nimwoo
Germany
Unconventional K-Drama
'Extracurricular' is a whole rollercoaster. It took me 2 days to finally decide to write this review because this drama is a lot to sink in and process.
It starts with what looks like a simple high school story with your regular poor main lead who struggles to make friends and live a normal life after his parents abandoned him, and then turns to be a dramatic and crazy story with bits of Tarantino.
As a film lover, I must say 'Extracurricular' exceeded my expectations considering this is a K-Drama. I've watched all genres of K-Dramas but never have I ever seen one dealing with such deep topics from the perspective of high schoolers. If you've watched many dramas too, you'll know that Koreans are very reserved about how they portray high schoolers, since they're still children, and you'll mostly only see criminal/taboo behaviors from high schoolers in K-Movies. So, to see the characters of this amazing show deal with topics like prostitution, explicitly about minors, or sex trafficking was pretty much a shock. I know this didn't air in public or cable TV, hence why it was much more detailed and censorless, but still kind of shocking.
One thing that annoys me a bit from TV dramas is that whenever there's a smoking scene, there's always someone who takes the cigarette out of the hands of the person that was supposed to smoke it and turns it off, or they just show the back of the person smoking it. However, we saw high schoolers with cigarettes turned on and actually smoking it, teenagers talking sexually about body parts, being fully aware of sexual stuff, being criminals... The unconventional nature of the show really surprised me and left a great feeling on me.
I love the way they developed the story. I hadn't been as annoyed and frustrated about every character in a show in so long, and 'Extracurricular' made it possible for me to hate each and every single character on the show, except from Mr. Lee and the teacher. Every other character was absolutely stupid and frustrating, and oddly that's one of my favorite things about this story; that the characters are completely unlikable and annoying and there's little to no personal development on their personalities at all and I see this from the POV of someone who values personal development the most in a show. The fact that this story didn't take them anywhere good gives you a bittersweet feeling and you start wondering, "was it really necessary?" about almost everything that happens. You question the logic of these characters and wonder why can't they simply use their brains wisely. And to me, this created a really remarkable story.
Oh Ji Soo is the most stupid male character I can think of from a K-Drama, but since his personality is somewhere in the middle of a genius and a dumbass, I can only say he's actually a genius. Bae Gyu Ri is a nosy girl that ends up uncovering a pimp business that offers security to prostitutes and ends up ruining the whole thing for O-ji. I can't say I didn't hate her 90% of the drama and wanted to get in the screen and slap her face so bad. She's pretentious and selfish, but I liked the way she cared for O-ji. They both made a dangerous, yet great couple.
Overall I don't want to get into details as I don't want to mark this with spoiler, but I'll just say I loved the unconventional and unique ending that they gave us. My review is only positive, but there still were some things I would've improved about the casting and role of certain characters so I'll give it 9/10.
PS. I loved the nightmare scenes, especially the one about Seo Minhee. All the nightmares are among my favorite representation of a dream in a show.
It starts with what looks like a simple high school story with your regular poor main lead who struggles to make friends and live a normal life after his parents abandoned him, and then turns to be a dramatic and crazy story with bits of Tarantino.
As a film lover, I must say 'Extracurricular' exceeded my expectations considering this is a K-Drama. I've watched all genres of K-Dramas but never have I ever seen one dealing with such deep topics from the perspective of high schoolers. If you've watched many dramas too, you'll know that Koreans are very reserved about how they portray high schoolers, since they're still children, and you'll mostly only see criminal/taboo behaviors from high schoolers in K-Movies. So, to see the characters of this amazing show deal with topics like prostitution, explicitly about minors, or sex trafficking was pretty much a shock. I know this didn't air in public or cable TV, hence why it was much more detailed and censorless, but still kind of shocking.
One thing that annoys me a bit from TV dramas is that whenever there's a smoking scene, there's always someone who takes the cigarette out of the hands of the person that was supposed to smoke it and turns it off, or they just show the back of the person smoking it. However, we saw high schoolers with cigarettes turned on and actually smoking it, teenagers talking sexually about body parts, being fully aware of sexual stuff, being criminals... The unconventional nature of the show really surprised me and left a great feeling on me.
I love the way they developed the story. I hadn't been as annoyed and frustrated about every character in a show in so long, and 'Extracurricular' made it possible for me to hate each and every single character on the show, except from Mr. Lee and the teacher. Every other character was absolutely stupid and frustrating, and oddly that's one of my favorite things about this story; that the characters are completely unlikable and annoying and there's little to no personal development on their personalities at all and I see this from the POV of someone who values personal development the most in a show. The fact that this story didn't take them anywhere good gives you a bittersweet feeling and you start wondering, "was it really necessary?" about almost everything that happens. You question the logic of these characters and wonder why can't they simply use their brains wisely. And to me, this created a really remarkable story.
Oh Ji Soo is the most stupid male character I can think of from a K-Drama, but since his personality is somewhere in the middle of a genius and a dumbass, I can only say he's actually a genius. Bae Gyu Ri is a nosy girl that ends up uncovering a pimp business that offers security to prostitutes and ends up ruining the whole thing for O-ji. I can't say I didn't hate her 90% of the drama and wanted to get in the screen and slap her face so bad. She's pretentious and selfish, but I liked the way she cared for O-ji. They both made a dangerous, yet great couple.
Overall I don't want to get into details as I don't want to mark this with spoiler, but I'll just say I loved the unconventional and unique ending that they gave us. My review is only positive, but there still were some things I would've improved about the casting and role of certain characters so I'll give it 9/10.
PS. I loved the nightmare scenes, especially the one about Seo Minhee. All the nightmares are among my favorite representation of a dream in a show.
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