✒ ☕️ Son of Privilege ♻ Son of Disgrace °6.5° °trope sampler°
Ah, food. We love to watch it sizzling, basting, bubbling, and we love to watch people enjoying it. Nothing says comfort like food. And what's the deal with chocolate? It's the most comforting food of all. Cha needs chocolate when she's feeling low.
Now also serving: lowkey melodrama. He's a surgeon who injures his hand, she's a cook who loses her sense of taste. They quietly navigate life's numerous heartbreaks and keep trudging on. “I've been running for a long time to come to you. There were times when I wanted to stop… I wanted to flop down and collapse… But because of you, I could come this far.” Our 2 leads have had many encounters over the years.
But first, let's go back to the beginning.
1992: Wando. Not far from Jeju, this cozy little fishing community is all the way at the bottom of Mainland South Korea. When a little girl comes by the restaurant trying to eat what's set aside for the cows, he /has/ to feed her. He invites her back the following day by promising to make her chocolate Shasta. Later that day, his deceased father's rich family comes by. He and his cousin get into an all-out brawl and end up in the hospital. Her family has to leave early and she isn't able to keep her promise to come back the next day, anyway. We see that neither one of them has a settled home life.
1993: Wando. The little girl finally comes back, but the boy has moved to Seoul. Apparently his daddy had run off with the maid's daughter and died not long after he - their child - was born. The privileged family had decided to collect their grandson.
2012: Seoul. He is an adult honoring his mother on her death day. Both parents gone, he's been abandoned in a snake pit. His aunt, uncle, and cousin Joon see him as a threat, and his grandmother, the matriarch, is a cold-hearted authoritarian. The family owns a hospital. He had wanted to be a chef, but he's a doctor. As a patient, she runs into him at the hospital and thinks she remembers him? He doesn't recognize her.
2013: Seoul. Inspired by him all those years ago, she's now a chef. He's been sent to Libya by his hateful aunt and uncle. He almost doesn't survive.
A couple years later, he comes home from Libya and she's dating his friend. Once again, she recognizes him, but he doesn't recognize her. Now that she's seen him again, she knows she can't stay with his friend. Cha has been in love with Kang since the day he fed her. When she breaks up with his friend for “no reason”, Kang is disgusted with her. Cha runs away to Greece.
C is a 2019 release that is rated 89 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 16 65-minute episodes. Yoon Kye Sang (Malmoe: The Secret Mission, The Kidnapping Day) is ‘he’, Lee “Kang”. We have to wait until deep into ep15 before we see Kang genuinely smile. He spends most of the show looking much like Eeyore from Winnie The Pooh. Ha Ji Won (Secret Garden, Empress Ki, Portrait of a Family) is ‘she’, Moon “Cha” Young. She spends the whole show acting like a trauma survivor, which she is. She never shows much spark of personality. In fact, each of the leads is so low and depressed that one feels sorry for them, but it's difficult to bond with them. They aren't unlikable, but they are a tad uncomfortable.
The ultra attractive Jang Seung Jo (Snowdrop, Death's Game-7.8) is Kang’s cousin, Lee Joon. His father is a fatuous imbecile, while his mother is smart, but conniving & ruthless. He's been pitted against Kang most of his life. I rather enjoy the relationship journey that these two men take. In the waning episodes Joon asks his parents why he even did that? Do they have to hate e/o? He's starting to get tired of it all. This is especially true because he learned of a dark family secret.
Kim Won Hae plays Hospice Director Kwon Hyun Suk. He has 133 credits on MDL. He's everywhere. I've seen him in Signal-8.6, While You Were Sleeping-7.3, Black-9, Clean with Passion for Now-7, The Hymn of Death-8.4, Start-up-8, Awaken-8.7, & Revenant-7.4 as well as his guest appearances in 8 additional features. He is like MSG; he makes every feature more delicious.
Min Jin Woong (My Father Is Strange, Nobody Knows) plays our FL's ne'er-do-well brother, Moon Tae Hyun. She has to get a job to pay off his debt instead of returning to Greece. He continues to plague her for the entire run of the show. He picks up on the vibe between the two leads early on and never fails to make suggestive jokes or comments to them, much to her horror. Once again, there's several child actors who are amazing; Woo Sung Min & Lee Chan Yoo stand out. Screenwriter, Lee Kyung Hee, also brought us Thank You & Uncontrollably Fond. Her first credit is from 1997, and this is her most recent work. The director is Lee Hyung Min of Strong Woman Do Bong Soon & Miss Night and Day.
Even as late as ep9 I was enjoying this. While it's not the masterwork that My Mister-9.5 is, I rather enjoyed the relaxation. Their aimless wandering left nowhere for the show to go, though. The romance trudges along and then sorta happens, with little fanfare. For the most part, the characters are engaging and relatable, while the sedation is the biggest reward. The romance is the weakest part of the finished product. It isn't a great romance. It is debatable as to whether it's good at all. All that can be said is that it should have been better. As a chef, managing heat is her profession. But this romance has no heat.
The show is heavy handed with melodrama, like a triple-thick ganache. It smothers everything. He is giving her a ride and there's an accident. He operates on her to save her life but, in doing so, ends up waiting too long to be operated on himself and his hand doesn't work right afterwards. He can't be a surgeon anymore. At this point, he still hates Cha, so it's a bitter pill for Kang. The family sends him to run the hospice center, where she works already, and she can't quit until her brother's debt is cleared. She loses her sense of taste and smell after an angry patron shoves her and she strikes her head. Given their past traumas, together they make a whole person, I guess. One patient is blind and her case becomes a bit of a situation. One of the cooks at the facility has Alzheimer's, so she's losing her mind - she's out of touch. It almost seemed like there was an overarching message about the five senses, the will, and the brain, but nobody goes deaf, so there can't be. We are left scratching our heads. The taste is Hershey's, not Godiva.
Then they threw in the jellies, nougats, caramels, cherries and toffees - they made trope goulash. Terminal illness. Rich family. Poor family. Missing or absent parents. Toxic parents. Competition. Debt collectors. WKEWY, or we knew e/o when {we were} young. I don't know why I thought they wouldn't do it, but with around 25 minutes to go, they just couldn't help themselves. They brought in the MSS trope.
MSS, or mandatory separation syndrome, is an overdone Kdrama plot point in which a pair, once they get together, are separated. ('I love you! Finally, we're together! Now I'll catch you later...' Huh?). Presumably this is to show that what is between them is true love that stands the tests of time and distance. A generous 15% of the time, it's a good thing and usually shows a lack of originality and poor implementation skills. It's common to see shows that are especially well written take a dive for an episode or 2 in order to wedge in something like this. In C, the MSS is awful. Sure, she's got stuff to work through, but running away is nonsensical. It also made the entire show look like a checklist tutorial on useless overdone tropes. The final episode could have done much to tie the show up nicely and redeem its shortcomings, but it was a disappointment and took things further south.
The writing is C's weakness. It's like a standardized modular home. They brought in that chunk & this chunk & tossed in another chunk & made a chain restaurant melodrama. The acting and directing aren't bad, but they aren't enough to elevate the production. The soothing cadence with the soft strumming soundtrack in the background make it mostly watchable, but the poor wrap up left a bad taste in my mouth.
Once again, here's a Kdrama showing competition killing the soul. Kcountry is a highly pressurized society. Common entertainment themes are toxic parents putting pressure on the children, severe competition, the detachment of those who are privileged from those who are not, and in-fighting among families who are privileged. Kang's father ran away with the maid. He was a son of disgrace. Kang loved his life in Wando but the family came to collect him. It will come out that he is not the only son of disgrace in the family. Many of these patterns are cyclical and many people appear to have everything are not everything they appear to be.
C always circles back to food. Kang was given chocolate by his mother's paramour when he was young. It made a big impression. His mother was on the way to purchase him some chocolates with the plan to take them and Kang back to Wando, but she died in an accident. When Cha was young she waited hours for her mother to meet her at the mall, but mom never showed. What did happen was that the mall collapsed and Cha was stuck there for days. A woman who was trapped and dying under the rubble gave her chocolate. Cha believes it saved her life. Yet she was merely existing until Kang gave her hope for the future. Chocolate (and food, in general) represents warmth, memory, caring, and love; all comforts that were too scarce in our leads’ lives. Together, they learn how to combine the sweet and the bitter into their own special recipe.
QUOTE📢 Everyone is terminally fated to die from the moment that they're born. They just tend to forget that when they're living.
〰🖍 IMHO
📣7.3 📝5.7 🎭7.3 💓6 🦋4.5 🎨6 🔚5 🤗3 ▪ 🌞5⚡3 😅1 😭4.5 😱2 😯2.5 🤢2 🤔4 💤1
🎵/🔊 7.7 Shazams: Just Look for you, by Ailee; Always be here by Jung Jin Woo; Special, by 유빈; The credits song is You & I by ID:Earth
Rated TV-15 just for language: F💣, $h!+, but there isn't much of it.
Re-📺? Once is enough
Now also serving: lowkey melodrama. He's a surgeon who injures his hand, she's a cook who loses her sense of taste. They quietly navigate life's numerous heartbreaks and keep trudging on. “I've been running for a long time to come to you. There were times when I wanted to stop… I wanted to flop down and collapse… But because of you, I could come this far.” Our 2 leads have had many encounters over the years.
But first, let's go back to the beginning.
1992: Wando. Not far from Jeju, this cozy little fishing community is all the way at the bottom of Mainland South Korea. When a little girl comes by the restaurant trying to eat what's set aside for the cows, he /has/ to feed her. He invites her back the following day by promising to make her chocolate Shasta. Later that day, his deceased father's rich family comes by. He and his cousin get into an all-out brawl and end up in the hospital. Her family has to leave early and she isn't able to keep her promise to come back the next day, anyway. We see that neither one of them has a settled home life.
1993: Wando. The little girl finally comes back, but the boy has moved to Seoul. Apparently his daddy had run off with the maid's daughter and died not long after he - their child - was born. The privileged family had decided to collect their grandson.
2012: Seoul. He is an adult honoring his mother on her death day. Both parents gone, he's been abandoned in a snake pit. His aunt, uncle, and cousin Joon see him as a threat, and his grandmother, the matriarch, is a cold-hearted authoritarian. The family owns a hospital. He had wanted to be a chef, but he's a doctor. As a patient, she runs into him at the hospital and thinks she remembers him? He doesn't recognize her.
2013: Seoul. Inspired by him all those years ago, she's now a chef. He's been sent to Libya by his hateful aunt and uncle. He almost doesn't survive.
A couple years later, he comes home from Libya and she's dating his friend. Once again, she recognizes him, but he doesn't recognize her. Now that she's seen him again, she knows she can't stay with his friend. Cha has been in love with Kang since the day he fed her. When she breaks up with his friend for “no reason”, Kang is disgusted with her. Cha runs away to Greece.
C is a 2019 release that is rated 89 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 16 65-minute episodes. Yoon Kye Sang (Malmoe: The Secret Mission, The Kidnapping Day) is ‘he’, Lee “Kang”. We have to wait until deep into ep15 before we see Kang genuinely smile. He spends most of the show looking much like Eeyore from Winnie The Pooh. Ha Ji Won (Secret Garden, Empress Ki, Portrait of a Family) is ‘she’, Moon “Cha” Young. She spends the whole show acting like a trauma survivor, which she is. She never shows much spark of personality. In fact, each of the leads is so low and depressed that one feels sorry for them, but it's difficult to bond with them. They aren't unlikable, but they are a tad uncomfortable.
The ultra attractive Jang Seung Jo (Snowdrop, Death's Game-7.8) is Kang’s cousin, Lee Joon. His father is a fatuous imbecile, while his mother is smart, but conniving & ruthless. He's been pitted against Kang most of his life. I rather enjoy the relationship journey that these two men take. In the waning episodes Joon asks his parents why he even did that? Do they have to hate e/o? He's starting to get tired of it all. This is especially true because he learned of a dark family secret.
Kim Won Hae plays Hospice Director Kwon Hyun Suk. He has 133 credits on MDL. He's everywhere. I've seen him in Signal-8.6, While You Were Sleeping-7.3, Black-9, Clean with Passion for Now-7, The Hymn of Death-8.4, Start-up-8, Awaken-8.7, & Revenant-7.4 as well as his guest appearances in 8 additional features. He is like MSG; he makes every feature more delicious.
Min Jin Woong (My Father Is Strange, Nobody Knows) plays our FL's ne'er-do-well brother, Moon Tae Hyun. She has to get a job to pay off his debt instead of returning to Greece. He continues to plague her for the entire run of the show. He picks up on the vibe between the two leads early on and never fails to make suggestive jokes or comments to them, much to her horror. Once again, there's several child actors who are amazing; Woo Sung Min & Lee Chan Yoo stand out. Screenwriter, Lee Kyung Hee, also brought us Thank You & Uncontrollably Fond. Her first credit is from 1997, and this is her most recent work. The director is Lee Hyung Min of Strong Woman Do Bong Soon & Miss Night and Day.
Even as late as ep9 I was enjoying this. While it's not the masterwork that My Mister-9.5 is, I rather enjoyed the relaxation. Their aimless wandering left nowhere for the show to go, though. The romance trudges along and then sorta happens, with little fanfare. For the most part, the characters are engaging and relatable, while the sedation is the biggest reward. The romance is the weakest part of the finished product. It isn't a great romance. It is debatable as to whether it's good at all. All that can be said is that it should have been better. As a chef, managing heat is her profession. But this romance has no heat.
The show is heavy handed with melodrama, like a triple-thick ganache. It smothers everything. He is giving her a ride and there's an accident. He operates on her to save her life but, in doing so, ends up waiting too long to be operated on himself and his hand doesn't work right afterwards. He can't be a surgeon anymore. At this point, he still hates Cha, so it's a bitter pill for Kang. The family sends him to run the hospice center, where she works already, and she can't quit until her brother's debt is cleared. She loses her sense of taste and smell after an angry patron shoves her and she strikes her head. Given their past traumas, together they make a whole person, I guess. One patient is blind and her case becomes a bit of a situation. One of the cooks at the facility has Alzheimer's, so she's losing her mind - she's out of touch. It almost seemed like there was an overarching message about the five senses, the will, and the brain, but nobody goes deaf, so there can't be. We are left scratching our heads. The taste is Hershey's, not Godiva.
Then they threw in the jellies, nougats, caramels, cherries and toffees - they made trope goulash. Terminal illness. Rich family. Poor family. Missing or absent parents. Toxic parents. Competition. Debt collectors. WKEWY, or we knew e/o when {we were} young. I don't know why I thought they wouldn't do it, but with around 25 minutes to go, they just couldn't help themselves. They brought in the MSS trope.
MSS, or mandatory separation syndrome, is an overdone Kdrama plot point in which a pair, once they get together, are separated. ('I love you! Finally, we're together! Now I'll catch you later...' Huh?). Presumably this is to show that what is between them is true love that stands the tests of time and distance. A generous 15% of the time, it's a good thing and usually shows a lack of originality and poor implementation skills. It's common to see shows that are especially well written take a dive for an episode or 2 in order to wedge in something like this. In C, the MSS is awful. Sure, she's got stuff to work through, but running away is nonsensical. It also made the entire show look like a checklist tutorial on useless overdone tropes. The final episode could have done much to tie the show up nicely and redeem its shortcomings, but it was a disappointment and took things further south.
The writing is C's weakness. It's like a standardized modular home. They brought in that chunk & this chunk & tossed in another chunk & made a chain restaurant melodrama. The acting and directing aren't bad, but they aren't enough to elevate the production. The soothing cadence with the soft strumming soundtrack in the background make it mostly watchable, but the poor wrap up left a bad taste in my mouth.
Once again, here's a Kdrama showing competition killing the soul. Kcountry is a highly pressurized society. Common entertainment themes are toxic parents putting pressure on the children, severe competition, the detachment of those who are privileged from those who are not, and in-fighting among families who are privileged. Kang's father ran away with the maid. He was a son of disgrace. Kang loved his life in Wando but the family came to collect him. It will come out that he is not the only son of disgrace in the family. Many of these patterns are cyclical and many people appear to have everything are not everything they appear to be.
C always circles back to food. Kang was given chocolate by his mother's paramour when he was young. It made a big impression. His mother was on the way to purchase him some chocolates with the plan to take them and Kang back to Wando, but she died in an accident. When Cha was young she waited hours for her mother to meet her at the mall, but mom never showed. What did happen was that the mall collapsed and Cha was stuck there for days. A woman who was trapped and dying under the rubble gave her chocolate. Cha believes it saved her life. Yet she was merely existing until Kang gave her hope for the future. Chocolate (and food, in general) represents warmth, memory, caring, and love; all comforts that were too scarce in our leads’ lives. Together, they learn how to combine the sweet and the bitter into their own special recipe.
QUOTE📢 Everyone is terminally fated to die from the moment that they're born. They just tend to forget that when they're living.
〰🖍 IMHO
📣7.3 📝5.7 🎭7.3 💓6 🦋4.5 🎨6 🔚5 🤗3 ▪ 🌞5⚡3 😅1 😭4.5 😱2 😯2.5 🤢2 🤔4 💤1
🎵/🔊 7.7 Shazams: Just Look for you, by Ailee; Always be here by Jung Jin Woo; Special, by 유빈; The credits song is You & I by ID:Earth
Rated TV-15 just for language: F💣, $h!+, but there isn't much of it.
Re-📺? Once is enough
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