Alexandra Leaving

I have been recommended this Kdrama by millie10468 . Thank you so much! I am in a terrible drama slump at the moment: anything new seems to be unoriginal and boring. I just watched too much of any type of dramas, methinks, especially too many romance-centric dramas.

Smile mom is a female-centric family drama, one of the genres that still work for me. The first things first: as an inpatient person I am, I have checked the ending and every single OTP I liked in the very first 20 minutes of the very first episode are going to be together at the end, plus all the evil and cheating people are going to be punished. I am not hiding it under the spoiler cut because this is what one expects from a family drama.

I quickly marathoned 15 episodes of Smile mom yesterday, with the help of my fast forward button. As any other family drama (apart from Family Honor), Smie mom has it's share of incredibly annoying characters that don't seem to have any point. The ratio of annoyingly uninteresting characters is not as bad as in "Three brothers" or "Life is beautiful" (which I had to give up, no matter how much I loved Tae Sub and Kyung Soo) . But it is still considerably high, may be 40-something percent.

This is one of my "big Kdrama questions": does anyone like any of those fathers, uncles, aunties, etc? Before "Chuno", I used to think that a firm "no" was the right answer. But it appeared that in Chuno, one of the most popular characters with Korean viewers was Ji Ho. So I am not so sure anymore.

Apart from the absolutely pointless characters there is also Jo Bok Hee, one of the main four ladies. Remember the evil mother from "Cinderella's sister"? This is the same kind of role, played by the same actress, only multiplied by 100. The confusing thing is that I am not sure what the drama creators think of her, sometimes I feel as if they view her in sympathetic light. And here is where I resist: a lady that married a guy for his money, but when he lost his money (they still live comfortably, by the way) never stopped pestering him and telling him that he wasted her life? The one that sells her daughter into the entertainment business and acts as if her daughter is her doll? No, I do not have any sympathy! The phrase "die, die, you horrible person!" has never been more applicable. I know some people like to watch characters that they "love to hate", but I am not one of these people. I am too violent for that. :D I want to shake Jo Bok Hee and report her for child abuse, and I can't!

If you can cope with all of the above, or at least are prepared to fast forward, the rest is pretty good. Yoon Jung Hee, the main reason I am watching this, is lovely as Kang Shin Young (a young married woman who after divorcing her cheating husband will become a politician and a writer), even though at times I wish there was more of her. I also really like the poor actress daughter of Jo Bok Hee, Dal Rae. And the story of a female professor falling in love a much younger man is also quite good, if you like this type of story.

Anyways, this is so female centric that I am going to finish it.