You're a terrible mom if you can't take care of me until I'm 60!
JEON JONG SEO as Na Ah Jung in Wedding Impossible (2024)
446 notes
·
View notes
Wedding Impossible
I recently caught wind of a mainstream kdrama with a significant queer character and @he-is-lightning-in-a-bottle pinged me today to say it's legit, so of course I had to check it out.
If you're curious, here's the set up:
Lee Ji Han (male lead) is the youngest grandson of a chaebol family. He wants to inherit the company but knows he can’t because of his position in the family, so he is pinning his hopes on his older brother who has no interest in the business to inherit so he can run things behind the scenes.
Lee Do Han, his brother, is a closeted gay man. He has been living in NYC for the last five years to escape scrutiny but is now being forced back to South Korean because his grandfather is trying to make him marry an heiress and take over the family business.
Nah Ah Jeong (female lead) is Do Han's best friend of 15 years and the only person in his life who knows he’s gay--she bearded for him in high school. She’s an actress but not a successful one, and she is always hustling for work including taking some very non-traditional acting jobs. She and Do Han are close and she knows his biggest secret, but she didn’t know he was a chaebol.
Do Han, under pressure from his both his grandfather and his brother, asks Ah Jeong to enter a lavendar marriage with him for three years to get them off his back and set him up to get out of the inheritance entirely. He frames it as an acting job and offers generous compensation, as well as appealing to her as a friend.
Yoon Chae Won, the heiress everyone is trying to force Do Han to marry, seems like a nice gal who honestly didn’t ask for any of this nonsense but is dealing with her own family pressures.
There is also a cabal of scheming half siblings (they have a different father from Ji Han and Do Han, it's a whole family scandal) who are fighting for control of the company, so will be working at cross purposes with Ji Han.
The primary focus of this drama is the enemies to lovers romance between Ji Han and Ah Jeong, as Ji Han does not know his brother is gay or that this romance is fake, and is trying to prevent the marriage by antagonizing Ah Jeong. He seems to love his brother but also doesn’t see what the big deal is about an arranged marriage if it means they get control of the company, probably because he himself has never cared about anything but earning his place. To be frank, I don't like his character and am not invested in this romance, and if that was all the show was doing, I probably would not stick around.
But Do Han is very important to the narrative, and the whole plot is built around his sexuality and his fear of coming out, so he has a very important role to play and will go on the extremely short list of gay characters with significant roles in mainstream kdrama. I don't expect him to get a romance, but I do expect that his story with his family and his pursuit of the life he wants will stay the B plot, and the tone of this drama lends itself to him getting a happy resolution. And I do genuinely like his friendship with Ah Jeong; she is a delight and their loyalty to each other is a really nice aspect of this drama. So I will be sticking around for them, and I do recommend folks who are interested check this drama out to support the production and make it clear there's an audience for queer stories in kdrama.
211 notes
·
View notes