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MJ Koontz
Back to being lost in America
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A Korean Version of the stateside show "Younger."
Are there changes? Yes!
Some of those changes are strengths versus the original. Some things don't change that probably should have. And some changes do not work so well.
Here our female lead has secretly been divorced for over a year. She is destitute, living in her abandoned home, that has fallen to ruin and is set to be demolished, yes in only a years time, shrug. She sneaks into her best friends house (Our Male Lead) for food and showers while he is at work, and secretly has hired herself to be his housekeeper for some steady income. Her daughter is off at boarding school and draining what little resources our FL has, since her husband has up and disappeared with another woman and left her to raise their daughter on her own. Though, our protagonist is a college educated, certificate wielding, and award wining Copy Editor, not a single company will give her an opportunity because she has been a housewife for the past seven years and is nearing forty. Too old, too educated, and too experienced for entry level work, yet biased against for leaving the work force for a home life and believed too long gone to understand the copy world of today and its markets she is refused substantial middle and management positions. As a wrecking ball finally makes her homeless, our FL is forced into erasing her credentials and past and pretend to be nothing more than a middle-aged high school graduate to land the most basic contract work entry-level gofer position possible. Hey it gives her money, and its at a publishing house, her life's love.
Sounds familiar yes?
While "Younger," as its name suggests, has the FL not only pose as an inexperienced beginner, it ALSO makes her pretend to be in her early 20's as an almost 40 year old. Far fetched, yeah, but the show mostly makes it work. Here, RIABB, recognizes it is unneeded and unrealistic and forgoes this while still covering all the ageist issues in full.
Other changes include taking the Lesbian Life Long Best Friend and the CEO of the Publishing house Love Interest and morphing them together into a single character that is our Chief Editor Male Lead. (Note the Lesbian still gets 2 cameos as a High-end Fashion store owner who used to date our ML. It is important that the show at least nods to this character and also normalizes her Lesbianism by the ML considering South Korea's openly known homophobia.)
By the show doing this character adjoining, it creates a lifetime best friends to lovers story, which is a fan favorite trope amongst Romance lovers. The show knows its audience. It also works well, and allows there to be a lot of screen time with the two leads together in cohabitation, as just like in "Younger," our FL is forced to live with her best friend.
The college student daughter is made mostly irrelevant as a Philippines boarding school living middle-schooler. This is one of those changes I can't get behind. The daughter is used in the beginning to show the financial strapped situation our FL is in, but once she gets the job, the daughter is all but forgotten. The fact that this woman is a mother is left to die on the vine. In fact, that there even is a daughter at all becomes superfluous. It would have been better to have just cut the never met child from the script and made the husband even more of a monster as in he wouldn't let her work as a woman, mother or not. Why not, it would have worked for the purpose of the story just as well and saved us from the odd dangling fruit that is this mostly forgotten daughter in the Philippines.
Our younger hip Brooklyn tattoo artist love interest (Yes the Triangle Lives!) changes into a younger, most sought-after, book cover artist and his beautiful dog. We can not forget this dog guys, its just not gunna happen. The character is tied to the story better and ends up with some secret backstory that deals directly with the publishing house and our ML. This change works well and is perfectly serviceable.
Yes, even the "frenemy" lady boss exists in both incarnations as CEO Go. Here she is displayed more powerfully and much sexier than in "Younger," but as a character I am still not impressed. The dynamic between our FL and CEO Go is exactly the same and I really wish they would have changed this up. Do we really need this to be how we address sisterhood in the workplace? Are we supposed to decide CEO Go really is a good person in the end? Should women expect this relationship, and be okay with this dynamic? Is there really nothing better out there? These questions could create a whole topic of conversation and arguments, but let's just say that for the purpose of the show, this relationship is one of the more complex on display even with its little screen time.
Overall, the show mostly functions as promised. Around episode eight it unfortunately devolves into a generic everyone falls-in-love romance with the entire cast pairing off. (THE ENTIRE CAST!) But, around episode 13 it pulls itself back into the better and stronger original story-lines that were laid at the beginning of the series and follows them through the last 3 episodes. However, because we leave the main story for so long, and because the show tries so hard to be just a typical love story for all, the ending does come on flat. The triumphs don't feel as triumphant as they should. The lows, aren't as low as we went in the beginning of the series, and characters become simply puppets serving the plot and attempting to make us feel warm on the inside as everyone finds happiness in the arms of someone else.
Is it worth your time, I'd say so. It was stronger than a lot of the Kdrama romances I have been sitting through. Is it amazing, perfect, OMG you MUST watch this, best love story ever, you will never be the same, add any other hyperbole or adulation that are carelessly thrown about on peer review sites? No, it is not.
RIABB has warmth, and a message, strong acting, and a great production. It moves steadily and smoothly though its tale without rushing. It is filled with superficial cuteness, and all the typical swooning beats and moments you've come to expect from these types of shows. Yet, it has a unique base story that keeps it apart from the pack. I gave it a 7, 3 1/2 Stars, B grade. Better than average and a solid watch but not great or a must see.
I do want to note, that I did also open a conversation on the MDL discussion board for RIABB about the ML of this drama. There are things that angered me, and issues that I am seeing repeated in Kdrama romances when it comes to the MLs in general. While, by the end RIABB's ML does grow and learn, and ultimately try to be a better man, the first 6 episodes find him doing some very questionable (Not sexual) things when it comes to our FL. It was hard for me to move past these plot points when it comes to ML's character as a noble human being and just put a really large blight on him from my point-of-view. I find him morally questionable, and if this was real life, I would very much be against him. Even if he is smart, handsome, rich, and successful, with a generally amicable personality, and over-all good natured, what he allows to happen and lets his company stand for in the beginning of the series and what he is NOT willing do to for our FL or stand up for what was right, really bothered me and I was unable to let it go. If you want to go a bit more in-depth or offer your own opinion on the matter, look for the discussion above the comments section for RIABB.
Some of those changes are strengths versus the original. Some things don't change that probably should have. And some changes do not work so well.
Here our female lead has secretly been divorced for over a year. She is destitute, living in her abandoned home, that has fallen to ruin and is set to be demolished, yes in only a years time, shrug. She sneaks into her best friends house (Our Male Lead) for food and showers while he is at work, and secretly has hired herself to be his housekeeper for some steady income. Her daughter is off at boarding school and draining what little resources our FL has, since her husband has up and disappeared with another woman and left her to raise their daughter on her own. Though, our protagonist is a college educated, certificate wielding, and award wining Copy Editor, not a single company will give her an opportunity because she has been a housewife for the past seven years and is nearing forty. Too old, too educated, and too experienced for entry level work, yet biased against for leaving the work force for a home life and believed too long gone to understand the copy world of today and its markets she is refused substantial middle and management positions. As a wrecking ball finally makes her homeless, our FL is forced into erasing her credentials and past and pretend to be nothing more than a middle-aged high school graduate to land the most basic contract work entry-level gofer position possible. Hey it gives her money, and its at a publishing house, her life's love.
Sounds familiar yes?
While "Younger," as its name suggests, has the FL not only pose as an inexperienced beginner, it ALSO makes her pretend to be in her early 20's as an almost 40 year old. Far fetched, yeah, but the show mostly makes it work. Here, RIABB, recognizes it is unneeded and unrealistic and forgoes this while still covering all the ageist issues in full.
Other changes include taking the Lesbian Life Long Best Friend and the CEO of the Publishing house Love Interest and morphing them together into a single character that is our Chief Editor Male Lead. (Note the Lesbian still gets 2 cameos as a High-end Fashion store owner who used to date our ML. It is important that the show at least nods to this character and also normalizes her Lesbianism by the ML considering South Korea's openly known homophobia.)
By the show doing this character adjoining, it creates a lifetime best friends to lovers story, which is a fan favorite trope amongst Romance lovers. The show knows its audience. It also works well, and allows there to be a lot of screen time with the two leads together in cohabitation, as just like in "Younger," our FL is forced to live with her best friend.
The college student daughter is made mostly irrelevant as a Philippines boarding school living middle-schooler. This is one of those changes I can't get behind. The daughter is used in the beginning to show the financial strapped situation our FL is in, but once she gets the job, the daughter is all but forgotten. The fact that this woman is a mother is left to die on the vine. In fact, that there even is a daughter at all becomes superfluous. It would have been better to have just cut the never met child from the script and made the husband even more of a monster as in he wouldn't let her work as a woman, mother or not. Why not, it would have worked for the purpose of the story just as well and saved us from the odd dangling fruit that is this mostly forgotten daughter in the Philippines.
Our younger hip Brooklyn tattoo artist love interest (Yes the Triangle Lives!) changes into a younger, most sought-after, book cover artist and his beautiful dog. We can not forget this dog guys, its just not gunna happen. The character is tied to the story better and ends up with some secret backstory that deals directly with the publishing house and our ML. This change works well and is perfectly serviceable.
Yes, even the "frenemy" lady boss exists in both incarnations as CEO Go. Here she is displayed more powerfully and much sexier than in "Younger," but as a character I am still not impressed. The dynamic between our FL and CEO Go is exactly the same and I really wish they would have changed this up. Do we really need this to be how we address sisterhood in the workplace? Are we supposed to decide CEO Go really is a good person in the end? Should women expect this relationship, and be okay with this dynamic? Is there really nothing better out there? These questions could create a whole topic of conversation and arguments, but let's just say that for the purpose of the show, this relationship is one of the more complex on display even with its little screen time.
Overall, the show mostly functions as promised. Around episode eight it unfortunately devolves into a generic everyone falls-in-love romance with the entire cast pairing off. (THE ENTIRE CAST!) But, around episode 13 it pulls itself back into the better and stronger original story-lines that were laid at the beginning of the series and follows them through the last 3 episodes. However, because we leave the main story for so long, and because the show tries so hard to be just a typical love story for all, the ending does come on flat. The triumphs don't feel as triumphant as they should. The lows, aren't as low as we went in the beginning of the series, and characters become simply puppets serving the plot and attempting to make us feel warm on the inside as everyone finds happiness in the arms of someone else.
Is it worth your time, I'd say so. It was stronger than a lot of the Kdrama romances I have been sitting through. Is it amazing, perfect, OMG you MUST watch this, best love story ever, you will never be the same, add any other hyperbole or adulation that are carelessly thrown about on peer review sites? No, it is not.
RIABB has warmth, and a message, strong acting, and a great production. It moves steadily and smoothly though its tale without rushing. It is filled with superficial cuteness, and all the typical swooning beats and moments you've come to expect from these types of shows. Yet, it has a unique base story that keeps it apart from the pack. I gave it a 7, 3 1/2 Stars, B grade. Better than average and a solid watch but not great or a must see.
I do want to note, that I did also open a conversation on the MDL discussion board for RIABB about the ML of this drama. There are things that angered me, and issues that I am seeing repeated in Kdrama romances when it comes to the MLs in general. While, by the end RIABB's ML does grow and learn, and ultimately try to be a better man, the first 6 episodes find him doing some very questionable (Not sexual) things when it comes to our FL. It was hard for me to move past these plot points when it comes to ML's character as a noble human being and just put a really large blight on him from my point-of-view. I find him morally questionable, and if this was real life, I would very much be against him. Even if he is smart, handsome, rich, and successful, with a generally amicable personality, and over-all good natured, what he allows to happen and lets his company stand for in the beginning of the series and what he is NOT willing do to for our FL or stand up for what was right, really bothered me and I was unable to let it go. If you want to go a bit more in-depth or offer your own opinion on the matter, look for the discussion above the comments section for RIABB.
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