Letter #166: B**** x Rich 2

Good morning, Erin.

You will never believe the journey I’ve been on since my last letter.

I mean, it’s quite boring, as far as journeys go, which I know you will find very easy to believe. But the material of the journey itself should surprise you.

I’ve gotten into Linux.

Yes, the operating system for computers. Not super-duper deeply, but…enough that I could reasonably be called a burgeoning hobbyist. Which I would never have expected. 

I will spare you the exact stages of how this happened, but suffice it to say that I got very, very curious about what it is and how it works and the story behind it—and I was particularly interested in how it could be applied. 

The long and the short of it is (at least, as far as this introduction is concerned)...I brought my mother’s old desktop computer back to life by installing Linux. The damn this was a total lemon FROM THE DAY SHE OPENED THE BOX—and now it runs like new. Total resurrection and overhaul. And all it took was replacing the operating system. 

But…what about B**** x Rich 2? Do we have another resurrection? Or is this just one more cog in the disaster machine that has been my recent K-drama experience?

1. I’m going to be very honest with you: I remember almost nothing about the first season of this series. Like, I thought I remembered it pretty well, but I noticed pretty quickly that I, in fact, did not. 

1A. Like, I remembered that the main girl was standing outside the school on two separate occasions when a girl plummeted to her death in the middle of the night. I remember that the second male lead was quite charming. And I remember that the lead actresses were hot. As in, they had some very steamy chemistry—whether it was intended to be that way or not. (...and also that the girls, individually, are quite good looking.) Which turned out to not be quite enough. 

1B. …of course, they recast a bunch of characters and swapped some characters out for totally new ones, so I was screwed either way, in that regard. I mean, even the main girl changed her hairstyle, Erin—I feel personally attacked.

1C. Even the building looked like it could have been different. Was it? I have no idea. But it could have been, from all the previously nonexistent angles of the school we got. 

2. But was it good? Um…eh. It’s about the same as S1: it should mostly keep your interest, but the script leaves a lot to be desired. Again, it feels like it should be a YouTube series, from the talent of the cast to the quality of the writing to the use of whatever locations they could find as stand-ins for places they couldn’t get access to. So, broadly, it’s a “did you like the first one?” kind of rating. I enjoyed it well enough, and, yes, I will happily watch the potential third season they set up. But it’s nothing to write home about. (I mean, yes, I’m writing to you about it, but…I’m a crazy person.)

3. One of my favorite things about the rich kids who make up the student body at this school is their incessant need to treat Hye-in (the main girl who is poor and there ostensibly on a scholarship) horribly—when they all believe she killed two of their classmates. Apparently classism is a stronger biological imperative for them than survival.

3A. There is literally a moment where she looks at her bullies and says she’ll kill them…and their response is to laugh at her. “LOL, she thinks we’re scared that she’s a murderer!” I just…wow.

3B. Now, in fairness to the bullies, they all believe she killed two people by tossing them off the roof of the school, so basic pattern recognition would imply that staying away from the roof of the building is the surest way for them to be safe from harm. But…still. Kind of odd that they wouldn’t think she could adapt. (Then again, I’m not rich.)

4. I do appreciate that the show tries to hit every single absurd rich-teens-melodrama cliche it can. You know I love a cliche.

5. There is a wonderful trio of background girls whom the show employs wonderfully as hole-pluggers for the plot when they gossip amongst themselves. I have no idea if they’re new for the season or holdovers, but I liked them a lot. 

6. There’s a lot of Vincenzo-esque flashing back to how what’s been playing out on screen was all part of the protagonists’ plans all along, and it just DOES NOT work. (Again, whether it worked for everyone when it was done in Vincenzo is probably more up for debate than I’d personally think it should be, but what worked there was that both the catharsis of the actions and the tone of the show often covered for how often (and how ridiculously) this method was employed.) Nothing about the feel of the show or the types of characters we’ve been following puts you in mind of this kind of storytelling.

6A. Expedient, though. Which is maybe unsurprising, considering the show feels like it was written to be twice as long and then forcibly halved. (See also: the trio of background girls and their gossip.) I mean, it still doesn’t work, but…

7. Relatedly: my favorite “big brain” move of the season comes from Hye-in, who decides to blackmail the chairman of the school by claiming that he tried to rape her—immediately after he has called security to have her removed from his office. 

8. …which, as stupid as this was, is actually a great example of this show being infinitely better than the various prestige thrillers I recently could not stand to finish. Whatever else I can say about the writing, the one thing this show undeniably does well is writing its characters as people. They all make choices—good and bad—of their own volition, for their own reasons. No one is given a pass for selfishness, immorality, vanity, or wickedness. There is no transfer of responsibility onto society or circumstances or some other nebulous externality. Yes, this rinkydink show technically has better character writing than many modern Netflix-money thrillers with their big-name directors and big-name actors. 

9. To wit: the ultimate villain(s) of the season gains access to what is obviously a very rape-y video a boy took of Hye-in in Season 1 and IMMEDIATELY decides to use it as leverage to protect against being outed for murder.

9A. …wait, we don’t care about spoilers, right? You’re not going to watch this show. Spoilers ahead!

9B. I’m talking about Yul-hee, one of Je-na’s similarly elitist friends (...are they friends? They spent most of this season at odds with each other, so I can’t remember if they were friends in S1) and her boyfriend. These two killers are horrible people who do horrible things for selfish reasons. And it’s nice to see, honestly. 

10. Also: Yul-hee is really good. Like, the actress is probably the only one who does a genuinely good job. I don’t think she has particularly more to do or particularly better writing than the others, but she was really good. It’s too bad she won’t be in Season 3.

11. Oh, the very end absolutely sets up a Season 3: Je-na basically shows Hye-in the briefcase from Pulp Fiction as a way to blackmail her into working at Je-na’s conglomerate as a spy or something. (Well, she wrote something on a napkin, I think, and showed it to Hye-in, who looked like she’d just been shown something quite threatening…or an absurd amount of money she’d get paid. It was a reasonably ambiguous face she made.) It was strange and unnecessary, and I am totally down for it. More Je-na x Hye-in!

12. Relatedly: they had the gall to keep Je-na and Hye-in mostly apart from each other, this season. Or, if not more apart than in S1, more apart than they should have, considering how much chemistry the two have with each other. I know they didn’t become besties by the end of S1 so much as allies of circumstance, but…big handicap not letting them spark on screen.

12A. Like, there’s a scene in Episode 3 where Hye-in and Je-na get coffee together from the school cafeteria, which  I don’t think makes any sense for them to do at that point in the story (like, in terms of their friendship status), but I did not care, because it was an excuse to see them on screen together.

12B. I mean, Je-na even has this whole fiance romance subplot all season. Like, what the hell? 

12C. Daryl, circa Episode 8: “I really don’t like seeing these two togeth—stop smiling at him!!!”

13. …oh—Yeri is hot, by the way. I know I was on the fence in my S1 letter, which I’m sure has been bothering you for two years, but…hot. Final answer. (Bad actress. But very pretty.)

14. The undoubtedly worst part about Season 2 is that they could not get #bestboy from Season 1 back. I don’t know what the reason could have been. But he was easily the best part of S1, and his absence was felt, believe me. 

14A. And they didn’t even have the decency to just recast the character. Instead, they replaced him with his little brother—who took up the mantle in every way he could: he had the same opinion, the same desire to help Hye-in, and the same romance subplot. Just…have someone else play the same character! What is this nonsense?!

15. One of the best bits of writing in the show was maybe done by mistake—but I still liked it, mostly: after Je-na donates a bunch of her own money to the school to make Hye-in become one of the most elite members of the student body (just go with it), she gets revenge on the boy who bullied her the most by utterly humiliating him in front of everyone at the school—and it is pretty darn rad. Except that it’s sort of softened by the fact that she did it to stop him from tormenting someone else, and she gets very upset about how much she enjoyed lording over this guy, tasting not just revenge but the sweet air of superiority that comes from being one of the elite for the first time in her life. Except no, that’s not what it was, because she then immediately goes on an absurd shopping spree, because she has a special credit card the school issues to its elite students. So, I don’t know that the show knows whether it wanted Hye-in to be well-intentioned, power-mad, or conflicted. But, at least at the start, it was quite cathartic seeing her cleverly put the screws to that jerk. 

16. Great use of Truck-kun, by the way.

17. My favorite moment of the season was probably when Je-na struts into the big party in Episode 4: a massive spotlight inexplicably appears to signal that she’s walking into the room. It’s so wonderfully stupid. I wish the show had leaned ever harder into this kind of stuff. No explanation, just bonkers nonsense. I loved it.

And that, I think, is all I have on B**** x Rich 2. Not-very-good nonsense. But I’d happily watch more of it. (Please let there be more of it. (And, like, not after three years, again.))

And that’s also officially the end of Phase V.

Why is this the end and not my letter about the shows I dropped and the ending of the thematic blocs? Well, because B**** x Rich 2 was supposed to be part of my yuri arc, so it feels better to at least end on a nod to one of the planned projects from this Phase. And we’ll start Phase VI with something big, I promise. 

But, until then, I hope you’ve managed to make it through all this, um, interesting weather we’ve been having. And will probably continue to have for the rest of the winter. (That’s what we get for years of very mild seasons: it all comes out at once.) I’m no fan of the warmer weather, but…we can stop this, now. I think we’re good.

…

More soon.

—Daryl

P.S. - Fun fact: I wrote this letter on that resurrected computer I told you about a the start of this letter! And with the brand new, very nice mechanical keyboard I bought myself for my birthday. 

P.P.S. - Also: I am getting into keyboards, now. It’s, uh…it’s been strange last couple of months, seonbae.