K-Drama ‘Devilish Joy’: Initial Thoughts
About This Drama: A rich slightly snotty Hallyu star (Joo Gi-Bbeum) meets a chaebol (Gong Ma-Sung) and it’s love at first site. The night they are supposed to meet up again, he gets hit by a star k-drama-style, and she is framed for murder ruining her career. Three Years later, the man has been living day to day without being able to create or keep any memories since that day ‘momento’ style, while the leading lady is broke has the worst luck. They run into one another by chance, and the dude’s inability to create new memories starts to change.
I’m in love with the leading lady played by Song Ha-Yoon, and Choi Jin-Hyuk is pretty hot ok? They have really cute chemistry together and for some reason even though my brain knows this show is basically lazy trash fluff, I continue to watch it. The heart wants what the heart wants. Send help.
As a disclaimer, I understand that lots of my mutuals are really enjoying this show and that’s totally ok! In fact, I AM WATCHING IT TOO, so I’m not hating on anyone enjoying the adorable fluff. In K-drama land there are always going to be problematic elements to many of the shows which doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy them BUT let’s make sure we understand what we are enjoying?
Whew! Ok, let’s dig into the issues shall we?
My biggest gripe with this show is the misogynist tone (I have a mutual who dropped the show within 15 minutes - you know who you are!- and I totally get it).
Women Need to Be Rescued: Within the first 20 minutes of first episode, Joo Gi-Bbeum loses her shoe, has a potty emergency, gets chased by robbers and almost drowns (I am not lying). BUT she’s always rescued by Gong Ma-Sung. What’s wrong with this? It’s cute that the guy is rescuing the girl because it makes him more attractive, BUT it’s important to realize that they are setting her character up to be incapable of taking care of herself, and heavily romanticizes needing a man to take come to her aide.
The man sees success and the women sees failure: Three years into the future (ep 2), even though Gong Ma-Sung has no new memories due to his accident, he has been insulated by his money and power, so he continues to have a generally good life and can do what he wants (though I’m sure the family has shenanigans in store to take advantage of his lack of memory). But Joo Gi-Bbeum falls from grace through no fault of her own, and is constantly short on money and trying to provide for her entire family. She’s living in POVERTY and that’s not actually funny yet the show loves spending a lot of time on watching her be humiliated.
Negging women is not attractive. If you don’t know what that negging is: a flirting technique best as “low-grade insults meant to undermine the self-confidence of a woman so she might be more vulnerable to your advances. I’m not saying he’s insulting her and making her jump through hoops so that she’ll like him (he literally makes her clean his whole house while he watches you guys!!) because he doesn’t know that he likes her yet BUT. That style of bullying women is super unattractive and feels very “My Secret Romance” and “Boy’s Over Flowers-ish.” He uses his money to manipulate her but her being poor isn’t really something that should be a joke? It’s presented as “oh how cute that he watches her get humiliated or causes her to be at a disadvantage - so fun!”
Lazy Plot and Flat Characters: My last complaint is really that the show isn’t working hard to be creative. It’s set up this kinda common amnesia setup, and all of the characters are people that have been in a ton of dramas before. It’s almost like they used a k-drama character generator. The only person that is an interesting character is Joo Gi-Bbeum and she’s awesome. I’m not sure why they didn’t give the lead male anything more than snobby and attractive cold male chaebol with a traumatic past? And the tropes…so…many…tropes. I LOVE a trope-fest (shopping king louis is the perfect example) but this one isn’t really coming together.
Having said all of that, I’m STILL watching it because [insert reason here]. If you just want to watch something that’s easy, straight forward, standard fare and you are OK with the cold rich male lead/poor commoner situation and the most tropes you can pile on a plate, you’ll still like it.
