Wild Romance: First Impressions

Posted by msclockwatcher on January 9, 2012 · 9 Comments 

I’d planned on recapping this drama but I’m not so sure anymore. Perhaps it will unfold like rom-com Korean dramas often do but right now, it’s pretty much a screwball physical comedy and I don’t know if there’s any point to recapping something like: “She hit his head with a hammer then he slipped on a banana peel.” Having said that, I enjoyed it.

***

The story begins with a viral video featuring our leads.

Park Moo Yul is your quintessential bad boy athlete: gorgeous, arrogant, talented and hot tempered. He’s got just as many antis as he has fans and is a key player on the Red Dreamers baseball team.

Yoo Eun Jae is a bodyguard with ajumma hair. And her company appears to have just one employee. She’s a tomboy with no sense of fashion or the application of common etiquette and is your typical kdrama female lead who eventually falls for the bad boy. She’s a huge fan of Red Dreamers‘ rival team Blue Seagulls.

In the youtube video, Eun Jae is seen bodyslamming Moo Yul so the internet story is that he fought with a girl. The real story unfolds and we see that Eun Jae and her family were having fun at karaoke when her drunk dad mistakenly stumbled into Moo Yul’s room where he was having a meeting with a mystery woman. Seeing as her annoying family hates his baseball team, her father and brother got into a fight with him and after he pushed them to the ground, she showed up and put her judo skills to good use.

There’s a whole brouhaha about it so Moo Yul’s people try to find her while she tries to hide because apparently, it’s illegal for a Judo black belt to go around whooping people’s asses.  Things happen and eventually they connect and decide that the best way to handle the situation is for her to become his bodyguard and the video be explained as a training session. So they have a press conference and now our couple is forced to spend time together.

Then there are a bunch of scenes that show how much they both hate the arrangement so they intentionally torture each other. Like when she steps on his dashboard with her dirty shoes.

He has to meet with the mystery woman in the middle of nowhere so he takes her along with him then dumps her and tells her to find her way home.

At a fan meeting, he makes fun of her favorite team and she gets so enraged that she lets an anti-fan’s egg hit his face.

He takes her jogging and when both get egotistical about their running abilities, they end up racing each other for 32 km and get stranded in nowhereland.

They get in a chatroom fight under different identities of anti-fan and fan till she repeats a phrase that clues him to her true identity. There are also other incidents like when she cockblocks him by making the girl he was taking home think that he’s a sick freak.

Then we get a little bit of depth when Moo Yul’s favorite teammate, Dong Soo, is told that his contract won’t be renewed because the only reason he got one the previous year was that they thought his warm, friendly personality would be good for the team. Ouch.

Since our couple hate each other and are sick of spending so much time together, Eun Jae devices a plan to end their relationship. How about she gets injured while saving his life so that she’ll be admitted to the hospital forcing him to get a new bodyguard? So they go to some abandoned building in her hometown where she’d hit him with a baseball bat and then somehow get herself hurt. The moment she bashes him in the back, some dude sees the door open and locks them in. Then slapstick jokes you can see coming from a mile away start to happen. Like they can’t get cellphone reception anywhere but outside the window so she climbs on him and stretches her hand outside and of course she drops her phone. And then he suggests that she try to climb out of the window and she gets stuck. I’m so shaking my head at the things one has to do for an acting role these days.

In the brief moment she could use her phone, she managed to speak to Moo Yul’s manager and tell him where they were. He comes to save them and all is well in the world again.

Moo Yul has been receiving death threats and when one of his teammates steals a drink from his water bottle and collapses, it’s clear that his stalker is serious which means that he really needs a bodyguard.

So anyway, she decides to take her job seriously and reassures him that she will protect him. He scoffs and tells her to just stay out of the way. This leads to a battle of athlete versus judoka which ends in a bet on the baseball pitch that if she can hit any of the balls he throws, he will dress like a girl and if she doesn’t, she will dress like a girl. Of course she loses and has to show up in an outfit he picks for her.

So she arrives at their little dinner party and while everyone is dressed casually, she looks like an extra in Catherine Zeta Jones’ Zorro. And while there, she is introduced to Dong Soo’s wife who happens to be the mystery woman Moo Yul has been hanging out with. Oh noes, is he cheating with the vet from City Hunter?

***

Well, I bet he’s not. Anyway, it’s a zany, insane comedy with over the top but hilarious scenes that I think will tone down starting next week. Comedy is great but the emotionally engaging scenes are always the best. Not that comedy can’t be emotionally engaging but that usually doesn’t come when it’s so slapsticky.

I don’t get why the female lead always has to be this tomboyish character with bad hair and no dress sense. When was the last time you saw a famous guy with someone that looked like that? But it’s kdrama so what can we do? New year, same shit, I suppose. As for chemistry, both actors are doing well in their scenes but I certainly don’t see any romantic or sexual chemistry between them. Here’s to hoping that changes as they move away from the physical comedy.

Having said that, for now, I’m sticking with this one.

Till next week!

Filed under Dramas, One-Offs, Reviews and Recaps, Wild Romance · Tagged with Hwang Seon Hee, kdrama, Lee Dong Wook, Lee Si Young, Oh Man Seok