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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Heirs" Episode 2

Eun-Sang (played by Park Shin-hye) sticks out in this drama as being the token teenager of a lower economic class. Kim Tan spends a lot of time deliberately needling her about her various peculiar attitudes, and this is all played for laughs. It's obvious to us, the audience, that this is a romantic drama where these two are supposed to get together, so it's funny. But "The Heirs" takes the bold, discomforting step of showing us why Eun-Sang's excessively non-confrontational attitude is probably the correct one.

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There's even a line here that explicitly spells it out, when Eun-Sang mentions she wants this trip to have at least one (rather pitiful) positive memory. Kim Tan doesn't get this at all- he's been having lots of fun. But for Eun-Sang this entire situation is existentially terrifying. First she finds out that her sister came to America to live the trashy life that you're supposed to go to America to escape from. And now Eun-Sang has no money, no means of getting home, and has to live with the fear that her mother will get emotionally crushed once the situation is fully explained.

It's hard to escape the implications, literally, economically, and culturally, that Eun-Sang's problems are created by the high society teenagers of whom Kim Tan is a member. And this is another incredibly interesting theme of the drama. I'd never thought about it before, but when you think about it, the Prince is actually kind of indirectly at fault for Cinderella's poor treatment in the first place, since he's the one who throws the big fancy parties that the stepsisters want to go to so badly. But unlike Cinderella, Eun-Sang has no interest in high class romance- survival's plenty good enough for her.

Outside of this central plotline, everything else is just exposition and basic character outlining of all the show's other heirs and heiresses. It's interesting that none of them really feel all that wealthy- for the most part they're just normal teenagers. Yeong-Do (played by Kim Woo-bin) gets some weird familial background exposition here, but for the most part his cranky rebellious streak is just the general resentment of a young person.

There's an interesting scene, for example, where a character assumes that Yeong-Do is some sort of positive character archetype based on a non-typical action he's doing- considering that Yeong-Do is the heir to a large family fortune. But Yeong-Do is clearly a youth before he's an heir- and to him his status only exists as a means to an end. What end that could be I'm not sure yet- but I don't think he knows, either. While the drama's story is still haphazard, I think this is a deliberate narrative choice meant to emphasize that to these youths there are lots of potential problems and almost no visible solutions.

Review by William Schwartz

"The Heirs" is directed by Kang Sin-hyoand written by Kim Eun-sook and features Lee Min-ho, Park Shin-hye, Kim Woo-bin and Jung Soo-jung.

 

 

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