castawaydish

Ahh noted. I thought we were talking about Kdramas in general. And yeah, the crime/mystery type of drama usually lack romances. It's kinda disappointing too because after all the episodes you usually end up rooting for two characters who share a good chemistry but it goes nowhere.

I completely agree with what you said and that's what disappoints me.

And omg yes! I have been saying that to my friends. CLOY is the type of drama, the production team and writer expected to be a hit without any effort into the writing. And that's what they got, disappointing tbh because better dramas are almost always ignored.

I dislike dropping dramas in the middle, so similar to you I also forced myself to complete it. It was a painful experience though.

And I have to agree with you on that too! "Masterpiece", I'm sorry but what???? lmao If that's a masterpiece then what's a true masterpiece??? Unlike you though I don't like being charitable, I call their taste in dramas total gobshite. I mean liking? Fine. Best Drama Ever/Masterpeice? No standards. XD

And agreed, I tend to not follow hype anymore because as noted in my original comment, they always are decent at best with most of them being mediocre. And that's how I find good dramas myself. Anything that generates low viewership or MDL rating? Must watch because it's generally bound to be really good.

I agree with your assessment that he popular Kdramas are the worst choices to show to beginners imo as well. And in general are mediocre dramas.

My own dose of Kdrama/Kmovie started in early 2000s with the movie called the Classic (Son Yejin, Jo Seung Woo movie). I absolutely loved that movie's portrayal of starcrossed lovers. Then I diverged into the Kdrama world and the next few Kdramas I watched - Autumn in My Heart, Winter Sonata, Stairway to Heaven etc. were all mediocre experience for me. So I understand what you mean by popular dramas being the worst ones to show to newbies.

I actually think there are good numbers of Eastern shows, including Kdramas that showcases both parts well. The most recent one I've seen was Be Melodramatic. It juggled the professions of a bunch of friends with their struggling love life well. I loved that they didn't sacrifice any of their characters to develop another character either which happens so often in your typical Kdrama where the 2nd lead or the antagonist gets zero development and just exist there as a plot device to further the main lead or to unite the main couple. The best example among the new Kdramas is Itaewon Class - where the character of Ahn Bohyun is completely wasted and is just a plot device that exists there to further Park Seo Joon's character.

A good melodrama that does this well (at least IMO) is Just Between Lovers. It shows the romance aspect between the main leads and also develops the other aspects of their life at the same time, whilst never ignoring the existence of the ensemble either as they each get their own development.

Thanks for mentioning Prison Playbook, I completely forgot about that drama. I think this is a good recommendation to beginners as well, especially if they enjoy a laidback type of show. Also yes, Nine! I was gonna recommend that too, but it escaped my mind when I was typing my recommendation.

I first became a fan of his after his role in Witch at Court. And he's consistently done good dramas since then.

Bromance is STRONK in this one. This is a fun drama due to the camarederie shared by the four leads. It's not unique, it's not extraordinary, it's not brilliant, but it's simplistic, it's fun and it's entertaining.

"My pet peeve is when they put popular actors, a filler story and lots of cameos for ratings. "

Exactly the same for me. They seem to believe that popular actors is enough to make a drama, and then they put little to no effort into the actual writing.

Many of these are not very beginner's friendly imo. You've to understand that romcom in general is a genre highly frowned upon by non-Kdrama watchers. Especially in the west, romcoms are considered lower forms of media, the genre's even less popular among guys. So IMO most of these will not leave a good impression on beginners at all.

If you force someone who has never seen Kdramas to watch things like Strong Woman or Tale of Nokdu, I'm sure they'll never touch Kdramas again. Saeguk or Historical dramas, in general, is not everyone's cup of tea, even I as an avid Kdrama fan shy away from that genre often.

Strong Woman while a hella fun watch is incredibly messy in terms of writing. If a Kdrama skeptic starts with it, they'll end up generalising the whole Kdrama world as messy writing that trades off writing continuity and consistency for comic relief. Some of the parts in it are so random that it's bound to leave a really bad impression on newbies for e.g the whole Buddhist temple storyline with the gangster boss, the high school boy worshipping Bong Soon, etc. I personally showed it to a few of my non-Kdrama fan friends and they found it laugh-worthy (not my words, theirs!).

I think there are better Kdramas to leave a great impression on newbies -> Stranger, Hwayugi, the Fiery Priest, the Guest, Doctor Romantic etc. These are genres that don't have a demographic divide and is generally loved by both males and females in both the eastern and western part of the world.

This is the best BL of the year tbh No question asked, no arguments valid. It's well paced (unlike UWMA), the story's not chopped up into nonsensical sections (unlike Why R U) and as it's produced by GMMTV the production quality's much better than the aforementioned BLs. Both UWMA and Why R U started off strong but then went downhill, but this seems to be getting better by the episode!

I'm loving it so far and I need the episodes to come faster!!!

Suk Jun Soo is one of the nicest 2nd lead tbh He's the epitome of second lead syndrome. Not a bone of malice in his body and his love for both the female and male lead are unconditional.

Needs more lead roles.

100% agreed. Why R U is butchered IMO because of the awful stress on the Tutor-Fighter relationship and a complete neglect of the other main couple which is far more "unique" and interesting. The whole Fighter-Tutor dynamic of kissing each other and then acting like nothing happened got boring after the first time. It's unoriginal, it's lazy writing and it's just not fun to watch. In the last two episodes, Saifah-Zon barely got 10min screentime and it's like a 50min show for god's sake.

I personally highly disagreement with their assessment of Hye's feelings for Jojo. It's far more genuine than he/she makes it out to be. And it was never an infatuation but rather a cherishing love. Often, everytime needs a kick to get their gear going and in his case, it was SunOh's interest in Jojo.

I agree with their assessment of Jojo and SO. They're both alike, selfish characters. Which is WHY I think they're not good for each other IMO. It'll only end up in a poisonous, toxic relationship if it was IRL. But they do deserve each other due to their highly flawed personalities.

Like I said, for me I don't want Jojo to be with either of the guys. I want both Jojo and SO to end up alone and mature before they jump into a relationship. And I want HY to find someone better than Jojo. But I'm sure the drama will follow the exact route as the webtoon.

Also in my other comment I meant there are more SO-Yukjoo development in the recent Webtoon chapters than SO-Jojo. Sorry for the typo.

I actually liked the premise and the whole Seri's family drama. The part that made me cringe hard was the romance as well, it was so badly portrayed and all the random and abrupt scenes that were inserted in episodes. For e.g one of them was the parachute scene, another was the whole Seri-Jonghyuk meeting in the European country which was so conveniently random and beyond cheesy and cheap etc. Like I said, Bollywood.

Also it was really badly paced imo the story really stumbled near the end, with most scenes beyond episode 10 being completely unnecessary and filler-like whereas the important parts being completely skipped (we didn't even get to see Seri returning back to SK, which was ridiculous. One scene they're talking about it and next scene Seri's all groomed back in her company taking over her position again, like wtf??).

The drama would've been 10 times better imo if it had focused more on how Seri adapts to the lifestyle in NK and how she returns back down to South.

What the audience wants actually don't matter especially if it's the international audience (if it did, so many webtoon adapted show would end in different ways). Since the ending has to be approved by the webtoon writer and the writer clearly doesn't want Jojo and Sunoh together (you'll understand what I mean by this if you read the webtoon).

The webtoon is indeed ongoing, but Jojo's not with Sunoh (I read it raw 'cause I know Korean) and is with HY. The new season for the webtoon started recently, so the drama's prolly gonna end at how the last season ended i.e with Jojo-HY together without any S3. In fact in the Webtoon there's no Yukjoo-Sunoh development rn than Jojo-Sunoh.

Personally, I think HY deserves someone better than Jojo. Both Jojo and SunOh are incredibly selfish people with little maturity compared to HY. So they deserve each other. What I want is a complete change in the ending with everyone ending up alone, with HY getting someone who's not selfish like Jojo.

Personally for me, I end up disliking all the hyped dramas because they usually turn out shit compared to the hype -> CLOY, Encounter, Alhambra etc. are few examples of mediocr-decent dramas which people take as the paragon.

CLOY personally for me ruined the joy of romcom dramas with well known names due to how cheesy it was and how ridiculous it was at times. Seriously, it was like Bollywood movies extended over 16 episodes. The parachute scene in episode 4 (IIRC) made me cringe harder than a South Indian movie due to how laughable and random it was. It scarred me from romcom, and now I'm actively avoided new romcoms with big casting. It's the prime example of a mediocre drama generating buzz only because of big names.

My suggestion is if you're falling out of love with Kdramas - aim for the little known dramas or dramas under another genre. CLOY made me facepalm hard but dramas like Diary of a Prosecutor, Tell Me What You Saw & Nobody Knows has restored my faith. Because unlike the hyped dramas, these dramas have to put more effort into their writing and production so there's a lot of details that are really impressive.

I can't think of any webtoon adaptation that didn't follow the webtoon ending. The fact that Jung Garam is credited first over Song Kang should be enough of an indication of the who the first male lead is.

Song Seung Hoon??? Chun Jung Myung??? So Ji Sub??? Jang Hyuk???

He looks younger than 49 and god he's sexy!

It's kinda dark, and handles grief and tragedy. People are prolly too into stupid romcoms to enjoy this.

The acting is brilliant actually. Kim Seo Hyun knows how to put on a terrific performance and the newbie kid An Ji Ho performs really well in his role as a quite, shy, tormented kid.