Things I am obsessed over
I watched the first two episodes of Basketball, the tVN drama whose protagonist dreams of becoming a professional basketball player while facing the harsh realities of life in the Japan-occupied Korea.
My verdict? Utter, complete, and absolute love.
The PD of Basketball is Kwak Jung Hwan, who was also responsible for one of my all-time favorite dramas, Slave Hunters. And while the stories and the time periods of Basketball and Slave Hunters are dissimilar, what stays the same (in addition to the gorgeous, crisp visuals) is PD Kwak’s talent for the narratives of the dispossessed - his knack for portraying the daily degradations of powerlessness. In Slave Hunters, except for shadowy secondary characters (who faced their own limitations within power structure), the characters were slave hunters (themselves barely a step up from slavery but fascilitating the oppression of their bretheren, the way Japanese collaborators help the occupiers against their fellow Koreans in Basketball) and slaves, viewed as subhuman things by their owners - the same way the Japanese characters view Koreans in this drama (at one point, a teacher tells his Korean students ‘you are only as good as your occupiers’ and that chilling line could come straight out of Slave Hunter power dynamic).
The other drama Basketball invites comparisons to is last year’s smash Gaksital - which is set in the same time period. But Gaksital is a bit different - its protagonist is a collaborator officer who becomes a powerful rebel. Basketball is about the people in the crowd scenes of Gaksital - the average person left behind staring as the rebels blow things up or the police chase the masked hero.
I have never seen the main cast in anything before but they all range from competent to shockingly good. Do Ji Han, our lead, is the one who is shockingly good. His vulnerability and seething rage are evident every second he is on screen - that scene where, beaten up, he stares at the poster of his basketball idol, got me right in the gut. He and the heroine, played by Lee Elriya, have natural, sweet chemistry. And I love Jung Dong Hyun’s star player, with demons of his own - I am pleasantly shocked that the secondary guy is not bad or unlikeable, but complex and sympathetic.
Basically, tl;dr - go watch.
I could happily watch 20 episodes just of Tan and ES wandering around, talking, and falling in love…the rest feels like a distraction from the perfection that is them.
Tommy and Grace killed me.
I have just finished s3 and in the process of watching this show, I somehow became a rabid Arthur/Gwen shipper. Probably the first time in my life.
There are also things like this:
Basically, being a shipper is fun.
It's so utterly ahistorical, but I don't mind because it doesn't pretend to be. Pretty people, prettier clothes, and love triangle angst.
It's cheesy and silly and romance-novelly and I adore Alice and Genie. I also love that it's Alice who's on a rescue quest and Genie who needs to be rescued.
