DAY 57: ECQ

So just this afternoon, still sweating despite the air conditioning and an electric fan aimed right at me --- and after three showers by 2:00 PM, I concluded my binge watching of a Koreanovela entitled SKY CASTLE.

After works like Crash Landing On You,  Pinocchio, Itaewon Class then What's Wrong With Secretary Kim, I wanted to catch this 2018-19 series which boasts of having the highest rating during its time of airing over and above that whole foray of KDramas available in South Korea.  Even more interesting is the premise wherein the entire series is built: it is like Desperate Housewives of Suburban Seoul.  But, unlike the Hollywood series on upper middle class American mommies, Sky Castle dealt with themes that are distinctly Asian as they are universal.

I was properly warned by friends of have seen the series.  There are some things not quite like what you can find in other KDramas.  Yes, the whole story or stories still revolve honor/dignity/destiny but somehow these themes have taken a turn which are unique to the middle class in their tireless (if not manic) effort to preserve the status quo or climb up the social registry.

There are very unique elements in Sky Castle:

(1) Romantic love is not central focus of the series (again): instead it is about the meaning of parental love, of distinguishing that fine line between parental guidance versus tyranny.  It is about recognizing just how far you can control and determine your children's lives.

(2) Marital relationships are dissected.  Just how much do you divide the responsibility of raising children between father and mother?  How will the relationship between husband and wife affect the attitude and outlook of the kids living with them in the same home?

(3) Ambition is the core of the series.  How do parents shape the determination and resolve of their children to fulfill their dreams  Whose dreams are the kids running after?  Are these their dreams or the ones brainwashed into their system by their parents as the offsprings' deliverable to qualify as a good child deserving of love?

(4)  Being somebody better by reinventing one's self brings out bitterness and endless happiness if one refuses to accept the past as essential to the journey to one's future.

Sure.  These themes may have been done a zillion times before but this is the first time we are given a glimpse of a completely different side of Korean culture.

This has got nothing to do pop music, chestnut haircuts  or cutting edge SOKOR fashion statements for kids.  Instead, we see a completely mature set of leads, representing four families with their children, comprised of molded-to-perfection professionals and wives with impeccable or noveau riche taste.

As a friend warned me, all the lead stars are forty-five years old and above because they are about parents and living the lifestyle of upper class suburbia.  And that tickled my curiosity.  Yes, I have seen this before in Desperate Housewives --- and that was snappy, bitchy and campy.  But having savored Sky Castle I realized that the Asian variable is no different: this series is quite unlike the other Koreanovelas I have seen before.  No, the age of the stars is not the ultimate measure to differentiate it from the field of possible comparisons.

The series refrains from being subtle, goes completely overboard with over-the-top acting, sensational plot twists and practically Walt Disney-like characterizations in order to celebrate the contrast between good and evil not only in emotional intensity but even in something as basic as designing the looks of the protagonists and antagonists.

My God! This series is high camp! It is an overwrought, buwis-buhay kind of drama in which characters perform their scenes of emotional highlight as if they were mainlining caffeine.  And when the series takes a turn to be funny, you are brought to near slapstick where you have a noveau riche Jin Jin-hee ( Oh  Na-ra ) garbed in a tight silver foil like dress with earrings scraping her shoulders and heels enough to damage your ankles as she wakes up her son for breakfast.  Or there are all these catfight scenes between Han Seo-Jin ( Yum Jung-ah ) delivering the favorite line, " I will rip your jaws apart. " Grabe.

In other words, all the twists and turns of Sky Castle can range from the truly shocking to WTF ... but then again you realize after a while that you are not looking for some beautiful organic logic here.  The series is about irony ... about how all these uptight mothers and fathers  want their kids to enter the best university not because of the so-called future of their children but because kids are their prize trophies.

No wonder the series was such a hit in China because ... well, remember that book on Tiger Mommies who practically raise their kids with a bullwhip, following a Spartan regimen in studies and deliberately depriving their kids of childhood for the sake of their future?  Here is a controversial exploration about the value of education as a badge for parents to flaunt their kids like prize horses on a stable.

But I must admit there were times I had to practice maximum self control not to throw the remote control stick at my tv screen because of my irritation for that oh-so-Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes mother Lee Soo-im ( Lee Tae-ran) whose character was meddlesome,  sometimes an airhead with a blackbelt in Taekwondo ... and yearning for the Mother Theresa of Calcutta Living Saint Award.  All that goodness was deliciously irritating as it was boring that you wished the evil and manipulative Han Seo-jin (Yum Jung-ah) would finally beat the living daylights out of her ... or better yet, rip her jaw.

Then there this dark as Maleficent academic coach named Kim Joo-Young ( Kim Seo-Hyung) who is cool, calculating, perfectly dressed in high-fashion black  (while all the other wives and mothers look like models from a fall-winter collection of a defunct Neiman-Marcus catalog) and has enough evil in her person to qualify as an incubus,  She is ... uh, deliciously and so camp in her bad that it is so good for indulgence.

And after asking myself why am I getting glued on this dramatic piece that has all the subtlety of an exclamation point, I finally realized why.  This was damn guilty pleasure.  You know you are overdosing on cheesiness but you just don't care because you're in for the ride.  

Art, art ... leche!

Watching series like these is like feasting on a bowl of chicharon bulaklak.  It tastes so good that you do not even think of the cholesterol.  

Instead you think about just how good the Koreans have done it again in weaving together a very timely issue in a manner engrossing, entertaining and yes ... addicting.

Then I began to think further.  

I know. Now is maybe not the best time to be thinking about such things while a number of my friends and co-workers are posting their pictures with fists over their hearts.  But then still ... I kept on asking myself these questions:

(1) Here is one series that carried the narrative superbly from Episode 1 to 20 without any excruciatingly sweet lovey-dovey love team running after each other while smiling their toothpaste commercial smiles and looking so good on high speed.  Instead we have actors in their mid to late forties, portraying complex yet entertaining and highly relatable characters for an audience to embrace.  Why can't we do that here?  

Why can't we entrust the Sharon Cunetas, ZsaZsa Padillas, Cherry Pie Picaches, Eula Valdeses, Dawn Zuluetas together with the Gabby Concepcions, Albert Martinezes, Richard Gomezes ... to be the leads rather than to be the parents of the more marketable love team where more of the same story goes around over and over again?

SKY CASTLE was about parents'relationships with children based on ambitions and expectations.  Can't we do something as real and as true as that without having the usual habulan sa hardin ng mga rosas at hampasan ng mga lobo while the elders stand on the sides either laughing or crying?

(2) What makes SKY CASTLE really interesting for me is that its core theme is the value of education. It is how we tend to give it premium and sometimes forget that school is only the means and not the end.  But still.  For an entire drama series to deal with the hard work kids put in to earn grades to qualify into good universities, I am amazed.  I am even impressed with the way a very important subject which is culturally rooted yet universal in appeal can be made so accessible to the audiences ... across the region and throughout the world.

SKY CASTLE is not only one of the top rating KDramas to grace the tv screens, nudged out recently by THE WORLD OF THE MARRIED.

So again, I ask myself: when will Filipino telenovela creatives feel the challenge to do something new ... and not be caught like the mouse of the wheel, running furiously at breakneck speed ... but still remaining in place?