Kim Hyun-joong’s Playful Kiss family

Here we get our first look at a Playful Kiss family portrait, which depicts the parents and younger brother of Kim Hyun-joong‘s lead character.
By all reports (I haven’t seen the original series myself) the family has a fair amount of screentime, in particular the mother character, played here by the wonderful Jung Hye-young. She’ll act the matchmaker for her son and Jung So-min‘s character, who comes to live with their family temporarily when her house is wrecked, since their fathers are friends.
I just hope the family parts won’t get too jokesy, because the over-the-top family members were a source of much awkwardness in Boys Before Flowers. (Again I repeat to myself: Have faith in director Hwang!)
Playful Kiss will air on September 1.

Playful Kiss ratings round two: 3.7%

I know some viewers were holding out for a marked improvement in Playful Kiss‘s numbers given its surprisingly poor start yesterday, but alas, it was not to be. Episode 2 didn’t fare much better, following Episode 1′s 3.5% rating with a 3.7%.
Competitor drama Baker King Kim Tak-gu hit yet another series high at 45%, while My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho held firm with 12%.
Most of you probably don’t care about ratings numbers, and I don’t use them to gauge a show’s quality. These days there are other ways to catch dramas, such as rebroadcasts and online, and no doubt younger audiences gravitate toward those alternative methods. Still, the ratings are important in determining ad revenues, and that, as we know, can be significant. Heck, the current union strike is happening because these companies have no money to pay their actors because they’re spending more than they’re making. There are other residual benefits as well, with high-rated hits bringing in more CF opportunities for its cast. (Expect to see a LOT of Baker King‘s Yoon Shi-yoon in the near future!)
For its own sake, I hope Playful Kiss can hang in there until Baker King wraps. True, its successor, Rain‘s Runaway, may also provide competition, but at least they’ll be on more level playing ground. And there’s always the export market.

Playful Kiss

CHARACTERS

Our heroine is OH HA-NI (Jung So-min), a not-so-bright student in her last year of high school, who’s in the last-place class (seventh of seven) of her year. She grew up with a loving father who runs a noodle restaurant (her mother died when she was a child), and the two have an affectionate relationship. Prone to daydreaming, Ha-ni’s fantasies center around Seung-jo, a boy at school on whom she harbors a pretty strong crush.
Ha-ni’s best friends, also in the last-place class, are DOKKO MIN-AH (Yoon Seung-ah) and JUNG JU-RI (Hong Yoon-hwa). Together, the trio is a little bumbling, but good-hearted and loyal to one another.

BAEK SEUNG-JO (Kim Hyun-joong), on the other hand, is the complete opposite. He’s in the No. 1 class and isn’t merely the best student, but positively perfect. In fact, in the most recent exams, he scored a 500 out of 500. Alas, that intellectual perfection doesn’t come with a gracious personality. He’s not just the cold, logical type a la Mr. Darcy but quite condescending to boot, looking down his nose at everyone, not bothering to hide that he finds them inferior. Whatta prince.
His parents are perfectly friendly people, though, and his mother (GEUM-HEE, played by Jung Hye-young) will figure largely in our plot. For now, all we know is that she’s a welcoming, cheerful mother with a lively sense of curiosity about her son’s life.

The guy with the retro flipped-up hair is BONG JOON-GU (Lee Tae-sung), a Busan boy with the thick accent to prove it. He can usually be seen traveling en masse with his posse, the foursome played by rock band Bye Bye Sea who are identified simply as “Bong Joon-gu’s Boys.”
Joon-gu and the boys are also residents of Class 7. While the boys can often be found jamming on musical instruments in between classes, Joon-gu spends a lot of his energies following Ha-ni around, trying to win her affections. She remains firmly fixated on Seung-jo, however, and doesn’t spare Joon-gu much thought.

New teaser for Playful Kiss

The first teaser for Playful Kiss was very short, though evocative (and cute!). This new one is a bit longer and gives us more of an idea of the opposites-attract dynamic between the two leads, Kim Hyun-joong and Jung So-min. Although at this point it’s more of opposites-bicker-in-denial-of-attraction, at least on his (perfect, polished) end, since his haughty character Baek Seung-jo feels mostly exasperation at Oh Ha-ni’s annoying ways.

(I’m feeling better about Kim’s acting in this preview, though of course it’s too early to say. Please, please, please be decent! I really do want to like this drama.)
Below are translations of the clip. I’ve tried my best to hear accurately, though a few words were hard to make out. But you get the gist:

Ha-ni: “People tell me to stop dreaming. But I have faith. If I keep walking steadily, I’ll make it to the finish line in the end.”

Seung-jo: “Hey, Oh Ha-ni.”
“Hey! Oh Ha-ni!”
“HEY!”

Seung-jo: “Sorry to tell you…”
“Thoughtless girl.”
“She’s a good girl.”

Ha-ni: “But that doesn’t get me down. Because I can just make him mine.”

Posters are out for Playful Kiss

The Playful Kiss posters are out! I think Jung So-min is kinda doing all the narrative work here, but I remain hopeful that the romance between her and Kim Hyun-joong will be solid and convincing.
This may be naive of me, but I’m placing an awful lot of trust in director Hwang In-roi, who was so deft at bringing lush cinematography and fantastic musical accompaniment to two other manhwa-turned-drama adaptations, Goong and Return of Iljimae. I really, really hope he can bring that same sensibility to this drama.

We don’t have long to wait — Playful Kiss premieres September 1.

Playful Kiss makes a dismal premiere (ouch!)

OUCHHHHH. Even for those who don’t put much stock in drama ratings, this has to hurt: Playful Kiss premiered today with a painfully low rating, 3.5%. That’s even lower than the flop it replaced, Road No. 1, which ended on an already low 5.3%.
Unsurprisingly, competitor KBS Baker King Kim Tak-gu held a distant lead with 44%. SBS’s My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho stayed in second place with an 11.9%.
As in any discussion of ratings, please note that I make no judgments on quality of content. I’m still eager to dive in and watch the drama, and my anticipation of its story and appeal remain undiminished. It’s just that, 3.5%, well… that’s harsh, man. I wonder if rerun numbers on the weekend will be appreciably better.
To be honest, I was expecting Kiss to premiere in third place, but I thought it would be a lot closer than that. Perhaps idol power is not what it once was — or maybe it never had quite the pull that the media hyped it to have, with similarly low numbers for the anticipated Sungkyunkwan Scandal (6.3%) on Monday.
(I know you’re probably eager to talk about the episode, so can I just ask that you keep the BIG spoilers out of it? I’m looking forward to watching the premiere and would love to let plot surprises have their intended effect.)

It’s all smiles behind the scenes of Playful Kiss

I always enjoy seeing a happy cast behind the scenes of their drama (especially if it’s an angsty show), and there are lots of smiling faces in these shots of the set of Playful Kiss. You’ll recognize the photos as coming from the last two weeks’ episodes with the couple tees, hospital scene, and tennis club.
The show hasn’t had the happiest ratings run, but it’s hanging in there with a cute, heartwarming story that owes much of its charm to its gem of an actress in Jung So-min. (I still can’t bring myself to say that Kim Hyun-joong is acting well, but thankfully in this role he manages to make up for that technical lack with personal appeal. His character is loads of fun to watch and his interactions with Ha-ni are growing sweeter by the day. Well, when he’s not pulling back in his infuriating but oh-so-realistic way. Boys!)

This week aired Episode 10, which means that we’ve only got a few more weeks till the drama wraps with Episode 16. (Note: The drama was not CUT, per se, though I recall reading some early reports that gave the number as 20. Either they were mistaken, or the drama decided to opt for a shorter run; it isn’t like Tamra or Heading to the Ground where MBC decided late in the game to cut the episode order.)