SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

She Was Pretty
(그녀는 예뻤다 / Geunyeoneun Yeppeottda)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Okay, yes, I know, it’s been less than a week since my last update… I went through this quite fast, haha.
This drama was recommended to me by my Kdrama-buddy friend, I’d seen some scenes and she told me it was really fun so I put it on my list 🙂
As with the previous one I watched, this was an older drama (from 2015) and I could really feel the old-school Kdrama style. I wouldn’t be able to really pinpoint how the modern ones are different, but it just felt like the old days when I just started watching Kdramas.

Okay, so this drama is called She Was Pretty. The story is about a woman called Kim Hye Jin (played by Hwang Jung Eum), who sticks out because she is ‘not’ pretty. She was red freckled (or pimpled?) cheeks, big bushy curls and an old-fashioned style in clothing. However, when she was younger she was really pretty and popular. She explains that when she was younger she looked like her mother, and when she hit puberty she suddenly got flushed with her father’s genes and ended up looking like she does now.
Her best friend Min Ha Ri (played by Go Joon Hee) looks like a model, she’s really tall and skinny and gorgeous. The two have been the best of friends since elementary school and friends of popular Ha Ri are often surprised to see her with such an ‘ugly’ friend.
On the other hand, there’s Ji Sung Joon (played by Park Seo Joon), who used to be really chubby when he was little. He was often bullied, but Hye Jin was always there to save him. The two were close when they were kids, but Sung Joon had to immigrate to America and they were separated for 15 years.
After these 15 years, Hye Jin suddenly gets an email from Sung Joon that he’s coming back to Korea and he would like to meet her after all this time. Excited, they arrange to meet but when they arrive at their meeting spot Hye Jin sees that Sung Joon has turned into a really handsome looking guy. He mistakes a pretty lady for Hye Jin (naturally expecting her to still be pretty) and Hye Jin gets embarrassed to be seen like this and hides. Instead, she asks Ha Ri to pretend to be her and greet him.
To make matters worse, at her new job at a famous magazine editing company, Hye Jin finds that Sung Joon is her new Chief Editor.
The only person who seems to be on her side is Kim Shin Hyuk (played by Choi Si Won), an eccentric reporter/feature editor who quickly sees the real beauty in Hye Jin.

I have a couple of things to say about this drama, some things I appreciated, but some things I couldn’t help but criticize a little. I will start with giving a bit more content to what went on the story, and then I’ll start pointing out the things that stood out to me in one way or another.

So Hye Jin starts working at this magazine called ‘The Most’, she starts out in the managing department but because of a misunderstanding where she was mistaken for an intern at the editing department, she is transferred there because the editing department was impressed with her skills during that misunderstood situation. At first she really doesn’t want to work there because she feels too uncomfortable with Sung Joon being there. Their relationship starts off really bad because Hye Jin is very clumzy and keeps making mistakes while Sung Joon is really stressed about gaining results – he is being pressured from America to make the magazine Number 1 on the rankings or else the Korea branch will have to shut down.
While constantly trying to avoid him because she is too afraid he will find out and make fun of her for how much she’s changed (in a bad way), Hye Jin finds herself immersed in work and builds up relations with her colleagues and eventually really finds her place there.

In the meantime, the story that began when Ha Ri pretended to be Hye Jin didn’t end so quickly. Sung Joon is more than delighted to see her again, basically suggesting that now they should date, but Ha Ri tries to brush him off. She tells him she’s going to study abroad the next day so he will leave her alone.
However, they bump into each other again at the hotel Ha Ri works at and she has to make up an excuse why’s already returned from her study abroad. She finds it harder this time to brush him off and this eventually leads to a complicated relationship. The main complication is that Ha Ri doesn’t tell Hye Jin that she’s still meeting Sung Joon and she even ends up really falling for him.

One of the really nice things about this drama is that Ha Ri was not the typical second female lead ‘best-friend-turns-into-frenemy’. She started out a little superficial, dating and playing around with guys and partying and living off a job her rich daddy got her. But she proves herself to be the most loyal friend to Hye Jin, and I actually think she is one of the sweetest people in the whole series. After continually meeting Sung Joon, even though she feels bad about it and wants to tell him the truth, the timing is never right and it keeps getting delayed and delayed. When she starts having feelings for Sung Joon (the first ever real romantic feelings in her life), she feels terrible and guilty towards Hye Jin. She knows what he means to Hye Jin and that she likes him. When she is about to tell him for real and even writes him a letter to convey her feelings better, Sung Joon finds out before she can tell him. Of course he’s really angry and just leaves her standing there without giving her a chance to explain. Which is not what she deserved.
When Ha Ri was still pretending they shared some really sweet moments and he seemed to really like her when he thought she was Hye Jin. Even so, when he finds out he just gets angry and leaves. I found it weird that -even though of course he was angry- he could just immediately forget about all those moments. He could’ve just asked her to explain what was going on, because she was really planning on telling him.
Of course, maybe it made it easier for him because he already had some suspicions at that point.

At work, initially he doesn’t really bother with Hye Jin (unlike in Another Oh Hae Young, he is not effected at all by the fact that one of his employees has the same name as his girlfriend, he just thinks it’s a coincidence), but she keeps reminding him of his childhood crush through little habits that she still has. Some things she does for example: 1. yelling ‘It’s a go!’ when the traffic light jumps to green, and 2. disliking rain falling on her because it makes her hair even bigger. They also show the same amount of interest in a certain painting that they liked together when they were kids. He keeps getting confronted with these little things that make him more curious about her. In the end, he claims that he fell in love with Hye Jin before he even knew she was ‘his’ Hye Jin, but I still feel that there was something weird, also comparing it to how he reacted to Ha Ri when he found out she wasn’t Hye Jin. After he left her there, he immediately went to Hye Jin, saying ‘It’s been a while’, and from one moment onto the other he started treating her well. I don’t know, it felt a little weird and it seemed to me that he was just heading towards whoever his Kim Hye Jin was, no matter who she was.
When it turned out to be the ‘ugly’ Hye Jin from work, it didn’t matter anymore because she was his Hye Jin. Although when he met her in the beginning he seemed really annoyed by her.
I couldn’t really pinpoint his sincerity and sometimes it felt a little forced, like he was determined to end up with his childhood crush, no matter what. It would have been interesting if he’d fallen for Ha Ri and even after finding out she wasn’t Hye Jin, still would’ve liked her or something. It was just a bit cliche to me.
And he also wasn’t angry at Hye Jin at all for not telling him the truth even though she knew from the beginning. It really made Ha Ri look like the bad guy, which she wasn’t.

I have to admit, although I love Park Seo Joon, I usually like him in roles in which he plays the manly but slightly dumb roles. I loved him in Fight For My Way and Midnight Runners, but as soon as they cast him as a suave gentleman or even a flower guy (Hwarang, She Was Pretty, What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?) I just feel a bit uncomfortable. I just don’t see him as a flower guy, I see him as the muscular manly guy. My friend pointed out to me that his acting wasn’t very good in this drama, but it didn’t really bother me.

I was actually more bothered by Hwang Jung Eum, especially in the second half.
Whereas in the first half I sometimes got a bit annoyed with Hye Jin because sometimes she was just TOO clumsy. Like, in a ‘are-you-kidding-me-can’t-you-even-pick-something-up-in-a-normal-way’ kind of way. But it added to the character she was portraying.
About halfway through the series however, Hye Jin gets herself a makeover. I wasn’t entirely sure why that was necessary because I thought the whole point of the story was that she wasn’t ‘pretty’, but apparently she needed a new start and suddenly turns up to work with her hair straightened out, her cheeks hidden under layers of foundation and an acceptable sense of fashion. And that’s when I started disliking her. Not only because I didn’t understand the necessity of doing this to her character, but I actually didn’t think it made her look pretty at all. I liked her way better before the makeover. I almost didn’t even recognize her with all the makeup, she didn’t look like herself anymore.
Also, for some reason I felt like her acting became really off after the makeover.
Maybe her initial looks helped her when she needed to act really clumsy in the beginning because whatever she did she looked ‘lame’ because of her looks. But after the makeover it felt like she had to act extra hard to still keep behaving in a clumsy way even though now she looked like every pretty girl in every K-drama ever. When she would do something clumsy it suddenly looked super exaggerated. There were a couple of scenes where she had to cry and she just would start bawling out loud (no real tears) like a baby and I just couldn’t take it seriously.
I was just very happy when in the last episode she felt like she couldn’t keep it up anymore and let her looks be as they used to be.

I read a lot of comments about this drama from people who suffered greatly from second male lead syndrome in this drama. As K-dramas go, usually the kind guy who is genuinely interested in the female lead from the beginning is pushed aside for the cocky jerk-off guy who only starts liking the female lead halfway through the series. That was pretty much the case here as well.
The love between the childhood friends conquered all in the end -for originality reasons I would’ve liked it if they played with that a bit more but oh well- but Shin Hyuk was a very good friend to Hye Jin until the end. Even when he started acting as a rival towards Sung Joon, he wouldn’t take it as far as becoming the evil ‘I-will-do-anything-to-obtain-hold-of-this-woman’ second male lead, which made him even more lovable. He just remained his funny but mysterious self.
His role reminded me of his role on Revolutionary Love (which is from 2017 but I watched it before this one). Because of the weird faces he would pull. Despite the fact of course that here he wasn’t naive or child-like at all, he knew exactly what was going on.
I’m always pretty much down for those kind of ‘I’m-always-goofing-around-but-I’m-actually-really-alert-about-everything’ type characters.

There were some mysteries going on at The Most. There were rumors about the Editor’s nephew who was secretly working in the editing department until he would be inaugurated as the new Vice-President of the company. And there was a writer with the pseudonym Ten who became a person of interest when it came to the 20th Anniversary edition of The Most.
I have to add though, but it was obvious for miles that Shin Hyuk had a secret identity. I just wasn’t sure if he would be the Editor’s nephew or Ten. But I was convinced he was one of them, there was just too much mystery about him. He was living on his own in a hotel where everything was done for him and he kept talking on the phone with someone in English. In the end, the older slouchy looking feature director turned out to be the nephew (no one ever saw that coming) and Shin Hyuk turned out to be Ten. Also, it wasn’t until the last episode that we find out that he was adopted in America and the people he had been talking to were his adoptive American parents.

A side story that I liked was one of the girls working at the editing department who had heard about the Editor’s nephew and was determined to seduce him. But she had three guys to choose from in the editing department and since she didn’t know which one it was, she went for the most likely option, because the other 2 didn’t dress or act the part. In the end, of course, she finds out she went for the wrong guy but she still fell in love with him so they became a couple in the end. I thought this little side character romance story was really funny and sweet. I’ve seen about five dramas with Shin Hye Sun who played this girl and the only part where she played a character like this was in Legend of the Blue Sea where she was the second female lead (sort of). In the other cases she was always this really sweet, caring girl. Anyways, I liked this on its own, even though it didn’t contribute that much to the main story.

On the other hand (I keep saying this), I found the Editor-in-chief super annoying. The woman who always dressed super over-the-top and kept talking in Italian. I guess they put her in for comic relief, but I didn’t find her funny and she kept barging in when it was least needed. I don’t want to bash too many characters, but I just didn’t really see the point in her as a boss if she didn’t act like one. She’s a good actress, I’ve seen her in several roles, but this was just a bit too much in my humble opinion.

For my last critical point, I have to admit that after Sung Joon finds out Hye Jin is ‘his’ Hye Jin and they start dating (as was to be expected, I guess), for me the story was pretty much wrapped up. And then there were about 5 more episodes to fill. Again, as I have pointed out in more reviews I think, sometimes in dramas when the story is finished they don’t know how to stop so they have a few more episodes to wrap up some other things or tell a bit more about some other characters or something like that.
In the last few episodes of this drama, it was mostly about the tension in obtaining that Number 1 position to save The Most and publish the best 20th Anniversary edition they could (of course with the events of interviews being cancelled and everyone snapping at one another).
But what puzzled me the most is that I was convinced that the reveal of Hye Jin being Sung Joon’s childhood crush that he’d been missing for 15 years would be the climax of the drama. Instead, it was more like the anticlimax. It felt like the whole story was leading up to the moment he would realize it was her… and then there was no explosion, but everyone just accepted it. On the one hand it saves the viewer a lot of unnecessary drama and emotions, but on the other hand I still felt like they were rattling it off a little bit.
So in the end, to save us from too much unnecessary drama, the second leads were both really nice people who were willing to give up on their own feelings in order for their friends to be happy, and the expected climax wasn’t deemed as an emotional climax at all. It was really very different from the series I watched before this.

Also, after the whole ordeal with her and Sung Joon and the truth coming out, Ha Ri became more of a supporting side character. They only showed some scenes of her being a sweet friend and looking for a new job, but that was it.
By the way, the way they told Ha Ri’s story (about her mother who’d abandoned her as a child and her terrible new stepmother) made the impression on me that Ha Ri really missed her mother as she had only good memories of her compared to her stepmother, but then her mother appeared on the worst timing ever, in the most random casual way ever. I think it was a moment where Ha Ri was really down because she just got busted by Sung Joon (or it was another moment where she felt really bad towards Hye Jin) and she was walking down the street and suddenly -without any warning- her mother is just standing there like ‘oh my god I missed you please forgive me’ and honestly I felt even worse for Ha Ri because she wasn’t even in the right state of mind to deal with her mother at that moment and she was just looking at her like ‘are you kidding me right now, of all times to appear?’ And so her relationship with her real mother as an adult was kind of thrown out the window so that was not very ideal.

Okay, I feel like I’ve only stated my points of criticism towards this drama, but honestly in it clicheness it was an enjoyable watch. Not too emotionally exhausting, but with funny and sweet moments and even though I was critical about the second half of the series, the ending was one of the best points.
Because it seemed to end like a very -they-lived-happily-ever-after- kind of happy ending in which the two childhood friends found one another again and realized they never stopped caring for one another. But I think everyone matured in the series, even the side characters. Ha Ri made sure she started living a better life and stopped dating random people and partying all the time, she went to look for her own purpose.
Even Han Seol (the girl who was after the Editor-in-chief’s nephew) realized that she shouldn’t keep following her greed and just be happy with this guy even though he wasn’t rich.
But the most important thing was that Hye Jin, even after ending up with Sung Joon and agreeing to even go back to America with him, still found her own passion. It had been her childhood dream to write children’s stories, and she finally found a place where she would be able to fulfill that dream. And Sung Joon remained the perfect boyfriend who realized very well how much she wanted to do that, and didn’t want to stand in the way of that.

One of the stories that was mentioned casually in the series but was actually very important was the story about the God of Opportunity. It said that the God of Opportunity only had one lock of hair on the front part of his head and was bald on the back of his head. This symbolized that the only chance to grasp another opportunity was to grab the lock of hair when it is right in front of you, because if it passes you, you won’t be able to grab a hold of it anymore.
And eventually this is what Hye Jin did, with some encouragement. She saw Ha Ri brimming with excitement when she decided to work hard to pass hotel management school and that inspired her. ‘When people do something they really like, they become really pretty’. I know from experience that this is true, that’s why I always loving listening to people when they’re talking about something they’re really passionate about; they just light up.
People are the most beautiful and the most impressive when they’re doing something they love and excel at it. And then suddenly the theme of ‘pretty’ also changed a bit, there was a bit more depth in there.
So Sung Joon went back to America for a year to make sure everything in the headquarters of The Most was stable, and Hye Jin went on working with a group of writers for children’s stories.
And after that one year they got married and had a beautiful red-cheeked girl who would yell ‘It’s a go!’ whenever the traffic light turned green. So the ending was really nice and sweet.

I liked it, it was light and humorous and enjoyable and did have some good messages to convey. It wasn’t exactly as I expected it to be -I expected something standard along the lines of ‘real beauty is on the inside’- but after the point of Hye Jin’s reversal of fortune was revealed the whole theme of outward beauty didn’t even appear as much as I’d thought. And after she had a makeover no one ever said anything about it again.

And now, I’m finally getting to the list of dramas from the 2017 season and I think the next one will be a bit more intense, but I’ll take my time to enjoy it as much as possible.
Please bear with me!