Personal Taste: Fan Favorites Lee Min-ho & Son Ye-Jin Star in K-Drama Together
“Clumsy Kae-in gets a male roommate who pretends to be gay just to land an address in her ritzy building, and ends up reforming how Kae-in sees love.”
Personal Taste (Viki)
If you like Son-Ye-Jin and Lee Min-Ho is it a foregone conclusion that you’ll like Personal Taste? Having seen this after watching several of their other works I had a lot to measure this one by but it is fun to have two favorites work together.
I first binge-watched this drama several months ago and recently re-watched it over a few weeks. I remember liking it better the first time. Does this mean my K-drama honeymoon phase is over? Truthfully, I don’t know if I’ll ever NOT be biased towards K-dramas (as well as Lee Min-ho and Son Ye-Jin) but I think a little critical thinking shows growth on my part.
Jeon Jin-Ho is more subdued and moody than we’re used to seeing many of Lee Min-ho’s characters. It was good to see this quieter and understated portrayal. Jin-ho has been described as pretending he’s gay but it actually started with a mistaken assumption that he doesn’t try hard enough to correct. As the story develops we see how his inability to clear up this misunderstanding complicates things on many levels. I appreciate the fact one of the more important characters in the storyline is actually gay. I don’t care for Jin-Ho’s co-worker/friend who goes out of his way to pretend to be gay. He seems to only be there to create more issues.
I’m not used to seeing Son Ye-Jin portray someone who’s not confident so it was different to see her as Park Gae-In. For me, Gae-In was a bit annoying—I’m glad I had seen Ye-Jin in several other K-dramas before this one.
I understand why screenwriters like to use the storyline of the handsome guy falling in love with an average woman. But sometimes the average-person character is written in such a way it makes it hard to believe the “above-average” character would be drawn to them let alone end up with them. Not because it couldn’t happen in real life, but because the character flaws as written are so over the top and thus hard to buy. Average people are just that. Average. Not dumb, not stupid, or overly awkward.
Gae-In is sweet and caring but everything from her really quirky sense of style to her overall lack of awareness and how her personality impacts her behavior made it difficult for me to believe Jin-Ho (who is exceptionally stylish and described as OCD) would be romantically attracted to Gae-In. Park Gae-In was a caricature along the lines of Ugly Betty without the transformation. I love Ye-Jin but Gae-In was getting on my nerves a bit—and I probably have a higher tolerance threshold than Jin-Ho would have. I didn’t think these characters had romantic chemistry between them. Notice I said characters and not actors. I would put that lack of chemistry in the writer’s lap, not the actors.
Also in the writer’s lap—other than Jeon Jin-ho, Park Gae-In, Choi Do-Bin, and Jo Eun-Ji, most of the characters were not very likable and/or downright annoying.
My favorite part about Personal Taste was the architecture storyline. Just like Jeon Jin-ho I was fascinated by Park Gae-in’s house—Sang Go-Jae. The exterior is real, but the interior was a set. Sang Go-Jae is a hanok—a traditional Korean house dating back to the Joseon period, but this one had modern touches. Bukchon Hanok Village in Seoul, where the exteriors were shot is a popular spot for tourists as well as shooting K-dramas.
I’d like to see Son Ye-Jin and Lee Min-ho pair up again with a better script. And it doesn’t have to be a romantic scenario.
What other K-drama shot a scene with the main lead in the same area?
Who won “Excellent Actor” in 2019 KBS Drama Awards for their role in When the Camellia Blooms?
Who won Most Popular Actress in the 2020 BaekSang Awards?
What actor will be in the AppleTV production of the Min Jin novel, Pachinko?
Released: March 2010 Episodes: 16
Cast: Son Ye-Jin (Park Gae-In), Lee Min-Ho (Jeon Jin-Ho), Kim Ji-Suk (Han Chang-Ryeol), Wang Ji-Hye (Kim In-Hee), FULL CAST
