Kdrama The Successful Story Of A Bright Girl

Ever since watching Fated to love you, I really like Jang Hyuk. Which is why I watched a Kdrama that's not just a couple of years old.

I watched The Successful Story Of A Bright Girl which was made in... 2002. A whopping 18 year ago.

But you know, I really like the old fashioned Kdrama tropes, where a spoilt chaebol meets a sweet girl, they meet, they hate each other and then they fall in love.

So I decided to give The Successful Story Of A Bright Girl a try.

The Successful Story Of A Bright Girl: the story

Yangsoon, played by Jang Na Ra is a poor girl, who lives with her grandmother on a mountain. Her parents are swindlers, and lots of people blame Yangsoon for the sins of her parents. Which is why they force her to quit school, and start working to pay off her parent's debts.

While taking a bath Kitea falls from the sky, right into her bathtub. It sounds strange, but it totally makes sense if you watch this drama.

Anyway, that's their first meeting.

Working as a housemaid

Once in Seoul, Yangsoon starts work as a housemaid, and what a coincydink: she has to clean Kitea's house too! I lóve this kind of storyline!

In the meantime Kitea is running a cosmetics company, but gets terribly betrayed by his cousin. He loses absolutely everything. His house, his car, all his money. Luckily Yangsoon is there to help him pick up the pieces of his life.

Yangsoon and Kitea are obviously meant for each other, but Kitea is pursued by the spoiled and awful Nahee. She's absolutely terrible and even causes Yangsoon's grandmother to die, because of her bad driving habits. Nahee keeps doing all kinds of awful things to get Yangsoon out of the picture.

The Successful Story Of A Bright Girl: why I dropped it

The Succesful Story Of A Bright Girl has all the ingredients I love in a Kdrama. But it just goes to show that all the right ingredients don't always make for a great drama. Which is probably why I dropped it after watching what was, I think episode 8.

Reasons why I dropped The Successful Story Of A Bright Girl

1. The most important reason for dropping this Kdrama was a practical one: the subs are really terrible. Half the time the subs are missing, or they're so out of sync with the drama they're useless. I struggled for 4 episodes, because I really wanted to watch The Successful Story Of A Bright Girl. But it was undoable.
2. Jang Hyuk is definitely one of those men who get better looking when they age. In this Kdrama, he still has his baby fat. Which I could forgive him for, if he didn't act like a baby too...
3. Jang Hyuk/Kitea is a very, very, very immature character. I get that he has a hard time. But the way he's carrying on wasn't very manly I think. And once he kind of pulls himself together, he still makes terrible decisions.
4. Kitea's behavior towards Yanghoon is quite callous. He just lets her worry about him, and once he opens a door, accidentally smashing it into her head and all he says is: 'Fix me some dinner.' It was nót okay!

Summing up

Even though I liked all the ingredients of this Kdrama, I did not finish it due to a combination of lack of subs and an immature and selfish main lead character.

How to watch this Kdrama online?

I watched this Kdrama on Dramacool. It wasn't available on KissAsian. It's not on Viki either.