There are lots of things I love about Asian dramas.
Key among them is a willingness to tell stories about love. The American television I grew up with doesn’t really do this—instead, it’s full of serialized stories that follow characters living through years of their lives. The extreme length of these shows prevents them from focusing on something as ephemeral as falling in love, and the fabled American “mainstream” doesn’t seem so interested in romance, anyway. To succeed here, a television series needs to please the whole family, a feat TV executives don’t seem to think is possible for an unvarnished love story.
Asian dramas, on the other hand, are just the right length for love: In 16 or 24 episodes, a world is created, a love story told, and a happy ending found. And it seems there’s less prejudice against the topic of love in Asia. So when I read an Entertainment Weekly article about the best American television scenes of the past year, I got to thinking about my own version of their list. It wouldn’t be about the best scenes in general. (Who has the memory for that?) Instead, it would tally my favorite couple moments in Asian dramas.
Motivation has been even harder than usual for me to come by lately. So instead of an actual Tuesday post, I give you a short review of Witch’s Romance (below), and a new blog thingy (“Favorite Posts,” above).
I’ve been getting frustrated with Blogger’s popular post widget (right), because it tends to rank reviews really high. This isn’t because my reviews are particularly good—it’s because people who love a show Google it and wind up here, often to discover that I’m lukewarm about said show (below).
So in response I put together a list of the Outside Seoul posts that I think are the most interesting. If you’re new to these parts, check it out—you might have missed something good.
Years after being
left at the alter by her globe-trotting photographer boyfriend, Ji
Yeon is a hard-charging career woman and dedicated journalist. But it
isn’t until she meets a much younger part-time worker that her
heart begins to heal—which is exactly when her ex-fiance returns to Korea and decides he wants Ji Yeon back. (Surprise!)
First impression
I was a little
reluctant to start this drama, having watched only the first episode
of its Taiwanese predecessor before dropping it. But it was silly of
me to worry. TVN’s crack team of creative professionals took an
awkwardly staged, cartoony farce and turned it into a funny,
sophisticated little gem. The acting has been toned down, the story
significantly tightened to focus on the lead couple, and the
production values astronomically increased. I was worried about how
anything could follow in the footsteps of my beloved Secret Love
Affair, but I’m starting to think that a change of pace with
this spritely rom-com is just the thing I need.
Final verdict
Witch’s Romance was a fairly popular and well-liked show during its run, but it just didn’t work for me. Like so many of its TVN station-mates, it felt too bland and machine-extruded to really engage either my heart or mind. This show bears no relation to the gritty, flesh-bound world of old-school Korean dramas, where poverty existed and danger was believably real. Its characters and their plastic, new-car smelling world are one-dimensional and hollow, utterly divorced from anything approaching real, physical life.
My Lovely Sam Soon was
the first Kdrama I ever watched, back before Korean dramas were
easily accessible on legal streaming sites. Thanks to a borrowed set
of DVDs, a friend and I were able to marathon all sixteen episodes
over the course of a single summer weekend, breaking only for
absolute necessities like trips to the fridge and an occasional nap.
Whenever
I think back to that weekend, one thing always stands out in my
memory: how incredibly bizarre it was to watch the show’s zippy
opening sequence, which was like nothing I’d ever seen before. From
the bubblegum pink color scheme to the chirpy techno theme
song—complete with garbled English—those forty seconds seemed to
perfectly embody My Lovely Sam Soon’s
gonzo charm and exotic appeal.
It only recently
occurred to me, though, that most streaming sites now dispense with
these opening sequences altogether. I can see why they do it—if you
were watching a bunch of episodes in a row, the exuberant intros
would probably get old pretty quickly. Also, I’m semi-convinced
that streaming sites are designed on the same principles as Vegas
casinos: they’re set up to lure you in and keep you there as long
as possible. When one episode wraps up, they briskly whisk you away
to another, making it easy to overlook just how much time has passed.
A long opening sequence at the beginning of each episode would rat
them out, making it impossible to ignore the fact that you’ve just
committed to another hour watching.
I made this realization while watching Boys over Flowers with the same friend who first introduced me to My Lovely Sam Soon all those years ago. BoF is another drama with an incredibly great opening sequence, but my friend didn’t get to see it until she watched episode 5 on Dramafever at my house. “What’s this?” she gasped when confronted with the opening’s eight-bit glory, all computer-generated firework flowers and floating diamonds decorated with the heads of cast members.The Netflix episodes she’d watched to that point hadn’t included this segment, so it was like some fabulous archeological discovery in the valley of the drama kings.
If you don’t immediately fall in love with the cheesy excess of the Boys over Flowers title sequence, you should just stop watching—you’ll definitely hate the show. Questionable fashion sense, bellows of “Alllmooossst Paradise,” and hokey “rich stuff” abound. But to the right viewer (i.e., me), this segment, like the drama itself, is nothing short of a masterpiece of tacky delights.
It actually makes me a little sad that it’s so easy for viewers to miss Kdrama intros. They’re great calling cards for the shows they represent, and any completist deserves to know they exist. This is why I thought I’d dig up some possibly lost opening sequences to share here. (“Possibly lost” in this case meaning easily available on YouTube or Vimeo, if only you know to look for them.)
Books and reading don’t come up all
that often in Western entertainment.
I did some Googling on this topic, and
even listing ten on-screen readers required one website to go all the
way back to the 1994–2004 run of the sitcom Friends. There
are some exceptions, often in the form of a girl who’s never far
from her latest book, including Rory from Gilmore Girls, Suzy from Moonlight
Kingdom, and the prisoners of Orange Is the New Black. But if you were a space
alien watching American media, you’d probably come to the
conclusion that nobody in the country ever touches a book.
In Korean dramas, things are different.
Lie to Me’s heroine read in
her spare time. Nine Ends, Two Outs revolved
around an aspiring novelist. The glorious wall of books in Joo Won’s
ultra-modern house in Secret Garden wasn’t
just there for show—it housed the copy of Alice in
Wonderland that became a key
part of his romance with Ra Im. And the last three shows I’ve
live-watched have all used books as central plot points.
