Letter #71: You're the Best!

Good morning, Erin. 

On today’s nightly walk, I accidentally started up my K-drama playlists instead of one of the more energetic ones I typically listen to. And, about halfway through my walk, the main theme to My Mister popped on, and suddenly I was thrown back to a couple of days before Christmas in 2021, when I went on my “music to mope to” walk because I was in such low spirits—where the music I moped to was, of course, the K-drama proto-playlist I’d put together after watching the first couple of Erin-went-home list suggestions. (I want to say I mentioned that walk in my Goblin letter, but I’m too lazy to check.) I call it a proto-playlist because I think it had maybe five tracks on it, and I think I looped through the whole thing at least three times over the course of the hour(-ish) I was out there. 

Flash forward to my walk earlier tonight, my K-drama playlist has 50 songs and is nearly three hours long. Oh, how far we’ve come, you and I. 

I mention this because, whether coincidentally or by divine will, we’re about to talk about a show that I started all the way back then and have been watching in small bursts ever since: 2013’s You’re the Best! Because, as my very first note says, “I love Lee Ji-eun AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME STOP.”

…which certainly sounds like a note I would make, doesn’t it. 

This series was 50 episodes long, so I’ve got 12 pages of notes, it looks like. I feel like I’m not going to need most of them, judging by how frequently “oh my God she’s sooooo cute” seems to appear…but I guess we’ll find out together. 

So, please remain seated, keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, and enjoy this mostly spoiler-light trip through IU’s lead-debut melodrama!

1. We’re actually going to start with the list of people I recognized, because—even when I started this—the show is chock full of folks I knew from my first few K-dramas:

• Ms. Jang (that is, IU) from Hotel Del Luna as Shin-soon, our titular* heroine

• the main cop from Two Cops as Joon-ho, the talent agency CEO and male lead

• Sunny from Goblin as Shin-soon’s willful and independent-minded older sister

• the mom from My Mister as Shin-soon’s mother

• the angry male lead from Mad for Each Other as the angry baker

• Officer Min from Rookie Historian as Joon-ho’s lackey

• the old manager from Hotel Del Luna as Shin-soon’s father

• the dad from A Business Proposal as a con man

• the old man who needs nursing care in Sweet Home as Joon-ho’s father 

• the simple-minded patient from It’s Okay to Not be Okay as a fisherman

1A. Because these notes are, for the earliest episodes, 18 months old, it’s really funny for me to see how excitedly I point out recognizing certain actors from things I’ve only just seen—when, by the time I’m writing this, I’ve seen them in several other things. (Like, I seriously have a note that says, “Wait, I think that’s Sunny from Goblin!” Which is just adorable, given things now.)

1B. *I say titular, but it looks like there was some kind of issue with the show’s original title, which was  “The Best Lee Soon-shin!” because it implied that the character was better than the Korean naval hero by the same name (which was the joke), so it looks like the translation originally switched over to “You’re the Best, Lee Soon-shin!” in the hopes of distinguishing that the protagonist wasn’t better than the national hero. But it’s mostly just called “You’re the Best!” in translations, now. So…yeah, she both is and isn’t the title character. And now you know. (Or already knew. You probably already knew. I always assume you know everything already.)

2. IU is about 19, as she’s filming this series, and LOOK AT HOW FULL HER FACE IS!!! This is probably the most adorable I’ve ever seen her look. 

3. …which you think is just me yet again gushing over one of the prettiest girls on the face of the planet, but no: I’m mentioning this because this is another show that tries to make us think that no one believes IU is pretty, and I just…don’t understand it. At least with My Mister she looks a bit of a mess, all grumpy and beat up. Here? She’s all big eyes and smiling. Sure, everyone eventually comes around, but it feels like it’s mostly because she gets put into a glitzier circumstance which makes more people look at her. But until then? Apparently everyone thinks she’s—at best!—plain. And I just don’t buy it. (Like, at one point, a character despairs that, with some work, they might be able to make her look average.)

4. Relatedly, our main girl Soon-shin’s got two older sisters: middle sister Sunny and eldest sister…um, I just keep referring to her as Hottie-nee (with -nee being the casual form (shortened from onee-chan) of the Japanese honorific you would use to refer to your older sister by both name and “title,” e.g. Keiko-nee), because she’s gorgeous and a former Miss Korea. So we’ve got IU, Sunny, and Miss Korea. I don’t know how you’d assign any of them as “the plain one” and expect us to believe it. But, whatever, plot reasons. 

5. The two best actors on this pretty soap-y melodrama are the guy playing Joon-ho (who, again, is one of my favorite Korean actors) and the woman playing Soon-shin’s mom. They are very clearly much more talented than the writing for the show, and, though they both do a great job with their respective roles, you can see how held back they both are. The mom in particular has so little to do, in many of her scenes, that you can see her trying not to give in to her natural actor’s instincts as she has to wait for other characters to get through their unnatural dialogue before it’s her turn to interject something. Meanwhile, Joon-ho has to slowly pull back his natural stage-actor’s ability to keep himself acting at all times, which results in a lot of movements that are more eye-catching on screen than they would be in person (when your attention is meant to be on someone else). Which is not to say the other performances were bad or anything, but these two were just noticeably better. 

5A. We all know that IU can crush a crying scene, but she has one moment in this show where she breaks through the barrier into something genuinely great: she leaves Joon-ho’s office after congratulating him on the relationship she thinks he’s rekindling with his ex-girlfriend, and the moment she’s alone she has to take a moment to stop herself from sobbing in total heartbreak—and she f***ing NAILS IT. It’s not performative or exaggerated but raw and real, like we’ve just caught the actress taking a moment to swallow something overwhelming long enough for her to get somewhere safe. Just the look on her face and in her eyes…it’s so slight but told you everything about how she felt and all the things aswirl in her mind. 

5B. …which the show then undercuts because she has to talk her thoughts out loud so that the audience knows she’s upset that Joon-ho seems to be dating someone else. Ugh. I’d be furious watching that back, if I were her. 

5C. Since we’re talking about small acting things that really carry weight, I want to point out how similarly non-performative Joon-ho’s actor’s reaction is every time he sees Soon-shin. He just absolutely lights up. It’s not showy, it’s not big, but he just…brightens up. Smiles with his eyes. I mean, he’s looking at IU, so maybe it’s not acting, but still…it’s really good. 

5D. I should really learn what this actor’s name is. For whatever reason, I think his name is Alex. I mean, his name literally isn’t that, but my brain sees him and thinks, “Oh, that’s Alex.” And your guess is as good as mine as to why. 

6. Speaking of Joon-ho, though, I absolutely love how much his personality wavers from moment to moment, early in the show, where he’s eminently capable, successful, and commanding…but then he folds like a cheap suit the moment he isn’t fully in charge of a given situation. It’s hilarious, and the actor does a great job with it. 

7. This show does the “they hate each other, which means they’re going to love each other” trope. Which is absolutely on my list of favorites. 

8. Relatedly: I absolutely love the main couple, here. Great chemistry between both the characters and the actors, and they easily found their way onto my list of favorite K-drama couples. Like, there’s an argument to be made that they should be top of that list. I don’t know that they are, but it’s at least close.

9. Relatedly: Soon-shin’s exact parentage is in question for most of the show (she’s adopted…though apparently no one ever told her that), and there was a good stretch where I was afraid she and Joon-ho were going to turn out to be siblings. Thankfully, that was not the case. 

9A. Speaking of her parentage: I’m not sure how obvious it’s supposed to be who her mother turns out to be. Like, it’s obvious, but it’s also sort of played as a big reveal. I dunno. It’s kinda like the show wants you to feel super-smart for figuring it out but also doesn’t hide it enough to make you feel like you’ve uncovered anything that wasn’t very apparent. 

10. The owner of the cafe the Soon-shin spends most of the show working at is supposedly an American (or spent a lot of his life in America). He doesn’t ever use English, but all the music that plays in the cafe is A) in English, and B) recognizable to me, which means I was always satisfied with scenes set at the cafe. It’s seriously like he’s using my old iPod. I mean, they played a song by Cascada! Cascada, Erin—you don’t know how happy that made me. 

11. There’s A LOT of no one saying things I would hope people would be inclined to say under normal, not melodrama circumstances. (Like, “I’m sorry I can’t be at work for a couple of days—my father just died.” I don’t know why you wouldn’t say that to your boss.) There are always circumstances in which someone might not want to reveal something and, as a result, cause problems down the road, but I can’t think of more than maybe two which fell into this category. Not a fan of that kind of contrivance nor of the dramatic fallout that results from it. I get that it’s not always easy to come up with ways to prompt the next story beat you need, but I still think this is a cheap way to do it. 

11A. To be fair, there are a couple of moments where one character or another will eventually (and I mean many episodes larter) say something obvious like, “Well, it’s not really your fault that it rained, so I think you’re right to be upset that you’re being blamed for the weather”—but, again, this is waaay later on that it logically should be. 

11B. And when they’re not not-saying things that it would seem obvious for them to say, they’re calling people to see if they can meet at some fancy cafe to talk for 30 seconds about what they could have said over the phone. And they almost always end up leaving the cafe in a huff before anyone has a chance to even say anything, putting them right back to where they were before the phone call. So much time is devoted to just walking into and out of rooms after promising to walk into a totally different room with the person they were just by themselves in a room with. 

12. …to say nothing of how wishy-washy Soon-shin’s family is about their opinions of her and her life choices. Like, to a point, it’s consistent character stuff: Sunny, for example, has never liked Soon-shin and is frequently not just mean to her but aligned against her…but she also will fall into the “nobody beats up my little brother but me!” mold when dealing with her (more on that in a moment), so she doesn’t quite flip-flop as she does have a complex set of emotions when it comes to Soon-shin. But it goes beyond that, at times, particularly with her grandmother (who’s a mess and a half, let me tell you), and I really think a lot of that (especially later on in the show) is just there to pad the runtime as we go through the same beats over and over again: do we want Soon-shin around? do we not? do we want her around just to enjoy telling her we don’t want her around and then get insulted that she took our endless telling her to go away seriously for once? And why do we do this fifteen separate times?

13. Relatedly: do Koreans not hug? Why does no one hug when someone’s in the midst of despair? “Oh, my daughter is sobbing uncontrollably—I better just stand here and look at her wishing there was something I could do to comfort her.” I mean, Joon-ho eventually hugs Soon-shin when she’s upset about something, but it’s probably more to do with him finally admitting he’s in love with her than with the need to comfort her. I’m just confused. Is it a social thing? A TV thing? Just this show?

13A. To be fair, there is one even more significant hug near the end of the series, and it’s wonderful…if a little late. 

14. Within the first few minutes of the show, we learn that Soon-shin is in love with Dr. Oppa, her best friend’s older brother (who is a dermatologist), and that Dr. Oppa is in love with Sunny, who wants all but nothing to do with Dr. Oppa. And you know I love a hopeless love triangle. 

15. Speaking of Sunny, she absolutely nails being comedically drunk, in this, in much the same way as in Bo Ra! Deborah, which is probably not surprising. (One of the keys, I’ve been told, is to act like you’re not drunk. Because that’s what drunk people do: they struggle to not seem drunk.)

15A. Similarly, Sunny can really give a Good Boy-level “I am amazed and know not what to say!” frustrated huff. (That’s my favorite line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, just to clarify.)

15B. She’s also the one member of Soon-shin’s family whose core character trait (being tough and independent) actually works for the alternately hot/cold treatment of Soon-shin. She doesn’t get to use it properly, since devotion to the delay-delay-delay tactic for conflicts rules the day, but every now and then Sunny is allowed to make some kind of powerhouse speech, and it kinda rocks. 

15C. Unfortunately, though, Sunny is part of the absolutely weakest subplot in the whole show, and, once it moves into its second (third?) phase, it becomes entirely disconnected from the rest of the story, a miniature sitcom adrift in the waters of an otherwise heavy melodrama. Sure, even before that point, she was mostly just there to walk around in progressively shorter miniskirts to flaunt everything she’s got. Which I’m not saying I object to, but she’s good at other things, too, y’know?

15D. Also, after having recently spent so much time with 2023 Sunny, it was quite the whiplash to go back to 2013 Sunny. 

16. There’s an “oh no we’re stuck on an island by ourselves” trope episode in this, and it’s everything I wanted it to be. 

17. …okay, we didn’t get Soon-shin in a big floppy beach hat, but we did get her best friend in one earlier in the episode, which is almost as good. 

18. There are a series of couples who get together over the course of this show, but there are also sets of characters who seem more than available to pair up but don’t. One in particular seemed like the perfect way to close off a storyline, but no. No smooches for you.

19. Speaking of getting together, though: at one point, both Joon-ho and Soon-shin are inexplicably wearing outfits of the same seafoam green color, and I literally shouted at my TV that this had better be the scene where they finally confess their feelings to each other (otherwise, why have them match?)...and it was, so everything was fine. 

19A. Also, their first date included them going to play Street Fighter II at an arcade, which means it was one of the best dates ever. (They picked the unlikeliest characters to play as, but it was still great.)

20. This show has the best use of the “I suddenly have diarrhea!” gag I’ve ever seen. It was both actually funny, for once, and story-relevant. So, good job, Lee Soon-shin. 

21. One of the more unexpected things about this show is how quickly the main plot goes from being a sort of light family drama to a pit of despair. I mean, it doesn’t stay quite as dark as that for too long, all things being equal, and there are more than a few other plotlines that run parallel to it that aren’t at all depressing, but…still. I did not expect the dark turn it takes, early on. 

22. One of the less unexpected things about this show is how IU still looks silly when she runs. 

23. Regardless of whether you’ve seen the show or not, it will not surprise you to learn that I picked Joon-ho’s bratty little sister as #BestGirl. From just her first few seconds on screen I just knew she was going to be my kind of ridiculous. (And no, there isn’t nearly enough of her, for my money. Especially later on in the show.)

24. I’m not sure why the goofy, upbeat closing theme for this show was approved. It doesn’t match the tone of the show at all. Yeah, there are silly or generally lighthearted moments throughout the series, but not enough that this theme song would seem thematically appropriate for the overall feel of the show. Like, if it had been used in my feel-good Japanese series Good Morning Call, which is an often absurd romcom, it would be perfect. But this? I dunno. 

25. Oo, speaking of bad music choices: the otherwise adorable love confession scene for Hottie-nee and the angry baker is sort of stepped on by the bizarre choice to play what I can only place as a knockoff Dance Hall Crashers song at the end of it, which doesn’t make a lick of sense for something so…cute.

25A. …Dance Hall Crashers was a ska punk band from the ‘90s. I recommend “Enough,” if you want to get an idea of what they sound like. Or “Shelley.” Actually, “Shelley” if you want to know what they sound like, and “Enough” if you want to know what they sound like at their best.

25B. I mean, I know you’re not going to check them out. My point is just that even though they are catchy and inoffensive (as far as ska is concerned), that kind of sound was a weird choice for the scene. 

26. Great lines out of context: “Do you have to be a celebrity? Can’t you just get married, instead?”

27. There’s a long list of characters who are the absolute dregs, on this show—as in written deliberately to be awful people—but I think the woman who tries to console her friend after the death of the friend’s husband by saying she should be grateful she doesn’t have to sleep next to a smelly old man anymore might take the cake, for me.

28. Don’t think I didn’t notice how thoroughly integrated the theme about losing or gaining connections to parents is to pretty much every plotline in this series. It’s not especially hidden, but it is often obscured by the other things surrounding those plots. So, y’know, I think it’s worth mentioning that they did a good job with that. 

29. Also, don’t think I didn’t notice that the guy who owns the cafe where Soon-shin works has a different pair of glasses on every time we see him. 

30 Also don’t think I didn’t notice how thoroughly my opinions of some of the ladies in the support cast changed after they slightly adjusted their hairstyles and made better wardrobe choices. Which…wait, maybe that says more about me than about the show. Hmm.

309A. No joke, though: Joon-ho’s ex-girlfriend goes from looking generically pretty to kinda hot to smoking hot over the course of the second half of the series, and all she did was trim her bangs and then grow her hair out a bit. (And she went from dressing like a discount rack biker to the most powerful trophy wife in existence, which did a lot, too, let’s not overlook that.)

30B. “Are you sure it was just the haircut and clothes, Daryl, and not how she also had a total turn into villainy?” I hear you say. And…I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about. 

31. Speaking of clothes, though, this is another show where people seem simultaneously to have no money but also no end to their wardrobe. I mean, at one point, Hottie-nee was getting changed into different outfits between scenes happening in the same couple of hours in her home! And how many of those striped t-shirts could Soon-shin possibly own that she never has the same one on?

32. Still speaking of clothes: there’s a scene where Sunny is wearing a see-through shirt with the Sacred Heart on it…and I don’t know how to feel about that.

33. I know the whole thing about Soon-shin being unattractive is supposed to be a bit of a put-on, not just because IU is maybe the prettiest girl in the world but because she’s supposed to have a kind of aura of misfortune surrounding her that would stop people from seeing how great she is, but there’s literally a moment where Joon-ho laments her having gotten a scratch on her “already ugly face,” and she looks up at him with the biggest Disney princess eyes…and I can’t imagine any aura bad enough to counter that. 

34. Whatever else I can say about this show, where else am I going to see a 75-year-old woman get into a cat fight?

35. >Soon-shin’s sisters show up at the cafe for the first time

      >idiot waiter sees them

      >DARYL: “Say how hot they are.”

      >idiot waiter says they’re hot

      >DARYL: “lol”

36. As much as I didn’t appreciate how much of the show is just people walking into rooms to ask the person in the room to meet them in another room for no sane reason, the rest of the show is people walking into rooms to talk to people who are already in the room talking to other people and then getting jealous that the other people are talking to them, and I loved every second of it. 

37. One of my favorite unintentionally hilarious moments of the show comes when Joon-ho’s ex-girlfriend asks her glamorous actress mentor why she has a DVD of one of her own movies out on the coffee table…when the glamorous actress mentor’s house is decorated almost exclusively with a rotating collection of professional photos of herself projected on all the walls. 

38. One of the other unintentionally hilarious moments (to me) is that so many very serious conversations happen in Soon-shin’s mother’s bedroom…which, because she sleeps on a futon instead of a bed, means everyone just sits on a totally empty floor as though it doesn’t look at all ridiculous on screen. 

39. This show did such a lazy job of covering up some logos on shirts, I took a picture of it and texted it to my family to show them. Like, there’s literally a New York Yankees logo with just a small duck sticker on part of it. It’s hilarious. 

39A. Though, in fairness, they also did this with a logo on the angry baker’s shirt, at one point, and they managed to make it look like it was just a fun pattern, so they could totally do something more than just a sticker or strip of tape, if they wanted. 

40. I’m not sure if this is a coincidence or deliberate, but, during the part of the story where Joon-ho tries to get over his crush on Soon-shin, the actor gets a haircut. Is it a take on the trope about the brokenhearted cutting their hair to symbolize their rejections, or did he just happen to get a haircut?

41. Oh, you know who else is really good, in this? The little girl playing Hottie-nee’s daughter. She doesn’t have a lot to do, and what she does mostly isn’t really anything too special—but she has one comedic moment she absolutely nails (her face when she sees the angry baker has moved into the spare room the family is renting out) and one dramatic moment that she knocks clean outta the park (when she screams at her father over the phone to never call her or her mother ever again because he abandoned them for some hussy).

41A. No, she’s not as good as the little girl actress in The Good Bad Mother, but we’re not talking about her, yet. Patience, seonbae. We’ll get there. 

42. Actually, wait—I almost forgot to mention that Hottie-nee gets to show off her acting chops, too, in one scene: when she finally gets pushed too far and vents that not everything that’s caused her problems is her ex-husband’s fault, she nails being simultaneously pained, distraught, and attempting to be okay. As she’s giving her speech, she lets sorrow creep in at very natural intervals and then fights it off as she keeps talking. She doesn’t have much chance to really stretch her acting legs, otherwise, but boy-howdy did she bring it in that scene.

43. There’s some kind of symbolism to no one ever removing his or her shoes when entering the glamorous old actress’s home, I just know it. 

44. I’m 95% sure the actor playing Joon-ho almost face-planted by accident when entering a scene in Episode 32, but he just kept going as though he hadn’t and it made the scene work even better because he doesn’t want to acknowledge how embarrassed he was by it in front of Soon-shin. Now, this could have been a deliberate (and kinda brilliant) choice on the part of the actor, but IU’s initial reaction is one of genuine concern and that little laugh of relief we give when we see someone avoid being hurt so I don’t think she was in on it, if that’s the case. Either way, it was good. 

45. I’m still mad at the show for the things it does with Joon-ho to slow the main romance subplot for dramatic effect. He acts totally out of character, and IT MADE IU SOON-SHIN CRY.

46. Because of how I was watching the show, most of the episodes were played in a low resolution…but every now and then an episode would come through in hi-def, and…I think IU might be the only one left unscathed by the jump to HD. I mean, I’m not knocking anyone’s looks, but…oof. HD soap opera camera lets you see all the pores, sweat, and unwanted facial grooves, and ain’t nobody perfect enough to survive that. (Except maybe IU. Probably because she’s part angel.)

47. Soon-shin and Joon-ho’s first kiss is a little bit awkward and silly (though only because it looks so realistic: she’s all unsure of what’s happening, and his face is all smooshed up and sincere), BUT…their first post-confession text messaging session was the cutest thing ever. They were both so very, very giddy. 

48. No, wait, I stand corrected: Soon-shin dressing like she’s a member of The Pipettes was the cutest thing ever. And I was so very, very giddy. 

48A. …The Pipettes are an early-2000s ‘60s style girl group from England. Go watch the video for “Your Kisses are Wasted on Me.” Or “Pull Shapes.” Or don’t—the point is that she’s looked adorable, is all. 

49. One of the characters becomes completely unraveled by the events of the series, and it’s actually done pretty well, considering how much of a melodrama the whole thing has been. There are quite a few genuinely solid writing moments throughout the series, and I’d say this is one of the better ones. 

50. In Shakespeare, the last character to speak is the one who sets the chaos of the story back into order, but I can’t figure out why the final moments of this show play out the way they do. You’d think they’d end with Soon-shin and Joon-ho. But no. And I cannot justify why. 

And there we have it: 50 episodes, 50 notes. Only took me eight pages. And…holy smokes, 10 hours?! S-Seriously?!

Um, well, regardless, this series was a pretty good time. I mean, it took a long time to get through, so I think it’s pretty clear that it had more than enough time to sort of cycle between being pretty good and kind of a drag, but the show was just as concerned with filling time as it was with telling a compelling story, so I suppose that’s to be expected. I don’t know that I’d really recommend it, but I can think of worse shows to sort of drift into and out of. 

…that said: IU. So, 10/10. 

Anyway. I’d like to tell you that The Good Bad Mother is next (because I have, in fact, finished it), but that’s not the case. Which I’ll get into a little bit more in my next letter. But fear not! You should have it gracing your eyeballs before the week is out!

I know, I know. It’s the best news you’ve heard all week.

But, then again, when is a letter from me not, right?

…you’re very quiet all of a sudden, Erin. 

—Daryl