Welcome to my weekly blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching but not recapping.

This week I’m still recapping Utsukushii Kare Season 1/My Beautiful Man Season 1 though it’s a short one I’ll finish next week. I’m about to start recapping On A Starry Night/Hoshi Furu Yoru ni, a recent favorite that I’ve already talked about some in the weekly recaps.

As expected, this week I rapidly finished:

The Glory – 더 글로리 – 2022

A recently aired modern Korean thriller, the two seasons are 16 episodes total.

A woman who suffered horrible abuse at the hands of a group of peers during High School wants revenge.

I enjoyed this show all the way to the end, though I feel the first half is stronger. One of the things I appreciated was that it didn’t turn the petite heroine into some kind of physical powerhouse, in fact, she was still intimidated and frightened by the men, so her revenge was very psychological. 

The downside of this is that in their efforts to maintain suspense, they did the usual thriller-writing-move of not revealing what she was doing all the time, so in places it got confusing or seemed like less was happening. At a certain point everything seemed to be in place and I was just waiting to see the suffering start. Also, the events at the end felt in the wrong order, with larger things wrapping up first before moving on to smaller things for a good chunk of time. It felt like they either needed to spend more time really developing that last bit or cut it down.

On the other hand, this show had a nice message about kindness despite its hateful characters and tragic events. Our heroine suffered terribly, but in the course of her revenge she meets some very kind, supportive people. It’s a nice contrast to the often bleak messaging of revenge stories.

Though I understand some people might find the romance superfluous, I liked her love interest, a friendly, sunny-seeming young man hiding his darkness.

And if you are in the mood to hate some really vile people in the safe space of a television screen, this is a good drama to pick. Seeing terrible, fictional people suffer can be a delicious pleasure.

This week I started watching:

Call It Love – 사랑이라 말해요 – 2023 (Pictured)

A currently airing modern Korean melodrama, I’m at 8 episodes out of 16.

A trio of siblings loses their home to their evil stepmother, and when one of them seeks revenge she meets her stepmother’s lonely son.

This is one of my favorite current watches, and interesting to watch alongside The Glory, because where that show was intense and over the top, and unrealistic, Call It Love is slow and thoughtful, and realistic. There are still bad guys who are pretty bad, but even then there are moments of sympathy and understanding for them.

But forget the bad guys, I’m all about our leads. One of my pet peeves with dramas is when characters that are supposed to be ‘unusual’ or ‘different’ turn out to be or become bland, nice people. This is not a problem with this show, as both our leads are strong characters with strong personalities. Our male lead is desperately lonely and one of the most passive male leads I’ve ever seen, but these aren’t just traits, they are a fundamental part of his personality and what he believes. Our female lead is tough and angry and yet compassionate. Both of them are flawed and make mistakes that hurt themselves and others, but they are understandable.

This is a slow, slow burn so far and I love the way the show is taking its time to explore the character’s emotions and the way they are moving through them. There are also some lovely little moments of comedy within the melodrama. My fingers are crossed for the second half to be just as good.