Sort of Review/ Commentary on K-Drama: You're Beautiful
Recently a friend of mine has gotten me into watching K-Dramas. Which, ok, they can be kinda cheesy, but not all of them have bad plotlines, and sometimes all you want is some cliched goodness to mindlessly lose yourself in. And some are less cliched than you might think.
You're Beautiful is one of the more cliched dramas, though, I think. It's basic premise is a common one in a lot of k-dramas that are supposed to be kinda like romcoms- sweet/innocent girl has to pretend to be a boy for *insert reason here*. As she is pretending to be a he, she meets the dashing young protagonist, who usually has some large flaw that she is supposed to help him correct/overcome while she is pretending, and who usually hates her at first sight. The two characters are generally also complete opposites and have epic fights mixed with intrigue and startling love declarations until finally "the big reveal" that *surprise*, she's a GIRL from which point, there are a few more twists and turns until she and the lead can live together happily ever after in holy matrimony (if not actually seen on screen, usually implied heavily in ending of the series).
In You're Beautiful Go Mi Nyu, a nun-in-training (I don't think she was quite a novice, but could be wrong) is picked up one day whilst running some errands for the Mother Superior by Ma Hoon Yi- a strange but hilarious man who fumbles awkwardly through introductions and seriously botches up their first meeting.
Once he does get Go Mi Nyu to listen to him, he reveals that he is the manager of fictional Korean idol group A.N.Jell, which her identical twin brother Go Mi Nam was set to join in a few days. However, Ma Hoon Yi had sent Go Mi Nam to get some plastic surgery done on his eyes and somehow it had been messed up. Now Go Mi Nam was in the U.S. undergoing corrective surgery for this mistake and couldn't be present for the signing of the very contract that would officially make him the newest member of the group.
Ma Hoon Yi, knowing of his identical twin sister, sought her out to beg her to dress up as her brother and sign the contract for him. Go Mi Nyu doesn't refuse for several reasons:
1) This is a k-drama- she can't refuse,there'd be no plot.
2) She and her brother believe that by one of them becoming famous they might be able to find their long lost mother. They had been left at the monastery with the nuns at a very early age and only been told that their father was a songwriter and their mother a famous singer.
3) Ma Hoon Yi swears that he would lose his job for the mistake with Go Mi Nam, and even though he was a creeper earlier, Go Mi Nyu is too kindhearted to see him truly suffer. This is just the beginning of Ma Hoon Yi's rather hilarious but misguided manipulation of Go Mi Nyu to get what her to do what he wants.
Once she agrees, Go Mi Nyu signs the contract as her brother (in a scene where I wondered just how shy everyone else assumed this guy was- I mean, she was doing a horrible job pretending that she wanted to be there. And that she was a boy.) She then finds out that manager Ma Hoon Yi was lying like usual and that she must stay on as Go Mi Nam for at least a month- until her brother can return and trade places with her seamlessly. She agrees, hesitantly and a bit overwhelmed by her three other band members:
Hwang Tae Kyung- tall, dark, handsome. Lead male, lead singer/leader of the band, her love interest. Arrogant, kind of an asshole, is a bit OCD, and like me, is night-blind. He does some really mean things during the series, but because of Go Mi Nam (Nyu) and his feelings for her, is sort of redeemed by the end. He and Go Mi Nam get off to a very bad start.
Kang Shin Woo- also handsome, but not as tall. Steadiest and most level headed of the group, he observes and catches on quite quickly that Go Mi Nam is actually a girl. He doesn't say anything however, first for a bit of entertainment, and then because he genuinely cares for her. He's the other man in this love triangle. I felt really horrible for him the whole time because he was so good to her and such a good guy and she was oblivious almost to the point of inadvertent meanness regarding his feelings for her. She hurt him pretty badly and I know it was to drive home the point about unrequited love, but sometimes I felt they kinda overdid it.
Jeremy- cute, floppy, kinda idiotic and clueless one. He and Go Mi Nam also get off to a rocky start, mostly because Jeremy thinks she's gross after getting really drunk and throwing up on Tae Kyung, and also because he thinks she's gay. Or he, in this case. It takes forever for Jeremy to find out she's a girl, and when he does, he ALSO gets a crush on her. It's more like puppy love, so he overcomes it much more easily than Shin Woo.
After the first night's disastrous drinking episode, Go Mi Nam slowly starts to carve out a place in the band. She apparently can sing just as well as her brother, so no one knows she's not a guy until Tae Kyung accidentally sees a video of her with the coordinator, discussing ways to make her disguise better. He sees it as an opportunity to rid himself of the nuisance that's ruining his life, and only through sincere begging on her part and the manager's does he eventually agree not to say anything. As a result, he gets roped into helping them with their subterfuge as Go Mi Nam is nearly exposed several times. Nosy reporters, and an evil actress that falls in love with Tae Kyung attempt blackmail on the band as they dig for answers to vague questions.
Things also become more complicated when everyone finds out that Tae Kyung's mother used to be in love with Go Mi Nam's father, and that the twins' parents are both dead now. She mounts a search for the twins to ask if she could buy the rights to a song their father supposedly wrote for her, while Go Mi Nam with the help of an estranged, money-grubbing aunt tries to track down someone who knows anything about her parents.
With a lot of different twists and turns, everyone eventually finds out Go Mi Nam is a girl (in the band, at least) and with their help she makes it through the month. Along the way, she falls dramatically in love with Tae Kyung and is blackmailed by the evil actress, Yoo He Yi. She also struggles to find out if Tae Kyung's mother's stories about her parents are the truth, and eventually finds out something that surprises everyone. But everything still turns out alright in the end- they stop the reporter from unearthing the truth, get the real Go Mi Nam back, and Tae Kyung dramarically stops her from returning to being a nun at the end of the series, promising to marry her in the future.
I'd give a better summary than this but it's late, I'm going on enough as it is, and I am so tired, I'm not quite sure I'm making sense anymore. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm making grammar and spelling errors galore. Augh. Anyway, that's kind of a rough sketch of what's going on in the show. Now on to what I did/didn't like about it.
Dislikes:
1. I thought that Go Mi Nam was WAAY too girly most of the time. I honestly had a hard time suspending my disbelief that anyone else could think she was a guy throughout most of the show. And I know she was raised by nuns, but wasn't she 20? Somewhere in that region? She was a little too freaked out by things that most mature girls would have been able to handle. And I'm not so sure she would have been quite as sheltered as they made her out to be, even if she was living in a monastery for the majority of her life. News can still get around. But maybe that's just Korea.
2. I got sick of Tae Kyung's same 5 facial expressions after a while. I actually liked the actor who played him, and know he can do much more than he did in this role, at least as far as expressions go. I guess it was partly just the character, but I eventually started wishing he could get some variety in there. Really.After a while, I was making Zoolander jokes. BUT. I really did love his performance, because it was perfect beyond that. It was a highlight of the series.
3. Go Mi Nam was really unconcerned about her brother. She and Manager Ma Hoon Yi maybe talked about him 3 times? Ok, more than that, but not by a lot. As a younger sister myself, I am kind of surprised that she showed so little interest in her brother and to some degree it seemed, he in her. Especially when they were supposedly kinda close when younger. But this was kind of consistent with her general air of obliviousness. I mean, once her aunt moved in with the band and she realized she had no valuable information, Go Mi Nam kind of ignored her at times, it seemed. Also, she had no problems ditching a good friend like Shin Woo with no attempts at explaining or calling him to let him know she couldn't make it to any of the nice dinners he set up for her. Her character seemed kinda one-sided to me at times, even for a cliched drama.Except for these general things, though, I did like Go Mi Nam for the most part. She was cute and funny, and very gullible, like with the pig nose thing.
4. Something that seems to be common in most k dramas is the idea that only complete opposites attract and are good for each other. I know that can be true, but I also know that sometimes people who are mostly similar can do just fine. It might be because writers think it produces more conflict, but people who are very similar can have a lot of conflict too, just about different things. I think I was sorta bothered by how much the show let that put her and Tae Kyung into set character roles and didn't allow much room for them to go beyond those roles- he was the arrogant, worldly man who was every girl's dream, and she was the sweet, innocent perfect girl who got the perfect guy simply because she could make him be less of a jackass. I felt like that relationship could have been developed in a better and slightly less cliche way.
I could go on about the other cliches that bothered me or stood out, but I think I'll leave it there for now. Besides, these are mostly just the ones that I found hard to ignore because they kept popping up occasionally as I was watching. Most everything else I could get over relatively quickly.
Likes:
1. Even though it was done to be more dramatic, I liked that she realized it would be hard for her to have a relationship with Tae Kyung after she left. It was a kinda realistic outcome for an unrealistic situation, and I was glad that she came so close to doing her own thing for a while. I know it was purely to make it more suspenseful as the viewers rooted for her and Tae Kyung to get together ( I totally was, despite any and all complaints), but it gave her a bit more depth to character that I'd been missing at times. I also felt that the scene with the missing hair pin and Yoo He Yi at the bar added some character to her,because she was something other than the perfect little girl for a few moments.
2. I liked how Yoo He Yi had moments where she questioned the morality of her actions- however brief those were. She wasn't quite just a villain that had absolutely no scruples blackmailing people and acting like she cared. I know her main motivation was that she didn't want Tae Kyung to hate her and maybe fall in love with her, but I kinda took it as a sign that she was making the first step to slowly caring about something outside of herself. The end of the series kinda destroyed that, but for those brief moments earlier on, I was grateful.
3.I liked that Shin Woo was sorta an exceptional good guy. Like, if Go Mi Nam hadn't been so oblivious, he might have been a serious contender for her heart. He was so sweet and caring, but he knew his limits too. I know I had several moments where I was actually rooting for him to win her over. But all in all, I think he was better off. I think he needed someone who was a bit less of a space case. I know that's what attracted him to her, but I think he would have had a hard time coping with her obliviousness all the time. He does get angry at her once for seeming to not care that she'd stood him up to go running after a Tae Kyung who clearly wanted to be alone.
4. At first, I didn't really like that they made Jeremy so childish, but as the show went on, he added some much needed humor and a different outlook on the same situation. He sorta livened things up after awhile. his crush on Go Mi Nam was a bit unexpected, and was heart-wrenching for a while, but his easy way of letting go was also nice in a show where everyone liked somebody else was being motivated by such feelings. The humor in the show, while sometimes cheesy, was my kind of humor. I'm easily amused, so Jeremy was my favorite when he wasn't exhibiting what looked like borderline homophobia. He did cute things and leapt to the funniest conclusions regarding the most innocent situations, and eventually overcame his prejudice towards Go Mi Nam, allowing them to become friends.
All in all, with all its flaws, I really did enjoy this drama. It was an easy show to watch and enjoy without having plotlines that were too heavy or dark. It had about the right amount of seriousness and levity and was a good, fun way to spend my free time.
Alright, I can barely keep my eyes open. I apologize if this is really disjointed. I wasn't half as tired when I began it as I am now. GAH. I need sleep and food. G'night.
Edit: I suppose I would recommend this drama to anyone who wants something that's mostly lighthearted with just a bit of drama and plot. It was definitely one I enjoyed, but it didn't knock my socks off. So I guess that means I'd rank it about a 6/10. Good, one I might rewatch, but not an absolute favorite.
You're Beautiful is one of the more cliched dramas, though, I think. It's basic premise is a common one in a lot of k-dramas that are supposed to be kinda like romcoms- sweet/innocent girl has to pretend to be a boy for *insert reason here*. As she is pretending to be a he, she meets the dashing young protagonist, who usually has some large flaw that she is supposed to help him correct/overcome while she is pretending, and who usually hates her at first sight. The two characters are generally also complete opposites and have epic fights mixed with intrigue and startling love declarations until finally "the big reveal" that *surprise*, she's a GIRL from which point, there are a few more twists and turns until she and the lead can live together happily ever after in holy matrimony (if not actually seen on screen, usually implied heavily in ending of the series).
In You're Beautiful Go Mi Nyu, a nun-in-training (I don't think she was quite a novice, but could be wrong) is picked up one day whilst running some errands for the Mother Superior by Ma Hoon Yi- a strange but hilarious man who fumbles awkwardly through introductions and seriously botches up their first meeting.
Once he does get Go Mi Nyu to listen to him, he reveals that he is the manager of fictional Korean idol group A.N.Jell, which her identical twin brother Go Mi Nam was set to join in a few days. However, Ma Hoon Yi had sent Go Mi Nam to get some plastic surgery done on his eyes and somehow it had been messed up. Now Go Mi Nam was in the U.S. undergoing corrective surgery for this mistake and couldn't be present for the signing of the very contract that would officially make him the newest member of the group.
Ma Hoon Yi, knowing of his identical twin sister, sought her out to beg her to dress up as her brother and sign the contract for him. Go Mi Nyu doesn't refuse for several reasons:
1) This is a k-drama- she can't refuse,there'd be no plot.
2) She and her brother believe that by one of them becoming famous they might be able to find their long lost mother. They had been left at the monastery with the nuns at a very early age and only been told that their father was a songwriter and their mother a famous singer.
3) Ma Hoon Yi swears that he would lose his job for the mistake with Go Mi Nam, and even though he was a creeper earlier, Go Mi Nyu is too kindhearted to see him truly suffer. This is just the beginning of Ma Hoon Yi's rather hilarious but misguided manipulation of Go Mi Nyu to get what her to do what he wants.
Once she agrees, Go Mi Nyu signs the contract as her brother (in a scene where I wondered just how shy everyone else assumed this guy was- I mean, she was doing a horrible job pretending that she wanted to be there. And that she was a boy.) She then finds out that manager Ma Hoon Yi was lying like usual and that she must stay on as Go Mi Nam for at least a month- until her brother can return and trade places with her seamlessly. She agrees, hesitantly and a bit overwhelmed by her three other band members:
Hwang Tae Kyung- tall, dark, handsome. Lead male, lead singer/leader of the band, her love interest. Arrogant, kind of an asshole, is a bit OCD, and like me, is night-blind. He does some really mean things during the series, but because of Go Mi Nam (Nyu) and his feelings for her, is sort of redeemed by the end. He and Go Mi Nam get off to a very bad start.
Kang Shin Woo- also handsome, but not as tall. Steadiest and most level headed of the group, he observes and catches on quite quickly that Go Mi Nam is actually a girl. He doesn't say anything however, first for a bit of entertainment, and then because he genuinely cares for her. He's the other man in this love triangle. I felt really horrible for him the whole time because he was so good to her and such a good guy and she was oblivious almost to the point of inadvertent meanness regarding his feelings for her. She hurt him pretty badly and I know it was to drive home the point about unrequited love, but sometimes I felt they kinda overdid it.
Jeremy- cute, floppy, kinda idiotic and clueless one. He and Go Mi Nam also get off to a rocky start, mostly because Jeremy thinks she's gross after getting really drunk and throwing up on Tae Kyung, and also because he thinks she's gay. Or he, in this case. It takes forever for Jeremy to find out she's a girl, and when he does, he ALSO gets a crush on her. It's more like puppy love, so he overcomes it much more easily than Shin Woo.
After the first night's disastrous drinking episode, Go Mi Nam slowly starts to carve out a place in the band. She apparently can sing just as well as her brother, so no one knows she's not a guy until Tae Kyung accidentally sees a video of her with the coordinator, discussing ways to make her disguise better. He sees it as an opportunity to rid himself of the nuisance that's ruining his life, and only through sincere begging on her part and the manager's does he eventually agree not to say anything. As a result, he gets roped into helping them with their subterfuge as Go Mi Nam is nearly exposed several times. Nosy reporters, and an evil actress that falls in love with Tae Kyung attempt blackmail on the band as they dig for answers to vague questions.
Things also become more complicated when everyone finds out that Tae Kyung's mother used to be in love with Go Mi Nam's father, and that the twins' parents are both dead now. She mounts a search for the twins to ask if she could buy the rights to a song their father supposedly wrote for her, while Go Mi Nam with the help of an estranged, money-grubbing aunt tries to track down someone who knows anything about her parents.
With a lot of different twists and turns, everyone eventually finds out Go Mi Nam is a girl (in the band, at least) and with their help she makes it through the month. Along the way, she falls dramatically in love with Tae Kyung and is blackmailed by the evil actress, Yoo He Yi. She also struggles to find out if Tae Kyung's mother's stories about her parents are the truth, and eventually finds out something that surprises everyone. But everything still turns out alright in the end- they stop the reporter from unearthing the truth, get the real Go Mi Nam back, and Tae Kyung dramarically stops her from returning to being a nun at the end of the series, promising to marry her in the future.
I'd give a better summary than this but it's late, I'm going on enough as it is, and I am so tired, I'm not quite sure I'm making sense anymore. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm making grammar and spelling errors galore. Augh. Anyway, that's kind of a rough sketch of what's going on in the show. Now on to what I did/didn't like about it.
Dislikes:
1. I thought that Go Mi Nam was WAAY too girly most of the time. I honestly had a hard time suspending my disbelief that anyone else could think she was a guy throughout most of the show. And I know she was raised by nuns, but wasn't she 20? Somewhere in that region? She was a little too freaked out by things that most mature girls would have been able to handle. And I'm not so sure she would have been quite as sheltered as they made her out to be, even if she was living in a monastery for the majority of her life. News can still get around. But maybe that's just Korea.
2. I got sick of Tae Kyung's same 5 facial expressions after a while. I actually liked the actor who played him, and know he can do much more than he did in this role, at least as far as expressions go. I guess it was partly just the character, but I eventually started wishing he could get some variety in there. Really.After a while, I was making Zoolander jokes. BUT. I really did love his performance, because it was perfect beyond that. It was a highlight of the series.
3. Go Mi Nam was really unconcerned about her brother. She and Manager Ma Hoon Yi maybe talked about him 3 times? Ok, more than that, but not by a lot. As a younger sister myself, I am kind of surprised that she showed so little interest in her brother and to some degree it seemed, he in her. Especially when they were supposedly kinda close when younger. But this was kind of consistent with her general air of obliviousness. I mean, once her aunt moved in with the band and she realized she had no valuable information, Go Mi Nam kind of ignored her at times, it seemed. Also, she had no problems ditching a good friend like Shin Woo with no attempts at explaining or calling him to let him know she couldn't make it to any of the nice dinners he set up for her. Her character seemed kinda one-sided to me at times, even for a cliched drama.Except for these general things, though, I did like Go Mi Nam for the most part. She was cute and funny, and very gullible, like with the pig nose thing.
4. Something that seems to be common in most k dramas is the idea that only complete opposites attract and are good for each other. I know that can be true, but I also know that sometimes people who are mostly similar can do just fine. It might be because writers think it produces more conflict, but people who are very similar can have a lot of conflict too, just about different things. I think I was sorta bothered by how much the show let that put her and Tae Kyung into set character roles and didn't allow much room for them to go beyond those roles- he was the arrogant, worldly man who was every girl's dream, and she was the sweet, innocent perfect girl who got the perfect guy simply because she could make him be less of a jackass. I felt like that relationship could have been developed in a better and slightly less cliche way.
I could go on about the other cliches that bothered me or stood out, but I think I'll leave it there for now. Besides, these are mostly just the ones that I found hard to ignore because they kept popping up occasionally as I was watching. Most everything else I could get over relatively quickly.
Likes:
1. Even though it was done to be more dramatic, I liked that she realized it would be hard for her to have a relationship with Tae Kyung after she left. It was a kinda realistic outcome for an unrealistic situation, and I was glad that she came so close to doing her own thing for a while. I know it was purely to make it more suspenseful as the viewers rooted for her and Tae Kyung to get together ( I totally was, despite any and all complaints), but it gave her a bit more depth to character that I'd been missing at times. I also felt that the scene with the missing hair pin and Yoo He Yi at the bar added some character to her,because she was something other than the perfect little girl for a few moments.
2. I liked how Yoo He Yi had moments where she questioned the morality of her actions- however brief those were. She wasn't quite just a villain that had absolutely no scruples blackmailing people and acting like she cared. I know her main motivation was that she didn't want Tae Kyung to hate her and maybe fall in love with her, but I kinda took it as a sign that she was making the first step to slowly caring about something outside of herself. The end of the series kinda destroyed that, but for those brief moments earlier on, I was grateful.
3.I liked that Shin Woo was sorta an exceptional good guy. Like, if Go Mi Nam hadn't been so oblivious, he might have been a serious contender for her heart. He was so sweet and caring, but he knew his limits too. I know I had several moments where I was actually rooting for him to win her over. But all in all, I think he was better off. I think he needed someone who was a bit less of a space case. I know that's what attracted him to her, but I think he would have had a hard time coping with her obliviousness all the time. He does get angry at her once for seeming to not care that she'd stood him up to go running after a Tae Kyung who clearly wanted to be alone.
4. At first, I didn't really like that they made Jeremy so childish, but as the show went on, he added some much needed humor and a different outlook on the same situation. He sorta livened things up after awhile. his crush on Go Mi Nam was a bit unexpected, and was heart-wrenching for a while, but his easy way of letting go was also nice in a show where everyone liked somebody else was being motivated by such feelings. The humor in the show, while sometimes cheesy, was my kind of humor. I'm easily amused, so Jeremy was my favorite when he wasn't exhibiting what looked like borderline homophobia. He did cute things and leapt to the funniest conclusions regarding the most innocent situations, and eventually overcame his prejudice towards Go Mi Nam, allowing them to become friends.
All in all, with all its flaws, I really did enjoy this drama. It was an easy show to watch and enjoy without having plotlines that were too heavy or dark. It had about the right amount of seriousness and levity and was a good, fun way to spend my free time.
Alright, I can barely keep my eyes open. I apologize if this is really disjointed. I wasn't half as tired when I began it as I am now. GAH. I need sleep and food. G'night.
Edit: I suppose I would recommend this drama to anyone who wants something that's mostly lighthearted with just a bit of drama and plot. It was definitely one I enjoyed, but it didn't knock my socks off. So I guess that means I'd rank it about a 6/10. Good, one I might rewatch, but not an absolute favorite.