Kdrama Review: My Lovable Girl (AKA Rain is Back!!)
“My Lovable Girl,” “My Lovely Girl,” “She’s So Lovable,”
“You Are Cute for Me”… Whatever this drama is called. Rain’s new drama. That
one. Yeah, I watched it.
For the noobs that may be reading this, I’ll give a brief
explanation on Rain. Rain is pretty much the first South Korean actor/singer to
gain huge international success. He debuted in the kpop world in 2002, and
since then has used his stage name Rain as
a pun in as many album/song titles as possible. His most famous music video has
got to be “Love Song,” which involved him body rolling shirtless. The album, Rainism, was deemed inappropriate for
listeners under the age of 19 for being so shmexy. The term “chocolate abs”
became rabid among kpop fans around this time.
Rain has released a lot of music and done multiple dramas
and movies, but the only other Rain drama I’ve seen is “Full House” (2004),
which I unfortunately decided to marathon when I was sick last spring. Unless
you actually like soap operas, I don’t recommend it. In the late 2000s, Rain
was in a couple of American action movies and was mentioned in Time’s “100 Most Influential People” and
People’s “Most Beautiful People.” In
2011, he left entertainment to complete his mandatory military
service. (Newsflash: South Korean males are required to serve in the military.)
But as of recently, the now 32-year-old IS BACK.
Onto the drama! “My Lovable Girl” is the story of two people
in the music world who have suffered loss. Lee Hyun Wook (Rain), once an
extremely successful producer and songwriter, is derailed after his girlfriend
dies in a car accident. Yoon Se Na (Krystal of kpop group f[x]), said girl’s
little sister, is a struggling songwriter herself, financially screwed and now
alone in the world. After a few years hiatus, Hyun Wook manages to return to
the entertainment industry, motivated to relieve his grief by anonymously
helping Se Na find success. Cue competitive fellow producer, savvy long-time
friend, and an arrogant kpop idol to round out the cast.
I initially enjoyed this drama. Rain is a total teddy bear,
guilt-ridden about the accident, angry with his womanizing father, and obsessed
with his dog. So adorable! Krystal played a good young-girl-in-love, little
smiles and all. Bad Guy seemed decently vicious with the potential to wreak
havoc. Unprecedented in kdrama land, second male lead was more of a jerk than
the male lead – what?? So great! And to top it all off, the setting is the kpop
industry, and the most accurate portrayal of it that I’ve ever seen in a drama.
So interesting!
Unfortunately, this drama was anticlimactic in a lot of
ways, and my overall rating is mediocre. Similar to “Coffee Prince,” this drama
contains a significant secret, which the audience knows about from the
beginning, which will prove fatal to the main romance once the other person finds
out. Hyun Wook annoyingly goes hot and cold with Se Na, one moment falling for
her and the next reminding himself that this will never work. (“What are these
strange feelings? What do these symptoms mean? In love? With her? Preposterous!”
C’mon, dude. You’re at least 30 years old. Grief ridden or no, you’re not a
naïve idiot.) All this is building up to the fateful moment when the secret is
revealed! And when it finally is… It falls flat. In “Coffee Prince,” the feels overtook my soul when the secret came
out. In “My Lovable Girl,” it was like, “Oh look, there’s Se Na’s glum face…
again.” Meh.
The villain, so dastardly in his deeds in the first part of
the drama, also fell flat rather quickly. Even the main romance felt flat in
the end, leaving me feeling I had watched the exact same hug ten times. I do
appreciate that Rain wasn’t super sexualized in this drama. (Shower scene was
short and didn’t even have an abs shot!) Points for him. But a little passion,
or at least a real kiss, would have helped me believe that the two leads were
actually in love with each other, not just exclusive best friends.
WARNING: SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH. I don’t even want to
start on why the last episode was so entirely stupid. The writers ran out of
conflict, so they turned Se Na into an idiot. Honestly, Hyun Wook should have
taken his own radio-show advice and let go of the jerk girl who decides to run
away. Wouldn’t that have been a great plot twist? Surprise! Walking out on your
boyfriend and all your friends for a year results in them actually hating you,
not running after you in train stations!
Ugh. Onto what I really want to talk about: the kpop
machine!
Way more interesting than the slow, slow storyline of this
drama is what I call “the kpop machine,” the current pop music industry of
South Korea. “My Loveable Girl” offered some interesting glimpses in how the
glamorous world of kpop actually works. Gone are the days of musicians writing
their own songs and showing them to the world via personal albums and concerts.
What we have in kpop is an extremely successful business, in which teenagers audition for the chance to sell their
souls to an entertainment company, and then spend several years in training to
be professional singers and dancers before they debut. The result is perfect looking, perfectly in sync, perfectly produced triple-threat Asian celebrities.
Since kpop is pretty much a worldwide phenomena right now,
most of these flawless idols make a lot of money – which goes back into the
company, a return on its investment. Cue multiple kpop artists suing/breaking
contract with their companies in the last few years for working ridiculous
hours and not getting paid.
Ok, so “My
Lovable Girl” doesn’t reveal the financial evils of kpop companies, but it does
show how kpop artists have limited, if any, control over their art. An entire
staff of professionals decides every detail of idols’ careers, including their
hair color, clothing, lyrics, title tracks, love lives, etc. As a fan, I can
bemoan an artist’s weird fashion sense, but chances are he didn’t pick out
those hideous pants. Somebody else got paid to do that. “My Lovable Girl”
featured a kpop group where the members didn’t get along, but had to pretend to
be buddy-buddy in front of the cameras. Probably happens in real life, too,
since the companies put groups together. No friend-group-garage-bands here.
As I’ve fallen for the magic of catchy kpop, I’ve come to
view its artists as models. They don’t design the art, they just rock it on the runway of the public. Kpop
boasts some ridiculously talented vocalists and dancers, and it was interesting
to see a bit of their world in “My Lovable Girl.” Hopefully the South Korean
music industry will balance out in the future, allowing the artists to actually
create their own music and personally reap the rewards of their efforts.
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