29 June 2016

또 오해영 Oh Hae Young Again


Title: 또 오해영 Tto Oh Hae Young
English Title:
  • Another Oh Hae Young
  • Oh Hae Young Again
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean
Year: 2016
Episode: 18
Cast:
  • 서현진 Seo Hyun Jin
  • 전혜빈 Jun Hye Bin
  • 문정혁 Moon Jeong Hyuk (Eric Moon)
  • 김지석 Kim Ji Suk
  • 예지원 Ye Ji Won
  • 허정민 Heo Jung Min
  • 이재윤 Lee Jae Yoon
  • 김미경 Kim Mi Kyung
  • 하시은 Ha Si Eun
  • 권민 Kwon Min



SYNOPSIS
Oh Hae Young was about to get married the next day when her fiancé Han Tae Jin tells her out of the blue that he doesn't want to marry her anymore. Hae Young readily agrees to cancel the wedding, but she requests that they tell people she was the one who wanted to break things off so she can save her pride at least.

Hae Young even struggles at work, especially when her high school classmate who was also named Oh Hae Young became her superior at the office. Because they have the same name, people always compared the two, and she always came up lacking next to the pretty and smart Hae Young.

Hae Young's parents are fed up with all the embarrassment they have to deal with because of their daughter's careless ways of telling the neighborhood their private affairs, and they kick her out of the house. Hae Young moves into a small apartment, and her neighbor happens to be Park Do Kyung, the one stranger who she unburdened with her secret that she was dumped the day before her wedding.

It turns out that the pretty and smart Hae Young was Do Kyung's ex-fiancée, and she suddenly disappeared without a trace on the day of their wedding. When Do Kyung found out through the grapevine that an Oh Hae Young from his ex-girlfriend's high school was getting married, he assumed that it was the one who left him at the altar. He set about ruining the wedding by messing with the fiancé's business to make Hae Young miserable.

Do Kyung ended up ruining the life of a different Hae Young, and he keeps having these visions of the Hae Young he screwed over. Although he doesn't want to have anything to do with her, Do Kyung keeps running into her when she's in a vulnerable state...



REVIEW
Oh Hae Young Again is about two very different people with the same name whose lives are intertwined in so many ways. I haven't watched a lot of Korean dramas lately but I decided to give this one a shot because it seemed interesting, but I liked it less and less as it went on, to the point that I actually wish I didn't watch it at all.

Although I didn't expect to love the characters, I thought I'd understand them at the very least. I certainly didn't think I'd get very frustrated with most of the characters, that's for sure.

Since there are two women named Oh Hae Young, people who know them gave them nicknames like 'dirt Hae Young' and 'pretty Hae Young' to tell them apart. I don't really want to use these nicknames, but it's easier if I do for review purposes.

I thought I'd like the so-called 'dirt Hae Young', but the more I know about her, the less I like her. I don't understand her tendency to overshare private matters to strangers, especially when she seems to be aware that her parents are concerned about how other people will perceive their family.

For someone who's supposedly gone through a terrible phase of being a social outcast, Hae Young seems extremely careless about expressing her opinions about other people's shortcomings. I understand how it's sometimes necessary to be critical of superiors, but she shares her views to her colleagues who couldn't really do anything to address her criticisms. I think I'd look at her tendency to be outspoken and honest more favorably, if she's being that way to the concerned individuals and not to third parties.

This Hae Young is aware that it's not anyone's fault that her name is so common, and she seems to accept the fact that it's not her fault that she's not extraordinarily pretty and smart. But she seems to take it against the other Hae Young for having the same name, and for being beautiful, intelligent, and popular. I don't get why it's okay for her to hate the other person, but she doesn't hold their classmates who made those stupid comparisons accountable for their awful nicknames and rude behavior.

I had a hard time liking Park Do Kyung right from the start although he seemed to be such a sweetheart, because he resolutely went about ruining another person to get revenge on some woman who screwed him over. I can't really forgive him for this mistake, because it's such a calculated action on his part, and he certainly wanted bad things to happen to other people.

I don't want to make excuses for Do Kyung like he just wanted to ruin someone financially but not enough for him to go to jail, or that he just wants someone to suffer but not so much. Although he has no control over the repercussions of his actions, he should be aware enough that the outcomes may be much worse than he had anticipated.

I wanted to give the professed 'pretty Hae Young' the benefit of the doubt, and I wanted to believe that she's a good person. But looking at her interactions with other people, she seems to be quite aware of social situations, which makes her candid actions and innocent words more treacherous. She seems to be uncaring about how she's hurting other people at best, and she seems intent on hurting some people while not obviously doing so at worst.

Park Soo Kyung is an eccentric individual, but she seemed like an upright person. It was such a disappointment that when she got pregnant after a drunken one-night-stand with Lee Jin Sang, she seems to be manipulating him to be responsible for her as a husband and for their baby as a father. It feels like she's aware that forcing Jin Sang to marry her will make him run away, but pushing him out of her life will make him want to stay.

The characters in Oh Hae Young Again have such a convoluted equation, that it's impossible for Do Kyung and Hae Young to even be together if they are real people. They just have a really complicated relationship, it doesn't seem that a future between them is even possible.




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또 오해영 Oh Hae Young Again