Sassy Girl, Choon-hyang

You follow the characters through three stages/phases of their lives, so you get to experience a few years with them; but you know how it is, it's kind of the old "several years later". You can tell the stages apart pretty well – the lead actress has a different hairstyle each time (nice, right? :-D) and in the last one, the male lead is almost unrecognizable – the glasses make the man. I don't even know why I'm mentioning this, I guess it caught my interest somehow. This was the first dorama where I didn't hope the main couple would end up together, I was rooting for the heroine and the "guy next door", who obviously will never end up with her, but that combination caught a few positive points with me. But that was at the beginning. After that, as it went on, I wouldn't wish her for him even a little bit. I was quite surprised by his character development; some of his decisions were really a surprise to me given how he was in the beginning. And while the main bitch had no surprises for me, by the end (like really the very end :-D) she stopped deserving all the hate I was radiating at her that almost set the screen on fire... Actually, this is the first dorama where my opinion of the characters changed, sometimes quite rapidly. I'm glad for that, because at least with that you can see some character development. Their foundation, what they came from, doesn't change, but certain little things do, and it's very nice that the viewer can notice it and that it can affect their mindset about the character, as it does in life. The other characters were great, whether more important or supporting roles, they were easy to live with, except that his mom did get on my nerves at times with her bullshit. But it's nice that not everyone is taken in by the "good" heroine. So much for the characters, there's no point in going into greater detail, the important thing about them to me was that development. Otherwise, like in every Korean dorama – the women are so whiny... :-) If I have to mention the music, I'll do it briefly, because even though I only watched it two days ago I don't remember much of it, which means it wasn't essential or memorable; but I can't complain, I know I never wondered "now what on earth did they pick for this soundtrack?" or "this is a spot that could use some background music". The music wasn't lacking, it wasn't overwhelming. The cinematography was like any standard dorama. The actors were fine, I knew the dad from before and this is the first time I saw him playing a completely positive character, so I thoroughly enjoyed his performance (but he does that coughing of his everywhere :-D). The main characters may not be extraordinarily beautiful, but they're appealing and you can easily stand watching them for those 17 episodes and end up telling yourself you could stand even more (just not of this story, the 17 episode was just enough (maybe more than enough... :-D)). I took it on in one go, but you can easily endure maybe a day without seeing the next episode, it's not that suspenseful, I was just having trouble sleeping ^^ Just an interesting tidbit at the end: the last 3 episodes or so were at the top of the ratings chart, with what I would consider an almost legendary over 30% viewership. Nice number, right? :-) A better 4 stars (11/06/2010) (less) (more)