Two women by the same name have know each other since their school days. One girl is was know as the plain Oh Have Young and the other was the Pretty Oh Hae Young. This caused the plain Oh Have Young to resent her more pretty counterpart to the point that the scars she experienced from her presence run deep. She never lets the hard ships of life get her down though. She later runs into Pretty Oh Have Young years later when they both are hired to work at the same company. Both women have had their share of hardships dealing with love. One's wedding was called off and the other left her husband to be waiting at the alter. These two men will connect the women together in more ways than than they both could imagine when plain Oh Hae Young began to fall for Pretty Oh Hae Young's ex husband to be.
I don't know what i was expecting when I started watching Oh Hae Young. Eric being in this drama was enough to get me to watch but other than that nothing motivated me to watch this drama. Two women with the same name who couldn't be any different was a good plot starter for this drama. You guys know I'm a sucker for those under dog stories where the character isn't given high praise by others but still keeps cheerfully living anyway. For the first few episodes, I was interested in the lives of the two Oh Hae Youngs. Then there was the chance that they would meet again. A driving conflict that keeps you watching the next episode. After that interest dies, your left with a relationship thats trying to form between to people but both people have emotional baggage. They don't talk their problems out like they should. Instead they have emotional fits that make both of them look like they need to be checked into a mental ward. Everything about this couple was like an emotional game of tug of war that I was watching but my mind stopped taking in what I was seeing. I think I also stopped looking at the screen during a few later episodes. Matters only get worse when other actions behind the scenes explain a lot of what happened to Oh Hae Young's plans for marriage. This section of the drama made my come out of my mindless state long enough to see plain Oh Hae Young became bitch on heels. I really enjoyed seeing her character be mad at the world. She was not there for anyone's foolery. Not even her supposed love interest. The side character stories were fun to a certain extent. Their relationships had too much clowning in them for me to take them seriously. Only one of the relationships made me invest my heart into their progress thanks to certain conflicts. Eric's character had a loop hole in his background story that I really needed to be informed about. It bugged me so a lot while I was watching…. I don't want to give away a spoiler so lets say he had traits that needed to be explained. Some Korean drama scriptwriters seem to forget the four basic story starter questions, Who, What, When, and Why when they write these scripts. You can't have a fantasy element in your script and don't explain when or how the character got this ability. This simple lack of storytelling made Oh Hae Young's plot collapse for me but thats not all. Fun fact about this drama is that the plot was suppose to span only sixteen episodes. Two more episodes were added for some reason. I could tell that the drama desperately wanted to end at episode sixteen. Most conflicts had been resolved except for the ones that the the scriptwriter prolonged. Two more episodes of Oh Hae Young weren't needed because it didn't expand on the plot we already had to make the story better. The ending was good however the process to get to this ending was not solid. In fact, it was some of the messiest transitions in a script that I had ever seen. There was no doubt that the script was being edited on while the dram was being filmed. Some of the ways that a select few conflicts were resolved weren't satisfying enough. The writer took the easy way out instead of letting things get really interesting for the characters. Seeing their love survive at the end would have been much more rewarding. I didn't even feel anything for the last attempt at a cliffhanger in episode eighteen. The plot tried to pull it off but the result gave off a cheesy feel like this was only made to get the drama to the ending. The final scene felt tacked on too. I miss the time when Korean dramas had solid scripts that keep the viewer engaged all the way up to the final episode. Each episode made you want to watch more not make you FORCE yourself to watch more. There's still good Korean dramas out there. These half assed ones give them a bad name sadly. Korea, DO BETTER.
I feel myself tired thinking about the characters of Oh Hae young. Plain Oh Hae Young was my ideal kind of Korean drama female lead. Yes, she can be very annoying at times but she has a strong will to be independent. Hye Young fills the shoes of her character well. She's funny, outlandish, and cute. Sometimes she's very vulnerable as well. These moments are usually kept to herself behind closed doors. Think that hyper active friend that's there when you're feeling down. She takes you out to eat and you guys hang out until you feel better about yourself. Being around her becomes emotionally draining after awhile so then you head back home. Korean drama needs even more head strong women who don't get pushed around by male characters. Eric Mun's character is the cool collected kind of guy who doesn't let what he's thinking slip too easily. If he does, you must really mean a lot to him. He loses his composure constantly during the later half of the drama. Its painful to watch each and every time that he does. Eric comes across as chill and a little quit in real life so this role wasn't too much for him to handle. Oh Hae Young's main lead is very different from Super Rookie's and that role might have been harder for him since it was a departure from his real personality. the costars might as well put on clown suits because they are responsible for the half of the comedy that Oh Hae Young herself isn't doing. They have funny moments that I laughed at and the couple that was always speaking french was adorable. Their antics did make it hard to take their relationships seriously. Lee Jae Yoon's character got barely any love at all in this drama. His character was just a body of negative emotions. I wanted the script to use his character more to help create a plot that hadn't been seen yet. He was present as a villain of sorts but the character would go off camera constantly. This caused him to lose his intensity as a character for me. The script writer didn't write his character with a strong enough ambition to be a calculating third wheel character either. Same problem with Pretty Oh Hae Young. She's a life sized doll that doesn't do much except be pretty. Some attractive people believe that everything will work in their favor. Sorry, looks don't buy love all the time nor do looks last forever. We all have to grow old someday. Better work on having a good personality.
Locations shown in Another Oh Hae Young must remind Korean viewers of a day in the life of a working class person in Seoul. Oh Hae Young walks down the streets of Seoul and rides the bus at certain times. She works at a company that contains normal looking office space. Her living routine rotates back and forth between her parents home and a place she rents out. The camera makes all these places feel familiar to all viewers no matter what racial background your from. They do this by simply having the camera following Hae Young from different angles. The angles used in her home center around making the setting feel as personal as possible. Nothing here is different from other dramas honestly.
Another Oh Hae Young is "another"(like that pun?) drama that starts with a promising storyline then falls flat toward the middle leading to the conclusion of the drama. K drama fans are coming to the daunting realization now that dramas aren't as good as they used. I'm talking going from a time that every drama coming out of South Korea was good to having a few good gems in a sea of flops. I would also like to note that this new era greatly affects people who have watched K dramas for years compared to a person who just started watching Korean drama yesterday. Our experiences and opinions will not be the same.
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