Wandering_Queen • Feb 15, 2019
Article The Problem With Love Triangles
The drama screenwriters are extremely bad at what they do and that's the reason for the cliche tricks they use in almost every drama to prolong the screen time. Love triangles are just one of the many annoying techniques. The occasional "incident from nowhere" (death of relative, car crash, illness and so on) that usually lasts for 1 episode, the standard "table dialogues" - which are supposed to convey the warmth and friendliness between the people, but inevitably end up showing only the disgusting food-spewing habits of apparently ALL the Korean population, the notorious "piggy-back" carrying after a drunken night at the karaoke bar for the company get-together... Bottom line is. It wouldn't be "Made in Korea" if it didn't include at least some part of the above mentioned. I truly cherish dramas that avoid those, but to be frank there ain't many. For the last 10-15 years I doubt I can count even 20 titles... The more interesting fact is that the most popular Korean dramas (least in the West) are those WITHOUT love triangles - Descendants of the Sun, My Love from Another Star, It's Okay, It's Love, Coffee Prince, Secret Garden... Yet the Korean film-makers still don't get the message and serve us crap after crap every year. I used to watch a lot of dramas back in 2016. Nowadays I pick maybe 5-10 titles per year tops (where I expect no triangles, given the story summary) and watch only those. But even then... The ones that are really worth it are probably 2-3/year max. Extremely constant low quality unfortunately. Bit like Hallmark movies - cheap, romantic and 90% garbage.
