Mini Reviews: Sly And Single Again, I Need Romance 3, and Nine: Nine Times Time Travel

I'm all backed up on reviews, so here go some mini reviews on a few of the shows we've finished in these lazy days of summer. It's kind of an odd mix of shows, but I gotta shake things up sometimes!

Mini Review #1: Sly And Single Again/Cunning Single Lady

A mini review in text messages:

...And that pretty much sums it up. Even from the first episodes, Coco was way more complimentary than I was, but the show did grow on me. It was a light, fluffy romance, but I wasn't on the edge of my seat for new episodes. 

The leads had some cute moments together, but I never felt fully connected to either one of them, and the two second leads mostly drove me crazy by the end of the show. I will say that the title Cunning Single Lady is pretty misleading because it sets up the female as some scheming gold digger, which she isn't. If anything, she becomes a more reasonable and well-rounded person far earlier than her male counterpart did. Even when he liked her, he was so mean to her for so long that I got a little irritated. That being said, the last couple of episodes were excellent. They tied everything together with a giant, fluffy bow.

Conclusions: It's fun enough and cute enough, but it doesn't have much new to offer to the K-drama romcom table.

Where to watch Sly and Single Again/Cunning Single Lady:

DramaFever

Viki

Kdrama.com

Mini Review 2: I Need Romance 3

Good things: Sung Joon playing a first male lead who apparently stole all of his moves from second male leads. The office friendship. Side romances.

Not-so-good-things: The female lead had the emotional sense of a used bad-aid. Are those lacking in emotion? Because that's what came to mind first. I love Sung Joon, but watching him tell his love what to do and how to feel for a billion episodes got tiring. It's pretty telling that I enjoyed the scenes where he was doing nice things by himself far more than the scenes where he was actually interacting with the female lead. That's not Kim So Yeon's fault. That's the writer's fault.

Conclusions:   A warm, lightweight romance that works for girls who love second lead types or Sung Joon. For people who watch a lot of dramas, though, the outcome of the entire show might feel so inevitable that it's hard to care about anything that happens in the middle. One look at the poster, and you know where the whole thing is headed.  The central love square just goes through the required motions until they kill enough time to film the finale, which is sad because I might be the only person on the planet who actually liked Tae Yoon until they turned him into a romantic obstacle. 

Where to watch I Need Romance 3:

DramaFever

Viki

Mini Review 3: Nine: Nine Times Time Travel

This drama might win for worst title ever (and it's a strong contender for worst female bowl cut ever). It's redundant and weird and didn't make me want to watch the show at all, but I'm happy that Rosie's incessant gushing about this series convinced me to give it a try. 

Good things: I'm very, very picky about time travel logic. I don't care about shows where people travel to the future, but any time people travel into the past, I immediately start to ask questions. Most time travel movies just make stuff up and do what they want, and it drives me crazy. (If you want to see a movie that actually treats time travel with respect, see Twelve Monkeys). The good news is that Nine sets many of its own rules, and it actually keeps those rules pretty faithfully. There are a few minor exceptions, but it's the smartest entry into the K-drama time travel genre that I have seen to date. 

I also liked how the series set the stakes right away. I'm not saying that the lead couple should be making out onscreen in episode 1 of every series, but it was interesting to see a show start with the relationship and then explore what happens when it is taken away. Sure, the romantic tension wasn't always there, but it was a fresh approach to K-drama romance.

A lot of people hated the conclusion. I didn't. But I will say that "I am the incense!" is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. What does that even mean?

Not-so-good things: This guy:

Everyone else was acting their butts off and trying to give us a drama with real emotional weight, and he was doing cartoon surprised faces in the corner. And not multiple different cartoon faces. The same. Freaking. Face. This is why I was't happy to see him reprising a villain role in You Are All Surrounded. 

People warned me that it would take about four episodes to get into this show. People were right. I'm so glad I stuck it out because I was bored out of my mind at first, but then I got to enjoy a smart, interesting series.

Conclusions: I watched bits and pieces of this show with five different people who never watch dramas, and they were all intrigued. With good reason. It's some of the best drama writing I have seen.

Where to watch Nine:

DramaFever

Viki

P.S. I dropped Bride of the Century around episode 8. I just couldn't do it. Sorry, not sorry.

7 times K-dramas make us act like overly emotional children

For better or worse, watching K-dramas brings out some pretty intense emotions in us. Somehow, they turn otherwise rational and responsible people into impulsive and moody creatures akin to 5-year-olds. If you've ever been around young children, you've seen how kids just can't quite hide or contain their emotions. The secret is that those emotions don't suddenly go away when you're an adult. You still feel like pinching the person next to you when they don't share and throwing a tantrum when you're tired and hungry, socialization has just taught you how to hide it. Well, here are 7 uncontrollable emotions we just can't hold back while watching K-dramas! 

1. The uncontrollable joy that makes you want to dance like a child when they get their first taste of candy.  

2. The extreme frustration that makes you want to throw a tantrum like a 2 year old when things don't go the way they want them to. 

3. The impatience you feel when you have to wait for what you want and are getting very close to having a meltdown because it feels like it will never come.

4. The confusion you feel when you have to choose between two great things, like ice-cream or cookies for desert, and you just can't comprehend why you can't have both. 

5. The exhaustion and crankiness you feel the next day when you fought being put to bed all night because you didn't want to miss a moment of fun.

6. The obstinance and stubbornness you feel when you are being made to say you're sorry, but you're really not. 

7. The total inhibition you display that is usually reserved for either the very young, very old, or very drunk about your K-drama obsession.  

Have K-dramas made you feel more "young at heart" (to put it nicely)? Comment below!

Expectation and Fulfillment in Dramaland

Yes, I know it's been three weeks since we've blogged. You can blame a combination of hiding out in a cabin in the mountains for a week, having to work extra to make up for hiding out in a cabin for a week, and then just feeling like I wanted to vegetate and watch dramas instead of writing about them. But now I'm back in a writing mood, so look forward to more consistent posts!

In all of my vegetative drama watching, I've developed kind of a bad habit. I used to be a pretty strict one-drama-at-a-time kind of girl. Maaaaaybe two dramas if they were airing simultaneously. Over the last couple of months, however, I keep starting new dramas, getting to the last three to five episodes, and then putting them on the back burner for a new drama.

Part of the problem is that I'm woefully behind on reviews, so I don't want to finish more dramas before I review the old ones, but that's just a big fatty excuse because the truth is that I love drama beginnings. I love the excitement of a new drama. I love the suspense that builds to the moment of romance shared and feelings expressed.

This obsession with beginnings has made me think about what it is that compels viewers to watch (and love) entire dramas. I think a lot of it comes down to the balance between expectation and fulfillment in the drama structure.


The best writers build a sense of expectation at the front end of dramas. They give us little moments of partial fulfillment throughout the first few episodes, pushing us to keep clicking the "next episode" button in hopes of getting more. And more. And more.

The problem with expectation is that you can't put it off forever. If you only give your viewers little breadcrumbs for too many episodes, they will eventually feel bored and move elsewhere. For me, this was one of the big problems with Heirs. I think we all kept hoping that interesting things would happen, but nothing ever did. It was just the same love triangle standoff at the end of nearly every episode, and it eventually got dull.

Similarly, one of the fastest ways to infuriate viewers is to build infinite expectation without an equal payout at the end. If you're going to put off viewer fulfillment for a full twenty episodes, you'd better be a screenwriting genius and give us an entire episode that is twenty episodes worth of satisfaction. If you give us a handshake at the end of it all, we're gonna start throwing things at our televisions and inventing new profanities to express just how cheated we feel.

Not to name names, but....
You know who you are. Now go in a corner and think about what you did.

Sometimes, drama writers want to play with expectations, and that's okay. It's refreshing when the second lead suddenly turns into the first lead or when a clever twist pushes viewers to think. But even if you toss in a twist, it needs to have some hint of expectation. We want the second lead to get the girl, but it has to feel earned. We want to know that she's going to be happy with her choice. That's why the ending of Marry Him If You Dare was so infuriating. The show focused so heavily on building romantic expectations that refusing to fulfill that expectation made the entire series feel somewhat hollow. I would have been okay with a series about her personal journey and individual development if the every episode hadn't shouted "WHICH MAN WILL SHE CHOOSE???"

"No, no, we meant for it to be a searing statement on women and romance! That's why we spent the whole series building a tedious, endless love triangle! We swear!"

At the other end of the spectrum, you have dramas that are great at building tension for the first half of the series, but they fulfill the expectation too early, leaving empty space for the second half of the series. It's pretty typical to have the leads first kiss somewhere between episodes 7 and 12, which is a great gift to keep viewers invested. The problem is that many writers seem genuinely baffled after the big kiss. They spend the rest of the series scrambling to come up with appropriate romantic hurdles, but we all know they're just killing time to the inevitable finale. Does anyone actually get excited when a drama moves into the noble idiocy/birth secret/corporate shenanigans phase of the show?

This is one reason why I'm a pretty strong advocate of the 16-episode series for most shows. Series extensions are one of the biggest enemies to narrative tension. I have seen only a handful of shows where the episode extension was okay (and only because I loved those shows), and I'm not entirely convinced that I have seen any shows where it was a narrative necessity. Even shows that feel rushed in the last five minutes could have avoided trouble with better pacing in the middle sections. Wait, I take that back. The extension for Queen of Reversals allowed it develop a satisfying, if unexpected, ending, so that one is the exception that proves the rule.

Maybe it's just because it was my first drama, but a good example of the balance between expectation and fulfillment has got to be Coffee Prince. As I watched, one of the things that enthralled me was how many heartfelt, meaningful moments it had sprinkled throughout the show. Unlike American romcom movies that ended after the big confession, Coffee Prince kept giving, and that's why I kept watching. It's proof that you don't need seven rounds of amnesia to keep people involved. With smart pacing, characters we can care about, and obstacles based in reality, shows can keep viewers engaged and satisfied.

One of the things that keeps me so engaged with You Are All Surrounded (aside from my love of action comedies) is the way that it builds expectation. With both the central mystery and the romance, the first ten episodes gave us enough hints to string us along. Episodes 11 and 12 get a pass because Lee Seung Gi's eye injury probably altered some of the script plans, but I keep hoping that the show will fulfill my expectations. It's getting to that stage in the series where the romance needs to start moving if it's going to keep my interest, and there's an opportunity for an engaging mystery as well.

In episode 12, we finally get a scene where Soo Sun starts to recognize Dae Gu as more than a little brother or a detective partner, but I have to admit that the reliance on the old rescue hug left me wanting more. Here's hoping episode 13 starts to move towards the fulfillment end of the spectrum!