Our girl Sa Ra getting the divorce over in the first episode so she has plenty of time to kick ass, serve justice and fall in love 💕

Concrete Utopia (id, 2023)

Crash Course in Romance - First Impressions

I started Crash Course in Romance purely for Jung Kyung Ho only to discover it is directed by HomeCha director and has all of my favourites in the supporting cast. And now I am firmly sucked in to it cause of Jeon Do Yeon. It’s my first time watching her and she is such an amazing natural performer - it’s like acting is in her blood. She just has to show up and she will make sure your eyes are fixated on her.

There maybe many actresses who are more beautiful than her , but I’m dead sure there are very few who can surpass her acting skills. I didn’t even know what a big star she is, until I saw this series and went and looked up her acting resume!

I adored Jung Kyung Ho in Prison PlayBook and Hospital Playlist ( a drama that didn’t hook me but his charcater did) and was dying to see him as a main lead and I’m absolutely loving him in every scene. He has to be one of the best actors out there who has picture perfect comic timing.

All his outbursts and expressions when he is startled by JDY’s character are downright hilarious. But he is also delivering on the emotional scenes, the scene where he cried eating her food for the first time - it hit home hard. It reminded me of the scene in Chocolate when the younger Ha Ji Won cried after eating the younger Yoon Kye Sang’s mom’s food at their restaurant. The connection she holds dear for the rest of her life in that drama. Food is so integral to KDramas and Korean culture and to see it form the foundation of the leads’ relationship, her food healing him - could it get better than this?

KDramas do found families the best - take Reply 1988, Prison Playbook, Hospital Playlist, Be Melodramatic, Hometown Cha Cha Cha - people bound by love, friendship and hearts. JDY looking after her autistic brother and her niece as her own kids, running a food store with her best friend is all kinds of heartwarming to me. She who had to give up on her handball dream, she who carries no grievance, no regrets, no sadness in her heart for having to bear the burden of raising a family at a young age. She who hasn’t had a chance to live her own life selfishly , but is selfless, pure hearted, free spirited, never once cynical, loving and a kind hearted soul. Her positivity is contagious.

Even when her autistic brother is misunderstood, she is polite and apologetic even though they are not at fault. Even when her daughter NaHee bears the brunt of unfairness from the academy and manipulation by the evil moms, she fights for fairness but doesn’t grudge the people.

JDY and Lee Bong Ryun’s friendship will hit the top 10 female friendships in KDramas if they keep going strong. I crave for the scenes between these two - pulling each other’s legs, egging each other on, encouraging and complimenting each other and most important reminding each other how valuable they are. Here’s to more women friendships! KDramas have often got this part right!

I don’t usually care for teenage romance or love triangles, but there is something endearing about the budding love triangle between Na Hee, Sun Jae and Geon Hu. Na Hee is married to her studies and completely oblivious to these two guys crushing on her and I love that! Also the scene in the park where Sun Jae and Na Hee tell each other their secrets - just a glimpse of how at the bottom of it all their friendship is pure and I hope that doesn’t change.

The moms don’t impact me after having seen Sky Castle, they are the toned down version of those monster moms from Sky Castle. Plus if you cast Kim Sun Young (love her in freaking every role and drama) and Jang Young Nam ( my favourite coach in BokJoo) - how am I supposed to hate them! I mean I want to whack the shit out of them for the nastiness they bring to the screen, but I love how well they are doing it. Do you get my conflict?

Crash Course in Romance has complete HomeCha vibes, Ms Sunshine meets Mr Grumpy trope, with backdrop of the competitive Korean education system pressure on kids and parents alike, which was dealt brilliantly in Sky Castle.

In summary, Crash Course in Romance is 100% Hometown Cha Cha Cha meets Sky Castle. I loved both dramas and it’s no surprise am enjoying this fine mix too right now.

What about you lot?

The Underrated Asian Show of 2023

QueenMaker (2023) ~ Actress Kim Hee-ae portrayal of being a Fixer (Hwang Do-hee) for one of Korea's prominent families is a thriller. It is 'Scandal' wrapped up in a stellar cast of proficient actors. When I say proficient I mean Proficient... Seasoned Actors... Marinated. This cast is your favorites Idol in the industry. This series is an acting class, pull up a seat. Who controls the narrative the world sees is Do-hee skill set. She's the only sleeping dog you should let lie before she takes your entire existence. The most underrated series of 2023. When you see actors in their 50's getting a check with a story line like this make some noise and praise them. Western World get to watching. I pray they will have a Season 2. The acting is everything. Netflix. (Korea) (x)

DRAMA REVIEW I Crash Course in Romance (2023)

This drama has all of the right elements: a solid cast that delivers, good directing and an interesting subject matter. The story started strong, I was even on board with the murder mystery but, in the third part of the drama, the script started to loose its footing. No longer able to figure out what story were they telling.

In many ways, I feel there were several missed opportunity. Crash Course in Romance could have told a good and solid story commenting on society’s prejudices on what a family should be or look like. There was also plenty of room for a proper storyline about the mental health of students going trough an incredible amount of stress and how they coped. How the competitive mothers are willing to bully, adults and children alike, in order for their kids to get into university and their impossible expectations that directly impacted in every aspect of the kids’s well being. By the end of the last episode, male lead doesn’t see anything wrong about kids pushing themselves this hard, except when they collapse, which in my book that means very little character development. Male lead also suffers from half of the story of a eating disorder and we are supposed to just, what?, let it go? There’s never a proper follow up on it or how it was connected to the murder mystery that the drama concentrated most of its time with. A mystery that was resolved in one scene alone, rushed and swiftly under the rug. Almost like we didn’t spend fifteen of sixteen episodes trying to figure out what was happening with this particular storyline.

We only got proper real development and resolution about the issues regarding the kids and mothers, on the last episode, in a epilogue like montage showing us where each character was. The character growth, throughout the run of the drama, came there was came from the teens and the leads. Everything else was almost like an afterthought.

None of this means this is a bad or frustrating drama. On the contrary, despite its shortcomings, is a really fun story with lovable characters. I can recommend it for that alone: entertaining value.

Rating: 7/10

Crash Course into Romance. 8

Story: 8

Acting: 10

Chemistry: 10

Comparable to: Crazy Love (kdrama) ; My Strange Hero (kdrama)

This drama was the talk of 2023 on Netflix. Was it a bit overhyped, meh…..a tad. Don’t get me wrong, the first half of the series is probably the best I’ve seen in a kdrama in a long time. At first it’s a simple romance story between two middle age characters with an other sub storyline of the hardships of how teenagers are pressured through school by their parents. It’s done brilliantly at first. Unfortunately it took a nosedive around episode nine and didn’t recover much. There is a murder mystery suspense plot that gets thrown into the mixed. It sorta jars the whole series getting quite predictable and very corny as it unfolds. The drama is still very watchable especially a must watch at least once, especially for Jung Kyung-ho who for me was the highlight throughout. His scenes with Jeon Do Yeon were perfect. And for Oh Eui Shik. Epic.

Woops! I’ve been so busy this last couple of months that time has really just slipped by me and we are at the end of the Elisabeth run In fact today is the final performance in Seoul. The 10th anniversary run still continues on with the tour performances and as an encore I have decided to translate some interviews from past Elisabeths, this being the first in the series! The next one will be posted in a weeks time~

Return to Seoul (Retour à Séoul), Davy Chou (2022)

yoon young bae by hong janghyun for wow magazine styling by kim sun young, hair by gabe sin, makeup by won jo yeon, nails by park eun kyung

Misa & Rem (Kim Sun Young)

RETURN TO SEOUL:

A young French woman

Seeks birth parents in Seoul

A self left adrift

See You In My 19th Life: We thought I killed you but I was trying to protect you

Destined With You: I did kill you but it was to protect you

Moon In The Day: I killed you. But I was protecting you from a version of yourself you never wanted to be

EVERYONE PLEASE PLEASE WATCH PALE MOON ITS AMAZING AND CONTAINS SO MUCH DEPTH AND I NEED PEOPLE TO SCREAM ABOUT IT WITH BUT NO ONE ON TUMBLR IS TALKING ABOUT IT

Please please please please please. I don't want to have to resort to MDL comments or the discussion on Viki to have these conversations.

It's currently on Viki with subtitles in a dozen languages, and the first two episodes are available without a subscription. There are 10 one hour long episodes total.

My spoiler free pitch from my initial impression, and which held to the end:

It's not a BL, doesn't slot neatly into any one genre, and doesn't feel quite like any other kdrama I've seen. But if you enjoy fascinating middle-aged women, and an often melancholy, elliptical, sometimes film-like approach, I highly recommend it to you. Our protagonist is complex and subtle, and played by an actress with an incredible presence, but everyone else around her is also fascinating and real in their own right, and I'm so curious to see the directions all these relationships develop.

Ask me any questions you have about it! I just didn't want to give too much away here because I really enjoyed discovering it as I went along.