I've always said that if you aren't willing to at least risk being tacky, you won't have any fun.
That's one of the themes of this show. The opening line is: "All Children Are Artists." As we see when the group later goes to an orphanage, the children take pure joy in expressing & sharing of themselves. They aren't worried about critics or reviews.
This show introduces us to Duk-mi. She's an energetic, hard working & passionate person who lives in Technicolor. A once aspiring artist, Duk-mi is now the curator of a privately owned museum. Her job is not ideal as she, along with her suggestions, are rarely respected. Duk-mi is not easily suppressed, though. She does her job with verve. She also has a secret life away from the museum. If found out, she would be fired. You see, Duk-mi ...🥁🥁🥁... Is a "fan😍girl." {GASP!} Pop singer Si-an is the recipient of her affection, and she is not alone.
Fangirls are a sisterhood of women, ALL devoted to a star. Besides knowing ALL the music and ALL the useless trivia about their idol, to be a true fangirl, one must be at ALL the star's public appearances. This includes ALL airport arrivals and book signings, not just concerts. ALL this dedication is neither easy nor cheap. We watch Duk-mi go from the museum, straight to a Si-an appearance lugging a step ladder & 14 inches of zoom lens. From behind a black mask, she snaps her photos & heads home, where we see how deeply her obsession is etched onto her being. Her studio apt is a giant Si-an collage. It's jammed with every souvenir of which one could conceive - posters, dolls, the requisite cardboard cutout & even Si-an pillows... Even a water bottle, half full, that Si-an threw to the crowd once. (I said 'half full' out of habit. This water bottle is definitely half-empty!). It's basically the tackiest decorating ever - Even worse than Bette Mildler's in Ruthless People.
We then meet Ryan (Conventional. Condescending. Cheerless). He's an artist turned lauded NYC critic. A mental block has severed him from his craft. He can dip a brush 🎨, but he can't touch it to the canvas. As a critic he isn't known to look at many pieces for more than 3 seconds (<1 sec is typical, 2+ could launch a new artist). He stopped creating art when a painting of soap bubbles arrested his gaze. Believing it was Stendhal Syndrome ('When exposed to an incredible work of art, one may experience a rush of psychological symptoms.') he sees a psychiatrist. His therapy was going the way of his paint brushes, though: Nowhere. It's a mystery in the NYC art scene, as is the artist, Lee Sol, who brushed on those bubbles that popped Ryan's career. Nobody seems to know anything about the painter.
The first time Duk-mi and Ryan meet is at an art auction in Shanghai. They fight over a painting. The painting is of soap bubbles. Artist: Lee Sol.
Duk-mi knows that "her SI-AN" is a fan of Lee Sol's work. Every year, The Road To Si-an webpage pools money from fans to buy a big gift for the object of their adoration. Her boss thinks it's merely a work trip, but Duk-mi's real mission is to get that 🖼 for Si-an. She loses. She tries to talk Ryan into surrendering the painting to her. He looks at her like she's a lunatic. Fate is at work; these 2 have 2 other chance meetings, though they both don't put it all together until later.
Duk-mi's boss, the director/owner of the museum, is a garrish, overweening tyrant. She is played by the great Kim Sun-young, who's clearly having the time of her life in the role & in those preposterous outfits. She makes Duk-mi miserable. Fortunately, her husband is embroiled in a scandal, so she must step down temporarily.
You get one guess as to who the next director is.
They don't blend well.
That should adequately lay out the paints on the 🎨: Except for their overlapping love of art, Duk-mi & Ryan, a Korean adopted overseas, have opposite existences. They are compared & contrasted in visual ways. Dude's home is painted a deep Wedgwood blue. While it's a pretty color, when it covers 4 walls it only reflects his current bleakness. Taste aside, Duk-mi's room is vibrant. She's open, which is why she can feel art so intuitively. She's full of love and passion. Ryan is dried up like old paint.
Ryan becomes drawn-in by hearing Duk-mi talk about works of art. With admiring fondness, she seems to be able to scry an artist's thoughts & emotions. He becomes fascinated with her w/o realizing it or thinking about why. Fascination leads to close observation. (😱! Don't look behind the mask!) We can feel doom approaching. What will Ryan, who is from that snotty NYC art world, think if he ever discovers HPL?
Another theme is family & togetherness. Duk-mi's parents created a home where all are welcomed. Duk-mi's mother is, well, /motherly/. She wants to feed and love-on everybody that comes through their door. They even raised Eun-gi - from birth - for an overwhelmed single mother. He & Duk-mi consider themselves siblings. Fellow fangirl, Seon-joo, who runs the local coffee shop, is Thelma to Duk-mi's Louise. The office, Duk-mi's apt, the museum, the coffee shop, and her parents place are all frequent gathering spots. Duk-mi's life is shared with family, and friends-that-are-family.
Ryan's life is solitude. That's why he's angry when Duk-mi pokes around his place when he's not there. He seems to have no one.
The two seem to fall for eachother quickly, though it takes them a few eps to realize it. While the falling-in-love is usually the funnest thing in a romance, in the case of Duk-mi & Ryan, I found the series even more entertaining after they get together. The way they mix it up is sensational; their relationship is pure enjoyment. Duk-mi smiles with her whole being. She smiles a lot. At first it seemed overdone, but it's rather by design. She is the SUN that warms him back up. Art is all about light. Ryan couldn't step forward until he came out of the darkness. His first steps towards healing were in Duk-mi's direction.
There are mysteries to be solved, secrets to be revealed, and singers to love in the balance of the show.
HPL also sketched in some laughs. They have trouble with R-r-ryan's name, so they call him "Lion". Eun-gi tells Da-ni that she'd be an annoying friend. She looks at him and says: "You're a good judge of character." We understand Duk-mi's obsessive side when we get a full look at her family home: It's genetic. The two protags are in a chess game over a notebook and the truth about Duk-mi, which is amusing. Generating laughter could be the trickiest art of all, and HPL sells it.
Poor Eun-gi. He's coming in 2nd again. He wins the silver medal (again) in scoring his gf. Duk-mi was just a primer, actually. He certainly has a type! In my ledger, Eun-gi's gf won: Eun-gi is arguably more attractive, & he's protective, loyal, appreciative, chill, great to hang out with, and... Well, did you /see/ that shower scene?? That actor probably has fangirls himself. Nuff of that...
While HPL is certainly silly, and completely adorable, romance-wise, it can also be profound. The following exchange is a free therapy session: Seon-joo's TV producer husband is pushed into doing an 'expose' show on 'crazy' fans. He hides this from Seon-joo, and even secretly copies files from her computer. When she finds out, she could have foamed up milk with no machine. She was STEAMED. He tries to explain, with the most positive framing, all the good reasons why he made the show, including securing the transfer she had wanted him to get. Fangirl nails it. She might be silly, but she ain't dumb. She asks if it was all for /her/ sake then? He says no, he didn't "mean that..." She responds:
"Do you know what I really hate about you right now? If you've hurt me, you should just remain as the assailant. Why are you using me as an excuse to act like a victim? Do you expect me to understand and pity you in this situation?"
He replies that he shouldn't have waited to tell her, and he's not sure why he stalled with that. She comes back at him again:
"Do you want to know why you didn't tell me beforehand? It's because you didn't feel the need to. You knew I'd throw a fit later on, but you were simply going to escape that moment." In finishing, she informs him that he didn't talk to her because he was already determined to do it.
One of the excuses he used was that it was all for their son. Her response: "You used my precious family as a weapon to stab me, and {your son} as a shield to hide behind. It was a nasty and cowardly move."
Perhaps that exchange will be useful for your next relationship argument. She later says that 'in a relationship there are things that cannot be resolved with logic. This is a matter of emotion.' Well put.
There are disappointments: No big "reveal" to Si-an, we don't see the exposé show & leaving a child at the playground?! C'mon. They could have done plenty of things better, but the positives redeem it. It's good enough to hang in your gallery.
The most important takeaway from HPL is that a loving and caring family unit can do a lot of good. Duk-mi and her mother make numerous lives better. Duk-mi's mother gets the credit as she raised Duk-mi. We ran the "open house" in our neighborhood. We are close with many of the kids still, and we even Christmas with two of the brothers that were fixtures in our home for a few years. We can't go after everything we want AND love others. The two are exclusionary. The odd thing is that helping others is more fulfilling than going after everything we want.
Quote: In Korea, if you kiss and don't go out, they send you to jail.
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