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Post by sageuk on Sept 12, 2013 23:50:35 GMT -5
I was more weirded out by two kids snogging each other, to be honest. Maybe its because I'm used to teenagers and adults doing it, but its weird. To think that kdramas would take the romance department to adolescents. And judging on what you say in regards to the boy, that part seems meaningless. It would have made more sense for the show to start with Hana waking up and getting ready for school.
* * * Wanna know how the Japanese drama opens up? The school, its fences and walls with barbed wire. Barbed wire. If you weren't told that the building was a educational institute, you'd mistake it for a prison (though I'm pretty sure alot of us felt that way when we were younger); and considering Ma's "lovely" personality, it might as well be.
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Post by nuwildcats on Sept 17, 2013 17:52:11 GMT -5
I loved the first 2 eps and the creepy element brought me right in to the drama and kept me there. But as Teacher Ma began revealing herself, I started retreating. Whew, what a mean lady for lower grade school students! The kids are just terrific and the drama captures kids that age and how they experience adults and the world perfectly. Meanwhile, I jumped ahead of 24.5, viewing the last ep on DramaFever. So I'm going to hang in there. Reviews online were unfavorable toward the Teacher Ma character by its end, saying her means didn't justify the ends.
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Post by TheBo on Sept 25, 2013 13:56:04 GMT -5
Sageuk! I finally read that comparative review, and I have to say, that guy is hysterical! What a crabby person. (PS "crabby person" is NOT a criticism in my book!) I was falling down laughing at his (her?) review of Star Trek Into Darkness, in which, for instance, he says J J Abrams has the sensibilities of a used car salesman. Loving it! Thanks!
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Post by nuwildcats on Oct 8, 2013 14:25:58 GMT -5
MBC just ran Episode 12 and there are only 2 more weeks left of TQC. If I only started watching at Ep 12, it would have been worth it and I would've gone back to view it from the beginning on DramaFever. Teacher Ma's inexplicable actions finally bore fruit and viewers got a glimpse of Teacher Ma's humanity, primarily from Ep 12. Concurrently I watched this on DramaFever all the way through the end. And like others I'll say, the kids' acting steals the show. The Teacher Ma character, not so much.
MBC 24.5: Wed & Thurs: 10:25pm (repeated: Thurs & Fri: 5:40pm
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Post by nuwildcats on Oct 30, 2013 16:43:12 GMT -5
Its title could have been: The Queen’s Classroom: An Ode to Teachers. With a subtitle, The Queen’s Classroom: Psychotherapy for Kids.
Although TQC ended last week, I’m still carrying a residual from it and this post, I guess, is my way to deal with haphazard thoughts.
Labelling this as “school” genre, along with my comment that these 6th graders are front and center in this story, distorts its value. TQC is really about a Teacher Ma forcing her 11-12 y/o students into no-win, no-exit situations, and letting the kids extricate themselves to hopefully develop into healthier human beings. As in her relationship with her students, Teacher Ma remains an obscure figure to us, too, hovering on the outskirts of the action, pointing the attention back toward her students.
Class 3's students represent 6th grade students found anywhere. What makes these students different at the school year’s end is how equal the most disparate students are to each other. The most intelligent or athletic, the most popular or powerful, student gets air time, revealing what’s hovering unresolved in their private lives behind their appearance. You’re left feeling that whatever the exterior, that whatever each kid was blessed with at birth, is irrelevant. The humanity they begin to see in themselves and in their classmates is what shines, adding luster to their innate personality traits and talents, and not the other way around.
The value system that emerges in Classroom 3 flips the modern rage to be number 1 or the very, very best… anything, to be seen and noticed above everyone else, to compete and vanquish or end up being a nobody. TQC secondarily implies that being a young, gushing, popular teacher is limiting, in that it won't take the darker and harder road to unchain students from unexpressed unhappiness that's influencing their present lives and future paths.
I like that in the end the creators didn’t tidy up the storyline’s ambiguity or fix viewer ambivalence toward Ma. At the end, Teacher Ma remains an unapologetic, and flawed human being and professional. One who nonetheless enabled her students to open up more fully to who they are. There are no epiphanies for her, nor those surrounding her, nor for us. No changes whatsoever. But that Teacher Ma influenced is undeniable in the end.
That this ambivalence and ambiguity is the creators’ intent comes through in lines given to the student-protagonist, Shim Hana, near TQC’s end. A character who ignored serious studying to develop friendships instead, Shim Hana shows a dormant intelligence in answering haltingly and thoughtfully when pressured, ‘I’m not really sure if Teacher Ma harmed us or not by the way she did things. I only know I want her to keep being my teacher.' This, at the same time her Class 3 classmates including the brightest, are pronouncing, wonderful, over Teacher Ma, and bawling hysterically...
...and in these final lines that were handed to Hana: 'Teacher, we did beat you, didn’t we? We did win?'
You’re left feeling good about the students as they move forward into middle school. Although there were storylines so unpleasant, I had to skim over them. I have a hunch that if we were to see these classmates 15-20 years down the line, the same personality traits will still be there--protected, and the long-lasting effect of Ma’s teaching methods will be evident.
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Post by nuwildcats on Feb 4, 2014 22:21:13 GMT -5
TQC's principal kid actors earned, as a group, MBC 2013 Drama Awards for best child actor. They couldn't very well leave out Seo Sin-ae (the outstanding child actor in Thank You) who was just okay in TQC, I thought.
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Post by anhrafael on Mar 8, 2014 13:56:02 GMT -5
I saw this show last year, and I loved it. I thought the teacher was awesome and the kids were great. I'm a retired teacher and this show made me homesick for the classroom. I just found your station after many years of being away and I'm so glad to be back.
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Post by nuwildcats on Mar 9, 2014 19:37:24 GMT -5
I never saw the Japanese original which I'm sure is online. As a fan it would probably be worth checking out. I kinda didn't think the teacher was fleshed out very well, and seemed to be there more as a blank canvas to draw out what her students needed. What I got from her came near the end when I saw the final results at the school year's end, and the little bit of info they gave us on Teacher Ma's background.
The kid actors were excellent and so deserved MBC's Child Actor award. I'm not a teacher (at least, not officially) but I really have hated saying goodbye to that classroom when the drama ended.
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Post by ajk on Sept 5, 2014 11:58:20 GMT -5
I just received word from MBC Chicago that they're going to rerun this series. It will run Wedesdays and Thursdays at 3:00 p.m., with rebroadcasts at 3:50 the following mornings. Sixteen episodes, each an hour long.
Lots of interest in this series when it first aired, so if you missed it the first time, it's worth catching even for an episode or two just to get the flavor of it.
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