This show is just non-stop fun from start to finish, and one of my favorites from 2012. It also won DramaFever’s 2012 award for Most-Overlooked drama of the year. I’m not really sure why it didn’t get as much play in the U.S. It could be because it appeals to an older audience (I doubt teens or those in their early twenties are really going to get this one), or just because everyone else’s first impression was, “So, the show’s about four guys that can’t accept they’re growing older and still act like they’re in college. That sounds…like me. I do that every day already.” I admit it; that was my original reaction to the show description. Go ahead and watch it anyway– this show is anything but ordinary.
The lack of popularity also might be because the show’s English marketing materials portray the four leads as playboy types. While one of them is married and might fit that moniker, the rest occasionally try to go out and pick up girls like younger guys, but those expeditions usually end up in spectacular failure. In fact, the opening scene of the series is them epic-failing at picking up girls.
The story really focuses around those four main leads. Kim Do Jin, played by Jang Don Gun, is a work-a-holic architect who runs his own small firm. Im Tae San played by Kim Soo Ro, runs the architectural firm with Do Jin and is a structural engineer. Their friend Choi Yoon, played by Kim Min Jong has become an attorney, and their friend Lee Jung Rock, played by Lee Jong Hyuk runs a juice bar owned by his rich wife Kim Min Sook, played by Kim Jung Nan. The four men have been friends forever, and have a tendency to regress to childish behavior when they’re together.
This type of behavior leads Do Jin and Yoon to get in a fight with high school students in episode one. The high school punks’ teacher turns out to be Seo Yi Soo, played by Kim Ha Neul, who also referee’s for Tae San’s amateur baseball team. Do Jin’s actually run into her before (literally) but failed to get her phone number. It seems serendipitous that the woman he’s had a crush on for over a year is appearing right in front of him and already knows two of his friends. He just wishes he’d realized it was her before he was such an *sshole to the punks’ teacher over the phone. Yi Soo has actually had a crush on Tae San since they first met, but she’s shut up about it, because he just started going out with her roommate played by Yoon Sae Ah.
Do Jin’s relationship with her is off to a rocky start, but it’s not near as rocky as Jung Rock and his wife Min Sook’s. Mostly because of Jung Rock’s deplorable habit of taking off his wedding ring anytime he sees a cute girl. Our first introduction to Min Sook is because she shows up at Yoon’s attorney office demanding a divorce. Apparently not for the first time.
Not that Yoon’s love life is any simpler. Tae San’s younger sister has had a crush on Yoon forever and relentlessly pursues him. He tries to keep her as far away from her as possible, since dating a sister– and one much younger than him — would be a breach of the bro-code.
Not to mention the time-bomb that a mysterious boy named Colin (played by Lee Jong Hyn) brings with him from England. It might just be that one troubled teenager can change all four of the guys’ lives forever.
The show is much more about the guys’ relationships with each other than you might expect from all of these love-triangle hijinks. It’s also about the women who decide to stick around, even once they find out how crazy these four are. If anything, the show is much more of a Bromance/sisterhood movie mash-up with some romance sprinkled on top. Most of the humor that permeates the show comes from that, as all of the characters comically blunder through their romantic relationships together, often trying to help each other out with varying (and frequently questionable) success. They usually manage to get through it somehow, even though it occasionally means “All hands go down with the ship.” This show really embraces what it means to get older, both from the male and female perspective. The characters deal with all the insecurities and universal contradictions of being an adult in sometimes aggravating, sometimes endearing, but always humorous ways.
This show is highly recommended, and still lots of fun on the re-watch.
Please support the Korean cast and crew by watching A Gentleman’s Dignity at official sites. You can find it here:
A Gentleman’s Dignity aired in Korea on SBS.
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