What would happen if the descendants of Joseon-era Robin Hood-like hero Hong Gil Dong were alive today and secretly carrying on his legacy of punishing evildoers and helping the poor?
That’s the premise behind the new movie Hong Gil Dong’s Descendants [홍길동의 후예], and it stars Lee Beom-soo (On Air) as that descendant, We Got Married’s Lee Shi-young as his love interest, and comedian Kim Su-ro (Our School ET) as his nemesis.
If you’ve seen the recent drama version of Hong Gil Dong, you know the basic premise of the story (even if the Hong sisters’ writing is prone to the overly exaggerated comic gag). What Hong Gil Dong’s Descendants does is reinvent the basic tale of a chivalrous bandit and place him in modern times, crossing the old folk legend with a dash of Clark Kent-ian Superman.
2007 was a rich year for drama-land. There was something for everyone, whether your tastes ran toward dark thrillers (Devil), intense dramas (White Tower), heart-warmers (Thank You), off-the-wall eccentrics (Mixed-up Investigative Agency), trendy fare (Coffee Prince), romantic comedies (Dal Ja’s Spring), and so on.
2008, on the other hand… not so much.
Every drama has its good and bad points, but it’s a lot easier to decide how you feel about one when those qualities are expressed in the extreme — i.e., very good, or very bad. When everything is a muddle in the middle, though, it’s harder to draw the lines.
That’s why in contrast to last year’s “Best” and “The Rest” designations, this year I don’t really distinguish “good” versus “bad” — or even “favorites” and “hated dramas” — and can only grade on a spectrum. I call that spectrum “MEH” with the extreme poles representing “generally watchable” and “generally unwatchable.” It’s just been that kind of year.
SONG OF THE DAY
Painter of the Wind OST – “색” (Color) by JOO [ Download ]
How should one convey bad news in writing? By creating a buffer first. Avoid traumatizing your audience with the bad news all at once, but instead cushion the blow so that you can maintain goodwill. That textbook approach (business communication, by the way) would be dandy if the crop of 2008 dramas I watched was anything like the stellar quality of 2007. But no, this was a harvest to make one downright grumpy.
This time last year, eight dramas vied to be in my Top 3. Even the ones that disappointed weren’t half bad and at least I finished them. Not this year. I picked up around twenty dramas and dropped at least fifteen. “Dropped” is putting it mildly. I ran from some of them like a kid fleeing an apparition: hands in the air and hair standing on end. As the year wore on, my patience wore thin and my grumpiness increased.
So, no, I can’t use the buffer approach when reviewing this year’s dramas. Hedging doesn’t work for this grumpy cookie. I will present to you the worst dramas first, followed by the so-so ones, and then the few gems of 2008. Even though the year was overcast and gloomy, the sun broke through the clouds occasionally and when it did the effect was glorious. Let’s get the bad news out of the way and we can enjoy the good stuff, shall we?
SONG OF THE DAY
Jin Yi-han – “This is the Moment” which he sang (live!) in Episode 3 of Who Are You. [ Download ]
[And thus begins the year-in-review series for 2008 dramas! This'll be a four-part series, and I'm honored to have three lovely bloggers -- Sevenses, thunderbolt, and Dahee_Fanel -- offering up their reviews in addition to mine. Hope you enjoy! --javabeans]
Year in Review – 2008
- In which I practiced my ?? face a lot.
Well, I’m but a wee babe in dramaland compared to Sarah, thundie and Dahee – I really started watching kdrama in earnest in late 2007. *pause while everyone picks their jaws up from the floor*
Caveat: I don’t have a huge base from which to compare, so this is all in my own humble opinion. You don’t have to agree, and you are definitely welcome to discuss. (No trolling, though, or I will start waving the Baton of Baleetion.) First of all, I’d like to say that my watching dramas is purely for the sake of relaxation – I have enough stress and overwork from school already, plskthx. Therefore it’s rather unlikely for me to take a huge tearjearker and run with it, if you know what I mean.
(And the concept of tearjerkers in general just baffle me a little. Why make yourself unhappy? I do love Atonement to the itty bitty pieces of my fairly battered heart, though that’s neither here nor there.)
So, looking over at the ones I watched this year, I’m actually fairly monogamous about my dramas. (Yay for having schoolwork?) The one thing that kind of stood out in my memory of this year, however, is that mostly all of them tended to have many ‘bleh’ moments – including the ones I’d loved and watched like an obsessed thing.
SONG OF THE DAY
Alanis Morissette – “Orchid,” as it is currently my favourite song ever and I wanted to share it.
[ Download ]
Like MBC before it, KBS has also released its list of year-end acting award nominees.
And while Hong Gil Dong (above) wasn’t the most prominent drama featured among the contenders (that would have to be the daily drama Mom’s Dead Upset, which brought in a whopping four nominations just in the Daesang category), it’s the one I watched and enjoyed in what I thought was a rather lackluster list. (Also! Kang! Ji! Hwan!)
The (very long) list of KBS actors is topped by a subset of nine Daesang contenders, which includes the aforementioned crowd of Mom’s Dead Upset veterans as well as Song Il-kook in the sageuk Kingdom of the Wind, Kim Sang-kyung in the sageuk Great King Sejong, and Kang Ji-hwan in the fusion-sageuk Hong Gil Dong. (A big sageuk year, no?)
