Annyeong chingudeul~ Hope you’ve had a good couple of weeks! I am crumblinggggggggg under a self-erected pile of work but this is my fault because I did not stick to my scheduled breaks and I now look like this:
Also, I’m just gonna apologise for all the typos I know I will only catch once I hit ‘Publish.’
New dramas on the block
There are a whole bunch of new dramas in town. Penthouse 2 is back in its full makjang glory. Beyond Evil stars Shin Ha Kyung and Yeo Jin Gu. Individually, they have never fail to deliver nuanced performances. The two of them in a drama about a serial killers and the monsters within? Of course it’s already making waves on social media. Vincenzo, the dark comedy starring Song Joong and Jeon Yeo Bin (OTP!) is cracking me up more than I expected. Sisyphus and River Where The Moon Rises were both…not entirely what I expected but I’m only 2 episodes in so it’s probably too early to make dem conclusive judgements about either (especially when we live in a world where shows can go swimmingly well until they crash and burn in their last week). Hello, Me! is definitely my favourite of the lot. Choi Kang Hee stars as a down-and-out 37-year old woman who’s pushed to living a better life when her 17-year old self suddenly shows up in 2021.
The Netflixation of Kdramas - People don’t diss kdrama as much, yay!
I watch most of these shows on Netflix (Penthouse, Beyond Evil and River are available on Viu). In general, I’ve found that the Netflixation/web dramatisation of kdramas has had interesting effects. For one thing, I’m glad I don’t encounter as many people who just dismiss kdramas without listening to why I enjoy them. (I still get annoyed by people who say that fluffy romcoms have no value in the world but never mind, never minddddd. Tonight is not about them.)
I’m never gonna be a fan of multiple seasons, man.
Yet, catering to a wider audience comes at a price. For one thing, the way some dramas have been segmented into multiple seasons is grating. One major reason why I turned to kdrama was that I’d grown tired of keeping up with American dramas which released one season after another, for financial gain, only for good stories distort into a waste of virtual space that made zero sense (yes, I’m looking at you, How I Met Your Mother.) With kdrama, whether you were down for a 16, 24, 30 or 50 episodes, you’d get a full story.
So when I watched Love Alarm in 2019, I was sorely disappointed to find that the 8 episodes released were really the first half of a 16 episode drama. Love Alarm has a pretty interesting premise. Kim So Hyun and Song Kang star as high schoolers who live in a world where an app, Love Alarm, is synced to the user’s heart and would therefore sound an alarm whenever the user steps into the 10metre radius of the object of their affection. At some point, the female lead installs a shield preventing the male lead from figuring out whether or not she really likes him. What interests me about Love Alarm is the commentary on what would happen if we let technology control our lives. By the end of season 1, people have started to rely on the app to not only assure others, but themselves, of their true feelings and that seems to have caused cracks in society that I hope will be further explored in season 2. It’s finally returning on Mar 12, so…set your alarms :D
Not entirely sure about I feel about shorter runtimes, either.
On the other hand, the Netflixation – or should I say, the web-streamisation of kdramas, means that stories exist on multiple platforms – and in multiple formats. Take, for instance, Lovestruck In The City (LITC), the Ji Chang Wook and Kim Ji Won starrer that ended its run earlier this month. A webdrama produced by Kakao TV and Netflix, it had a shorter runtime of about 30mins per episode – which aggravated a friend and I to no end, because we wanted m o r e. A mockumentary revolving around 6 individuals and their perspectives on love and relationships, LITC featured 3 couples but - spoiler alert - only 1 OTP, it seems. The downside, for this particular drama, was that I soon became more intrigued by the other 2 couples than the main OTP, precisely because we were only given bits and pieces of information about them. I had so many questions - which were NOT answered in the finale. I was entertained but somewhat disappointed, nonetheless. The release schedule also deviated from the usual Mon-Tues/Wed-Thurs/Fri-Sat/Sat-Sun schedule. Instead, episodes were released every Tues and Fri, making every other day of the week excruciating. Giving us 30 minute episodes instead of the usual 50 on non-consecutive days is like…promising me one scoop of ice-cream but only letting me have a quarter scoop every 3 days. That’s just inhuman.
New house, some much-needed new rules.
Jokes aside though, the ability to create shows in differentiated formats and on new platforms means that standard rules no longer apply. It’s just like when tvN and OCN gained popularity and acquired more funding for dramas and we started to see longer and grittier shows like the Reply series, Vampire Prosecutor and Voice. Contrary to mainstream expectations, there are a whole bunch of boy love (BL) kdramas available online now (I’ll do a longer post on these new dramas soon - still catching up with all of them ahahah) We definitely need more mainstream representation of LGBT OTPs and I’m hoping that the continuous production of BL webdramas, from Where Your Eyes Linger (starring Han Gi Chan and Jang Eui Soo) to You Make Me Dance (starring Won Hyung Hoon and Chu Young Woo), implies that this demand for LGBT OTPs will soon translate to more representation on mainstream channels as well.
That’s all from me for now, folks! See you in two weeks :) Have a good weekend, my friends.