The thread is open for spoilers and discussion.
With news of Son YeJin and Hyun Bin’s nuptials, this drama will be on many fans’ watchlist. It’s produced by that network JTBC so I’m skeptical about the plot. No makjang please! But I’ll give it a try since
a. JTBC didn’t stir any controversy in the production of this show,
b. Jeon Mi Do (Hospital Playlist) is on it,
c. we need to support dramas with older actresses. Please no aegyoooooo!
Here’s the synopsis from soompi.
JTBC’s upcoming drama “Thirty-Nine” will star Son Ye Jin, Jeon Mi Do, and Kim Ji Hyun as three friends who met in their second year of high school and are now on the verge of turning 40. The series will follow the three 39-year-old women as they encounter unforeseen circumstances in their lives.
source: soompi
Let’s enjoy the show.
Kalimera @PAckmule3,
Thank you for opening this thread! I want to watch this because Jeon Mi Do is in it. Are you going to watch it with us?
P.S. Can you -please please please- open a thread for “The Grid” for us?
@GB, @Viva and I are willing to start watching it! Thank you in advance! :*
There you go. I opened it for you.
Thank you @Packmule! 😀
*Sending lots of cookies*
You’re welcome. 👍
@packmule3 and @Cleopatra, I’m in. I think we may have a tearjerker here.
I watched Love and Leashes-nit about a veterinary clinic, but light and funny nonetheless. Recommend it for a little raunch and it requires very little time. Call it a pleasant diversion.
I just finished Episode 1 and I really really like it! The premise is interesting and new at the same time.
I was so happy to see Jeon Mi Do again on my screen! She was perfect!
Her pairing with Lee Moo-Saeng is pretty good indeed! *sighs*
I also liked Son Ye Jin with Yeon Woo-Jin. I haven’t seen him anywhere before and the pairing is pretty good!
As for Kim Ji-Hyun, we haven’t seen much. We only saw Lee Tae-Hwan in two scenes. They haven’t interacted in episode 1 yet!
Unfortunately, we should bring handkerchieves with us. This story will bring us sorrow as well.
Dear @OAL good to have you on board!
Hi @Cleopatra, I am going to watch this. I saw it on Netflix today when I went to watch 21/25(also good). I’m also watching Park Min Young/Song Kang in the we a ther drama( good too). I am waiting for March to see if we get wedding pictures from our SonBin couple-it’s one ship that’s come in. Am a lso looking forward to seeing Jeon MiDo. Looks like there’ll be a third season of HPL(if winter garden gets married, I’ll skip it).
Anyway, happy 39 watching. (And @Cleopatra, am eating spanokopita and Greek salad with feta for late lunch-yum).
“Do you want to see the peonies?” Is the new “Do you want to have ramyeon?”. LOL! They did it even exchanged names?!
Is Chan Young’s relationship with her oppa an affair or a non- affair because there’s no sex involved?
Would you let your husband have “dates” like dinner and movies alone with a (girl) friend?
Some thoughts and questions In my head as I watched ep1. Definitely mature topics. Not sure if I’ll keep on watching. I was a bit sleepy in the middle. Great to see Mido here, I find her story to be the most interesting so far.
Dear @OAL,
Thank you! I do hope you enjoyed eating spanakopita and greek salad with feta! I have noticed on IG the pics the gang posted but I am not going to watch Season 3. I want to save myself from how I felt after what happened last summer.
My agapimeni @Janey,
I laughed at the line so much, because it came out of the blue. Also their pairing is refreshing, because Yeon Woo-Jin looked so innocent in a way.
You have forgotten the golden line of past summer: “Do you want to see butterflies?” (Song Kang on Nevertheless)
I will continue watching 39, since as we are going to find out which one of the girls has a terminal condition. I am afraid that is MiDo / Chan-Young, mostly because Cha Mi-Jo is the narrator and because she had an outburst towards Lee Moo-Saeng / Kim Jin-Seok.
In my eyes and from what we have gathered so far from Episode 1, Kim Jin-Seok is a coward. He had a relationship with Jung Chan-Young and when he had to study abroad she didn’t follow. He left and then formed a relationship (?) with his wife and he left her pregnant. So, he (had to) marry her.
If you truly love someone but for some reasons you cannot be with her. You can have sex with whomever you like, if you cannot live without it, but you should be careful not to leave someone else pregnant.
I really liked that MiDo is playing a character like that. She is rebellious and loyal. She is fierce in her everyday life, but she is a woman who loves someone who won’t be with her. At least she finally realized it, even if years have passed by.
I also like that we get to see realistic situations about life, relationships and how dating really is about women in their late thirties.
Waiting for tonight’s episode!
Sigh…I am out. Infidelity is not something I want to be watching. I bailed after I found out MiDo’s character plays the mistress. I am sticking with 25 21. Happy watching ladies.
@nrllee,
Basically they haven’t committed one. Since they haven’t done anything sexual, after he was married. They just hanging out going for dinners and movies.
As it seems I will be the one who will continue watching it.
Thanks for the heads-up, @nrllee. Infidelity is makjang territory to me. It will bring me nothing but stress to watch because I’ll be fuming at her character. 😂 JTBC!!
@Cleo sorry but just because it’s not sexual doesn’t mean he’s not cheating on his wife (and child?). I didn’t get that far. I bailed when MiDo’s character point blank asked him if he was going to get a divorce after he brought her home from the Police station. That’s her coming between the married couple right there. 🙄
@nrllee,
It’s okay. You should watch it until the end, though. She told him, she quit smoking and she will quit him as well.
Although that is not your thing and totally I understand it, I am more interested in the emotional aspect of relationship from CY’s POV.
For Chan Young loving him from afar destroyed her. Being in such a toxic relationship for so many years, made her stagnant and then she found the courage to let him go. For me, the fault doesn’t lie only to CY here, but to Jin Seok that’s why I wrote above that he is a coward.
@Cleopatra,
🙂 There’s physical cheating, and there’s emotional cheating.
Mido’s character might not yet be in an physical affair with the married man since they haven’t had sex, but she is in an emotional affair with him.
The question here that this JTBC writer is trying to mess around with the viewers is this: Is emotional cheating harmless because there’s no sex involved?
I say it depends on how a person looks at long distance relationships. 😂
Let’s ask ourselves this: Are two people in a long distance relationship (LDR) still in a relationship despite their lack of sexual intimacy?
I think most people will say yes. For all LDR couple, their emotional connection matters more than the physical intimacy. They’re still in love with each other despite not having sex. They’re faithful to each other because of their emotional bonding.
Now, let’s go back to the question of emotional cheating again.
It’s easy to see that the cheating characters are in an emotional relationship although they aren’t engaging in sex. They think of themselves as a couple despite the no-sex. And that’s the crux of the matter. He’s in no position to be in any sort of coupledom/coupleship other than his marriage.
Just because they have emotional affair, and not a physical affair, doesn’t make the cheating any less real, any less potent, any less damaging to the man’s marriage. It can be argued that an emotional infidelity is worse than a physical infidelity because it’s harder to get over from.
Plus, given today’s technology and social media, their affair can go on undetected for some length of time, and their bonds will only deepen in time.
So no, nothing good will come of it in the end. She’s setting herself up for a whole lot of pain. 🙂
Well, if she breaks up with him in Ep 1, and stays away from him, that’s good.
But if for the next 3 or 4 episodes, she’s going to dither around, wondering whether to wait or not, then she isn’t a relatable 39-year old. Women in their 40s have a sense of urgency. That’s when it usually hits us that time is swiftly running, and we either get on with our lives or be left behind.
@Packmule3,
In order to clarify this, they were in an real relationship when they were younger. They broke up because he had to go abroad (for further studies?) and she didn’t want to or couldn’t. We don’t know what happened in the past yet.
This whole “affair” situation, is a thorn between Chan Young and Mi Jo’s friendship.
MiJo is against it and says those two are in an affair. She is hard on herself because she was the one who introduced them in the first place.
Chan Young is deluding herself to call it “love”, until she reveals to MJ that they haven’t done anything physical since he got married.
I agree in everything you are saying. Most likely she will pay it with her life.
I think she is the one who has a tumour.
Plus his wife already knows and it is really his fault. It’s a mess really…
@Packmule3,
Tonight we are going to find out who has the malignant tumour. It is also a terminal condition. Since Mi Jo is the narrator and talked in the third person in the beginning and we got to see in the preview that she shouts to Jin Seok that she will kill him, I am assuming that Chang Young is sick.
Dunno how they are going to make this work, but I want to see what will happen next.
P.S. I agree with you about the sense of urgency @Packmule3.
The thing is not to make another mistake just because you feel lonely.
😂😂 Wait, what? Chan Young will get a tumor and die because she has an affair?! Say it ain’t so, Drama Gods!! 😂😂
Nooooo. What this screenwriter should do, if he/she wants to avoid makjang territory, is to eliminate the affair and demonstrate that Chan Young would learn from it. The screenwriter doesn’t have to eliminate Chan Young as some sort of cosmic retribution for cheating. That’s going too far with the morality here. 🤦♀️😂😂
@Packmule3,
After watching the trailer, I thought that Son Ye Jin’s character Mi Jo was going to die. But from what I gathered last night, that’s the assumption I made!
Except this is not accurate and Mi Jo is talking about herself using third person?
I agree with you if CY has the tumour, she will die because of a broken heart? That would be awful indeed. *facepalm*
Here is what I found about the Writer-nim. She is Yoo Young-A who also wrote “Encounter” and the movie “Kim Ji-Young: Born 1982”. I haven’t watched anything by her so I don’t know how she deals with her stories!
https://asianwiki.com/Yoo_Young-A_(screenwriter)
Yes, that’s it. There’s no point in digging a deeper hole when you’re already in a hole.
Loneliness is a state of mind. I can be lonely in a gala with 100 other guests. But I don’t feel alone when I’m by myself on the beach with miles of empty sand around me and the blue horizon in front of me. I love it when I can have the whole beach to myself.
😂 Sometimes I wish people at work would leave me alone so I can think.
@packmule3 Ep1 begins at a funeral. And the 3 men are there. All 3 men shed tears so we aren’t to know which of the 3 women died? With a voiceover narrating (@Cleo says it’s MiJo (Son YeJin) and it does sound more like her)
“Never in our wildest dreams did we expect a funeral to be held for one of us in our late thirties. We laughed a lot. And cried a lot. This is our passionate story…”
And then opening credits Ep1 and it flashes back in time to introduce the 3 women to us.
So perhaps what we will have is that ChanYoung (MiDo) will be diagnosed with a brain tumour and decide life’s too short to be moping over a married man and live what’s left of her life without any entanglements. That’s the best case. Worst case is if the man decides to “be there for her” because she’s not going to be around much longer anyway. 🙄.
So very true @Packmule3!
Loneliness is a state of mind. Sometimes people are desperate to be / do, etc and don’t think clearly if that will really benefit them. Others are afraid to be by themselves and they do catastrophic mistakes in their romantic relationships.
I totally get what you are saying, there are times I wish that too…
Messy. Messy. Messy.
If he decides “to be there for her” because she’s dying, then he should divorce his wife. There’s no way the wife will have him back wholeheartedly after that. Just cut the losses for everyone involved, and start all over.
On a separate note, I’m writing a blurb on 2D1N. Na In Woo made quite a start.
A friend made me took a 5 mins glimpse on Mido’s new flick i.e. ep1. Nope. All I see is Shwa having junwan’s/geoul’s personality mixed up with shwa herself. So, she is in an affair too?? 🥴 Sorry Mido. Maybe in another drama. 😌
Hello there. It’s been a while. I watched the first episode. I don’t know what to feel. Can’t shake off the Song Hwa in Season 2 vibe. But I think I’ll still continue to watch for Son Ye Jin before she goes on honeymoon.
I have a feeling that it’s Kim Ji Hyun’s char who will die. She’s feels like a 3rd wheel to MiJo and ChanYoung. Also ChanYoung dying’s too much a tragedy for her already, although death can be an absolution.
What the?! “Spoilers” so early on in the series. I wonder what route this drama is taking if the revelations are coming in so early. Or is it just about the journey to self actualization?
@packmule3, short note-Jeon MiDo probably took this role to avoid being type cast. Affairs are so prevalent in K Dramas and some actresses play against type to enlarge their range. See Show Window, The Queens House and the jeon So-min role. This one had some good plot twists for those who like this sort of thing(I do on occasion).
Yes, Chan Young is the one who is terminally sick.
This episode was way better than Episode 1.
@packmule3, I like a good making once in awhile. The d I sconcerting thing here, that I repeated elsewhere is that Mido plays a morally compromised person. We are used to seeing her in the HPLs as the epitome of virtue. I use makings to yell at the TV screen. For me, they’re very cathartic. I have spent the majority of my life keeping my emotions buttoned up, partly for professional reasons as I worked c in government and interacted with the public. Makjangs are a perfect excuse v to let em rip. I end up distressing without harming anyone.
The beauty part of this blog is that we learn that each of us has our off limits characters, genres, actors, topics. Knowing this helps in having civil discussions and if we need to express more we may go private.
Now getting back to Mido, it looks like there’ll be a third season of HPL. I hope she gets more air time and that the actress who will not be named will get a cameo at most.
Why would a doctor share a diagnosis like that to a friend of a patient? I get it that it’s part of the storyline but it’s a privacy issue. Does this still happen in SK?
I find the story telling a bit weird with the splices of present time. The drama literally killed off the most controversial character in ep2 and probably not see her get over her affair and start anew. Then the story will center on Mijo, she’s probably not going the the US. The other friend feels like a side character and not a main one. I’m more interested in Mijo’s sister!
@Janey really? So it’s SYJ as the FL and the other 2 are just 2FLs? I thought the whole premise was about their friendship so they would have their own fair share of air time as their past stories unfold. I didn’t get past the first half of Ep1.
But yes a doctor sharing the diagnosis is a big no-no. Privacy issue as you said. 🙄. Especially if it was without the patient’s consent.
Hi @nrlee – that’s my opinion based on what I saw in ep2. There’s this long crying bout of SYJ when she internalized the diagnosis of her friend. She cried beautifully But to be honest, I don’t want to see her – I want to see how Mido dealt with the diagnosis. So I felt like it was about her rather than Mido who is the one who is terminal. I hope they show Mido’s reaction later.
@Janey I guess SYJ is the A-lister amongst the 3 women. She’s the one with more fans so it does feel like she’s the focus and the other 2 are support roles from what you’re saying. Then again it’s only Ep2. There will probably be more of the other 2 as the drama progresses. This writer has great credentials for movies (My Annoying Brother and Miracle in Cell No7) but her drama credentials aren’t as good. Encounter (with Song HyeKyo and Park BoGum) was her last drama. According to her interview (https://www.soompi.com/article/1512249wpp/thirty-nine-writer-shares-why-she-wrote-the-drama-why-shes-thankful-to-the-cast-and-more) this was originally meant to be a movie? And she decided to stretch it out into a drama. I think she should’ve stuck to what she’s better at – movie scripts, and kept it as a movie.
Hello all! Finally found some time to watch KDrama (or even Netflix!). 🙂
So far, I like the 2 episodes. I am not blown away by them, but I am not also turned off. Truth to tell, I am the age demographic of the characters, and it’s amusing / nice to find little facets of myself in either the relationship, personality, or career (really, just the desire to take a year-long break lol) of the three women.
I agree that Mido’s character is the most complex, and I agree with @OAL, I can imagine Mido taking the role partly because it is interesting/challenging to portray. I enjoy watching Mido act — for me, her character here bears no trace whatsoever of the brainy/practically perfect (until proven not *snort*) neurosurgeon she played last time. Subtle and fine acting chops, I say. SYJ’s character appears to be the main character among the 3 friends, but Mido’s character iw more complex and interesting.
Also this is my first time to watch Kim Ji Hyun. Her character is sweet and likeable, and her story arc will most likely involve the restaurant owner.
Given that we already know now what will happen to one of the characters, I guess the story will be a “slice of life” kind of thing — basically, the story of their 39th year, and their last year together.
I sort of want to continue liking the show, but that will mean getting invested in the characters, and eventually getting sad about that certain sad event. Oh well. Let’s see. 🙂
@Miracle23, I would urge you to watch this drama if you have the time or inclination. MiDo’s role is not the typical mistress. Without giving spoilers, she was the first girlfriend of the man who went overseas and to use the vernacular, knocked up another woman whom he married. To make matters worse, Mido plays an acting coach who relies on clients that come from the agency where our man is CEO. He holds the upper hand. Her char a certain is complicated.
The heart of this drama is actually the relationship of the three women friends. That packs a lot. But, I do understand the reluctance to watch a drama that’s sympathetic to a mistress. In some cases that’s okay to me. One is where the wife has dementia. And then there’s the case where my sympathy lies with both women, where the man is a manipulative creep, who has the worst ulterior motives. So far, 39 is not your typical makjang or a makjang at all. So for those of you inclined not to watch it, don’t be put off by the m word.
@ rllee and others, I think we’ll see more of MiDo-although Son Ye Jin is the biggest name, Mido seems like the glue that holds the whole drama together. I want to see how Kim Ji Hyun is “used”. We now know that two of the men are connected. I think that having introduced the new doctor’s young adopted sister, we’ll also see some more plot interactions and complications. Am looking forward to seeing how they work it out. It is a 12 episode drama and we’ve seen major plot devices in two episodes so maybe we won’t see padding. But I truly hope that our three protagonists get fair screen time.
Speaking of Mido, it looks like HPL will get a third season and I saw a new WG thing on YouTube that was artfully done with very attractive pictures of our actress who will not be named. However, I also saw another YouTube of actors body shaming women and the first actor up was none other than Yeo Yeon-seok. Some comments were from unhappy WGers. This may be a one off but our actor is not without his personal critics. If we do have a season 3 I hope Mido and Kim Dae-myung get lots more screen time.
@OAL all the hoopla about S3 is fake news. The cast got together to do a running commentary for the BlueRay release of S2/S1. S3 would be impossible to film because everyone has moved on. YS is on the cards (considering) a drama with Park MinYoung to start filming soon. Finally a drama with an age appropriate ML for PMY 🙄. So YS is probably out.
But no I don’t want to watch anymore. As soon as MiDo’s character asked her old flame if he was getting a divorce, I was out. He has a child with the other woman? I question her motives for even getting to that stage in a relationship with a married man. He married the other woman? He made vows to “forsake all others” and that includes old flames. Even if there is no sex involved. They are clearly emotionally involved. Walk away. Don’t encourage it. He may want to just hang out and go to the movies one on one but you draw the line and say no? You be the responsible adult? You are not going to be the one coming between his wife and he. That’s for them to work out. Stay out of it. Just because someone is 39 (and desperate) is no excuse for allowing the moral compass to stray. We loved SHwa as a woman because she was strong, independent and lived a fulfilled life of her own. She wasn’t going to mope around. She went camping on her own. She had moral fibre (until the end of S2 🙄). This whole drama wreaks of a mid life crisis for women? It’s like them saying, “O my goodness. I am nearly 40. Time to just let my hair down and forget responsible adult living.” 🙄.
I will stick with 25-21. Where “children” are dealing with very “adult” problems and trying their best to make good decisions. At least they have the excuse of being young and inexperienced if they falter. The recklessness of youth. At 39, these women don’t have that luxury.
@nrllee, I respect your opinion. I understand where you are coming from. It’s your time and your choice.
Am happy that we won’t be watching HPL3. I also want to see YYS with PMY. I actually like her drama with Song Kang. They may not be age appropriate but in this drama they are on a similar level intellectually. So far there are scenes with them working collaboratively that to me, justify the romance. It works for me. I also have to say that as women, we have been conditioned to watch all sorts of romances where the men can be the women’s fathers, even grandfathers. It’s the norm. But, heck, a woman with a younger lover is viewed as some kind of hag. I look at Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn and scratch my head. And in real life, how many older rich guys do we see paired with younger hot babes(who are in it for the Ultimate aphrodisiac, money). That’s why the prenuptial was invented. But, we always see the double standard. PMN is quite beautiful and has been paired with age appropriate leads like Kim Jae-wook. Park Seo-joon may be considered too young for her at two years younger than she is by S. Korean standards but here that doesn’t seem like an age difference at all. Same thing goes for Ji Chang Wook and Lee Min Ho who are a year younger. I don’t even put them in the class of noona dramas. With those guys they look good together. As someone who has been with my husband, who is 5 years younger for 43 years I just don’t get it(and we look age appropriate). And where women have a longer life expectancy than men, marrying a younger man statistically assures the woman of not becoming a widow. And from my,limited experience, older men tend to mansplain a lot(lol). So let’s hear it for noonas!
@AOL, thank you for your kind invitation to watch 39😊. Honestly, I don’t find Mido engaging anymore in those 5 minutes clip of ep 1 that I watch. I don’t think I can watch her anymore for quite sometime. All I see in her is Shwa being a foolish 40 y.o. And now she is playing same role. Her crush/first love is a married man with kid. I dismiss this lunacy in HP. I am not gonna entertain any of it especially that she picked up the storyline. Except this time her cancer is not just a scare. With this plot there are bound to be crying fest and I have seen shwa/mido cried intensely, helplessly. No different. 😁
I also find their relationship pretentious, unorganic? Choppy interactions. Perhaps editing, scripting, acting and directing play a part in that output.
The truth is I have no issue with certain makjang stories, especially if done really well and featured highly skilled actress/actor like Kim Nam Joo in Misty or Song Yoon Ah & Kim So Yeon in Secret Mother or Jang Hyuk (my ultimate bias)🤭🤭🤭 in Money Flower. You just can’t go wrong with them. They grabbed your attention from the getgo.
I also prefer watching actresses in their mid to late 30s than the young faces. The thing about 39 is (love interest aside), I don’t find their friendship as tight, interesting & intense as Be Melodramatic or www: Search. They don’t pull me in during that 5 mins, instead I am annoyed with the detached feeling I got from their interactions. One very proud of her pretty face to the point of suggesting her friend, who looks just fine, to do plastic surgery, at the age of 39??? You said that to a friend?? Knowing she might have insecurity complex? Really, Show? It is so off-putting. Not even funny. Compared this to Be Melo that kicked off the girls’ friendship with a bang. They cared for each other, decided to stick together in one house to care for a friend who is having ptsd i.e. owner of that very house 😅. Their personality are so different yet they jive really well🥰.
Weird is I even see a reflection of that maggot role in mido’s 39 character.😂 I have ptsd towards any characters equivalent to those stupid 30s & 40s ppl of Yulje. I can almost see the direction of these 39 y.o. ladies and how I don’t find them any different from those 99ers, at least on mido’s part.
It’s a hard pass for me, AOL. I am sorry. Nevertheless, I hope you all enjoy your watch.
Hi @Miracle, Everyone is entitled to her own opinion. I see the different points of view and respect your choices. Thank you for your makjang drama recommendations. I am tempted to watch The Penthouse but it’s multiseason. I just finished Show Window The Queens House with dynamite performances by Song Yoon-ah as the wronged wife, Jeon So-min in a villainous role as the mistress(not type cast) and Lee Sung-jae as the husband you love to hate. Our lead actresses are phenomenal to watch, especially when they interact. This was my yell at the TV show. Lots of plot twists. It was chaebols at war with lots of vengeance. The other one that I watched was Love ft, Marriage and Divorce with Park Joo-mi, Lee Ga-ryeong and Jeon Soo-kyung as three wives who s e husband’s were all having affairs. The wives all worked together on a radio show. The husband’s had various levels of creepiness with the one playing a psychiatrist making me want to throw rocks at the TV. I started this during the first season and I got hooked. There is also a mother-in-law who wants to sleep with her stepson, the psychiatrist who sabotaged his marriage but who is foiled when she finds out about his much younger mistress. A lot of this is cringeworthy but it’s hard to look away. This MIL is also the first love if another husband’s father who named his dog after her. And this MIL (played by Kim Bo-yeon, who in real life is divorced from the actor, Jeon No-min, who plays another one of the husbands-life imitates art) literally killed the psychiatrists elderly rich father by clogging his arteries and not calling for help when the Dad had a heart attack in the movies(MIL was a nurse before she married). This one is a wild makjang and it starts season 3 at the end of the month. They’ve recat two husband’s, the youngest originally played by Sung Hoon and the psychiatrist played by Lee Tae-gon. I definitely will watch this one. So I guess you can say, I’m mad for this makjang. I see the insane ity of it all and know how utterly insane it all is. This is such a wild subset of K Dramas that I find difficult to ignore. It’s bad behavior on steroids. American soap operas can’t even come close to all of this.
I was waiting for that scene, since the end of Episode 2.
I would like to write that Lee Mu-Saeng nailed it Episode 4 🙂
His performance was really profound and touched me deeply!
@Miracle, I have written apologetically about MiDo’s role from your and others point if view that the mistress is at fault understanding that . opinion and the opinion that marriage vows are sacred. In prior discussion no d of other topics there was a group opinion that in our in of wedlock pregnancies the father of the child must do the right thing to prevent the mother from having an abortion, In this drama MiDo’s love interest is in a loveless marriage to a woman who claimed to be pregnant by him. However when the child was four he found out he was not the father and that he was manipulated into the marriage. In addition the child’s mother never took an interest in the kid and left the parenting to him. The birth mother so much as admitted that she never bonded with her son. The husband asked for a divorce with full custody of the son, who he felt fatherly about despite there being no genetic ties. I get the idea of how marriage vows are sacred to many. But again there are many reasons for marriage as a social construct
In some cultures marriages are arranged. In others it is solely an economic relationships. In some it is not available to lower classes. In others there’s polygamy.
My point here is there seems to be a rush to judgment about the virtue of MiDo’s characters character, when the situation was more complex.Slthough she had an emotional relationship with the husband, it never became physical. The wife was manipulative and a liar about the father of the child and entered into the marriage under false pretenses. She literally was a preadulteter. So why the rush to judgment of the MiDo character and the actress who took the role comparing her to the WG actress. This seems harsh to me. You know that I’m biased-that I like the drama and am sympathetic towards the three female leads. I now know enough about these dramas to expect twists. This drama wasn’t going to cast Jeon MiDo as a total b***h,
@Cleopatra, Lee Mu-Saeng’s acting was superb. His attempts to wipe his tears along with the change in voice was just another reason why I will continue to watch this show.
@ OAL, I agree with you. The husband got married as he knew he made a mistake and took the responsibility. The wife probably did not just act cold to the son, but also to the husband. Mido and the husband did not commit adultery. I can understand the husband who did not cut ties with a female friend who was his lover before the marriage.
Also there are some actors/actresses that I would follow as I believe in their choice of projects to take on.
Kalimera.
I am still watching this. I am still enjoying this.
What I don’t enjoy though, is people with double standards.
Kang Sun-Joo who is the wife of Kim Jin-Seok, is a lowsy person. She went to talk to Chan Young’s parents about the “affair” Chan Young is having with her husband.
Of course she omitted the fact that he asked her for a divorce and she didn’t say the golden line:
“I wanted to get married so bad to Oppa that I went with another, became pregnant and that idiot took responsibility because I said so!” Ha!
I don’t like liars and I don’t like people who are unethical. Mrs. Kang Sun Joo is both. I don’t feel sympathetic towards her and I won’t change my mind.
The mistake here lies with the Writernim and the Director for not revealing this critical information since the beginning.
Script wise, they introduced us Chan Young as the amoral one, when in reality Kim Jin-Seok’s wife is worse! I am not okay with this development. It was a wrong way to use this arc like that.
In Life, things like that happen every minute that passes by.
Like this or that, truly happen. I am not too judgemental even to a tv-show because it is our society’s mirror.
It is easy to vent. It is easy to raise your finger and say: “I wouldn’t do that”.
Until Life proves you wrong and you do that, because you didn’t know better or you didn’t care for the consequences. The second category is much worse than the first though.
A person should have a perfect sense of morality or be utterly perfect in order to be spotless, which such a perfect being doesn’t exist in our world.
We are imperfectly perfect and that is okay. As long as we don’t hurt ourselves and others while we are on this planet, breathing, living and trying to understand who we are and what we want to do with our lives.
@haegbong Lee MuSaeng is one of the reasons I am watching this! His character is not what meets the eye.
I just finished watching the last episode today, so thought I’ll come here to see if anyone else has continued watching and keen to read what others think.
I had somewhat high expectations for this drama due to both SYJ and new gem JMD. But fair to say I’m quite disappointed overall despite some strong performances (Lee Mu Saeng for example) and fell flat for me. I’d say it’s barely memorable and it’s not one I would revisit anytime soon.
I do think it suffered a lot from the directing/editing. For one, if this was to sell the tight-knit friendship between the three ladies, I certainly didn’t feel it. It felt a little messy and I think that heavy focus/screentime was given to SYJ (which isn’t surprising, I think many fans were looking forward before she gets married/honeymoon etc) resulting in disjointed scenes. She’s the main narrator, sure, but in my opinion show suffered by giving Mi Jo far too much emphasis and didn’t flash out the side stories/plot. I felt they could have completely done away with Seon-U’s sister’s arc, that was pretty pointless in my opinion.
Back to the friendship, I think it’s quite clear Joo Hee is the third wheel of the trio, but in ep 12 the flashback showed that it was Mi Jo who recruited Joo Hee. Maybe she had a fondness for her at the start but as they developed friendship she grew closer to Chan Yeong. Nothing wrong with that but again, the execution wasn’t done well with mixed messaging. So Chan Yeong prepared two gift boxes, one for Mi Jo, one for Joo Hee. We never found out what was in Joo Hee’s box?
@Cleopatra re: your comment on the “love triangle” between CY-JS-SJ, I think I can understand why so many members of this blog found it distasteful. At the end of the day, I think it is morally wrong to choose to be emotionally intimate with a married man, regardless of the reason behind it. Don’t forget, CY did not know that JS’s son was not his biological son. Early in the story she even asked if JS would seek a divorce, so that makes her the third party in the whole thing. Also in the final episode, Mi Jo made the comment on why CY refused to get married with JS- “You were willing to be by his side when he was married, that means you weren’t after a marriage certificate”. Again it rings alarm bells that she was indeed his mistress.
I think this was a missed opportunity to have made it a solid drama, it could be the length (12 episodes probably is a little short to flash out three leading characters and their side stories), it just felt sloppy and I found myself not really caring for any characters in the end.
Thanks for the update, @TheWanderer.
I’m sorry the drama came up short. But as long as you, you personally, gained some perspectives on your tolerance level and moral underpinnings, then not everything is lost.
For me, it was important to point out to the readers here in BoD that, although society may view infidelity only in terms of sexual relations with someone other than your spouse/partner, the truth of the matter is
A. infidelity often occurs when there’s a long, profound emotional attachment to someone other than the spouse/partner.
B. it’s easier to get over the physical cheating than emotional cheating.
Kdramas that try to tell you otherwise are detached from fundamental anchors of reality.
@packmule3, in Thirty nine, the infidelity should be asterisks, as they do with sports statistics that are in question like when home run totals were increased because of doping. In this drama, MiDo’s character’s friend was actually trucked into marriage. His wife was pregnant with another man’s child.he stepped up and married her. Upon learning that the child was not his, he still was the best fatherthe marriage was loveless. It seems to me that the wife married under false pretenses, making all vows null and void.
Marriage itself is a social construct. So many marriages are economic arrangements. Divorce was impossible in many religions/cultures and then in others we have polygamy. We know how frowned upon divorce is in S. Korea. And must people stay in a marriage where there is spousal abuse.
So bottom line, let’s agree to disagree.
@OAL
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Kalispera,
I didn’t write anything about the show, because I knew the story didn’t sit well with many of the regulars. I enjoyed it and wanted the emotional release it gave me since I cried a lot.
Let me repeat again the importance of a good script and a good director.
For director Kim Sang Ho, Thirty Nine was his first official job as a director. He was an assistant director on Run On, hence we had cameos from Im SiWan as himself and Kang Tae-Oh as a writer.
So I give him a lot of slack because you cannot cut someone else’s wings when he starts flying for the first time.
As for Writenim Yoo Young-A she is an experienced jakkanim. I have heard that her movie scripts are better than her drama’s ones. Her previous work was Encounter. Some liked it, but other said it was dragging too much. I don’t have an opinion since I haven’t watched it.
I have watched Thirty Nine though and I have to say that her idea for the story was excellent. The execution on the story was not that good and maybe our director couldn’t help that much because it was his first work.
Why?
Because we are supposed to see the friendship between three female ladies Cha Mi-Jo, Jeong Chan-Young and Jang Joo-Hee and the reality of learning that one of them is terminally ill.
In episode 1 we realize that the main narrator is obviously Son Ye Jin’s Cha Mi Do and we see the story through her own prespective.
So, we get many subplots regarding her and her beau the amazing Yeon Woo-Jin as Kim Seon-U. These subplots took away time from the bubbly and sunshine Jang Joo Hee and her arc.
We get to see that the friendship between Cha Min Do and Jeon Mi Do’s Jeong Chang Young is the strongest. They are soul mates. They have a world of understanding beyond time and they have a connection that surpasses everything and everyone.
Yes, even Jang Joo Hee. Not that they don’t love her, but always in odd numbers one of them is left behind. And Joo Hee raises that question to Mi Do that she is always left behind and her fear is that they fall apart when Chang Young dies.
So, we know have the dynamics of the main relationships.
I really like that Joo Hee found Lee Tae-Hwan’s Park Hyeon-Jun and steadily they started with a friendship that transpired to something more. Chan Young wanted before she dies, her friends to find happiness and they did. Even herself.
Now, let me come to the matter at hand. I believe that Chan Young and Lee Mu-Saeng’s Kim Jin-Seok relationship arc was portrayed wrong.
The narrative they shared with us had a problem. The Jakkanim took this road and I disagree with how they chose to show it to us and let me explain.
Chronologically, Chan Young and Jin Seok had a relationship. Because he was a chaebol, his mother didn’t give his blessing to them being married. Obviously it caused a rift between them.
JS went or was forced to study abroad and CY stayed behind.
So one night he was drunk in a NY club, he was calling on the phone CY and Song Min-Ji’s Kang Sun-Joo who saw him in that state, and by her later confession she fell in love with him at first sight.
She fell in love with Jin Seok’s desperation who was begging Chan Young on the phone not to break up and take him back.
So, Sun Joo took him on a hotel, they didn’t do anything, but the next day he woke up she told him that they had sex. And then later on, that she got pregnant from that drunken one stand they supposedly had.
If we have agreed that drunken sex is a no no for a woman, isn’t it the same also for a man? If they have done sex, was it consensual?
Jin Seok married her out of obligation, but was unhappy in his marriage because he didn’t love her. So he focused his energy to the child.
As he was a CEO with an agency for actors and actress he had as an external associate Chan Young who in the meantime became an acting coach. Hence they were always around each other to talk to as friends, but not as lovers.
When his son was three years old, Jin Seok found out that the boy was not his biological son. The wife was not treating the boy as a mother should and Jin Seok was apathetic. Instead of divorcing her, because he was afraid of what his family would say he started drinking and didn’t say anything to anyone even Chan Young about it.
Then, Chan Young decides to quit on him, as she did on smoking. That was before she learned that she had pancreatic cancer stage four and after a while Jin Seok found out too and broke down completely.
But what the writernim showed to us first?
The emotional cheating you all said. Even when the truth came out, those who continue watching were upset. I cringed especially to the part where Jin Seok’s wife went to Chan Young’s parents after Jin Seok filed for divorce. She was a bitter woman. When her parents were unaware of her health condition.
I don’t like unethical people. Especially the kind who destroy lives in a whim. I am not going to say here what Jin Seok and Chan Young did was right or wrong either. We all have our moral compass and we follow it.
Without knowing any of this, in the first two episodes, I felt that Jin Seok was a coward towards to Chan Young.
Then when everything was out, for not cutting ties with his family and being afraid of what they would say to him about his choices.
In the end, he chose Chan Young and stayed with her.
In my book, @The Wanderer, Chan Young didn’t want to marry Jin Seok, not because she was his mistress, as you wrote.
For CY, the marriage certificate didn’t matter.
For Chan Young, Jin Seok was her man, her partner, her everything and she was happy that she received love, that he was there for her and didn’t leave her side when she was in and out of the hospital, until the day she died, because that was his decision to stay by her side.
Loss is a big issue that we don’t talk about. I am glad someone did, even though the script had problems. The actors and actresses did their best and we got a realistic drama.
In life, not everything comes and goes our way.
We need to accept that we are going to lose someone. I do hope that before that happens, we will be content that we lived a good life and we are grateful for everything we have and didn’t get.
P.S. Lee Mu-Saeng became one of my favorite actors. His emotional scenes were everything. He was a good match to Jeon Mi Do’s Chan Young. I didn’t expect it.
I am glad that Thirty Nine gave me such emotional scenes to deal with and ponder a lot about such a matter. I know that I will cry every single time; but I am going to rewatch it again.
@packmule3,I understand where you’re coming from but we’ll just have to agree to disagree. My guess is that there is a divergence in our backgrounds that may be controlling here. That’s what makes the world go round.