Letter #119: Dreaming of a Freaking Fairytale

Good morning, Erin.

Y’know, I was excited to see that IU reunited with You’re the Best co-star Jo Jung-suk for an interview on her YouTube channel…but I’d be lying if I said this was the reunion I got the most excited for this week—because I just found out that the Pop Star and the Pop Star’s Ex from Transit Love 3 got back together! I knew those crazy kids would find their way back to each other. 

Does that mean I’m not still a little frowny over how he picked My Girl—like I wanted him to—even though he was clearly not feeling it at the time he made his final decision? Of course not. BUT…this double-confirms that she’s single, which is great news for me. Who is also single. And, sure, will probably never meet her nor impress her, if I do. But there’s still a non-zero chance that it could happen, which is the best bet I’ve got! 

Then again, maybe I should just finagle a new job at a place frequented by hot, young, rich singles looking to slum it with verbose anime nerds. 

…not unlike the heroine in Dreaming of a Freaking Fairy Tale, which, as luck may have it, is the show we’re going to talk about today! What excellent timing!

So, grab your glass slippers and perk an ear for the sonorous opining of the omniscient narrator, Erin, because we’ve got some bibbidi-bobbidi to boo! 

1. …because this story is overtly and deliberately structured to parallel Cinderella. Like, even within the story, that’s literally what our protagonist is trying to do for herself: get that magical Cinderella ending. In case you weren’t aware. ‘Cus I have no idea if this show made any kind of splash or not.

2. That said, I had a really good time with the series. It certainly has its flaws, and I don’t think it’s going to be anyone’s favorite show, but I’d definitely say it’s worth watching. (And it’s a quick series, which makes it even easier to recommend.)

2A. To wit: I started it just to make sure that the first episode worked properly…but then sort of didn’t stop watching. It’s one of those shows. 

2B. …even though the first couple of episodes are a bit of a mess and didn’t really hook me in.

2C. …except Episode 2 eventually introduces both the romance storyline proper AND my absolute favorite thing in the entire series, which is Dan-a, which we are absolutely going to talk about (for what will be very obvious reasons). And I was soooooooo in after that.

3. Speaking of obvious reasons—here’s the list of folks I recognized:

• Other Secretary Kim from What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim? as Jae-rim (our “Cinderella”)

• the main guy from May I Help You? as Cha-min (our “Prince Charming”)

• Young Stewardess Bully from The Glory as Dan-a, Cha-min’s 

• Woo-ju’s mom from Frankly Speaking as Jae-rim’s “evil step-mother”

• the main host lady from Change Days as a fortune teller

• the spoiled bratty influencer from Celebrity as Ri-na, Dan-a’s spoiled bratty friend(?)

• Ha-bin from Single’s Inferno 3 as the second male lead’s brother

4. So, #bestgirl is 1000% Dan-a—and it’s not just because she’s played by Song Ji-woo, who I’ve repeatedly referred to as being “that pretty girl from that thing I just watched!” (because of how she keeps popping up in things), even stealing my heart when she was essentially just a student ID photo in Extraordinary You. Or, well, I’m sure it plays some role in her being #bestgirl, but the main reason is because she’s totally ridiculous and an absolute b****…and you know that’s very much my type. From her first moment on screen (which is just a shot of her ludicrous nigh-Victorian dress and ornamental handheld fan), I knew she was going to be everything I could want, and I was not disappointed. She is equal parts brat, loon, romantic, and villain, and I loved every single moment she was on screen. (No, seriously: each of her on-screen appearances is marked by an “OH MY GOD I LOVE DAN-A” in my notes.) I thought she was hilarious and charming—well, charming by my metrics—and the actress absolutely killed it. There’s a lot of good stuff in this show, but nothing quite hit the high that was Dan-a. 

4A. Also, Song Ji-woo gets to smile, in this one, which isn’t something she often gets to do in the roles I’ve seen her play. She seems to be specializing in deadpan and/or mean characters, at the moment—which, hey, I’m clearly not going to complain about—but it’s nice to see her look happy, too. 

4B. …hang on, surely she smiles in Welcome to Waikiki 2. Lemme just hop back over to the—yup, there she is. It’s fleeting, but it slips in every now and then. 

4C. Um, sorry, we were talking about Dreaming of a Freaking Fairy Tale.

5. The opening of the series is a sort of animation of flipping through the pages of a book called “The New Cinderella,” which is a reference to the idea that the show is going to be playing off of Cinderella, of course, but the book itself is just a hodgepodge of excerpts from different fairy tales. But, impressively, it’s all in English, and all the sentences are real and make sense. Which maybe they did by using pages from actual English-language fairy tale books. Which would be a little less impressive. But it would probably explain why one of the pages is an advertisement for purchasing the book. 

6. To help with the “fairy tale” motif, the show has a narrator who chimes in frequently to either expand on some backstory or comment on what’s playing out in front of us. And it’s awful. Exclusively. 

7. Taken as a whole, this show is actually quite well written, particularly regarding Jae-rim and particularly when she’s being snippy. She rarely does what’s expected of her—both in-universe and as a K-drama protagonist—and she almost always steers into whatever confrontations she finds herself in, to the story’s benefit because the result is always great. (Does it sometimes lend itself to sort of an “and then everyone clapped” vibe? Possibly. But I didn’t write it down, which means I didn’t notice it!)

8. Speaking of Jae-rim: really, really solid performance, from the comedic beats to her core selfishness to the romantic stuff to the surprisingly sexy stuff—just an all-around notable job from…uh…from [quickly asks the google machine] Pyo Ye-jin. I was surprised. I probably shouldn’t have been, considering my notes from Secretary Kim tell me that I quite enjoyed her on that show, but I didn’t expect her to be able to so successfully carry a show. And so much more the fool am I. 

8A. See, ‘cus I watched the show because I saw Song Ji-woo was one of the leads, so I didn’t even know that Pyo Ye-jin was going to be in it. And when I saw she was playing the protagonist, I immediately wondered if she would be able to lead a show. Answer: yes. Very much yes. And now I’d like to see what she can do with a slightly better script. 

8B. Also, when I mentioned “surprisingly sexy stuff,” I didn’t mean to imply that she, like, had any racy scenes or anything, just that there were a handful of occasions when she had to play a version of her persona that was sexy or sultry or seductive—and, though these are not terms I would jump to immediately when describing her general look…girl can clearly be hot when she wants to. Which, again, took me quite by surprise. 

9. They do a couple of product placement segments for some pizza franchise, and they are the most “commercial”-looking scenes I’ve ever seen in one of these shows. Absolutely loved it. 

10. The “meet cute” for Jae-rim and Cha-min is kind of great—if you ignore that the physics of it should have sent the two of them careening down a flight of stairs to their deaths. 

11. I don’t know what it is about this show in particular, but the actress playing Jae-rim’s step-mom seemed a lot taller on Frankly Speaking and Goodbye Earth than she does here. She’s tiny in this! 

12. Relatedly: I have questions about how old she’s supposed to be. She has a daughter who is a full-on doctor. But she’s also pregnant.

13. I mentioned that the first couple of episodes were a bit of a mess, and this was mostly down to the execution of the script (and the script, if I’m honest). The concept was solid enough, but it was shot/edited and performed like a web drama: everything was overdone, like when you try to sell a bad joke by exaggerating the delivery of the punchline. It mostly stops being an issue in the middle of Episode 2 with a pretty great comedic scene involving Cha-min’s desire to not think Jae-rim is hot, but it’s not the easiest ride to get to that point. 

14. Oh—Cha-min’s pretty good, too, by the way. He’s not written as well as Jae-rim, but the actor makes it work, landing his comedic beats and selling the pathos of his otherwise ridiculous personal story. Plus the chemistry between the leads was quite good, which is a big help. They can charm their way through some pretty mediocre material, as long as they’re together.

14A. Speaking of: when the smooching starts up…well, he really goes for it. She, um, doesn’t. Or maybe that’s just what it looks like when you’re just content to receive the intense kissing. Either way, they were not going at the same levels. 

15. The second male lead, though, was awful. The character was boring and useless, and the actor didn’t bring anything to the role, either. 

16. …and I still can’t get over that his brother is played by Ha-bin from SI3. It was just so weird. I mean, his performance was fine, but…it was just so weird. 

17. My favorite subtitle of the series: “20 years ago from now.” Because that is not how to say that.

18. Given how often Cha-min says things in English, I thought it was a missed opportunity that they didn’t have Jae-min not understand English and grow increasingly annoyed with him for continuing to do it despite her wanting him not to. Or maybe I’m the only one who would have found that running gag amusing.

19. Speaking of running gags…well, actually, this isn’t a running gag: I spent most of the season hoping something they mentioned early on would come back as a comedic payoff—and it totally does in Episode 8, to my absolute delight. Did anyone else remember it? Dunno. But it was exactly what I wanted. 

20. Speaking of remember things from early on, though: when Cha-min is hanging out with some other chaebols (who never appear again because they’re just here for exposition) in Episode 1, one of them mentions that a girl slapping a rich guy like in a cliche romance drama is pretty much game over for the guys, that he’ll be smitten from then onwards. In Episode 4, Cha-min is slapped, and it very much does no such thing. I mention this only because I don’t know if the show meant for me to connect those two moments or not. 

21. One of my 100 favorite Dan-a moments is when she barks like an angry chihuahua when she can’t come up with a retort for being asked to leave. 

22. I’m pretty sure the show literally steals the main riff from “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” (from Disney’s Cinderella) for the background music for the step-sister’s big scene at the hospital. 

23. Another one of my 100 favorite Dan-a moments is the mantra she recites to calm herself—which is just a long list of designer brands. (Sidebar: her pronunciation was excellent!)

24. Y’know who else was good? Jae-rim’s best friend. She’s not in it much, but she has one big scene with Cha-min that is terrific, and it’s all down to her comedic performance. Her subtle change in tone over the course of the scene is incredibly funny, and I hope I’m not the only one who appreciated it. 

25. A big strike against the series is that none of the characters apart from Jae-rim(?) seem to like mint chocolate chip ice cream. Which is just wrong. 

26. I had no idea what the internal timeline for the series was. Like, every now and then, something would crop up to sort of ground us in time relative to prior events, and I would be shocked every time.

27. I don’t think I mentioned that I loved every second of Dan-a’s bratty friend showing up to be a total b**** to people, but I did. I’ve only seen this actress twice, playing exactly this character trait both times. And she is so good at it. 

27A. “And how much of this has to do with you thinking she’s really pret—”

THERE’S NO TIME, ERIN!

28. I was going to close this out with, like, five other of my favorite things about Dan-a, but suffice to say that I literally clapped and threw my head back in glee every single time she appeared on screen. Ugh, she’s so great. 

And we’ll end it there. On the best note.

But, yeah, check it out, if you feel like it. It’s a good time. 

Next up is…a surprise—with a surprising connection to this show. 

No, it’s not Sweet Home 3. I’ve started it, of course, but there’s a little way to go between here and there, seonbae. Maybe a little-little way. Or maybe a lot-little way. It’s hard to say.

But we’ll get there. Promise.

More soon.

—Daryl