Having now watched about half the episodes of Reborn Rich, I am a little puzzled as to its growing appeal. Its original (and probably a great part of its continued) success seems clearly due to bravura performance by Lee Sung-min. But the other characters, including a rather bland (in this show) Song Joong Ki are either stereotypes or not that interesting.
At the end of the episodes we watched last night, I said to my wife that there was actually something a little tedious about the “action” which basically involves accounting paperwork–mergers, acquisitions, investments, slushfunds, etc. etc. Applied to my profession, its as if there was a drama about a dominating professor and a set of teaching assistants that focused on grading papers and taking attendance. Sure, it would be very popular for the first few episodes–15% audience share or more–but then the appeal would begin to level off, whereas it seems like more and more Korean viewers are being pulled in by the paper-crunching. I guess they can’t stay away when they hear there are some really sexy spreadsheets featured on the show.
