I'm finding Romance is a Bonus Book w-a-y too relatable. Every episode there's something that speaks to me and my life...except for being even older than the oldest character. Jesus. When did I get this old? How did it happen? I feel like the last 15 years were a blink. I don't feel as old as I am. When I think about it, I feel a bit hopeless. All the nevers. Never wills. Never haves. The didn'ts. The won'ts. The should'ves.
And, for the most part, they are getting the publishing stuff right. The heartbreak of shredding un-read and damaged books. The debate over how many copies in a print run. The sadness of poetry. I appreciate that. Maybe nearly 85 to 90% of the publishing stuff is actually correct. The only bit that blatantly wasn't is that the show covers about 6 months and one book project goes from receiving the handwritten (!) manuscript to book launch/in book stores during that time. No freaking way. It's never that fast. Ever.
I'm halfway through it now. It keeps making me cry. The last episode had three of the women drunk and commiserating: our heroine (wherein her husband cheated on her), a co-worker (who recently divorced her husband because she was exhausted and he never put her first), and the boss (lonely and a bit bitter after having walked out on her own fiancé years before). I feel like I need a friend to cry on like that sometimes, but I don't have anyone like that. The closest thing I have is the dog and let's face it...he's smelly. And not much help.
The romance part is a bit bittersweet -- There's Lee Jong-Suk's character Eun Ho who has loved Dan-i for years but he's never come out and said it after holding his tongue when she got married. So she's always thought of him as her younger brother, though he's been dropping more and more clues because her proximity is testing his limits. I'd say she was thick to not be getting it, but I think that, after 20 years of thinking one way, she's having a time adjusting to the idea. And she's been through a lot in the last year.
And the second lead guy, played by Wi Ha-Joon is very sweet too (other than he's got some kind of weird obsession with a writer who was/is Eun Ho's dad (?) -- not that Ha-Joon knows that) and I feel a bit bad for him because you know where the show is headed. But I suspect he'll get the second lead girl in the end.
So...I'm enjoying it but it's also wrecking me. It's too close.
Edit: on episode 15 now. Wanted to talk about some of the nice bits...
When Eun Ho is talking to Dan-i about how she doesn't really actually like poor second lead guy in a romantic way...she just likes his interest in her and going out on dates because it's been so long. That's a true thing.
That moment when the Kim Sun-Young character (I've seen her before in a few things as a character actress, sometimes in really bit parts...this is the most I've seen of her and I like her style) has to miss a work event she'd been planning because she was at the hospital with her son (who apparently had meningitis) and how she'd always lied about where she had to be when things like that happened because it's always the mom that's called, it's never the dad. It's always the mom's job, no matter that the dad worked at the same place. That's another true thing.
That it didn't take Dan-i too long to figure out she did love Eun-Ho as more than a friend; that the "what if we break up and I lose you" thing was just a hiccup and not a huge catastrophe in the storyline. That their love was always there and reasonably believable. The age gap wasn't even a big deal. They could have made this into the angst fest stumbling block, but they didn't.
And this is my first Lee Jong-Suk drama and now I'm getting it. There's other actors that I'd say are more classically handsome but there is something about him that's very lovable. I like him. Am liking Lee Na-Young too and will have to look up other things she's in, though this particular character has this weird dichotomy of been quite tough/feisty sometimes and then falling quiet.
Edit: Finished it. I would say that I really liked this one. There weren't too many things that were weak, though there were a few.
One, the disappearing daughter. Actually, you can see that they tried to work in mentions of her a few times, but let's face it, they barely did. Which wasn't overly realistic. During the six month timeframe of the show, they should have at least had her come home once or had more phone calls or something. They could've done a great comedic bit where Dan-i has to explain that Eun-Ho is something more than an honorary uncle now. So it was a wasted opportunity. The character was really treated as more of a plot convenience (make the divorce more bittersweet, give more umph to Dan-i needing money).
Two, the actual physicality of the romance. Does that make sense? They had some quite cute and adorable scenes hinting at things, like Eun-Ho asking if he can spend the night in her room, but it was all so sweetly innocent to the point that it's literally the door shutting in the viewer's face. Not that I'm saying we needed to actually see that, BUT for as much in love as Eun-Ho is with her and has been for years, their kisses were too...I dunno...weak? Tame? The still lipped/freeze-framed kind of thing. More on her part than his. Maybe it was on purpose. I don't know. But there were only hints of the chemistry they had and it felt a bit lukewarm. Like there should have been more.
Three, while I've actually been looking for relatively angst-free things to watch, it did flounder a bit in that there really weren't any high (or even medium) stakes in the latter half of the plot. Really, the only tension is in the beginning when Dan-i is struggling so much, but that's essentially solved as soon as Eun-ho knows her situation because you know that no matter what, once he knows he's going to take care of her. There's never really any danger that the situation with the writer/mentor/father figure of Eun-ho and the thing with second lead guy was going to actually cause any problems. So...while I appreciate that on one hand, as a writer I'm also kinda, meh. Any of my past editors would have yelled at me and told me to beef it up. There wasn't enough conflict.
So...am I glad I watched it? Yeah. I am. Would I have been more critical if I a) hadn't seen so much of myself in it and b) didn't have a vested interest in stuff set in the publishing world? Probably. But that's me, so... I did really like Lee Jong-Suk though and am glad I watched it just for him. I'm gonna bump up some of his other dramas on my list. Will I watch it again? There's a good chance of that. I think it will always leave me wanting a bit more, but overall I really liked it.
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