Freitag, 10. Juni 2016

Unemployed Romance

실업급여 로맨스 (Unemployed Romance) is a South Korean drama series that was aired from October 5th to December 07th 2013 on E Channel every Saturday. The drama therefore consists of 10 episodes.

Story: Im Seung-hee dreamed of becoming a famous writer but due to an injury she couldn't paricipate in a contest and is working for a small company. The company's owner ran away with her car without paying her and her colleagues. Now that the company is bankrupt, she has to go to a government office responsible for giving out unemployment checks. Her first love, Kim Jong-dae, is currently working there and a lot of memories come back.

Cast: So the female lead character Im Seung-hee is played by Lee Young-ah and this honestly wasn't her best roll. Seung-hee is, at least in the very beginning, such a naive and annoying person that I actually thought she needs some guidance. About the acting itself, the scenes of Seung-hee crying were just way too much, it was so obvious that it was fake so that definitely wasn't her strongest job but then again.. I've seen actors and actresses do worse. As the male lead, we have Nam Goong-min as Kim Jong-dae in this drama and his acting was alright but nothing more or less either. Again, in some scenes I couldn't even pity his character because it was just too weird - because people know how to think. Well, most of them.
Actually both of the lead characters are far from being successful and I really felt like they were giving up on some point which annoyed me.
In the rows of the second leads we have a heavy second male lead syndrome (yay, tropes!) named Song Wan-ha or Seo Jun-young, an actor whom I really learned to like. He's not that bad but it's sad that it's obvious even in the very beginning that he's going to be the poor guy. His acting was quite good I'd say while his character was probably a little naive as well. He's not really a victim though so actually he's a likeable character as well as a good actor. After all my favorite in this series.
Now I would say we have two female-second-leads. Bae Seul-gi as Moon Seon-joo is the typical second female lead. Yes, one can understand her up to some point since she felt betrayed in the past but then again it doesn't make up for what she did wrong. As for the acting, it was sometimes a little too much again, especially her break down in one of the latter episodes. Sometimes it seemed to me her character was already cold enough in the beginning to make a guess what went wrong but maybe that was just my feeling, I don't really know about that. The other one is Jung Seung-ah as Oh Yeon-woo, a naive but cheerful girl, her father has money and influence and tries to make Jong-dae stay with her for exactly that reason. Her character is simply immature, and that's what the acting delivers. It's not really bad but nothing surprising.
Lastly there are Park Woo-chun as Park Gwang-pal and Kim Kang-hyun as Uhm Hyo-sang. The first is a typical player and because his mommy has money he's just playing around. While it was kind of funny, it's actually really sad because people like him exist. The acting therefore was kind of on spot but the expressions again were a little too much only to turn his character into a funny one. As for Uhm Hyo-sang, all I can say is that he's kinda pathetic in the end. He wants a girlfriend but never had one as far as we know and which is also connected to his friend Gwang-pal.

Soundtrack: The soundtrack in fact isn't bad but please - I didn't even notice other songs except for T.O's "거짓말 (Lies)". Yes, M.Pire actually make a guest appearance in the beginning in this series but this song keeps playing all the time so I didn't really notice anything else. Why did they release other songs in the first place if that's the most memorable song included in the whole series? I don't know. However, there was nothing annoying about the music itself so I'm just glad they played such a nice song all the time.



Even after watching this drama with low expectations, I decided to give it a 5/10 only because there's hardly any change in the characters. And the only special thing was the ending when I wasn't even sure whether everything before was just written by Seung-hee or happened a long time before and she just used her real story. Nevertheless, it is in fact kind of confusing. Some things are supposed to be funny but were nothing more but the basics we've seen dozens of times before.
While I did like the flashbacks used in this I also thought that two episodes only consisting of the past story weren't really my style since it wasn't that funny either.

If you like something cute and slightly funny just taking a little more than 8 hours you should give this one a try but if you're looking for something special, something different from the ordinary rom-com stuff, this might not be your style either.




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