Sometimes all you need is an old school drama to keep the doctor away…

The Musthavesubs girls are all sick and unfortunately for us it isn’t pretty! We’ve abandoned school/ work and found ourselves wrapped in blankets sneezing and coughing our way through the last couple of days.

What is a girl to do when she is hurled up in bed unable or unwilling to do much?

Yep, you guessed it – watch a drama!

However when you’re this sick, it’s hard to focus on the subtitles, the plot or appreciate the cool/ breezy style the director is trying to portray, so times like this provides us with the perfect opportunity to raid the back catalogue and go all old school. Yay.

Sometimes all you need are your favourite drama tropes to make you feel better. It’s familiar and safe but still has the ability to make you turn into the worst type of fangirl around. Sickness be damned.

Here are our top five favourite old school drama tropes that remind us why we love dramas so much:

1. Poor girl meets super rich chaebol – Come on, it’s a classic!

Okay it’s been done to death over the years but who doesn’t love the idea of Lee Min Ho, Roy Qiu or some other hot actor stepping up and falling madly in love with some poor but brilliant girl that could be you!? Who doesn’t want to see them defy all odds – crazy parents, jealous ex girlfriends and their own stupidity to win the girl and get their happily ever after? Sign us up, we’re sold.

2. When hate turns to love – watch out for the fly kicks, death threats and other delightful pre-romantic interludes

We love when writers have the OTP hate each other at the start of a drama. Sometimes we love this more than the HEA. This is where you see all the magic. Their verbal sparring, their unspoken hot sexual tension and the anticipation of what is to come – the romance! The slow but obvious build up of friendship and romance is always a pleasure to witness. We love watching their insane and often hilarious interactions as they keep finding themselves at odds and somehow thrown together in ‘random’ situations. Of course they are, it’s a drama!

We really hope that this drama trope never becomes unpopular because we sure would miss all that fun, silly banter between the OTP.

3. The perfect love rival – the leading lady never had it so good!

Yes, yes, we have a ridiculous soft spot for love rivals and we need help but we can’t help ourselves. It’s only because we know that they get their hearts broken and lose the girl by the end of the drama. How can we not feel sorry for them?

 

What is a drama without that secondary character waiting in the wings to sweep in and take care of the leading lady when she needs it most? For us, a drama without a love rival isn’t a true drama. Yes, they can be annoying, frustrating and make you want to punch them in the face but they’re a necessity that you need to accept comes with the package. They are like Brussels spouts at Christmas, not to every ones liking but a must nevertheless.

4. She has twelve jobs, goes to school and doesn’t take your shit – Give us an old school, tough leading lady any day.

We adore old school leading ladies of yesteryear with their multiple jobs, unreliable parents, tough attitudes but kind personas. Yes, she’s dirt poor but has the latest mobile phone and  really cute clothes/ accessories but she’s earned it. Plus  the poor thing will suffer so much more before she gets her happily ever after, so leave her alone.

As much as damaged, silent leading ladies are interesting. Or ambitious, smart ones make us appreciate them. We would happily watch a good old fashion fighter that never gives up and uses her courage, sarky wit and lovable charm to seize the day and get her man.

5. If you looked that good as a boy, wouldn’t you try it? – Cross dressing your way to a HEA

You would think watching a girl dress up as a boy and lie to her OTP would get boring after a couple dramas but no, it hasn’t and we have a feeling it won’t.

It’s all about the delicious angst and the conflicting feelings running through the leading man’s head. This particular drama trope works so well for us because it’s one of the few genres where the writer really develops the friendship between the OTP before it moves onto the romance. The leading man falls first and foremost for his friend – a person, rather than a pretty girl and isn’t that lovely for us fangirls to witness? Sighs*

Classic dramas = the best form of medicine for drama junkies

We feel better already 🙂

Day 17: Your Favourite Male Third Wheel

If you have ever read any of our posts in the past, you may have noticed that we have a ridiculous soft spot for male love rivals.

They call it Second lead syndrome- we call it a problem.

We’ve got a love hate relationship with male love rivals in dramas. On one hand a good love rival has the influence to elevate a drama and make it amazing. Not only does the leading man have to bring his ‘A’ game and really deliver the goods, he also has to show why he’s worth his OTP.  Also, a good love rival brings angst, doubt and real options for the leading lady. Who doesn’t love watching a complicated love story where we’re really shown why the OTP deserve each other?

On the other hand, rooting for the love rival never ends well. We’re on the losing side and there is only one way the drama will end. Yep, our love rival heartbroken as the OTP get their HEA and he ends up with the pathetic consolation prize in the form of the female love rival or worse some random girl that suddenly appears in the last episode. Why is there always a random girl!? Who else hates watching a good love rival bravely smile through his pain while the OTP shove their love for each other in his face by inviting him to their wedding? UGH, we hate that.  

It’s engrained in our culture to root for the loser- the underdog that tries his best right to the very end. They are that constant that is there for the leading lady when the leading man is off acting like an idiot. They are that shoulder to cry on, the one that will do your milk round when you’re sick (Shining Inheritance) or generally be that perfect guy that you desperately wish the leading lady would pick. A good love rival can have a lot of impact on the viewer, their heartbreak and longing is sometimes more compelling than the OTP. Sometimes this is great for a drama, however a good love rival has literally made us hate a drama by the end of it’s run because we sit wondering why the hell the leading lady would pick her OTP when clearly the love rival is much better suited for her. It’s frustrating, annoying and just makes us want to throw our screens out the window.

 

How can a leading lady resist those ernest eyes?

As you can tell we feel passionately about our male love rivals. We doubt we’ll change our ways anytime soon. We guess that makes us gluttons for punishment but who said being a drama addict was easy?

Here is a quick rundown of a few of our favourite male love rivals that have stolen our hearts one way or another:

Our technical pick has to go to Thank You’s Choi Suk Hyun:

We’ve blogged about this love rival before because he has to be the most solid, perfect love rival we have ever seen in a drama. He technically was everything that the leading lady would ever want. Not only was he the love of her life but also the father of her child. They shared intense chemistry and he loved her! They could have easily lived happily ever after if they wanted to.

Our favourite love rivals who had no chance but still made us switch sides include:

Jeremy from You’re Beautiful – We loved Jeremy way more than Shin Woo, who was just annoyingly boring with his elaborate attempts at revealing his love for Min Nam. Jeremy was just that fun, sweet love rival that made us smile. He cared about Min Nam so much in that innocent, protective way. We loved that scene where he’s heartbroken and he sings that song on the radio. He managed to evoke so much sincerity in that scene and it was one of the more sombre scenes from him that really stood out for us in the drama.

Nakatsu from Hana Kimi – He loved her despite thinking she was a guy! Once again, he was a complete darling that stole the show. We would have loved it if she liked him just a little bit. It couldn’t have been just us that felt that the OTP shared zero chemistry together in that drama?

The love rivals that were robbed:

Han Dong Jie from Easy Fortune Happy Life – This was our first Roy Qiu drama and the one that cemented our love for him. He was that perfect, gangster with a heart of gold. He cooked, took care of her and made us swoon whenever he appeared on screen. Hehehe. This was a drama where we literally wanted to throttle the leading lady for picking her OTP who was a complete idiot that needed a good punch in the face. Why would anyone pick Blue Lan over Roy Qiu??

Meng Cheng En from P.S MAN – There was a bloody poll to change the leading man!!! He shared so much chemistry with the leading lady, he was that perfect love rival that avoided being boring by doing crazy things like hijacking moving cars to take her to the hospital, catching her from a real high balcony or giving her more blood than you are legally allowed to give just to save her life. But still she picked a guy that was too afraid to admit his feelings for her after 20 episodes!

Oh, love rivals, at least we love you.

Day 11: Your Favourite Drama Ending

We fear drama endings the most. There have been many instances where we have loved a drama all the way through its run and then the last couple episodes absolutely killed the drama for us. We have indeed been burned and have become cautious in giving our final verdict of a drama until we watch the credits roll in the last episode.

Most of the time we’re not fans of wrapping dramas up in a nice pretty bow in its finale as it feels contrived and predictable. We really don’t need to see the OTP’s wedding, their children and a sequence where we watch two old people sitting in rocking chairs holding each other’s wrinkly hands, we get the picture!

For us sometimes an open ending is better. Dramas really make the OTP suffer and so it’s quite nice to end a drama with a hopeful ending where you know that the OTP will be happy but not necessarily immediately. In our opinion an open ending feels more natural and realistic and allows us to hope for the best rather than see it shoved in our face.

Take Soulmate, so many people hated the drama’s ending and hoped for a second season for so long but for us it was perfect. The whole drama was about meeting your soul mate who is your destiny regardless of when and where. They went through so much and it would have been wrong if they got together immediately. However, ending the drama with the knowledge that the OTP were in the same city at the same time gave us the hope that maybe they will meet again and live happily ever after.

We watched an alternative ending of this drama where they meet again on a bus and we thought it was so cheesy. We really don’t need the details of how they meet up again, just knowing that there is that possibility was enough. After all the whole point of the drama was the idea that everyone has their own soul mate, who you will eventually be with you one way or another.

We are so glad that this didn’t happen!

As long as the drama doesn’t make us want to reach for a sick bucket with a cute HEA or make the main characters do anything stupid, we’re easily pleased.

That said there are a couple drama endings we really didn’t like and felt ruined the drama experience for us.

For example: the drama ending where the leading lady/ man leave to study abroad. UGH!

We really enjoyed Shining Inheritance but the ending killed the drama for us. Why would she want to study abroad after all she went through? We would never leave our father’s side after believing he had passed away. Then there was her surrogate grandmother that was sick with Alzhiemers – where are her priorities? Aren’t there any good universities in Korea, why leave everyone dearest to you to study in America? We just thought it was really strange and unlike her character to decide to pack up and study abroad. The point of the drama was to show us how important family was to her and there she was leaving after everything was resolved, it’s like she didn’t learn a thing in the drama.

The same thing was done in Coffee Prince to a lesser degree. It felt like they added that last minute desire to study abroad as a way to extend the drama a little longer. The end episode really did feel completely unnecessary and in our opinion took away some of the awesomeness from the overall quality of the drama.

Pulling the rug from under your feet finale:

We can’t believe 49 Days killed off the leading lady! How dare they have us root for her throughout the drama and then kill her off under the idea that it was always meant to be her time. Seeing someone struggle for 19 episodes was cruel and pointless.

Let’s not even get started on the last minute long lost sister storyline. Groan*

Day 10: A Drama which made you so sad

There are many dramas that make us sad for various reasons.

For example those amazing dramas that started off so well and then turned into utter crap. Ahem, we’re talking about you: Will it snow for Christmas, I am Legend and Cinderella Unni! Or worse, those bad dramas that you gave a shot despite your better judgement but only made you regret it. Ugh, we hate those dramas.

We have to admit we try and avoid most sad dramas because for us, watching dramas is our way of escaping real life and well frankly who wants to be miserable when you don’t have to be?

People ask us all the time, why don’t we watch historical dramas, you’ll love them and we always say the same thing, we can’t handle them. They are often too intense and far too tragic. The drama won’t just kill a character, they will do it in the most violent, horrible way possible and well, we’d rather avoid that. We’ve watched Brave Heart, we get the picture.

The same goes for melodramas, it’s rare that we would watch a melodrama because we can’t stomach all the crying, the pain and watching a character that we have grown to love die at the last hurdle. No thanks, give us a romcom any day over that!

That said, a couple melodramas how slipped through the net and we confess we really enjoyed watching them, despite needing a giant box of tissues and a mop to wipe up the tears we shed.

The drama that really comes to mind for this topic is MARS.

We loved this drama so much. The only time we would rewatch it, is on one of those dark days where you are so depressed that you need to wallow in your own misery until you feel better.

When you’re feeling like that, is it just us or do you find that watching a happy drama where characters are laughing and in love just makes you more depressed and only watching people worse off will do the trick?  Does that make us sound twisted?

Mars was incredibly dark and the characters were so utterly broken and scarred. It is intense viewing and we adored it from start to finish. It was one of those rare treats where the characters were all written and acted beautifully and your heart just ached for them as they suffered through the drama. The OTP were so different from each other. They were both damaged goods that came together and took solace from the world in their love and watching their romance blossom despite the odds was so fascinating for us.

Yes, it’s depressing and we’re not likely to rewatch it anytime soon (hopefully). However, it’s definitely a drama that all drama viewers need to watch at one point because it’s a standout classic in our opinion that is just brilliant viewing. Trust us, you’ll love it.

Other scenes from dramas that made us so sad:

Shining Inheritance:

There is a scene in the drama where Eun Soo is so desperate and broken that she takes her brother to high wall and tries to commit suicide with him. The scene made us so utterly sad as we watched the leading lady reach her breaking point after trying so hard to keep it together. This scene always stands out in our minds because the scene was so emotionally charged and intense that it impacted us in the way that only a good drama can do.

Scent of a Woman:

This drama made us cry a lot. Come on it’s a drama about a woman dying of Cancer! The scene that nearly destroyed out tear ducts was a scene with the love rival Eun Sook begging the leading lady to live after one of his patients passed away from Cancer. The scene was soooo good because Eun Sook had been trying to keep it together for 14 episodes and so watching him breakdown was heartbreaking for us. The poor guy had so much pressure on him already – the leading lady was not only the woman he loved but also his patient. He doesn’t even get the girl at the end, that’s just cruel!

Loving you a Thousand times:

This drama is just a weepfest of agony. Where do we start… there is her suicide attempt, her baby being taken away from her, her husband abandoning her, her cancer… the list goes on. It’s horrible and will make you cry a lot. Avoid this drama unless you’re feeling miserable.

Oh the tears!