Bitch Talk: Another Hong Sisters Drama??

Thanks, @nrllee, for the warning. The Hong sisters are teaming up with the director of “What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?” and “Let’s Eat” series for a new tvN drama next year.

Per soompi, the working title is “Can This Person be Translated?”

How about “Can These Writers be Rehabilitated?” 🙂

The past three dramas of the Hong sisters all dealt with death, and I’m frankly tired of their death wish. From their emotional narratives, I already know what I need to know about their perspective on grief, mortality, transience of life, love and happiness, melancholy, and inevitability of death. I doubt that there’s anything fresh coming from them.

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I think they translate “mono no aware” and recognize its strain in their previous works, and stay clear of it. lol.

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So unless it’s in the vein of the “Warm and Cozy,” I’m skipping their next drama. Life is already too short to brood on the fleeting, the finite and the ethereal. I want them to return to the basics and write a drama that celebrates life, and the living (instead of these fantastical creatures), for a change.

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18 Comments On “Bitch Talk: Another Hong Sisters Drama??”

  1. Amen to that. I find they have a disturbing fascination with the macabre. As if to keep pushing the envelope (death). It makes me wonder if it’s because they are grappling to find an answer (that sits well with their world view) so they keep exploring the subject in their dramas in multifaceted ways? 🤔.

    My daughter is watching HDL now and I will ask her what she thinks of it when she finishes.

  2. I don’t really care about it. If I like the story and the characters, I’m in 🙂 Their last dramas had great OST too.

  3. Well, death is the great challenger, isn’t it? I take your point, but I’m just fine with the macabre and gothic. Your post made me think through the HS dramas I have watched.

    I didn’t like Warm and Cosy! Or Big. Or Couple or Trouble. Or Hwayugi. Or You’re Beautiful. Dropped them all.

    I thought Hong Gil Dong and My Girlfriend is a Gummiho were just okay.

    I loved HDL, Master’s Sun, The Greatest Love, Delightful Girl, and My Girl.

    Each preference category has titles that dealt with death and titles that had nothing to do with it.

    So, for me at least, I’ll check out whatever they offer, whatever the theme!

  4. I’m not feeling it lol

    I don’t want to watch a drama and not feel satisfied, always thinking there’s something missing.

  5. I only bought one OST on iTunes because I don’t know how Spotify works. 😂 It’s the ballad by Taecyeon? Taeyeon?

    I buy at least one OST for the kdramas I watch so I can play it while I’m writing. Call it my mood music.

    “Flower Crew: Joseon Marriage Agency” had no OST available on iTunes so I was bummed out. I was playing “Tightrope” from the “Greatest Showman” instead while I was writing my reviews. 🤪

  6. For Spotify, you can just listen but there are some publicities for Spotify.

    Did you buy All About You by Taeyeon? It was in Hotel del Luna. She sang of lot of OST. I think the first I heard by her was “If” for Hong Gil Dong’s OST.

    Hotel del Luna had a lot of good songs : Can You See My Heart by Heize, Done For Me by Punch, etc.

  7. 👍
    Yes. And it’s not only death. It’s this sense of stoicism and keeping-a-stiff-upper-lip because life is going to be bittersweet anyway. That’s what Chansung was all about, right? He had to see his duty through the end because it was his fate.

    And that was the same stoicism — and FATALISM — that Sunni the female lead in Hwayugi displayed.

    ✅ Fatalism! That’s it. I was trying to look for the word. There’s a strain of fatalism in Hong sisters’ worldview. Whatever Manwol did, she can’t escape the inevitable. As the Hong sisters said in their post-kdrama interview, Manwol had to go and when she died, that was the happy ending they, the sisters, envisioned for her.

    🤦‍♀️ Facepalm.

    If that’s all the *happiness* they could think of, they need to experience more orgasms in their life. 😈 😂

  8. Yes! That’s the one. “All About You” by Taeyeon.

    Haha. I wouldn’t buy “Can You See My Heart” even if it was on sale for a penny. It would only remind me of Captain Firefly. I wanted to download “So Long” by Paul Kim.

  9. Thanks!!! 🌸

    I just bought “If” by Taeyeon for Hong Gil Dong. I heard this song before, but I didn’t know the title. I’m glad you reminded me about it.

  10. “If that’s all the *happiness* they could think of, they need to experience more orgasms in their life.”

    Hahahahaha 🤣 that’s so true. If only Chansung and Manwol can change their fate like Danoh in Extraordinary You…

  11. You’re welcome 🙂

  12. Yes, fatalism. While referencing existentialism AND reincarnation. Honestly, I felt the Heidigger was in some ways the biggest red herring of all. The show was about ghosts and reincarnation for the most part. Existentialism doesn’t work at all with the show as a whole. Fatalism, however, works, however dour and musty we might find it.

  13. Tim Burton always comes to mind whenever I view Hong Sister dramas – there’s a certain brooding darkness about it – like a specter of doom looming in the background – and I am never sure if it’s just imagined (my preconceptions) or if it’s deliberate on their (HS) part.

  14. It is definitely not imagined! I agree completely re Burton. The HS and/or their directors actively work within the Gothic tradition when bringing their ghost stories to life and they borrow heavily from German expressionism just like Burton does. The haunted hotel itself has a very long history in horror and gothic! Luckily, the HS lighten it all up or we’d have another The Shining on our hands.

    But I never thought they did this with their lighter productions? They DO always borrow from folktale/myth/literature both eastern and western for both structure and symbolism, which is their main attraction for me.

  15. @barbrey, 😂 isn’t it 3am in your corner of the world? What are you doing up so early?

    Happy Friday the 13th!!

  16. No…no The Shining! 😂

    It was in Ep 5 of Psychopath Diary. Dong Sik was pretending to be Jack Nicholson. 😂😈🤪

  17. And that’s also why I keep returning to watch a Hong Sisters drama.

    Because despite their past obsession with death or their anxiety with death, they still write an excellent script. For me, an excellent script (or *meaty* script) allows the viewers to derive as much meaning from the drama, through their own cognizance, understanding, or interpretation as through what’s simply shown in the plot. The audience can either go in-depth or skim the surface and still enjoy the show.

    I can revile their endings and all, but I’ve to be honest and admit that their romcoms are thought-provoking. 🙂

  18. Yep – I’m insomniac quite frequently. Do you normally get up at 6 am?

    Glad you think the same as me re their shows – at least to give them a few eps to prove themselves!

    Do you recommend Psychopath? I never started. I loved Dexter and other psychopath shows but for some reason the synopsis for this one didn’t grab me.

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