cityhunter

there were not enough pretty boys in SUFBB to make up for the fact that sung joon's acting consists soley of a dashing smile and impressive set of eyebrows.

i do not know how SS escaped my notice for htis article b/c i dropped it and love in the moon light as well. maybe i will have to do a follow up "MORE highly rated kdramas i dropped lol"

the 1st 3ish eps of MNIKSS are horrifying. i had that one on hold for a while but eventually got over the hump and really liked it.

at one point the female lead says she doesn't care if the curse kills her, cuz you know she loves him so much. it just made me so mad. sure, i've seen waay nastier male leads but he was not so awesome as to say you're willing to die to get a chance to be with him.

it exceeded my per drama sexist BS limit.

The Princess' Man only escaped my list because i didnt watch enough of it to even put it on my dropped list. i generally dont do that unless i've seen at least 2 episodes

when he died i yelled, and i mean YELLED at the TV, f-bomb and all. and i cried. oooh god did i cry. the rest of them added together couldn't make one Byung Hee.

personally i feel there is a lack of honest discussions about the merits of individual dramas in the Asian entertainment fandom. Negative opinions, even in the form of constructive criticism, are not taken well by fans. many of us have our little niches with other fans we know well where we can say "you know what, the female lead in cruel city is a pointless joke, i totally shipped him with his noona" but open discussions, like we see in these comments, are rare.

with IOTL i remember a moment of "Seriously this crap AGAIN??" and just never went back.

Actors don't have to be touchy feely to have good chemistry. there are lots of shows out there that have minimal skinship and great chemistry. this was just bad choices. They went with a high school girl because Korea is obsessed with youth and purity (so gross) they went with Gong Yoo b/c he's Gong Yoo and they went with Kim Go Eun b/c she was all anyone could talk about after cheese in the trap and it seems they made this choice without ever actually having the two in the same room.

the age gap b/w Gong Yoo and Kim Go Eun is the same as me and my husband. Kim Go Eun is 25. by the time i was her age i had i 2 year old daughter. she's a grown woman capable of grown woman feelings and her grown woman feeling did not feel anything for Gong Yoo who returned the favor lol.

In bride of the century when the main girl said she loved him so much she didnt care if the curse killed her i was like "woman have we been watching the same drama? if i was you i could barely muster the gumption to point out if his shoes were untied."

in goblin, i really dont think it was the actress. it was the writing. it was not her choice to write that character like a bland 12 yo. we've seen her play mentally/ emotionally mature characters so she can do it she was directed to play that character like a child and could only act the scenes that were written for her.

i finished all of those but Heirs was more a "i'm not going to let this crap beat me"

i enjoyed legend of the blue sea but was very disappointed in the handling of shim chung's character. she could have been so much more.

DotS... this is one of drama land's recent attempts to put together more serious/ mature dramas without leaning so heavily on the soap opera/ makjang roots of the genre. they didn't quite make it.

it took me 3 days to complete episode 1 and i never went back. i finished 1994 but gave it a low rating.

i rate dramas based on one thing: how much i enjoyed them.

i tend to be a high rater in general and rarely change my rating upon rewatch even if i know something not quite up to snuff. it is possible to really enjoy an objectively bad drama, which is why these 6 dramas are highly rated despite their flaws.

in order to get that from me all a show has to do is give me enough to love that whatever flaws it has doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of the drama.

these six all have one or more of the traits i have a really hard time getting past if i'm not having fun.

1. bad acting
2. lazy/ unskilled writing
3. prolonged periods of misery
4. poorly developed characters.

i could tell where IOTL was going i've had it confirmed by MDL friends and have no desire to watch it. it would not have entertained me. a big part of that is that i have absolutely no desire to watch angsty dramas. take your misery elsewhere b/c i can't tolerate it for more than 2 episodes at a time. other people enjoy that sort of thing, and i hold nothing against them for it, but it's not for me.

Gong Shim was a struggle for me as well. Remember that basic Chaebol BS starter kit i was talking about? they had it bad here. in the beginning the male lead was so different and interesting but they just couldn't have that could they? also if you are going to name a show Beautiful Gong Shim, it should be about Gong Shim.

DoTS was enjoyable for me, but certainly not a masterpiece.

Heirs was a battle of the wills. i knew what is was going in and i can usually enjoy that sort of thing the first time through even though i know it is poorly written tripe. I marathoned 24 hours of Boys Over Flowers TWICE, certainly i could get through 2 hrs of this a week. omg it took all my will power.

Those standard issue k-drama rom coms walk a fine line. it's easy to fall over on to the "meh" side of it.

instead of real character development they just shrugged her off and said "meh, she's cute and perky, that's enough"

huh, touche. sometimes things slip by.

sometimes i think so much attention is paid to a drama's packaging and not enough to what's inside. i am guilty of watching a not so great show because i liked an actor or just couldn't let go of a premise though so i'm just as guilty :)