매리는 외박중

I’ve recently concluded watching a nice K-drama. Marry Me, Mary was shown on the KBS channel on Astro recently. Knowing me, it was another funny romantic drama, and not the tearjerker type. I stumbled upon the drama as I was channel surfing. The drama was showing one of the main characters performing on stage. I’m embarrassed to say that he caught my attention for two reasons: one, he’s cute and the second reason was that he reminded me of Hyde from the J-rock band L’Arc-en-Ciel. It turns that the actor had always been a L’Arc-en-Ciel fan! The drama was already four episodes along but it wasn’t hard for me to catchup. It’s a typical story where the girl’s parent wants her to marry his good friend’s son. The girl’s name is Mary and she’s a typical optimistic girl who patiently deals with a father who’s always running from loan sharks. Now, Mary’s not one to go quietly into an arranged marriage, so she pretends to have a fake wedding with a band singer she just met. Who does that in real life but hey, this is a drama. Not willing to be brushed off by his daughter’s attempt to evade the wedding, Mary’s father and his friend sneakily register her as married to the other guy. How you can register someone to be married without the person in question being present is something I’ll never figure out but again, this is TV. From there, they come up with some sort of agreement: the girl has to live with the two guys (alternating between them each day) for 100 days and at the end of it, decide who she really wants to marry. The girl doesn’t want to and only agrees to stop her father and his friend from harassing her further. So, in a way, the girl has two husbands (her father doesn’t know the wedding was fake). It’s a ridiculous start to a story but maybe it’s the absurdity that attracts us to it; the fact that it could never happen in real life perhaps makes us more curious to see how the story unfolds. Or maybe it’s the really good-looking guys that make us watch. The guy the girl had the fake wedding with is a singer of an indie band and he is so cute, he kinda looks like a girl sometimes. Good thing his voice is rather deep. I’m not sure I am familiar on how J-rock singers dress but how this guy dresses sort of reminds me of J-rock singers. He’s the typical guy who doesn’t like commitment and changes girlfriends every other month. His only passion in life is making music. Now, the other guy (the one she has a marriage license with) is the typical cool, phlegmatic character you find in any manga. He however has an overbearing father who expects him to do everything he asks him to. He’s the relatively young owner of a drama production company. He has a history with Mary, having known her since she was young but had not seen her in years. To sum it up, they have a past connection. So, who would Mary choose? Would it be the cool indie band singer or the calm and collected entrepreneur? At first, it seemed obvious who she would ultimately choose but as the story progresses, things don’t seem so certain. There’s also an ex-girlfriend that enters the picture but not in the way K-dramas would usually portray. The ex-girlfriend is actually a cool character and not annoying and whiny. Basically, I like the story because it feels different from other K-dramas; it’s funny, it’s entertaining and real (despite the unrealistic start). I also love the music. Of course not every drama is perfect. I liked the first half better. Towards the end, the storyline kind of shifted to the typical drama where one character easily misunderstands another over trivial things. There was also something that annoyed me: the two guys are always having to save Mary from one incident or another (rolls eyes). The whole thing makes it seem like some shoujo manga. Oh right, it’s a shoujo manhwa. I forgot. The drama was adapted from a manhwa done by the same creator of Full House.