My Week in Dramas 25 May 2025
Watching historian Tom Holland, the author of Dominion in a series of interviews has inspired to drop a few lines pertaining to something that’s been weighing on my mind as I survey the checkered landscape of comment sections related to short C dramas over the issue of forgiveness. It’s fascinating to read angry comments about older dramas where the female lead forgives the male lead for everything on a spectrum of indifference/neglect to terrible that he’s done to her as she reconciles with him. Often there’s a child involved. Rather than rooting for the male lead, he’s perceived as THE villain of the piece. Is it intentional? I wonder. Or is it just bad writing? That the male protagonist would elicit such rage from the audience. No doubt the domineering CEO stereotype turns tyrannical when things don’t go his way. A man with seemingly absolute power is a terrifying trope. Of late there are also stories about parents whose ill-treatment of their children are left at the end to languish in regret. No doubt many would be cheering on the sidelines that the daughter/son has had the last laugh. For these types of villains, no forgiveness is possible. At least that seems to be the consensus. And the woman who goes back to the man who hurt her is … according to common wisdom … a first class idiot.
It’s a scenario that I have mixed feelings about. Certainly the script itself could be a problem if the characters are portrayed as caricatures and/or their motivations aren’t clear. It’s puzzling… that forgiveness business… because it seems like a miscarriage of justice or a slap on the wrist for the perpetrator to “forgive”. Writing a redemption arc is hard and not many are carefully considered for the pay-off. There’s a meme or joke among avid watchers about the “knife of forgiveness” because the errant male lead is often the subject of a eleventh hour stabbing at a crucial moment in the final act which inevitably leads to a reconciliation and happily-ever-after. It’s, in effect, a miracle. It moves her to forgive him as his willingness to take the knife for her is proof that he loves her enough to be remorseful.
Many in the comment section rail against the lack of justice. Why go back to him? Everyone wants “karma” for the baddies. The unworthy CEO included. But it strikes me that unqualified forgiveness is a miracle. A miracle born of love where the forgiver bears the cost. Just as Jesus said to his disciples when Peter asked him, “How many times should I forgive? Seven times?” The response from his Lord was shocking. “Seventy times seven times.” Vengeance comes far more easily than forgiveness.
Forgiveness is certainly not foremost in the mind of Wen Yifan from The First Frost. suffering deep-seated abandonment issues. After the passing of her father, her mother re-marries in unseemly haste to a single dad. There are outlines of a Cinderella tale. Yifan can’t get on with the new family due largely to step-sister’s provocations, so she goes to live with Grandma. When Grandma falls ill, she gets sent to Uncle and Aunty who try to sell her off for the bride price. She seems to have had egregiously bad time with relatives which sees her being overly self-reliant. That is until she encounters the boy from high school who never forgot her, Sang Yan years later.
These types of plots are fairly common so it’s really about the director, the script and the actors bringing a fresh coat of paint to the same basic structure. Occasionally First Frost is a hard slog while other times it’s sweet and moving. Whenever the show goes into plod mode, it’s Bai Jingting that gets me through with his finely tuned performance and the perfectly timed facial expressions. Zhang Ruonan is good as Wen Yifan and she brings out the character’s introversion with a light understatement.
The story has to begin where it always does — high school because it is about longevity — an infatuation that lasts, love that has stood the test of time. For someone like Yifan carrying a ton of baggage, trauma and the fear of being cast aside, accepting the love of someone like Sang Yan is harder than doing on-the-scene reporting in disaster areas. Her default position is to escape when things go pear-shaped and there’s good reason to do so but as the show strongly indicates, she can’t run from her past forever. Like a lot of these types of traumatized characters, she takes refuge in her professional life and uses her introversion as the rationale for keeping everyone at bay.
Enter Sang Yan. The boy she rebuffed unceremoniously. He’s still smarting over her seeming change of heart about going to university together so he treads cautiously. A lot of the show is about them playing hide and seek until she decides to take a leap of faith at the off chance that she too can find happiness. At Episode 21 everything’s humming along nicely for the love birds but it’s not obviously going to last. It’s a C drama unfortunately and there’s the matter that she hasn’t told him about. A ghost that’s haunting her from the shadows.
As I’ve mentioned in the last podcast, the “moonlight” 白月光 trope has become one of the most popular if not the most popular trope among C dramas of late. It’s nothing new but is gaining plenty of traction. A man who has been steadfast in his affections seems swoony. Reassuring, I would imagine. Because it’s not really love that the lovelorn protagonist is looking for but reliability. Like a pair of comfortable durable shoes that will go the distance. Often the story opens with a former boyfriend or fiance or husband who made extravagant promises but turns out to be a dud. Or worse, a fraud.
A reliable man is what IU has got in When Life Gives You Tangerines. It’s taken me a while to get back to this gem but I finally have after battling a cold and a couple of busy weeks at work. It is nice to be able to watch Park Bo-geum in something again that doesn’t send me off to sleep or looking at the clock every few minutes. For some reason the drama continues to give me Anne of Green Gables vibes even though the setting is completely different. What I particularly like about this show is that it doesn’t just show that women have a hard time of it especially in those post-war years but men too. Except for that 1%. Moreover, even though Ae-sun is the spouting “progressive” notions about wanting to do further study and write poetry, it is actually Gwan-sik that is truly the radical here. While he is influenced by her to a large extent, it is he who really breaks with tradition, moving away from his family to set up a home with Ae-sun as they struggle to eke out a hand to mouth existence. She’s the one shouting into the megaphone undoubtedly but he’s doing back-breaking work making her dreams come true.
Underpinning a lot of the feel good is the idea that men and women should be working cooperatively to build and maintain civilization. When a man marries, he is matured by the responsibility of providing for and protecting his family. His wife brings the children into the world so that civilization continues. For that alone she should be honoured. But of course her contribution exceeds child-bearing and rearing. Many women have a side gig to make ends meet.
I love the tit for tat between MIL Yang and grandmother-in-law Yang. It’s a bit of a running gag. Grandma brags about how great her granddaughter-in-law is in terms of her offspring implying that her daughter-in-law is a bit of a deadbeat by comparison. MIL bites back on one occasion stating in no uncertain terms that she has the better son between them.
While one is constantly confronted with bleakness and poverty, there’s also a feeling of optimism lurking in the background. There’s also the feeling that things are improving. Not just for women but for the populace in general. The lives of Ae-sun and Gwan-sik are a microcosm of what’s going on in the country — a Korea that’s gradually battling its way out of poverty, breaking with tradition and transforming into an economic success.