Vincenzo

Finished my Game of Thrones watch/rewatch. I had only seen the first four seasons, so the second half was only vaguely familiar to me because of all the gossip and chat about it when it first aired. I was not as offended by the final season as some, probably because I was just not that invested in the characters to begin with. 

Now I'm watching Vincenzo, a kdrama on that was apparently a big hit on Netflix. It was originally broadcast on Korean cable. This means it can be a little edgier than regular broadcast TV dramas in its use of violence. It is an odd mix of regular kdrama tropes, like the "truck of doom" as murder weapon, and a more international framework that brings guns into the story. It uses the usual kdrama set-up of eeevil chaebol/prosecutor corruption/psycho killer vs. plucky found family surrounding the OTP, but the male lead, played by Song Joong-Ki, is supposed to be a Mafia consigliere who was adopted as a child in Italy. He has blood on his hands, and is shown as more effective in punishing the bad guys through dirty means than the institutions of law and justice which are all crooked. It is interesting to see how the drama uses over-the-top humor to leaven the idea that the protagonist is just as bad as his enemies since they are all murderers. We have lots of shows in the U.S. with amoral protagonists, but it's really unusual for a Korean drama to bring the cynical revenge stories so common in Korean movies to  a TV series since those usually include a moralizing punishment or death. After all, you still can't show characters openly smoking on Korean TV, so the show goes through all kinds of contortions to show characters about to smoke. The moment where Vincenzo is shown holding a smoking cigarette is the first time I've seen the main lead actually light up even though he still isn't shown inhaling. Yet the same series can show all kinds of sadistic violence. 

The Italian word 'consigliere' is misheard as the Korean pronunciation of Corn Salad:

Daebak Realty/Sell Your Haunted House

 To take a break from my Game of Thrones marathon (I'm midway through season four, which is about how far I got when I watched it the first time) I just binge-watched a Korean drama called Daebak Realty, with the alternative title of Sell Your Haunted House. Ten of the sixteen episodes have aired so far, and I watched all ten over the last few days. The premise is that the protagonist, Hong Ji A (played by Jang Nara)  is a shaman who performs exorcisms to get rid of ghosts that are haunting real estate properties and preventing them from being sold, or lowering the property value. To perform an exorcism, she needs a medium as an assistant, or"psychic"--a young man who is a virgin (explained as: hasn't mixed his yang with yin!) who can be possessed by the spirit. The spirit is trapped in the medium's body and  the exorcist-shaman then stabs him with a special magical needle containing a talisman with the spirit's name on it, thus releasing the spirit. A side-effect is that the spirit's memories and habits are passed on to the shaman, leaving a huge emotional residue. In this framework, we learn that our exorcist is living in a house haunted by her mother's spirit. Brusque, ill-tempered, dressing only in black, Ji A has shut down after years of emotional toil. Her mother was a shaman who died twenty years earlier, apparently in a exorcism gone wrong, when Ji A was a girl. Ji A can see her, as she can see other spirits, but has not been successful in finding a psychic strong enough to exorcise her mother's spirit. 

The story begins when a con man, Oh In Bum, gets tangled up in one of her jobs and they discover that he is a strong medium who can assist her in her work. Each episode has a "spirit of the week" while the over-arching mystery is how Hong Ji A's mother's death is related to Oh In Bum's uncle's death, and how both are related to powerful and crooked developers who use violence to take over properties; they've been trying to dislodge Ji A from her home, Daebak Realty, but she refuses to sell because her mother's spirit is attached. In Bum proves to be such a strong medium that he absorbs the spirits' memories, rather than Ji A, and their shared experience creates a strong bond between them.

The attention to the details of the exorcism rituals, the great casting of guest actors for the weekly spirit stories and the secondary roles, and the charisma of the two lead actors, have made it a good watch. The relationship between the two main characters is complicated and evolves as they discover more and more about how their pasts are connected. A running gag is how her exorcisms require so much energy that she eats gargantuan amounts of food.  After so many recent drama disappointments (even good actors can't save a poor script), I'm glad to have found one that combines its supernatural elements with believable psychological portrayals, and that is not about a serial killer.

The other drama I am watching is called Doom At Your Service, and also has a supernatural twist. It's two main stars are super popular but I am watching for one of my favorite actors, Lee Soo Hyuk. 

OK, back to Game of Thrones!

kdrama watching

 I just finished watched a weekend family kdrama Yeah, That's How It Is, all 54 episodes. It was one of the better kdramas I've watched in the last several months, despite the fact that it is a few years old. I only found out about it from the comments of a DramaBeans post--a usually grumpy commenter said it was good so I checked it out. It turns out that the writer has a long track record, including a drama, Life is Beautiful, that has a gay relationship as a central plot point. I'd heard of that drama--maybe I should watch it next. Luckily all subbed episodes were easily available--unlike the situation when I first started watching dramas (in 2013? I think) and had to sit through endless commercial interruptions before I subscribed to a DramaFever (RIP). It's been a while since I really binge-watched a kdrama. Checking my watchlist, I see that I'm up to 200 kdramas completed, 96 dropped. I have not one single 2021 drama on the completed list, and 2 are on the dropped list (there are more), which just shows how few I've even started watching at all in the last four months.  Several of the ones I dropped over the years were big fan favorites but didn't appeal to me, while several of the ones I completed were not so great but I found them entertaining.  The only dramas I've watched more than once are Coffee Prince, Marriage Not Dating, and Secret Forest. Maybe I should dip into my completed list to find some good ones to rewatch.

Lately, most new dramas have been some variation on supernatural love stories, time travel, serial killers, or a combo, or have been just plain too bad to watch past the first two episodes. And I dropped the most recent time travel drama at episode 14/16 because it just was so stupid, despite the fact that it had a couple of really good actors. But the action sequences were all like first-person shooter games while the actual story was nonsensical and the romance between the middle-aged man and young woman was offensive and boring. Ugh. 

I have fewer jdramas or cdramas on my list because I find the mediocre ones unwatchable, and the good ones few and far between. It's also harder to get good recs because I don't haunt the discussion sites and I don't find the popular genres appealing. Maybe I should rewatch Fated To Love You, so ridiculous but it made me cry so hard ("Goodbye, My Love!")