I finally finished a drama! Granted, it was a very, very (very) short drama, but there was a beginning, middle, and end, and I hit every single one of them. Handmade Love, or Handsome Tailor as I know it, was a mini-drama that I watched, wrote about and now that it’s done, I wonder, why did I care?
Well, I guess that’s the point, I didn’t really care, and the episodes were like a second long, so it was easy to watch. Is that where my bar is now? Is this show easy to watch? Is it short enough to swallow while my attention span is temporarily resting on something? I want to say that’s sad, but I’m focusing on the positive, I finished a show!
As I wrote in my previous post, it’s not like Handmade Love was terrible. It had a lot of great qualities going for it. Handsome leading man, check. Interesting storyline, check. Awesome set design, check. Unfortunately, Handsome Tailor is a perfect example of how a pretty hero and an interesting idea do not a good drama make. You need someone who is actually able to craft that idea into a good, logical, or heck even just a basic storyline that made sense. This show had some really lazy storytelling that made me come out from watching it with all sorts of “But Why?” questions. Let’s take a look at a few.
Who is Woven? Okay, he’s some sort of god? But he’s not a big enough god who is allowed to be able to touch the main god’s jacket? He loves clothing so much, he steals the god’s coat just so he can touch it? Who beat him up in the beginning, when he’s so artfully laying there? The god found him and shoots him? But he’s a god. I think it’s a magical gun, but… is that what sends him to earth for his punishment? Does the gun just take away some of his powers?
Oh no, now that I’m asking questions, I only have more to as. I should probably say watch out, spoilers are coming, but I don’t think in a show like this, that matters.
Okay, so he gets to earth and he’s punished for touching clothes by making clothes for humans? He needs to learn about human emotions? Why? What is the correlation between his crime and the punishment besides the fact they both involve clothes? If his favorite thing in the world is beautifully created clothes, how is sending him to earth to make clothes a punishment? And how long is he there for? Until the other gods think he’s learned his lesson? Whatever lesson that might be? At least in Mystic Pop Up Bar, there was a deadline, a number of people she had to help in order to be done with her punishment. Woven? It’s like the god said “You go to your room until I tell you you can come out.” Okay then. 
Why do they take the girl on to be a part-time worker after they make the life changing clothes for her in the first two episodes? I can see why she would like to work for them, they are cool and Woven is hot. But why do they choose to take her on? It’s not like they are banging out work unless there are lots of clients we’re not seeing off screen. Is he drawn to her even then? I think Woven is so much of an enigma, we just don’t see anything from him which makes his motivation hard to understand.
Then at the end, the god comes to earth for a visit and you think the next set of episodes (each storyline is told in a pair of episodes) is going to be about her, about her interactions with Woven, maybe get some of this overarching storyline in, but no, you realize in the next episode they had a whole conversation that Woven is being ungrounded after he finishes up his last job (which just happens to be the girl’s mom) AND THIS HAPPENS OFF SCREEN. How freaking anti-climactic that is. I think it was at that point I sent messages out to the tune of “I don’t know what the point of this show is.” And from there? He’s suddenly IN LOVE with the girl? Like, no lead up to this up until now, it’s just “Oh, I get to go home, wait, now I don’t want to go home.” And then she’s in love with him? And then at the end, the goddess is just like, cool with him staying? Does he lose his god-dom? Is he a human? Is he a regular tailor now? Is he going to outlive her? We don’t know because, you know, the story is not something this show was necessarily bothered with. 
In the comments, Humbledaisy mentioned she heard this was produced by a clothing line, which would explain the lack of plot in favor of style. Although, I have to say, I didn’t love the clothes he created, so if that’s the work that’s being done by the shop…
It’s not a bad drama. It’s just… a waste of time. A very, very pretty waste of time. One could say, “well it’s so short, you can’t expect a perfect drama”, and to that, I call BS. Mr. Heart, a show about the same length had a story, character development, and depth. Drama specials are one episode shots that tell a single story, and a lot of them do it well. I just, well, with a show that seemed so striking and interesting from the start, am disappointed it ended up being solidly meh. Bummer.
At least that handsome tailor was pretty handsome the whole way through?
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