Sunday, February 04, 2018

A Gentleman's...Dignity?

So there's been a clip floating around on Facebook for a while of a scene from a Korean Drama where a girl's red dress gets caught on a guy's bag and winds up unraveling. Very red string of fate kind of imagery. I'd seen it a few times (I apparently have a lot of friends who watch Kdramas) and I decided to look it up a few days ago. It's called A Gentleman's Dignity. I've now watched 3 1/2 episodes but I'm not sure if I can go on. There are elements of it I like and elements that make me literally groan out loud.

Things I have learned from this show:

  • The acting is only so-so and over acting definitely seems to be the norm. It might just be a style thing. I dunno. I've never watched a K-drama before.
  • It's almost like live action anime, especially with the main girl. She literally rolls around on the bed and flails around spastically. It's unreal.
  • There's also a bunch of kabedon going on. And blinking. With sound effects.
  • It's simultaneously very adult and very juvenile. Very.
  • The women need to grow spines. The one main character has moments where you're all, okay, you go girl! but then she flops back into passivity. It's nice to see that the girls have friendship but I don't think it remotely passes the Bechdel test and half the time they are sniping at each other. And one is infatuated with a guy twice her age (and she cries ALL THE TIME). He could be her dad. At least he's the nicest guy.
  • The men are mostly misogynistic jerk wads (and I have also just now learned that I can't spell misogynistic without looking it up first). Every now and then they do something nice. One constantly cheats on his wife (who is played to be an all-out b-word, but then, her husband is cheating on her all the time. Who knows what she'd be like if he wasn't?). Though, to be fair, perhaps the best part of the show is the friendship between the guys
  • And even though I was looking for a show with older characters, I'm almost more interested in the teenage ruffians that Yi Soo is teaching. They have, in a way, more charm.
Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I know there are cultural things here that drive some of my dismay. I was at first excited because I thought, hey, a show with people my age. That'll be nice. But then they all act like high schoolers. On the other hand, I am kind of curious as to what happens but I just looked it up and the show has something like 20 episodes. I don't think I can get through that much of it. I think I'm just going to look for a summary.

EDIT: I found a good recap website and read through them all (which took ages...I really wish I didn't have that need to finish things...). Glad I read the recaps instead of watching though. I never would have made it through. Plus, whoever wrote the recaps was snarky and saw a lot of the same issues I did (but apparently watches a lot of K-drama). Anyway, in a nutshell, the story was mostly very, very predictable but had a few moments that were really nice. In the end, from reading through it, I almost liked the cheating husband/bitchy wife duo the best, mostly because of the wife. At least she had a character arc. And the hoodlum teenage dude who actually had a good heart. It was hard to see why the main guy actually liked the main girl so much when she waffled between acting like a floppy five year old, a confused teenager, and being clueless. The only interactions between them that were actually pleasant is either when they both got into teasing mode (texting each other but pretending to text someone else) or when they shut up and kissed.

It makes me wonder if I can watch K-dramas at all. I don't think I have the patience for it or the willingness to wade through the over acting.

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