etoks21

"Some of you are going crazy about actual romcoms and forget that REAL ROMANCE is not about "I love you" or kissing scenes."

No one in this thread has "gone crazy," (you're taking care of that on your own) demanding a typical, stupid kdrama romcom. Not one single person. Stop making stuff up to respond to.
Is there some rule I'm unaware of, by which Kdrama romances can't include beautiful, emotionally intimate scenes AND physically intimate scenes, even if it's just a peck on the cheek and holding hands?

"Dongman and Euna had much more intimate scenes in a single episode than most romcom couples in more than 10."

DM and EA had more emotionally/psychologically intimate scenes, yes, absolutely.
Romantic? Not so much.
DM did, however, deliver to EA that glorious soliloquy in which he said he would name everything in the world "Eun Ah." It was beautiful. I teared up.
Then they shook hands, said goodnight, and went their separate ways for the night.
This is not what people in real life do, especially over many months.

If the writer wants them to NOT be physically intimate, it's not too much to ask that she let her audience in on why these characters aren't going that way.

Are they both asexual? OK, that's valid. Was EA molested as a child? That's valid, too. Is DM impotent? Also valid. Then Show. Us. About. It.

I felt "My Mister" dragged in many places and could easily have been cut by four episodes.
The onus is on the writer and director: They know they have twelve episodes going in, so they should have made cuts earlier so the last two eps wouldn't have to be a frenzied tying off of loose ends.

In this case, the brother's entire side story could have been cut. It was intriguing but went nowhere.

Since you're so concerned about the MDL commenters' code of conduct above, perhaps you should read it again. It requires that commenters treat others with "respect."

Your last comment above is psycho-confrontational and full of insults, you big baby.
That doesn't seem very respectful to me.

Go moan at someone else about your hurt feelings.

Oh, and also...maybe touch ass, I mean grass, yourself, cupcake.
oops! There was another bad word.
Run to the mods.

Sounds good!

I see you've gone lunatic/psycho.
That's what commenters do when they have nothing else..

Go shriek at someone else, b*tch.

"I didn't need a kiss."
Implying, of course, that I did "need" a kiss.
I thought there was "no need for challenges." :)

If, as I wrote, the writer showed us WHY the very normal, human acts of expressing romantic love through kissing/etc. were not occurring, there would have been no reason for kissing/etc.

"It is a deliberate action on her part."
I never said her action was NOT deliberate.

"But, it is not out of being clueless, or scared."
Unless you are close to the writer IRL, or you are the writer, how can you know this?
If you are the writer, I am thrilled to be discussing this with you.
WAATH is a phenomenally original series, except for the last 1 and 1/2 episodes. You should be proud.

I don't care what genres are listed at the top of each show's page.

I have left detailed explanations of why I feel the way I do in comments here, and none of them are that I'm "disappointed" it wasn't in the genre I expected or didn't adhere to a preconceived list of kdrama tropes.
That's an absurd accusation. In response to episodes 1-10 I have left gushing comments about how remarkable this show is.

An 8.5/10 is hardly a negative rating.
I explained how I came up with it.

Please read the words I write in comments before responding.

I challenge you to quote where in my comment I asked for a "conventional romance. I didn't. You leapt to that assumption.

There was nothing "typical" or "conventional" about DM and EA's relationship, it was deep and magical. You're putting words in my mouth that I did not say. DM's soliloquy to EA about how the world and everything in it should be named "Eun Ah" could have been right out of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

However, Romeo and Juliet, being normal humans in their time and place, got married and slept together within days of meeting. Dong Man and Eun Ah had months and months, and never so much as held hands. Or did they...I don't recall for sure. For a 40-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman, that is downright odd.

OK, maybe there is some valid reason why none of that happened. Perhaps DM's many issues made him afraid to even kiss EA on the cheek after asking her permission. Fine, SHOW me that on the screen. His asking EA's permission and giving her a tentative, magical kiss on the cheek would have been an epic scene, ripe for all sorts of possibilities, visual and otherwise.

There are unconventional ways for kisses to happen. There are quirky, creative ways to indicate that a couple slept together. I don't know what they would have been in this case; that's the writer's job, but none of it has to be "conventional." Grownups in love kiss. They sleep together. The writer seems scared of such realities.

But, if the writer doesn't want to go there, then show why that didn't happen. Is DM impotent? Is EA a germophobe for whom kissing another person is a nightmare? Fine, show me that.

Instead, we got nothing.

The beautiful, supportive, slightly magical, deep friendship between DM and EA was not a grown-up romance, it was a different kind of love altogether. That the script didn't know what to do with that amazing interaction, after claiming, through supporting characters, that they "liked" each other, is WAATH's biggest failing.

Did they ever so much as hold hands? I don't recall.

Regarding how the rest of the plot played out, a much better choice would have been to build to either the announcement that DM was going to, at long last, direct a movie, or to the commencement of filming the movie, then either do a sequel or leave it at that.

Instead, the writer and director chose to shoehorn the filming of the movie, DM's psychological shutdown mid-production, and, of course, his winning a fabulous Baeksang award, into the final episode, as if this is a standard, cheesy K-drama like any other, which is the opposite of what WAATH was in episodes 1-10.

Disappointing finish.

Episodes 1-10: 10/10
Episodes 11-12: 7/10
Overall: 8.5/10

Did Dong Man and Eun Ah ever hold hands? I don't recall.

I agree that the compelling side story about No Gang Sik's daughter should have received more attention. I liked the fighting scenes that established him as a loose cannon, followed by his showing up with a car full of cabbages to share, and everyone was afraid of him, and rightly so. :)

The rest of your reply is intriguing. Thanks.

After 24 hours pondering how this show was a magnificent joy ride for ten episodes, but went into hyper-rush mode in episodes 11 and 12, and never established the central relationship as adult-romantic (even though other characters assured us they "liked" each other, and in that way it was like a Chinese censored BL bromance), I'm rating this 8.5/10. Up until episode 11, I was going to give this a 10/10.

Other assessments, comments behind the spoiler button below.

What are you mad at him about?
I think a lot of the problems stem from bad writing.

Yeah, well, high school kids for sure, but I don't consider high school kids to be "children." They're teenagers. But, clearly, the casting team wanted to make sure there was a sharply defined bottom/top vibe in both relationships. You know who is schtupping whom among these four just by looking at them. :)

My main point is that the show never established them as romantic partners in the first place. They had one of the most wonderful, magical best-friends relationships I have ever seen on screen, and it was lovely, but there was nothing presented, other than other characters TELLING us they "liked" each other, and the script implying it, to indicate that they were romantically involved.

The show never established a romantic relationship, so there was no need to show a "breakup." Dong Man's remarks about and to Eun Ah at the first shooting and the awards show was no different than what one would say about a treasured friend and colleague.

What you dream up in your head does not count.

In this way, the Dong Man and Eun Ah relationship was like a Chinese censored BL bromance; lots of meaningful glances and junior high school flirting, but nothing on an adult level. It was a strange situation. What was the writer and director afraid of?

This was also true of the central, age-gap relationship in "My Mister," by the same writer. Loads of implications that IU and Lee Sun Kyun's characters were romantically attracted to each other, but never anything concrete. Hmmm...interesting that the writer has done this wink-wink, nod-nod thing twice in major productions.

This.

How do you know that?

Episodes 11&12:
The finale felt a little flat to me, lacking the fireworks I spent 10 episodes reveling in.
Ep. 12, especially, was often rushed.

Other than that, my primary reaction is slight disappointment that Eun A and Dong Man's relationship never progressed into a romantic one, even though the script and other characters seemed to keep telling me they WERE romantically involved.

Don't get me wrong, their relationship is beautiful, deep, and supportive. Their conversations over dinners or drinks or whatever, when it was just the two of them, were lovely. They seemed, as Dong Man said, to have come into the world as two halves of one whole. I could not imagine a loving friendship more gorgeous than theirs.

But that doesn't make them girlfriend and boyfriend, which, again, the script and other characters kept labeling them as. Yes, yes, yes, before you come at me, telling me that relationships don't have to have a label, let me clarify. I totally agree with that. My beef is that the story and characters were labeling them as GF/BF, but I did not see that on the screen.
Perhaps "disappointment" isn't the right word for what I'm feeling. "Confused" is more accurate.

And yes, if it had gone romantic, we should have seen some smooching and lovemaking. However, I don't know about anyone else, but I can't imagine the two of them doing either of those things.
So, yeah, "confused" is more accurate.

Acting was fantastic across the board, direction, too. This is the largest collection of actors in one cast who are great at natural weeping that I've encountered.
Great writing, imagined from a perspective I've not seen before.

Bravo.

Sure, Jan.

Why are you obsessed with the gays?

Sure, Jan.