You’ve Fallen For Me
넌 내게 반했어 / Heartstrings
(Jun – Aug 2011)
who’s in it
Jung YongHwa (You’re Beautiful)
Park ShinHye (You’re Beautiful)
Song ChangUi (Life is Beautiful)
Kang MinHyuk (You Who Rolled in Unexpectedly)
Lee HyunJin (Operation Proposal)
So YiHyun (Gloria)
Im SeMi (Hooray for Love)
Woo Ri (Crime Squad)
what’s it about
Welcome everybody to a college populated by hot young
Park ShinHye is a traditional music major here, her specialty the gayageum, an old school Korean string instrument played by plucking, not strumming. She is the pride and joy of her famous grandfather, an authority in gayageum circles, and he wants the next generation of his bloodline to become just as well-known and respected. Our girl’s committed to her music, absolutely, but she’s no stuffy bore, she’s very personable despite her hard-working nature and has a quality circle of fun-loving friends who together form a traditional music quartet called the Windflowers.
Park ShinHye is not usually one to get involved in campus civil wars, but because of her love for all things responsible and traditional, she finds herself caught in a fight to defend the honor of traditional music against the too-cool-for-school campus hunk Jung YongHwa, a contemporary music student, and also the lead singer of a popular rock band called The Stupid. This boy appears to be ambivalent about everything but three things: his music, his family, and So YiHyun, the ballet instructor he has a wildly inappropriate one-sided crush on. Then this new girl enters his world and starts yanking on his strings, working up something that feels like an emotion when all he wants to do is play music and love the ballerina…will he be able to hold his cranky ground when faced with the full on cuteness that is Park ShinHye?
Oh right, there’s also some much ado about nada regarding a campus musical production Song ChangUi has been recruited to bring to glorious fruition, and that’s where supporting leads Lee HyunJin and WooRi play a part, but grievously little. There is also some university politics and parental boohoo subplots, but it is all sooo not worth mentioning.
commitment
15 episodes (originally planned for the standard 16, but due to a car accident that involved Park ShinHye in week four of broadcast, only one episode aired, and the show decided to end its run early instead of going to 17—thankfully, for I cannot imagine how they would have stalled for another 120 minutes
network
MBC
director
Pyo MinSoo (Full House, Coffee House)
screenwriter
Lee MyungSuk
first impressions
An obvious lack of depth and variety in the writing plagued this show from the opening: gimmicky, shallow, hurried, and let’s not forget to mention the dreaded foreshadowing of student-teacher l’amour (blech). I had some lofty expectations, a side effect of having loved Your Beautiful too much and having foolishly tried to associate two wholly unrelated projects together just because it carried the same star power. My own fault for being greedy, so I quickly adjusted my frame of mind. I wasn’t completely loving the story presented, but I was going to go with the flow and stay open to it. Fortunately, the direction of the show was helmed by a man very comfortable in light romantic comedies with narrow plots, a director with a good track record for coaxing cute out of even the slimmest margin of story. The feel and look of the drama was stimulating on the senses, the soundtrack felt the right amount of breezy and catchy, and all of the cast seemed well recruited for their parts. Ah, yes, the people were going to be this drama’s greatest asset. We were given a little bit of everything.
The gorgeous idol: Jung YongHwa
The respectable actor: Song ChangUi
The energetic fresh face: Im SeMi
And, of course, a popular leading lady: Park ShinHye
Plus, as extra fan service: Kang MinHyuk
With these young stars clearing the path, how bad could it fumble?
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