Boys Over Flowers (2009)

Tragic brain trauma story

This is really a sad series about a girl with untreated brain damage which affects the way she eats and talks (poor thing!). When the series starts, viewers are clued into her condition when she totally disregards the fact that someone who is bleeding from multiple head wounds is about to commit suicide. She shows some semblance of normalcy when she steps in to grab the kid as he jumps. This act gives her a one way ticket into Upskirttown Academy where girls prep themselves for a lacey-panties-and-high-stiletto-heel future of hybrid French-maid and Japanese-child-porn-school-girl courtesans. What an awesome life for young ladies of the 21st century! As incredible as that might sound I just couldn't get over how bad GJD's grasp on reality was as the series progressed. There was a bullying scene to begin with that our protagonist didn't witness so I guess that's not her fault but then more bullying ensues until we get a setup that suggested an upcoming gang rape. Of course, we can't expect our poor brain-compromised protag to fully comprehend the seriousness of the situation enough to avoid the mofo who set her up in the first place. Instead, she confronts him and tells him an irrelevant fact that she was an unkissed virgin. Yes, GJD, that's exactly what I would tell the forker who nearly got me gang-raped (newsflash: no, no it's not). Moving right along, we get the hapless heroine getting herself into a sexual assault situation where the aforementioned mofo tries to force a kiss on her. No red flags there for GJD apparently as she continues on with life as usual, her neurological condition shielding her from the trauma; lucky girl. Blah blah blah, then some insta-romance BS plot where the rich mofo falls for her without logic or reason at all and tries to woo her, yadda yadda yadda, some intervening storyline with a Fabio wannabe kid who has the hots for a model who likes to toy with his feelings, oh boo hoo hoo for him, then the point at which I decided I wasn't the target audience for this... GDJ gets roofied and gets photographed in a compromising position... and it flies over her cranium chamber. Rather than reacting to the fact she had been potentially raped she was more focused on convincing the mofo, whom she supposedly doesn't have feelings for, that she didn't have a relationship with the roofie guy. At this point, it just became really, really tragic to watch.

Firstly, there's a difference between a relationship and rape; a whole consentful of difference which the directors and writers just overlooked as conveniently as the protagonist GDJ did. As a pre-MeToo production this series didn't age well, but I don't believe it needs a MeToo movement to have corrected this story, it just needs a functional brain to realise what's wrong and right, but BOF never seemed to have meant to be anything other than a blatantly misogynistic production anyway with the gratuitous upskirting angles and forked up "school" uniforms for the girls.

Secondly, there's nothing to recommend this series as none of the chars are remotely good looking. I checked it out for Kim Bum at first but his character here was such a slut that it made him ugly to watch. The only char that was likeable was Bom Chun Sik coz he was interesting with his psychic guesses however, he's a minor char.

I mean if you're a neuroscience student then by all means check this series out to study how sick the production team's brains are to have created this crap and how accurate GDJ's portrayal of a brain damaged person is. Aside from that, it could be a good series for people who need eye exercises as you end up rolling your eyes and scrunching them tight a lot wondering WTF did u just witness. Oh, and if you're a zombie then go for it, you'll totally enjoy the irony of the show. Apart from that, I wouldn't recommend it to viewers who do not fit into any of the above categories as it might cause brain damage from your neurons spontaneously combusting from trying to make sense of the sheer ludicrousness of the protagonist's behaviour and decision making processes. This show feels less like a serious series attempt and more like an erotic soft porn fantasy of a bunch of middle-aged, male Korean film execs.

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