Young Lady and Gentleman (Recap + Review)

Curious about those 50+ episode weekend dramas that you don’t have the time or energy to dig into? Good news for you! I’m starting a new (sporadic) series where I recap and analyse them!

First up, we have Young Lady and Gentleman, which in short is about a romance blossoming between a 41-year-old chaebol widow and the 27-year-old woman who moves into his house to tutor his kids. I was hesitant to start this one because I remember the outcries after the first episode aired, but in the end my curiosity got the best of me. Let’s get into it!

Part One: Two Houses, Alike in Incompetency

Nothing like the threat of a murder-suicide to start a drama with, huh? Park Soo-chul is heartbroken when his wife suddenly leaves him and his newborn to pursue her dreams in America. Unable to even register his daughter’s birth without her mother there, Soo-chul doesn’t know what to do. He almost walks into the river with her in his arms, but he’s stopped by his neighbour Yeon-sil. Yeon-sil is a recently widowed woman with a son of her own, and to save his life, she makes a proposition: Marry me, and let’s raise our kids together. I’ll be Dan-dan’s mother.

And so Park Dan-dan is raised in a step family of four with her older brother Park Dae-beom.

There’s still one stop to make before we reach the present. We skip to a summer day when Dan-dan is thirteen; upset about something, she decides to run away from home, only to run into the bike of a officer on leave instead. He plays with her for a couple of hours and then rides her home, solidifying himself as her first love in the process. The soldier is Lee Young-gook, her future husband, and he is currently… twenty-seven.

Yup.

I really don’t know what they were thinking with this scene. I can tell you what I was hoping it was: a cute serendipitous coincidence to give us an idea of who these characters were before hardship changed them. But there’s no excusing it. This is a meet-cute between a pre-pubescent girl and a fully grown man, and it certainly doesn’t help that Ji Hyun-woo is still playing the character despite very much looking like the middle aged man he is. Someone flicking through channels could mistake this scene as a moment between father and daughter, for fuck’s sake. And for all of my hopes that this scene would go unaddressed going forward, nope, the two characters remember this moment later and it brings them closer. Ick.

Well, now we have that out of the way, let’s get onto the good stuff, because disqualifying Young Lady and Gentleman after one poor choice doesn’t seem fair.

Present Day: Dan-dan is at her wits end after Yeon-sil and Dae-beom fall victim to a scam that loses them their house. It’s not the first time this has happened, and frustrated with her father for tolerating them, Dan-dan decides to make it on her own. This is how she ends up on Young-gook’s doorstep as an applicant to be a live-in tutor for his kids. Young-gook and Dan-dan don’t get off to the best start, but he quickly sees that she’s the best person to help him.

Young-gook starts the series as a serious and severe man weathered by grief, whose kids have resented him since their mother died and challenge him at every given moment. He’s too busy muddling his way through this to notice the women competing for his affections; the duplicitous Jo Sa-ra (who has more than one reason for cuddling up next to him), and his long-time friend Gook-hee, who actually recommends Dan-dan for the job.

Actually, can we pause to talk about Gook-hee for a moment? I was excited to see Wang Bit-na here – she was despicable in Five Kids, so I was looking forward to seeing her play this softer character. As Dan-dan’s former professor, I was also anticipating an ugly tension to form between the three as she noticed her student and her best friend (who she already gave up once to his deceased wife) develop feelings for each-other, which could have been really interesting. And then she just abruptly left to go to Australia in episode five, and I discovered the role was an extended cameo.

I’m not sure what the point of giving this character so much screen time in these early episodes if she was just going to leave, to be honest. Dan-dan could have just seen an advert for the job, the plot didn’t hinge on Gook-hee’s introduction. Seeing her go felt like having an entire version of the show ripped out from under me, but alas, we move on.

Dan-dan wins over the kids straight away, which means she’s also winning Young-gook over, because she acts as a bridge to his long-estranged children and helps to rebuild their bonds. He’s more present when she’s around, more receptive to what his children are thinking and feeling, and considerably happier for it.

Jae-ni and Se-chan both have a special connection to Dan-dan, but the youngest son Se-jong, in particular, adores her. You know who really doesn’t like that? Sa-ra.

Sa-ra was getting pretty comfy as Se-jong’s caretaker before Dan-dan came along, and soon enough we find out why: Se-jongie is her biological son, who she left on Young-gook’s doorstep seven years ago. That’s why she’s really after Young-gook – if she can make him fall in love with her, then she gets to live the life she always wanted, as the loved and respected lady of the household and legitimate mother to her son aaaaaand this is the point where I realise Young Lady and Gentleman is a makjang.

Birth secret? Check. How about a secret identity?

Remember Dan-dan’s birth mother? Well, she got into a massive car accident in America and had to have ten constructive facial surgeries. You know, like you do. So now she swans back into the plot as Anna Kim, who coincidentally is an old friend of Young-gook and therefore ends up right in front of Soo-chul and Dan-dan.

We get a couple of other tropes to check off our Makjang Bingo cards: Amnesia, terminal illness, faked pregnancy… but we’ll get to all of those.

Another key player in this story is Wang Dae-ran, who lives with Young-gook and the kids. She was his father’s mistress for twenty decades, but he left her with nothing when he died, and now she bitterly clings to her place in the household until her daughter (Young-gook’s half-sister Lee Se-ryeon) gets married and can claim her inheritance. Dae-ran boils my blood sometimes but it’s actually impossible to hate her. Look at this woman in her beautiful rose dress! She’s killing it!

You can imagine that Dae-ran is obsessed with class, so Se-ryeon can’t marry just anyone. She’s scandalised when she realises that Se-ryeon’s boyfriend (Dan-dan’s brother Dae-beom, what a surprise) is a filthy commoner. I was shocked by how much I enjoy Se-ryeon and Dae-beom as a couple. They just meet in a club one night, and that’s that, unconditional love. It’s really quite sweet to behold before their parents ruin everything by intervening.

The two of them (as well as Dan-dan and Young-gook) start to feel like star-crossed lovers pretty early on. You see, its not just Dan-dan who works for Young-gook at this point in the story – Soo-chul also gets hired as a live-in driver, and Yeon-sil secretly comes to stay with him (despite knowing it could cost him the job). They get caught in no time, of course, and with the reveal of Dae-beom as Se-ryeon’s boyfriend on top of it, Wang Dae-ran now has major beef with the Parks, and every subsequent encounter ends in an epic five-way hair-pulling tussle.

This plotline was pretty blatantly influenced by Parasite. If the parallel of a poor family (accidentally, in this case) getting wrapped up with a rich one wasn’t an obvious enough homage, Dae-ran calls the Parks “parasites” and scam-artists at every given opportunity. I like the way it resolves itself, with Dae-ran eventually getting called out as the real parasite trying to suck Young-gook dry, but we’re still a long way off from that point.

The pacing of Young Lady and Gentleman‘s first sixteen episodes took me aback. Young-gook’s relationship with his kids rapidly improves, and Dan-dan’s family secrets are exposed one after another – when it was revealed that Soo-chul is the lost-long brother of Gook-hee’s older sister of all people, I fully expected the family reunion to be dragged out for forty episodes ala Once Again, but nope, that plot is resolved in a few episodes.

Of course, I forgot that weekend dramas tend to fall into acts. Where things tend to wrap up around the 16-episode mark in a short drama, in a weekender that point usually marks a big shift in the plot instead. At the end of episode 16, Young-gook, who is now ready to embrace his feelings for Dan-dan, hits his head in the mountains and loses his memories. The game resets, and we start again.

At this point, Young-gook has let Sa-ra go and his opinion of Dae-ran is at an all-time low, but now both of them have a second chance with him. Are they going to use it wisely? Absolutely not.

Part Two: Gaslighting, Gatekeeping Girlbosses

You know I love the amnesia trope, and it continues to do what it does best: Young-gook is now mentally 22-years-old.

A far cry from his usual gentle and mature self, he’s now brash, loud and childish. I’m not convinced for a second that any 22-year-olds act like this (I am one, I get to decide), but he’s certainly a breath of fresh air from the hero we’ve come to know.

You see, our Young-gook is someone crippled by his sense of responsibility. He feels responsible for upholding other people’s expectations, for keeping promises that impact his comfort and mental health, for doing the best by his kids (even when they disagree with his definition of “best”). Despite his good intentions, we see how his interpretation of what it is to be a mature and responsible adult hurts himself and others over and over. Amnesiac Young-gook isn’t wired that way, so the competitiveness and playfulness we see glimpses of in the Original Young-gook are released in full force, and it’s so much fun.

Determined to take full advantage of this situation, Dae-ran and Sa-ra (who have been in cahoots to make Sa-ra Young-gook’s wife for a while) hatch a scheme to improve their places in the house. Sa-ra reintroduces herself to Young-gook as his girlfriend, convincing him that they were planning on getting married before his accident. She also tries to convince him that he used to give Dae-ran a hefty allowance every month. This is where the amnesia is so delicious – 22-year-old Young-gook is initially thrilled to have such a beautiful, sexy fiancee but can he bring himself to kiss her? Nope, uh uh, get her out of here. She’s still not a romantically viable option to him no matter how much shameless gaslighting she exposes him to.

And obviously Dae-ran doesn’t get far either – the current Young-gook is free of the sense of responsibility towards Se-ryeon that’s allowed him to tolerate her mother until now. She’s not his sister’s mother anymore, she’s the ahjumma that killed his mother, and he has no patience to spare her.

Here, you see in one frame why it’s hard to stay mad at the otherwise infuriating Dae-ran. She always knows right away when she’s messed up, and the way she squirms when she’s in trouble is hilarious.

Naturally, it isn’t long before Young-gook starts falling for Dan-dan again, but now she believes that he was cheating on her pre-accident (see: The Big Bad Lie) and she’s keeping her distance. This had a lot of potential – Young-gook was feeling very insecure about their relationship before his accident, but now he’s young at heart again, and it brings a new dimension to their dynamic. Dan-dan always had a higher emotional intelligence than Young-gook, but now she’s the more mature one too, and it’s great how he sees through the cracks in her dour facade and is almost immediately smitten.

Unfortunately, this plotline was not used as well as it could have been. There’s no catharsis, you see. An amnesia plotline lives and dies by the cathartic moment it ends on, when everything comes flooding back and the main characters are finally all clued into the same narrative again. That moment is brutally snatched from us here, because unfathomably the moment Young-gook’s adult memories return, his memories of the last three months (all that sweet sweet gaslighting) are ripped away from him, and he and Dan-dan do the “will they, won’t they” dance for an additional seven episodes.

Young-gook, for some reason, continues to keep Sa-ra around, even though they both know they weren’t in a relationship before his accident. Very fucking convenient for her and Dae-ran, of course, but beyond frustrating as a viewer. This is the moment where my watch of Young Lady and Gentleman tips from a pleasant experience to a painful one, because while there are plenty of enjoyable moments henceforth, they’re coloured by this lingering desire to slap sense into these characters for perpetuating their own misery.

I know that it’s in character for Young-gook to bow to the pressure of maintaining this shammy engagement out of a misplaced sense of guilt towards Sa-ra, and probably also pressure as a high-profile chaebol with a reputation to uphold, but jesus christ. Sa-ra has to lock Se-chan in the basement for Young-gook to regain his senses and realise how much harm his indecision is causing the kids! And where is this spine when it comes to his own boundaries and wellbeing? What is Dae-ran going to have to do to finally be thrown out??

Let’s break to talk about the side plots. I was convinced for a moment that Jun-woo and Mi-rim were going to replace Se-ryeon and Dae-beom as Best Couple, but those worries were dispelled pretty fast. I loved the way they got together and how unceremonious it was – how often does an accidental kiss result in two characters saying “hey, I actually liked it and I think you’re cute, wanna date?” – but aside from that, the two of them aren’t that notable.

Se-ryeon and Dae-beom continue to be extremely underrated, as their “will they, won’t they” is the only one in Young Lady and Gentleman that I can stand. They get back together early in this act, and although they’re still lovey-dovey, the honeymoon period is well and truly over, and now they have to figure out the best way to be together when they’re from such wildly different upbringings. Dae-beom’s lack of quantifiable success makes it difficult for him in Se-ryeon’s pretentious circle, and Se-ryeon’s lack of worldly experience makes it hard for her to integrate into his working-class family. Eventually, the only option they see is to break up again, and this doesn’t feel forced like the other breakups thus far. With their families still vocally objecting to their relationship, they think they’ve exhausted all their options. A healthy middle ground doesn’t feel like it’s on the table, so in order to honour the love they have for each other, they decide to separate. It’s lovely to have a break-up in this show that doesn’t feel contrived, and I can’t wait for these two to get their happy ending!

All of that aside, a lot of this arc focuses on Anna Kim, her blossoming new relationships with Dan-dan and Soo-chul, and how they go sour when Soo-chul figures out she’s his ex-wife. Also, she has cancer now. I’m not sure why she had to be terminally ill, frankly, because I have plenty of sympathy for her without it. Anna Kim had the choice to settle or to pursue her dreams, and the plot beats her down again and again for choosing herself. It more than implies that the big car accident (resulting in all that reconstructive surgery) and this cancer are her punishments for the choice she made. And sure, she hurt Soo-chul on purpose so he would give her up and left Dan-dan before her birth had even been registered, but honestly, would she have been better off if she stayed?

I don’t think a life with Soo-chul would have been as good as she’s now convinced it would. I hate him. The show wants you to believe that he’s a good guy – that’s why they emphasise how he supported the family alone through financial hardships – but all I see is a cruel, vindictive and sour little man who gets nasty when the women in his life threaten to undermine his patriarchal authority. Also, he is played by a stand-out awful actor. I laugh every time this man winces his way through a dramatic scene.

I understand the resentment he feels towards Anna, but convincing Dan-dan that her biological mother is dead (because daddy knows best) is unjustifiable, especially because he’s allowed her to believe for years that he and Yeon-sil cheated on her mother instead! Yeon-sil royally pissed me off in the beginning (she was the worst character), but as the story progresses, I’m shifting my sympathy towards her for having to put up with this little man’s ego for the last twenty-something years. Someone should give her an award.

This act ends around episode 34 when Young-gook finally gets back together with Dan-dan after a parade of stupid contrivances. That’s not going to become a pattern, right?

Right?

Part Three: Love Conquers All?

Before I get into what I really think the meat of this arc is, I want to get the loose ends out of the way. So let’s do a quick fire round:

• Se-ryeon and Dae-beom stick the landing, getting back together one last time and absolutely refusing to let their plans to marry be hindering by their families again. Their ending is unceremonious, hardly the focus of the climax, but their relationship has been a pillar in this story since the beginning and and a sweet-spot in my overall watching experience. Well done!
• God, this show is repetitive! Sometimes I had to check and see if I had the right episode, because Dan-dan attempted to quit at least five times over the show’s run, and every single time she was brought back because the kids wouldn’t stop crying or got ill without her or whatever else. It’s cute once, twice max, but eventually you have to put your hands up and admit that you only needed 40 episodes for the plot you mapped out.
• The last act definitely exhibits something I’m used to in weekenders, which I like to call Collective Amnesia, where all the characters forget what they were so angry about because the show’s ending in two episodes and we’ve got to wrap things up. While some of these reconciliations felt natural enough – I liked how they resolved Dae-ran’s story, for instance – others were super rushed. For instance, Sa-ra. But we’ll get to that.

Okay, let’s go!

Dan-dan and Young-gook are now meeting the barriers I wanted them to start addressing about ten episodes ago: how society would see their age difference, what Dan-dan’s parents would think, and how Young-gook’s daughter would react to the prospect of a stepmother only thirteen years older than her. I can’t say it was all handled in a way I liked, though. For example, Dan-dan’s father locks her up and tries to trick her into going to America with Anna because he’s a controlling Patriarchal dictator dressed as a “concerned parent” for his fully-adult child. What an excellent father.

Can you hear the venom? I’m so full of venom about this development.

It all inspires another breakup, until Dan-dan discovers Anna’s identity (and the conspiracy to keep her in the dark about it so she’d leave Young-gook). Does Dan-dan finally cut ties with her vile father for good? NOPE.

Young Lady and Gentleman asserts that, well, his heart was in the right place by forcing his daughter to leave the man she loves, almost breaking her in the process – he had her best interests at heart!

NO. Trying to send Dan-dan away from Young-gook only served his own interests, because if he could successfully emotionally blackmail her into obeying him, then he would get to keep his good little daddy’s girl. He would be able to consolidate his paternal authority and keep her under his thumb.

God, what a slimy little man. Every moment spent talking about him is a moment wasted, let’s move on.

In this last third, I really started to see the narrative Young Lady and Gentleman had woven, one exploring the gendered expectations mothers face in its universe. I’ve already talked a little about how the show shames Anna for “abandoning” her child in the pursuit of success, but I had an epiphany about it: What if she was suffering from Postpartum Depression when she made that decision? She says multiple times that she felt “suffocated” and she had to get away, and I take that to mean that her emotions were too confusing and overwhelming for her to think rationally. There’s no evidence that she was unhappy with her life before Dan-dan was born, and it’s telling that she immediately regretted her decision once she left and got some clarity. I think it’s a strong interpretation of the text, but even if you’re not convinced by my theory, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s not fair that she was “punished” with cancer for her choices when Soo-chul, who actively made Dan-dan miserable for years, escaped unscathed. Just saying.

Then there’s Dae-ran. I have far more positive things to say about the resolution of her character, because Young Lady and Gentleman at least recognised the injustices she faced as legitimate ones. Dae-ran was the mistress of a chaebol for twenty years, and Young-gook’s father kept her in that position of disgrace, even though he clearly liked her enough to keep her around. After making her dependent on him, he left her with nothing on his deathbed, nothing to compensate her for all the shame of being the mistress, nothing to give her back her independence. Now she has to use her own daughter as a bartering piece to have a chance of ending her dependency on his son. No wonder she was spiteful. No wonder she wanted revenge. That said, as much as I appreciated the compassion the writers showed her, I hate that she ended up exactly where she started. When Young-gook threw her out (totally justifed after everything she put him and his sister through) she literally couldn’t survive without her. Her only option was to crawl back into the house. She’s still dependent on him! Nothing has changed!

And lastly, there’s Sa-ra, whose resolution is the most confusing. I don’t think this drama’s creative team ever reached a consensus on what they wanted to get out of Sa-ra. Young Lady and Gentleman couldn’t decide whether she cared more about being with her son or winning the love of the man she was obsessed with or wanting the financial stability of being a chaebol’s wife. She’s torn down the middle by muddied motivations, some sympathetic and some not. The crux of the issue is that I think they really did want us to care about her for a moment there. I haven’t mentioned yet, but Sa-ra gets a separate loveline with Cha Geon (Dan-dan’s uncle). He sees her damage, and he isn’t scared away. It’s genuinely quite poignant – all of Sa-ra’s romantic relationships have been toxic, she literally doesn’t know what it is to be loved, and when she learns, she rejects it.

How interesting is that? She would rather chase someone emotionally unavailable for the pipedream of an affluent life than seize the very real chance of happiness right in front of her. In that sense, Sa-ra probably got the worst “punishment” – just as she finally dared to imagine a future with Geon, a true fresh start with a man who respects and loves her, the writers snatched it away in the form of an almost comically abrupt miscarriage. Then she leaves the country, completely alone, just like Gook-hee before her. That feels so cruel for someone who has never had a chance to live a healthy, happy, normal life, and so I’m left wanting so much more for her. The writers backed themselves into a corner with their indecision and created an ending that, whether you liked or hated Sa-ra, was unsatisfying either way.

Young lady and Gentleman feels like it’s on the cusp of telling meaningful stories about how women in Korean society who go against norms and try to climb the social ladder – whether through their careers or through marriage – are demonised, but parries back and opts for “wow, aren’t women crazy” instead. I see true sympathy here for these complex women who made awful choices at the expense of others, but what there isn’t is an overt acknowledgement of the societal structures that guided them down these paths. What support is there for newborn mothers, for women who’ve never been able to earn their own money, for desperately broken women with awful support systems? Why are we punishing them instead of helping them?

Anyway, in this arc Dae-ran tries to trick Se-ryeon into a doomed marriage for money, Sa-ra pretends to be impregnated with Young-gook’s child as one last attempt to get him to marry her, and Anna dies of cancer.

Sigh.

Young-gook and Dan-dan continue the pattern to breaking up and getting back together. There are some obvious flaws in their relationship at this point. Dan-dan is immature and cries over every little thing, but she is more willing to be vulnerable and open. She’s always true to her feelings – she’s the one to acknowledge their shared attraction, to ask him out, to fight for their relationship when obstacles arise. Young-gook only acts in a crisis, will otherwise passively let things wash over him, good or bad. He doesn’t fight for them.

And that’s why I loved their final break up and reconciliation. Dan-dan, furious with him for the first time, tells him all the pain she’s faced over the last few months from the objections of her parents (and more, obviously) were nothing compared the pain she felt every time he gave up on her. This is the slap in the face Young-gook needs to finally change, and I’m convinced that the two of them will actually make it this time.

I’m glad of it too, because despite the hairpulling frustration I’ve suffered at the hands of these two, I do really like them. The characters have such great chemistry that you barely notice the generational gap between them. It’s been clear from day one that Dan-dan makes up for Young-gook’s lack of emotional intelligence, and he needs her to help him be more honest and present and loving to the people around him. Together, they are a unit who can create a balanced, safe, and loving environment for their kids to grow up in, and that warms my heart.

Here’s your conclusion: While Young Lady and Gentleman definitely could have tied up its story in 40 or even 30 episodes, struggling to manage its multitude of plotlines without repeating beats and leaving loose threads everywhere, the main plotline created a strong emotional core that kept me wading through all the bullshit. I’m normally someone who can enjoy a bit of makjang, but I found it unnecessary here because there was plenty of drama to mine from the concept of a widowed parent finding new love with a younger lady – look at Five Kids! They spent all of their fifty episodes navigating the complex issue of building a step family, and I wasn’t bored once! I won’t dwell too much on the things I would change, because media should be taken for what it is. This was a hot mess with a lovable family in the centre, and while they definitely tested my patience, I’m glad I got to meet them.