A celebration of subtlitled subtlety
This Drama was a bit of a flashback for me, to the days when JTBC was consistently my favourite go-to network for reliably good quality Dramas. Those days are long past, but this Drama was as good as almost any of those faves from 5-7 years ao.
What I loved about this Drama was its embrace of subtlety. Subtlety in story, subtlety in acting, and subtlety in dialogue. In a Drama all about subtitling, it seems especially apt that I had to rely on subs to follow the story - albeit enhanced by what Korean I've picked up from 8 years and 300+ K Dramas. So many times I smiled, snickered or even laughed out loud at the low key humour and the deliberately off-kilter words and actions of all the main characters.
I was VERY impressed by SSK's English, I had no idea she was THAT fluent, but I think perhaps the most interesting character of them all was CSY's. She really was borderline sociopathic to start with, and that was brilliantly counterpointed by her foil, the dryly irrepressible PA played so well by Yeon Je Wook, for whom I will defintely be keeping an eye out in future.
The Drama kept overused tropes to a minimum, avoided schmalzy sentimentality, and even kept its PPL to manageable levels with evidence of thought and care in its insertion. I've now completed 390 East Asian Drama series, and this is only the 45th to score at least 9/10. It scores that highly for reminding me of the joy that GOOD K Dramas can still deliver, when they get nearly everything right.
What I loved about this Drama was its embrace of subtlety. Subtlety in story, subtlety in acting, and subtlety in dialogue. In a Drama all about subtitling, it seems especially apt that I had to rely on subs to follow the story - albeit enhanced by what Korean I've picked up from 8 years and 300+ K Dramas. So many times I smiled, snickered or even laughed out loud at the low key humour and the deliberately off-kilter words and actions of all the main characters.
I was VERY impressed by SSK's English, I had no idea she was THAT fluent, but I think perhaps the most interesting character of them all was CSY's. She really was borderline sociopathic to start with, and that was brilliantly counterpointed by her foil, the dryly irrepressible PA played so well by Yeon Je Wook, for whom I will defintely be keeping an eye out in future.
The Drama kept overused tropes to a minimum, avoided schmalzy sentimentality, and even kept its PPL to manageable levels with evidence of thought and care in its insertion. I've now completed 390 East Asian Drama series, and this is only the 45th to score at least 9/10. It scores that highly for reminding me of the joy that GOOD K Dramas can still deliver, when they get nearly everything right.
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