[Drama Recap] Orange Marmalade: Episode 7

He thought he would give up on love. He thought he'd live away from her. However, when he saw her, he became sure of love and promised they will be together forever.

On the June 19th episode of KBS 2TV's Friday drama, 'Orange Marmalade', Jeong Jaemin (Yeo Jin-goo) said he would leave Baek Ma-ri (Seolhyun) and he also rejected the politically arranged marriage at the same timel. When he was leaving his family, Jeong Jaemin went to see Baek Ma-ri one last time.

He gave Baek Ma-ri a pigtail hair ribbon, tenggi. Baek Ma-ri rejected the ribbon. She said, "A butcher's daughter is not allowed to wear a tenggi". At this, Jeong Jaemin declared his love to her saying, "If you get married to me formally, it'll be ok. I'd like to see you wearing this tenggi". Jeong Jaemin said, "When I was packing ti leave, I thought about it. Everything I won is from my father. I'm going to be on my own from now on. I'm not going to run away. I'm going to stand still here. Please do not take away your eyes from me. I promise you now. I'll make it happen so we can be together. I'm not going to let you exist only in my memories" And he promised to marry Baek Ma-ri. However Baek Ma-ri became more nervous. She talked to herself, "What if he'd find out I belong to a blood race..." When Baek Ma-ri said, "I'm not a human", Jeong Jaemin responded, "Even when people would treat you like an animal just because you belong to a butcher's family, it doesn't mean you're a lowly being. You're the most precious and valuable person to me".

And then Jeong Jaemin kissed Baek Ma-ri. Baek Ma-ri could not reveal she was a vampire after all. The whole star-crossed lovers thing has gotten to be a bit overdone. What makes it obvious is that quite a bit of the screentime is simply dedicated to Jae-min and Ma-ri moping about how they can't be together forever, and it's hard to escape the fact that this is a very modern romance narrative. That's not necessarily horrible on its own but given that this is the Joseon era I'd sort of expect that the possibility of concubinage would at least be discussed.

Even if the vampire thing makes that obviously impractical. Speaking of vampires, that whole problem gets into some very serious territory here. Si-hoo comes up with some nifty tools to pull of his own investigations into the matter, and it's easy to see how the vampires could be overpowered even considering the possibility that they're much stronger than the humans. Si-hoo is very much a man of action, and these segments are so different from the love story they're practically from a different drama. And that's the main problem with "Orange Marmalade" right now. The main extent to which it is interesting at all has pretty much nothing to do with the high school romance plot that made up the first four episodes.

While cute initially, the way the script keeps calling back to these plot points has gotten to be rather annoying because now there's a vampire war going on right in the background and that would be a much more compelling backdrop than the whole arranged marriage problem. This is especially true because Ah-ra doesn't just sit back passively. She actively takes a personal part in the battle and I can't help but think that, teenage love notwithstanding, it seems like Ah-ra is taking this way too far. Obviously all of this is going to end in a huge horrible mess but it's starting to be difficult for me to care. Outside of Si-hoo the other teenagers are just starting to come off as kind of dumb.

As usual "Orange Marmalade" is beautiful to look at, and I also like the occasional odd oriental musical clue. Overall, though, this leg of the story is running into the same problems that hit the first part- there doesn't actually seem to be enough plot to justify the extended runtime. This much is especially odd because there's definitely interesting details that could be better fleshed out going into the final Joseon portion- but I guess this is all we're going to get.