A brief encounter with Dae Hyun, our saintly male lead, prompts orphan Jung Saet Byul (who is currently raising her younger sister) to fall in love. He goes on with his day, but she is smitten for life. Fast forward 3 years and she goes to work for him at his convenience store. While people of her status are overlooked by the world, she manages to distinguish herself with her hard work and intelligence. She, °inconveniently, puts the hook-kick to his love life, however, through a series of misunderstandings and other blocks. There is no mistaken understanding when it comes to her, though: She's marked him for clearance; /her clearance to purchase him/ that is.
Rated 7.6 on MDL, BSR is much like unexpired convenience store fare - edible, somewhat good, but not very good. It degrades from being pleasant to being a bit of a chore in the last third. Knowing what I now know, would I go back and watch it again for the first time? That's almost a coin flipper. My answer is "no", but many people will enjoy watching this show - for good reason. Everyone is entitled to h/h form of wind-down entertainment, and BSR has obviously done the job for many viewers who have received it well. There are gems tucked away like Korean beef and fresh green onion in the 🍲. They have plenty of good ingredients, but they didn't incorporate them well. Just go into it with your eyes open(ha!). If your enjoyment level starts declining, know that it doesn't get better later. It fizzles and flattens.
Let's talk about the fizzle first. They have fun with the girl fights. There's flying kicks & flying bodies all over the place. They even do the Matrix Reloaded burst-out-of-the-pile-up. They have animation overlay to show eyes with hearts or to bleep out some language. All of it's cute and fun. I was thrilled with the first couple episodes.
They lay out clear character contrast in the opening shots of ep1. She's leading a gang brawl. He's saving a 🐈. (Gimme the perfect combo, indeed!) Sadly, he doesn't notice her for 2/3 of the show. Forget her, /I/ was frustrated! Most viewers want to see him take notice in little ways early on - let's get those 🌭 on the warming rollers! It takes a while for them to get toasty, right? It's a pity that all we see is his pity, or his overlooking her. Very gradually, they bond - soon the two communicate naturally by intricate hand ✌🏽👐🏼 signals. Nobody else can understand, but they somehow do. It's one of the cutest things about the show.
There's a handful of excellent scenes... brilliant really. "Let me go through the expired goods," she says, when the girlfriend walks in the store. He goes to a college reunion and everyone is practically dressed in monotone. They look a boring bunch. He has the most color in a pale green sweater, which could signify that he's still green. He's still a bit naive. She doesn't have a HS diploma, but she is not green. She loves green things and 💐, though. Our FL knows the meaning of every flower. I loved it and it makes me want to learn more of them.
We will see each female lead have a talk with the other that leads to a situational change. It's skillful mirroring. Kdrams love the 💘 🔺. (It's not a love triangle if a third party is interested in one of them, but they only have eyes for eachother, is it?) There's some truly funny moments that are muted, slightly, by other clumsy humor attempts that fail. The closing of episode 12 is fresh - stunning, even.
The best thing about BSR is Kim Yoo Jung playing Jung Saet Byul. She's gorgeous. Her smile is brighter than 🌞. If she went past the freezers she could "melt all that stuff". Also, she can wear tan or white and look good, which shouldn't be allowed - I hate her, lol. Her friends are likable, as is the ML's BFF. The secondary romance is painfully goofy at times, but overall I enjoyed that couple more. Kim Sun Young as Kong Boon Hee, Dae Hyun's mother, is a blast. She commands the screen. Watching her makes me happy. I suppose I'm a true fan.
As for every other character... yuck. His father is contemptible. I want to strangle him every time he's on screen. It's not okay to be that lazy and irresponsible. They get offended when somebody hurts dad's pride. He deserves so much more than hurt feelings! What °pride? ...Pride in what? Breathing? Dae Hyun. He's the ultimate good guy, but they fail to sell "everybody's doormat " as a romantic lead. He is in a current day relationship with a woman when the show begins, and it's a mostly positive relationship; at least, his GF is not the cartoonish villain that they'll often show in romcoms, which is appreciated. He's a wonderful human being, but he's missing sex appeal. He's too wimpy! Ji Chang Wook plays Choi Dae Hyun. He plays a similarly nervous guy who is upended by a woman, in Lovestruck In The City, which is far better than BSR. He's great in K2. It's not the actor's fault, it's how they wrote and directed him.
Our leads' °besties° have instant 🎇. Their relationship is easily more fun than the primary romance. "If I had love in My heart, I'd want the expiration date to be ten thousand years away." "Just call me ten thousand years." Yep, that's how GMO the dialog can get in the show. To be fair, that's between a pair that is comic relief, and they say a lot of very slurpy things. It's almost slapstick, but hey, they're fun. The director tries to wedge in a little too much nonsense, so the eyes will roll at times.
BSR becomes a bit of a slog to stick with it as the episodes roll on. Despite many nice touches like animation overlay, snappy cutting, and pauses that enhance, they don't have enough content to fill more than 10eps competently. Most of the characters are not relatable enough to truly draw the viewer in, and many of the plot drivers and vignettes are boring. Unfortunately, after the initial taste sensation, the expiration date is met long before the episodes expire.
〰🖍 IMHO
🎬72 📝57 🎭70 💓60 🦋40 🌞60 🎨45 ⚡ 🎵/🔊70 😅43 😭20 😱30 😯45 🤔40 💤40 🔚75
Age 13+ The show is tame. No language cautions. They touch on eroticism via the friend's webtoon. Fighting.
Re-📺? Never
{BTW, our ML is BFF with a guy that actually has a tan! Eum Moon Suk plays
Han Dal Shik (Dae Hyun's best friend). He looks so much like a friend of mine (who happens to be Hispanic) that I could only smile and smh every time he appeared on screen. I never plan to go down a 🐇 ⚫, but here we go: When you watch East Asian dramas you would think everybody there is paler than Tom Brady, which is tedious. East Asia's multi-millenia love of pale skin is connected to wealth & status. Field workers are tanned by the sun while the wealthy have a cave-dweller-like vitamin-D deficiency. We will hear Dae Hyun's family talk about their pride more than twice, and that is what it's all about. I am in love with 🌏Asian entertainment. I hesitate (or voice qualifiers) before recommending it to my African American friends and family, though, because it's as colorless as the show Friends. People insist on judging people based on things for which we have no control. Is anything more meaningless than a person's looks? Nobody has a choice of parentage or their skin color, so what is there to judge? Furthermore, much of history has been bleached. Early pictorials of Jesus showed a milk-chocolate skin tone until racism gripped the middle ages. Bible scholars will tell you that there aren't any white people in the Bible, except perhaps, some tangential bad actors. (In Poland they never adopted the Caucasian Jesus and kept the old paintings). The legend of the leprechaun was probably based on real-life Africans visiting Europe with gold. Africa was loaded with gold in ancient times, and there were Africans that navigated the world in canoes with gifts and exotic animals. They were masters at reading the sea currents, or the superhighways of the sea. The legend degraded over time to what we see now. That's two examples from a whole universe most people didn't know existed, Other than the good old vices of pride and prejudice, I cannot tell you why our 🌍 history has been color-lifted, but it is a fact. So, if we point at 🌏, three fingers are pointing back at 🌎. The result is that we remain divided. We should challenge them to diversify more, but also be patient with Asia. We all have deficiencies to work on. I am respectfully and patiently calling them out on this tired old mindset. Let's not start on the way they beat up on orphans...}
In order of ~lite&trite~ to ~heavy&serious~ you may also like:
Reformed by Love:
Crazy Love-7.8,
My First First Love-8,
Boys Over Flowers-8 ~ melodrama to the max,
The Legend of the Blue Sea-7.2 (But for eps 20 &21 it's an 8+)
Oh My Venus-7.4K,
Call It Love-8.4,
That Winter, The Wind Blows-7,
Itaewon Class-8.9,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,
SKY Castle-9,
My Mister 9.5,
Out of Reach love:
A Love So Beautiful-7,
99 days with the Superstar-7,
Crash Landing On You 9.1,
Oh My Ghost 10,
Love Struck in the City 7.3,
Something in the Rain-8.6,
Romance junkies only -
My Secret Romance-7 (if you ff thru overdone flashbacks),
The Bride of Habaek-7,
Heirs-7.3,
C🇨🇳: Well-Intended Love-7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine,
When I Fly Towards You-7.8,
Wait, My Youth-8.4,
A Little Thing Called First Love-8.5,
Find Yourself-8.9,
Hidden Love-7.8
Consider a 🇨🇳Chinese 🎎/🔮 fantasyfeature: The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8, Love Between Fairy and Devil 8.9, Love and Redemption 10 or 🇯🇵Japanese romcoms: Maid Sama 10, Mischievous Kiss Love in Tokyo 7.8, Love, Chunibyo And Other Delusions 8.4, or Toradora 8.5.
