How the mighty have fallen…

As soyjoy mentioned in her last recap, watching an episode twice makes the shortcomings glaringly obvious. This definitely isn’t a masterpiece that needs to be seen more than once. It’s not surprising for a 50-episode series to be drawn out, but I think some plot development/movement is in order. Fortunately, Lee Chun Hee’s entrance has infused a bit of energy and his love interest has been revealed, giving me some hope for the future. I still enjoy the goofy and sweet moments, so all is not lost.

[Just a little housekeeping note: Unfortunately, our 3rd partner in crime had to bow out, leaving 2 of us for the recaps. With the good ratings, I fully expect to see 50 episodes of Smile, leading to our decision to recap 2 episodes together going forward.]

SONG OF THE DAY

Smile OST – “안녕 내 사랑” (Goodbye, My Love) by Melo’ Breeze [ Download ]

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Filed under: Drama Recaps by dw4p - 33 Comments →

Hello! I’m Gallivanter, the other half of the Nazreal-Gallivanter team. I’m so happy to be given this opportunity to spread the love on my favorite drama from this summer. But, if I’m going to be retrospective, I don’t know that yet.

Episode four starts to get a little more serious. Not a lot, but some as our characters are now familiar with each other, and no longer care about the language barrier. Or is it that the show no longer cares about making jokes about Korean-English? Either way, I’m thankful. Tamra has all the makings for a quality drama; cinematography, acting, writing, the history and plot, but it’s the unnecessarily silly things that hinder Tamra, and I’m hoping episode four is a sign we’re moving away from that.

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Filed under: Drama Recaps by Gallivanter - 14 Comments →

This episode is not so much a series of small lol’s as a crescendo towards one, raucous, side-splittingly hilarious scene (Thank you, Lee Chun-hee!!). In my opinion, it’s the funniest scene in this series so far.

Overall, the snappy pace and light fun of this series are getting a bit bogged down, but we do get a lot more Jung-in/Hyun-soo quality time in the latter half of this episode (yay!). In recent episodes, the two carried on about the slapper and traded barbs as they adjusted to the new two-family dynamics, but the actual relationship between the two of them for its own sake hadn’t developed much. Here, we get lots of “I care for you” looks from Hyun-soo toward Jung-in, which I appreciate even if he hasn’t actually mentally processed this yet.

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Filed under: Drama Recaps by soyjoy - 36 Comments →

Although Tamra the Island has finished airing, gallivanter and myself have volunteered to continue Javabeans’ efforts to offer recaps to Dramabeans readers. So, in the next weeks, we’re hoping to share detailed recaps, thoughts and opinions on this little treasure of a drama.

Now a side note for Tamra: Unfortunately the powers of MBC decided to cut the original 20 episodes to 16 episodes and by Episode 10 we start seeing the weird effects of crazy editing to keep the storylines flowing. What we’re also hoping to do is recap the original episodes once the DVD release comes out. It’ll be interesting to do a comparison between the editions and look at how much more of the characters/plot/themes we see in an extra 4 hours of viewing time- watch this space!

Otherwise, it’s easy to write about Tamra retrospectively but this could spoil it for first time readers/watchers so we’ll try to recap as we watched it the first time round, keeping the surprises and discoveries fresh.

We really hope you enjoy the recaps; happy reading!

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Filed under: Drama Recaps by Nazreal - 28 Comments →

Hullo! I’m soyjoy, and I’ll be your guide through episodes 5 & 6. The three of us “Smile” recappers are rotating weekly, so hopefully our stylistic differences won’t throw you off. Luckily, we’re all in agreement that this is an endearing and enjoyable series, so at least the commentary should be pretty consistent in tone!

I think Lee Min-jung is adorable; she’s the reason I started watching the drama, then quickly got sucked in. She’s refreshing and spunky, and, like javabeans and dw4p, I’m really enjoying her in “Smile.” That said, I think Episode 5 is Jung Kyung-ho’s time to shine. He carries the scenes so well, from understated moments like the one above, to the wildly contorted facial expressions he makes in Hyun-soo’s goofier moments.

And off we go…

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Filed under: Drama Recaps by soyjoy - 31 Comments →