[Teeny spoiler alert: discussion of character transformation from show start to finish. No plot elements revealed. But then, don’t we all know how the chaebol drama works anyway?]
I just finished watching Graceful Family. It is a chaebol drama worth watching.
The excitement and intrigue of the script holds up episode by episode. It doesn’t have any obvious spots where the writers added some kind of fluff to the storyline in order to get higher ratings. It is satisfying . . . mostly.
I wanted to watch from episode to episode not only to know how the plot surprises resolve themselves but to see how the typical character “types” interacted, because we all know them. The way the characters were defined, and how the actors fleshed them out was what claimed my attention . . . mostly.
The characters are conceptually all well-developed from the start, so there is not a lot of need to waste time on back stories. The actors clearly work well as a team, and the actors for each role have the appropriate body types for the characters they portrayed.
The snarling bear-like head of the family knocks out all opponents. The fancy-chicken-like trophy wife squawks constantly. The sleek racehorse-like sons go at it like well-bred territorial stallions, the scrappy sparrow-like heiress hides a pure, delicate heart under an attitude of street-smart indifference. The falcon-like head of the corporate legal team carefully studies her intended prey from afar and then strikes unerringly, with her brood of young falcons observing and imitating.
You get the idea.
The character who kept me from really buying into all the passion and the conflict is the young lawyer who claws his way up from near-poverty.
This character is, in English idiom, an odd duck. Clearly, when we first see him, he is not too far removed from his working class roots. He is a grown-up version of the poor fat child who never stopped eating because he never really got full. He’s awkward and lumpy. He looks like he could morph into the thuggish chaebol dad if he achieves any success at all.
Then, when he meets the heiress, he begins a transformation into something like her physically graceful, sophisticated brothers. As the series progresses, he loses weight, stands up straight, acquires a deeper voice, and gets darker, more manly eyebrows. Plus different camera angles and lighting that emphasize manly planes in his face.
But, from my point of view, he never becomes strong and steely enough to go toe to to with those who mistreat and misuse the poor, the helpless, and the righteous.
He never becomes a real hero standing out from the crowd and taking risks, which is usually what happens to the working class man or woman who ends up exposing and transforming a chaebol family and business. He just becomes a nicer, more confident version of his lumpy, timid childhood self.
Does anybody else feel this way, that the main actor’s physical type isn’t what the main character’s physical type should be? Or does the actor (for anybody else) convey the needed sense of physical steel and mental confidence?
(Also, does any one else want to see a spin-off with the News Patch characters? A wonderful, if slightly wacky, couple.)
