You know that awkward moment when you watch a drama almost all the way through with only two episodes remaining, and then realize you done screwed right the frack up? Well, welcome to my world. Wild Romance was a wacky, adorable fun ride...until it turned into an overly melodramatic, randomly angsty hellscape.
The premise of our heroine being a tomboyish bodyguard to a pompous rich athlete had all the makings for romantic comedy gold...and it delivered. Eun Jae was a tough amusing bad-ass and her contentious bickering relationship dynamic with Park Moo Yul was fun and perfect. The antagonist subplot was interesting but well balanced within the overall story, the secondary characters were phenomenally unique and the drama was perfect..until the whole thing derailed somewhere around episode 9? 12? I don't know which, and frankly I'm not sure exactly what happened. I DO know that the minute our heroine realizes she's fallen for the lead, she turns into this sappy, overly emotional dork that feels so out of left field that it gave me whiplash. When heroines abandon their personalities upon realized love, my patience with a drama starts dropping fast.
The acting in this series was absolutely amazing, so I'm pretty sure the fault lies almost entirely with the script writers. When Wild Romance went from a fun romantic comedy to a downright Makjang-meets-irritating-heroine I was out. I only had two episodes left but I couldn't stomach any more, especially when considering how random Park Moo Yul's confession to Eun Jae felt, her subsequently turning into even MORE of a weirdo, all the while the secondary cast are running amok like an out-of-character flock of whackadoodles. After all that, I just had to bail.
IF this drama had toned down the angst they'd ramped up midway through the drama, and IF they had kept Eun Jae's character dynamic to a believable confident women who can kick ass and not be bothered with names, as opposed to the vomit-inducing punchline she so frequently later felt like, then I'd be singing this drama's praises. It didn't rely on cliches, all of its characters, including bit characters and its antagonists, were amazingly interesting, the premise was fabulous, and the acting rocked everything but the rafters. Too bad the peak and execution of the second half of the drama crash landed into a Volcano.
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