Worlds Within Monster Pusher Post
Worlds Within is my favorite drama in the world. It tells the love story of two directors for a fictional TV station which could be deadly dull but is not. The story has everything - love and loss, families and the way they tie us down (some good, some not), friendships, joy of work, some incredible emotional highs and lows. There are three separate OTPs, each wonderful in its own way. It's a lyrical, swoonily romantic, oddly real drama
Please join me in a group watch! (Note of warning - it starts off a little confusingly and slowly, perhaps, but gets perfect by about ep 3).
Behind the cut are character profiles (written by me) and a non-spoilery picspam. Do check it out.
Joon Young
Our heroine is a relatively new director but she has already shown style. Her inexperience makes her overconfident sometimes, but she has a great deal of potential. A hard worker, Joon Young is incredibly awere that she is in a gruelling, man-dominated field and has to work very hard to keep people from using that as a pretext to treat her as second-rate.
Quietly stubborn and occasionally rash, Joon Young's biggest flaw at the start of the story is a certain emotional shallowness - it is too easy for her to move on from failed relationships especially with work as a welcome distraction, or to keep herself from caring too much about others in general. When WW starts, we witness that in action in her failing relationship with her surgeon boyfriend - Joon Young's basic inability and disinterest in putting in enough effort to save a salvageable relationship is something she will need to eventually overcome, just as she will have to learn caring more about other people and understanding other points of view.
Her best friend is Ji Oh, whom she's briefly dated in college. Joon Young comes from a very rich family, and has a thorny relationship with her parents - she idolizes her professor father and both longs for and is repulsed by her cheating, gambling socialite of a mother.
Ji Oh
A rising star of the department, Ji Oh is the big brother for those lower on the totem-pole - he will speak up for them when nobody else will. Ji Oh is incredibly hard-working and is a dedicated, caring guy, good at his job and good to those around him. But he is far from saintly - in addition to his temper, Ji Oh harbors major insecurities (about his station in life, both in general and as compared to Joon Young) and when he gets caught up in his issues, he ceases to be able to process the harm they do to someone else - he can be cruel and probably because he feels and thinks too much, when he chooses to shut down and shut out, it is frighteningly total. As the drama starts, his on-off ten-year-long relationship with his first love is on the skids.
Unlike Joon Young, Ji Oh's family is far from wealthy - his parents are farmers and Ji Oh has spent his life watching his idolized mother bullied by his father, which adds to his issues, of course, but also results in him being quite serious about drama-making as a means to escape the rural lifestyle and enter the white collar world.
Joon Young and Ji Oh's love story is the crux of WW and it is, arguably, my favorite kdrama love story ever - best friends turned lovers, workaholics finding fun together, it all feels so real - from the giddiness of the beginning of love, to adjustments two people inevitably have to make for it to work, to the delicious delicious angst. They just fit.
Kyu Ho
My favorite secondary character in WW. The star director with the golden touch (all his dramas hit 40% ratings), Kyu Ho is sardonic, arrogant, and extremely competent at what he does. He is indeed hard-working and very talented, but has no issues with rubbing it in everybody's face. He comes from a highly influential family - his father is in serious contention for the Presidency. Kyu Ho is the "good son" - unlike his brawling trouble-maker of a younger brother, he has never put a foot out of line when it comes to his family's expectations. He doesn't date seriously (as his eventual marriage will probably be arranged in a proper advantageous manner) but has a number of women on his list whom he regularly calls if need arises.
Little does he know that a hurricane called Hae-Jin is about to hit, creating one of my all-time favorite secondary OTPs ever.
Hae Jin
I want to be her when I grow up! Only I am older than she is, alas. Hae Jin is a middle-class girl with one overwhelming ambition - to become an actress. She has had some experience and what she really wants to do now is to participate in the period epic Kyu Ho is about to start filming. She auditions but when she does not hear back immediately, decides to pursue Kyu Ho and his team everywhere (and I do mean everywhere - men's bathroom included) in order to persuade them of how right for the role she is.
Hae Jin has no internal breaks and no false modesty - she is cheerful, hard-working, and determined as hell. She is childlike but not childish, with a great sense of fun but a certain in-built pragmatism - her relentlessness is not rosy glasses but monomaniacal pursuit of her goal. Once she decides she wants something, look out. Oh, and she just might decide that in addition to a role in the drama, she wants Kyu Ho himself.
Muhyul
Chief of the drama department, Muhyul is a sort of benevolent, if occasionally harsh, father figure. Soft-spoken, gentlemanly, and rather closed-off, he has two big regrets in his life. One is his distant relationship with his teenage daughter, product of a failed marriage, and the other is his life-long devotion to Yoon Young, a famous actress as known for her affairs as for her hits. He doesn't regret the devotion, he regrets its failure to win her. But he might get a second chance.
Yoon Young
A famous actress, businesswoman, and scandal-maker, Yoon Young wears many hats, and all of them are of her choosing. She is whip-smart, ruthless when needed, but capable of love and friendship. At the start, her closest relationships are with two elderly veteran actresses - she is a cross between a daughter and a younger sister to them. When she and Joon Young first meet on set, they clash, but eventually they become friends - Joon Young receives a fair amount of rather cynical wisdom from the older woman. She is willing to give her old relationship with Muhyul another try, but she is not necessarily willing to commit - she likes her flings. One of my favorite things about the drama is that the drama respects her, not demonizes her.
Soo Kyung
He is also known as Yang Unnie - a somewhat derisive nickname for his weirdness, loudness, and general lack of competence. He's not actively bad at his job, but he is not particularly interested either. The only reason he still has his job is because Ji Ho threatened the wrath of the union if he was let go. Not that many want to work with him so he gets assigned to Kyu Ho, who just might make a decent assistant out of him, if he doesn't kill him first. Yang Unni isn't bad though - he's sweet, fun, and has good taste in women - he has a bit of a crush on Joon Young.
Seo Woo
One of the most successful scriptwriters in the bisness, the eccentric, outgoing Seo Woo is a total delight. She is good friends with Ji Ho (who abuses that mercilessly when work requires, cajoling and bullying her to work faster) and in the course of the drama becomes friends with Joon Young (she, JY, Yoon Young and Min Hee, a young assistant director, become a close-knit, if somewhat odd, quartet of friends). She is not above using nearest and dearest for writing inspiration - in one of my favorite sequences she arranges for the OTP who are on the outs to go on a trip together so she could observe for her next drama :P
Have a shippy MV:
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