Where Stars Land

Where Stars Land

6/10

Where Stars Land

Genre:                                                  Episodes: 16                                     Year: 2018

Romance

Melodrama

Synopsis:

Han Yeo Reum works at Incheon Airport where her desire to be praised by her superiors often leads to her making mistakes. After working for a year, Yeo Reum is transferred to a new team, where her new mentor is Lee Soo Yeon, a KAIST graduate who has only worked at the airport for four months. Unlike Yeo Reum, Soo Yeon wants to live an ordinary life and has no desire to stand out.

Cast:

Lee Je Hoon (Lee Soo Yeon)

Chae Soo Bin (Han Yeo Reum)

Kim Kyung Nam (Oh Dae Ki)

Lee Soo Kyung (Na Young Joo)

Lee Dong Gun (Seo In Woo)

Kim Ji Soo (Yang Seo Koon)

Ro Woon (Ko Eun Seob)

Ahn Sang Woo (Gong Seung Chul)

Lee Sung Wook (Choi Moo Ja)

Jang Hyun Sung (Kwon Hee Sung)

General Thoughts:

This drama is the epitome of what-could-have-been. It had all the resources and materials to make an excellent show, but it never quite got there. Or it did for a while, but then it messed it up at the end.

You were so close 

I heard some rumours that this was supposed to be a 20 episode show and that it suffered an unfortunate episode cut due to scheduling conflicts (which may be why the ending ended up being rushed, and quite frankly cr*p), but I can’t seem to find any evidence that supports this idea. Perhaps it was just the desperate wish of viewers trying to find some reason why this drama that was going along so nicely suddenly fell apart.

I'm not sure this show would have been as good with different leads

The absolute worst thing about dramas that are travelling along so nicely only to fall apart (seemingly randomly) at the end, is that it kinda undoes all the good things they did along the way. ‘Where Stars Land’ was a thoughtful, charming show for most of its run, but by falling at the final hurdle it just messed up all these great things it had going for it. What I can say was fabulous from start to finish was the acting. Despite the shaky start this drama had with its casting, I think it all turned out for the best. Before Lee Je Hoon and Chae Soo Bin accepted, the leading roles were out to Hyun Bin and Park Shin Hye (who are currently starring together in ‘Memories of the Alhambra’), and Park Bo Gum and Suzy. While either of those combos probably would have worked out in the end, I’m endlessly glad that we were treated to the Lee Je Hoon and Chae Soo Bin combo instead. They’re not exactly a pairing I would have thought up myself (he’s so action, she’s so adorable), but their chemistry here was really fabulous. Both of them have proven that they’re excellent emotional actors previously, so I was never worried that they would be unbelievable, but I did fear that the pairing would be a bit…random. Good news for all of us, it wasn’t. It was delightful.

Even if the plot did get a bit wonky, the show was always visually gorgeous

What made both of their performances so spectacular in ‘Where Stars Land’ is that they weren’t exactly playing sensible, logical characters, but they were both still able to draw the audience into an understanding of the characters. While I might not have always believed that Soo Yeon was making the right calls in regards to his health and his relationship with Yeo Reum,

We all felt a bit this way about Yeo Reum at the start

Je Hoon’s perfect depiction of Soo Yeon’s fear and insecurities made me understand why Soo Yeon was making the decisions he was making. Chae Soo Bin had a bit of a harder task as Yeo Reum was a little awkwardly written. At the beginning of the series, Yeo Reum wasn’t exactly a character that was all that likeable. She was loud and abrasive with apparently no skills to back up all her talk. However as the story went on, Chae Soo Bin was able to inject a bit more of a bubbly, nonjudgemental energy into Yeo Reum, and she became instantly easier to root for. Kim Kyung Nam has come out of nowhere and totally grabbed my attention this year. From the dorky younger brother in ‘Smart Prison Living’ to the damaged older brother in ‘Come Here and Hug Me’, to here. These three roles were totally different and just go to show that he’s a wonderfully diverse actor. With the addition of his role as Dae Ki, we can now be certain that he can do funny, emotional and adorable. I’ve got my fingers crossed that he’s on the way to Male Lead Territory, because his performance here as the gruff but squishy security sunbae has made me keen to see what he would do with a leading role.

These two characters were an adorable side plot I couldn't do without

Lee Soo Kyung hasn’t got a whole lot of credits under her belt, but I really enjoyed what she brought to this show. It can be hard to play an aloof character without coming across as arrogant (and b*tchy in the case of girls), but Lee Soo Kyung added a wonderful sense of vulnerability to her character that cancelled out her rough exterior. Despite the story never actually going too far into the character of Young Joo, the way Lee Soo Kyung played her had me believing that there was a justifiable reason behind Young Joo’s knee jerk reactions to Dae Ki that went beyond her simply being cold.

Do I care about In Woo or his involvement in the story? No. No I do not.

Lee Soo Kyung made me believe that Young Joo had been faced with discrimination in the workforce for being a female, or that she'd had a previous uncomfortable dynamic with a male superior that caused her to be so cautious around Dae Ki and interpret his behaviours as something more than what he meant. I was honestly surprised that the drama never delved more into Young Joo’s character, but it actually left me feeling that much more impressed with how Lee Soo Kyung played her, as I got a very concrete sense of who Young Joo was without it ever being spelled out on screen. I thought Lee Dong Gun was kind of wasted here. To be fair I’ve only seen him in ‘7 Day Queen’ in which he was fabulous, but I have heard he’s a pretty consistently powerful actor. Here he didn’t really do much. His character wasn’t exactly written well, and while Lee Dong Gun didn’t do a bad job, he definitely wasn’t used to his full potential. The angsty brother storyline kind of didn’t make a lot of sense, nor did it have a proper resolution, so while Lee Dong Gun was convincing as both a vindictive, uncaring brother and a desperate, loving brother, these two personas coming to exist as the same character wasn’t exactly smooth.

I'm not sure anyone who leaves their bother in this state deserves a redemption arc...

In Woo’s redemption was hinted at very slightly early on, but the actual redemption came on so quickly that it did feel a touch random, and very much like the writer was throwing the plot out the window in order to force a happy ending for everyone. 'Older' actresses (as in over about 35) tend to get delegated to mother and grandmother roles, so it was nice to have Kim Ji Soo play a character that wasn’t simply someone’s family member.

Seo Koon is the unsung hero of this drama

Seo Koon was a strong and determined character, and Kim Ji Soo played her with a lot of backbone. She was the boss that we all wish we had, and was a refreshing character to have in K-Dramaland- a place that is so often filled with over demanding superiors.

What Was Great:

Romance:

Unarguably the best thing in this drama was the romances. Yes, plural. Every love-line in this show was fab. Our main couple were obviously wonderful, what with their adorable chemistry and actual (gasp) discussions about their feelings.

I will never get tired of the way Soo Yeon looked at Yeo Reum

While it can be nice to watch a couple bicker as they fall in love, it was a different kind of treat to watch a romance that was based on communication, understanding and learning to come to terms with each others’ disagreements. They weren’t a perfect couple by far, but what made them so easy to root for is that you really believed they were trying to make their relationship work. Yes, they liked each other on a fundamental level (which does tend to increase the chances of a relationship working), but there was no great ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’ spin on their romance. Soo Yeon and Yeo Reum were together simply because they wanted to be. Granted, they did have their moment at the end of the show where they completely stopped communicating with each other and were lying because they ‘didn’t want to hurt the other’, but for most of the show’s run they were honest with each other, which is definitely a breath of fresh air in K-Dramaland. Our second love-line was more like the typical K-Drama love-lines, and it was done oh so well. The bickering that Soo Yeon ad Yeo Reum didn’t have, Dae Ki and Young Joo most certainly did.

I don't even know which one was my favourite love-line

It was unbelievably cute watching these two figure out that they liked each other, and then flounder around completely out of their depth and confused as to what to do about it. Their small moments of showing that they cared for each other were a fun, lighthearted break from the more dramatic goings on in the Soo Yeon-Yeo Reum line. Not that Dae Ki and Young Joo didn’t have their ups and downs (because they definitely did),

You can legit see his brain breaking down

it was just far less heavy than one of them being crippled with their awesome prosthetics accidentally killing them. I mean, it’s hard to get much heavier than that. Perhaps one of the most enjoyable things about these two simultaneous love lines is that they were so different from each other. While Soo Yeon and Yeo Reum were both so open about their feelings and unembarrassed about their affections for one another, Dae Ki and Young Joo certainly weren’t. So we got the joy of watching a couple actually communicate and build a trusting relationship as well as a couple that were awkward and embarrassed, tripping over themselves to show that they cared but not that they cared too much. I even liked Eun Seob’s one sided crush on Yeo Reum. Yeo Reum never came across as a poor friend, as she always made it very clear that she thought of Eun Seob as nothing more than a friend. Even when he made his feelings a little more noticeable, Yeo Reum drew a clear line, so there was never any doubt where the two stood. No one could ever accuse her of leading him on, because just as she was open an honest with Soo Yeon about how much she liked him, she was also open and honest with Eun Seob about how she only saw him as a friend and that she was interested in Soo Yeon.

What a fab friend

You could also never accuse her of being pushy or demanding, because while she politely turned Eun Seob down, she never told him that he wasn’t allowed to like her. Yeo Reum made it very clear that Eun Seob could do whatever he liked with his feelings (either deal with them and be just friends, or act on them and risk the friendship), but she also made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t going to let him live in a neutral zone where he wasn’t quite a friend and wasn’t quite a lover. And I think we all adored the way that Eun Seob didn’t take the classic jilted lover road of stirring things up for the main couple. By giving Soo Yeon and Yeo Reum fair and honest advice on their relationship, Eun Seob gave them the best possible shot at making their relationship work.

I would not have said no to more double dates either

Sure, he was ready to be a shoulder for Yeo Reum to cry on should it all fall apart, but it was clear that he liked her far too much to sacrifice her own happiness for a shot at his own. It was selfless and sweet, and made him that much more of an endearing character. Sure, the plot may have kinda fallen apart towards the end, but at least we had all these great love-lines to keep us going. Heck, I even liked the separated-but-not-yet-divorced-line of Seo Koon and Moo Ja.

Subtlety:

This drama sure didn’t get up in your face about the themes it wanted to present. Subtlety isn’t something that comes along in your everyday K-Drama, so it was an interesting and welcome change to have a show that mentioned a lot of issues in passing without having to rub our faces in it. Things like sexual harassment, discrimination in the workplace and power dynamics in relationships were touched upon without the drama feeling like it needed to dedicate a whole episode or a whole plot line to each issue.

It doesn't have to be in your face for the point to get across

It helped the drama flow smoothly, as our story was never interrupted by a random side plot, but rather the issues raised their heads in ordinary situations every now and then. Personally I find this a more interesting and realistic take on these sorts of issues. Although it can be interesting and emotional to watch our heroine fight against harassment at work, it’s far more likely that this is a subject that she will try and deal with quietly and discreetly, and not bring to the attention of all her coworkers. Yeo Reum’s short, quiet self defence was easily looked over, and rather than spending a lot of time and effort to try and right was was done wrong, Yeo Reum sadly accepted that it was something that had happened and tried to move on with her life and work. It can be interesting to have a romance between coworkers, but it’s not unlikely that things will skew in the male’s favour should the relationship work out. It wasn’t even something I really considered all that much, and obviously wasn’t something that Soo Yeon considered until Yeo Reum brought it up, and we saw the truth in her fears when a rumour spread that they were dating, and people accused Yeo Reum of seducing Soo Yeon- a man who others considered out of her league.

This show made me rather grateful for my teeny tiny office workplace

Rather than making a huge issue out of these situations, the drama instead chose to show these moments in passing, or expressed them through character interactions without needing to spell it out. Often, I found that this made these issues hit harder to home and feel more heartbreaking, as it made you realise that these situations aren’t something that happens every now and then and becomes a big deal, but is actually something that happens on a day to day basis, but people keep quiet or overlook it because they don’t want to risk their reputation, relationships or career. 

What Wasn’t:

Lost It’s Way:

What can I say, this drama f*cked up its ending big time. It’s not just that I didn’t like the way the ending panned out, but that it also seemed to go against what the drama had previously set up. In Woo was always a problem character, and his rushed redemption didn’t do much to endear him in anyone’s eyes.

Man, do I wish you'd been written better

Quite frankly I wish that the show had gone to either extreme with his character. I either wanted him to be so obviously selfish and unrepentant that we all hated his guts and were rewarded with a solid downfall. Or I wanted him to be so obviously and heartbreakingly misunderstood by Soo Yeon as he did everything in his power to protect him without his knowledge. Instead the show chose to keep his character somewhere in the middle where we didn’t like him because he was selfish, but we also couldn’t outright hate him because in his own convoluted way he kinda was trying to look out for Soo Yeon. The problem here is that the drama contradicted itself a little. At the beginning, In Woo seemed honestly shocked (and super displeased) that Soo Yeon was alive and (seemingly) well. He should have at least known that Soo Yeon was alive, as at the end of the drama we’re shown a flashback where In Woo (post injury) gives Soo Yeon’s Mum a watch to give to Soo Yeon. Which he wouldn’t have done if he didn’t know for sure and certain that Soo Yeon was alive. I also argue that a quicker, less harmful way to get Soo Yeon out of the airport and away from the gangsters would have been to just tell him the truth rather than literally threaten him with the prosthetics that were helping him live a normal life.

There are like a million ways In Woo could have handled this better

It just seemed unnecessarily cruel for In Woo to use the disability that was (indirectly or not) caused by him to try and make Soo Yeon quit his job. Honestly, the gangsters as a whole just confused the hell out of me. I was expecting In Woo’s involvement with them to get spelled out in a bit more detail, but nope. And as quickly and randomly as they were introduced to the story, they were gone. After Soo Yeon heroically rescues In Woo from drowning (which wouldn’t have bothered me that much anyway)

Gangsters are such a tacky way to add conflict IMO

the gangsters are mysteriously gone, never to interfere in the brothers’ lives again. Sorry, but I’m not buying that a huge criminal organisation who has invested years, and probably millions, in some nefarious airport takeover scheme would just give it all up cuz a dude with a robo-arm beat some guys up and picked up a car. Especially when said robo-arm is taken off only days later. I understand that having Soo Yeon’s prosthetics cause him harm was necessary to add some conflict into the show, but I really didn’t like how it played out between our leads. These two people who have been very open and honest all drama long are suddenly lying and hiding things from each other. I can sort of give Soo Yeon a pass because it’s his body and his choice what he wants to do with it, but I have no idea why Yeo Reum wouldn’t tell him that she knew he was seriously sick so they could sit down and have an in depth discussion about what their options were. I would much rather have seen Soo Yeon and Yeo Reum be honest about what was happening and argue and disagree openly while trying to understand each other than watch Soo Yeon try and hide his sickness and Yeo Reum try and hide that she knew. Like, why? What did she even get from it?

Can we all just stop pretending everything is fine and actually talk about the issue here?

He was still wearing his prosthetics, so he was still getting sicker, so her decision to lie was totally random and unnecessary. Perhaps the worst part of this drama’s ridiculous rainbows and ponies and fairy-dust finale is that we actually ended up skipping right over the issue of the prosthetics hurting Soo Yeon anyway. The last quarter of this drama was essentially Soo Yeon and Yeo Reum disagreeing on whether Soo Yeon should wear his prosthetics and die, or live as a disabled man in a wheelchair.

I get why you don't wanna live without them, but I don't get why
you won't explain it to your girlfriend

It’s a sh*t choice to be fair. Both sides had reasonable arguments. Yeo Reum sees Soo Yeon as a wonderful, respectable, loveable man whether he is on his own two feet or in a wheelchair, so she doesn’t understand Soo Yeon’s willingness to let his prosthetics kill him. On the other hand, Soo Yeon hates his disability and knows how hard it would make life for Yeo Reum and himself if they were to live that way, while Yeo Reum is perhaps not as aware of exactly how difficult that life would be. At the end of the day, while I do understand that Yeo Reum thinks a life in a wheelchair is better than no life at all, it’s still Soo Yeon’s decision to make- it’s his life after all. So, all in all, a great discussion and an endlessly fascinating conflict. It seemed for a while that the drama was going to take the route of killing off Soo Yeon, which would have been sad, but not terrible. The idea that he was just someone that was passing through for Yeo Reum was heartbreaking, but made sense and could have been a very bittersweet ending to the show. Then it chose to save Soo Yeon, which I must say I was happy about. The problem is that it felt like Soo Yeon changed his mind very quickly, and was almost blackmailed into choosing to live.

As aesthetically pleasing as this scene may be, I kinda wanted Soo Yeon to inject it himself

I would have preferred if the show had spent more time on Soo Yeon’s choice, and showing how he learned that a life in a wheelchair is still a life worth living, rather than focusing on some convoluted, confusing gang plot that was going to get dropped anyway. And then we skip the part where Soo Yeon is in a wheelchair. And he’s not even with Yeo Reum during that time. He disappears off to America (the land of magical medical cures apparently) and comes back with shiny new limbs, whole and hearty and ready to be human again.

'This is the real me.' ...Is it though?...

Which f*cking blows. To me, the whole point of this drama was for Soo Yeon to come to terms with his disability and live his life regardless of what his body could or couldn’t do. The show went out if its way to criticise the way we focus on perfection and normality, and then basically smacked us in the face by telling us that Soo Yeon couldn’t be happy with Yeo Reum without his prosthetics. Needless to say, that wasn’t the message I was wanting out of this show. I mean, for all their talk of being true and honest with each other, Yeo Reum never saw Soo Yeon in his wheelchair once. Sure, he showed her his prosthetics, but that’s not who he is. I truly wanted this drama to show at least a a glimpse of Soo Yeon and Yeo Rim living a difficult, but still enjoyable life together without Soo Yeon’s prosthetics. Yes, it would have been a nice happy bonus for the prosthetic issue to be fixed so that Soo Yeon could have more independence and whatnot, but not before we see Soo Yeon and Yeo Reum continuing to love and care for each other as they lived with Soo Yeon’s disability.

Also it was just fr*ggin' weird that they didn't show Lee Je Hoon's face in the final scene. Like, is that even him?

To be honest, I didn’t even need the overly happy ending with the prosthetics being fixed, as long as Soo Yeon and Yeo Reum were together and figuring things out. So on that front, the show f*cked up royally. At the same time that the show’s subtlety was one of its great strengths, it was also one of its greatest flaws. While it did a great job of not being super, painfullly obvious about some issues it was addressing, it also kinda dropped a lot of its storylines that it had going and hoped no one would notice. While occasionally bringing out a small reveal about the characters’ lives worked nicely (like realising that Moo Ja was the husband Seo Koon was currently separated from),

Let's just try to remember the cute and forget the rest

it was a total fail when it did this to points that were actually necessary for the story. We would have been so much more sympathetic and understanding of Soo Yeon’s hatred of his disability and his belief that he couldn’t be loved because of it had we known earlier that his Mum skipped out on him after the accident. His reckless overuse of his prosthetics and unwillingness to live without them also would have been much more understandable had we known that he’d only had them for a year. With Yeo Reum’s Dad saving Soo Yeon from driving down those stairs right after he’d had the accident, I’d (incorrectly) assumed that Soo Yeon had got the prosthetics not long after that. These points were crucial in shaping Soo Yeon’s identity, and I desperately wish the show had given them to us earlier, rather than throwing them at us in the final episode like bonus pieces of information. I also coldem the show for not having Dae Ki and Young Joo get together in the ENTIRE YEAR that was skimmed over. Before the time skip they’d pretty much revealed that they liked each other, so why the hell were they still in the EXACT SAME STAGE a whole year later? Why, show, why?

Someone needs to go to Korea and hold a writer convention to spell out that time skips are generally a bad idea

And there were countless other stories that we just never heard the end to- what happened to In Woo, where did the gangsters go, what was the deal with Yeo Reum’s Dad and the doctor who made Soo Yeon’s prosthetics, what was the deal with Yeo Reum being adopted, what stopped Yeo Reum and her Dad from meeting each other then he was still alive (presuming he’s even dead, because while it was heavily hinted at it was never explicitly stated), how did Seo Koon meet Soo Yeon, why is Eun Seob suddenly being shipped off overseas? Long story short, the end of this drama is a complete and total fail.

Recommend?

I’d like to say yes, but I wouldn’t really. There were great parts to this show, but overall it was pretty disappointing.

If only, if only, if only...