Hi everyone! We’re back with a second episode of Stars in My Pocket. We’re thrilled to welcome Laica, our new addition to the Stars family!
Warning: Chock-full of spoilers below!
Cast & Characters
Kim Ji-won as CHOI AE-RA
Park Seo-joon as GO DONG-MAN
Song Ha-yoon as BAEK SEOL-HEE
Ahn Jae-hong as KIM JOO-MAN
Show Notes
00:13. Saya and Festerfaster welcome Laica. Yay!
00:32. An introduction to Fight My Way (also called Fight For My Way), and how we nearly drop it because hero Go Dong-man (Park Seo-joon) made us cringe so, so much. Festerfaster recalls a terrible date.
3:46. How dramas can overblow mundane moments, and how Fight My Way doesn’t. We discuss how we found the show much more relatable because it kept things natural and low-key.
5:09. Dong-man makes Ae-ra lose her job: did he have a right to interfere with her life and decisions?
7:27. Kim Ji-won and how much we adore her, especially as Choi Ae-ra.
9:24. We move onto Park Seo-joon and how his simplicity was his biggest appeal as a character. Saya compares him to Luke in Gilmore Girls.
13:34. Dong-man and Ae-ra’s terribly awkward romance, and how it’s such a refreshing subversion of every relationship cliché ever. (Reference to 1992 drama, Jealousy)
20:59. How we felt about Choi Woo-shik’s character, the scoundrel Moo-bin, and his effect on Ae-ra. We question whether he was necessary to the show. Segue to stalker-guy (Kang Ki-doong), and we struggle to understand why there are all these strange men around Ae-ra.
28:08. We discuss Dong-man’s ex, mean-girl PARK HYE-RAN (Lee Elijah), and whether her relationship with Dong-man was doomed because of his best-friendship with Ae-ra. Laica notes how Ae-ra would moderate the friendship between them whenever Dong-man was in a relationship.
[We move onto secondary couple, Kim Joo-man (Ahn Jae-hong) and Baek Seol-hee (Song Ha-yoon), who have been in a long-term relationship for several years already. While our main couple’s romance is blooming, this couple’s is falling apart.]
36:50. How Joo-man and Seol-hee wanted different things out of life, and the way it impacts their ability to relate to each other. Laica points out how Seol-hee let the relationship swallow up her sense of self, and we ask whether she was too self-sacrificing.
48:53. The Other Woman, JANG YE-JIN (Pyo Ye-jin), and Joo-man’s mistakes and eventual growth. How great it was to see Seol-hee become a bit more badass.
52:00. How we felt about girlfriends Ae-ra and Seol-hee, and the group-friendship between the four of them. We also detour to Seol-hee’s relationship with her mother, and the way her mother supported her daughter’s agency.
59:37. Dong-man’s petty archenemy, KIM TAK-SOO, whose character Festerfaster compares to Arjun, the character from Indian epic The Mahabharata.
1:04:02. Our opinions on Ae-ra’s reaction to Dong-man’s decision to go into MMA. (The word Saya was looking for was ‘temerity’!) Reference to Choo Sung-hoon and Yano Shiho, who feature on variety show Superman Returns. Their story partially inspired this drama.
1:09:13. The quality of the acting in this show. References to Park Seo-joon’s previous dramas: Witch’s Romance, She Was Pretty, One Warm Word, and Kill Me, Heal Me.
1:10:32. We love Kim Sung-oh. References to his previous dramas: Secret Garden, Diary of a Night Watchman, and his many hilarious faces in Warm and Cozy.
1:14:12. The unexpected makjang turn from the almost-throwaway character of mysterious landlady, Hwang Bok-hee. Closing thoughts. References to Misaeng and Bottom of the Ninth with Two Outs (also called 9 End 2 Outs).
And that’s a wrap!
Dramas Over Flowers 