In the US, when a movie is a turkey right out of the gate, the movie studios will either release it on a slow weekend without any media previews, hoping to recoup some of its sunk costs by luring unsuspecting audience members into the theater, or it can go the way of direct-to-DVD (formerly known as direct-to-video). Because the majority of K-dramas are live-filmed, its impossible to gauge its crappiness beforehand and what started off promising could quickly devolve into woefully terrible. Some pre-filmed dramas are actually decent, but a few stinkers have emerged in the last few years that are so bad I wonder how it even got an air date in Korea. The upcoming Full House: Take 2, the long-in-coming sequel to the Hallyu hit Full House, must be dreadful to a never before seen degree, because this drama is airing first in Japan on TBS, and doesn’t even have a network in Korea yet. Since TBS is releasing the DVD a few weeks after airing the drama, my guess is this baby is never seeing the light of day in its native country.

The stills I’ve seen have been uniformly sucktastic, mainly because the costume and hair stylings of the three leads No Min Woo, Hwang Jung Eum, and Park Ki Woong make them resemble cousins of The Muppets. With the drama set to premiere in a few weeks, TBS has released the first ever teaser trailer showing us glimpses of the story line and the characters in action. The story follows the exact same set up as the original – average girl enters into a contract marriage with a top star – but this time the whos and whys are slightly different. No Min Woo looks like a top star idol singer, and the second male lead happens to be his group mate. I honestly find nothing remotely positive about this production, and really wonder why folks even bothered to dig the original out of the dust bin in order to bastardize it and make a sequel that looks cheap and feels shoddy. Oh well, I suppose this one will be good for a laugh, though I find myself cringing every time I see the hair styles on all three leads. Continue reading →