K-Dramas or How The Heirs Blew Me Away

It's no secret that I love watching Korean Dramas. Not many Westerners do, so whenever I talk about them at work I always get people telling me how dumb or clique or silly or any other adjective that described their dislike. But for me, K-Dramas are a refreshing breeze and are much cleaner than most American TV. There are some American shows that I like, but a lot of stuff now a days are either full of things I don't want to watch or have been going on forever and there is no way I'd be able to watch it all.

K-Dramas though, only last one season of 16-24 episodes. They are like a novel, one story that has a beginning and an end, instead of a series of mini stories that have no ending. I don't get to watch them much anymore, after arriving in S. Korea, because the website I normally watch them on doesn't have the rights to play them in Korea. However, I do get to watch a few when they are playing live. While this is a lot of fun and keeps me from marathoning them like I have in the past, there is the downside of no subtitles, and my Korean isn't that great. It's good enough, but not great.

So far, I've watch two dramas as they aired. The first one was called Two Weeks, and started Lee Min Ki as a former gangster who gets framed for a very violent murder and has to escape the police and the gangsters who want him dead long enough for him to go through a surgery that will save the life of his daughter. It was a very emotional drama and it had a great ending.

Then I watched The Heirs. There was so much expectation going into this drama. First the lead male was played by Lee Min Ho, who is a very popular, very tall, and very handsome actor from the likes of Boys over Flowers and City Hunter. Then the lead male's older brother was played by an actor I recently noticed and fell in love with because of his FANTASTIC deep voice (I'm a sucker for deep voices; must have been all that late night NPR) and his absolutely brilliant smile -- when he happens to smile, anyway. Then there was the second string male, Kim Woo Bin from one of the School dramas, who also has a deep voice and this exotically handsome face that I wasn't sure about at first but fell head over heels for by the end of the show.

What made me love this drama, other than the wonderful male cast, was the writers turned most of K-Drama stereotypes head over tail. Main guy was good, second string was jerk. Main guy's (real) mom was good. Horrible girl rival mellowed by the end. Etc. Yes, this is a drama about rich teenagers, so there's a lot of pettiness and  teenager-y things, but half the time  the teenagers were all making mature choices and decisions, and then dealing with the consequences like adults. For the most part, anyway. Lee Min Ho had a moment of weakness where he just self-destructed, which was really hard to watch.

But there was a lot of themes of different kinds of love, repairing relationships, and family throughout the whole drama, as well as a good thread of becoming better people and learning to get along. It was so phenomenal that I will most definitely buy it and watch it again, and this time hopefully be able to understand a lot more about motivations and the like, most of which I missed because they used vocab I am not familiar with.

If anyone wants to watch a good, cutesy romance that is a refreshing change from most out there, this is the one to watch.

The only problem I really had was with the English in the first two episodes, which are set in L.A. S. Korea's idea of what American's are like is really sad and depressing.

Have you seen The Heirs? Have you seen anything else with the main actors, Lee Min Ho and Park Shin Hye? Tell me what you thought in the comments!

Thanks for reading!