MBC's Wednesday-Thursday drama Cinderella Man (신데렐라맨) stars Kwon Sang-woo (Stairway to Heaven), Yoona of SNSD (You Are My Destiny), Song Chang-eui (Boys Don't Cry) and Han Eun-jeong (Full House).
(all screen caps by Luv, TY-KSW @ Soompi; some pictures are from MBC)
Characters:
Kwon Sang-woo plays Oh Dae-San and Lee Joon-hee
Yoona plays Seo Yoo-jin
Song Chang-Eui plays Lee Jae-min
Han Eun-Jeong plays Jang Se-eun
Jeong Hye-seon (Golden Bride) plays Grandma Kang
Yoo Hye-ri (You Are My Destiny) plays Lady Oh
Lee Byeong-joon (Story Of A Man) plays Elegance Choi
Ahn Seok-hwan (Boys Over Flowers) plays driver/steward
Background:
The premise of the drama is about chaebol Lee Joon-hee needing an emergency heart transplant, finds an identical twin in Oh Dae-san and pays Dae-san to masquerade as him while he goes and find out the truth about his birth mother. Dae-san is an orphan who operates a fashion clothes stall in Dongdaemun Market (Great East Gate, something you'd find in Petaling Street) and has his stall leased from Yoo-jin's late dad, who also operates a clothes store, but only Dae-san and Mr. Seo knew of the leasing.
Seo Yoo-jin was a student in the prestigious French school of design but due to her father's sudden death, she has to put her studies on hold and return to Korea.
Mr. Seo's death throws Yoo-jin into a pile of nice debts, since her mom on the day of the funeral collapsed and had to stay in the hospital and it was found that Mr. Seo was well, too nice. Consequently, Yoo-jin loses her dad's stall to curly mop Ma Yi-san, a debt collector (a.k.a. loan shark).
Sopia, the fashion conglomerate owned by Joon-hee and Jae-min's grandmother, subsequently father, is also facing its own internal mess. Jae-min, although the oldest, isn't the legitimate son as he is from Lady Oh's (played by Yoo Hye-ri, also from You Are My Destiny) previous marriage. Grandma Kang isn't letting her daughter-in-law and son take over the company. Knowing her son had an affair, Grandma Kang 20+ years ago did the obligatory Asian drama cliche: taking her legitimate grandson away right on the night of birth. Way to go, Grandma Kang.
Episode 1
The father's will came with a surprise as Jae-min didn't get a promotion as Lady Oh hoped but Grandma Kang took back her president's seat. Jun-hee needed to be trained to take over, as Grandma Kang hopes.
Jun-hee refuses to stay with the family and decides to rent the presidential suite (these chaebols...). He spends some time with his deceased father only to found out about a letter left for him.
Meanwhile, Dae-san is your regular jack of the town - loud, sweet-talker and a total opposite from the cold and demure Jun-hee. (The only way you can differentiate between the two Kwon Sang-woo is that Dae-san wears somewhat loud clothes, has curly hair and wears no specs.)
(No, that's not Dae-san. It's Ma Yi-san, the satturi speaking debt collector)
Owing to Mr. Seo, Dae-san decides to help his widow and daughter. Yoo-jin is used to the high life of Paris and adjustment takes a while. She started off being like a spoiled brat who thought it would be easy to operate a store in DDM, then she got rescued by Dae-san when a bunch of debt collector comes to take claim on the store, led by the curly mop.
He makes his living as the 'doryeonim' (young master) of Dongdaemun Market, selling clothes, and copies designs from haute couture aisles. One day doing so, he was mistaken for Jun-hee and carried off Jun-hee's purchases that was left behind. When the real Jun-hee turns up, the sales people got frozen quite well.
Dae-san also delivers clothes to the bar ladies (sorry don't know what it's called) regularly, but crossed the border when he invaded territories. Running away, Jun-hee was caught instead. The two were surrounded and surprise surprise, they faced each other...
Episode 2
Lady Oh on sending Grandma Kang for her return to work, was unconvinced about Jun-hee. Jae-min reminiscences about the time when he went to Paris to look for Jun-hee with a good intention but was challenged coldly by Jun-hee, even to the point of being insulted that he wasn't the legit son. Jun-hee, also remembering that time, believes he need to do something, despite his failing heart.
Jun-hee decides to follow father's letter's instructions and pursue his mother's whereabouts. Knowing he needs to keep an eye on the company while he goes and get his heart surgery while finding more information about his mother, he decides to hire Dae-san as his body double. Dae-san, disgusted with the way he was being treated despite the pay, rejects.
Yoo-jin, left with no money, was on the verge of breakdown. Dae-san starts to help Yoo-jin to sell off the father's stocks, so they set up a stall on the street. Dae-san, using all his, uh, manly charms to attract customers, helped Yoo-jin on the first day only to lose his own shop next.
Left with no options, Dae-san puts on a humble face and goes to meet Jun-hee...
Episode 3
Dae-san goes off to return his clothes to Jun-hee but was 'kidnapped' along the way. Grandma Kang wanted to make sure Jun-hee was healthy and so sent her henchmen to take him for medical checkup where Dae-san reluctantly participate with gusto. Again, Kwon Sang-woo gives fanservice.
Yoo-jin, in the mean time, wants to find a design-related job, but has to resort to selling clothes by the street stall for a while. To build up her confidence, she downs soju and threw away her self-consciousness.
Jun-hee goes and search out his mother in Jeju and realised his mother was already dead but also unearthed something about his stepmother. Jun-hee is angry and broken. His heart cannot sustain him any longer and he needs the surgery a.s.a.p. So what does he do? He speaks to his steward, good ol' ahjusshi who at first isn't sure if the plan was going to work...
Episode 4
Se-eun meets Dae-san in his Dae-san outfit again in this episode who mistook her for one of the bar ladies and recognizing him as Jun-hee. Dae-san, needing to keep his identity a secret, tells that this is his undercover job, to research about the current consumer market.
Meanwhile, Yoo-jin, due to her prestigious education background, was called back to Sophia as an intern where before she was rejected in Episode 1. She meets her senior, Se-eun, but both were unfriendly to each other, Yoo-jin colder...
Comments
I'm sorry if the Episode recaps got less and less. This is partly due to my bad memory and partly due to the insufficient number of screencaps which doesn't help in triggering my memory, except for the first two episodes.
Cinderella Man didn't start off with a bang. It was interesting to see Kwon Sang-woo tackle two very different characters and balance between both. But probably, even he found it difficult to keep up, cause in later episodes, Dae-san pretty much dominates. But it didn't start off with a bang.
It has a lot of drama cliches, such as the stepbrother and stepmother plot, the kidnapping plot and the debt plot.
Yoona, being her 2nd try in drama lead, the first being You Are My Destiny (which scored ratings but sucks overall, I say), sheds her young SNSD girly image to a more mature image, being an university student. I won't say her acting has improved tremendously since her YAMD days, and to a certain point, she annoys me. The other bad thing about acting is underacting. She tends to be a bit stony in some of her scenes, kinda like Jang Geun-seok in his Hong Gil Dong days. There tends to be a lack of depth in her eyes but she's not a bad actress. Her character just annoys me, where the first two episodes reminded me so much of her YAMD days.
On the other hand, Kwon Sang-woo has 100000X less crying scenes and it's a good thing. It's a good change, though he tends to overact a little for his Dae-san character. He doesn't exaggerate like Lee Pil-mo's Dae-pung in Sons of Sol Pharmacy House, but he does tend to overplay his Dae-san loudness a little too much. Like him play-wrestling with Mr. Ahjusshi.
It's my first time seeing Song Chang-eui acting and he carries his character well. I kinda pity his character cause while he's trying to be the nice older brother, Jun-hee is always so cold to him, making him feeling really left out by everyone and totally conflicted. But he's not all good either. To dumb a fiancee just because she went broke is totally uncool.
I've watched Han Eun-jeong twice, once in The Successful Story of a Bright Girl, the other in Full House. She sort of reprises her role in Full House except she's more spunk than sexy here. But both were designers and why she is snubbed by Yoo-jin, we'll just have to see.
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