Letter #39: My Sassy Girl
Good morning, Erin.
I promised you an Oh Yeon-seo trilogy—and, by gum, you’ll have an
Oh Yeon-seo trilogy.
“…but I never wanted an Oh Yeon-seo trilo—”
Thank me later, Erin, there’s no time!
Let’s talk (very broadly) about My Sassy Girl.
1. As we sometimes do, we’re going to start with the “hey, I know
you!” list:
3. …and, even better, it’s Oh Yeon-seo and Piano Girl in poofy
dresses!!!
3A. If we can be serious for a moment, here, I want to point out
that they’re both gorgeous—but that Piano Girl looks fantastic in this
show. She’ll never be able to top her appearance in Vincenzo, in my
mind, but she ought to “accidentally” drop screenshots of herself, in this,
when she’s walking around in crowded areas. (“Oh no, I’m so embarrassed that I
dropped these. Why, yes, this is me. Well, I think it was more the
stylists’ hard work than my natural beauty, but it’s sweet of you to say! Well,
all right, if you insist that I’m gorgeous, I guess I’ll take you at
your word…”)
3B. That said…Oh Yeon-seo pulls another over-deliberate cutesy
look, again, and I immediately caved. And she wasn’t even trying to get me to
do anything.
4. One of my favorite things about this show is how IMMEDIATELY
everyone jumps into being the cliche roles they’re supposed to be in a
historical drama. Because it has ALL of them. And it’s great.
5. One of my other favorite things is how modern the dialogue
is—at least at first. (There’s a lot about the show that’s fun and unique, up
front, that eventually goes away.) As in, they’re speaking in modern
vernacular, rather than in the typical…um…serious dramatic language, I guess. I
don’t know why I’m at a loss to describe it any other way, but, whatever, the
point is just that the dialogue could have been pulled from a show set in 2022,
and I found that fun.
6. In a similar vein, one of my other other favorite things
is the modern musical cues: every now and then, the background music will play
a modern song as a traditional Korean instrumental. The most obvious example
(which comes back several times) is the playing of “Back in Black” by AC/DC.
Which had me laughing more than a little bit, when I noticed it, early
on.
7. Also: there are a few action scenes throughout the show, and
they are generally pretty spectacular.
8. When the show wants to be funny, it’s pretty funny. Coach Choi
as the mom is easily the funniest, in my opinion, followed by the nobleman who
keeps showing up everywhere, followed by a massive tie between the Main Guy’s
friends, the whole of Piano Girl’s entourage, and the sort of meathead dudes
who pal around with the dude who wants to woo Piano Girl.
9. But, unquestionably, #BestGirl is the Little Sister, who is
bratty and (let’s call it) ambitious and sort of benignly selfish and of
course I liked her. (Yes, even more than the cold and ruthless Piano Girl.
Because the Little Sister had more jokes.)
9A. Actually, the Little Sister is a lot like her mother (Coach
Choi), now that I’m thinking about it. Not that the mother is a brat, exactly, but
their individual behaviors are rooted in the same kind of personality “flaws,”
and it’s really just a matter of age that influences how those “flaws” present
themselves. Which is much better writing than I realized, at the time. Huh. How
about that?
10. Some really solid smooching, by the way. After some really awful
smooching.
11. One of my favorite games on these kinds of shows is seeing how
many earring holes the actresses are pretending they don’t have in their ears.
Oh Yeon-seo has several.
12. The actress playing the Queen seems to be the only one who is
really committed to acting like she’s in a typical historical melodrama. And I
kinda like that.
13. There may or may not be a fake relationship-style segment to
this story, and I may or may not have absolutely loved it.
14. Main Guy’s friends work at a bookstore, and the “cheesy
romance” section of the store had two very familiar sounding titles on
prominent display: Boys Over the Flowers and Love from the Star.
Which made me laugh. (‘Cus I know things!)
15. There’s a pretty strong crossover from the show being fun and
silly and very colloquial to it being very serious and much more standard-fare
historical drama. Which is disappointing in that the early successes are mostly
abandoned. And it’s not that the typical serious stuff is particularly bad, but
it isn’t as special—and, worse, it veers into some pretty bad cliche territory.
I mean, I love cliches, but not bad cliches. And these are some pretty bad
ones.
16. There’s also an awful lot of filling time by starting an
episode with a replay of the scene that ended the previous episode. Which isn’t
a terrible thing to do, per se, but when you’re cribbing 10 minutes from the
end of last episode, I feel like you didn’t do your job as a writer.
17. To the show’s credit, though, the level of “character X blabs
something to character Y and that causes plot to happen” is darn high—as in, in
a good way: it’s always set up in a way that makes sense and never employed as
a one-off excuse to get something to happen. The gossipy characters gossip
without thinking about wider implications, and the sneaky characters use
chatting to their advantage whenever they can. I’m sure there’s an argument to
be made that there are better ways to do this, but, insofar as this oft-used
technique is concerned, this is the best I’ve seen it done, probably.
18. This show is yet another lesson in realizing my crush is never
going to take me seriously unless I’m a CEO, the emotionally tormented heir to
an international conglomerate, or the person who was secretly with her for a
traumatic childhood memory.
[purchases another anime statuette]
You’ll never leave me, little plastic waifu.
19. There is exactly one mystery, in this show, and I don’t think
I needed to be the world’s greatest detective to solve it. But, I mean, I am
the world’s greatest detective, of course, so obviously I solved it
immediately. (Though, really, if it was meant to be a mystery…it wasn’t. At
all.)
…which is all I have to say about that.
It was mostly pretty good. Until it wasn’t. And, even then, your
mileage may vary on exactly what that means. But, even so, I wouldn’t not
recommend it, if you’re looking for a historical drama you haven’t seen, yet.
Or if you, like me, just like looking at Oh Yeon-seo.
You’ll never guess what I’ve moved onto next—but, then again, by
the time you’re reading this, I’ve probably already dropped it for whatever you
tell me to watch next.
Which is either adorable or a serious character flaw.
Eh.
—Daryl
- Oh Yeon-seo as the sassy princess.
- Piano Girl (from Vincenzo) as the romantic rival.
- Coach Choi (from Weightlifting Fairy) as the main guy’s mom.
- Divorce Lawyer (from Touch Your Heart) as the nobleman who keeps showing up everywhere.
- [REDACTED]
(from Glitch) as the main guy’s little
sister.
- Ji-ho’s dad from First Life as one of the bad-guy advisors.
- Restaurant Friend (from Our Beloved Summer) as the solution to an unresolved love triangle.
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