Boy, did this episode pack a punch in terms of deep questions! Much of the villainy is set aside as we focus on our leads, though trouble has begun to brew in certain quarters. We start off with HTH’s shock announcement that he is the long-lost Dong Geul aka Han Dong Eun. HMH and his mother look as though they’ve been forced to eat Dungbombs as the board of directors buzzes amongst themselves. GCY begins to questions things as well, pondering the circumstances of her first meeting with HTH.
HTH confides to a weary Ji Hoon (GCY’s brother and his adopted brother) that Sara’s birthday is the next day and he wants to make it a day to remember. Ji Hoon, who may know a lot about superficial women but doesn’t understand gems like Sara, suggests an ‘aristocratic date’. HTH gleefully plans one , which promises to be a disaster. Meanwhile a super happy Sara relives that hug when HTH arrives home from some shopping. 
Her reactions upon hearing his dulcet tones is hilarious as is his reaction upon speaking in said dulcet tones
Continue reading “Birth of A Beauty Ep 10 Recap (and why HTH is utterly swoon-worthy)”
Category: Birth of a Beauty
Birth of a Beauty and are we really makjang-free?
Adjusting to a dramaverse without the beauty that is Liar Game is pretty difficult, as most other dramas, somehow, fail to live up to expectations. I began watching Birth of a Beauty after sparing the appropriate mourning time for Liar Game Season 1, and boy was it underwhelming at first. Yet, slowly but surely, the show’s begun to grow on me. Yet quite a few fundamental flaws exist within its makeup that prevent it from being as good as it could have been.
The premise is simply enough. An oversized woman, Sa Geum Ran (SGR) believes herself to be happily married to Lee Kang Joon (LKJ) and suffers under the hands of her in-laws to maintain her marriage. She is, thus, horrified to discover that her husband has been carrying on with beautiful, cold announcer Gyo Chae Yeon (GCY) for quite a while and that her in-laws prefer the Other Woman to her. Confronting her husband with the affair, she is handed back her wedding ring and promptly dismissed after he informs her that he’ll be filing for divorce. Heartbroken at the callous treatment, and the gloating smiles on her in-laws’ faces, she drives off into the night and is met with an accident. Bruised and battered she arrives at restaurant chain owner-pretending-to-be-cosmetic-surgeon Han Tae Hee’s (HTH) place and begs him for a drastic transformation. Seeing that HTH has had feelings for GCY for quite a while, he agrees to help in hope that both of them will get back the respective people they love. And thus, SGR is transformed, through numerous invasive plastic surgery procedures, into Sara. LKJ, GCY and the evil in-laws believe SGR to have died in the car accident and don’t even bother mourning her, instead transferring every assert she owned into their name, and gloating at her death in joy. HTH and Sara vow to do everything they can to break up GCY and LKJ who have just announced their wedding plans.
At first the plan is to separate the two, for Sara to make off with the husband she still loves despite his callous treatment of her, and for HTH to make off with GCY whom he still loves despite her callous treatment of him. With LKJ an easy target for the now-beautiful and unrecognizable Sara’s charms, everything appears to be according to plan.
That is, until Sara remembers a crucial part from the night of her accident and realizes that LKJ was behind it.
Love turns into hatred, as Sara vows revenge on all who were complicit in her ‘death’.
Infiltrating her in-laws home as the lovely, talented girl-next-door, she begins a campaign of torment and terror (for them that is, it’s highly amusing for any viewer watching to see them get their just desserts). HTH, feeling sympathy for her, happily aids her along, as he’ll still get GCY regardless of what happens to LKJ> Yet things change when he begins to feel curiously breathless around Sara. Suddenly GCY just doesn’t seem to matter as much. Even the startling discovery that she was an accomplice to Sara’s murder (a fact that Sara does her best ot hide from HTH as she’s afraid that it’ll hurt him) barely makes his heart ache, and even then, it’s pity for Sara. Could he be falling in love with his own creation? But is it Sara he loves? Or Sa Geum Ran?
Things are complicated by the reveal that HTH is the legitimate son, and heir to the corporation that LKJ and the sinister Han Min Hyuk (HMH) work in, Winner Group. Add to that the fact that his Grandmother is now in danger from both HMH (the illegitimate son) and his scheming mother, and we’ve quite the tale on our hands.
So much for SBS’s makjang-free policy. Continue reading “Birth of a Beauty and are we really makjang-free?”
The Quill and Screen 