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A great drama from an emotional standpoint if you can hang in there for the first few episodes. A proper Chaebol/CEO story combined with ghosts in and out of a shopping mall (sounds good doesn't it?) and a disheveled psychic who is utterly terrorized by said ghosts.
Gong Hyo Jin is creepier than the ghosts to start off with, and the CEO constantly saves her even though he wants nothing to do with her. Do not watch just after The Greatest Love -- the pairing only superficially resembles those fabulous characters.
The script and soundtrack are more powerful than Gong Hyo Jin's admitted acting skill and the charm of Jo Si Seob (he went onto success as a romantic lead after this), and the revelations of their slow and prickly romance are fueled by another of those complicated structures of allusion and jokes which the HS can produce, and which are frustrating to guess at from the subtitles. A total guess on my part, but most of the subtitles appear to be so literal (i.e.close to the meanings of individual words in Korean) that I think the translators decided to try to give a taste of the verbal humor and play that way, throwing caution and pronouns to the winds.
Physical touch/sexual attraction and the psychic invisible phenomena are the concepts which are constantly played with (the two words are"sound-alikes" in Korean, hehe). The pair discusses invisibility as part of selfishness -- she was so needy she couldn't "see" him...he is stuck in a mirroring past experience and couldnt see her real self. The title Masters Sun and her name Tae (means sun) refer to another set of metaphors -- she is a shining light (sun) to ghosts in their world, so they flock to her like moths, but in the outer world she fears she is a darker light.
The attraction of total opposites is compared to a children's fable or book about a wolf and a goat. It sounds like when in Aesop the lamb tries to escape through fancy talk but the wolf cuts in with realpolitick and eats her/him, enough so that the viewer is quite worried about how it will all end. There is a reference to a "Candy" -- The CEO calls Seo inguk charater "Candy Kang" with great relish -- but is the bodyguard really he is a gender-reversed Cinderella character?
Anyway, the HS always create instantly recognizable characters, and all the supporting actors in Masters Sun were genius. The romantic pair in each show always have over-determined motivations, allowing for lots of audience interpretation. The HS scripts seem to always catch the top of the wave generically, and each show is distinct from all the others. This was the last of the annual productions they had kept up with since 2005, and thereafter the shows come every other year more or less. 2015, '17/18, '22 and soon '25/26. Cant wait.
Gong Hyo Jin is creepier than the ghosts to start off with, and the CEO constantly saves her even though he wants nothing to do with her. Do not watch just after The Greatest Love -- the pairing only superficially resembles those fabulous characters.
The script and soundtrack are more powerful than Gong Hyo Jin's admitted acting skill and the charm of Jo Si Seob (he went onto success as a romantic lead after this), and the revelations of their slow and prickly romance are fueled by another of those complicated structures of allusion and jokes which the HS can produce, and which are frustrating to guess at from the subtitles. A total guess on my part, but most of the subtitles appear to be so literal (i.e.close to the meanings of individual words in Korean) that I think the translators decided to try to give a taste of the verbal humor and play that way, throwing caution and pronouns to the winds.
Physical touch/sexual attraction and the psychic invisible phenomena are the concepts which are constantly played with (the two words are"sound-alikes" in Korean, hehe). The pair discusses invisibility as part of selfishness -- she was so needy she couldn't "see" him...he is stuck in a mirroring past experience and couldnt see her real self. The title Masters Sun and her name Tae (means sun) refer to another set of metaphors -- she is a shining light (sun) to ghosts in their world, so they flock to her like moths, but in the outer world she fears she is a darker light.
The attraction of total opposites is compared to a children's fable or book about a wolf and a goat. It sounds like when in Aesop the lamb tries to escape through fancy talk but the wolf cuts in with realpolitick and eats her/him, enough so that the viewer is quite worried about how it will all end. There is a reference to a "Candy" -- The CEO calls Seo inguk charater "Candy Kang" with great relish -- but is the bodyguard really he is a gender-reversed Cinderella character?
Anyway, the HS always create instantly recognizable characters, and all the supporting actors in Masters Sun were genius. The romantic pair in each show always have over-determined motivations, allowing for lots of audience interpretation. The HS scripts seem to always catch the top of the wave generically, and each show is distinct from all the others. This was the last of the annual productions they had kept up with since 2005, and thereafter the shows come every other year more or less. 2015, '17/18, '22 and soon '25/26. Cant wait.
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