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Mary Stayed Out All Night (2010)
Mary Stayed Out All Night
매리는 외박중 / Marry Me, Mary!
(Nov – Dec 2010)
who’s in it
Moon Geun Young (Cinderella’s Sister)
Jang Geun Suk (You’re Beautiful)
Kim Jae Wook as (Bad Guy)
Kim Hyo Jin (I Am Happy)
what’s it about
Moon GeunYoung plays Mary, a 24 year old whose life is pretty hard—the usual drill: debt brought on by a troublemaker father and caught in a dead-end situation—but she’s a glass half full kind of gal. Even though she’s forced to take a break from college because she can’t afford tuition and is struggling to find a job, she keeps her spirits up. Cute and bubbly, with thick, flowing hair even a mermaid could envy, she’s a lovely breath of fresh air. She’s the kind of fresh air that makes for an enjoyable main character. Of course it helps that Moon GeunYoung can, well, act.
When she accidentally bumps Jang GeunSuk to the ground with a car fender, there’s a feeling that kindred spirits have been reunited from another lifetime. He’s an unsigned but rather popular
Both characters are breezy and affable, and Jang GeunSuk plays the kind of happy drunk who gives away hugs-for-free as fan service (he should go on the road and do that for charity, he’d make a lot of money). He’s a lover, not a fighter. The two take to one another rather quickly in friendship, in fact. They are opposites in mindset, but similar in cuteness. They seem to attach pretty mutually and perfectly together, like a kitten and puppy who don’t know better yet, but can sense the other’s trustworthiness and become inseparable. Come to think of it, Jang GeunSuk and Moon GeunYoung do spend some quality bonding time barking and meowing at one another, which is probably the most adorable flirting technique ever invented.
You may be wondering why two people who have befriended one another for less than seventy-two hours would undertake a 100 day fake relationship? Obviously, it’s a Dad troublemaker thing. Her debt-ridden father wants his daughter to marry perfect (read: rich) stranger Kim JaeWook, who on his end, is agreeable to his own father’s arranged marriage demands just as long as he gets the investment money for the new kdrama he’s producing—think non-suicidal version of his rich kid Hong TaeSung role from Bad Guy. If you inferred that the comparison is to imply that he’s dreamy, you are correct. Also, fella doesn’t seem like a bad guy. It is interesting to note, actually, his is the blueprint of the more typical kdrama principal. Had the dice rolled differently...had this been another kdrama...if it wasn’t Jang GeunSuk on the other side, it would be too easy to see the story going a different way.
Closing the proper quadrangle, we have a famous actress (the character), Kim HyoJin, who has been cast in the drama Kim JaeWook is throwing together…and this actress also happens to be Jang GeunSuk’s ex-girlfriend, a relationship that both parties are still not completely over…seems she lost him when she was just starting her career climb.
Everyone is interconnected. As I said, a proper kdrama quadrangle!
(what’s it about initially posted Nov 10, 2010)
director
Hong SukGoo
screenwriter(s)
In EunAh (Goong, Hon) – Eps 1-10
Go BongHwang (18 v 20) – Eps 11-16
commitment
16 episodes
network
KBS2
first impressions
Without a doubt, this drama would never have worked without the combined star awesomeness of Moon GeunYoung, Jang GeunSuk, and Kim JaeWook. Another necessary and welcomed ingredient? Their characters were all so interesting, apart and together. It made every minute of the show enjoyable. If the plot seemed rather convenient, you would be right, but in the history of most crazy kdrama plots and the things parental units have done in their efforts to manipulate their children, for me this one doesn’t really rank. Call me crazy, I didn’t find it all that ridiculous. In the minds of these flighty characters who seemed to live in a strange logic-free land, their solutions made perfect sense—for them. Obviously, not for us. On the other hand, who knows? If I had to drop out of school because loan sharks were banging on my door, I suppose I could marry two hot men as a Get Out of Jail card. I would. I really would!
Jang GeunSuk ditches the mean charisma he had in You’re Beautiful and nicely transitions into a happier costume, a John Lennon-Julian-Casablancas-y charm…a little high on life, a little drunk, but a serious musician, serious thinker. I’m speculating on that last part, but there seemed to be some hints that there was depth under all that leather and hair. As for Moon GeunYoung, she was perfect as the Daddy’s Girl who had been forced to put her youth on pause because of her home situation. A carefree person she ain’t, not because she doesn’t want to have fun and be free, but because she can’t. She finds escape through tv. She’s very relatable in that way.
There is an instant believability in her connection with Jang GeunSuk’s character as well as Kim JaeWook’s, the latter being an overly polite but distant sort of fellow, the kind of guy who offhandedly tells an aspiring singer who promises to continue working hard: “Don’t try any more—for people without talent, it doesn’t matter how hard they work.” Worse, he doesn’t see why that would be an inappropriate thing to say to a dreamer. He’s that guy.
My initial thoughts on this drama, very simple: I LOVED IT. Everything about it. It was exactly what I had expected...but way better. In truth, I had a slight fear that it would be awful, there was a fifty-fifty chance that it could be. Sometimes putting so much star power in one basket works against itself, but this one was a pleasant surprise. Everybody’s best charms were put to good use. It’s the kind of drama that understands what it is to be a kdrama…why fans get obsessed...it’s fun, a bit hipster…totally beyond reason…but it has set up a typical (popular) type of kdrama cliché that forces all the lovable leads to be constantly in the other’s breathing space…pushing each other out of comfort zones. And that is the best kind of drama. If the situation does not feel especially natural, that’s ok, I can live with that, because with all this forced time together, the characters can at least progress in their affections naturally.
Besides, I’m confident these actors can deliver silly in a way that will be both salient and palatable.
(first impressions initially posted Nov 10, 2010)
wildcard
Insanely popular trendy stars = double-edged sword.
In other words, the big names in this one were both a benefit and liability for this hair-tastic little drama. With rising young talents like Jang GeunSuk (JGS), Moon GeunYoung (MGY), and Kim JaeWook all gathered on one roster (all golf-clap recipients for their acting and their pretty), Mary had accumulated quite a fortune, but with that wealth also came a downside: the rabid kdrama base anticipated a greatness Mary could never have possibly achieved.
In comparison, fellow 2010 winter offering Secret Garden was a similarly hyped show because of its bucket list of stars, some of the hottest mega-sunbaes (seniors) in the biz. The fact that Ha JiWon, Hyun Bin, and Yoon SangHyun’s wacky drama didn’t completely crash and burn from its top heavy load still impresses me. Lots of big stars in one show can mean high mountains, but also carries a higher risk for bigger missteps and sometimes...an epic fall. Luckily, Mary wasn’t an epic fall, only a partial rolling down the mountain...maybe an ankle sprain, too, but in a kdrama, that’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. Truly.
We can have all the faith in actors we can hold in our devoted hearts…but they are just one component in a complicated endeavor. This drama was the very definition of a double-edged sword. The poor thing did indeed benefit from the glowing dazzle of its stars, but the writers definitely felt the liability of trying to manage them. It became clear that they did not know how to properly spend all the gold they’d collected.
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