Heart to Heart: Loving Imperfection

Before I forget, here’s a Happy Seollal (or Lunar New Year) to all our readers out there! Thanks for sticking with us for the past year and we hope to see more of you in the following yearssss. 🙂

Since everyone’s in the festive mood, it’s only right to upload a piece on one of the more heartfelt and happy kdramas airing recently. Heart has a LOT of heart. I love it cos all the characters in it are so human — there’s no silly cold chaebol waiting to have his gentle, loving side discovered. Well, there are some secrets — the latest and greatest being Hong-do as the reason for Il-suk’s death, and the collapse of Yi-seok’s family. (ouch) But the past eps have taught us that Heart‘s characters have mettle. I have faith that it won’t be long before they realise that everyone has been punished enough for the death of Il-suk, and it is time to get a move on.

And it’s not like the characters in Heart are all saints. On the contrary, we may not have liked them when they were introduced to us, but they really do grow on you. And you end up liking them far more than you’d want to admit.

1) Hong-do

Truthfully, I find her social inhibitions a little annoying at first. Maybe cos I’m naturally an extravert, and her extreme shyness gets on my nerves. There were times when I felt like screaming at her to take that darn helmet off and open that MOUTH. Coupled with the fact that beneath the social-phobic exterior is a very bright and quick-witted mind. (argh)

Along the way, as Hong-do walks out of her hidey hole, I begin to cheer for her. For the few baby steps like finally managing to meet people without running off to hide and lately, to walking out of her house sans helmet. And in ep11, to finally own up to her biggest mistake — pretending to be a granny in order to get jobs. Even then, she doesn’t actively consider the idea of crawling back to her hole to hide. She’d rather brave up and face the music. (way to go!)

2) Yi-seok

Again, I didn’t find him attractive initially (partly also due to his recent flop as a hypnotherapist-prosecutor in Reset). He came across as a selfish prick at the beginning of Heart, and I took offense at the way he dealt with his patients. Yi-seok gave me the impression that he opened a psychiatric clinic mainly to attain fame and glory, through book publishing and appearing on TV. But he doesn’t really care whether his patients are healed in the first place.

When he gets involved romantically (and physically) with Hong-do, we not only see a transformation in Yi-seok but we see that like Hong-do, he had been in hiding all this while. Yi-seok has assumed the role of his deceased (and favoured) hyung, and in the process of becoming the extraverted and popular Il-suk, the shy and introverted Yi-seok has to be buried. By treating Hong-do, and more importantly, having someone who doesn’t compare him with Il-suk, Yi-seok begins to emerge.

And I do like the Yi-seok I see quite a bit now. He may still appear to be snappish and a little immatured, but he is also thoughtful, and he tries to understand things from another person’s point of view. I do love how he leaves Hong-do to make her own choices, but at the same time, reminds her that she isn’t that turtle of the past. She can come out of her shell and say “No”, if she wants to.

3) Do-soo

Yes, he can be a male-chauvinist pig (aka MCP). And we all have seen how indecisive he can be when it comes to love. Most of it has to do with his upbringing as the all-important grandson of his traditional (and large) family clan. I’ve said last week that Doo-soo hits his all-time low in ep10, by telling Hong-do in her face that he’d rather she remained a broken character, hiding forever in her hidey hole, juz so that he can have her.

He finally learns to accept the bitter truth, that he is too late and has done too little to earn Hong-do’s love. Doo-soo is still work-in-progress at learning how to let go and realising that the world doesn’t revolve around him. However, he does have certain traits which I do love.

For one, his MCP personality also has an up-side. He is protective and gentle towards women he cares about and loves. Remember that even though he doesn’t even like his fiancee, he has never raised his voice, nor did anything to upset her? That trait is displayed in ep 11 when he instinctively grabs Se-ro to prevent her from getting scalded against the bbq hotplate in the restaurant. Also, he doesn’t hold grudges and leaves a defenceless and drunk Se-ro to her own devices — even though she has been really mean, suing him and dropping dungs on him. Instead, he shoos away his more sleazy partner and volunteers to send her home safely.

4) Se-ro

She was intoduced to us as a bitch — vapid, arrogant, demanding. She sues police officers who are doing their jobs, juz because she doesn’t get that tiiinnnny part in a movie. (and we know she won’t get that role anyway, since the director was so pissed with her interferences on-screen) Then later, she goes on to create scenes at the station daily. Juz cos she didn’t get her way. At home, she appears to be an insensitive brat, constantly harping on the possibility of moving out of her home and totally not caring an ounce about her bipolar mother.

I surprise myself when I realised how much I’ve come to like her over this few weeks. Unlike Hong-do/ Yi-seok, I won’t say Se-ro has transformed. Rather, Heart is revealing the layers in Se-ro’s personality. The bitchiness and wilfulness are still there, but she is more than that. For one, she remains the most honest of all the characters. She admits to Doo-soo that what she did earlier was overboard, and sincerely asks to be forgiven. In addition, she also tells him she likes him and will try to persuade him to like her too. In ep11, she is the one who comes right out to tackle the wrist-grabbing scene of the night before, and she is able to say, without any malice, that she is jealous of Hong-do for having two men fall for her at the same time.

And not only is she truthful to her own feelings, she is emotionally matured, even though with her messed-up family, she probably doesn’t get much attention from her parents as a kid. When Doo-soo drunk-hugs Hong-do (yet again), Se-ro’s reaction isn’t that of hurt pride, or even anger. Rather, there’s a certain wistful thoughtfulness; she can feel Doo-soo’s pain, and knows that she has a long way to work if she wants him. Even if the working requires her to be really generous — she begs for her oppa to let Hong-do meet Doo-soo, juz so to cheer him up. I hope Se-ro will get her Doo-soo soon. Those two are a match for each other.

As a closing note: ep13 will likely be a rocky ride, as our characters’ faith in each other will be tested with the re-surfacing of THE issue (aka Il-suk’s death). Come to think about it, if Il-suk had been alive, Yi-seok’s family will still be dysfunctional, since they seem to pin all hopes and happiness on one boy. However, Hong-do may not have her sociophobic tendencies (i assume that the accident is the cause for her blushings and her fear of people) and Heart as a story won’t have happened.