Cheese In The Trap Review

Title: Cheese In The Trap
Genre: Melodrama, Romance, Comedy
Episodes: 16
Broadcast Period: Jan-2016 to Feb-2016
Cast: Park Hae Jin, Kim Go Eun, Seo Kang Joon, Lee Sung Kyung, Nam Joo Hyuk, Park Min Ji, Son Byung Ho, Ahn Kil Kang

Having returned to college after a yearlong break, due to her family's poor background, Hong Seol (Kim Go Eun), a hard-working over-achiever, inadvertently got on the wrong side of Yoo Jung (Park Hae Jin), her senior who is athletic, good looking, gets good grades and has a kind personality, but also a hidden dark side. From then on, her life took a turn for the worse and Seol was almost certain it was all Yoo Jung's doing. After almost a year of weird behavior around her, such as getting dropped from important courses and others suddenly mistreating her, Yoo jung, the person she least expected anything from, suddenly is friendly towards her. He keeps asking her out, and help her around school, but somehow Seol doesn’t want to trust him. How will this shape their relationship?

Wow, what an unfair plot I just wrote there, I really didn’t know where to stop, I’m not quite satisfied with what I wrote, but oh well. You have to know that this drama is based on a webtoon, and has gained quite an audience, me included. I started the webtoon before the drama, so I knew what I was going into. I got to say that I think the scripters did a good job, staying true to the original story while still adding new details that gave something fresh to the drama. I think everyone is entitled to their own opinion on the drama. I would be the last person to question why someone feels the way they do about it. If someone felt it went downhill and was terrible, that's valid. If someone thinks the overall experience was amazing, that's valid, along with all the other opinions people may have. I belong to the later opinion. I loved this drama and everything in it (except for the ending, but I won’t comment on that!). An extremely realistic, slice-of-life drama depicting a love story in the context of university life. Since I’m a university student too, I could REALLY put myself in Seols shoes, and feel her frustrations. A pity that the drama experienced some controversial issues over the directing as well as bad publicity from the original webtoon. I didn’t read so much about the controversy, since I loved the drama and appreciated the actors hard work, and was afraid I would get influenced about the millions of opinions out there. To sum it up, I think this is one of the good dramas out there, and I really did appreciate it.

☆☆☆☆ / 4 out of 5 stars

♥♥♥♥½ / 4½ out of 5 hearts

The Marriage Plot Review

Title: The Marriage Plot
AKA: Marriage Scheme
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Episodes: 16
Broadcast Period: Apr-2012 to May-2012
Cast: Kang Hye Jung, Lee Kyu Han, Cha Hwa-Yeon, Lee Young Eun, Lee Min Woo, Kim Se Jung, Park Min Ji, Seo Jae Kyung, Kim Won Joon

So Doo-Ryun (Cha Hwa-Yeon) has four daughters. Since her husband passed away she runs a kimchi making company; Chinjung Kimchi, and has raised her four daughters by herself. The first daughter Sun-Hee (Lee Young-Eun) is sweet and respectable. Her second daughter Gun-Hee (Kang Hye-Jung) is selfish and competitive, and have no affection for the family. Her third daughter Min-Jung (Kim Se-Jung) likes buying expensive items and playing around. Her fourth daughter Min-Ji (Park Min-Ji) has been prepping to enter college the past four years, but she isn't interested in studying. Gun-Hee works at a food company Sangcharim, where she works hard at the company, but doesn't get along with her boss Gang-Jae (Lee Gyu-Han), who is the son of the company owner. Gang-Jae and Gun-Hee work on a project to launch a Kimchi business, but due to Gun-Hee's mistake, the company fails to get investments and results in Gang-Jae's father becomes so upset at their failure, he orders his son to go to Alaska. Gun-Hee sends in her resignation to Gang-Jae, but this only makes Gang-Jae learn by chance that Gun-Hee is the daughter of the kimchi making company Chinjung. Meanwhile, So Doo-Ryun regrets that she did not raise her daughters so well and hopes to change their ways, so she make up a brilliant plan to change their lives.

I never felt so conflicted about a drama; it was good AND really bad. First thing I noticed and kept bugging me the entire time was the bad acting by Kang Hye Jung, I expected more from her. Nevertheless, thank god Lee Kyu Han was the male lead, he really outshined Kang Hye Jung, and made the drama watchable. Lee Kyu-han really sold the show from a whole range of emotions from crazy happy to crazy in love to crazy depressed. Or maybe he’s just crazy. In fact, he outshined everyone else, except for the mother. But hey, she is a senior actress with a lot of achievements, so nothing to say there, and her character here was very loveable and realistic. I do feel cheated by this drama because we never got any hijinks to live in a boardinghouse. No forced living situations or hilarious face-offs apart from an early challenge between the men vs. women. It would have benefited the drama to call it something else than Marriage Plot because there was simply no plotting to be had.

☆☆½ / 2½ out of 5 stars

♥♥♥ / 3 out of 5 hearts