Drama Drubbing: Lady of the Storm (2014) or Why NOT to Watch?

Thank GOODNESS! The drama that was “Lady of the Storm” aka “Stormy Woman” is finally over! Finally! Talk about wanting to abandoning ship so many times but not being able to because of one reason and one reason only: wanting to see revenge heaped upon the persons that did a woman and her daughter wrong. So imagine a firecracker; no a stick of dynamite where the wick has been wetted and no longer will light. No bang, no bucks…nothing!

That is what you will get when you watch this mess! So, I’m writing this review as a warning to those that even consider watching this: DON’T! I did the same thing when I reviewed Crazy Love which SHOCKINGLY has the same lead actress (should have learned my lesson)!

For drama and casting information, see MyDramaList as well as my previous post, Ladies of the Storm.

The main thing that can make or break a drama, especially if it is going to be a revenge drama is for the viewer to feel totally satisfied with said revenge. Just think about it! I wrote in the halfway post that Han Jeong Im (played by Park Sun Young) was definitely living the life of Job, from the Bible; however, unlike Job, Jeong Im’s life never returned to be better than it was before. The writer totally dropped the ball in at least giving us viewers closure. I don’t think anyone who watched feels vindication for Jeong Im and most definitely not for Soo Yoon. It was hard, as a mother to accept the crappy vengeance heaped on any of the wrongdoers heads. What vengeance?! This drama sadly taught us that in South Korea, for the rich, there can never be any justice against them; that everyone from prosecutors, police, teachers, secretaries, other fathers, damn, the man on the street, can be bought to lie/steal/betray a person despite the loss of another human being’s life. Wow, writer-nim, is this really the South Korea you want us to believe exists?

The sad attempts of revenge were so weak, even I was offended for Soo Yoon. At every turn, for every major crime that the main characters Hye Bin ( played by Go Eun Mi ) and Hyun Soo ( played by Jung Chan ) committed, they basically got away with. Through bribes, lying stealing/destroying evidence; neither of these people really went away for a majority of the crimes they committed. Again, very sad commentary of the Korean justice system. Maybe that is what the writer was trying to say…if so, they were brilliant; however, if that was not their attempt, then this crap drama couldn’t get any worse…can it?


Jeong Im’s many attempts to disguise herself were laughable, at best; funny at least. I think even a blind man would have known it was her half of the time. The many scenes where a decent peripheral vision would have given her away, just became one of the major jokes of the drama. Others were the fact that no conversations were unheard, people that don’t live in your house can walk in any time (buzzed in by the help)! It is really hard to write about this drama and keep your language clean! There are so many words I’m willing to use to describe the sheer ridiculousness of this drama.

Normally in these dramas, the damsel in distress/the woman scorned/the wronged woman, at least has a comfortable and confident shoulder to learn on. What in the world was this writer thinking of to make Hyun Woo ( played by Hyun Woo Sung ) such a useless man? He spent the ENTIRE drama trying to convince his brother to play nice! When that didn’t work, he spent the rest of the time playing rescuer of Jeong Im.

What a waste of a hunk of a man! At least he is a man worthy of tying a woman’s shoes! Eye candy for sure and after many, many episodes, we didn’t even get the customary shower scene…or did we? The mess that is Stormy Woman has fogged my brain that I truly cannot remember Beuller? Beuller? Thankfully, I’ve seen this actor in better roles so I haven’t lost hope on him…yet.

One of the positives of this drama was that Jeung Im had a true and loyal friend by the name of Oh Bong Sun (played by Park Jung Sook). I really cannot disparage this character. At least she had a better but uninteresting love line with her man than Jeung Im! Sad but true. Bong Sun was loyal right until the end. She never betrayed her friend, never gave away secret intentionally, and was always there for her.

Another bad (or good) thing in this drama was the fact that very few of the characters learned their lessons. The worse offender would definitely be Jeung Im’s stupid sister in law, Jang Mi Yeong ( played by Song Yi Woo ). She was believing every lie of Hyun Woo’s right until the end. I have no doubt that at the prison doors when Hyun Woo is released, she will be waiting for him like a faithful dog! Not once did she learn any lesson nor did she ever apologize to Jeung Im, Soo Yoon or even to us for her actions. I admit, that her remaining selfish to the end was actually a good thing! Sometimes when writers go the “all is forgiven” route, it tends to be annoying but it would have been nice for her to apologize to someone.

The entire Jang family was a stark lesson in greed. The mother, Kim Ok Ja (played by Lee Joo Shil), in the beginning, her greed consumed her to the point of overshadowing her common sense; however, she was the first to realize her wrong-doings and was truly repentant earlier than her spawns.

I will contend that Jang Mu Yeong ( played by Park Joon Hyuk ), mea culpa moment was simply because he was caught! No other reason. Even after finding out who was responsible for his daughter’s death, that barely spurned any revenge against the man and woman responsible. He continued to work for them and against Jeung Im. There were moments at the end where he changed his tactics but by then it was way too late for me. Too little, too late.

Poor, poor Do Jun Tae ( played by Sun Woo Jae Duk), was unlucky in love and had a poor choice in women! Some of us were actually rooting for him and Jeung Im because he made a better match to us; however, somewhere a long the way, the writer decided to continue injecting the possible love lines between Jeung Im and Hyun Woo; two useless human beings. So, I will continue to feel sorry for this man that everyone kept trying to think was evil but in the end, he wasn’t. He knew nothing about what his father did; he made no attempts to hide it, or destroy anyone in the pursuit to keep the company. Overall, he was a good man with incredible bad luck!

But let’s talk about the real stars of this drama: Hye Bin and Hyun Soo. This power couple were strong, devious, and totally “take charge” people. The things that these two would get away with were brilliantly planned and executed. When all is said and done, their downfalls were contrived and simply unbelievable. It was like the writer made two perfect villains and then simply dropped the ball in getting us to the end of the drama.

Both Hyun Soo and Hye Bin were excellent in using human weaknesses in getting their way throughout the drama. Even the occasional setbacks were turned into wins at every turn. It really became a big joke and kept us waiting for the “good guys” to get a mark in the win column. The wins for the bad guys totally outweighed the wins for the good guys. Sure, the writer had them both going to jail in the end and the last scenes you see is a semi-repentant Hyun Woo writing to his doofus brother (no, never an apology to Jeung Im, I might add) and the best, a totally unchanged Hye Bin still a gangster in prison blues! I must say, writer-nim, thank you again for NOT changing her in the end! Seeing Hye Bin as a BYTCH right until the end was some of your best writing!

There is nothing you can say that will convince me otherwise that Hye Bin was the best character written in this drama. From stealing her so-called best friend’s husband (never a mianhe for that), covering up her daughter’s dealings with Soo Yoon (never a mianhe for that), sending an innocent woman to jail, hurting her big mother time after time (no apology here), and all the other crimes she covered up/bought the witnesses/destroyed evidence for. While she was the best character in this drama, the lesson learned in the depravity of human beings was the worse! I’m going to say it, she cared more for her demon-seed daughter than Jeung Im ever could for poor Soo Yoon….

But the final lesson learned from watching this drama is this: I will never watch another Park Sun Young drama again! I still find it hard to believe this is the same actress that I first seen in Crime Squad! Her management should be fired for systematically getting her typecast as one of the worse type of characters in a drama: a doormat. She was a doormat in Crazy Love and almost one in this one. This isn’t acting to me. Shame. Sad. And the writer? While this might have been their first screenwriting job, it is definitely my last watching.

Let’s not forget Noh Sun Man ( played by Yoon So Jung)! She actually got paid to play this role whereby half of the time she was crazy, in a coma, in the hospital or just not on the scene. Unlike the 1000s of viewers that watched this drama from the beginning to the end, she at least was ahead of the game. She got paid! What’s our excuse?

MDL Rating: 6, because the villains were awesome!
*MDL refers to MyDramalist website

Final verdict: Don’t watch!