Ups and Downs with “The Romantic and The Idol”

Part One: Jihyun

I realize I’m hella late to the game as I’ve only finished watching the reality series “The Romantic and The Idol”, or, if you watched it on Mnet, “Romancing The Idol” which ended while ago (and has even gotten through a second season), but I have GOT to state for the record, WHOA MAN, is Jihyun one of the prettiest and sexiest k-pop stars alive or WHAT!!! 

Damn, from the first time I got to know the members of 4Minute I’ve known their sexy leader Nam Jihyun was a total BABE, but this show takes it to the next level! Watching the 4Minute reality series “Travel Maker”, Jihyunnie always seemed like the sweet, gentle, and soft-spoken member of the group, but watching this show shows me that this girl actually has some super sassiness to her that can cut down guys with one barbed comment if need be!

Jihyun is first paired up with Hyungsik of ZE-A, and her initial feeling was that she doesn’t like younger guys (Hyungsik’s two years her junior), but wouldn’t you know it, they continue to get paired together as if fate had something to do with it, and soon they were enjoying each other’s company.

It doesn’t take long for Hyungsik to fall for the smokily beautiful Jihyun, but Jihyun takes things one step at a time- hilariously calling him out for trying to talk informally to her, tying to initiate holding hands, and when he make the mistake of commenting that the “younger guests have a bigger advantage than us”, she rains on him with the sharpest icy retorts “Well, I’m sorry you got stuck with me!” to which a dazed Hyungsik can only respond mouth agape! AHAHA

After some time together though, Jihyun finally warms to him, and out of everyone on the show, these two beome the most stable pairing, one that you somehow KNEW was going to make it to the end! So much fun watching these two, and I was simply LOVING the show…
And then we move onto Part TWO of my essay on “The Romantic and The Idol”…

 Part Two: Seung Ah

At the same time I was getting into the couple relationship develop between Hyungsik and Jihyun, I suddenly began to realize how cute Rainbow member Seungah was! It seemed that as each episode went on, she was getting prettier and prettier! Man there was this one episode where she was wearing this lacy white dress, and I was all over that, soooo pretty!  

Strangely, at the same time I was beginning to like her, I began noticing that not only did none of the guys really care for her, they were downright mean and stand-offish whenever they DID happen to get paired with her...Whenever they would end the night with each member voting for who they liked, she was the only one of the 8 contestants who never received any votes, being the good-natured girl she is, she always laughed it off and took it in stride, but as the show went on, it got to the point where I thought it was becoming downright cruel- For example, when she was paired with Mir, he made it clear he had no interest in her as he jokingly insulted her and talked to her disrespectfully- Again, during the post-interviews, she laughed it off and played along, but it was the sign of things to come…

The guy “JB” she’d been paired with a few times had admitted he liked another contestant and when he had to go on mission dates with her, he made it clear that he didn’t want to have anything to do with her! Riding in the car, he’d keep his shades on and sit away from her, when walking to the lookouts, he’d walk ahead of her, slouched and never looking back…It was here I was getting downright PISSED OFF! I can sort of rationalize him refusing to do any missions since they were of the lovey-dovey type, but going out of your way to make sure the girl you’re with feels lonely and miserable is so freaking uncool! Seungah took the dates in stride as usual, even lending an ear as he talked about the other girl he liked(!) but when interviewed separately,  she’d tear up admitting how cold and unliked she’d felt during these dates. GRR!

  BTW,  I know that at this point of the blog entry I should be accompanying it with pictures of the scenes I’m talking about, with Seungah being ignored and/or getting her feelings hurt, but I just won’t. I had a hard enough time watching those scenes the first time, the last thing I want is to have screencaps of them on my blog since I never want to see them again! In fact, after watching some of the worst of the episodes, I had to actually spend the rest of the night watching live Rainbow performances so I could see Seungah vibrant and HAPPY again! 

Aw man, I started out loving this show so much because of Hyungsik and Jihyun, but by the time it was winding down, I was ending each night feeling so horrible, I barely paid attention to them (though of coure, they ended up just fine) and finished watching it “just to see what happened” with SeungAh.  (SPOILER ALERT) I'm happy to report that in the end, JB did the right thing, and though he clearly had no feelings for her, it was cool to see he wanted to make things good with SeungAh, I thought that was commendable. 
  So I ended up finishing the show with mixed feelings...You know what though, even though I was put-out so much of the time, I have to say that if it wasn’t for the show, I wouldn’t have come to love SeungAh as much as I do now- before watching this, she was just another member of Rainbow, and now when I watch those live performances, I see the sweet, thoughtful and PRETTY girl I came to know from the Romantic and The Idol!