Kdrama Watching

Queen In Hyun’s Man

Finally saw Episode 3, and …  yeah, critical faculty out the window for this one. The knit-cap, Boong Do’s good cheer, aghhhhhh, just kill me now with all the cuteness!!! I guess logically-speaking it’s weird that he’s so calm about the whole thing, but frankly, I don’t really care. I’m just loving the fact that he’s not all angsty and mopey and tortured. Stay cool, Boong Do!

My Husband Got a Family

I’ve been watching this weekend drama on KBS World on and off for a while. It’s not really the type of drama I’d bother streaming or downloading, (one of those 50+ episodes famiy drama with TONS AND TONS of characters and storylines, and we’re lucky if we get 20 minutes per episode with the main couple), but as a TV fare it’s pretty decent. The set-up is pretty snark-worthy  – a woman (Yoon Hee) marries a man (Gwi Nam) whose adopted parents live in America because she doesn’t want to deal with in-laws, but then he found his birth parents, who, guess what, live across the hall from them! Hey, she has to deal with in-laws after all, lots and lots of them as it turns out – parents, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandmother, great aunts. Cue wacky hijinks!

I … actually like it, hehe, despite rolling my eyes initially at the premise. Well, I like the part related to Yoon Hee and Gwi Nam, and their interactions with both sets of family. Having not been raised in Korea, Gwi Nam seems a tad clueless when it comes to the appropriate way of dealing with his family. The results are sometimes hilarious, like when Yoon Hee tried to explain to him that the elders in the family don’t always say what they really mean:

If they say “why go eat expensive food like steak when we can just have kimchi like usual”, then that means you should go buy the most expensive steak RIGHT NOW. Or if they say “we don’t have to go visit your great-aunts tomorrow if you have something else to do”, that means we DEFINITELY have to go.

And then they both wished that it will rain the next day so they won’t be able to make the long drive. Cut to – beautiful, clear, sunny day. Hah!

There’s also sadder stuff – Gwin Nam’s sister telling him she had never celebrated her birthday in 30 years because the day she was born was also the day he went missing, his grandmother saying that Gwi Nam’s mother spent her entire married life watching her husband take his mother’s side in every argument, only to now watch her son takes wife’s side in every argument.

The show spends too much time of Gwi Nam’s three sisters love life for my taste, though. The three potential love interests are sooooo typical Kdrama hero-type – the arrogant has-been, the poor sap who doesn’t realize he’s in love with this woman even though EVERYONE AND THEIR COUSINS can see it clearly, and the improbable “how could they not know they’re related??” coupling (Gwi Nam’s youngest sister + Yoon Hee’s youngest brother) – the love stories are so much less interesting than watching the sisters interact with Yoon Hee, and with the rest of the family.