Diary Entry #1: <쾌도 홍길동> Ep. 24

January 02, 2008: The famous Hong sisters were back with their latest drama Hong Gil Dong (period drama), and it's also another chance for me to "assess" and enjoy Kang Ji Hwan's new work :)

March 26, 2008: Finally after close to 3 months, this drama had came to an end. It had been rather agonising because I expected this to be a thorough comedy like Hong sisters' previous works had been.

However, I won't complain 'cos if you give some thoughts to the so-called moral of the story, to what the Hong sisters' are trying to relay to us audience through the drama, especially the last episode, you'd figure out, as I did, that this was actually a drama with depth.

I was suddenly reminded of a line in another drama: "好的作品不会有好的收视率" (or something to that extent). But, of course, I'm not saying that those with high viewership ratings are bad dramas. I would not say that Hong Gil Dong was a very bad drama, but neither was it a very good one. The acting from most actors was definitely faultless, the storyline progress reasonably well considering this was the Hong sisters' first attempt at a period drama, but maybe because of this, they could not pump in their usual dose of comedic story-telling.

~~~
A few scenes in the finale that I particularly enjoy (not exhaustive):

This peck-on-the-cheek is very common and nothing special, yes I know, but it was the little actions and interaction between these two characters after the kiss that really tickled me. But I have no idea how to capture the whole interaction as it didn't look as captivating in still, so I just captured the kiss...

The 'grand' love

伊绿：真像萤火虫啊，要不我们许个愿吧？

吉童：在这节骨眼上?

伊绿：像是让我们走好，在跟我们打招呼一样。

吉童：我们会一起走的。

(两人深情对视，微笑，坚定的牵起手。)

~

(火箭落下，一片火海。官兵冲进山寨，此时山寨已空无一人。镜头转来转去，然后对准掉落地上的那一束花，旁白起。）

伊绿：吉童啊，I Love You!

吉童：知道。

伊绿：你知道什么意思吗？

吉童：白痴，

我爱你..

我爱你..

我爱你..

~~~

If you are wondering how on earth did "I love you" appear in a period drama's dialouge, the story goes like this:

episode X:
茉女：你对他是什么感觉？
伊绿：我也不清楚，好像是 i love you 的感觉...
茉女： I love you？
伊绿：嗯，我在清国的时候看到那些色目人这么对旁边的女人说的。那些女人听到后都会很开心也很感动的样子。 我想 i love you 应该是好的东西吧， 我对吉童好像是那种感觉...

episode XX:
伊绿：吉童啊，i love you！
吉童：什么？
伊绿：I love you！
吉童：那是什么？是好的吗？那我也 i love you吧！

also, throughout the drama, 'i love you' was used so frequently, it even became a secret code between the two of them at one point...