I'm going to take some heat from the female drama lovers for this review for sure. Cinderella's Sister (aka Cinderella's Stepsister) is a melodramatic "cryathon" that aired on Korean TV a year or two ago. For anybody who's not familiar with this genre, it's basically just a soap opera with a set run time and (hopefully) an end goal. There are loads of Korean dramas like this, and, well my Korean girlfriend (God bless her) really likes this stuff and wants me to watch with her, so yeah, I watched this whole series!
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Your basic story: Widowed winery owner with young carefree "princess" daughter meets unprivileged widow with standoffish "evil stepsister" daughter. Widower and widow soon get married. Widow is more or less just looking to cease going from one loser relationship to another, and she succeeds in accomplishing this by wedding the winery owner. As a result, their daughters are thrust together and are mostly left to get along as newly anointed sisters.
For the first 5 episodes or so, the story focuses on the 2 families getting together, at which time the daughters are 14 year old high school girls. The daughters clash from the beginning, even though the widower's daughter tries her best to welcome her new step sister with open arms. The widower's daughter is bubbly, sheltered, and a little annoying, but she's kind and doesn't mean any harm. On the other hand, the widow's daughter is an abrasive ass; yeah, she's had a tough life to date, but the amount of undeserved vitriol she spews on her newfound sister makes you not want to like her character at all.
Both girls have a crush on some older dude who's working at the winery. Eventually, this dude falls in love with the widow's daughter, but ends up leaving the winery before love can blossom between the two. He doesn't really want to leave his new love though, so he does so via perhaps the most unmanly and idiotic scapegoat way possible; instead of just telling the girl he loves her and wants to be with her, he sneaks off to board a train without any notice, and gives a letter (written in Spanish no less) to the widower's daughter to pass along to her sister, which basically begs the widow's daughter to come stop him from leaving if she loves him. And, he does this knowing the two stepsisters hate each other at this point, and that the widower's daughter is still in love with him, and not to mention the fact the widow's daughter is just learning Spanish. WTF???...This is our hero???...If I tried this nonsense in real life, I'd either get laughed at or ignored, and probably both.
The series then skips forward to when the daughters are in their early twenties, and, goes forward from there as all the main characters eventually re-converge. Dude who took the train out of town shows back up in the sisters lives, and they all have to eventually work together to save the winery. Dude is still upset that widow's daughter didn't stop him from leaving when they were younger. Perhaps he should have been more direct or used a better method years ago, or maybe tried to call or write his love sometime during the 8 years he was away. Idiot!
The rest of the series pretty much goes as follows: love/work/family related problems crop up, the characters cry/yell/do something absurd, melodramatic/happy/romantic music ensues, issues are resolved, then repeat until the story arc is completed. In the meantime, everyone stares off into the distance, and reminisces A LOT! There's also many misunderstandings and wild changes in character's demeanors as events unfold, people faint or die upon hearing bad/shocking news, there's about a billion instances of someone grabbing another person's arm as they're about to walk away, buckets of tears are shed, and of course, there's always some evil person(s)/company behind the scenes, and (perhaps) ulterior motives among all the main characters, etc.
This show really tested my limits I rolled my eyes often at the heavy formulaic melodrama involved here (my GF was not pleased with this!). That being disclosed, I did kinda like this show overall in some strange sort of way, and there's a good bit to like here; both lead actresses gave solid performances throughout, although I could barely tolerate the stepsister character most of the time. The widower was perhaps those most fair and stand up character I've ever seen in any Korean melodrama. And, it was good to see the 2 sisters grow some over time and eventually come to an understanding, which led to a nice touching moment in the finale. Also, I generally felt bad for the widower's daughter who mostly got crapped on by just about everybody throughout the entire series.
As for the male leads, Chun Jung Myung did what he was asked quite well, but his character was not very likable either, although it should be noted that he and the often unlikeable stepsister seemed a perfect match for one another. As for Taecyeon; he has a nice body for the ladies to drool over, but his acting is questionable at best. In his defense though, he's given nothing to do other than follow the stepsister around like a sickly puppy or overhear random conversations for the sake of advancing plot points.
I may have liked this story if it were streamlined into a shorter miniseries format and it cut down on the nonsense some. But, if drawn out to a longer format (with no end in sight), I might have faked my own death in order to avoid watching it. However, I do like this KTV method of airing shows for a specific number of episodes, then moving on to the next show. This particular show, while not without faults, works well enough to recommend ONLY if you're a fan of/familiar with K-dramas. If not, it's borderline excruciating.
7 out of 10 stars.
