One of my theories, let’s call this Packmule3-ism #8, is that there’s a correlation between writing kdramas finales and achieving orgasms in bed. Korean drama writers who write bad finales have either never experienced the big “O” or really terrible at giving/getting one.
Why?
They don’t finish well. 😱😂🤷♀️
That’s my theory but I’m NOT going to experiment and prove its validity. However, if you want to test it yourself, go on ahead! Date a kdrama writer and come back to me with your report. lol.
Let me list the kdramas that I know have bad endings. I’ll even rate them with emojis. 🤪 Remind me to send their writers a how-to guidebook on sex one of these days.
Because This Life is Our First
a. They separated in the second-to-the-last episode because the girl decided to “divorce” him for being – I can’t remember now – emotionally unavailable? Like she only noticed that now??
b. Last episode was spent with the guy pining for her and moping. Then, one night while he was pitifully drunk, she came back to him while he was sleeping.
c. I would have thrown her out with the cat litter. 😟
Faith
a. Returns to her century
b. Searches for her way back to Goryeo period
c. Reunited in the last minute. No hugging, no kissing. Just eye glances. I know that she nixed kissing scenes with Lee MinHo and/or has it limited to one or a couple times in the kdrama. Her reason? She’s a married woman with a child who might get confused about her Mommy kissing somebody else other than Santa. 🤪
100 Days My Prince
a. They were separate for the most part of the final two episodes, and only got together in the last 15 minutes.
b. Noble idiocy. She thought she didn’t deserve him because of her brother’s crimes. With 10 minutes to go in the final episode, she still sent him away.
c. Happy-ever-after only happened at the last 5 minutes of the final episode
d. Plot holes. Ooh. Don’t get me started on plot holes because I swear I can make this kdrama as hole-y as Swiss cheese. Fact: I stayed because of Kyungsoo Do. 😕
Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart
a. Didn’t watch it because I knew the sad ending. 😵
b. Moral lesson: Time travel does not pay.
Signal
a. Good detective show
b. Moral lesson: Time travel does not pay. Didn’t I say this already? 🙄
My Ahjussi
a. Didn’t watch because IU is synonymous to sad story. 😧
b. Moral lesson: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Where Stars Land/Fox Bride Rain (so bad, they couldn’t even decide on a title)
a. He left her to get medical intervention abroad
b. The viewers weren’t even sure if he was the one who came back
c. Annoying girl to the end😒😡
Poem A Day 💩
a. Wrong guy got the girl 💩💩
b. Even the director admitted that he changed his mind 3/4th of the way so the ending looked forced. 💩💩💩
c. No chemistry between the “final” OTP. I rarely comment on “chemistry” because chemistry, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. But trust me on this one. It looked like an ahjussi-niece pairing. Ewww. 💩💩💩💩
d. Poop emojis are reserved for this kdrama
Hwayugi
a. in the penultimate episode, girl dies while fighting mythical dragon and saving the world
b. in the final episode, girl remains dead but the hero, the monkey king OhGong, has amnesia too
c. she appears to OhGong to make him remember but only has one day to do it. One day in which to relive all their memories when they should have an eternity to be together.
d. Like an organ donor, he gives her one eye of his so he can find her wherever she is. He promises to find here wherever she is because he looooovvvvees her.
d. Ending scene? He goes on a wild goose chase (or wild MONKEY) chase looking for her…with his one eye.🤦♀️
The Ghost Detective
a. he dies in the first episode
b. was in some form of comatose body after episode 8 🤬
c. dies again (and stays dead) in second-to-the-last episode
Third Charm
a. this is the worst story ever and I had to explain this to some distraught viewers in another forum (not soompi)
b. the third charm here is NOT about getting back together again, but about BREAKING up for good.
c. this is a break-up story 🙀🤯
DO NOT WATCH even if it’s the last kdrama on earth and you’re dateless on a Friday night. 🤪
Goblin
a. two-way interpretation of the ending
b. If believe in reincarnation, ending is dumb and sad. Because the guy is immortal and live forever and the girl only has 7 more lives to go through before she dies for good. And each time, she dies the guy waits for her return all alone by himself for decades. 🤦♀️
c. If believe in Christian faith, ending is good. She goes to heaven, is rewarded for living a good life and SACRIFICING her life to save a busload of kids. As “reward” she gets to ask to live eternity with husband on earth instead of heaven.
d. meets at the cemetery. Last two minutes. No hugging, no kissing. Just tears. 😭
Reply 1988
a. Girl ended up with the right guy (both times, in reel life as well as real life)
b. Happy Ending ruined by the stupid childish hysterics of the fans of the second male lead 👿
c. No wedding for OTP. OTP had to hide their relationship😕
Coffee Prince
a. Midway through the final episode, girl got sent abroad to study being barista or something FOR TWO FREAKING YEARS
b. Came back only at the end
c. Am I really supposed to believe that they didn’t have trouble adjusting back to their couplehood?
d. I predict the relationship ending in 2 months and girl returning to Italy to date Italians. 🤫
Rooftop Prince
a. Stupid ending
b. King returned to live life back in his own era and to live alone in his lonely palace
c. He returns (as a ghost?) in the last two minutes of the show. What did I say again about time travel? 🙄
My Girlfriend is a Gumiho
a. MiHo dies after losing her tail
b. He goes on living his life alone for an undetermined length of time
c. She appears on a day of eclipse 🙄
Mr. Sunshine
a. “Hello darkness, my old friend.”
b. (I think) Except for the girl, they all die 😟
Hong Gil Dong
a. See the lights up in the sky?? That’s not a meteor shower. Those are flaming arrows falling down on them.
b. That’s visual euphemism for they were massacred in the end. 😱
Splash Splash Love
a. Left King SeJong to return to her 21st century
b. But still deludes herself that the SeJong lookalike she meets on the bus is SeJong reincarnated 😖
Mirror of the Witch
a. the girl he loves dies young
b. he lives to old age as the widely acclaimed court physician HeoJoon who apparently lived and died a bachelor in real life. Had I known this but of history, I would’ve spared myself from shipping the couple.
c. Hello loneliness, my old friend 😢
Seven Days Queen
a. For the sake of the country, he gives up the love of his life and lives 40 years as king, without her at his side.
b. Audience got trolled by the director with a dream of a Happily-Ever-After together
c. He dies dreaming that he’s back in her arms
d. 7 days of love = 40 years of torture = only in dramaland is this considered romance
e. Kdramas must get over this martyr complex. It’s tiresome. 🙄
The King in Love
a. another one of those open endings
b. No, the girl didn’t end up with that despicable second male guy. #metoo The girl doesn’t love him as anything other than the king’s closest friend. And the second male guy renounced her after finally realizing that he almost ruined the whole kingdom over his lust for the king’s woman. He apologized to the king and he exiled himself. What code of honor would make him pursue the girl again after admitting to his sins?🤮🤬
c. King abdicates the throne to pursue the girl in peace.
Cheese in the Trap
a. piano
b. is
c. gone, lol.🤪
So, what’s my point here? Perspective.
In my book, only kdrama neophytes, drama queens, pessimists, and trolls would think Fluttering Alert’s ending is as bad as the endings of shows I’ve just listed.
There’s no comparison. Not even close.
****
Update on Viki: 67% subbed for Ep 15, 3% subbed for Ep 16. Is there any way we can bribe the subbers to work faster? Chocolates? Starbucks gift cards? Ugg shoes? Christmas dates with kpop idols?
On point! While reading recaps/reviews of FW’s ending, my first thought was Coffee Prince’s ending (and also some of the other YEH’s dramas’ endings). I was also reminded of it cos my local TV station is showing the Malaysian remake of it. Like omg, end it already! It wasn’t even midway through the show but was it in the last episode? Cos she kept refusing to get married? I would also talk about the ending for Lie to Me and Marry Him if You Dare but that would bring up too much angst. FW’s ending sounds abrupt but who knows like the other episodes of FW, they always sound meh described but when watched with subs, they don’t come off as bad.
“DO NOT WATCH even if it’s the last kdrama on earth and you’re dateless on a Friday night. ” (Third Charm)
😂 That goes for listening to love (Lamentation) songs about unrequited love as well (Taylor Swift I am looking at you 😂).
I hope Fluttering Alert gets fully subbed for your sake. If the subbers are volunteers, they may well be so miffed with the ending that they veto subbing the final episodes out of principle or have moved on to others. 😬
All I can remember is Goong. The ending was 🤪 too. Worse. She ended up with the crappy tsundere guy who didn’t want to “save” her when she did that whole kneeling-to-atone self-punishment. 😂
Oh, Coffee Prince, it’s my favorite Dorama and I love it.
For the record, whilst I whined about the noble idiocy and weird mood changes within the Palace in 100 days My Prince in the last 2 episodes, the last 5 minutes and the final scene with the 2 of them kissing amid the shower of cherry blossom petals I adored. I disagreed with the dissenting voices who laboured about the lack of a bed scene or a proper Royal wedding…I adored how their love story unfolded (bar the strange time apart – although the one positive to be gleaned from it was the volumes of love declarations from Wondeuk/Lee Yool (note she didn’t write anything 🙄) which effectively catapulted him into legend in my eyes. He palmed off all the girls thrown at him by daddy dear in the interim…sigh…😍 A good old fashioned man of honor. I definitely stayed to the end for DKS and how he portrayed WonDeuk/LeeYool – HongShim I tolerated. Swing Kids swings by my country in Jan and I will watch that on the big screen.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your brood. 🎄 🎉
Same here, “HongShim I tolerated.” I think I would have preferred a different HongShim, an actress with softer jawline and less round face. The actress is only 23 years old accdg to wiki so she’s the right match for Kwangsoo Do but in the story, she was supposedly 28 y.o. spinster and she didn’t act her age. And it absolutely bugged me that LeeYul recognizes who she was from just one sighting of her at the bridge, while she didn’t connect that this guy was the Crown Prince and her young love, Palpoongie, especially when she heard the boy identify himself as Lee Yul, son of the Prince. 👿
I suspected the writer had a crush on Kwangsoo Do, or at least the character she wrote as LeeYul/Wonduk bec she wrote him well. But all the characters? 🤪 They were inconsistent. Like Minister Kim. Really? After threatening to kill her own daughter and treating his son like a nonentity, he would change his heart at the last minute.
And that 🌝 moonface guy? He was given too much significance and too many minutes for what little good he actually achieved.
I don’t care about the Royal Wedding or wedding night. I’m more concerned about the Royal family she was joining, especially her Mother-in-law. Again, that was a weak point.
The MiL suddenly turned into a new leaf and ending her plots to overthrow LeeYul?? Just because her hubby, the King, was going to spend more time with her?? Huh? So all her conspiracies were just “attention seeking”??? It didn’t make sense.
As for the Prince, really, he was visiting the ex-CP and her baby? Are we 100% sure that baby wasn’t his and MY wasn’t a cover-up? 😂😈
No. The lack of Royal Wedding is the least of my worries with 100 Days My Prince. It was as if the writer believed that killing off the bad Minister would solve all the problems when the real problem was that the King was weak. 🙄
I stayed for Kyungsoo Do.
hahahaaa. This list of kdramas with bad endings is perfect. I haven’t seen them all but still I’ve seen the one one shouldn’t see even if it was the last kdrama on Earth, rightly said :)))
I honestly don’t know what the writer was thinking of when she wrote that.
I understand that we can’t have happily-ever-afters all the time…but come on! She made us (well, you and the other viewers) go through all that angsty moments for the guy and all that vicarious pain for the girl’s tragic life, and there’s no reward for us??!!
Nobody expected THAT ending. They should have warned viewers that it was a drama on how to break up without remorse instead of conning viewers to believe that it was a drama about breaking up AND finding each other again.
The viewers didn’t sign up for that drama.
Agreed on all your points above.
“I suspected the writer had a crush on Kwangsoo Do, or at least the character she wrote as LeeYul/Wonduk bec she wrote him well. But all the characters? 🤪 They were inconsistent. Like Minister Kim. Really? After threatening to kill her own daughter and treating his son like a nonentity, he would change his heart at the last minute.”
Honestly in hindsight, because of now KDrama scripts are seldom fully written at the start, I have a feeling the writer aligned her writing of latter scripts to DKS’s portrayal of WD/LY. He has that effect on you. I think he grasps a character so well (bearing in mind he has zero acting ‘training’ and he researches on his own and simulates everything in his mind) that he comes to life on screen and he becomes the muse for the writer. Less instinctive actors/actresses who rely totally on the script for inspiration lets the writer guide them so their character is really at the mercy of the writer having a complete grasp of ALL the characters in her mind. I think that’s why he won the Directors Award this year (all the directors WANT to work with him). It’s a little recognised award of industry directors/Writers who vote so it’s totally merit based and not a poll on popularity alone.
I am not sure how much we will see of him in DramaLand in 2019. I get the feeling that because of the looming enlistment of a few of the older members, he will be pouring his energies into EXO (he is a team player). Whilst those in the industry have been pushing for him to choose his acting career over EXO, he has openly said that for him EXO is a priority. He understands full well that they can’t really function as a group without him. Whilst he is not their ‘leader’ by name, the steadiness of his character and quiet fortitude make him their center. They all respect him. It is very obvious. Ahhh I have rambled on too much. Yes I adore him as a person. He’s the sort of boy if daughter dear brought home I would totally tell her to marry him or I would be in danger of disowning her for her lack of judgement. 😂
DKS has “depth.” There’s another actor-idol that I know of who’s like him. Siwan. He’s also an intelligent and deep actor. They have a good grasp of the story so they could match their reaction to the moment they’re playing.
That guy in “My Gangnam ID is Plastic Monster” (lol I forgot the title) is not a good actor. He’s handsome to look at but no… he can’t compare to DKS and Siwan. Same with Ok Taecyeon. hahaha. My good friend @mslee will kill me for saying that. I like Ok Taecyeon as a person (or at least his IMAGE) but he’s got one-dimensional acting. The emotions don’t come from within. It’s like the director tells him to cry and he’ll do it.
But since the emotions are only skin-deep. it’s like the sadness is just a “mantle” he put on for that moment. He isn’t really sad to the bone.
Me after reading your reply – quickly asks Mr Google who SiWan is…ahh…haven’t watched any of his dramas and he looks like he’s in the army right now?
I agree about the actor in Gangnam ID…I never finished that either…I got super annoyed with the female actress and her character…her constant whining…The male actor was eye candy and dare I say it, if it was based totally on looks alone, he would win against DKS. He had the height, the cheekbones, the flawless complexion…but I never really ‘bought’ his character completely to fall in love with him. I value authenticity…if there is a sniff of anything disingenuous in their portrayal of a character, I bail. He was just very…flat…I get that his character was supposed to be cold and aloof but hey WonDeuk was cold and aloof yet I could feel his mirth, his displeasure, his disgust, his anger. He (I googled him – his name is Cha EunWoo) has a way to go yet in his transition from idol to actor.
I am currently watching My Strange Hero (Yoo Seung Ho) and Sky Castle. I will probably pick up The Man Who Became King with JinGoo and SeYoung (zombie girl from Hwayugi) when it premieres 7Jan. I don’t know how you juggle so many dramas… 3 is my absolute limit and even then it’s pushing my circadian rhythm way out of what would be sensible for mere mortals.
Same here!!!
I like the “concept” of the Gangnam ID and I liked the direction it was going (at least of Episode 12?? I can’t remember where I dropped off) but the romance didn’t seem believable.
Like why would he fall in love with her?? We were more than halfway through the kdrama but I still didn’t get when, why, and how he fell in love with her. Because he liked to save her?? Because he liked to champion the underdog?? Because of their tenuous “connection” in middle school (or was it high school??) Because she was prickly like him?
The actor IS good-looking but I don’t see an ACTING career. Maybe a modeling career. lol.
I can barely keep up with two kdramas but Fluttering Alert is done now. I binged on it while putting Memories of the Alhambra on the back-burner. I’m on Episode 6 of Top Star Yoo Baek (went through 4 episodes in one go but I had to wake up VERRRRY early to watch) but this is an easy kdrama. I’m on my winter break so I’ve a bit more time nowadays. 🙂
“Same here!!!
I like the “concept” of the Gangnam ID and I liked the direction it was going (at least of Episode 12?? I can’t remember where I dropped off) but the romance didn’t seem believable.
Like why would he fall in love with her?? We were more than halfway through the kdrama but I still didn’t get when, why, and how he fell in love with her. Because he liked to save her?? Because he liked to champion the underdog?? Because of their tenuous “connection” in middle school (or was it high school??) Because she was prickly like him?
The actor IS good-looking but I don’t see an ACTING career. Maybe a modeling career. lol.”
Agreed on all points. I stayed for the novel concept. I was hanging by a thread but the nail in the coffin was when I read how fan girls (of the idol) bemoaned the fashion sense of the actress because she didn’t match his more stylish threads? 🙄 Really? I never even noticed? He in designer wear I can understand (he was chaebol?) but her dad was a cab driver? She was supposed to be shabbily dressed? For a drama that was espousing looking beyond what was external to garner comments like that just meant the message just wasn’t getting through… So I bailed. Looks like plastic stayed fantastic after all in spite of the drama ☹️
I need to read up on all your Packmule3-ism ☺️ This is up to number 8 already. Where can I read the rest? 😂
Ah so that’s why it’s bad endings because of the big O! 😂 I get it! I get it 😂 You’re so right! 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
FYI I am rewatching 100DMP again – just the HS/WD parts. Not for the feels 😆 But to see if a second viewing will reveal if she really had an ‘aha’ moment when she realized WD was Palpoongi/LY in those 100 days (now that we know she connected the 2 from that fateful night). She may well have recognized LY and ran after being sighted under the rain of cherry blossom petals…but because he wasn’t in garb as WD, and wasn’t in the usual context (not in Hanyang and in noble attire), she may have been in that, “you look familiar but I can’t quite place you” mode that we get when we see someone again whom we’ve met before but because the setting and context is so vastly different that our mind doesn’t make those connections. And by the time she made those connections in that 100 days, she had already fallen head over heels and no longer wanted him to return to be CP anymore (selfishly). An academic exercise just to satisfy curious minds 😄. I may well still end up in the same spot in the end (that it was just bad writing) but I am starting from a different reference point so it may give me new ‘eyes’.
👍👍👍 awesome!! Yes, please!
See, I’d forgive this writer a lot of things if she would only make HongShim recognize LY for who he was on her own. There was no parity.
LY recognized her that very instant as she waited for the blossom to drift down on her open palm. She on the other hand had 100 days to remember this guy. Sure, he acted like buffoon because of his amnesia but still… there were quirks that should have reminded her of that young boy or that crown prince.
Like the regal walk.
Or that book, what was it called? She told him to learn it when they were little right?