Tempted is a 2018 Korean Drama loosely based on the classic novel, Les Liaisons dangereuses, by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.
Millionaire Playboy Kwon Shi-hyun (Woo Do-hwan) makes a bet with his friends to seduce Eun Tae-hee (Park Soo-young, also famously known as Joy of Red Velvet), a diligent college student who no longer believes in love after watching the demise of her parents' marriage. After Tae-hee meets Shi-hyun, her views on love begin to change. As Shi-hyun's secret deepens, his feelings for Tae-hee become real.
The series is sometimes called The Great Seducer as well, being the literal translation of its original Korean title (위대한 유혹자). As of February 2020, it's internationally available for streaming on Netflix.
Tempted provides examples of:
- Bad "Bad Acting": Shi-hyun, according to his friends.
- Becoming the Mask: Shi-hyun eventually falls deep in love with Tae-hee.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: The pool scene
probably best exemplifies the BST between Shi-hyun and Tae-hee. Sparks fly, but she's asking him why he feels the need to act like a bad boy, and it ends with him being The Tease towards her. - The Bet: As with pretty much any media based on Dangerous Liaisons, it underpins the plotline.
- Betty and Veronica: Tae-hee and Soo-ji to Shi-hyun's Archie.
- Broken Pedestal: Shi-hyun is devastated when he incorrectly discovers his beloved mother was the culprit in a hit-and-run that seriously injured the victim.
- Celeb Crush: Exploited by Se-joo. Before he becomes friends with Kyung-joo, he tries to manipulate Kyung-joo's maid Bingbing into preventing the girl from joining them on their little vacation. Bingbing says that all she wants is to see the love of her life dance again, and Se-joo assumes she's talking about a boyfriend she lost... but she's talking about a Cantopop star who died, Leslie Cheung. Se-joo then proceeds to dance like him.
- Childhood Friends: Shi-hyun, Soo-ji, and Se-joo.
- Crazy Jealous Girl: Soo-ji's hatred of Tae-hee is mainly based on her ex-boyfriend and Shi-hyun liking Tae-hee better.
- Flirty Stepsiblings: Fiercely Defied by Shi-hyun and Soo-ji. Shi-hyun's father and Soo-ji's mother announce their engagement in Episode 1; Shi-hyun and Soo-ji immediately conspire to prevent the marriage from happening, partly because of their own Parental Issues but also due to the fact that essentially becoming siblings will make their complicated romantic feelings for each other feel super weird.
- Narrowly avoided by Shi-hyun and Tae-hee. His father and her mother are old flames who were prepared to leave their spouses for each other, but it didn't work out.
- Glamorous Single Mother: Na-yun, a former supermodel with a lavish home.
- Good with Numbers: Tae-hee is a mathematical wunderkind.
- Imagine Spot: Multiple times, Played for Laughs. One particular sequence illustrates to the audience what would happen if a boy waited for Tae-hee outside all night: she'd call the cops.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: Tae-hee. Case in point: She goes swimming in a tiny black bathing suit that shows off her shapely legs, but quickly gets shy about how revealing her outfit is when her Love Interest teases her about how much skin he's able to see.
- Ladykiller in Love: Se-joo is madly in love with Soo-ji; she's oblivious to his affections.
- Lighter and Softer: Compared to its source material as well as other adaptations like Cruel Intentions.
- Love Dodecahedron: Shi-hyun and Soo-ji have Unresolved Sexual Tension; Se-joo is in love with Soo-ji; Shi-hyun quickly falls in love with Tae-hee; Soo-ji's ex-boyfriend is in love with Tae-hee; Shi-hyun's father has been Tae-hee's mother's paramour for a long time; Soo-ji's mother is in love with Shi-hyun's father; Tae-hee's best friend has a crush on Se-joo; Tae-hee's best friend's mother is a Mrs. Robinson who went after Shi-hyun... and that's not all of it!
- Manly Tears: Shi-hyun cries more than every woman in the show combined.
- Millionaire Playboy: Shi-hyun and Se-joo; they're also Childhood Friends.
- Mrs. Robinson: Kyung-joo's mother, Na-yun, is smitten with nineteen-year-old Shi-hyun.
- Nothing Personal: Se-joo notes that neither The Bet nor his incredibly cruel reveal of it were done because he has anything against Tae-hee. He doesn't care about her either way. The bet was meant to punish Ki-young and the reveal to punish Shi-hyun.
- Oh, Crap!: Shi-hyun's reaction as Tae-hee tells him more about her car accident, like that it was two years ago ... in the Jeongeup area ... and it was a hit-and-run ... all details that perfectly match the hit-and-run his mother committed.
- Parental Issues: All over the place.
- Tae-hee's mother is negligent.
- Shi-hyun's father actively hates him. Soo-ji's mother is cold.
- Kyung-joo's mother is a frivolous socialite who would risk her young daughter's reputation just to pursue a nineteen-year-old (Shi-hyun).
- Se-joo's father is outrageously cruel and forbidding. Although the young man's relationship with his sisters-in-law is frayed, even they intervene when their father goes too far in "disciplining" Se-joo — and that's frequently.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Hye-jung falls in Love at First Sight with Joo-hwan as the latter is caked in makeup, including glittery, chartreuse eyeshadow. No one finds this weird. (And it was local Fashion Week, anyway, so it's probably a Justified Trope within context.)
- Relationship Revolving Door: Shi-hyun and Tae-hee break up a lot.
- Running Gag: Black coats are Father Mateo's thing. Shi-hyun just doesn't seem to respect this rule.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Soo-ji and Ki-young are startled by Hye-jung's pet turtle.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Gender-flipped. Shi-hyun starts the series cynical, disaffected, and on course to end up with the even more dysfunctional Soo-ji. Once he meets upbeat humanitarian Tae-hee, he falls for her at a breakneck speed.
- "Shut Up" Kiss: Soo-ji gives Se-joo one in Episode 6, during a confrontation.
- Sins of Our Fathers: Shi-hyun breaks up with Tae-hee out of guilt when he discovers that his mother is supposedly the one who hit her with a car and left her temporarily paralyzed and permanently traumatised. She does the same when she realises his mother died while en route to confront her mother about her affair with his father.
- Snow Means Love: Shi-hyun and Tae-hee's Big Damn Kiss in Episode 4 is framed with drifting snow.
- Tragic Dream: For Soo-ji's mother, earning the affections of her business husband, as he is enamored with another woman; and to a lesser extent, her aspirations as a doctor. She's accomplished enough, but fails to reach certain heights in her profession.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: Shi-hyun and Soo-ji have had this for a long time, which is one of the main reasons that the announcement that his father and her mother are about to marry is so distressing to them.
- Verbed Title
- We Used to Be Friends: Shi-hyun gets sick of Soo-ji sabotaging his relationship with Tae-hee about two-thirds of the way through the show and cuts ties with her and Se-joo.
- Yoko Oh No: Shi-hyun, Soo-ji, and Se-joo's tight-knit, exclusive friendship group drifts apart when Tae-hee enters the picture.
