"True Beauty" review

This drama started off for me in a surprising fashion. I expected a drama that the female lead was just so stuck on her "ugly" looks that she was willing to do anything to achieve looks and populatrity. Instead, we got a female lead that was bullied because she didn't have good skin. I'm not sure I liked the bullying angle as I think it's used too much in Korean dramas, but it made the lead character instantly likable. Events had her escaping that world and moving to a new world where she did reinvent herself but she was always subconscious about this reinvention because as we all know, you can pretty up the outside but until the inside is loved, you will never be completely satisfied. And that was the enduring theme of the drama for all the main characters. Ju Gyeong learned to love herself inside and out, Su Ho learned forgiveness not only for himself but for his Dad and Seo Jun learned to forgive Su Ho for his supposed wrong doings.

I also thought that Su Ho falling in love with the true Ju Gyeong- the makeupless, comic book loving free spirited girl was the right path to take. Of course, their love was revealed to have began at even at earlier age cause kdrama... Even the first kiss was with her unmasked self. I liked the Su Ho never once doubted Ju Gyeong's love for him, never once considered she would waver for Seo Jun. I didn't care for the breakup as I thought it was the easy way out but as Su Ho later said "we were just too young" and i would hope that now he would handle it differently. Why people always think it will be easier handling tough situations without loved ones I will never know?

Most know I am not a triangle fan. Like at all. This wasn't a triangle. I never had any doubt about who the end couple would be and it was the correct end couple. This was the classic side car. Where the FL loves the ML, the ML loves the FL, and SML loves FL but there's no hope of winning her over. Yes, I've heard the webtoon is different, but this isn't the webtoon. Seo Jun liked her but he didn't really know her. At first he was doing it to mess with Su Ho and it developed into more for him, but he always knew, even when Su Ho was gone for that year with his father, that Ju Gyeong loved Su Ho. I truly felt this angle wasn't needed. These boys had had so much happen to them and they were already so far apart that that should have been the main focus. Fixing them. Healing that aspect. They had already lost 1/3 of their friendship group, why would they not work on maintaining the friendship they had? And even in the final episode, Seo Jun's last ditch effort to win Ju Gyeong by hugging her and then intentionally hurting Su Ho by continuing the hug, just wasn't cool to me. Again, why are you actively trying to draw a wedge in-between one of the few friends you have over something you can't have.

I also initially dropped this drama after episode 10 because of one character- Su Jin. Yes she had a crappy life, crappy dad, but she was cold and heartless and not remorseful of her actions. I'm glad in the end she found her calling and got away from the abuse. The friends were nice to forgive and forget...but I wasn't quite ready to.

Sister and Grapefruit clearly stole the drama. They were the ones I was rooting for the most and that wedding was a debacle...hilarious, but a debacle. I would have liked to have seen more sister scenes as well. Mom and Dad were generally useless as characters. Sure they came around in the end but they were mostly there to show how inept they were.

Actor wise...Moon Ga Young was delightful as always. Eun Woo delivered as well. I recently watched Rookie Historian and I could tell he's improved as an actor. Hwang In Yeop was a new actor to me. I think he was fine but I didn't buy him as a high schooler and that often would take me out of the scenes.

Overall, the drama was better than I expected it would be but it could have been much more if they had just focused a bit more on rebuilding the friendships lost, uplifting the family unit instead of the mean girl antics from the bullying and Su Jin and the sidecar romance which we all knew was going nowhere.

I give it a B.