Juniper
There are just a few more episodes to “Penthouse War In Life” and while I am looking forward to more drama, I am also wishing there are more episodes as it’s such a good drama. The acting from the adults and kids is superb. In this drama, adults get bullied and pushed around, physically and verbally abused as much as kids. It’s like being ultra-rich and privileged gives people a right to exert unlimited power over those whose status in life is lower than theirs.
Cheon Seo-jin is an extremely interesting character as she is such a nasty person. Although married to Dr Ha Yoon-cheol, she has never really loved him. She just wanted to steal him away from his ex-girlfriend from college, Oh Yoon-hee who was her rival then. Although she is having an affair, she acts possessive towards her husband when she finds out he is seeing and helping Oh Yoon-hee although they are not cheating on her. There’s a lot of slapping and beating up people in this drama.
Finally Oh Yoon-hee makes her way into Hera Palace where the rich people live and of course her stay there is fraught with difficulty as the rest of the residents (initially) object to her living so close to them. It’s funny to watch Oh Yoon-hee (acted out so capably by Eugene) flirting with the lawyer in the Hera Palace gym and how he reacts to her praise and compliments. She really had him wrapped around her little finger after that scene.
Things are getting more exciting when it’s revealed that one of the snobbish residents, Kang Ma-ri whose husband supposedly works in Dubai but is in fact in jail. Kang Ma-ri’s wealth comes from her secret life working as a scrub mistress to the rich wives of Seoul who give her tips on which shares to buy. The rich wives also present her with lavish gifts. None of the Hera Palace residents know the truth about Kang Ma-ri’s life, not even her own daughter Jenny.
There is a lot going on at Cheong Ah Arts School where all the kids attend and are competing for a spot as School Ambassador. Enter the quirky and weird looking Gu Ho-dong, the new physical education teacher who is somehow connected to the deceased Anna Lee/Min Seol-ah, biological daughter of the uber-rich and elegant Shim Su-ryeon. He is all out to punish Shim Su-ryeon whom he mistakenly believed to have abandoned Anna Lee. However he has got it all wrong as Shim Su-ryeon wants to find out who murdered her daughter and is on a mission to exact revenge on her husband, the Machiavellian Joo Dan-tae who is having an affair with Cheon Seo-jin.
It’ll be interesting to watch how the villains of the drama get their just desserts and hopefully the bullied will rise up and win over the bullies. The kids in this drama are bad because their role models, their parents display even worse behaviour.
