Protect the Boss

Protect the Boss is a South Korean drama that aired on SBS from August 3rd to September 29th in 2011.

The show is played through eighteen hour long episodes that are filled with embarrassing, eventful, and memorable characters.

Plot

It all begins with an out of control, delinquent, high school girl by the name of No Eun Seol (Choi Kang-hee) and her partner in crime, Myung Ran. With enough girl power to scare off enemies and fierceness that grants them a juvenile record, the two best friends grow in unison and soon realize that their path of crime and bullying isn't something to be proud of.

As a young adult, Eun Seol has a hard time finding and keeping a job based on her criminal past. With her father living off in the mountain areas, she branches out towards the city in hopes of a good paying job. She soon thinks that she's found a dream job and goes in for the job interview which is held in a bar for employee bonding.

After being sexually harassed by one employer (and making a grand exit while kicking serious butt), No Eun Seol runs into the nation's "Papa Boy", Cha Ji Heon (Ji Sung), in his half drunken state.

After a slight altercation, seeing to it that she ran into him and nearly "messed up his suit", she ends up escaping from the people who she had previous altercations with and leaving behind a very upset and confused, Cha Ji Heon (as he was blamed for her mistakes).

With his father as chairman of a the DN Group of business (he taking on the roll as a director), Ji Heon had previously been at the bar getting as drunk as he had due to a new scandal he and his family were involved in. Taking on the roll as an immature, young man who suffers from agoraphobia and no personal interest in his father's business, Ji Heon had added onto the worked up paparazzi's and the disgrace upon his family's wealth and reputation.

Of course, the next few days pass and the only thing he can recall of the night before was a woman whom he had run into, the woman he inevitably puts all the blame upon. Ironically, he fires his secretary who, in general, he never got along with. With his father back into play at the DN Group, he and many other directors come together to try and find a perfect fit to Ji Heon's laziness by finding a better and rather advanced secretary.

Cha Bong Man (Park Yeong-gu), Ji Heon's father, confides in his nephew, Cha Mu Won (Kim Jaejoong), to help in finding this perfect match.

Mu Won and Ji Heon were once upon a time very close considering the fact that they were cousins. Growing up and having family vs. family in an all out brawl for the throne as Chairman and director of the growing company, their brotherly romance broke off and they now looked at one another as archenemies. Mu Won, a completely opposite individual from his immature and lazy cousin, takes this plan into consideration as a way to break his competition.

When hosting this meet and greet of secretaries, Mu Won comes face to face with Eun Seol who has shamelessly tried to push herself in finding a job as a secretary. Seeing to her juvenile record and poor academic background (and her rather detailed and very mean piece of mind thrown to the DN directors), he decides to give her the job as he is totally intrigued by her being.

Though Eun Seol was nothing more than a secretary, her evolving relationships with both directors, the chairman, and allies, soon sets herself as bait in a new scandal that is slowly unfolding. And of course, through her apparent goodness and thick-headedness, she finds herself stuck in the middle of it all.

Overall

To be honest, this was so not what I was expecting. I wanted to genuinely watch it because it starred JYJ's Kim Jaejoong and I was expecting a bit more realism to it. Then again, it was overfilled with cliches and a love triangle which I assumed would last forever but glad that it didn't.

Eun Seol's character took a while to get used to and though it's but my second kdrama, I have to state that if one of the main characters are annoying, it destroys the whole drama. She wasn't necessarily annoying, it had just gotten to the point where her as a juvenile became a joke and I personally didn't like how she was always resorting to violence when she could've said or addressed things with words or maybe screaming.

The second lead girl, Seo Na Yoon was also hard to get used to. Her preppy ways and whiny complaints nearly every episode drove me insane. It's one of the main reasons why it took me three months to finish the eighteen episode series just to move on with my life.

All in all, it doesn't compare to anything extravagant. Something to pass the time maybe. I did start enjoying it more as the characters seemed to grow with the show. Ji Heon's agoraphobia was slowly diagnosed and treated with Eun Seol's help and he as an immature person grew to be a loving and caring individual. Just seeing him with that side to him was wonderful. I thought he was going to be like that forever. Also with Eun Seol, seeing to it that her violent and non-caring ways were pushed to the side and a more caring and kindred spirit arose...it was like, as a viewer, I was growing with them.

Ji Heon and Mu Won's tattered relationship as cousins had also been mended but mainly because they addressed the problem and took it into consideration to change their ways.

By the ending episodes, I'm not going to lie, I was crying. I'm a helpless romantic despite how cliche something can get and when No Eun Seol and Cha Ji Heon were to be wed...just the lasting words as they were walking down the aisle together, looking at the crowd around them consisting of their allies and enemies...it was something that really caught me off guard and it wasn't an in the moment thing. It was genuine, their words.

Finding their fairytale ending wasn't exactly a fairytale and I liked that. It was different and it was perfect all at the same time.