Birth of a Beauty Episode 1

Mash up drama with a rocky start!

Birth of a Beauty is a K-drama clearly inspired by many other dramas. Sometimes that can be a bad thing, and others it can totally working. Blending two of my favorite drama things: the "beauty transformation" and revenge!

Already it's clear that Birth of a Beauty has more ideas tucked in, but I won't waste time picking them apart. I will say that for the first part of episode 1 I was a little lost, the story telling does not flow smoothly. And the description on Dramafever had me thinking the storyline was something else. So to say it was a rocky start is an understatement. After pushing through and things clicking together it definitely works.

The female lead is so WRONGED that it goes beyond dramatized, and I love it when dramas do that. So that any revenge hijinks from here seem completely acceptable. We all love the drama. It's extremely over the top in this first episode and it will be interesting to see how things settle down for the next 20 episodes, because if every episode is this crazy it could get really tiring.

Overall I like Han Ye Seul as Sa Ra, well soon to become Sa Ra. It's interesting how they through in an amnesia bit and then sad how they made her "revenge" idea only be that she's now beautiful. Clearly Han Tae Hee is using Sa Ra, cause he really has done his homework on how to get revenge for Sa Ra. I'm excited to see how that plays out because the blurb for the drama is clearly not doing this show justice.

Long story short I'm in for episode 2.

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An Enjoyable Mess

75% of the time I spent watching this episode, I couldn't help but think of it as one of those sculptures that are made from all different kinds of recycled materials. It felt as if the writer randomly chose different plots from different drama genres and decided to glue them together into one script, resulting in one entire mess. A good mess though. The show went from funny, to heartbreaking, to soap-y, and then to downright goofy —I sometimes asked myself what the heck I was watching— but I couldn't help but enjoy it. It really has that sticky factor that keeps your eyes glued to the screen for the entire hour. Plus, the two main characters are likeable and easy to root for. I find the male lead quite refreshing in his category, too. To summarise my whole review in shorter words... I cannot wait for the next episode's mess to air!

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