#and Ki-tae's incredibly gentle 'do you really love me' from before and his acceptance when she DOES deny it

[reachexceedinggrasp]

When I first tried to watch Successful Story of a Bright Girl last year, I was mystified trying to figure out how old Ki-tae was supposed to be and whether the show was going to comment on someone maybe barely in his twenties being a top executive in a major corporation or if that's just not something we question.

And for a while it seemed it was the latter. The show is really over the top and the characters border on cartoonish (you need a very high threshold for both yelling and mugging to camera if you're going to watch it, the histrionics are constant), so I was like... sure. We can not question this, that's fine. And they do comment on his unrealistic youngness a little but not seriously. Okay. Just part of the silliness. He's a barely-out-of-university executive, whatever. I concluded Yang-soon calling him ajusshi was meant to be fairly egregious on her part.

I gave up on the show after the vehicular homicide incident (too far for me), tried to go back to it when I got desperate for a floofy romcom but couldn't find it in watchable form on the internet, eventually had to get it on dvd for working subtitles for the later episodes, and finally continued at long last only to discover in the middle of the series that he's apparently meant to be 29.

Which means before the time skip he was 28. Which means he was a nearly thirty year-old working professional who owns a house and a car romantically pursuing an impoverished seventeen year-old high school student who is being forced to wait on him as basically an indentured servant in order to keep her parents out of prison.

I mean...!

It never seems the slightest bit creepy because not only do they physically look the same age anyway, he has the maturity level and temperament of a moody fourteen year-old. The 'power' he has over her is played like the schoolroom antics of a boy pulling pigtails rather than any desire to genuinely take advantage of her situation. There's nothing predatory about his behaviour. He is not her actual boss, either, looking after him and his house is just a package deal with her working for the CEO (his boss/sort-of-foster mother).

I can't claim to be upset by this alleged age difference because I'm not one to be bothered by such things unless they're written in a deliberately fetishistic way, but taken at face value... the whole scenario is a bit...!

idk why they didn't just make him like 22. It's not as though he looks any older than that. Jun Tae calling him hyung honestly seems wild because Jun Tae is way more believable as being in his thirties. The driver guy is also supposed to be the same age as Ki-tae and looks way older. He always feels way older, too. Honestly, his crush on Yang-soon did strike me as a bit creepy because he really doesn't come off like a peer, especially at first. He comes across like an adult looking after a kid. Making it all the weirder that he's the one she calls oppa. Ki-tae may have been actively trying to lord it over her (because he's a jerk), but nonetheless he does feel like a peer. Just a peer who's a stuck-up asshole with too much money.

His pride and entitlement really are epic. He takes entitlement to new and dizzying heights. You've got to sort of appreciate how they committed to this character flaw and his hubris wasn't broken even well into the downfall, because of course it wouldn't be. It's a well-paced, realistic arc as frustrating as it is to watch him triple down so many times before he finally grows. It does make it difficult to ship them when he's SOOOOOO ungrateful and such a dickhead to a girl much less fortunate than he is who is busting her ass to help him while having zero reason to do so. She rescues him and looks out for him constantly in a decent, respectful way that is sincere and not patronising at all and he just screams at her for it. And she's never seen much of his good side to begin with.

We, the audience, see that he has this whole sweet, innocent aspect to his personality and that he was actually trying to do nice things for her but she doesn't see it because he always pretends he's not doing nice things and puts her down to her face. All his kind gestures are cloaked in assholery or are made in secret. He's super tsundere but she has no way of knowing this. No reason is ever given why she would like him or warm to him. They are, at times, extremely cute together but that's mostly because the actors have such good chemistry. In fact it's a real testament to their chemistry and charisma that I can invest in the relationship at all, because in general I hate this trope lmao. Bickering and bullying with no openly expressed tenderness is not romance for me. She puts up with no end of bullshit from him and he does nothing to deserve all her efforts, but she also never stops being mean to him or shitting on him in conversation and never admits that she likes him, so the tsundere really goes both ways.

And then her 'dream' to be in the army comes out of absolutely nowhere at the last minute and she treats him almost as badly over it as he treated her during his downfall, so like, whatever lmao. At least they're on equal footing, I guess.

It's not as bad as I thought it was when I quit it the first time, it's entertaining enough and a fun time if you know what you're getting into, it's just very juvenile and very... loud. I've also seen a lot of comments on how much JH has grown as an actor since this (and of course he has, this is way less nuanced and infinitely more mannered than he would be playing a similar character in Thank You just 6 years later- although I actually like Ki-tae and don't like the TY guy at all despite this) implying he was bad, but he did fine imo. He only has a couple really awkward moments and is mostly striking the right balance considering the OTT tone of the whole show. It's Jang Nara who was shockingly rough to me. If she weren't so naturally adorable her bad habits as Yang-soon would be catastrophically annoying. Apparently a lot of people don't rate her as an actress even now, but I think she was phenomenal in FTLY and Mi Young is up there with the best-realised performances I've seen in kdrama. The growth from here to there is very dramatic.