Highlights: "My Lovely Girl" Episodes 14, 15, and 16 (Final)

This week we had three episodes to wrap up “My Lovely Girl”, and the ending was just about what you’d expect, in ways both good and bad. Songs are sung, fathers are disapproving, time is jumped, and dogs with cancer are not miraculously cured (sob).

These were my five favorite scenes from episodes 14, 15, and 16 of “My Lovely Girl”:

1. Shi Woo’s public confession

I didn’t love the fall-out of Shi Woo’s on-air declaration of love, but I did really like the scene itself. Yes, it was both stupid and inconsiderate from a PR standpoint, but it also illustrated everything I love about the character—his impulsiveness and genuine sincerity. He didn’t confess his love thinking that Se Na would be forced into fake-dating him; he did it because when he was asked what kind of woman he loved, he could only tell the truth. Even understanding that this was a bad move for an idol, I can’t help but love it.

2. Dal Bong at the beach

I hesitate to call this a “favorite” scene, but I can’t deny how moved I was by Dal Bong’s last minutes. In fact, I was downright heartbroken—I cried right along with Hyun Wook as it became clear that Dal Bong was gone forever. I sometimes have trouble connecting with the human characters on this drama, but Dal Bong owned my heart from the first episode on. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I have to go cry some more.

3. Dad isn’t a cheater

So I wasn’t exactly dying from curiosity as to the resolution of this storyline, but it was still nice to finally find out that Hyun Wook’s dad was helping out the former-trainee single mom because he felt responsible for what happened to her, even though he wasn’t the father of her baby. It’s a relief to know the old man was decent after all.

4. A year without Se Na turns Hyun Wook into a jerk

I don’t think that the time jump really accomplished a lot in terms of the plot, but I got a huge kick out of Hyun Wook, bitter radio-show host. It was a welcome reminder that Rain can be incredibly funny.

5. CEO Shin Hae Yoon

What a wonderful surprise it was to see that Hae Yoon finally had something nice happen to her after 15 episodes of unrequited love and misery. There’s no doubt in my mind that she deserved to become the CEO of AnA—she was consistently good at and dedicated to her job. Good for her!

Overall Thoughts and Feelings

Now that “My Lovely Girl” is over, I don’t know how I feel. The thing is, I enjoyed watching it. It’s a fun, low-key show—perfect for a sickday marathon, for example. The tone is breezy, the acting is variable but generally pretty good (Rain being the real standout), and there are no glaring missteps.

But I can’t help feeling that the whole of this drama was much less than the sum of its parts. The beginning wasn’t drastically better than the end, but it did set up a world that was much broader than the one the drama ended up inhabiting—in terms of characters, but also just in terms of stories. Remember the time that Hyun Wook had tinnitus for an episode, and that’s why he couldn’t write songs any more (and it was so bad that he nearly drove off the road)? Yeah, neither does the drama. What about Ra Eum, the girl that Shi Woo had a crush on? She disappeared by episode eight. Even Jae Young ended up being a toothless villain, and I can’t help but feel that Kim Jin Woo was utterly wasted in the role (seriously—he was such a dynamic presence in “Queen In Hyun’s Man”, but he had none of that here). There was a set-up for a really bustling, exciting drama.

What we got instead was 13 episodes of our hero lying through his teeth, a supporting cast that was mostly ignored (remember the time that Hoya was in this drama?), and an episode 16 that was basically all filler. It’s that last part that annoys me the most. Having Hyun Wook’s dad come in at the last minute to tear the happy couple apart for literally no reason made it so obvious that the writer was completely out of ideas, and it made me really stop caring about what happened.

All of this makes it seem like I hated “My Lovely Girl”—but I didn’t! As I was watching it, I had a lot of fun. It’s only now that it’s over and I’m thinking about the drama as a whole that I start to have these negative thoughts about it. I don’t regret watching it, but I do wish that it had been better.

Let us know how you felt about the ending of “My Lovely Girl” in the comments below!

[tv] Catch up with “My Lovely Girl” on SoompiTV! [/tv]