Drama Tally - Mousie tallies up her dramas for the first half of 2011

[dangermousie]

Dramas I loved

1. City Hunter - adrenaline, romance, acting and writing and directing are all perfect. I am pretty sure this will be my drama of the year - I even dream about it. There is nothing about this drama I would change.
2. Secret Garden - so romantic it made me swoon, but also funny and smart. I love this drama. Oh, and it made me laugh like a hyena and bawl like a maniac.
3. Gloria - it must be incredibly hard to maintain perfection for 50 eps but this drama came really close to managing. So perfect, it made me feel I was living with these people - two amazing OTPs, great every day interactions, and everything else.
4. Can You Hear My Heart - romance and family ties and hope and gorgeous colors.

Dramas I liked

5. Miss Ripley - smart, brilliantly acted, but I confess to not being truly attached to the characters, which is why it's in the 'like' and not 'love' category.
6. Heartstrings - sweet and poetic and very young
7. The Royal Family - once again, smart and very well acted and very dark, but, as with Ripley, I was a bit detached from the characters.
8. New Tales of the Gisaeng - I adored the main OTP with fiery adoration but the rest of the storylines interested me less. 52 eps really showed here - it got draggy in parts and last fifth sort of really lost it.
9. Crime Squad - it was smart and tragic and fast-paced but I think I cannot truly fall in love with procedurals. This is a damn good one though.
10. Dream High - infectuously cute, even if with a nuance and maturity of a spoon. I confess it's not higher because the main character, played by Kim Su Hyun, bored me. I loved everyone except for him.

Meh

11. My Princess - I love the leads but to call this plotless and fluffy would be the understatement of the decade.
12. Thornbirds - love the actors and normally a big melo fan but even I hit a brick wall with the stupidity of these characters. If any of them used a single brain-cell between them, the drama would have been two eps long.
13. Lie to Me - see comment to 11
14. 49 Days - I was enjoying it and then came that ending. This drama is dead to me.
15. Romance Town - see comment to 11
16. Best Love - see comment to 11 (notice a trend?) Plus, the hero was a Bugs Bunny cartoon on speed and the whole feel utterly unrealistic in any emotional sense whatsoever. If there are people who behave like this, I don't want to meet them.
17. Manny - not even Seo Ji Suk could make me like a story of a male Mary Poppins. No, thanks!
18. Yaksha - interesting premise, gross and confusing execution.

Get Thee Behind Me, Satan

19. Athena Goddess of War - there should be some sort of criminal charge for wasting a cast this good on a drama this awful. And I say this as a rabid fangirl of its predecessor, IRIS.
20. It's OK, Daddy's Girl - no, it's not OK at all, actually.
21. Paradise Ranch - this is a drama to show someone if you want to torture them and waterboarding is not available. I was trying to think of anything good about it - acting, writing, anything. Only thing I could come up with it ended.

Coming up next - 2011 OTPs - the good, the bad, and the kissy.

Comments

[happahaole.livejournal.com]

Thornbirds...lol i laughed so hard reading your description for that. i almost pulled all of my hair out when i was watching that drama. the evil girl drove me insane. her actions made no sense. and the main girl was such a dimwit for half of the drama. she annoyed me to death. i couldn't understand how the main girl could forgive the evil girl again and again and again...-.-...she even raised that girl's child when she was asked to.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

That drama had such potential but ended up ugh.

[junmaolove.livejournal.com]

ROFL'ed on the "see comment to 11".... Only watched a few on your list and I must say, I agree with you especially on 11, 13, 15 and 16. On 11, I totally wasted my time watching it thru the very end. It really didn't make any sense. T_T 13, 15 and 16, skimmed thru it, found wanting and just stopped viewing it all together.

Can't wait for your next post! :D

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I just can't stand fluffy, I guess.

fluffy

[watchumlots.livejournal.com]

Yeah, fluffy sucks. Unless it's for kids. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't also so damn silly. Silly is just plain irritating.

[iheartkleenex.livejournal.com]

Stupid 49 Days... made me cry like an idiot and then that ending. Not that it's such a horrible one, it makes sense, but then the entire drama was pointless if we got back to square one.

I would have liked it if Yi Kyung would have actually died and she would have been together with the Scheduler in the afterlife, the two of them together forever because they absolutely deserved it. And Ji Hyun would have lived happily with Han Kang!!!! And don't get me started on the whole sister thing. It was nice, but how about introducing it first not just dump it in the middle of the last episode so that we wouldn't feel for the parents or Yi Kyung.

What was the point of the 49 days, she still ended up dead! GAAAAAAAAAAA!

WHAT?

[(Anonymous)]

Err I'm sorry but Yi kyung dying would make no sense at all! The point of the drama is live! Even with the sad/bad things live!!!

Ji Hyun dying, why give her 49 days if she was to die? Well if it wasn't for the 49 days she would never live her last 49 days as she lived as a ghost. She lived it to the full and got to know love, cherish the little and important things and also how life was important. If there wasn't 49 days, she would marry MinHo, be cheated, complain, never know kang loved her and die without knowing the good things. So yeah 49 days was a blessing for Ji Hyun not a curse or pointless thing.

Re: WHAT?

[iheartkleenex.livejournal.com]

Call me a romantic fool or whatever, but I would have LOVED for the main couples to end up together, so I kinda disagree with you. And yes, I would have liked to think that there was an afterlife and Yi Kyung and the Scheduler would have ended up together even there.

The drama spend 19 episode trying to build up the love between Ji Hyun/Kang and Yi Kyung/Scheduler just so in the last episode have JH die and boom! of course Kang and YK would eventually fall in love with each other. If they were going that route I would have loved some tiny little evidence from the beginning.

Re: WHAT? - 49 Days

[watchumlots.livejournal.com]

I liked 49 Days... I even liked the ending, except for the lost-sister. That was 'tupid. But the "life is for the living and death is The End" message was OK for me. Thought that message was well-done and conveyed eloquently and vividly. Even liked the greedy, vengeful villains, not totally hideous like the usual k-drama archetypes. In my mind, one of the least-worst series this year.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I just try not to think about 49 Days because it gives me rage. ugh.

[lightsjustright.livejournal.com]

Yay for Gloria and CYHMH!

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Aren't they great?

[timescout.livejournal.com]

I'm more or less on the same page with you about those dramas that I watced /am watching, thugh my 'love' section is conciderably smaller. :) I tend to like a lot of dramas but truly love only a few. I'd say Gloria and CYHMH are definitely there. Gisaeng would have been too if it had been shorter, the tail end is not nearly as good as the beginning. I still like it though, it find it amusing.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Gisaeng has recently gone insane.

[ambergold.livejournal.com]

ugh, I consider Secret Garden to be one of the most sexist dramas I've seen, right up there with Fated to Love You, and Joo Won to be one of the most chauvinistic bastards to ever be a drama lead - and he STAYED THAT WAY. I loved the first half of this and despised the second.

Other than that, I agree with your summary of all the other dramas I've seen (though I did enjoy Lie to Me much more than My Princess. similar fluff, though).

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

We'll just have to agree to disagree on JW, who I adored (as opposed to FTLY which is a whole other story). I do have to say that, leaving aside everything else, literally negating your existence for someone else should give you a lot of 'get out of jail free' cards. MMV.

Lie to Me had such inconsistent character development (if at all) while MP, while fluffier than a baby kitten, was at least character-consistent, so I placed it higher. Neither was anything to write home about.

Btw, thanks to your posts, I checked out Love Keeps Going, and it's completely adorable! Thank you!!!

[spunspider.livejournal.com]

randomly butting in to say omg re secret garden and the bruha about him assaulting her or whatever by holding her down on the bed. maaaan that was one of the crazier moments in drama fandom. o.o i mean i can see why it was triggering for people but imo it was a lot closer to a brother and sister wrestling or something, in terms of relationship dynamics and boundaries. my real beef with secret garden was that after all that fantastic setup, the Big Conflict at the end ended up being parental opposition, wth? but then yes yes Yes, joowon at the end, jfc, i could forgive it almost anything after that, omg THE WAY I CRIED.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Oh God, I remember. JW reminded me of my toddler in that scene - he is about as emotionally savvy. And she was not really fighting, just showing her annoyance (are you kidding me? She could total him with one hand if she wanted to) and then felt save and loved/loving enough to fall asleep in his arms.

Oh, that sacrifice! I bawled so much it was insane. Because it's not even dying so she could live, it's beyond that. I think it's the most romantic/sacrificial gesture I have seen in a drama.

I don't think it was about parental opposition per se - it was about the journey of these two quirky, damaged people to love each other and parental opposition was one of the steps.

[spunspider.livejournal.com]

yeah she was pushing him away like you would a clingy child (plus it was part of their bickery dynamic at that point). if he'd done it while they were strangers, or when he was being a dick to her at the beginning, it would be a different story. ;/

it was so tragic and so well-acted it was just TEARS ON MY FACE the whole way through.

that wasn't how they set it up, though. it hadn't really been a part of it much, so it felt like a bit annexed on to the end, as opposed to a whole complete story. it rang of /device/ more than anything. it's so so aggravating to me because they didn't have to use such a trite device when they had so much else readily available to them. i did like that even by the epilogue she hadn't given in, i like that consistency. and ugh amnesiac!joowon was SO. CUTE.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yes, at that point in their relationship it made sense.

I haven't cried as much as I cried in ep 17 since Chuno. Aaaaaah. It was incredible.

Well, from the moment Mom met Raim she was a snobby bitch to her and that was in ep 4? And JW had to get his manner somewhere. So I didn't feel it was tacked on but I can see how MMV about it.

[missjb.livejournal.com]

about Jo Woon sacrifice in secret garden, I must say it's the most idiotic action I've seen in a drama... yeahhh call me crazy.. he can think another sacrifice which are not idiot, like that, heh Instead of cry, laughed... Sorry, just don't like the excecution. vut overall, I enjoyed secret garden.

[december-clouds.livejournal.com]

17. Manny - not even Seo Ji Suk could make me like a story of a male Mary Poppins. No, thanks!

I read the first line in a description about this and went D: and stayed away

13. Lie to Me - see comment to 11

I sort of liked the first episode but I thought it would be too frustrating.

20. It's OK, Daddy's Girl - no, it's not OK at all, actually.

LOL!!!

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Manny was - whose idea was that?

[spazzy06.livejournal.com]

Ahh, Secret Garden. What a cracktastic drama that was.

I have yet to meet another rom-com this year that lives up to it entertainment wise. Lots of romantic comedies have aired this year, but they have been mediocre at best. Aside from a few cute scenes here and there, I can't think of any light drama that has aired this year that is worth re-watching from beginning to end.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

The thing with SG is that it wasn't really a romcom - it was a romantic melodrama with fantasy and comedy elements. I think it made all the difference.

Secret Garden

[watchumlots.livejournal.com]

SG just didn't do IT for me. It started off well enough, but the "magic" wasn't magical enough. The male lead had no compelling qualities: why would anyone want him other than being good-looking & rich? The only drama that made me laugh as much as SG was Coffee Prince, the same trope: cross-dressing. SG used the "body/soul switch," and CP cross-dressing. But the physical comedy was worth it, it had me uncontrollably laughing out-loud. With K-drama, there is something for everyone, and those of us that are difficult to please will find everything a little lacking. It could have been great (greater) if only...

Re: Secret Garden

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I actually adored Joo Won - he was smart and odd and neurotic. Not sure I'd want him for myself but he was awesome as a character. But I totally get MMV.

[village.livejournal.com]

How many episodes of Paradise Ranch did you actually get through? I lasted five minutes into the first episode. A first for me. I always try to give a drama a chance. But, I just couldn't. Just, no. No.

Lie To Me has surprised me actually. For the first four or so episodes, I had a similar "meh" feeling because it was suffering from the classic romcom embarrassing female lead + pure plot silliness. And yet somewhere around episode 6, I started to actually give a crap about the leads - I think that's when they started to bring the angst - and the chemistry between YEH and KJH is pretty undeniable. And while it's still your typical romcom fluff, the leads have a sort of strange YEH & Gong Hoo in Coffee Prince vibe that's really working for me.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I got through 3 eps of PR, not sure how.

LTM - I watched 9 eps and got bored despite the excellent chemistry. I just felt there was no story.

[orangebreeze.livejournal.com]

If only Romance Town was all romance and fluff. :)
Actually, it's all about money by now. Which is frustrating and fun at the same time.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Heh. I clearly didn't get far.

[zhuer.livejournal.com]

does this only count as the k-dramas?

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yup, I need a separate twdrama/cdrama/jdrama list :)