Tuesday Hero

Also known as: 2 Outs in the 9th Inning/Bottom of the 9th with 2 outs

Genre: Romance, comedy

Episodes: 16

Long Story Short

Although the title makes you think this is about baseball playoffs, no it is not. It is about Hong Nan Hee (Park Soo Ae) and Byun Hyung Tae (Lee Jung Jin) who are best friends for 30 years. The drama focuses on how they finally end together and their struggle to mutually agree to take their friendship to a whole new romantic level. If that's so, why use a baseball thing in the first place, you ask? Well, because this drama relates baseball philosophy to "real" world happenings, friendship, and love.

Sometimes, we don't need to have too much going on to enjoy a drama, and this is what I love in 9 End 2 Outs. Although the facing is a slightly slower compared to our typical k-dramas, it is, however, a well written one and excels at narrating how the love story unfolds. Honestly, not all dramas can smoothly pull that off and have the leads a good transition from being two bickering partners into a believable cheesy couple.

Some dramas fail at showing us "when" and "how" the leads started liking each other, that whenever they act like a real couple, it doesn't make sense to me since the impression of "they haven't reached that next level yet" is still on me. It ticks me off whenever a drama wants me to believe that a big fire is coming out of a lighter. I am glad that this drama is not like that and that everything that happens in each episode helps the leads to finally realize they belong to each other. Slowly adding a wood onto a small fire is more convincing, right?

This drama has a lot of talking,but mind you all, the talks are with sense and are mostly reflections about life, which is a good thing. I, as a viewer, learned a lot from the dialogs and I absolutely love that.

Anyway, another thing great about this drama is that the leads know that they are attracted to each other and are mature about their feelings. The only thing that hinders them from turning their friendship into a romantic relationship is that they value each other so much that they can't afford losing one another if the relationship didn't work out. That, of course, is completely understandable considering they have an ongoing 30 years of strong friendship.

One thing I love about their friendship is that they can be really mad to each other at one moment, then completely forget whatever happened after a minute or two, like a real siblings. They don't need that "say sorry or i wont speak or look at you" stage, they just automatically forget it all. They can still talk about all things (like talking about their current boyfriend/girlfriend) and can still play their "im-his/her friend" role despite confessing feelings to each other. I think that is really awesome.

It always makes me smile, though, whenever they have that -my-heart-is-beating-really-fast-now-i-might-be-really-loving-you-i-cant-take-it-anymore moment, which always happens whenever they're serious and their eyes met. It just makes me swoooooooon, really, because it feels like I am witnessing how much they feel for each other so far. A bystander like me is happy seeing all that, just like this:

I also love how this drama also points out how age gap makes it hard for a relationship to last longer (Nan Hee's boyfriend is a college baseball player who is 8 years her junior), as well as the status gap (Hyung Tae's girlfriend is a renowned classical guitarist). The drama shows that these, along with right timing, affect relationships.

Anyway, the best thing in drama? It is villain-free! One thing that people don't know about me is that I prefer villain-free dramas. Why? Because it is more realistic. I just really don't think people who are rejected (in love) are overly clingy and revengeful. Real people have self respect and little pride in themselves that plotting to kill or making other people's lives miserable seems so unrealistic to me. I mean, broken-hearted people don't have time to think about other people's lives because they can't even think straight for themselves. Sigh.

And yes, the main leads' chemistry is also off the chart! I love them both! ♥