A charming romcom that really made me laugh out loud at times. Though the premise is ludicrous, the leads are so cute together and the supporting cast is adorable, too.
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Tag Archives: Chae Soo-bin
Fox Bride Star (aka Where Stars Land)
Had no idea what this was about and just clicked the play button out of curiosity but I must say that so far it’s quite enjoyable. No..it hasn’t slapped me in the face with it’s excellence..but neither has it put me to sleep so that’s a good thing..lol..
The setting is Incheon airport..the inner workings of the different sections behind the scenes, security, patron relations, immigration — all those folks that makes an airport run smoothly. We are introduced to our heroine (Chae Soo-bin) and find that she is a girl who can’t seem to keep her emotions in check and has been transferred from section to section because of it. This has made her fearful and overly eager to please but hasn’t dampened her enthusiasm. Unfortunately she acts before she thinks and soon finds herself in the usual hot water.
Our “hero” (Lee Je-hoon) is a man of mystery, deadpan, calm, isolated, keeping to himself and wanting only to do his job and be left alone. We soon find out that there is a real mystery about him..centered specifically on his feats of heroism that he’s displayed..the focus is that he seems to have a “bionic” arm which bends metal..can support the weight of a falling car..you get the idea! The more the guy wants to be invisible the more people talk about his strangeness!. You can imagine that these two are like chalk and cheese and have different viewpoints in life. What I’m enjoying is that, through their interactions, they are slowly changing each other. I’m really curious as to what the mystery is and what the outcome will be.
Now..unfortunately it has its share of OTT secondary characters which I could do without and sadly there are still instances where it’s expected that an employee gets on her knees in apology to a rich troublemaker..even if she is the one who has been assaulted..but there are also very human moments that make us smile and that makes up for the other.
Fingers crossed that it continues along this lovely path!!
I’m Not a Robot – Series Finale
I thought I’d better do a little drama housekeeping before I started in on Life, so I turned my attention back to I’m Not a Robot this weekend. I was about half-way through it and had stopped because it was still on-air at the time and getting to the more angsty part of the story and thought I’d rather wait until it was completed so I could work my way through the heartache parts and get to the good stuff at the end. But other shows kept interrupting so I was wondering if there was something about the show that was holding me back for some reason.
I’m happy to say that I was charmed anew by the ‘boy with no friends’ (he has a psychosomatic life-threatening allergy to human touch) and the bright girl who plays the robot who comes into his life as a companion. But… After having just come off the very gratifying romance in What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim? I will say that there things that left me wanting a little more. I think I’ve been spoiled. I’ll save the spoiler-type reasons why for after the jump, below.
What really works in this drama, though, is the pairing of Chae Soo-bin and Yoo Seung-ho. They’re both playing characters about 4 years older than their actual ages, and that youthfulness generally works for them. She is once again smart and sassy, as in Strongest Deliveryman, but she’s a lot sunnier and more sweet-tempered in this character. It’s novel to have a character who wants to be a hands-on inventor and is focused on achieving her goals, even if she doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to make and promote her ideas. She also has the courage of conviction and when someone in her past doesn’t give any consideration to her dreams, she has the sense of self-worth enough to leave him without explanation or drama. This could easily have been a “Candy” role, but it never is; even if he’s a wealthy CEO he never bankrolls her dreams and that’s never on her agenda either.
The fact that the “other” is Uhm Ki-joon in a role for which he is highly unsuited as he just looks too much older at 42 than his ex, Chae Soo-bin’s character Ji-ah, who’s 24 playing 28, that makes his character’s age of 34 just plain jarring most of the time. That he’s made the robot look and behave like Ji-ah and is trying to figure out where he went wrong in their relationship because he wants her back is the part that makes me wish they tried a lot harder in their casting of this role. It’s not that he gives a bad performance, I just don’t want to see him in that triangle.
Yoo Seung-ho is about a year older than Chae Soo-bin, and they work well as a result, even though there are times when I want to scold myself when he looks young and vulnerable and boyish when just moments earlier he’s been very mature and sexy/playful. He also, I might add, has a nice lighter baritone voice which adds to his charm. As he gets older he’s less the “Baby So Ji-sub” he once was and is more his own persona, but oh, those killer side-ways glances he specializes in! Plus, he and Soo-bin do some good kissing once the awkward firsts are out of the way.
The show spends a lot more time focusing on the relationship between his relationship with his robot, and that’s a wise decision because they work the best. The business machinations at company HQ work less well because they are a mix of silly shenanigans and serious criminal activities — which are you, Show? Are you playful or not?
Of note, also making an appearance in this one is Kang Ki-young, who was Park Seo-joon’s friend in Secretary Kim, though here he plays a former childhood pal who may/may not be a bad guy. He is more fun when he’s snarky, but he does a worthy job here.
All in all, I generally enjoyed the show, but… Mild spoilers follow.
Strongest Deliveryman – Final Impressions
I am working my way through some of my in-progress shows and Strongest Deliveryman is one that I can now put in the Finished column, and I’m glad that I watched this show.
One of the things I particularly enjoyed about the drama was it’s cast of pretty average hard-working working class characters, and the inclusion of not one, but two “reverse Candy’s!” (Candy’s are what they call the Cinderella types, hard-working and plucky girls or guys who meet their fabulously rich handsome prince/ess and live HEA.) Go Kyung-pyo is such a winning personality; he looks like someone who is decent to the core, like his good pal Park Bo-gum (they recently went on vacation together to NY), and this is perfect for his character. He’s so dedicated and optimistic and firm in his convictions that being decent and kind is the only path and if they just persevere together, it will all work out. He’s not the perfect Pollyanna though; he can be angry and hurt and want to give up and this balances everything out.
Chae Soo-bin is his more jaded counterpart and her lack of faith in her fellow Koreans is put to the test by his sunny side up persona. Of course they’re cute together!
The 2 Candy types are the 2nd leads and they end up being good additions to the plot and being something different from the typical. He’s the ne’er do well 2nd son of a rich family who’s cast out and has to choose to wallow in self-pity or find his own way and she’s the pampered daughter of another rich family who gets tired of the silver spoon and runs away to make her own life. I like the performances and the young actors who play them very much; they felt fresh.
This isn’t a drama of high angst, though they certainly run into a lot of challenges along the way, with one exception pertaining to our hero’s family story. When the truth is revealed in fuller detail late in the story I gotta say my heart broke not just a little for him, and I was glad that he had the heroine to be by his side because she, with her own family story, fully understands him. It made me really see them as a couple with a future even without a lot of dialogue just because you could feel those bonds forged in their experiences individually and together.
I liked them as a couple, and liked the cast in general, and the show also succeeds because of the positive underlying messages.
We Talk Dramas All Day 