burhaa aadmi

Like you, I was excited for Jeong Eun Ji, I loved her in R97 and have been following her Insta updates not knowing what this show was about. I will not be watching. It is very clearly a Drama length CF sponsored by either one alcohol company or the industry as a whole, and actual CFs tied in to the show are already appearing. I'll wait for her next and hope it's less repellent than a celebration of a social sickness.

Punch! The SD card scene is brilliant. Amazing bromance political thriller.

the only part of this comment I disagree with is the "snob" part. There is nothing snobbish at all in being repelled by seeing a social evil portrayed as good thing. Alcohol is fine, and drinking with friends is fun, but Korea's celebration of drinking to literally toxic levels of excess, and even worse of judging someone's character and worth as a person by how much alcohol they can consume, is a hideous and indefensible blight. You are NOT a snob for speaking up against it.

VERY disappointed that SK is making yet another celebration of its excess drinking culture. According to recent statistics, 13 Koreans die every day from excess alcohol consumption, it's horrific that this social, physical and mental harm is celebrated like this.

A fascinating read, thanks! It really does sound like the sort of concept that might translate well, it made me think of Law School. Well done on an interesting and intriguing suggestion.

A question about your casting choices for the male and female adult roles, if I may: The males you've named are all big names in their 40s and very well-respected actors. Is there a reason why you didn't select any of the big name female actors from the same age group? I see that the Klem cast are roughly contemporaneous in age, which fits with the characters they're playing, but your suggestions have quite big gaps in ages, with Seo Ji Hye being closest in age to the male actors listed. No room for female actors of similar status and age to the males, like Jeon Do Yeon, Lee Bo Young, Yoon Se ah, Oh Nara etc?

Thank you for this very helpful review. I watched the first three, but already by then I realised that I just didn't care enough about any of the characters to stick with it

"get more hate than they deserve" - since all entertainment reactions are subjective, it is not possible for any Drama to get "more hate than it deserves", because there is no objective standard for determining how much is too much, or too little. The number of Dramas in this "overhated" list that have countless 10/10 ratings and glowing reviews here at MDL shows that while some may hate them, myriads of others love them. And all of them are correct.

Almost none of the Korean actors on this list are "character actors" - just about all of them are lead actors

Speaking of whcih, do ytou know of Hokkien Dramas that are English-subbed? I reallly, REALLY don't like the way "Chinese" is used by so many when they mean Modern Standard Mandarin/Putonghua, and it fascinates me that some TW Dramas are made entirely in Hokkien. But I assume they're not subbed at all

An interesting list, thanks! The only one of those 10 I would go out of my way to watch is Jasper Liu, but I am much more surprised that so far, even in the comments, no one has mentioned Chen Bolin. For me, easily the best TW actor in terms of the art and craft of acting, with a focus on his craft more than fame. Perhaps that's why he does more movies than Dramas, and that might account for his lower profile on MDL

Thanks for taking the time to read and reply! 🙏As for limited legal access, that's the "ethical challenge" I alluded to, unfortunately.

Again, it seems you have missed my point. I will repeat it

""In K Dramas, see the word "genius" in a synopsis, you know it's a guy.""

Of all the Dramas you list that I have not watched , exactly ONE describes the FL as a genius, Memorist.

So with a tiny handful of exceptions, my point remains true: K Drama FLs can be clever, or hardworking or intelligent or almost any combination thereof and almost all my favourite K Dramas feature FLs like that. But as far as the Drama is concerned, they cannot be "genius" leads. Especially not of the "dropped out of MIT at 12" prodigy variety.

Thanks for your reply. I am certainly not trying to set some sort of test, I'm genuinely interested in finding K Dramas with FLs who are geniuses and are described as such.
I have seen many of the Dramas you listed and one of them, Dae Jang Geum, is one of the two I had in mind in my initial post. She really was a bona fide genius.
The other Dramas on your list that I've seen are Search:WWW; IHYV, IOIL and Sungkyunkwan Scandal. None of those featured female leads who were geniuses.
In my initial post I said
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"In K Dramas, see the word "genius" in a synopsis, you know it's a guy." -
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and this statement is true of those Dramas. None of them were promoted as having a genius FL, and rightly so. No matter how independent and talented the FL was, she was not described as a genius, and especially in the case of IHYV, IOIL, and Sungkyunkwan the FL was not a genius. Hardworking and intelligent, but not a genius.

There are many K Dramas with powerful, intelligent FLs, and Search:WWW is one of my faves for that very reason. But the point of my initial comment was specifically about *genius* leads. The only other Drama apart from Dae Jang Geum I've watched wherein the FL was described and shown as being a genius - someone with a prodigious inborn talent that was exceptional and not simply the result of long hard work - was Empire of Gold, where Lee Yo Won's character was unambiguously a business genius.

In contrast, there are COUNTLESS Dramas like Melancholia, where the ML is described and promoted as a genius, often to an extent that seems implausible as noted by the person to whose comment I initially replied.

That's great, could you name them for me please, I'd like to check them out

I called "Missing 9" "Missing 9 Neurons" because the whole thing was so brain dead stupid that watching it actually killed brain cells. The Villain went through the ENTIRE Drama without a scratch, despite everything they did to him and that ending was the headdesking cherry on the top

Ah, my apologies, thanks for the clarification

There are many, many dramas in this list I would not have scored at 0.86 🤣 But that aside, I'm genuinely surprised you consider 8.6 to be a low rating, worthy of something being called "underrated". Checking my own personal database, I see that barely 10% of the 400+ shows I've completed scored 8.6 or higher. I guess it's a reflection of the fact that MDL scores do tend to be very high - lots and lots and LOTS of 10s and 9+s for basically every Drama here, making anything uner 9 seem low

chacun à son goût 😉

Muito obrigado, muito arigato😁!

If you haven't tried City Hall, do give it a go. VERY different from everything she did after it, and apparently that was her deliberate choice