Korean dramas

I think once we get past the con artist/marriage dude it'll pick up for me. I'll probably get back to it later because I do like the characters.

Ohlala picked up this week. I'm liking how the story is getting a bit more complex and I'm not sure who I want the heroine to end up with. Last week it was clear everyone was a jerk but this week more backstory explained a lot.

I made a page for Eat Your Kimchi if anyone follows it and/or wants to tweak it.

I watched the first twenty minutes of FH 2 and gave up.

A friend tried to get me into one of these; something to do with roses? I can't tell if the story was incredibly generic or if I was missing a lot of cultural context.

There are a lot of cultural things that have confused and frustrated me when watching the shows. From my very western perspective some of the older characters should be smacked with a brick. What I do like is that when you have a show that runs 16 or 20 hour long segments there is time for really great character development. There can also be completely clunky and contrived plot complications where people take turns with the Idiot Ball. Those are the ones I stop watching.

Is anyone watching King of Dramas? I'm getting a big kick out it and I really like watching all of the actors think.

I am! I just love all the meta and Lampshade Hangings.

edited 14th Dec '12 9:26:36 AM by whimsyful

Usually at this point in a drama I get exasperated by the plot complications but I am really curious as to where they are going to go next.

Here I am double posting again but I just saw episode 14 of King Of Dramas and I saw that the series has been extended to 18 episodes.

I hope it stays as smart as it has been.

edited 17th Jan '13 9:34:36 PM by blackcat

Yeah, I really hope the pacing doesn't start dragging. I've yet to meet an extension I liked.

As near as I can tell, the only thing left unresolved is who is/was Anthony's father? I thought the extra from the fire might be him but maybe not. And then there's the ring. Is that just gone and out of the story or will it return?

ETA: Just finished episode 16 and now I'm wondering where the fork in the road occurred when they switched from 16 to 18 episodes.

edited 25th Dec '12 8:15:20 PM by blackcat

Well, now we have the whole will-Anthony- lose-his-eyesight thing. I'm really hoping they lampshade this, since it's such a overdone kdrama trope.

I agree. Throughout the entire series the writer has been deftly puncturing all of the conventions. Suddenly veering into full blown melodrama is just gonna make me mad. I expect things labelled "Romantic Comedy" to be romantic comedies. And when it says "Melodrama" I know there will be tears, terminal disease, murder-suicide and someone staring out a window while sad music plays that their heart will go on. Or not.

I'm looking at you "It Happened in Bali".

I've discovered both dramabeans and soompi.

edited 2nd Jan '13 9:39:19 AM by blackcat

Precisely! I love how Genre Savvy and self aware it is. *Crosses fingers* Please don't screw it up writers!

Oh I love dramabeans. Even if I don't always agree with them, they are very entertaining and informative. When I first found it I went on a complete Archive Binge of their show recaps.

Now that it's a new year, what were you're favorite shows of 2012? Mine was definitely Answer Me 1997. Queen Inhyun's Man was pretty good too.

Hmmm. Setting aside King of Dramas for the moment, I'm going to have to say Wild Romance and The Golden Hour. Hongdae Lovers and Rooftop Prince had moments but with both of them I got bogged down about episode 12.

I really enjoy the short films that Drama Fever puts up. Of those, I would have to say Love, NY and Once were my favorites.

I seem to like romances. Hunh.

I primarily watched three series last year.

I really like The King 2 Hearts; it's something that fits my taste a lot. There's just something interesting about a modern-day monarchy interacting with contemporary times and the royalty actually doing something actively. And I tend to like expositions of unconventional military, especially with the North Korean woman as a top agent getting involved in the two Koreas. It also featured a wide variety of international cross-culture and used them quite well.

I saw the 2nd half of Dr. Jin and it was pretty intriguing to see how history would change. Though the effects are a bit low-quality and the surgeries were rather predictable, I could see that the real point of them was just plot advancement.

I watched some episodes of The Great Queen Seondeok; it was too long to watch fully, but I was really impressed with this series. I thought it was going to be about the queen's accomplishments and the work on unifying the land, but it's actually a lot of drama and tragic moments.

There were things about the last two episodes of King Of Dramas that bugged me but I ended up being OK with it after it was all said and done. I liked how the focus of the drama shifted. Up until the last two or three episodes the focus was on how the characters functioned inside their very specific world. Those last episodes were about those characters reacting to their world. It reminded me of how the Fruits Basket finished up. After exploring the whole world of the manga, it ended up where it started, with some characters who had to work out some problems and did.

I'm still really uncertain about the world of K Drama forums. I've been lurking over at Soompi and some of the acceptable cultural conventions of the site are er, um, kind of annoying. The little snippets of a video repeating over and over make me insane. But there are some really insightful perceptions. So, I'm still lurking.

I've been watching Air City. I like those action-y slice of heightened reality life shows. I liked Golden Hour and Auction House for the same reason.

I also started The Flower Boy Next Door. I'm probably shipping up the wrong tree, Enrique has the Too Good To Live (I'm sure we have a name for it but I'm not looking it up right now) syndrome written all over him. And I like Jin Rak better. But I'm really bad at this so chances are it'll go opposite of my preference.

I've also started the Taiwanese drama Substitute Princess. I don't know that I will continue it. There is the possibility of a lot of interesting conflict development. Or not. We'll see.

edited 17th Jan '13 9:35:45 PM by blackcat

blackcat - you might want to consider the Dramabeans website as a good place to talk about K Dramas and their conventions. Plus they have a section where they explain certain parts of Korean culture (such as "Oppa" "Unni" "Hyung" and other forms of speaking to others.

Just a thought. :-)

Thanks! I find that I've been relying on dramabeans more and more for insight. I don't always agree but I don't have to.

I watch a lot of them on crunchyroll. I was amazed at a site that had both anime and K-drama available.

I checked it out, I may go back to that site, lots of titles I don't see other places.

I keep trying to read Do Mi's name from Flower Boy Next Door as Do Re Mi.

Another one of my double posts, I really like the character development in Flower Boy Next Door and that so far, the story has been so tightly constructed. I did look at the webtoon that the show is based on and even though I don't understand Korean, I did get a general sense of the story. I wish I did read it. I liked the drawing.

I am also watching Personal Preference. Interesting.

I've heard good things about Flower Boy Next Door, but I think I'm going to wait until it's finished. Been burned by promising dramas finishing poorly. I will check it out after, purely because it's from tvN and Kim Ji Hoon is in it if nothing else.

Boy do I know what you are talking about there. I think the plot twist that got thrown in at the end of episode 12 will be the make or break for this show.

ETA: Crap. Almost wrote a big ol' spoiler. Not in terms of plot but in terms of how the writers are spinning the plot. Which becomes a big ol' spoiler.

edited 25th Feb '13 8:47:14 PM by blackcat

Flower Boy Next Door did kind of derail but it didn't go careening into a neighborhood leveling houses and killing children. The character development and growth remained interesting and I even ended up switching ships after a while. I've liked Park Shin Hye in almost everything I've seen her in. I'd never seen Kim Ji Hoon in any thing before but I thought he did really nice work.

I loved Kim Ji Hoon in Joseon X-Files. I'm really wishing for a series that finishes strongly though.

On the new dramas front, I'm probably most interested in the new time travel mystery Nine, which is from tvN and done by the same writer/director team who did''Queen In-hyun's Man. I've heard good things about That Winter The Wind Blows, but it sounds really melodramatic.