We’ve Reached Halftime! – Ladies of the Storm (2014)

Ladies of the Storm (2014)

My buddy and fellow daily drama watcher, Nelly asked me the other day whether I was going to give a drama recap at the halfway mark of Ladies of the Storm or as we affectionately like to refer to it as Stormy Woman, I really hadn’t given it much thought. But with this cycle of daily dramas that I am watching, this is the one that has remained. Unlike Love & Secret (still haven’t decided to return), Run Jang Min (maybe…one day), and You Are The Only One (boring as hell), this drama has survived. The big question is “Why has this drama survived?”

Not since watching Yellow Boots and the recently aired Cheongdamdong Scandal have I wanted a woman to get full revenge against her oppressors and antagonists! Even in the disasters that was Ruby’s Ring and Two Mothers that I have had murderous thoughts against characters so strong. Ladies of the Storm definitely delivers those feelings in spades.

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Main Characters

Park Sun Young as Han Jung Im
A wonderful and talented woman who married her childhood sweetheart. Ever since childhood, she has shown a talent for art but because of family obligations, she never pursued her dreams to be an artist. Her family takes advantage of this cheerful and loving woman but she has the unconditional love from her daughter, So-Yoon

Go Eun Mi as Do Hye Bin
She has been raised in privilege and with a selfishness that will amaze you. But being the daughter of a concubine has left her desperate for acceptance in the family especially the matriarch of the family. This selfishness has led her to betray her only friend Jung Im when she encounters a man who looks like her first love.

Hyun Woo Sung as Park Hyun Woo
With a bright and cheerful personality, he is the younger brother and second son of the co-founder of KP Group. Even though he attended law school in the US, he has no real ambition until he meets Jung Im who he falls in love with. Such a contrast to his older brother!

Jung Chan as Park Hyun Sung
Husband of Hye-Bin and older brother to Hyun Woo. As the KP group co-founded eldest son, he is vengeful against the Do family because of what he perceives as a wrong because Do Jun-Tae runs the company. He is willing to take his revenge by any means necessary, regardless of who gets hurt. This man is a total user of people!

Sun Woo Jae Duk as Do Joon Tae
The only son of the founder KP group, he is respected in the art world because of his mother’s influence. This man is an enigma. You can’t tell what he is thinking but he is aware of everything that is going on in his surroundings. Like a cobra waiting to strike, you don’t know when that will happen. An expressionless man except when it comes to his mother. There is no doubt of the love and respect he has for his mother.

Park Joon Hyuk as Jang Moo Young
Husband of Jung-Im. This ambitious man doesn’t care how he gets to where he wants. So when Hye-Bin approaches him, he doesn’t care because she is a ways to a means. His ambition exceeds his common sense and his humanity as you will see. A moment of passion not only ruins his marriage but puts into motion the total demise of his family to include his only daughter, So-Yoon.

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Rest of the Cast
Shin Yun Sook as Go Choon Shim
Lee Joo Shil as Kim Ok Ja
Song Yi Woo as Jang Mi Young
Yoon So Jung as Noh Soon Man
Park Jung Soo as Lee Myung Ae
Park Jung Sook as Oh Bong Sun

Synopsis
Jung Im thought she was living an ordinary life as a wife and mother; however, her ordinary life comes to a halt when her friend, Do Hye Bin has an affair with her husband, Jang Moo Young and she loses her precious daughter So Yoon. The drama is about one woman’s life full of ups and downs and how she recovers her life and hopefully her love.

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My Thoughts
**Warning**SPOILERS GALORE!! So why has this drama continue to interest me where the others have fallen by the wayside? What else can it be but the anticipation of revenge and retribution. Jung Im’s character has experience what I would call the “Life of Job” drama experience. If you are familiar with the Holy Bible, Job was a man who had everything in life; wealth, family and true love for God. As the story in the bible goes, he loses everything he has and continues to experience hardships that most of us couldn’t survive but Job does and lives on to have more than he had before. So, why do I equate Jung Im to Job? In the course of this drama, she has lost her family life as the affair between her husband, Asshat (he’ll have no other name during this recap) and her supposed best friend, the bytch from HELL (I could use an even more harsh word here, but I’ll be nice) causes her to divorce, loses her job and place she lives in because of the bytch from HELL, her daughter is first injured during an act of bullying (bytch from HELL’s daughter is the bully) and then later dies (mainly because of bytch from HELL and her daughter), she loses her mother as a result of Asshat running her down during a car accident (and covering it up with the help of bytch from HELL) and finally (What? You thought that was enough?) is accused and convicted of Art Fraud and sent to jail for 2 years (courtesy of the bytch from HELL, her mother and her husband! A trifecta!)!!

So, imagine watching this drama as one incident after another is dumped unto this poor, unsuspecting woman’s head. Yes, the blood pressure goes up with each incident. The travesty that is the justice system fails this woman because of greed. Her child is hurt and later dies because of sheer evilness of a young girl who believes she should have whatever she wants and because of a mother that provides it for her. It is so rare that I wish the worse for a child, but Mi-Joo, the bytch from HELL’s daughter, will have no quarter from me and definitely no sympathy. She terrorized everyone in that girl’s school because she felt privileged. The homeroom teacher perpetuated this attitude by covering up Mi Joo’s deeds because of money. I was never more livid than watching this so-called educator NOT protect the children under her care but cared more for the all mighty ₩ ₩!! Not to mention a best friend who knows what happened but disappears as her father is bought off too. The flinging of money by the rich and wannabe famous in this drama is stunning! But let’s spend some time talking about some of the other characters I just hate and hate and hate!

This woman truly was spawned from the devil! I’m convinced that she really isn’t part of the Do family but was part of a plan by her ditzy mother, Lee Myeong Ae, to get into the Do family after her affair with the father and after his death. The bytch from HELL is a true brat! Her tantrums on the screen are priceless! Her hatred of Jung Im is simply jealousy. She is jealous that Jung Im married a man for love; jealous that even though she is poor, she is happy; jealous that she has (or had) a wonderful relationship with her daughter; jealous because Jung Im has a mother/daughter relationship with the Do family matriarch Soon Man, but most of all, she married a man that looked like her first love who was basically killed because of her! Wait, did I forget kidnapping? Okay, that’s to come in the future episodes! When this woman gets her just dessert, it better be good, writer-nim; no half azz revenge for this woman! I’m really going to stick to the first 60 episodes, but let’s just say, this woman HASN’T let up in her greed, hatred, and unreasonable attitude towards Jung Im. Have we seen the worse? Only time will tell. Go Eun Mi is playing the HELL out of this role. First time ever seeing her and she will be hard to forget after this drama!

The best ending for Asshat at this juncture is death! I have never seen a man so oblivious to the harm he has caused his family. His reasoning for having an affair with Hye-Bin for power and money was so asinine, it is hard to believe. Then to have the nerve to try to tell his ex-wife that their divorce isn’t real and that he will come back to her when he can. Like the woman is supposed to wait around for this happening after he unceremoniously dumped her; took her daughter, provided no support for her when she was in jail (knowing she was framed but didn’t care). But to add insult to injury is to cause the vehicular death of her mother! Now, this hasn’t come out yet but he had no problem turning this accident into a jail-able offense! No, the jail cell is just too good for this man as he continues to harass poor Jung Im and trying to dictate her life (to include lovelife!).

If ever there was a man so undeserving of his revenge, it is Hyun Soo, the bytch from HELL’s husband. This man has effectively made it impossible for us, the viewers to garner any sympathy for his cause. He is under the delusion that KP Group should be his and Hyun Woo’s as he holds Do Jun Tae’s father responsible for his father’s death (still haven’t seen that evidence) and that he stole the company from him. Well, considering the man brought up both him and his brother, this is not generally the actions of a guilty man in the drama world! He married his wife with this in mind, knows all about her evilness and doesn’t care. He has systematically been privy to everything that has happened to Jung Im to include the daughter’s death and made sure she did hard time for the fraudulent charges. Why? She dare to attract his brother! His animosity towards Jung-Im is amazing! The woman hasn’t done anything wrong but he holds her in total disdain and I’m no longer surprised by anything he is willing to do. I see attempted murder in the future. Anyone else?

There truly are a lot of useless human beings in this drama; Jang Mi Young, Asshat’s sister is no exception. Not only does she lie and frame her sister in law for Art Fraud but continues to lie and hold evidence that could set everything in motion. Her spoiled brat attitude only got her in an affair with Hyun Soo because like her brother, she values money more than common sense. To think that she really believes Hyun Soo’s “I’ll leave my wife for you” missives, she can only blame herself for everything that happens. Again, another person who I have no sympathy for; Hyun Soo? Do your worse.

The biggest disappointment and the object of my ire in these later episodes has been Hyun Woo, Jung Im’s supposed love interest. Where exactly can I find the love? Here is a man who abandons a woman he knows has been set up on a fraud charge and left to return to the US WITHOUT first checking to see if she really was released from said charges. Here is a man who was one of the first people outside of Jung Im’s family that knew about the affair but didn’t prepare the woman. Wait, there is more. Here is a man who KNOWS about the animosity that both his brother and his sister in law have for this woman but his whole spiel throughout this entire drama has been “Forgive them and let’s run away”. Hyun Woo has been really good at running away but where exactly is all this love?

Granted, he has shown great affection for Jung-Im but he really hasn’t been there for her enough. The entire time in this drama, he has been running counter-defenses for Jung-Im. He is good at getting her out of situations but generally it is after the damage has been done. There is one thing he still don’t know about and we are hoping that in the knowing, this character will have his “reality check”: The real cause of So-Yoon’s accident and death. Hyun Woo, please come to the darkside and really save Jung Im!!

In many ways, Jung Im is her own worse enemy. Like Hyun Woo, she has this belief in justice and the adage of “The truth will prevail”. Well, honey, not in drama land where you are surrounded by the rich who think nothing of paying off teachers, nurses, prosecutors, judges, and damn your own family to get their way. One after another injustice, she still holds onto that belief. In many ways, her and Hyun Woo are well-matched and sometimes I wish they just runaway; however, as we viewers have watched the travesties heaped onto her person, we want justice, even if Jung Im doesn’t. Justice for her, her mother but especially her daughter.

As shocking her mother death was, what elicited the most tears from me was the death of her daughter, So-Yoon. After being separated from her mother for 2 years while in a coma and her mother receiving news only from her loyal and trusted friend, then when the threat that the daughter might awake from said coma frightened both the bytch from HELL and her daughter, Mi Joo, it was with the powers and assistance of Asshat that the poor girl was shuffled from one hospital location to another because of a man’s jealousy (Asshat being jealous of Hyun Woo) and a mother’s fear, the last moments that mother and daughter spend together is a brief awakening followed by a permanent death. JUSTICE FOR SO-YOON!

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So What’s Next

In these later episodes, the revenge is slowly building and the brother who has been pretty silently watching from the sidelines is now coming into play; Do Jun Tae. Many times he offered to help Jung Im in her revenge and many times she turned him down; however, the simple act of finding out what happened to her daughter (another sad and poignant scene to watch) has put them together but for how long? Me? I’m #TeamJunTae all the way! Unless he does something really evil in these next episodes, all I see is a man that has put up with a lot of crap from a supposed half sister and her husband, the half sister’s mother and done nothing to stop them. The big question now is will he turn evil? I think the writer is bored and wants to frustrate us viewers more by doing this. I personally cannot see how Jung Im will get revenge without Jun Tae! Hyun Woo has been pretty useless but writers are good at turning around the end game for ratings. Speaking of ratings, the ratings for this drama has been consistently in the upper teens and rising. I’m making no predictions for the outcome but the way I feel about the love relationship right now, I’d prefer Jung Im to ride off into the sunset…..by herself. Yes, I said!

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Verdict
So is this a good drama? I call it decent. So many things have happened to our female lead that we really want her to get her revenge. As far as her love life, the teams have been drawn and we can only wait and see who the winner is. Surprisingly, this writer, Eun Joo-Yeong is fairly new but I’m not willing to give them a check in the win column just yet. The proof will be in the execution of the revenge as we wind down to the end of the drama which we are still trying to determine when that is. All I know is as long as Mi Joo ends up in a mental institution and So-Yoon can smile down from the heavens, I’ll be happy! How about you?