kdrama: She is WOW
She is WOW is a 12-episode TVN drama about Jo Ah Ra, an award winning actress in her 40s who has been happily married to the country's top news announcer, Gong Jung Han, for over twenty years, and their son is studying law in the US. Except actually, they only got married for their careers (her because no one took her seriously an actress or thought she could be intelligent until she was attached to a respected man, him because her fame increased his) and their son, Min Gyu, is a borderline delinquent who has been held back several years. After Ah Ra won a Top Actress award, the entertainment industry also decided that she was too old for anything but commercials and radio shows, with the occasional cameo in a drama, and hoped that if they ignored her, she'd quietly slink off to the corner and not risk infecting the 20-somethings with her wrinkles, something her ego is far to healthy for them to ever succeed at.
Then Min Gyu gets booted from yet another school and comes home, threatening to ruin the image of the perfect family with his less-than-perfect behavior, and just when political opportunities open for Jung Han, he announces that he's having his boyfriend move in with them. Said boyfriend is half his age, and used to be Min Gyu's tutor. This is right about when Ah Ra notices that their new neighbor is a very hunky (and unfortunately-for-her, married) general who likes to engage in sweaty exercises in the back yard. Soon to be added to the mix are and almost frighteningly efficient and capable housekeeper who may be scheming something, and Ah Ra's brother, an out-of-work paparazzi reporter who thinks "family loyalty" means he should get first scoop on scandals. There's also a tragic-yet-cheerful young lady who is dying of what she describes as "the kind of cancer pretty girls in dramas always die from." Plus a scheming politician's wife, comas, secret pasts, tragic childhoods, revenge plots, and possibly-fake secret baby reveals and a fake pregnancy.
It is just as soap opera-y as it sounds, and moreso. It's like someone heard that a lot of English language fandom tends to describe kdramas as soap operas, so they say down and spent a month mainlining US soaps, watched Soap Dish once or twice, and then decided that that movie was an amateur and that they could clearly do better, and then decided to cram as many trashy soap opera tropes as they could into 10 hours. (Each episode is 50 minutes.)
Many plot twists are random and seem to be introduced to keep the drama going, but that's deliberate, and more than once, the soap opera drama ends up with more realistic consequences and fallout for the characters. It's also a very cynical exploration of Korean society, particularly the entertainment industry and its views on age and gender. I'm not sure of how some things played but I liked it and some of the things it did, and found it very addictive.
Then Min Gyu gets booted from yet another school and comes home, threatening to ruin the image of the perfect family with his less-than-perfect behavior, and just when political opportunities open for Jung Han, he announces that he's having his boyfriend move in with them. Said boyfriend is half his age, and used to be Min Gyu's tutor. This is right about when Ah Ra notices that their new neighbor is a very hunky (and unfortunately-for-her, married) general who likes to engage in sweaty exercises in the back yard. Soon to be added to the mix are and almost frighteningly efficient and capable housekeeper who may be scheming something, and Ah Ra's brother, an out-of-work paparazzi reporter who thinks "family loyalty" means he should get first scoop on scandals. There's also a tragic-yet-cheerful young lady who is dying of what she describes as "the kind of cancer pretty girls in dramas always die from." Plus a scheming politician's wife, comas, secret pasts, tragic childhoods, revenge plots, and possibly-fake secret baby reveals and a fake pregnancy.
It is just as soap opera-y as it sounds, and moreso. It's like someone heard that a lot of English language fandom tends to describe kdramas as soap operas, so they say down and spent a month mainlining US soaps, watched Soap Dish once or twice, and then decided that that movie was an amateur and that they could clearly do better, and then decided to cram as many trashy soap opera tropes as they could into 10 hours. (Each episode is 50 minutes.)
Many plot twists are random and seem to be introduced to keep the drama going, but that's deliberate, and more than once, the soap opera drama ends up with more realistic consequences and fallout for the characters. It's also a very cynical exploration of Korean society, particularly the entertainment industry and its views on age and gender. I'm not sure of how some things played but I liked it and some of the things it did, and found it very addictive.