1
bbchops
Dallas, TX
This review may contain spoilers
Enjoyable romantic comedy with some plot issues but nevertheless a guilty pleasure.
If you read this review to the end, I know it’s going to sound like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth when I say I really enjoyed watching this feel-good show. I absolutely did enjoy it, but it somehow left me feeling like something was missing—like the feeling you get when you pig out on empty calories. It wasn’t the cast. Hwang Jung Eum was adorable, beautiful, and vulnerable as Bo Nui. (Shout out to the costume designer: Bo Nui’s wonderfully quirky outfits were like a whole character by themselves!) The other parts of the love triangle were also well played by Ryu Joon Yeol (Je Su Ho) and Lee Soo Hyuk (Choi Gun Wook). And Lee Cho Hee was delightfully cute as the goofy, lovelorn administrative assistant Lee Dal Nim.
So what about the empty calories? The issue didn’t come into focus until I thought about the rating I would assign to this drama. I really liked it, but how did it compare to my other highly rated dramas. Just how good was it? And that’s where the wheels started to fall off. The more I thought about it, there were just too many plot points that were dropped or glossed over. The character development seemed to lurch around in places. I’ve never written a review filled with spoilers, but I’m doing so here—mostly to explain my less than stellar rating to my favorite reviewers out there who rated this drama too highly in my opinion.
In no particular order:
--Bo Nui puts her entire life on hold, sacrificing everything, to take care of her comatose sister Bo Ra, but there is shockingly little screen time devoted to Bo Ra until the very, very end. For some reason, Bo Nui can’t even look at her sister until Su Ho comes along—a full 13 years after the accident. Doesn’t this seem strange?
--Su Ho goes from emotionless, almost autistic, to sensitive new age guy in the course of a couple of episodes. In the final third, he acts downright goofy around Bo Nui. It was kind of cute, but come on. The guy had spent 30 years being totally withdrawn and completely socially inept, then all of a sudden he’s a regular guy?
--After Su Ho's accident, Bo Nui runs home packs up her apartment of twenty years and moves to an undisclosed location the very next day AND is somehow able to move her barely awake sister to a new hospital the same day too. What?
--I never figured out how Bo Nui’s old boss (Won Dae Hae) fit in. Was he a good guy? A bad guy? He kept inexplicably floating in and out of the story. He starts out the drama on the lam and one step ahead of his creditors and Bo Nui, then makes a pile of dough selling his company (and Bo Nui’s clever program) to Su Ho where he should have been set for life. But next thing we know he’s broke again and selling magic drinking water before getting hired as an inept security guard who lets the bad guy in, who then disappears again only to reappear as some kind of employee For Su Ho’s new company. It made my head spin.
--I also had a lot of issues about the way the software business was portrayed. How did the programming team allow their software to be sabotaged not once, but twice(?!) and in exactly the same way? And when they reviewed the security footage and saw ex-employee Park Ha Sang roaming around the office, absolutely no mention was made of the fact that Bo Nui was also there with her old boss turned security guard. And did they ever catch Ha Sang? Was he ever punished? Finally, I was a bit flabbergasted when Choi Ho, the chicken restaurant guy, came out of retirement after twenty years and is somehow able to help Su Ho decrypt the ransomware. It would be about as easy for a retired pro football player to come back lead his team to victory as it would for someone to jump into cybersecurity after a twenty-year absence from computer programming.
Finally, In dramas like Secret Garden and My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, which explicitly rely on suspension of disbelief, you go into them knowing that some plot inconsistencies must be forgiven and that the viewer must relax into the story and enjoy it a little less critically. However, Lucky Romance, really isn’t that kind of drama. Things should make more sense. But in the end, although my list of complaints seems long, they didn’t stop me from enjoying myself. This drama is just not a “10”. It is a guilty pleasure “8”.
So what about the empty calories? The issue didn’t come into focus until I thought about the rating I would assign to this drama. I really liked it, but how did it compare to my other highly rated dramas. Just how good was it? And that’s where the wheels started to fall off. The more I thought about it, there were just too many plot points that were dropped or glossed over. The character development seemed to lurch around in places. I’ve never written a review filled with spoilers, but I’m doing so here—mostly to explain my less than stellar rating to my favorite reviewers out there who rated this drama too highly in my opinion.
In no particular order:
--Bo Nui puts her entire life on hold, sacrificing everything, to take care of her comatose sister Bo Ra, but there is shockingly little screen time devoted to Bo Ra until the very, very end. For some reason, Bo Nui can’t even look at her sister until Su Ho comes along—a full 13 years after the accident. Doesn’t this seem strange?
--Su Ho goes from emotionless, almost autistic, to sensitive new age guy in the course of a couple of episodes. In the final third, he acts downright goofy around Bo Nui. It was kind of cute, but come on. The guy had spent 30 years being totally withdrawn and completely socially inept, then all of a sudden he’s a regular guy?
--After Su Ho's accident, Bo Nui runs home packs up her apartment of twenty years and moves to an undisclosed location the very next day AND is somehow able to move her barely awake sister to a new hospital the same day too. What?
--I never figured out how Bo Nui’s old boss (Won Dae Hae) fit in. Was he a good guy? A bad guy? He kept inexplicably floating in and out of the story. He starts out the drama on the lam and one step ahead of his creditors and Bo Nui, then makes a pile of dough selling his company (and Bo Nui’s clever program) to Su Ho where he should have been set for life. But next thing we know he’s broke again and selling magic drinking water before getting hired as an inept security guard who lets the bad guy in, who then disappears again only to reappear as some kind of employee For Su Ho’s new company. It made my head spin.
--I also had a lot of issues about the way the software business was portrayed. How did the programming team allow their software to be sabotaged not once, but twice(?!) and in exactly the same way? And when they reviewed the security footage and saw ex-employee Park Ha Sang roaming around the office, absolutely no mention was made of the fact that Bo Nui was also there with her old boss turned security guard. And did they ever catch Ha Sang? Was he ever punished? Finally, I was a bit flabbergasted when Choi Ho, the chicken restaurant guy, came out of retirement after twenty years and is somehow able to help Su Ho decrypt the ransomware. It would be about as easy for a retired pro football player to come back lead his team to victory as it would for someone to jump into cybersecurity after a twenty-year absence from computer programming.
Finally, In dramas like Secret Garden and My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, which explicitly rely on suspension of disbelief, you go into them knowing that some plot inconsistencies must be forgiven and that the viewer must relax into the story and enjoy it a little less critically. However, Lucky Romance, really isn’t that kind of drama. Things should make more sense. But in the end, although my list of complaints seems long, they didn’t stop me from enjoying myself. This drama is just not a “10”. It is a guilty pleasure “8”.
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