Yang-Soon is a poor country girl who lives with her grandmother. Her parents
are con artists who are
constantly on the run from the people they’ve swindled.
One day, she’s pulled out of class by two women who are owed money by her
parents. They decide that if her parents won’t pay them what she owes them,
their daughter will have to settle the debt. They get her a job as a housemaid
in Seoul, where she’ll work until the debt is paid off.
Her job as a housemaid involves cleaning two houses: In one house, the
residents are a female executive from Snowy Cosmetics and her spoiled brat
adult daughter Na-Hee. In the other house is Gi-Tae, whose parents ran Snowy
Cosmetics until they died rescuing him from drowning. Gi-Tae has lived in the
house alone since he was a teenager. Gi-Tae is now the president of Snowy, but
due to his unconventional life circumstances, he hasn’t fully matured, and
exhibits many childish tendencies. Na-Hee is Gi-Tae’s girlfriend, though he
doesn’t particularly have much affection for her. Unbeknownst to Gi-Tae, his
uncle and younger cousin Joon-Tae, both executives at Snowy, are plotting to
take over the company themselves, leaving him out in the cold.
Yang-Soon and Gi-Tae don’t get along at first, but despite his immature behavior,
Gi-Tae is captivated by Yang-Soon’s strong-willed and smart personality. When
Yang-Soon wins an art contest for Snowy Cosmetics, she’s able to pay off her
debt and quit working as a maid. However, when she tries to return to her house
in the country, she finds out that Gi-Tae, desperate to maintain contact with
her, has bought her house. Desperate to get away from him, Yang-Soon hops a bus
to another region, where she gets a job at a branch of Snowy Cosmetics.
A year later, Yang-Soon returns to Seoul as a member of her branch’s baseball
team, where she’s reunited with Gi-Tae and the friends she made in Seoul a year
earlier. Her return, however, coincides with the final stage of Joon-Tae and
his father’s plan to take down Gi-Tae. When Joon-Tae successfully steals all of
Gi-Tae’s property, including leadership of Snowy Cosmetics, Gi-Tae is lost and
must rely on Yang-Soon to get back on his feet.
Writing and Acting
The acting was surprisingly good. Jang Na-Ra, who played Yang-Soon, gave a
really moving performance when she was crying over the death of her
grandmother. Although...they showed the scene again in a flashback during a later
episode, and her acting didn’t seem as good then. I guess I was just feeling
her emotion more when it actually happened.
Some of the writing was a bit cheesy (of course), and a lot of the scenes and
moments had a corny feel to them (of course). What can you say though? It was cute. That's all they were really going for.
Music
Here are the songs I identified:
Olli’s Club – It’s Allright
Willa Ford – I Wanna Be Bad
Ringtone from “The Nutcracker”
조장혁 – Love Song
Dance-pop version of Ellie Greenwich’s “Sunshine After the Rain”
“Just the Two of Us”
The Commodores - Easy
Patti Austin – Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
혼지시킨 사랑
둥근 해가 떴습니다
유미 –
사랑은 언제나 목마르다
“How Deep is Your Love” cover
“(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons”
Plus One – Last Flight Out
English
Words: scan, makeup show, before & after, T-bone steak, panel, hot pink, test,
naissance (French, actually), marketing team, cable car, terminal, fair play, concept,
romance, fax
There were also a few cases where I couldn’t tell whether they were using
English.
Hey, I Know That Person
The grandmother who was in
Protect
the Boss and
Assorted Gems was
here as (again) a grandmother. Yang-Soon’s grandmother, to be exact.
There was a security guard who reminded me of Eun-Seol’s father from
Protect the Boss, but I’m not sure if it
was the same guy. It was a small role, so I don’t even know if he was credited.
The actress who played Sam-Dong’s mother in Dream High played Na-Hee’s mother
here.
Other Observations
This one really got me worked up emotionally. The villain, Joon-Tae, was so
evil that I literally wanted to kill him with my own hands. At one point in the
middle of the story, Gi-Tae actually held him hostage with a knife, and I was
actually hoping he’d get stabbed to death right then and there. That’s how much
I hated him. He gets his comeuppance at the end (of course), but he doesn’t
die. I think the scene of him nearly getting killed by Gi-Tae was supposed to
be a substitute for him actually getting killed, because the writers knew the
audience would hate him that badly, but didn’t want things to get gory. A wise
choice, I’d say.
Yang-Soon was one of the most beautiful female leads in any drama I’ve seen.
She seemed like the All-Korean Girl. A very wholesome, sweet beauty. What a gem
of a woman.
There was a minor character who seemed to be written out near the end. She wasn’t
really consequential, but it didn’t seem right that she just kind of disappeared.
I guess they felt that the character wasn’t important enough to keep bringing
the actress in, since she had almost no lines and only served as an extra set
of hands.
Like so many of these dramas, the ending felt a bit haphazard, but it was good
enough. There was a part of me that didn’t want the two lead characters to end
up together, but predictably, they did. They weren’t a bad couple, it’s just
that their relationship seemed like it could’ve worked as a temporary period of
helping each other, rather than a true love that was meant to last forever.
Final Thoughts
I really liked this one. As I said before, I appreciated the lack of
preachiness and pretension, and the fact that I was able to get so emotionally involved
with it indicates its merit. What the heck. I feel like giving it a fairly high
ranking.
1.
Beethoven Virus (5)
2.
City Hunter (7)
3.
49 Days (9)
4.
Dream High (13)
5.
Unexpected You (4)
6.
Successful Story of a Bright Girl (15)
7.
Sandglass (11)
8.
Three Dads, One Mom (2)
9.
Assorted Gems (14)
10.
Delightful Girl Choon-Hyang (10)
11.
Ad Genius Lee Tae-Baek (12)
12.
Lovers in Paris (1)
13.
Hwang Jin-Yi (6)
14.
Spring Day (3)
15.
Protect the Boss (8)
