Boys Over Flowers Best Episode Yet…

Have you ever been in a noisy pig pen before? I have and the sound of whining pigs had almost damaged my eardrums.  If you were in my room 15 minutes ago, your eardrums are probably broken right now. It’s amazing my neighbors didn’t call 911. Our euphoria sounded like pigs getting butchered one after another. That’s why my brother seldom watched comedy with us. The volume of our laughs is abnormally high. It’s been such a long time since I have showed this much reaction while watching anything on screen.

That is how exciting Episode 8 was. It was full of good ol’ Korean humorous antiques of which they are best at.

In this episode, I finally saw and accepted how different Ji Hoo is from Rui’s established character in the manga and the Jdrama. This Ji Hoo is rough, slightly conniving, totally ungraceful, and yet there is still some part of him, that you know is Rui. I have made my peace with Ji Hoo at that moment when he said, ” I had to collect a debt. After all, he ruined my robot.” And there he is, our Rui.

I also prefer how they altered the supposedly “awkward date” to something more of a wake-up call for Jandi. In both the Taiwanese and Japanese versions, Makino and Rui’s date was a train-wreck. In here, we find them actually having a great time until Jan-di starts to realize she misses Jun Pyo. (Ah, that marker scene. I was wondering what Jun Pyo did with the marker. I thought he was going to draw faces on a sleeping Jan Di).

“Awwwwwwww” to those scenes of Jun Pyo stalking Jandi and Ji Hoo. He can never let go of Jan di, this guy. I think Jun Pyo’s love for Jan di overpowers that of Domyouji’s. In the Hana Yori Dango movie, there was a scene on which Domyouji chose Rui’s side over Makino’s. I was really turned off there, you know. But I guess it’s all up to your principles, what is important, love or friendship? You know my answer. Jun Pyo chose Jan di over his what, 18 year-old friendship?

Well, extremities and “irrationality” – that’s what Hana Yori Dango is about. Actually, I found this great description of Hana Yori Dango on the WITH S2’s subtitles page which nails down the world of HYD:

The storyline illustrates the supreme fantasy that a drama can bring out the most. Each of us probably has an experience of admiring or dreaming of something. The drama ‘Boys over Flowers’ is the concentration of the admirations.

In this episode, the Korean’s touch is also more visible.  First half was heart-wrenching pain for our Jun Pyo, and the second half is the comedy, as  I say, the Koreans are good at.  Man, if the Koreans are running out of screenplays, they should do more Japanese Shoujo mangas because the former’s romantic comedy formula is getting old and tiring.  In most of kdramas, their characters spend their time on bars drinking their love life away.  There’s also their love squares and pentagons.  On the other hand, the Japanese screenwriters seldom recreate a straight romance shoujo as it is.  They like to inject some kind of preaching and life lessons in their episodes.  That’s why, if you want to get more doki doki moments over life altering moments, you would want to put your money on the Koreans. And vice versa.

Starting from the hospital set-up to Jun Pyo’s sleep-over in Jandi’s house…those are basically Korean signature scenes, if not Hollywood.  Nonetheless, I still laughed my heart out.

This is my favorite episode so far.  What comes after the addiction stage?  Oh, I don’t want to be sober yet.  I hope this “high” continues till the final episode huh.

By the way, this marks the Rui arc.  We still have the fiancee arc, the island arc, the domyouji look-a-like arc…what else, I can’t remember right now…oh, of course the major one, there’s the mother arc to come as well.  At least, our couple have finally admitted their feelings to each other.  It will be a long week of waiting.

Another big THANK YOU to arashi.vox for the subtitles.  You are the fastest drama fansubber I have ever seen!  Subarashi.

P.S. About Koo Hye Sun – Gawd, people….she’s not 50 years old!  She’s just 24 years old.   She doesn’t have any friggin’ wrinkles yet.  But I understand you haters.  There are just some actresses out there that get in your nerves no matter what.  For me, it’s Yoon Eun Hye.