House of Spirits (2016)

A theme that has eluded Hollywood for the last decade is forgiveness. Hollywood prefers the strawman approach to villainy – they will often create one-dimensional baddies who solely exist to debunk a talking point the creators disagree with. If their villain is making a pro-capitalist argument, you are supposed to dismiss solely because the villain is the one making the argument. It doesn’t matter if he (and it is usually a HE) makes some valid talking points, you must disagree with him or else you are part of the problem. Nuance has become a lost art.  If a character is deemed to be on “the wrong side of history,” they are irredeemable. Therefore, it was a bit surprising to see nuance in the Hong Kong comedy series, House of Spirits. On the surface, it is a silly comedy – after their father, Po Fuk, has passed away, four estranged siblings are forced to move into his flat in order to receive their inheritance. The provision of his will is that they must live together for nine months before selling the flat (which has a market value of twelve million dollars). Also, the flat is haunted by the ghosts of Bak Wah and his wife, Yi Lan, two movie stars from the 1950s.  The only two people who can see Bah Wan and Yi Lin are Po Foon, the oldest sibling, and his niece, Mui Siu-fei (Fei-fei). If this show were made in the States, the focus would be on slapstick comedy and there would have to be a main baddie who threatens to upend our protagonist’s peaceful co-existence. There is such a baddie in House of Spirits, the real estate developer, Kam Cha-lei, but he is more of minor subplot and is given surprising depth. 

Before I can dive into the plot, it is important to do a brief summary of the main characters, because they are all well-defined individuals, who are given their own unique character arc.

Po Foon (Bobby Au-yeung)

Po Foon is the oldest of the siblings. He left the family at an early age to pursue his dreams and to escape his father’s abuse. After he left, his younger siblings (especially his sister, Po Yan) view him with disdain. He rarely shows up at family functions and when he does, he usually arrives late and only stays for a few minutes. After their father Po Fuk passes away alone, Po Foon starts to have dreams of his late father, who urges him to bring the family back together again. Po Foon is convinced this is his father’s final wish and is determined to mend his broken family. He initially resorts to an underhanded tactic to get his siblings to agree to move into his father’s flat with him, he forges his father’s will that states the siblings must live together for nine months before they can sell it. His younger brother, Po Yue, figures out the ruse earlier but agrees to remain silent after Po Foon bribes him with a portion of his share after they sell the flat (two million dollars to be exact).

In his youth, he (along with his friend, Kwai Si-fuk) starred in a children’s show where he played the superhero, Captain Po, who always fought the Monster (Si-fuk in a shoddy dinosaur costume). After the television series ended, the two of the opened up an education center for children (Space Shuttle), with Po acting as the Principal and Si-fuk the CEO. After offending a prominent mother, whose son attends Space Shuttle, Po Foon is forced to resign. It turns out her husband is a prominent investor in Space Shuttle and, in order to avoid a lawsuit, Po Foon agrees to not only resign from the school but also not to work in the education field for a year. With his limited options, he agrees to work the late shift at his friend’s (Bak-chun) eatery. Bak-chun’s eatery is short-staffed after his wife gives birth, so Po Foon agrees to help out. The eatery also happens to be across the hall from a multi-purpose shop owned by Chu Chan-chan, who is a jack of all trades (electrician, plumber, and carpenter) and also happens to be a high school friend of Po Yan. In fact, it is Po Yan who put up the money that allowed Chan-chan to go into business for herself.

Po Foon uses this opportunity to perfect his father’s rice noodle roll recipe. When Po Foon was a kid, his father often forced him to slave away in the kitchen for hours until he perfected the rice noodle roll. His father was so determined to make Foon learn the recipe that he often kept him out of school.  This was one of the reasons Foon grew to resent his father.  Now that he has time on his hands, he decides to honor his late father’s wishes and perfect the rice noodle roll recipe. After a few failed attempts, he learns that the secret to rice noodle rolls is a specific brand of flour.  The biggest fan of his rolls turns out to be Chan-chan – they are a cure for her insomnia. After she finishes a plate of Po Foon’s rice noodle rolls, she immediately falls asleep. They are also a hit among the customers – Po Foon initially isn’t interested in selling them, but they demand for the rice noodle rolls becomes so great that he eventually gives in.

Po Foon tries to see the best in people, often to his detriment. When he runs into his ex-girlfriend, Joanne, he is still haunted with guilt over being partially responsible for ending her dancing career – when they were still dating, Po Foon got into a car accident which Joanne’s legs. He paid for her surgery and medical treatments, but they couldn’t overcome the awkwardness and broke up. Joanne initially puts on the mask of friendship when she approaches Po Foon, but her true intention is to swindle him of 300,000 dollars to pay for plastic surgery. She lays the guilt trip on thick – she constantly complains about the pain in her legs. She tells Po Foon she needs the money to get an experimental surgery in the U.K. that, if successful, will allow her to dance again. Po Foon is almost fooled – he just can’t believe that beautiful creature standing in front of him is capable of lying. It is Po Yue who exposes Joanne’s dishonesty, this sparing his older brother more heartbreak and bankruptcy. Yet, despite her deception, Po Foon does bear Joanne any ill well – he is not that type of a guy who holds grudges.

Po Yan (Joyce Tang)

Po Yan is Foon’s younger sister (and second oldest sibling in the Po family). Like Foon, she grew up resenting their father but for a much different reason. After their mother passed away, it was Po Yan who raised her two younger siblings, Yue and Yi. Her ambition was to attend a university in the United Kingdom, but her father shot that idea down and forced her to play mother to her younger brothers. When Po Foon left the family (she was oblivious to the abuse he suffered at the hands of their father) she, naturally, resented him for leaving her to hold the bag. She views Foon with apprehension – she, understandably, can’t believe that he is a changed man. The best way to describe the two – Foon is the heart of the family; Yan is the brains. There is a constant butting of heads between the two, but once the two of them get in sync with each other, the family begins to thrive.

She never stopped acting like a mother to her younger siblings; she constantly scolds Po Yue and Po Yi (often her anger is justified). She loves her husband, Mui Chiu, but wishes he was more of a go getter (he is a manager at a factory). She is not a greedy person – it’s just the thought of living in poverty scares her. She wants their daughter, Fei fei, to have the opportunities that she didn’t when she was younger; as a result, she is raises her daughter in a strict manner. Her marriage with Mui Chiu becomes strained – when Fei fei and her moved into her father’s flat, Mui Chiu stay behind because of his work. He tries to make it up to his wife and daughter by visiting every weekend, but his not being around often leaves him out of the loop. The other thorn in their marriage is Mui Chiu’s overbearing mother, Sik Giu, who makes all sorts of passive aggressive remarks to her daughter-in-law and often undermines Po Yan in front of Fei fei. When she suspects that Po Yan is having an affair, she visits the flat to keep an eye on her daughter-in-law. Sik Giu puts on angelic act when the rest of the family is around – to the point that Yan’s siblings can’t believe she doesn’t like her mother-in-law. To make matters worse, Mui Chiu usually sides with his mother. However, eventually Sik Giu’s true character is exposed, and this is also the moment that endears Po Foon to Po Yan, because when Sik Giu is hurling criticisms at her, it is Po Foon who defends his sister. He is especially offended when Sik Giu calls Po Yan a loser. The other surprising moments is when Po Yan’s sister-in-law, Fiona, also comes to her defense – this is surprising as the two of them have been at each other’s throats the entire series.

She also has a chip on her shoulder – she wants to prove to her husband, and to herself, that she a excel at business.  When she learns that Chan-chan wants to open up her own repair/design business, Po Yan invests money in it to help out her high school friend. They divide their duties – Po Yan is responsible for the business/financial end which allows Chan-chan to focus on the labor aspect. This first order of business is to find clients. Po Yan meets with various companies (hotels, schools, etc) about allowing Chan-chan to renovate their buildings, but they turn her down because Chan-chan’s business is new and they are skeptical about a woman’s ability to do a “man’s job.” When the Space Shuttle education center is need of repairs, Po Foon persuades Si-fuk (whose nickname is “Seafood”) to give Chan-chan and his sister a chance. He also tells Si-fuk to keep this a secret; his sister is a proud woman, and he worries that Po Yan will not take the job if she finds that he is behind it. Si-fuk is not good at keeping secrets and he immediately tells Chan-chan, who in turn tells Po Yan. She is slightly annoyed that Po Foon is responsible for their first gig, but she also realizes that a job is a job, and it would be foolish to pass on this opportunity. Miu Chiu initially objects to Po Yan (he is actually more annoyed that she kept it a secret from him that actually starting one up) but Foon is able to convince him how important this is to Yan.

Anthony Po Yue (Jonathan Cheung)

Po Yue is the second youngest of the siblings. He has held a grudge against Po Foon for most of his life; when he was in elementary school he bragged to his classmates that his older brother was Captain Po and they didn’t believe them. He was hoping to put all doubts to rest by asking his brother to take part in a leg race at the school. Foon agreed and Po Yue then bragged to his classmates that his older brother would be making an appearance. They were excited over the prospect of meeting their idol, Captain Po. However, on the day of the race, Po Foon, due to his hectic schedule at the television studio, missed the race and this resulted in Yue’s classmates labelling him a “liar” and bullying him. Despite Foon’s best efforts to make it up to his younger brother, Yue never forgave Foon for letting him down.

As an adult, Yue seems to have it made – he was a well-paying job at an investment firm; she is married to a popular runway model, Fiona, and the two of them just put a down payment on a posh apartment. They agree to move into his father’s flat because the apartment is still being renovated and they need a place to live (the three million dollars they will inherit after selling his father’s flat doesn’t hurt either).  By all metrics, Po Yue is living the dream, yet he suffers from a huge inferiority complex – he loves Fiona, but he also believes that only way to keep her by his side is by showering her with nice things. In fact, that main reason he put a down payment on the posh apartment was to appease her. In the past, Fiona dated an investor by the name of Dickson, and he worries that she still has feelings for him. Fiona’s mother keeps pressuring her to divorce Po Yue and get back together with Dickson.

When the investment firm he works at is caught up in a scandal, Po Yue is made the scapegoat and is fired from his job. Po Yue becomes so desperate for money that he contemplates selling the flat to one of his former clients, below the market value. Po Foon finds out about this but agrees not to tell the rest of the family about it. The only thing that prevents him from signing it is the contract is the timely intervention of a stray cat, Fei Jai, that hangs around the flat and is used by Po Luk as a conduit into the world of the living. 

David Po Yi (Bob Cheung)

David Po Yi (a play on David Bowie) is the youngest of the Po siblings. He is unemployed and spends most of his time listening to music and playing video games in his bedroom. He was still living at home when his father passed away. He never had a real relationship with Po Foon – he was still a toddler when his oldest brother left home. It is largely because of this that Po Foon decides to take Po Yi under his wing; much to his little brother’s annoyance.  When Po Foon starts working at the eatery, he makes Po Yi work the late shift with him.  He develops a close relationship with Foon and Fei-fei; he is often given the job of picking Fei-fei up from school and then looking after her until Po Yan comes home. He also is the only sibling who is willing to give Foon the benefit of the doubt – he doesn’t have a preconceived idea about Foon, like Yan and Yue, so he has no reason to doubt his older brother’s sincerity. 

Po Yi’s real aspiration in life is to be a musician, but he also suffers from stage fright. When he was younger, he froze up at his piano recital and, after this embarrassing incident, his father forbade him from playing any instruments. He still composes music, but he keeps it to himself.
He develops on a crush on Fei-fei’s piano teacher, Liu Sing-san, who is also an aspiring musician.  It also turns out that she is the ex-girlfriend of a famous singer that Po Yi admires, Jay Fung.  When Sing-san and Yi accidentally mix up each other’s iPods, Liu Sing-san hears one of the Po Yi’s musical compositions and is impressed. She suggests that the two of them should enter a talent show together. This puts Po Yi in quite the pickle – he still suffers from stage fright, but he also doesn’t want to let down his crush. When he tries to perform at a live mic event, that Sing-san invited him to, he freezes up onstage and runs away. This is witnessed by Po Foon, Fei-fei, and Chan-chan. He is convinced that he won’t be able to perform at the talent show and initially turns down Sing-san. 

Chu Chan-chan (Nancy Wu)

Chan-chan is Po Yan’s high school friend/ business partner and Foon’s eventual love interest. She initially dislikes Foon – the only thing she knows about him is what Yan told her in high school. The first meet by chance; when the fuse box in the building overheats and burns out, she offers to fix it.  Foon is initially skeptical of her ability, even though she is willing to fix it for a reasonable price and looks for other electricians.  However, their prices are way too high, so he inevitably chooses Chan-chan. This is when she is reunited with Po Yan and the two of them decide to go into business together (after Yan loses her job at the company she works at).

Her shop happens to be located right next to the eatery that Foon works at and the two of them eventually become close to one another.  Po Yan suffers from insomnia, which is why she is on call 24/7, because she needs something to kill the time. After Foon perfects his father’s ride noodle recipe, he gives her a plate on the house, and she falls asleep. Convinced she has found the cure for her insomnia; she keeps demanding Foon make more for her. She eventually realizes it isn’t the rice noodles that is responsible for her night’s sleep but Foon himself. At first, she is in denial about her feelings and then when she finally admits them, she can never bring herself to tell Foon how she feels, because it doesn’t appear to return her feelings. In fact, he seems determined to set her up with Si-fuk. In truth, Foon does love her, but he doesn’t believe he stands a chance with her – he is not what you would call handsome, and he is significantly older than her. Plus, Chan-chan initially shows interest in Si-fuk, so Foon believes is doing both of them a solid by setting them up. Chan-chan is a fan of Si-fuk – when she was a child, she religiously watched the TV show that Foon and Si-fuk starred, but he completely emphasized with the Monster.  In her childhood, she lived in an orphanage and one day the Monster showed up and performed all sorts of tricks for the children. Afterwards, he saw Chan-chan sitting by herself and cheered up with a pep talk. She assumed it was Si-fuk in the costume, but it was actually Foon who was covering for Si-fuk on that day. She credited this pep talk with help turning around her life. She goes on a few dates with Si-fuk but often finds herself talking about Foon: much to Si-fuk’s annoyance. What is impressive is that the relationship between Foon and Chan-chan is totally believable, despite the twenty-year gap between the actors; Bobby Au-yeung was 56 when this drama was made and Nancy Wu was 35. There is also the fact that Nancy Wu is gorgeous while Bobby Au-yeung is an ordinary looking dude; but none of that matters because the two of them have terrific screen chemistry. Also, because Foon is well-written character, it is easy to understand why Chan-chan would fall in love with him.

Chan-chan is a tomboy – she often dresses in flannels and blue jeans. Most of her colleagues often refer to her as “Brother Chan” because of her more masculine tendencies. She shares an apartment with her two male co-workers, Cheung Tsan and Ling Bo.  Cheung Tsan has a crush on Chan-chan and becomes insanely jealous when he sees her with Foon. Ling Bo has a crush on Cheng Tsan, but he is an unrequited love.  There is the inevitable scene where Chan-chan wears a dress and naturally turns everyone’s head. Again, Nancy Wu is gorgeous no matter what outfit she is wearing, so it is silly that it’s only after she puts on a dress that people would notice this; I refer to this as the “She’s All That” logic.  I should also point this is second drama I have seen Nancy Wu in; she was in the series, “Ghost of Relativity,” where she played the role of a ghost that lives in a cellphone. Here, she gets to play the romantic interest. 

Bak Wah and Yi Lan (Bowie Wu, Helena Law)

Bak Wah and Yi Lan are the two spirits that reside in the flat. In the 1950s, they were famous movie stars that starred in a series of Canto dramas.  Even though, Yi Lan loves Bak Wah, their marriage was less than ideal – Bak Wah was addicted to gambling and lost most of their fortune due to his addiction. The reason they still haunt the apartment, and haven’t moved on, is that they want to find out what happened to their long-lost daughter, Bak Wai, who ran away from home when she was seventeen years old. Bak Wah was a stern daughter and when he disapproved of that outfit she was wearing, she mouthed off to him, he slapped her, and she ran away from home, never to return.

The only two that can see them are Foon and Fe-fei; they both opened the umbrella that two spirits attached themselves to and breathed in the dust that allows them to see the ghosts. When Foon first realizes that the elderly couple, he was talking to are ghosts, he freaks out and tries to exorcise them from the premises. All attempts at exorcism are a failure and he eventually gets used to living with ghosts. Fei-fei, on the other hand, immediately takes a liking to Bak Wahn and Yi Lan (especially the latter) and often refers to them as her grandparents. 

There are often a few times throughout the series where the possess other family members (Yi Lan possesses Po Yan and Bak Wah possesses Po Yi and Miu Chiu) to either diffuse a situation or push a character in the right direction.  When Liu Sing-san walks in on Po Yi playing the piano, she asks him to play her another song. He freezes up and comes up with different excuses why he can’t play for; Bak Wah loses his patience, possesses Po Yi, and then serenades Sing-san with a love song. Sing-san is touched by this and asks Po Yi to play at an event that she is organizing. The problem is that Po Yi has no memory of serenading Sing-san and when he goes to the event, he has no idea that she wants him to play.  When Po Yan and Miu Chiu are having a heated argument over the business she started with Chan-chan, Bak Wah possesses Miu Chiu to ease the tensions. This does backfire later on; Po Yan wants to get intimate with Miu Chiu and Bak Wah (still inside Miu Chiu’s body) freaks out and pushes Po Yan off the bed and then leaves Miu Chiu’s body. When Miu Chiu comes back to his senses, he finds that Po Yan is angry with him but doesn’t understand why.

The interesting thing about House of Spirits is that drama would still work without the spirits. The characterizations are strong that the show could have easily made for a compelling family drama.  If you cut out the ghost subplot, you would have a solid family drama about loving, healing, forgiveness, and redemption. However, the writers to an excellent job of tying in the Bak Wah/ Yi Lan with the rest of the drama. At first, it feels disconnected with the main drama at hand, but it does have both a thematic and narrative link (if I were to say how, I would be given away spoilers).

Fiona Yue Fa (Koni Lui)

Fiona is Po Yue’s ditzy newlywed wife. She is an aging, part-time show model, who finds that she is now in competition with younger models. When she breaches her contract by gaining weight, she is fired. In attempt to upstage her younger counterparts, Fiona’s dons a revealing outfit that exposes her midriff, which gets the attention of the paparazzi but for all the wrong reasons – as it the outfit reveals that she has a beer belly. She becomes the subject of ridicule online; the only company that is willing to hire her is one that specializes in liposuction. When her former modeling agency threatens to sue her for breach of contract, she lies and tells the CEO that she is pregnant, then she, along with CEO’s sympathetic wife, lays the guilt trip on thick and he agrees to sign her to a new contract. She also uses her “pregnancy” to make her in laws wait on her hand and foot. 

Fiona could have easily been written as a one-dimensional character – in a lesser hand, Po Yue’s character arc would be dumping his bitchy, overbearing wife – but there is something endearing about Koni Lui’s performance. Fiona puts on a confident front, but she, just like her husband, is very insecure person.  Before she met Po Yue, she dated different types of men and, by her admission, lived a very loose life. She is worried that if Po Yue finds out about her past, he will dump on her on the spot. Her initially motive for approaching Po Yue was to make her ex-boyfriend, Dickson, jealous; Po Yue tried to break the ice with earlier and she flat out rejected him, but when she saw Dickson sitting a table with other women, she walked up to Po Yue and kissed him passionately on the lips, to show Dickson that she still had it. Despite her bitchy demeanor, she does legitimately Po Yue. It also turns out that Po Yue knew about her past and it didn't bother him in the slightest - he just wants to focus on the present. 

Foon and Yi don't have any issues with her; Foon often gives her the benefit of the doubt while Yi keeps to himself. It is Po Yan who acts antagonistically towards Fiona; she suspects that Fiona is a gold digger and always view her with suspicion.  The turning point in this relationship occurs when Fiona tells off Yan's overbearing mother-in-law; she may take issue with how Yan runs things, but she has a far bigger issue with overbearing mothers-in-law. She also later proves to be a good aunt to Fei-fei. 

Bianca Mui Siu-fei/Fei-fei (Bianca Chan)

The eight-year-old daughter of Po Yan and Miu Chiu, Fei-fei is the often the glue that holds things together. After moving into her grandfather's flat, she becomes extremely close to Po Foon, Po Yi, Bak Wah, and Yi Lan. When her mother says negative things about her uncle Foon, she is the first to defend him. She often worries about her parents' marriage - they are separated for most of the week and when Mui Chiu comes to visit, they often get into heated arguments with one another. She is often her uncle Foon's co-conspirator in various schemes to bring the family together; they devise a plot to cure Po Yi of his stage fright. Po Foon has arranged a huge get together for all the tenant on the rooftop and has Fei-fei play a few songs on a keyboard. Fei-fei then pretends to have a stage fright and starts to cry; Po Yi can't stand seeing his niece struggle and helps her with her song. Po Yi sees through the ruse but is genuinely touched that Po Foon and Po Yi staged this scene for his benefit.  Fei-fei later uses this stagecraft to manipulate her parents into stop bickering - she draws "disturbing" pictures at school (of her parents fighting and her crying) and this catches the attention of her teacher, who calls in both of her parents and tells them that they need to work out their differences for their daughter's benefit.  It turns out Fei-fei faked all of this to force her parents to stop their endless bickering. 

Miu Chiu (Tsui Wing)

Po Yan's husband and Fei-fei's father. Despite his turbulent relationship with his wife, Miu Chiu genuinely loves Po Yan and Fei-fei. When Po Yan starts up a business with Chan-chan, his initial objection isn't that she started a business but rather that she did it behind his back. His biggest flaw is that he always sides with his mother. He is unaware of his mother's passive aggressive behavior towards Po Yan, so when he sees that the two of them are not getting along, he asks Po Yan to try harder. However, even in their lowest moments, there is no doubt that he still loves his wife. It's just a matter of getting on the same page with her.

Kwai Si-fuk (Max Cheung)

Si-fuk (who is given the nickname "Seafood" by Foon) is the CEO of the Space Shuttle learning center and has been Po Foon's best friend since they were teenagers. He was also Foon's co-star on a children's role - he played the role of The Monster, where he was forced to wear a chintzy dinosaur costume.  He was overweight in his youth but grew into a handsome man.  While Foon is more focused on education, Si-fuk worries more about the financial aspect of Space Shuttle learning center, which means he often takes in the children of wealthy parents, even though many of them fall short of Space Shuttle's standards. Foon is worried that bringing in so many unqualified students will force him to water down the curriculum, but Si-fuk tells him that they desperately need the money to keep afloat.  The neat thing about this scene is that doesn't strawman Si-fuk - he is genuinely concerned about Space Shuttle's future and realizes that he has to shake hands with the devil to keep it going.  

After Chan-chan is hired to renovate Space Shuttle, Si-fuk is instantly smitten with her. He wants to pursue a relationship with her and asks her to go out on multiple dates. Foon, believing he doesn't stand a chance with Chan-chan, gives Si-fuk his blessing to ask her out. Chan-chan is flattered and even star struck- she was a huge fan of Si-fuk growing up and has posters of The Monster hanging on her walls. However, whenever Chan-chan and Si-fuk are on a date, she spends most of the time talking about Po Foon. When Si-fuk makes his move on her, she rejects his advances. It is at this point in the series that she realizes she has feelings for Foon.  

Even though Po Foon is his best friend, Si-fuk begins resenting being in Foon's shadow. He was Foon's co-star on television, but it was Foon who got all the fan mail. When they opened Space Shuttle, it was Foon who was the face of the school. Now, the woman he has the hots for can't ever shut up about Foon. Foon feels awful about it, but there is very little he can do to appease his friend.  

The biggest character arc in the series is Po Foon's emergence of the family patriarch - he begins the series as being an estranged member of the family to being the guy that everyone can rely on. However, his role of patriarch isn't just limited to his family but eventually extends to the other tenants living in the apartment building: it is Foon who helps Po Yan find a nice, affordable school for his niece; it is Foon who helps cure Po Yi of his stage fright; it is Po Foon who places his entire trust in Po Yue after the latter contemplates selling that flat behind his family back; and it is Po Foon who looks in on his neighbors, most notably the senile, Ho Gwai. He desperately wants to atone for his mistakes of the past and win the trust of his siblings in the process.  Hell, he is also the guy spirits turn to when they need to help.  

One of the ghosts is Chiu Fong-fong, who was a girl who grew up in the same orphanage as Chan-chan. When Foon sees her lingering around Chan-chan, he fears the worst. It initially looks like his worst fears our confirmed, when it seems that the ghost pushes Chan-chan into oncoming traffic, but Foon is able to pull her out of the way in the nick of time. However, it turns out this was an accident and Fong-fong's ghost has no malicious intent; instead, the reason she hangs out Chan-chan is that she has unfinished business she needs to attend. When the two of them were living at the same orphanage, Chan-chan's mother visited and dropped off a present; Chan-chan was busy at the time and didn't get to see her mother. Fong-fong was already jealous of Chan-chan because was popular with the other children and seeing Chan-chan's mother drop off a present drove Fong-fong over the edge. She grabbed the present and buried it under a tree.  She later regretted her decision but before she could make amends, she passed away. As a spirit, she now asks Foon to lead Chan-chan to the tree and dig up the present. After Foon digs up the present and gives it to Chan-chan, Fong-fong can pass on to the afterlife. This is the common thread among all the ghosts in House of Spirits; the reason they hang around the living is that they have unfinished business they must resolve before moving on. 

This also applies to the Po Family, before they can become a functional family, they must first exorcise all the ghosts in their closet. Once they have resolved all their petty differences and forgiven each other for their past transgressions, they become an unstoppable unit. This is also a stark contrast to the content made in the United States - if House of Spirits was made by Netflix, Amazon, or any other streaming service, Po Foon would be a bumbling, irredeemable idiot while the female characters would always be in the right. Therefore, it was refreshing to see a series where each character (including the ditzy Fiona) is given a satisfying character arc.  

Cast: Bobby Au-yeung (Po Foon), Joyce Tang (Po Yan), Jonathan Cheung (Anthony Po Yue), Bob Cheung (David Po Yi), Nancy Wu (Chu Chan-chan), Bowie Wu (Bak Wah), Helena Law (Mrs. Bak – Yi Lan), Koni Lui (Fiona Yue Fa, Po Yue’s wife), Tsui Wing (Mui Chiu, Po Yan’s husband), Bianca Chan (Bianca Mui Siu-fei, Po Yan’s daughter), Lau Kong (Po Luk), Max Cheung (Kwai Si-fuk), Moon Lau (Liu Sing-san), Willie Wai (Wong Bak-chun), Jay Fung (himself), Joe Tay (Kam Cha-lei), Angelina Lo (Sik Giu, Mui Chiu’s mother), Calvin Chan (Cheung Tsan), Kelvin Yuen (Ling Bo), Chow Chung (himself), Suet Nei (Kam Siu Mo-ching, Cha-lei’s mother), Fanny Lee (Au Yuk-han, Bak-chun’s wife), Yu Chi-ming (Ho Gwai), Alex Yung (Yin, Ho Gwai’s grandson), Carat Cheung (Joanne Chin Cho-kwan), Aliya Fan (Mrs. Tou), Willie Lau (Mr. Tau), Joey Mak (Chiu Fong-fong), Raymond Chiu (Dickson), Andy Lau Tin-ling (Jason).

Director: Not Available
Writers: Ma Chun-wing, Au Yuk-han, Ho Ching-yi, Yeung Seut-Yee, Wong Sau-ching, Ma Ching-man.
31 episodes ~ 45 minutes.

Korean Daily Dramas (Part I)

 

 

I have spent the last few months watching Korean Daily Dramas (in the States we call them “Soap Operas”) and they tend to consume a lot of your time. I have watched eight in total: Suji & Uri; Vengeance of the Bride; The Second Husband; Smile Again; The Brave Yong Su-jeong; Queen’s House; The Third Marriage; and Love Twist. I decided to do a general overview of these series instead of an in-depth review, because it would require a huge epic undertaking – each of these dramas is over 100 episodes long (Queen’s House is the shortest at 100 episodes), which means there a lot of filler episodes where nothing happens. The Second Husband is the biggest offender when it comes to this – there is a love triangle subplot involving three supporting characters that has no relevance to the main storyline; it is there purely for comedy relief and is completely discarded in the shows third act. These three characters disappear from the narrative, and everyone forgets all about them. 
Editor’s note: Even a general overview of these series is much longer than I expected. I was initially hoping to do it all in one post, but that is proving to impractical; I already have written 11 plus pages and I’m not even halfway through the analysis. I plan on breaking up the analysis I three parts. 

The Korean Daily Dramas can be separate into two distinct categories: Revenge Melodramas and Redemption Melodramas. The first one speaks for itself: the main character (usually a working-class female) is wrong by the main antagonist and then vows revenge on that individual. In the Redemption Melodramas – the main character is wronged by the antagonist, and their entire life gets derailed in the process. However, rather seeking revenge, they are determined to get their life back on track and, thanks to sheer willpower and hard work, are able to reclaim their lives. The antagonists often believe that the protagonists are plotting elaborate revenge, but in reality, they are just trying to make a living. Even the antagonists of the series are given a redemption arc – after eating humble pie, they reflect on their lives and are determined to make amends for their wrongdoing. Suji & Uri and Smile Again fall under the Redemption Melodrama category, while the other three are Revenge Melodramas (though, The Brave Yong Su-jeong is a hybrid, because it allows for one the main antagonists to redeem himself in the end). Love Twist follows a similar route – there is a revenge element to the storyline but it only accounts for a few episodes of the drama and most of the antagonists, with the exception of one, are given a redemption arc. It is a show that is less about vengeance and more about forgiveness. Love Twist is also interesting because its two protagonists, Oh So-ri and Park Ha-ru, are largely responsible for the hell they create for themselves. There is more nuance in the characterizations.

All seven melodramas are variations of the same plot – they all offer up similar protagonists, antagonists, tropes, themes and often feature the same actors; Vengeance of the Bride and The Second Husband are so similar to the point they are almost indistinguishable. Smile Again offers an interesting variation on the formula in that the lead protagonist is a male (Dong-hae) instead of the usual female. They are a modern retelling of Cinderella (instead of the heroine being saved by a fairy godmother, they often find a wealthy benefactor who helps them enact their revenge).

This would be the perfect time to explore all the tropes these melodramas have in common:

 

1.     The Wronged Protagonist

The one common trope most melodramas (women’s weepies) have in common is that they really like to pile the misery on the lead protagonist. The lead protagonist in each of these shows often starts off the series living an ideal life – in Suji & Uri, Suji is a well-respected psychiatrist; in The Second Husband, Seon-hwa is in a common-low marriage with Mun Sang-hyeok and has just given birth to the first son; and in Queen’s House, Kang Jae-in is married to Hwang Ki-chan. They have a son, Eun-ho, and are expecting a second child.

When Vengeance of the Bride and The Brave Yong Su-jeong begin, both of their lead females, Su-jeong and Seo-yeon, are children. The opening scene of The Brave Young Su-jeong is of Su-jeong’s mother getting killed in a fire while trying to rescue her daughter while in Vengeance of the Bride, Seo-yeon is the favorite daughter of the prominent Kang family (the father Baek-san is the chairman of a cosmetics company). However, Seo-yeon’s world comes crashing down when it is revealed that she is not their biological daughter (when she was infant, her father was murdered by Baek-san and her birth mother disappeared – simultaneously, Baek-san’s wife, Nam In-soon, gave birth to twin girls, but one of them died. So, her mother-in-law, who just happened to be at the scene of the crime, took the infant Seo-yeon and swapped her with the deceased baby – this all happens while Su-rin was unconscious. For ten years, Baek-san and In-soon raised Seo-yeon as their own daughter (for the first ten years of her life she went by the name Kang Ba-ram), oblivious to the fact that she was the offspring of his former rival. When In-soon finds out that Seo-yeon is not her biological daughter, she gives Seo-yeon the cold treatment and eventually kicks her out of the house – they send the family servant, Choi Yeong-wan, to look after the young girl. Unfortunately, Yeong-wan gets attacked by a bunch of Baek-san’s goons and ends up losing track of the child – Seo-yeon ends up being raised in an orphanage. 
Flash forwards a couple of decades later and Seo-yeon is now a stylist at a salon and is looking to start up her own cosmetic business and ends up running afoul of Baek-san.

The protagonists in each of these series initially possess two distinct qualities: empathy and naiveté. They are all warm individuals (with the exception of Dong-hae) who give everyone the benefit of the doubt, which also makes them an easy target for bad faith actors. In Queen’s House, Kang Jae-in  (Hahm Eun-jung) is a chaebol, who is seemingly in an ideal marriage with Hwang Ki-chan (they have a son named Hwang Eun-ho and another child is on the way) but her entire world comes crashing down when she discovers her husband is having an affair with her best friend, Kang Se-ri (played to perfection by Lee Ga-ryeong). However, it isn’t just her husband and best friend that betrays her, but her extended family as well. When Jae-in and Ki-chan are competing for chairperson of YL Group (her father’s company), her aunt, Kang Mi-ran, and brother Kang Seung-woo side with Ki-chan. Her other best friend, Do Yoo-kyeong also betrays her by signing to the papers to commit her to a mental hospital. Jae-in never harmed any of these people, they simply resent her for social status – Doo Yoo-kyeong has the habit of blaming others for her misfortunes while Se-ri is a sociopath who never shows any remorse for any of her actions. It turns out that her aunt, Mi-ran, is actually Seung-woo’s biological mother (Jae-in’s father took him in at a young age and, to protect his younger sister, lied to his wife that Seung-woo was the product of an affair). Mi-ran can only think of Seung-woo’s inheritance and sides with Ki-chan, because she believes she can work out a deal Ki-chan (he will be the chairman until Seung-woo is ready to take over the company). It backfires big time against Mi-ran – Ki-chan has no intention of stepping and his new wife, Se-ri, is constantly a source of scandal. 

In Suji and Uri, (also starring Hahm Eun-jung), Su-ji is a famous psychiatrist (who has her own talk show) whose life gets upended by multiple scandals. The first one involves her father, Jin Jang-su, who owns a chain of Bibimbap restaurants and wants to expand his business overseas. He uses his daughter’s name (without her knowledge) to persuade investors to put money into his company. However, his partner embezzles the money and flees the country, leaving Jang-su holding the bill. The investors, naturally, want their money back and when Jang-su fails to cough it up, they show up at the hospital Su-ji works at and demand she pay them back. This confrontation ends up on the news and is the first time the public starts to question her character – guilt by association.  Even Jang-su and Su-ji eventually pay back the investors; there are still people who hold this against her.

The incident that derails her career is when a video of her slapping her younger sister, Na-young gets leaked online. Na-young desperately wants to host a talk show and asks Su-ji to put in a good for her, but despite Su-ji’s best efforts, the producer rejects the idea – instead he offers Su-ji an insane sum of money to host the show herself, she is appalled and turns it down. Na-young only hears about the first part (that the producer wants Su-ji to host the talk show) and assumes that her older sibling stabbed her in the back. She never allows Su-ji to explain her side of the story. Later, Na-young meets with the producer and pleads her case and, sensing her desperation, he begins to put the moves on her.  Su-ji happens to be in the restaurant at the moment, witnesses what is happening, and immediately puts a stop to it. This enrages Na-young, who is convinced that Su-ji is trying to sabotage her career.  The two of them get into a heated argument and Na-young brings up a sensitive topic (Su-ji’s birth mother abandoning her when she was six) and Su-ji slaps her across the face. Now, it just so happens that slap is recorded by Na-young’s cameraman (she hosts a TV show that highlights lesser-known restaurant in South Korea) and he sends her a copy on his phone. She uploads the video (out of context) and then plays the victim.  This video, coupled with the scandal involving her father, is enough to turn the public against her. Her patients (who used to idolize her) cancel their appointments, and the hospital (which used her fame to bring in business) eventually fires her.  The only people who stand by her side are U-ri (a fellow psychiatrist at the hospitals and his sympathetic makeshift family (none of the people in household are related by blood).  He persuades his adopted mother, Oh Seon-young (who owns a prominent restaurant, Madang House) to allow Su-ji to rent the spare room in their house.  At first, she is a recluse – she spends most of her time locked up in her room and only comes out to eat. U-ri urges his family to be patient with her and not to force things; eventually she opens up and with U-ri’s support she gets back on her feet. Also (and this is not a spoiler), it is revealed that Seon-yoong is actually Su-ji’s biological mother (but I will get to that later).

I have to believe that reason Hahm Eun-jung took the role of Su-ji is the autobiographical elements to the role. Like the character of Su-ji, Eun-jung’s life was upended by a bullying scandal (I already wrote about the T-ARA bullying scandal in my review for White, so I won’t repeat her).  She, and her T-ARA members, had to face the harsh judgement of the public, who made up their minds before the facts had come out. She also went through a bout of desperation – she would spend entire days in her bedroom and often go days with out showering.  She was eventually vindicated and went on to have a successful career as an actress. She also won the Excellence Award – Actress in a Daily Drama-at the KBS Drama Awards for her performance as Su-ji (she also won one for Queeen’s House).  She went from being ostracized by her peers to being celebrated (similar to Su-ji).

The Third Marriage, Jung Da-jung (Oh Seung-ah) is betrayed by her best friend, Kang Se-ran (Oh Se-young).  Da-jung was separated from both of her parents when she was kid – her mother left at young age after having an affair with her father’s best friend, and her father was accused of murdering an employee at his factory and spent years trying to clear his name. While her father was in prison, the bitter wife of the deceased employee, Cheon Ae-ja, sold Da-jung to a diner and she spent the next few years slavishly working for her tyrannical adopted mother. She eventually ran away and wound in an orphanage. She is a self-made woman and eventually lands a job at a food company, Dream Foods. Da-jung eventually marries Baek Sang-cheol, who also works at the same food company, Dream Foods, as Da-jung. It turns out that Da-jung’s best friend Se-ran is also Cheon Ae-ja’s daughter – the two of them knew were playmates when they are little and eventually reconnected in high school (though, Se-ran is not aware of this as Da-jung was the name given to her by her stepmother – her birthname was Shin Go-eun). Bear in mind, everything I just described happens in the very first episode of the series.  As a result, the first episode feels a bit disjointed at times – to the point where it is often difficult to understand what is going on.

It is shortly after her marriage to Sang-cheol that Da-jung is reunited with her biological father, Shin Deok-su. The two of them hit it off and form a close bond, but Se-ran remembers that Shin Deok-su was the man who murdered her father (or that it what her mother told her) and she decides the best way to get back at Deok-su is by ruining his daughter’s life. Her request for revenge is motivated by a misunderstanding, something she only realizes all too late. Se-ran is jealous of Da-jung and tries to steal her life – she steals Da-jung’s husband, birth right, and even Da-jung’s daughter. It turns out that Deok-su is the long-lost son of Yoon Bo-bae, the chairwoman of a popular restaurant and when Se-ran finds out about it, she manipulates the DNA results to make it appear that her father is Bo-bae’s long-lost son. As a result, Bo-bae believes that Se-ran is her granddaughter and impulsively gives her the role of CEO. She also gives Ae-ja a managerial position. When Da-jung realizes she has been betrayed and that Se-ran is responsible for her father’s death, she seeks revenge of her own, but since the law has failed her, she decides to marry the chairman of Dream Foods, Wang Jae-guk, and use his connections get back at Se-ran. She also effectively becomes Se-ran’s stepmom – in a business merger, Se-ran ends up marrying Jae-guk’s son, Wang Ji-hoon.  However, the ultimately proves to be a huge mistake on Da-jung’s part.

In Love Twist, the romance between Oh So-ri (also played by Hahm Eun-jung) and Park Ha-ru gets derailed by a white lie told by their parents. So-ri’s father, Oh Gwangnam, is having an affair with Ha-ru’s estranged mother, Park Hee-ok. To further complicate issues – Park Hee-ok is also best friends with Gwangnam’s wife, Maeng Ok-hee. When So-ri’s biological father, Park Ki-tae, appears out of nowhere and wants to claim Ha-ru as his own, Hee-ok, at Gwangnam’s urging, claims that Gwangnam is Ha-ru’s biological son. She even creates a fake DNA test so that Ki-tae will get off her back. Her intention was to protect her son from Ki-tae, who is a genuinely evil man (he raped Hee-ok when she was a young and Ha-ru was conceived as a result). She puts on an indifferent front when she is around Ha-ru, but despite her cold exterior she does care for her son. However, Ok-hee, while visiting Hee-ok finds the DNA test, believes that it is genuine, refuses to listen Hee-ok’s explanation, and eventually tells Ha-ru about it. As a result, Ha-ru believes So-ri is his biological sister and breaks it off with her. Instead of telling her the truth, he coldly pushes her away and hooks up with So-ri’s one-time best friend, Kang Yoo-nah, who is pregnant after a one-night stand, and Ha-ru tells So-ri the child is his. It turns out that So-ri is pregnant with Ha-ru’s child but believing she has been abandoned decides to marry Kyungjun, who currently works for her father’s company and intends to use So-ri to fulfill his own ambitions. Kyungjun also helped fake the results of the DNA test; he visited Ki-tae, took a sample of his hair, and claimed it belonged to Gwangnam. Both him and Yoo-nah know the truth about So-ri and Ha-ru but choose to remain silent because it gets in the way of their own plans. Hee-ok and Gwangnam also keep silent because they don’t approve of So-ri and Ha-ru being a couple.

Dong-hae (Carl Laker is his American name), in Smiling Again, is the only protagonist who is kind of unlikable when we first meet him. He is an impulsive individual, with anger issues, and often jumps to the wrong conclusions. He is extremely sensitive when it comes to his mother, Anna, who in her youth got into an accident in typhoon, which caused her to be intellectually challenged – she has the mindset of a seven-year-old. He also never knew his father, “James” who abandoned his mother before Dong-hae was born, which means he has spent most of his life raising himself and his mother.  At the beginning of the series, Dong-hae (Ji Chang-wook) is a member of a short distance speed skating team and is currently in South Korea to compete in a competition; he also has come to visit his girlfriend of six years, Yoon Sae-hwa (played by Park Jung-ah, former member of the girl group, Jewelry), whose aspiration is to anchor the nine o clock news, but currently does a five minute segment for the news station. She is giving a chance to prove her chops when she is given the job of hosting a TV show that reunites people with long lost family members.  When Dong-hae and Anna arrive in South Korea, Sae-hwa is supposed to pick Anna up at the airport (Dong-hae has to go to the hotel with his team) but an opportunity arises and she asks her school friend, Lee Bong-yi, to pick up Anna for her.  Dong-hae begins to worry about Anna and goes back to the airport to get her, when he sees getting on the bus with a strange woman. He immediately assumes the worst, waves down the bus, and confronts Bong-yi inside the bus. He never allows her to explain herself and gets violent with her – he pushes her aside and she ends up injuring her arm in the process. When he has finally calmed down, she explains herself and he feels like a horses’ ass. Bong-yi is such a sweet natured girl that we immediately resent Dong-hae for his ill treatment of her – it takes quite some time before he is able to get on our good side (this is after he has been incredibly humbled by circumstances).

 

This brings me another trope of these Soap Operas……

2.     The Two-Timing Spouse/Lover

In Smiling Again, Sae-hwa breaks up with Dong-hae to chase after Kim Do-jin. She initially isn’t interested in Do-jin until she learns his father is Kim Joon, the newly appointed executive director of the TV station she works at. His mother is Hong Hye-sook, the CEO of the Camelia hotel. Sae-hwa see this as an opportunity to advance her career – if she marries Sae-hwa and gets on Kim Joon’s good side, it is a given that she will get that anchor job on the nine of clock news. She coldly breaks it off with Dong-hae and then tries to pressure him to leave South Korea, out of fear that he will reveal their relationship. Their relationship was already strained after Sae-hwa asked Dong-hae to appear on her show and talk about his long-lost father, but he flat out refuses. However, Dong-hae’s mother, Anna, is desperate to find her former lover, James, and asks Sae-hwa if she can appear on her shoe. Sae-hwa knows that Dong-hae will not like this, but she decides to go through with it any ways – she wants to impress her bosses and will gladly use Anna to achieve this goal. Dong-hae learns about this, rushes to the television studio, and tells Sae-hwa that he will appear in Anna’s place.  He then makes a huge scene and tells Sae-hwa (and her audience) that he has no interested in finding his father – he then grabs his mother and storms out of this studio. Dong-hae’s live outburst gets Sae-hwa in trouble and she is demoted back to the five-minute news segment. Dong-hae does apologize for his behavior, but Sae-hwa uses it as an excuse to distance herself from him, so she can pursue Do-jin. This moment also demonstrates the differences in culture – in the United States, there is no way Sae-hwa would lose her job for a guest’s outburst, in fact, she would rewarded because this kind of outburst would have boosted ratings numbers and gone viral on the internet. Dong-hae’s outburst is pretty minor when you compare it to the things that are allowed on American television.

Dong-hae’s dreams of being short distance speed racer are dashed when he sacrifices himself to save Sae-hwa from an oncoming truck (this is another trope that pops up in these dramas – females walking into oncoming traffic only to push out of the way at the last second by the male protagonist. This is even more comical because often the female in question has more than enough time to get out of the way but chooses to stand still like a deer caught in headlights). Dong-hae is hospitalized and told by the doctor that he will never be able to ice skate again. At first, Sae-hwa is remorseful and gives him money to return to the states with, but when Dong-hae gets a job at the Camelia Hotel, as a chef, Sae-hwa’s paranoid gets the better of her and she keeps pressuring him to leave South Korea. She is responsible for her own undoing, because she constantly harasses Dong-hae that people, most notably Kim Joon, noticed the two of them together and begins to wonder what their relationship is.

The biggest lie that Sae-hwa told Do-jin is that he is her first romantic partner. She paints herself her as a virgin – this is after Do-jin tells her that he could never stand the thought of her being in a previous relationship with another man. However, it proves difficult to cover up the six years she shared with Dong-hae and eventually the truth comes out. Again, this is brought on by her constantly badgering Dong-hae in public places. Revenge was never part of Dong-hae’s plan – he just wanted to get back on his feet and working in the kitchen of the Carmelia offered up such an opportunity. He is even on good terms with Hye-sook – he saved her from a disgruntled ex-employee who confronted her in the elevator. She is also impressed by his devotion to his mother and strong work ethic. Their relationship becomes strained later on, but I will get to that later.

Since Smiling Again is not a revenge melodrama this allows for Sae-hwa a chance at redemption. She does a lot of despicable things throughout the series but eventually all her lies catch up with her, and she is left with nothing. It is a humbling experience and gives her a moment of self-reflection – she has no one to blame but herself. She does atone for her sins and even helps Dong-hae win control of the Carmelia (she has a lot of dirt on Do-jin). It is a nice variation on this character – it also fits well within the theme of the show that everyone is deserving of forgiveness (all they had to do is seek it).

In The Third Marriage, Baek Sang-cheol is a total flake – it doesn’t take much for Se-ran to seduce him. He also can’t make up his mind who is he is in love with, when he is with Se-ran expresses his love for her and tells her he will divorce Da-jung, but he loses his nerve when he is with Da-jung. It’s only after Se-ran is given the CEO title that Sang-cheol is determined to divorce Da-jung. However, the only reason Se-ran is interested in Sang-cheol is because he is Da-jung’s husband, once he finalizes his divorce from Da-jung, she loses all interest in him and moves on to Ji-hoon. She also frames Sang-cheol for assault and he spends the next few years in prison. Like most of the two-timing husbands, Sang-cheol is truly a pathetic figure. When he finds that Da-jung is the true heiress to Bo-bae’s fortune, he tries to get back on her good side. 

In The Second Husband, Seon-hwa’s partner, Moon Sang-hyeok has an affair with Yoon Jae-kyeong, his boss (and whose father is the chairman of confectionary company) and sees this as golden opportunity to further his career.  He abandons Seon-hwa, and their son, and begins a torrid romance with Jae-kyeong (played by Oh Seung-ah, my favorite actress in this genre but more on that later). The interesting thing about The Second Husband is that Seon-hwa and Jae-kyeong initially hit it off with each other – Jae-kyeong is oblivious to the fact that Sang-hyeok is in a relationship with Seon-hwa (and vice versa). The two of them meet up and often talk about their significant other (unaware they are talking about the same guy) but once Jae-kyeong finds out that Sang-hyeok is Seon-hwa’s significant other (and has a son to boot), she doubles down on her affair and rationalizes Sang-hyeok’s infidelity. She now views Seon-hwa as an enemy she must destroy. 

The running gag throughout the series is the physical abuse Sang-hyeok endures at the hands of others – he constantly gets either slapped or punched in the face. He wants to win the approval of Jae-kyeong’s wealthy parents, but they always view him with suspicion. Even though he betrayed Seon-hwa, he still has feelings for her and when she drops hints that she would like to get back together with him (as part of her revenge plot) he is very receptive to the idea. He is constantly weighing his options: Sang-hyeok can give him anything he wants but he was significantly happier when he was with Seon-hwa and she is better “wife material.”  When he sees Seon-hwa with his brother-in-law, Jae-min, he gets insanely jealous. It is actually an entertaining performance from Han Ki-woong, who constantly does his best Rodney Dangerfield “I get no respect” impersonation. Sang-hyeok is so pathetic that he becomes somewhat endearing. He acts like he is in control of the situation, but you can see the constant panic in his eyes.

Queen’s House is interesting because, like Smiling Again, there is an attempt at giving the cheating spouse Ki-chan, an actual character arc. There is a tragic element about his character – the one person who genuinely cared about him, his ex-wife Jae-in, is the same one he pushed away. He comes to this realization fairly late in the series – Ki-chan gets diagnosed with cancer and only has a short time to live. He tells Jae-in about this and, rather than being elated by the news, she tells him he must live because he needs to atone for his sins. Later, he walks in his mother and Se-ri arguing over who will get his life insurance. Neither of them shed a tear over the fact that he has cancer and will die in a few months, they can only think of the money they will inherit.

The second half of the show is when we see a gradual shift in the character – his attitude towards Jae-in begins to slowly change. Ki-chan does a lot of terrible things – he murders an employee (Kim Do-hee) to cover up his corruption and then lets Jae-in’s mother, Choi Ja-young, take the blame; he also is responsible for the death of Jae-in’s father, Kang Kyu-cheol; and commits Jae-in to a mental hospital after gaslighting her into believing she is insane.  He resorts to the dirtiest tricks to cover up the many scandals that involve him and Se-ri. Redeeming a character like this is a tall order, but damn, the series somehow pulls it off (this is largely due to the sincerity of Park Yoon-jae’s performance). Ki-chan realizes that Jae-in will never be able to forgive him for his terrible deeds but he is determined to make amends.  He fadlls back in love with Jae-in after she suffers from amnesia in a car accident (arranged by Se-ri) and lost her memory of the last eight years. She still thinks she is married to Ki-chan and also believes that she has miscarried their son, Eun-ho. Ki-chan decides to take her back into his house (much to the displeasure of Se-ri) and soon finds himself falling back in love with her. He realizes how badly he messed things up – he had the ideal wife and replaced her with a sociopath, who is constantly getting in trouble.  It is revealed  that Jae-in faked her memory in order to get close to Ki-chan to find evidence that will bring him down, and get back at the people who wronged her (most notably her awful mother-in-law).  Hahm Eun-jung’s acting is especially enjoyable in this section of the series – when Jae-in is around Ki-chan she puts on a “helpless babe in the woods” act, but when he is alone with her mother-in-law, she reveals her more ruthless side. It is quite the contrast. 

3.     The Wicked Step-sister

Since most of these series are essentially a retelling of Cinderella, there are often characters who function in the roles of the wicked Step-mother and Step-sisters. They can be literal step-sisters (like Jin Na-young in Suji & Uri) or symbolic (like Yoon Jae-kyeong in The Second Husband and Kang Ba-da in Vengeance of the Bride – both played by Oh Seung-ah). The all share a same common trait – they all are deeply insecure; suffer from a victim mindset; blame the lead character for all of their misfortunes; are habitual liars; rarely show remorse for the actions; and will resort to all sorts of dirty tricks to bring down the protagonist. 

In Suji & Uri, Na-young is Su-ji’s younger step-sister who resents her older sibling. She hosts the Korean version of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives – where she eats at the more out the way restaurants. While this program pays the bills, her real ambition is to be the MC of a talk show. She lives in the shadow of her more famous sibling and resents Su-ji’s success. Though, despite talking behind her older sibling’s back, Na-young’s face lights up when she finds out that Su-ji knows the producer of the talk show she is auditioning for and pleads with her sister to put in a good word for her. Su-ji actually does this, but the producer is not interested in Na-young, instead he wants Su-ji to host the show. Su-ji declines the offer.  However, when Na-young finds out about this, she believes Su-ji has stabbed her in the back.
The two of them get into a heated argument outside, which ends with Su-ji slapping Na-young (after Na-young makes a comment about Su-ji being abandoned by her birth mother). It turns out that Na-young’s cameraman on the Food show witnessed this exchanged and recorded it on his cellphone. He shows Na-young this footage and she leaks it online, which results in a backlash towards Su-ji. This, coupled with the fact that Su-ji’s father was accused of fraud by angry investors (the way he got them to invest in his product was by dropping his famous daughter’s name -without Su-ji’s permission), tarnishes her image and the public turns against her. She was once the face of the hospital and now, after the scandal, they try to distance themselves from her. Na-young believes this newfound sympathy from the public will translate into a successful career but the opposite proves to be true – the TV stations further distances themselves from her because she was involved in the scandal. She eventually hooks up with Su-ji’s well-meaning but dense ex-boyfriend, Han Hyeong-seong, gets pregnant, and uses the baby as leverage to move in with Hyeong-seong’s wealthy family – his mother is a chaebol and his father is a prominent surgeon at the hospital Su-ji and U-ri work at. If there is a flaw with the series is that this character is so loathsome in the early going that it’s hard to sympathize with her later on, especially when she tries to atone for all her mistakes – she is given an ambiguous ending.

In The Second Husband and Vengeance of the Bride the wicked stepsister is played by Oh Seung-ah, who is easily the best part of both of these dramas. In fact, her performance in both of these dramas is hard to top – to the point than when I watched other Soap Operas, I kept thinking to myself, “This would be so much more entertaining if Oh Seung-ah played the villain.” There a few similarities between her and Hahm Eun-jung: they were both idols (Eun-jung was a member of the girl group, T-ARA, while Oh Seung-ah was part of RAINBOW, and the sub-units Rainbow Blaxx and Rainbow Pixie); both of their groups debuted in 2009; both of them were born in 1988; and they both went on to have successful acting careers. I’m surprised the two of them haven’t acted in a drama together – this needs to happen. My ideal scenario - they play squabbling sisters who form an uneasy alliance when the family company is under attack from a sinister third party. The first half would feature lots of hair pulling, face slapping, backstabbing, and a random scene where the two of them have a karaoke face off.   The main difference is that Eun-jung is usually cast in the role of the protagonist while Seung-ah is cast as the antagonist (the sole exception is The Third Marriage, where she is cast against type as the heroine of series).  I should also point another actress who pops up in Smile Again, Lee Joo-yeon was also a member of a group, AFTER SCHOOL, that debuted in 2009 (however she was born in 1987), but more on that later (I’m a big AFTER SCHOOL fan – their Japanese release, “Ssh” is one of the greatest, and most criminally underrated, K-pop tracks ever released).

The best word to describe Oh Seung-ah’s acting in both of these series is frantic – with her quivering voice and bug-eyed expressions, she always looks like she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her characters wear a mask of confidence but the fear in their eyes always gives them away. She dominates the proceedings that the lead actresses in both series, Park Ha-na, in Vengeance of the Bride, and Uhm Hyun-kyung, in The Second Husband, often come across as background extras in her presence. Neither actress is bad, but they don’t have the screen presence that Oh Seung-ah brings to her roles (I suspect this is a result of her idol training, which requires its stars to have great stage presence).

In Vengeance of the Bride, she plays Kang Ba-da, who grew up believing that the heroine, Eun Seo-yeon (when Seo-yeon was a child she went by the name Kang Ba-ram), was her biological twin sister. She resented Seo-yeon growing up because her parents favored Seo-yeon (her father, Kang Baek-san viewed Seo-yeon as his potential replacement and her mother, Nam In-soon, smothered Seo-yeon while often ignoring Ba-da). When it is revealed that Seo-yeon isn’t their biological daughter – In-soon kicks her out of the house and it seems that everything has worked out for Ba-da. With her number one rival out of the way, she is given the education and cushy job that would have originally gone to Seo-yeon.  Her father is the chairman of cosmetics company, LeBlanc (it is later revealed th0at he stole it from Seo-yeon’s true biological father), and Ba-da is put in charge of developing new products.  Seo-yeon works at beauty shop and just so happens to run into her former mom, Nam In-soon, who doesn’t recognize her. Also, since Ba-ram changed her name to Eun Seo-yeon (after the parents who adopted her from the orphanage), there is no reason for her to suspect that Seo-yeon is the little girl she raised for ten years as her own. Seo-yeon doesn’t bear any ill will towards In-soon and the two of them actually hit it off.  This is the main difference between Ba-da and Seo-yeon – despite the many hardships she faced, Seo-yeon refused to play the victim and kept a positive attitude towards life while Ba-da is a perpetual victim. In fact, if Hollywood remade this melodrama, the Ba-da character would probably be the protagonist, given how Hollywood aggressively pushes the victim mindset.  One the side, Seo-yeon is trying to start up her own cosmetics business and gives her new face mask to In-soon. Ba-da gets hold of the face mask and attempts to claim it as her own. It’s also this incident that puts Seo-yeon on Kang Baek-san’s radar. Ba-da’s attempt to steal the facemask gets thwarted by the older brother, and his best friend/Seo-yeon’s love interest, San-Deul (who knows Seo-yoen’s true identity).  When Baek-san’s attempts at intimidating Seo-yeon fail, he goes with the “if you can’t beat them join them approach) and offers her a job at LeBlanc. This further annoys Ba-da, who once again is forced to play second fiddle to Ba-ram. Ba-da is also in love with San-Deul but has been in love with Seo-yeon/Ba-ram since childhood and rejects Ba-da’s advances.  San-Deul is also played by a familiar face, Park Yoon-jae, who played the two-timing husband, Ki-chan, in Queen’s House.

In The Second Husband, Seung-ah plays Yoon Jae-kyeong, who not only steals Seon-hwa’s husband, but (accidentally) kills Seon-hwa’s grandmother and then, finally, frames Seon-hwa for murder.  Seon-hwa spends four years in prison, patiently plotting her revenge. Like Ba-da, Jae-kyeong is incapable of admitting any wrongdoing and her non-stop lies eventually catch up with her. Seon-hwa’s revenge is a bit on the ridiculous side, but I will get into that later, because it is so absurd that it needs its own paragraph. It was Seung-ah’s performance as the conniving Jae-kyeong that gave her recognition as an actor. She would usually be cast in villainous roles – though, in The Third Marriage, she was cast against type as the heroine, Jung Da-jung. It’s interesting to contrast this performance with her villain roles, because it requires her to dial down her performance.  She is not bad but, in my opinion, the Seung-ah who chews the scenery in The Second Husband and Vengeance of the Bride is more entertaining than the restrained Seung-ah in The Third Marriage.

 

And this allows me a smooth transition to talk about the evil step-sister in The Third Marriage, Kang Se-ran, who is a complete psychopath (played to perfection by Oh Se-young, who gives Oh Seung-ah a run for her money for the most entertaining villain in a Korean Soap Opera). Se-ran is the type of femme fatale that popped up in a lot of Cecil B. DeMille’s silent melodramas (Oh Se-young would make an excellent silent film actress); she is the ultimate sinner (she breaks all of the ten commandments). She steals Da-jung’s husband, steals Da-jung’s inheritance, kills Da-jung’s father, kidnaps her daughter, and even attempts to murder Da-jung. She fakes being pregnant to prevent her husband Wang Ji-hoon (Wang Jae-guk’s only son) from divorcing her. She burns all bridges with her best friend due to a misunderstanding – she believes that Da-jung’s father murdered her father. The irony is she spends most of the series sucking up to the actual culprit (Jae-guk). She is so blinded by vengeance that she never bothers to ask if it is worth it. She is enabled by her greedy mother, Cheon Ae-ja (played by Choi Ji-yeon).

(The end of Part One. INTERMISSION!!! Be sure to pick up some snacks at the Concession Stands. Today we have a two-dollar special on small popcorn and small drinks are dollar. WHAT A DEAL!!!  Part Two will be posted sometime in the next two years.)