Year End Review Best of 2012 ...(for me)
So I'm about a little over a year into my addiction to Korean dramas. It's here to stay. When I first started watching them it was mostly about the cultural differences and how they made the narratives different, interesting and less predictable from western stories. I wasn't exactly particular about the quality of writing, acting or directing. That drastically changed after I watched last year's City Hunter. HOLY SHIT. That was some of the best television I have ever seen English/Spanish/Korean/Japanese what have you. It was fan-flipping-tastic. Of course I'm sure it helped that I had watched quite a few dramas beforehand and had an elementary understanding of honorifics, jondae and banmal (the level of respectful speech used with people of different societal rankings), family roles and societal expectations in Korean dramas (not necessarily South Korea itself) to help facilitate the enjoyment of the drama. Since Korean dramas aren't made with a non-Korean audience in mind it can be a bit of a learning curve. Of course there are also the things I won't get out of the dramas like the depth of pop cultural references (which admittedly now with the amount of dramas I've watched I'm getting some, but only those that reference dramas I've seen), puns, idioms and some metaphors. It can really make you feel basic and left out not being able to understand a language like you're at a party with a ton of inside jokes happening and you don't know any of them. Thankfully I've found the site dramabeans.com which gives the best crtiques and dissection of dramas that I've encountered and in doing so let you in on why things are funny like mispronunciations, rhymes, puns, cameos, references and etc. So I'm going to just name the best dramas I watched from the year the actors that I love from them and other dramas I have seen them in.
1. Answer Me 1997 (drama, comedy)
All of the main actors in this drama were new comers but they were well chosen. Anyone who was into boy bands of the nineties will understand the depth of love and devotion Sung Shi-Won (portrayed by Jung Eun-Ji) had for H.O.T. This drama was starkly poignant in its capture of what its like to be a teenager and not care for anything other than the music that makes you so happy you break down in painful sobs. The narrative was astonishing in how it wove the future and past together to tell the story of teens/young adults being friends/hopeless crushes/friend zoning/hating each other and falling in love. Every relationship was super realistic. One that stuck out was the relationshp between Sung Shi-Won and her father. It was so real, almost upsetting to watch and remeniscent of the relationship between Ariel and King Triton in Disney's The Little Mermaid. The show had amazing reveals and pay offs that I couldn't predict. It did suffer from its own success when it went from being 30 minutes long to 45 minutes - an hour after ratings and fans demanded more. But overall the story is still strong and beautiful.
2. Arang and the Magistrate (historical drama (saeguk), semi-comedy?, fantasy, action)
Arang and the Magistrate stars Shin Min-Ah (My Girlfriend is a Gumiho) as Arang, a ghost with amnesia trying to find out who she is and how she died, and Lee Jun-Ki as Kim Eun-Oh, a bastard son of a nobleman and a slave with no regard for anyone but himself which makes him the world's least helpful medium in the Joseon era. Arang and the Magistrate has its own world of mythical beings with reapers, ghosts, demons, faeries and brother kings of heaven and hell and even some mommy issues. Actually quite a few mommy issues. The villian is major creepoid with a capitol CREEPY. Arang and Eun-Oh journey and grow together as they uncover the mystery of Arang's death, Eun-Oh's missing mother and develop a reluctant love for each other as they quite literally go through hell and back. The beginning of the drama is quite comical but as the story grows denser and more layers are revealed the comedy falls by the wayside and is only trickling through the second half of the drama. I think the drama may have suffered from some writing issues and time constraints as there were a few elements never explained (ghost tattoos, peaches/peach blossoms ability to harm ghosts) although some of these things might actually be common knowledge in Korean lore, I felt they were weirdly ignored. Great fantasy with the ability to stick (mostly) to the rules it created for itself, even if the ending was kind of a cop out with the dreaded Time Skip.
3. Shut Up: Flower Boy Band (music drama, high school drama)
Shut Up: Flower Boy band is tvN's (korean cable channel) follow up to Flower Boy Ramyun Shop, as it ventures into primetime dramaland up against the Big 3 (korean broadcast channels MBC, SBS and KBS). If Ramyun Shop was a left jab then SU:FBB is veritable right hook follow up, securing tvN a spot among the heavy weight champs. Shut Up does what tons of tv shows fail to do and just tells a story from beginning to what is definitely not the end but leaves you supremely satisfied anyway. It stars Sung Joon as Kwon Ji-Hyuk (Lie To Me) the leader of a band of outsiders and troublemakers, who have created a surrogate family between themselves in a rock band ironically called Eye Candy. When one of their numbers is wrongfully killed they swear vengeance in the form of....musical success? In the name of their fallen brother they decide to really get their shit together as a band and do what he had always dreamed of and become famous through a battle of the bands. Fame proves to be confusing and challenging as they individually come to realize it may not be what they wanted and they weren't truly ready for it. A romance between Kwon Ji-Hyuk and Im Soo-Ah (portrayed by Jo Bo-Ah) further threatens to tear Eye Candy apart. This show is strongest when it comes to Bromance and really loses you in the music corporation hoops it jumps through and also the girlfriend's dad gangster woes but the romance is solid and this show is also a good vision of true teen drama.
4. The King 2 Hearts (fantasy, political, romance mild action)
The King 2 Hearts poses a What If favorite of Korean dramas: What if the Korean monarchy existed in the 21st century? It starts off with the stereotypical story of a partying, no fucks given and no repsonsibility crown prince Lee Jae-Ha, played by the simultaneously adorable and drool worthy (HOW does he do that?!) Lee Seung-Gi (My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, The Greatest Love (hilarious cameo)). His brother, the King Lee Jae-Kang, played by Lee Sung-Min (Pasta, Arang and the Magistrate (cameo)) is desperate to make a man out of his little brother and to unite the two Koreas and has found a way to maybe two birds, one stone that shit. Jae-Ha is finally released from millitary service when his brother puts him in an international millitary competition with a team mixed with North and South Korean members to bolster support for reunification. The team also contains his future fiance Kim Hang-Ah, played by Ha Ji-Won (Secret Garden), from the North also, a match orchestrated by is king hyung. The story goes on to be about making a man out of a boy and a love that crosses and withstands the 38th parallel. Quite possibly the ultimate bromance between a king and his bodyguard, Eun Shi-Kyung. Shi-Kyung played by Jo Jung-Suk is the worlds most moving robotic character second only to Wall-E. The drama sounds appetizing when put this way but sadly is weighed down by political plotlines involving the worst Day Players speaking TOO MANY LANGUAGES. Seriously, how do you have a scene where someone Korean is speaking English to a person speaking French and someone else responds in Korean and everyone just understands each other? I didn't understand and I had subtitles. The villians were also a little too insane to unintentional comical proportions. And the last minute war between the Koreas really should have been the main over-arching conflict from the get go. Next time more heart wrenching robot, less psychotic-bondage-mistress(?)-goth American minion with weirdly-not-necessary-to-the-plot mommy issues. Despite its failings the drama was really addictive. Definitely this year's Boys Before Flowers with its absurdity.
5. I Need Romance 2012 (romantic comedy)
Pretty much a straight reboot of I Need Romance, INR2012 barely changes its face but updates the conflict from cheating to a bad communcation. Which is something I related to much more than the GOING BACK TO A CHEATING BASTARD in the first series. Again the story is of two lovers who have been together more years in their life than seperate, living in a duplex with connected living rooms but no longer a couple. Joo Yeol-Mae (portrayed by Jung Yoo-Mi) lives beyond the left door, an untidy, loud and outspoken person with only bits and pieces of her life together as she composes music for movies (director of which happens to be the CHEATING BASTARD from the first series) for a living. Yoon Suk-Hyun (portrayed by Lee Jin Wook) lives in the right side and is every bit the opposite of his ex-girlfriend, a clean, calm, quiet screen writer. The things this drama does right are soooo right and the things it does wrong are soooo wrong. It truly encapsulates the tight wire of communication people walk on as they go through relationships. Yeol-Mae says exactly whats on her mind and when it comes to her, whether her feelings will remain that way for five minutes or five years. Its a refreshing sort of honesty but also completely unfiltered, a selfsh honesty that is further propelled to the extreme by her expectation of Suk-Hyun to be the same. She constantly forces or tries to force feelings/thoughts and decisions out of Suk-Hyun at the rate she wants and never taking into account that Suk-Hyun is a thinker and needs a bit of time to completely evaluate how he feels about something. In ways they're both right, Yeol-Mae thinks they've been with each other long enough to have an immediate answer to the questions she poses and he's correct in the thought that their lives shouldn't be planned on a spur of the moment feeling. When Yeol-Mae has had enough a fresh start comes in the form of Shin Ji-Hoon, played by Kim Ji-Suk (Personal Preference, The Vineyard Man) and Suk-Hyun must come to terms with the fact that he's still in love with Yeol-Mae. This drama fully gets the back and forth a person goes through with the ending of a relationshp and start of a new one. The things this drama does completely wrong is convince me these two were ever in love because they really don't know each other at all.
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