‘Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo’…A wholesome slice of college, but with the garnish of sports.
College life in Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo is no longer a dreadful ordeal of submissions, assignments, exams and oh, the horror, group projects (if you have watched Cheese in the Trap, you know what I am talking about). It is now replaced with training, diet restrictions, regular health check-ups, competitions and the dreams of winning an Olympic gold medal.
This brand new setup itself is a winner, providing a fresh template for the story, and Weightlifting Fairy does well to stay away from the usual themes of rivalries, high-stress environments, and corruption that have come to be associated in stories about athletes and sports. The director here is more interested in telling us the in-betweens — crushes, dating, unrequited love, hanging out with friends, family troubles and mainly the insecurity of being a woman and an athlete. Kim Bok Joo’s (Lee Sung-Kyung, buried under layers of clothes) crush on Jae Yi (Lee Jae-Yoon) starts off when he refers to her as a woman, when helping her carry a heavy dressing table. It’s a small yet bright spark on how female athletes are rarely seen as feminine, especially when you are a weightlifter. Watch the scene where Bok Joo explains to Joon Hyung (Nam Joo Hyuk) why she never wanted Jae Yi to find out that she was a weightlifter. She isn’t ashamed of being one; contrary to it, she is quite proud of what she does, but it comes with a side note of the reality she has to accept. Bulging stomachs, double chins, calloused hands, and red, sweaty faces, it is a sight no girl ever wants a boy to see, and it is sad to hear Bok Joo say state this with a matter-of-fact tone, yet a streak of maturity strikes through her, when she accepts that their relationship might never come to happen. Similarly, there is Choi Sung Eun (Jang Young Nam), Bok Joo’s coach, who finds it unbelievable that someone can fall for her and she also secretly harbors a crush on the team’s professor.
Amongst all this, the story touches on various aspects of campus life, but never do we delve on anything for too long to make it boring. It’s a sprinkle here and a sprinkle there.
Lee Sung Kyung has done a great job as Kim Bok Joo, excellently portraying her childlike innocence, but not making her blatantly dumb. Her eagerness and excitement on meeting Jae Yi were quite cute and amusing to watch. Nam Joo Hyuk (whom I have just realised, have watched every single one of his dramas) has tremendously improved as an actor and gets to do more than just flaunt his good looks. I really loved the fact that the show didn’t bounce off Bok Joo from one guy to the next. They gave her time to get over Jae Yi, gave Joon Hyung the time to be the friend that she needed and then slowly proceeded to develop their friendship into a relationship.
Kyung Soo Jin is excellent as Song Si Ho, who is the only one on the show, with a hell load of troubles. A victim of circumstances, she is an anemic rhythm gymnast, with a family and career falling apart and no friends supporting her. Take the scene where she spills out Bok Joo’s secret to her coach in a rage of anger and jealousy. The next day she feels guilty and foolish. There is no plotting or planning behind this, rather just a momentary human reaction. The show surprisingly doesn’t pit these heroines against each other. They are roommates, have an eye out for the same guy (though not at the same time), fit into the stereotypic rivalry of the rhythm gymnasts and the weightlifters (aka the skinny girls vs. the fat ones, rolls eyes) and generally quite different from each other in all aspects; that right there, is a lot of fodder for drama, but we never go there, thankfully and focus on them individually but if Song Si Ho was in her own drama, she would get a rich possessive hero to solve all her money problems, get her back into a national team and help her get a happily ever after, but unfortunately this isn’t her story.
