Tag: Korean Drama

K-Drama Report: Ms. Incognito (2025)

October 12, 2025

Oh, this show is delicious. Intrigue, secrets, betrayals; all the ingredients of a howling melodrama, but arranged neatly in an understated package. Ms. Incognito is a rare sort of genre mash-up: the cozy thriller? Even before we move to the idyllic small town, where a mountain range sits in each kitchen window like a painting, there’s such a comfortable atmosphere that pulls ever so gently inward. Even the old abrasive favorites like a deadbeat mom and flashbacks to an abusive father only pause the warm feelings. It’s the product of at least two things: the lush, cinematic style, and the story premise, which is just about my favorite thing in the world – a badass woman who’s pretending to not be a badass. She carries the aura of violence, an unheeded threat or even an invitation to instant karma. … More K-Drama Report: Ms. Incognito (2025)

K-Drama Report: Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, Part III

September 28, 2025

My girl almost got away with it, too. I know, you can’t have everything. Or can you? This is the funny thing about K-dramas, that the endings are so critical, it adds an extra layer of tension to the viewing. “Please don’t screw it all up!” It makes sense, though. Because K-dramas are, by default, limited to one season, there’s an actual expectation of a narrative conclusion, unlike in American television (where shows are either canceled prematurely or go on so long they drift off into incoherence). Thematically, there’s also an aspect of wish fulfillment. A show like Bon Appétit, Your Majesty is a romantic fantasy following the template of countless fantasies before it. We know all the beats – and we anticipate them – so laid down and preserved for their dramatic potential. Without a doubt, one of those beats is the officiation of the romance, however that takes shape (I don’t even have the term for it). The audience proxy, in this case Royal Chef Ji-yeong, lives this fantasy of winning over the palace one-by-one with her masterful cooking skills, including the scary-sexy King Yi Heon, with whom she eventually falls in love. Why shouldn’t she be able to hold onto that love, too? … More K-Drama Report: Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, Part III

K-Drama Report: Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, Part II

September 26, 2025

In its second act, Bon Appétit, Your Majesty levels up from good to great to excellent at blistering speed, centered around the latest challenge for royal chef Ji-yeong: a competition against legendary Chinese cooks to decide Joseon’s fate with the Ming dynasty. At the start, I worried the show would adopt a “dish of the week” structure, with Ji-yeong making food for King Yi Heon alone until they eventually fell in love. How would they make that interesting each time? Instead, we have this latest contest which animates the entire palace, setting conspiracies into motion and raising the stakes to the level of national consequence. The Ming envoy, Director Yu Kun, walks with the authority of his emperor, turning each exchange with the Joseon king into a careful game of feints and doublespeak. The contest itself occupies two episodes – contained almost entirely to one location – with two additional episodes of build-up. It’s remarkable, and I’ll just say now that I can’t remember the last time a K-drama made me cry like Bon Appétit’s ninth episode, with the contest’s surprising climax. … More K-Drama Report: Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, Part II

K-Drama Report: Bon Appétit, Your Majesty (2025)

September 22, 2025

Finally. You know, Yoona’s an interesting case. I’ve previously discussed how she’s this deific figure in hallyu but often plays the most mundane characters in K-dramas (faring a bit better in film, by all appearances). She takes us behind the scenes of these shows on her YouTube channel and she’s so enthusiastic, and I wish I could be, too. I really do. Unfortunately, it’s gotten to the point where Yoona’s not a selling point anymore. On one hand, she’s drawn to these safe, relatively unchallenging roles, but on the other, I don’t know if I’d be comfortable with her unsafe, thrown into the deep end of Korean movies and TV. Take Lim Ji-yeon, for example, who’s had a five-star career and now everyone knows she’s a brilliant actress, but Christ, does she get her ass kicked. She plays an abused wife in Lies Hidden in My Garden and a runaway slave in The Tale of Lady Ok. Award-nominated performances, but it’s too much for me to handle. The price of being a badass, really. A badass woman, mind you; no price for guys. Oh, I’m so nervous for my sweet baby Shasha in Project Y. I’d much rather watch Yoona in a reality show like Hyori’s Homestay or any old Girls’ Generation content, where we also see her actual, though still guarded, personality. … More K-Drama Report: Bon Appétit, Your Majesty (2025)

K-Drama Report: Queen’s House – Art by Other Means

June 24, 2025

As is mentioned just about anytime we talk about K-dramas here, the taxonomy of Korean television is complicated, inconsistent, infuriating. I’ve seen some people call Squid Game a K-drama, but to my mind, K-dramas are the romance shows – to which there is no further sufficient term. We’ve seen how these are not like the American soap operas of quantity over quality, all weird frame rates and embarrassing storytelling, were anyone paying attention. No, K-dramas sport high production values and command A-list talent. Like IU! Sure, even the best of them can be emotionally manipulative and turn on plot contrivance, but they’re not trash. They’re not disposable, and how dare you insinuate otherwise? Believe me, if they were, I’d be honest about that. Honesty? It’s the only thing I have left. … More K-Drama Report: Queen’s House – Art by Other Means

K-Drama Report: Love Next Door, Part III

October 19, 2024

Here at the end of Love Next Door, I’m revisiting a question from early on. These Reports frequently reference back to the small clutch of K-dramas I’ve seen, and a few get more attention than others: Twenty-Five Twenty-One, of course, while I almost never mention Madam Antoine, despite really liking it. Both Doona! and Love is for Suckers come up because they had obvious or interesting flaws to measure against. Now I’m wondering how often I’ll cite Love Next Door in the future, because it bears almost no distinguishing hallmarks. I think it’s a great show, ultimately, but it’s the K-drama you’d get from the K-drama wishing well. Appealing leads? Check. Beautiful setting? Check. Cozy atmosphere? Romance? Happy ending? Check, check, check. Then you’re standing there, looking at your cup of vanilla ice cream, full of grave self-doubt. … More K-Drama Report: Love Next Door, Part III

K-Drama Report: Love Next Door, Part II

October 10, 2024

Love Next Door kicks off its second half by hitting the Big Red Button. In my experience, a good K-drama will take its time to develop the characters and their conflicts, nurturing these story fundamentals like a gentle gardener, while other K-dramas will decide at some point to lob a grenade in there and blow up all the flowers. Someone will die, or end up in the hospital, or get hit by a fucking car, or a bus. Love is for Suckers kept introducing extreme situations for the characters to suddenly deal with as the climax to existing, unrelated issues. In retrospect, was this a commentary on the sensationalism of reality TV? In Love Next Door, we know that something happened in Seok-ryu’s past; she took a year off from work and broke things off with her fiancé, and perhaps these two things are related. During a taste test of her cooking attended by both Seung-hyo and ex-fiancé Song Hyeon-jun, she collapses, clutching her stomach, and elects for Hyeon-jun to take her to the hospital. … More K-Drama Report: Love Next Door, Part II

K-Drama Report: Love Next Door (2024)

October 6, 2024

“You can never go home again,” according to so many movies and TV shows. Within its first half at least, the K-drama Love Next Door asks the other, rarer question: “But what if you could?” Our heroine is Bae Seok-ryu, a Korean who’s been living and working in the U.S. for the last ten years, homebound after leaving her big tech job and even a fiancé. Her mother Na Mi-sook has a habit of bragging to her friends about Seok-ryu’s grand successes overseas, if only to match her frenemy Seo Hye-sook’s equally aggressive bragging about her son Choi Seung-hyo, an award-winning architect and co-CEO of a new firm. This is the world waiting for our heroine when she lands in Korea, and it’s a world of hurt – literally. Finally breaking the news to her mother, Seok-ryu is beaten, though she expected nothing less. … More K-Drama Report: Love Next Door (2024)

K-Drama Report: Love is for Suckers, Part III

April 17, 2024

I cannot imagine that, upon finishing the finale of Love is for Suckers, one doesn’t immediately go back and rewatch the very first scene. Not because it’s a twist-movie “now it all makes sense,” but because the show opens with a flash-forward tease that doesn’t come back in the end. For those who didn’t be-kind-rewind, the first episode opens with our heroine Goo Yeo-reum taking a van to the Kingdom of Love house. She scrolls through articles on her phone about a wedding between contestants after a controversial season. On the set, she first speaks with Sang-woo, who says it’s been a long time. The contestants are gathered nearby, dressed up like brides and grooms. Han Ji-yeon excitedly calls out to Yeo-reum – which, like, whoa. This makes Jae-hoon turn, and the lovebirds lock eyes. Sang-woo corrals everyone for pictures, and then Jae-hoon and Yeo-reum make eyes again. The clock winds backwards, taking us into the show… … More K-Drama Report: Love is for Suckers, Part III

K-Drama Report: Love is for Suckers, Part II

April 14, 2024

Something I’ve long found interesting in media studies is why people decide to watch what they watch. What goes into the decision, if a decision ever comes from the endless browsing across multiple platforms? In this most academic pursuit, I’ve been privileged with a curious, compelling subject – myself – and every now and again, he baffles me. At the moment, I’ve got at least two shows running: Love is for Suckers, and season two of The Shield. That follows. It’s season two because I watched the first way back in college, during the great mania around prestige television. Unfortunately, it vanished off streaming, and I’ve only returned to it ten years later. It’s good. It’s probably the best police procedural I’ve ever seen (if The Wire and Mindhunter are just stage-left of procedural), in part because it’s honest and seems to have a mission. In its exploration of police corruption, we see the grisly effects but we also understand the very logical cause. The bad guy’s gonna get away with it, so we want Vic Mackey to step in with his extrajudicial methods. Why wouldn’t that impulse exist in the real world, and is the system strong enough to resist it? … More K-Drama Report: Love is for Suckers, Part II