a short guide to korean dramas

[kaigou]

hollywood happy ending: everything ends happily, the lovers are reunited, and any damage during the course of the show/movie is miraculously repaired, restored, or otherwise rendered null.

hollywood unhappy ending: main character dies, but everyone else gets a t-shirt and learns to love again.

bollywood-musical happy ending: same as for hollywood, but with spontaneous mass musical sequences. possibly also involving helicopters. and extra dance maneuvers performed while riding camels.

bollywood-musical unhappy ending: unhappiness and bollywood musicals are like matter and anti-matter. it's theoretically possible but would likely cause significant tears in the time-space continuum.

korean happy ending: at least two characters die*. the lovers survive. mostly. except for the dead ones.

korean unhappy ending: everyone dies*.

* alternate option: utter insanity and/or hot pokers stabbed through delicate body parts.

...by k-drama standards, Hamlet isn't a tragedy, it's just a rom-com with a higher body count than average.

Comments

[susanna]

Are you sure about Hollywood? I remember watching "Quo Vadis" with my father, and a lot of people died, and he was cynical and said: the highest paid actors will survive. (He was born before the war, and he failed to automatically identify with the heroes. He always saw the side characters. When I watched "Jane Eyre" he listened while pretending to read a newspaper in the other corner of the newspaper, and his question when he heard the happy ending was "what happened to the former wife, by the way?")

[kaigou]

Maybe I should change that second tag to "with tongue firmly in cheek".

[treesahquiche]

Your father is awesome for appreciating and caring about the side-characters.

I think the former wife died in the fire? Or maybe she was just locked up for the rest of her life. It's been a while since I've read the book/watched the movie.

[kaigou]

She dies in the fire (that she set, because she's insane). For the most part, she's really just a plot-point.