The Heirs was like watching someone's delirium fever fantasy of money and privilege, outfitted in designer uniforms and backdropped by hallways pricier than most houses. But beneath all that glitter, there was something poignantly familiar — the suffocating weight of expectations, the gilded cage that privilege can make out of itself, and the way that love gets run over by the cogs of family inheritance. Kim Tan, son of an empire he never asked for, living in a gilded cage that everyone dreams of but nobody is aware of. Cha Eun-sang, a girl whose crime was only that she was born without a trust fund, is fighting to survive in a world where she is merely an irritation to be present. Watching them try to love each other across the chasm of class difference was like watching a person try to hold the ocean in their hand.
What Struck Me About Their Pain:
I never imagined I'd feel so much for characters drowning in excess. But something about Kim Tan's exhaustion — the way he perceives his future as a life sentence, the way all his decisions have already been made for him before he was even born — resonated on a universal level. Not because I understand wealth, but because I understand the suffocating weight of familial expectations. In Bangladesh, too, we have our own variation — the eldest son to whom the family business must come, the daughter to whom a good marriage must be arranged, and the children on whose shoulders generations rest. The balance is different, but the asphyxiation is similar. Family pride, duty over want, sacrifice disguised as love — it's a vocabulary that both societies use in their sleep. When Tan's father utters to him, "This is your fate," it could have been any Bengali parent instructing his or her child that reputation matters more than dreams. The words change, but the cage doesn't.
The Cruelty of Class Difference:
The Heirs does not romanticize poverty or wealth — it shows both have the ability to kill you, just in varying ways. Eun-sang's shame isn't about being poor; it's about being treated as if her very presence is somehow wrong. The way that the wealthy characters treat her like she is not even a person, just something in the way of them and their convenience, made my stomach turn. I couldn't help but think about how class operates in our society as well. The careless cruelty of individuals who've never faced the need to balance pride and survival, the manner in which poverty becomes a moral failing with them. The distinction is, in Korea, they developed a whole genre devoted to exploring this imbalance. In Bangladesh, we're still denying that it exists in pretty much the same way.
Why Korea Makes These Stories:
There's bravery in the manner Korean drama obsesses over class struggle. The Heirs, Boys Over Flowers, and Cinderella and Four Knights — they return to this trope because Korea saw drastic change. A generation previous to this, this nation's wealthy today were commoners. The agony of inequality is new; the wound is still raw. These giant conglomerates, these chaebol families, were born of Korean society, and they had to deal with what they've become. The shows aren't just entertainment —they're a way of dealing with what they've become, of wondering if the cost of success was worth it. Here in Bangladesh, we do have our own wealthy families and our own elite power forces, but we don't examine them the same way. We're learning to challenge authority still, still finding our voice in terms of inequality. Maybe that's why Korean dramas ring so true —they're having the conversations we're not yet ready to have.
Not Like Other Love Stories:
The Heirs is not *Crash Landing on You, where love conquers all. It is not Hometown's Cha-Cha-Cha, where healing is subtle. This is one of love trampled by systems bigger than human beings, where good intentions cannot bridge structural inequality. Where other dramas give us fantasy, The Heirs gives us frustration. The obstacles aren't miscommunications that may be resolved by better communication — they are economic facts, family traditions, and social hierarchies that have established themselves over generations. You can't kiss away a trust fund or hug away a class system.
What It Left Me With :
The Heirs failed to give me the warm fuzzies I get from other K-dramas. Instead, it left me with fire-burning questions: How much of our lives do we actually own? When does family loyalty turn into family tyranny? Is love sufficient when the world is against some people and wants to rip them apart? I walked away from this drama angry and depressed and strangely optimistic all at once. Angry at systems that lower human beings to the status of pawns on a chessboard. Depressed for all who find themselves caught in circumstance rather than choice. But optimistic because at least someone was brave enough to mount these debates on television, to make us wriggle with our own facilitation in injustice. The last scene, with Tan finally deciding for himself, didn't feel like triumph — it felt like the beginning of a very hard struggle. And maybe that's the most honest ending there ever could have been.
The Heirs breathed something I was praying to be reminded of: "The golden spoon isn't always a blessing. Sometimes it's just a more expensive chain." And in that whisper, I felt the reverberation of all the young folks fighting to choose between responsibility and aspirations, all the love stories that ended up in failure because the world wasn't ready yet, and all the systems that prioritize legacy over bliss.
Legacies are too burdensome to carry. This soap opera taught me it's okay to set them down.
The Heirs was like watching someone's delirium fever fantasy of money and privilege, outfitted in designer uniforms and backdropped by hallways pricier than most houses. But beneath all that glitter, there was something poignantly familiar — the suffocating weight of expectations, the gilded cage that privilege can make out of itself, and the way that love gets run over by the cogs of family inheritance. Kim Tan, son of an empire he never asked for, living in a gilded cage that everyone dreams of but nobody is aware of. Cha Eun-sang, a girl whose crime was only that she was born without a trust fund, is fighting to survive in a world where she is merely an irritation to be present. Watching them try to love each other across the chasm of class difference was like watching a person try to hold the ocean in their hand.
What Struck Me About Their Pain:
I never imagined I'd feel so much for characters drowning in excess. But something about Kim Tan's exhaustion — the way he perceives his future as a life sentence, the way all his decisions have already been made for him before he was even born — resonated on a universal level. Not because I understand wealth, but because I understand the suffocating weight of familial expectations. In Bangladesh, too, we have our own variation — the eldest son to whom the family business must come, the daughter to whom a good marriage must be arranged, and the children on whose shoulders generations rest. The balance is different, but the asphyxiation is similar. Family pride, duty over want, sacrifice disguised as love — it's a vocabulary that both societies use in their sleep. When Tan's father utters to him, "This is your fate," it could have been any Bengali parent instructing his or her child that reputation matters more than dreams. The words change, but the cage doesn't.
The Cruelty of Class Difference:
The Heirs does not romanticize poverty or wealth — it shows both have the ability to kill you, just in varying ways. Eun-sang's shame isn't about being poor; it's about being treated as if her very presence is somehow wrong. The way that the wealthy characters treat her like she is not even a person, just something in the way of them and their convenience, made my stomach turn. I couldn't help but think about how class operates in our society as well. The careless cruelty of individuals who've never faced the need to balance pride and survival, the manner in which poverty becomes a moral failing with them. The distinction is, in Korea, they developed a whole genre devoted to exploring this imbalance. In Bangladesh, we're still denying that it exists in pretty much the same way.
Why Korea Makes These Stories:
There's bravery in the manner Korean drama obsesses over class struggle. The Heirs, Boys Over Flowers, and Cinderella and Four Knights — they return to this trope because Korea saw drastic change. A generation previous to this, this nation's wealthy today were commoners. The agony of inequality is new; the wound is still raw. These giant conglomerates, these chaebol families, were born of Korean society, and they had to deal with what they've become. The shows aren't just entertainment —they're a way of dealing with what they've become, of wondering if the cost of success was worth it. Here in Bangladesh, we do have our own wealthy families and our own elite power forces, but we don't examine them the same way. We're learning to challenge authority still, still finding our voice in terms of inequality. Maybe that's why Korean dramas ring so true —they're having the conversations we're not yet ready to have.
Not Like Other Love Stories:
The Heirs is not *Crash Landing on You, where love conquers all. It is not Hometown's Cha-Cha-Cha, where healing is subtle. This is one of love trampled by systems bigger than human beings, where good intentions cannot bridge structural inequality. Where other dramas give us fantasy, The Heirs gives us frustration. The obstacles aren't miscommunications that may be resolved by better communication — they are economic facts, family traditions, and social hierarchies that have established themselves over generations. You can't kiss away a trust fund or hug away a class system.
What It Left Me With :
The Heirs failed to give me the warm fuzzies I get from other K-dramas. Instead, it left me with fire-burning questions: How much of our lives do we actually own? When does family loyalty turn into family tyranny? Is love sufficient when the world is against some people and wants to rip them apart? I walked away from this drama angry and depressed and strangely optimistic all at once. Angry at systems that lower human beings to the status of pawns on a chessboard. Depressed for all who find themselves caught in circumstance rather than choice. But optimistic because at least someone was brave enough to mount these debates on television, to make us wriggle with our own facilitation in injustice. The last scene, with Tan finally deciding for himself, didn't feel like triumph — it felt like the beginning of a very hard struggle. And maybe that's the most honest ending there ever could have been.
The Heirs breathed something I was praying to be reminded of: "The golden spoon isn't always a blessing. Sometimes it's just a more expensive chain." And in that whisper, I felt the reverberation of all the young folks fighting to choose between responsibility and aspirations, all the love stories that ended up in failure because the world wasn't ready yet, and all the systems that prioritize legacy over bliss.
Legacies are too burdensome to carry. This soap opera taught me it's okay to set them down.