Daebak K-Rambles

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Re-watch value: 0 out of 5 stars

SYNOPSIS

*From DramaList*

The story of a man who became a neurosurgeon though he dreamed of becoming a cook, and a woman who became a cook because of him. Lee Kang is a neurosurgeon, who once dreamed of becoming a chef. As a child, Moon Cha Young once met Lee Kang at a small restaurant in the seaside town. There, Lee Kang cooked and gave her a meal, which in part inspired her to become a world-famous chef. Many years later, the two meet again at a hospice ward and together they heal their own emotional scars by preparing meals for the patients there.

RAMBLING

*beware of spoilers*

Chocolate is a melodrama, and it reminded me so much of Just Between Lovers (another melodrama surrounding a tragic department store collapse). It stars Ha Ji-won, from Secret Garden and King2Hearts (if you haven’t watched these, get to steppin’), among other dramas. She did a fine job on this show; nothing to write home about. Her male lead is played by Yoo Kye-sang, whom I’d not seen before, and her brother is played by Min Jin-woong, who was unrecognizable. He played such an outlandish, unruly younger brother that I didn’t remember him playing Secretary Hoon in Memories of the Alhambra!

Chocolate is a slow burn, very conveniently filling up the spaces in between family politics and budding romance with vignettes of terminal patients in their final days at the hospice. (This aspect reminded me of Miss Hammurabi, which did the same with the victims and defendants involved in the judges’ court cases.) Some patients’ stories were compelling, but most of them weren’t.

The food Cha-young made coincided with the terminal patient’s last meal:

• Lee Kang’s best friend Min-sung -> He wanted Cha-young’s dumpling soup

• Haraboji that got abandoned by his kids at a Chinese restaurant -> He wanted Jajangmyeon

• Halmoni that had a love-hate relationship with her husband’s mistress -> She wanted wild raspberry rice cake

• Little boy Ji-yong -> Cha-young made him a chocolate cake in the shape of a spaceship

• Michael, the sickly teenager that was given up for adoption -> He wanted his Korean birth mother’s kimchi stew with pine mushrooms

I’m on the fence about calling all these vignette stories a waste of time, although they contributed in making Lee Kang a better, more compassionate doctor who wasn’t so focused on taking over the company.

It was a preachy message, however. Live every day as if it is your last. Cha-young’s brother says this in the last episode: “The day you wasted today is the tomorrow that someone who died yesterday so badly wished for.” Did I waste 16 hours watching this show? ….

The show delved into a volatile family headed up by a powerful matriarch grandmother. She held the keys to their small kingdom of hospitals and medical facilities, like the hospice. The halmoni visits Lee Kang and his mother at their seaside restaurant, a heated fight breaks out between Lee Kang and his older cousin Lee Jun, and Kang’s mother makes the difficult decision to move to Seoul so the boys can literally spend the rest of their formative years competing against one another to become their halmoni’s favorite to inherit the medical menagerie.

With Lee Jun harassing an innocent neighborhood dog and throwing a rock at Lee Kang’s head, I thought the older cousin was just going to be a rotten adult, evil to the core. Who messes with a sickly dog and stones their younger cousin whom they’ve known all of 5 minutes?! The show does a curious 180 on the typical evil counterpart trope—Lee Jun grows up to be… good? He’s certainly competitive, at the behest of his cruel mother and halmoni, but he understands that his family is wrong, and he’s so righteous that he throws a hissy fit any time his parents use underhanded techniques to win small battles against Lee Kang. Jun seems to pity and have sympathy for his cousin Kang who lost his mother not long after coming to Seoul in that horrific building collapse. I loved that Jun was never beyond redemption and never malicious. He screamed at his dad for sending Kang on assignment to the dangerous Libya; he secretly visited Kang in Libya while he was in his coma; he the list goes on.

The boys certainly didn’t grow up liking each other, but in the end, they didn’t know what they were fighting for. Neither of them had any innate passion for managing the hospital empire their grandmother and Lee Jun’s mother built over so many years. They were dueling for a crown they had no interest in wearing. I adored how Jun just reverted to his more creative side and wanted to become a pottery maker; Kang, no longer able to perform neurosurgery, was appreciative and content to help usher patients on their way to death.

The twist that Lee Jun’s father wasn’t a legitimate child wasn’t much of a twist to me. It probably could have just been left out altogether considering the story arc of the cousins.

The only twist that truly made me gasp was when Kang was looking after Lee Jun’s first love. He visits her surgeon, a pissy lady with short hair, and grills her on Kim Hee-ju’s procedures and why she wasn’t given the necessary follow-up surgery to effectively save her life. The doctor taunts “Are you saying I’m an incompetent doctor?” And Lee Kang quips back “No, I’m saying it’s accessory to murder.” WHAT THE FUCK?! The twist = Hee-ju’s angelic husband actually conspired to kill her with the help of his mistress, who was the accomplice surgeon. Bravo. You got me with that one.

The show touches on PTSD, which Cha-young exhibits a severe case that makes her pass out, especially every year on her birthday. The show covers the theme of abandonment, with mothers abandoning their children and children abandoning their parents. It even covers Alzheimer’s disease in a very inaccurate way. None of these turned out very persuasive to me.

Can someone please explain to me how QUIZNOS is now the peak of cuisine?? Quiznos is coming straight for that Subway spot in K-dramas. It’s maddening but here we are.