She Was Pretty (2015)

The drama should have a higher score, compared to other romantic comedies. It obviously has flaws and one can criticize it in many obvious ways, but gosh, as the story goes, it is such a Renoir, giving off this warm and giddy vibe about the truly good things in life – love, friendship, and family, and even camaraderie at work – indeed it’s that pair of rose-tinted glasses on human relationships. You need it every once in a while – particularly on rainy, gloomy days.

I really don’t want to “criticize” so much as to make suggestions to the plot in hopes that writers all over perhaps could take the frame of the story and add their brilliant touches for the masterpieces to come. There is a Chinese version already, garnering pretty good reviews, that I now must check out to see what their writers have done.

I agree with those that say the arc of the story finishes in 12 episodes, with the last four episodes mainly to wrap up everything and tie in all the loose ends. I wish that the arc would branch out further and use all that white space at the end to detail more instead the beauty spots of the story. For example, the friendship between Hye-Jin and Ha-Ri needs to have more hurdles to prove the strength of the girls’ soul sisterhood. Ha-Ri as a character needs more development because the way it is, she’s a major character of the story not to have more background. We know she’s well-off from her dad, but with a broken family due to a missing mother and a mean stepmother, Ha-Ri is ripe as a character for more complex internal interplay. Her sole anchor in life is her friendship with Hye-Jin but her relationship with her dad has poorly influenced her perception of men, to the point where she’s simply using most men for short-term flings, to be discarded once she becomes bored.

This is a person very useful as plot device to build bitter tension between the main couple only because she is quite capable of doing both good and evil. Her heart is different from Hye-Jin’s, whose inner beauty always shines through and very willing to suffer self-sacrifice for her friends and family. Ha-Ri should’ve been more daring, manipulative, greedier, all the time being confused over what she could potentially lose in order to gain the love of the one man so different from all the rest she’s had before. At what point does Ha-Ri realize that her need for this man is more a possessive act due to her miscast feelings about the sexes as the result of her upbringing? At what point does she recognize that she will lose her life-long friend just by standing in between them, keeping them apart, and thus breaking the hearts of two good-hearted people in love? These questions can be quite interesting to explore for the drama just by adding a few more calculated mishaps caused by our confused catalyst.

Then there’s the character of Sung-joon. I may upset a lot of star-gazers but PSJ looks simply too polished as a male model to play a character like Sung-joon, a chief editor of a fashion and style magazine, whose hobby is life sketching, and who has introverted pursuits like secretly drawing Hye-Jin biting on sea-weed at the seaside. PSJ looks too sharp and white-collar chic, gawky as a male specimen belonging in the photos of The Most rather than one of those in the shadows making it. It’s the difference between Shin-Hyuk as Editor Kim and Shin-Hyuk as Ten photographed in that last issue of the magazine. The two can be equally amazingly handsome but style-wise, PSJ does not behave like a frenetic, work-absorbed man bordering slight-autism whose awkward aloofness melts away next to the spunky, child-like Hye-Jin.

The role is difficult because in many romantic comedies, the male lead is put on a pedestal and his personality is pretty much written in stone to be unbendingly arrogant, tough but suave in order to attract and sustain female desire. Sung-joon is a hardcore romantic, who frequents art galleries and prizes a jigsaw puzzle because it’s a leftover from his childhood. It is difficult to get through to Sung-joon since he lives in his own world most of the times, people can’t read and understand him, and more importantly he doesn’t allow many to enter in that world - that is, unless it’s Hye-Jin. He has never forgotten his childhood sweetheart because she alone was able to break past that thickly woven layer of disassociation from reality having lost his mother at a young age.

The two of them together felt right as rain to him, and he seeks to recapture the spirit of their romantic friendship the same way he keeps listening to Carpenters’ bluebird song. That is why it is all the more compelling to him that a complete stranger, a new intern in office who looks nothing like the Hye-Jin he knew and loved, could so easily give off that familiar vibe and make him feel at home again. The drama is most fun when the two of them are together, recognizing each other but pretending not to. There should’ve been a few more escapades of the lovebirds struggling over how to behave and contain themselves as they walk the line separating work and enjoying each other’s company in order to fulfill another deadline. It is only because Sung-joon is quite abnormal personality-wise , and not just another handsome face, that in time, the heart wins over the head to validate his suspicion that Hye-Jin is his Hye-Jin all along despite the evidence otherwise presented by Ha-Ri time and again.

That is why PSJ, although he’s fine in the drama, falls short somewhat – because he hasn’t delivered a Sung-joon that has been lovesick his whole life and bumbling over how not to be a fool standing in his office as the boss. PSJ shows us his cool and collected, while Sung-joon is really a floppy mess, but they can both be very handsome men still, right?

And what about Shin-Hyuk, who is like a Joker thrown into the mix. His role is not unlike Ha-Ri's by way of effecting the relationship of the main leads. Another plot device, he mainly exists to pull on Hye-Jin and create a love quadrangle of sorts for the drama. For the amount of white space available, why not add another layer of complexity by giving his particular friendship with Hye-Jin more detail? Like Ha-Ri, Shin-Hyuk is underused as a character, whose flair comes in none other than as comic relief with signature jokes and poignant lovesick stares. Indeed, precious little is said - albeit purposely - about his unique personality and background until the very end. The character grabs so much of most viewers' sympathy, so why not more of viewers' memory too by slowing down the transition of his feelings from friendship to that something more. Rather than the abrupt disclosure at the end, give more room all along the way to spotlight him as a personality in need - someone who realizes himself through his quasi love friendship with Hye-Jin the atypical quality of his own family or upbringing - such that viewers understand - gingerly - his impulses to fight tooth and nail to hold on to the thing he's got with Hye-Jin. He could still be a character shrouded in mystery - following the path the writer's set up - simply because he loses his will to wreck the main couple and advance his own fantasy, as he confronts something new to himself little by little: Hye-Jin's own waking feelings for Sung-joon.

Finally, there's Hye-Jin, our bubbly protagonist whose force of personality holds in orbit the other characters. Here, I have to compliment HJE as an actress. She adds such vivacity to her character, with loud squeals, cackles, and tons of quick facial expressions that are a delight to behold but nevertheless would be a concern for someone keeping up a goddess face. She got my attention early on with her energy and comic timing, which is so lacking in female leads since many have such boring body language, either at best lounging themselves on the men or at worst just sitting or standing pretty. Instead, she is so game to play for laughs and go against type that for me, the show became a love at first sight. I want so much to see a heroine who can be silly, awkward, and ugly – in adorable ways. HJE delivers just that.

Now, I must mention a fundamental flaw in the storytelling I believe with the character of Hye-Jin. Her attraction to Sung-joon was too quick and easy, it was like she was ready and willing as soon as he started his pursuit. Exactly what was his record in the story other than acting boss-like, yelling condescendingly “You Intern!” everywhere like she was his servant, and generally being the stoic, arrogant alpha male to stoke female desire. Yet, for a woman like Hye-Jin, who sees past this kind of thing and is more unencumbered by superficiality (supposedly she lost her childhood pretty face and was used to playing second fiddle to Ha-Ri her whole life in attracting male attention) Sung-joon for much of the first half of the story offers little of the qualities that reach deep into her heart other than the stereotypical fancy of a trophy boyfriend. Another example, Ha-Ri gives her a really expensive and fashionable pair of shoes, which doesn’t interest Hye-Jin at all. To Hye-Jin, beautiful though they may be, the shoes are uncomfortable and just don't fit her kind of person. In a way, Sung-joon is no different from those brand name shoes that only Ha-Ri seems to desire.

Nothing is explained about why or how Sung-joon becomes special in her eyes, other than their sharing a childhood past at one point - a past that initially Hye-Jin was ignoring despite a stream of emails from him asking for a catch up but that midway into the story suddenly became a past for which she was beholden, one where he was now quite meaningfully her childhood sweetheart. It would have been much better storytelling to have Hye-Jin not fall so quickly in love, to be more on guard, to have her even avoid or hide wearing those unfit shoes so to speak, to have the two of them stumble over antics and mishaps in order for them to confront growing feelings that they are in fact perfectly matched, just like they once were. Hye-Jin should have resisted Sung-joon a lot longer – first because of barriers set up by Ha-Ri and Shin-Hyuk and later because of Hye-Jin’s own wrongful, preconceived notions about Sung-joon from the beginning. The moment she sees him as "her" comfortable Sung-joon - the same, pudgy but lovable boy of her childhood - she accepts him wholeheartedly despite the changed appearance.

For a show that makes much ado about breaking with image, I think the end would have been sweeter to have the he’s and she’s recognize that for all their prettiness it is still the heart that matters most - gorgeous appearances included, of course.

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