If you haven’t heard of Netflix’s latest Korean sensation Crash Landing on You… I wonder if there’s any ride you can hail from planet Mars to bring you back to earth.
The formula for the success of this rom-com is simple yet with a dose of slight complexity: female and male protagonists from two different worlds meet in the uncanniest of circumstances… and romance (of course) blossoms.
The two different worlds in this situation? North and South Korea.
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(No) Spoiler Alert: I Haven’t Even Finished It!
The truth is, I’ve barely made it to the end of the second episode, but there was just one thing that kept me glued to the screen: their complexions.
Trust me, it was a maaaaaaajor case of skin envy I had never really developed before, as I found myself not lost in the plot or dialogue, but how their complexions were just alabaster, in every. single. frame.
Naturally, I had to do a spot of mildly extensive Googling to find out about the how, the what and the what-nots.
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Female Lead: Son Ye-Jin
South Korean actress Son Ye-Jin is 38 years old as of 11th of January this year, but close-up shots of her really do tell a story that’s a decade younger.
Without divulging much of the plotline, let’s just say she had to be featured prominently in scenes where she barely had any make-up on.
In those particular scenes, I just zeroed in on her facial features as the checklist just formed automatically in my head.
Preorbital fine wrinkles – zilch. Forehead lines – nada. Fine lines around lip -none. At this point I didn’t even need to bother checking off the general tautness and radiance of her skin anymore.
When interviewed by the press, the actress reveals that she does not even swear by a complex skincare regime – she just religiously applies a serum that whitens and illuminates her skin, right after her luxurious nightly anti-aging skin-lifting mask.
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Male Lead: Hyun Bin
My first impression of Hyun Bin wasn’t all that great – he seemed to have a crippling disability of smiling… but when I realized that was what the role required of him, I also started fawning about his complexion.
Hyun Bin turns 38 in September this year, but my, does he look like those pubescent upstarts in K-pop supergroups that litter the country of Korea.
Perfectly chiseled cheekbones I’d attribute to the result of a good gene pool, but his unblemished and poreless complexion is no slouch at all.
While conventional Korean skincare routine usually involves at least 10 to 14 steps (!), the skincare game is steadily evolving and streamlining its products by producing hybrids, something Hyun Bin himself professes to using.
With a congested filming schedule, he takes the moisturization of his skin very seriously, and with the big 4-0 creeping up on him, he adopts an approach that dives beyond the deeper recesses of the skin to repair damaged skin – via the DNA.
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Should I Go On?
Halfway into the second episode of this show, I realized I was really (really) just suffering from that severe bout of skin envy. I was also making this a personal crusade to find just ONE SINGLE FLAW on their skin that could make me go:
“AH HA! YOU’RE NOT PERFECT!”
I of course, have failed terribly in this attempt, and with absolutely scant knowledge of what really is going on in this Netflix phenomenon, I humbly accept my defeat, and walk away from this show, knowing that with the right approach on skincare, I too can look like them. my skin can too, look like theirs.
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