I've been really busy with work for the past few months and my drama writing has fallen to the wayside. But I wanted to keep track for posterity a few shows I saw.
Plus I went to Atlanta to see Stray Kids. I had bought the tickets a while ago when I felt like I might need a pick-me-up in 2023 as the members of BTS enlisted in the military. Little did I know that was going to be a bit slower than expected, Yoongi would announce a goddamn tour (AHHHHHHHHH), and there would be so many BTS solo projects it's been hard to keep up. Nothing is quiet in BTS Chapter 2.
That said it was a really refreshing break to see SKZ. I had seen them last year on a whim, having only been listening to their music for a few weeks, so I was happy to see them again now that I am more invested.
I'm not dedicating my life to them but I enjoy their music and their personalities. I had fun on my own and met others who were attending the concerts on their own. I maybe didn't see any of Atlanta itself but I felt connected to a new community of fans and it's been to have that in K-pop.
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Crash Course in Romance
I really loved how this show started out so when it veered off-course for me into a murder mystery drama I lost total interest.
Nam Haeng-seon (Jeon Do-yeon) runs a banchan shop and is raising a teenager, Hae-yi (Roh Yoon-seo), on her own. Hae-yi is a strong student preparing for college entrance on her own while everyone else pays for extra study academies and tutors. Choi Chi-yeol (Jung Kyung-ho) is a famous math tutor. All the mothers fight to get their kids in his class. He and Nam Haeng-seon have a run-in and hate each other from this initial misunderstanding. But they find their way back into each others lives.
Nam Haeng-seon and Choi Chi-yeol have overcome difficulties in their past and in many ways they seem ill-suited to each other. He is not good with people. She is terrible with boundaries. But he starts eating her food which heals his stomach issues and he decides he wants to help her out by tutoring her daughter in exchange for the food. But Hae-yi starts to succeed with this tutoring over her rich school rivals who then want to take her out of the competition.
The strength of the series is the way the couple slowly makes their way to each other, with all these missteps, miscommunications, and misunderstandings. It's cute, funny, embarrassing, and charming.
This is layered over the scary competition over college entrance exams, parents who will do anything to give their kids an edge, and the harm all these pressure is doing to these children (ethically and physically).
So I was deeply on-board, until a murder plot got shoehorned in. This is not the first drama to do this but by that point the couple had gotten together. So my investment was less and then there is a sub-plot that emerges late that challenges all the preconceived notions of the characters that we had seen before. It gave me whiplash and was wholly implausible. So a disappointment once the show went so far afield.
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I was a soft fan of Season 1. It was not a total hit with me but I was deeply invested in the the main characters. I like how they worked hard to solve mysteries together and the romance slowly bloomed from a love and respect for each other.
But with Season 2, the mysteries were not as compelling, there was hardly a plot holding things together or a reason to keep the characters apart any longer. A love triangle was hastily thrown together. The side characters remained broad comedic sketches which I never liked from the start. I made it through Season 2, but barely.
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Love to Hate You
I continue to feel Netflix is churning out salacious crap in the K-drama space. It's getting really frustrating. Their series are short, cheap, and pushing the envelope on sex and/or violence just because they can, not because any of it is narratively justified. And the shows are not even good.
I hated this series which was full of unlikable characters. When characters do battle with each other through manipulation, it's an immediate put-off for me. They do not ever win my goodwill back.
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