I was never really interested in the premise of this drama because I’m feeling quite blah at the thought of another cross-dressing girl drama. I was willing to by-pass that and watch this if it had a good cast, and I thought that Song Joong-ki and Yoo Ah-in were good choices.

What wasn’t, is Yoochun and to a lesser extent, Park Min-young. I’m very irrationally angry at dramas that cast idols with no acting experience to take on big roles. I know there does exist a number of people who are of one profession, who go into another without ever having done it before and end up being good at that other profession as well. But from what I can tell of the dramas I’ve watched with idols taking on really big roles is that they’re better off as idols.

If they were really better off as actors, they would probably debut as an actor first, then randomly get plopped into idoldom as to boost their popularity, and then go back into acting once they’ve reached that level of popularity (ie, Sulli and Heechul). It makes me angry because it’s not like there’s a lack of good actors in Korea who can do the job a thousand times better than the idols that are chosen for the parts.

More ramble on casting after the jump.

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My sixth Hong Sister drama. Round of applause, please.

I’m not immediately hooked yet, but I’ve almost never disliked anything the Hong Sisters have put out, so I’m definitely going to keep an eye on this drama. I think I keep expecting this to be as funny as “You’re Beautiful” (which I personally think is their most hilarious drama to date) and it’s not quite there yet but there are definitely upsides to this drama.

One huge bone I have to pick is that the Hong Sisters are absolute crap at writing female characters. I can sense it’s going to be the same in this. All Hong Sister second female leads are psychotic bitches who are incredibly manipulative and deceitful. What the hell :\

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I love this song. It works so well with certain scenes, and the humming in the song is beautiful.

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You are so pretty.

But you are not a good actress. Trying to watch King of Baking Kim Tak-gu is like slowly murdering yourself. Yoon Shi-yoon and Lee Young-ah are the only bright spots but Eugene and the other male lead are pretty terrible. Good thing I’m watching this with 0.005 of my brain.

(I also can’t get over how much Joo Won looks like a grumpy Kang Dong-won.)

I’m all about the styling of Han Ga-in’s Moon Jae-in in this one.

The guys are standard suits and chaebol-wear, and everyone looks sharp, but it’s nothing to write home about. Moon Jae-in, on the other hand, I love. I’m not that interested in how the Hong family daughters are dressed because it looks like typical expensive-women wear, and that bores me.

The one winning thing about a good majority of Jae-in’s outfits is that her shoes give her rather girly get-ups a sharper, harder edge. She almost always wear badass biker boots, either with stacked heels or no heels at all. Everything else about her outfits are extremely girly — pastel blouses, slouchy button-downs — but once you look down at her shoes, the feeling completely changes.

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There’s a new SBS variety show called “Heroes” with an all-female cast (minus the MCs) — IU, Kara’s Nicole, After School’s Gahee, Shin Bong-sun, Lee Ga-eun, Yoo In-ah, T-ara’s Ji-yeon, BEG’s Narsha, Seo In-young, No Sa-yeon, Hong Soo-ah, Finkl’s Lee Jin.

The episode begins with the cast members arriving one by one to a remote location, inside a warehouse, where there are two tables set up. One table is labeled “popular team,” and the other is labeled “unpopular team.” As the members arrive one by one, they’re supposed to decide which table to sit at.

This is the awkward and stupid part: the sunbaes in the industry obviously feel like they belong at the popular table, and the eldest unnies who are also the most senior in experience feel even more of a reason to sit at the popular table. This leaves: jokes about Shin Bong-sun, and jokes about the younger members.

Seniority is a big deal in Asian culture, and I understand that. Women like Noh Sa-yeon and Lee Jin have been in the industry for forever, and do have a lot of work experience that people, say, IU don’t have. But the problem I have with Asia’s sense of seniority is that somehow it trumps everything (both seniority in age and in experience). Look, things in the industry are a lot different now than they were ten years ago. I know that the elder sunbaes have had to pay their dues many times over to be where they are, but it’s so embarrassing to watch them single out newbies like they o b v i o u s l y do not know anything or they can’t possibly be knowledgeable of this, this, or that.

So you get the younger girls being embarrassed to admit their popularity for fear of appearing haughty — because we know that it’s double whammy to be both haughty and a haughty female — when I’m sure audiences know someone like IU is sure as hell more relevant now than Lee Jin.

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