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Jun. 16th, 2020 06:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsLast night tenillypo and I finished watching Crash Landing On You, a Netflix kdrama featuring a hard-boiled South Korean businesswoman who accidentally paraglides into the demilitarized zone while testing out a new line of designer sportswear and drops down in front of a dreamy North Korean military officer.
Obviously, they fall in love! Excitingly, Yoon Se-ri is an actually competent and adult kdrama heroine with confidence and resources, who navigates the extremely plausible premise with aplomb and has a great time once back in South Korea throwing her money around to get results. Meanwhile, Captain Ri Jyeong-heok is an unexpectedly top tier kdrama boyfriend with a truly astonishing dearth of asshole behavior. In one episode, he restocks her completely empty kitchen because he's very concerned that she only has water bottles in her fridge, and then he realizes -- by himself! without being told! -- that he's put everything on shelves convenient for his height and carefully rearranges everything to make sure the kitchen organization is useful for someone who's six inches shorter. Never was he more attractive to me than in that moment.
It's also the sort of romance where the protagonists have resolved all their interpersonal feelings by like halfway through the show, but the obstacles that keep them apart are extremely logistically legitimate ('I'll be killed if I stay in your country and your family will be killed if you stay in mine' is pretty difficult to get round) and both of them are constantly doing their level best to be responsible and kind to each other about it. Lots of flinging themselves in front of bullets for the other, both emotional and literal.
All that said, a lot of the charm of the show is also in the supporting cast.
Ri Jeong-hyeok's squad, ft. the rude one, the hot one, the baby one, and the one with the forbidden encyclopedic knowledge of twenty-year-old South Korean kdrama tropes who thus must function as Interpreter of Yoon Se-Ri's Strange South Korean Behavior
The B love interests: Gu Seung Jun, a South Korean con artist hiding out in North Korea who really just wants someone to neg him, and Seo Dan, Ri Jeong-hyeok's arranged North Korean fiancee, who is more than happy to oblige
The Rat, a meek and morally compromised North Korean wiretapper, who spends the first half of the series seriously fighting for his own soul; he ends the series with friends and a much more satisfying job that still makes use of his audio experience! We were so proud of him! Bonus points for every time he managed to use his wiretapping skills to solve an unexpected problem once he got redeployed into comedy hijinks in the back half of the show.
A clique of judgy ahjummas in Ri Jyeong-heok's North Korean village that Yoon Se-ri uses her networking skills to befriend, who subsequently get a few heroic moments of their own while navigating the ripple effects of Plot Shenanigans
Se-ri's adopted mom, who has spent the past twenty years coming to terms with the fact that her husband's illegitimate daughter is way more important to her than either of her useless and terrible biological sons but has not yet had any success at conveying that fact to Se-ri
Seo Dan's mom, who has absolutely no difficulty conveying her extreme supportiveness to Dan whether Dan wants to hear about it or not
And a special shout-out to the South Korean propagada's-eye view of the warm and cuddly National Security Service, who pop up in the last two episodes of the series to have a lot of feelings about forbidden romance.
Agent A: we've hired a psychologist to analyze CCTV footage of the North Korean infiltrator, and the expert says he's a very nice man who's really in love
Agent B, shedding a single tear: you fool! haven't you seen the way he LOOKS at her! OBVIOUSLY he's really in love!
A North Korean defector was apparently involved in the writer's room, and there have been several articles interviewing North Koreans living in South Korea to get their opinions on the show; the attitude as reported appears to be "the details about daily life: surprisingly well-depicted and nuanced! the dreamy and chivalrous North Korean military officer: haha not in a million years."
So, you know, there's that. Warnings also for mental health stuff (Se-ri has suicidal depression in her past, and is saved from jumping off a bridge by a chance encounter with her future soulmate; both her therapist and the show posit a trip to Switzerland as the cure to suicidal ideation, which really makes me wonder how much money the Swiss tourism bureau shelled out for this drama), at least one more major character death than we were strictly expecting from this work of gripping not-exactly-realism, and extremely long episodes.
tenillypo and I finished watching Crash Landing On You, a Netflix kdrama featuring a hard-boiled South Korean businesswoman who accidentally paraglides into the demilitarized zone while testing out a new line of designer sportswear and drops down in front of a dreamy North Korean military officer. Obviously, they fall in love! Excitingly, Yoon Se-ri is an actually competent and adult kdrama heroine with confidence and resources, who navigates the extremely plausible premise with aplomb and has a great time once back in South Korea throwing her money around to get results. Meanwhile, Captain Ri Jyeong-heok is an unexpectedly top tier kdrama boyfriend with a truly astonishing dearth of asshole behavior. In one episode, he restocks her completely empty kitchen because he's very concerned that she only has water bottles in her fridge, and then he realizes -- by himself! without being told! -- that he's put everything on shelves convenient for his height and carefully rearranges everything to make sure the kitchen organization is useful for someone who's six inches shorter. Never was he more attractive to me than in that moment.
It's also the sort of romance where the protagonists have resolved all their interpersonal feelings by like halfway through the show, but the obstacles that keep them apart are extremely logistically legitimate ('I'll be killed if I stay in your country and your family will be killed if you stay in mine' is pretty difficult to get round) and both of them are constantly doing their level best to be responsible and kind to each other about it. Lots of flinging themselves in front of bullets for the other, both emotional and literal.
All that said, a lot of the charm of the show is also in the supporting cast.
Ri Jeong-hyeok's squad, ft. the rude one, the hot one, the baby one, and the one with the forbidden encyclopedic knowledge of twenty-year-old South Korean kdrama tropes who thus must function as Interpreter of Yoon Se-Ri's Strange South Korean Behavior
The B love interests: Gu Seung Jun, a South Korean con artist hiding out in North Korea who really just wants someone to neg him, and Seo Dan, Ri Jeong-hyeok's arranged North Korean fiancee, who is more than happy to oblige
The Rat, a meek and morally compromised North Korean wiretapper, who spends the first half of the series seriously fighting for his own soul; he ends the series with friends and a much more satisfying job that still makes use of his audio experience! We were so proud of him! Bonus points for every time he managed to use his wiretapping skills to solve an unexpected problem once he got redeployed into comedy hijinks in the back half of the show.
A clique of judgy ahjummas in Ri Jyeong-heok's North Korean village that Yoon Se-ri uses her networking skills to befriend, who subsequently get a few heroic moments of their own while navigating the ripple effects of Plot Shenanigans
Se-ri's adopted mom, who has spent the past twenty years coming to terms with the fact that her husband's illegitimate daughter is way more important to her than either of her useless and terrible biological sons but has not yet had any success at conveying that fact to Se-ri
Seo Dan's mom, who has absolutely no difficulty conveying her extreme supportiveness to Dan whether Dan wants to hear about it or not
And a special shout-out to the South Korean propagada's-eye view of the warm and cuddly National Security Service, who pop up in the last two episodes of the series to have a lot of feelings about forbidden romance.
Agent A: we've hired a psychologist to analyze CCTV footage of the North Korean infiltrator, and the expert says he's a very nice man who's really in love
Agent B, shedding a single tear: you fool! haven't you seen the way he LOOKS at her! OBVIOUSLY he's really in love!
A North Korean defector was apparently involved in the writer's room, and there have been several articles interviewing North Koreans living in South Korea to get their opinions on the show; the attitude as reported appears to be "the details about daily life: surprisingly well-depicted and nuanced! the dreamy and chivalrous North Korean military officer: haha not in a million years."
So, you know, there's that. Warnings also for mental health stuff (Se-ri has suicidal depression in her past, and is saved from jumping off a bridge by a chance encounter with her future soulmate; both her therapist and the show posit a trip to Switzerland as the cure to suicidal ideation, which really makes me wonder how much money the Swiss tourism bureau shelled out for this drama), at least one more major character death than we were strictly expecting from this work of gripping not-exactly-realism, and extremely long episodes.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-16 12:53 pm (UTC)Interestingly, it seems that every other photo you put in this post isn't displaying. (Trying to open in a new tab tells me that I don't have permission to access the resource, which is odd considering that I assume you uploaded all the photos with the same process.)
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Date: 2020-06-16 12:55 pm (UTC)I really love reading your thoughts! And yes, as much as I love the leads (and I love them a lot), the supporting cast absolutely makes this show. Honestly, those fifteen seconds of Manbok and his sound engineer job was literally my favorite part of the show. I cried like a baby. So earned.
I'm interested in what you thought about what happened to Seung Jun. It felt completely unnecessary to me, but it is a kdrama, so you've kind of got to have the Unnecessary Angst.
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Date: 2020-06-16 01:08 pm (UTC)Oh, weird -- is it working now?
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Date: 2020-06-16 01:12 pm (UTC)I also super didn't feel like the ending with Seung Jun was necessary, we definitely spent the last 45 minutes wondering if they were going to pull out a surprise twist on that. Like I'm glad Dan learned to love herself and find fulfillment, but also! it would not have been very hard to have him forced to leave and the ambiguity be about whether he would be able to come back, or even in a coma or something.
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Date: 2020-06-16 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-16 02:18 pm (UTC)Are those the Kim matriarch and the bunker dude from Parasite in that last photo? *goes off the check* They are! Another reason to check this out.
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Date: 2020-06-16 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-16 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-16 02:41 pm (UTC)YES! And I loved to bits the ahjumma cosmetics and how touched they were and how even though they'll never, ever see each other again they know that Seri cares about them and will never forget them and she had to know that there was a possibility they'd never find out about a South Korean brand but she just made that message in a bottle anyway and hoped they'd find it and !!!!
Like I'm glad Dan learned to love herself and find fulfillment, but also! it would not have been very hard to have him forced to leave and the ambiguity be about whether he would be able to come back, or even in a coma or something.
Right? She so desperately, desperately wanted to be loved for who she is, and yeah, now she knows that she had someone who loved her (enough to die for her) and that she's worthy of love, but...I want her to have the love! Not just the memory of love! It's my one big complaint about the show, because it just didn't need to be that way. (Though I absolutely cried again when her mom was saying that Dan now has someone who loves her. I was a weepy wreck through the last episode.)
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Date: 2020-06-16 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-16 02:57 pm (UTC)Can I give you some recommendations of others it might be good to start with?
+ City Hunter and Healer are both thriller types, but well-plotted, with good characters, and good ships (Healer, in particular has one of my all-time favorite ships from anything). I feel like they're both super accessible to people who aren't familiar with kdramas and their tropes. (I describe CH as "Batman without superpowers and set in ROK" and Healer as "Superman without superpowers set in ROK" and my friend who is obsessed with every version of Lois Lane says that Young Shin is one of her favorite versions of Lois, if that makes any difference to you.)
+ Queen In-Hyun's Man is maybe my favorite romance ever on TV? A time travel story about a Josen-era scholar who falls in love with the contemporary actress playing the queen he serves back in Joseon. Super satisfying and delightful.
+ Coffee Prince is a classic romcom that's low stakes but engaging. I recommend this one because I think every single person who's ever gotten into kdramas has watched it and is fond of it. (Though I haven't seen it in years, so it may not hold up as well as I hope it does.)
+ Age of Youth (which is Hello, My Twenties on Netflix, I believe) is not at all a typical kdrama, but it's wonderful--a slice-of-life story about five wonderful young women, any of whom I would die for.
+ Reply 1997 is another modern classic about a group of friends coming of age in the late 90s.
+ Dal Ja's Spring is a bit older and low key, but it's about a woman in her 30s who falls in love with her job and with a younger guy. I love Dal Ja so much.
+ Flower Boy Next Door is a romcom but a bit more wistful because it's about a young woman with severe social anxiety learning to live again.
And then when you get further into kdramas, I have to recommend White Christmas, which is dark and atypical and I have never found another kdrama like it, but I love it madly (and it's from the same writer as Age of Youth!). I probably wouldn't start with that one though! (Also I love Shut Up Flower Boy Band to the depths of my soul, but it's about a high school band, so if you don't like high school stories, it's probably not for you.)
The thing to remember is that you kind of have to ease yourself in and learn the language of kdramas? Things are going to seem weird and possibly off-putting at first, but I think if you stick with it, after a few episodes you'll find you understand the rhythm of it.
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Date: 2020-06-16 03:23 pm (UTC)Where would you place it on the kdrama camp scale? I dunno if camp? is the right word, but the sort of shenanigans v. broadly conveyed? Because that is my biggest obstacle in kdrama.
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Date: 2020-06-16 03:23 pm (UTC)I concur so much. That and the coffee-making. (Although did the fresh food last long enough whilst she was recovering in hospital?)
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Date: 2020-06-16 03:37 pm (UTC)It is indeed working now!
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Date: 2020-06-16 04:08 pm (UTC)My favorite kind of romance :)
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Date: 2020-06-16 04:08 pm (UTC)Sold! That is so unbelievably sexy that I am temporarily straight for this character.
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Date: 2020-06-16 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-16 07:44 pm (UTC)I can't promise to watch this show because I really never have acclimated to TV in the same way as movies (and I haven't even watched a movie that wasn't semi-wallpaper with
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Date: 2020-06-16 09:01 pm (UTC)In all honesty, the fanfic of my heart for this show would be 'somehow the ahummas team up to rescue Comrade Nephew from Europe when the kidnappers invade his building & hijinks subsequently ensue.'
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Date: 2020-06-16 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-17 12:09 am (UTC)> Se-ri's adopted mom, who has spent the past twenty years coming to terms with the fact that her husband's illegitimate daughter is way more important to her than either of her useless and terrible biological sons but has not yet had any success at conveying that fact to Se-ri
At that paragraph I became SUPER SOLD.
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Date: 2020-06-17 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-17 01:49 am (UTC)Thank you so much for this lovely introduction — clearly my summer watching is set out for me.
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Date: 2020-06-17 01:49 am (UTC)I've also watched and liked a bunch of the ones
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Date: 2020-06-17 01:52 am (UTC)