Tag: Lee Da-hee

K-Drama Report: Love is for Suckers, Part III

April 17, 2024

I cannot imagine that, upon finishing the finale of Love is for Suckers, one doesn’t immediately go back and rewatch the very first scene. Not because it’s a twist-movie “now it all makes sense,” but because the show opens with a flash-forward tease that doesn’t come back in the end. For those who didn’t be-kind-rewind, the first episode opens with our heroine Goo Yeo-reum taking a van to the Kingdom of Love house. She scrolls through articles on her phone about a wedding between contestants after a controversial season. On the set, she first speaks with Sang-woo, who says it’s been a long time. The contestants are gathered nearby, dressed up like brides and grooms. Han Ji-yeon excitedly calls out to Yeo-reum – which, like, whoa. This makes Jae-hoon turn, and the lovebirds lock eyes. Sang-woo corrals everyone for pictures, and then Jae-hoon and Yeo-reum make eyes again. The clock winds backwards, taking us into the show… … More K-Drama Report: Love is for Suckers, Part III

K-Drama Report: Love is for Suckers, Part II

April 14, 2024

Something I’ve long found interesting in media studies is why people decide to watch what they watch. What goes into the decision, if a decision ever comes from the endless browsing across multiple platforms? In this most academic pursuit, I’ve been privileged with a curious, compelling subject – myself – and every now and again, he baffles me. At the moment, I’ve got at least two shows running: Love is for Suckers, and season two of The Shield. That follows. It’s season two because I watched the first way back in college, during the great mania around prestige television. Unfortunately, it vanished off streaming, and I’ve only returned to it ten years later. It’s good. It’s probably the best police procedural I’ve ever seen (if The Wire and Mindhunter are just stage-left of procedural), in part because it’s honest and seems to have a mission. In its exploration of police corruption, we see the grisly effects but we also understand the very logical cause. The bad guy’s gonna get away with it, so we want Vic Mackey to step in with his extrajudicial methods. Why wouldn’t that impulse exist in the real world, and is the system strong enough to resist it? … More K-Drama Report: Love is for Suckers, Part II

K-Drama Report: Love is for Suckers

April 8, 2024

Another K-drama, another shock — to me and my imagination so constrained by the conventions of story. In countless instances before, I’ve shrieked, “You can’t do that!” upon narrative shortcuts like coincidence or melodrama. Here, Love is for Suckers plays out for four episodes and only begins on the fifth — and it’s brilliant. Clued in by a flash-forward cold open, we know that this will be about a romance between the producer of a Bachelor-style reality show and one of the contestants. But before that reality show even begins filming, we watch entire relationships come together and fall apart. Jobs are lost. There are medical emergencies. We learn about pasts enough for people from those pasts to reemerge. It may just be table-setting, but it feels like an entire show — with the commensurate emotional weight. … More K-Drama Report: Love is for Suckers

Best of the Year: 2021

December 20, 2021

An annual tradition five or seven years strong is the Year End Review, in which, via podcast, I recount the ten best movies or TV shows I saw for the first time that year. Originally hosted on The Battle Beyond Planet X, it’s since migrated to Questions: We Don’t Have Answers. The three-part podcast with cohost Donovan Morgan Grant and special guest Stella Bowman is now up. The following is my individual top ten list, with Worst of the Year and Honorable Mentions thrown in for flavor. What were your picks of the year? Let me know in the comments! For once, I actually mean that. … More Best of the Year: 2021

Search: WWW | Recommended Korean Drama

June 12, 2021

“Give me Cha Hyeon,” Ga-kyeong says, and as the scene whips between reaction shots and the music swells, I’m bouncing the iPad on my knees, making a positively indescribable noise. Search: WWW often shocked me like this, inducing so much excitement and even dread, then clocking me square in the stupid grin. It was urgent somehow, to even process my experience with it — but I couldn’t. Perhaps it left me feeling so much that my thoughts were annihilated. I’d like to recommend it, but where do I even start? … More Search: WWW | Recommended Korean Drama

Lee Da-hee: Dichotomy

June 4, 2021

I promise not to make this a regular feature, especially since it’s rare anyway. It’s something I’ve always liked about actors, when an already compelling turn is underscored by just how opposite the performer seems to be in reality. It’s a strange thing to write about, but the actress Lee Da-hee represents an extraordinary case. … More Lee Da-hee: Dichotomy

K-Drama Report: The Beauty Inside (2018)

May 30, 2021

Yes, I cried. Happy? I am, because it’s been a while. The story as old as this website is my search for another K-drama as affecting to me as the first I saw, Cheer Up! (Sassy Go Go). Last year, I thought it might be Something in the Rain, with superstar Son Ye-jin, a relatively straightforward romance where the twist is that the woman is older than the man by maybe six years. Scandalous! Granted, it was further complicated by the man being a family friend, so to Son’s mother, it was like her two children were hooking up and she did not take that well. Also, it is kind of scandalous, damn it, and would be even in the States. Also, if the woman is taller, but I do go on. Could go on. I’ve seen ten episodes, but a few episodes back, my view rate slipped from days to weeks to months. It was so disheartening because I loved the show from premise on, and I really liked the central couple, as well as Son’s long-suffering friend. The problem was a fatal, repetitive subplot involving sexual harassment, which felt so tertiary to the main plot and certainly prickled me with sensitive subject matter. … More K-Drama Report: The Beauty Inside (2018)