TMI stands for “too much information.”
I’m not a person who has FOMO or fear of missing out. I’ve the opposite: JOMO or joy of missing out.
When a drama pushes TMI on me, I don’t know what to do.
Here are the dramas that have rendered me speechless.
1. “My Husband Does Not Fit”
This is a Japanese drama. It’s self-explanatory. It is what it is.
Netflix released this in 2019, and it appeared on my feed. My instant reaction was to create a post on Dec 3, 2019 to bitch about it here on my blog. But that post remains in my “Draft” folder because I couldn’t write more than three words about it.
Those three words: “What the heck?!”
Sure, vaginismus is an actual gynecological condition, but I don’t need to be educated on this. TMI!
2. “You Raise Me Up”
The title here is wittier. Can you guess what the subject matter is?
No, it’s not about Josh Groban. hahaha.
It’s about erectile dysfunction.
Am I being sexist when I say that erectile dysfunction concerns me more than vaginismus?
This is an ongoing kdrama available on Viki. One of my favorite actors is on it, Yoon Shi Yoon, so I checked it out. The actress is somebody who was formerly known as Hani. She’s a kpop idol?
I could have binged on the drama if it wasn’t that one scene in Episode 1 that turned me off. YSY’s character masturbated while watching porn. If that scene had been done with one of Yumi’s cute cells (Naughty cell??), I would’ve laughed through it.
But I didn’t need to see the table shaking. That’s TMI.
I’ll retry to watch this drama after I erase that scene from my head.
3. “Love With Flaws”
The premise of the drama is good. You love people despite their flaws. However, the process is shitty. Literally, shitty.
Read about it here: Love with Flaws: Eps 1 & 2 First (and Last) Impressions
I can’t watch a drama with the actor half-assing…errr…half-pooping through his role. TMI.
4. “Clean with Passion for Now”
This one, I was prepared to like this because of Kim Yoo Jung (the actress is “Lovers of the Red Sky” and “Love in the Moonlight”)
But as soon as I saw the female lead’s child version of herself eat her nasal mucus, I was outta there.
TMI. I don’t need to know to see this gross back-story.
Speaking of back-story…
5. “A Gentleman and a Young Lady”
source: soompi
This is the blurb from mydramalist:
Lee Young Kook is a widower with three children. He still hasn’t gotten over the death of his wife. He decides to hire Park Dan Dan as a live-in tutor for his kids and he becomes attracted to her. Meanwhile, Park Dan Dan has bright and positive personality despite her harsh situation.
Source: https://mydramalist.com/686231-the-gentleman-and-the-lady
If it wasn’t 50 episodes long, I would’ve checked out this drama.
The controversy about this KBS drama surfaced in the first episode when the guy met the girl for the first time when he was 27 years old, and she was only 13.
Their back-story is TMI.
The writer didn’t need to establish that they were “fated” lovers because they met when she was preadolescent, and he was full-grown adult.
Look: there’s nothing wrong with a man interacting with a young female child. What’s troublesome about this drama, however, was that the writer romanticized this encounter as the first milestone in their relationship when they met again 10 years later.
The love story could have existed without this back-story. In my opinion, the netizens were right to object to the intimation of pedophilia in that scene.
🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸
These are some of the TMIs in kdrama-land that I’m glad to miss out on. What’s yours?
Agree with #1 – #4
What the heck is that #2 drama?🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Sometimes I wonder if young girl-older guy fated love narrative in kdrama love story is related to their culture. Writers keep selling this trope and I find it nauseating tbh.
I am not sure about TMI, but I skip kdramas that go the opposite direction from my beliefs. I hate having the feeling of being gaslighted/ brainwashed when I watch a show.
@packmule3, I hate the much younger woman older man trope that has been done since the invention of movies. How anyone could see Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn together is mind boggling -the visuals offend.
I am enjoying You Raise Me Up.The story itself is not prurient. It is more about his confidence and the cruelty of the bet between the two doctor former lovers, to “cure”him. Our hero was her first love who was formerly a star. We have yet to find out what traumatic event changed his trajectory. We know his dysfunction is psychologically based. This drama is more serious than it appears to be. I did not know these actors but I find the two leads engaging. The ML does angst very well. I really felt for him. The FL is more understated. Hers is not a flashy performance. I am looking forward to seeing how they resolve this. Anyway, this is not the f I rst erectile dysfunction outing. There’s a movie about a playboy gynecologist (male) with ED and a urologist(female), who are office neighbors and their romance. I think our c rzma is a lot more serious and is worth watching.
These are more cases of extraneous information than gross-out TMIs. Both of my peeves relate to people’s opinions that are given more credence than they deserve.
1. “He’s so handsome!” This is usually said loudly by people in the background when the male lead walks in. Yes, Show, we know he’s handsome: that’s why PD cast him. I think this is sexist. If a woman is subjected to commentary about her appearance by strangers–including such things as wolf whistles–it is considered sexual harassment. Does switching genders make any difference, really? It’s still objectification.
2. “S/He’s too good for him/her” or “S/He could do better.” This is when people without a valid connection to the couple weigh in on the couple’s compatibility and relative social standing. I’m sorry, but if you’re not one of the two people in the relationship, or if their relationship isn’t a matter of state and you bear the proper authority, your opinion doesn’t matter. It annoys me when such gossip is used as a plot device to tear a couple apart. Do You Like Brahmns was a particularly egregious example of this trope. The ML and FL were deemed wrong for each other by the college community based on the disparity in their musical abilities. In real life, a couple should have their privacy respected, celebrities or not. It is up to them to determine whether or not they’re suited for one another. Of course characters in a drama aren’t real, so they and their relationships can be dissected by viewers based on how they’re written and acted. My gripe is about strangers within the world of the drama swaying the couples’ resolve to be together.
I also took a look at You raise me up and personally I don’t have that much problem with the table shaking, for me it’s more cringy than explicite (like those train driving into the tunnel scenes in older film, or a car shaking with a couple inside), but this is of course something I could gladly be without (in fact one of my favourite Korean rom coms Ps Partner begins with this kind of scene as well, although no porn watching involved). But altough as @OAL says the drama presents a very relevant topic, there was a thing that turned me off in the beginning of the drama. Namely the scene when the ML comes to the clinic and how he was treated by the receptionist and the doctor (=FL) lead there. I was chocked: how can a doctor conduct a prostate examination like that?? Without presenting herself, talking to the patient first and explaining the purpose and method of the examination. Or did I miss a scene here or something? It was supposed to be some comic relief? this was just too much. They could have skiped it and planned it in another way. As a doctor she could just have happend to be there in place of her male collegue and that way learn about his problem. That could be enough ambarassing for him, as their first encounter after years. Why show the said examination in a humiliating way for the patient. The behaviour of the psychiatrist was very questionable to say the least. I know it’s a rom com but still… If they decided to cover this kind of sensitive topic they should avoid such mishaps in my opinion.
I continued watching despite that and the rest is relevant and ok done but this first impression was just not good.
*I meant: the behaviour of the psychiatrist was very questionable AS WELL to say the least.
Thanks, @Welmaris. Good points to consider.
I like our “free form” discussions. I write something and it serves as a “prompt” for you to bring up something that you observed or something that bothered you.
Re. “Do You Like Brahms?” If the couple’s feelings for each other are swayed by public opinion, especially strangers to them, then their attachment was weak to begin with, isn’t it? I didn’t continue the show; I was left with the impression that the female lead was weak. 🙂
I was reminded of Capt Wentworth in Jane Austen’s “Persuasion.” He was bitter because Anne was — in his opinion — was easily convinced by Lady Russell to give him up.
That quote:
“He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill, deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure. She had given him up to oblige others. It had been the effect of over-persuasion.”
I always roll my eyes at the ‘Oh, I’ve fallen on you’ and the inevitable l.o.n.g pause whilst perfect strangers freeze in an awkward position.
This isn’t TMI, but rather discomfort:
– The hitting and physical abuse by older generations that seems to be common in drama families whether rich or poor.
-The school bullying that seems so extreme and so accepted as part of growing up.
-There was even physical bullying among adults in ‘Run On’. It was described by one character as ‘discipline’ from one more senior group to another.
-Societal attitudes towards single parents where there was no marriage.
Fred Astaire. Ugh. I never understood what women found attractive about that man. Sure, he was a lovely dancer but he looked skeletal. And I thought Ginger Rogers had it harder. She did exactly the same moves but in heels. lol.
“Funny Face” wasn’t my cup of tea because of Fred Astaire. But I did love “Love in the Afternoon.”
It wasn’t just because the actor was Gary Cooper. It was also the idea of hooking Mr. Flannagan (lol. I still remember the name) who knew what he was doing, and he was doing it exceedingly well that would turn the head of a young impressionable girl like Ariane.
Oh, how nice to see a Persuasion quote here at all places! Thank you @Packmule3. This is one of my favourite novels of all times. I haven’t watched Do you like Brahms, but I love the “second chances trope” in Jane Austen (it occurs also in Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park as well). I think in Persuasion both of them were at fault. She was not confident and easily swayed but he was proud. So it’s his perspective here. In those times a woman could end up in destitution through a long an uncertain engagement. And he could just say I’ll prove myself and the come and ask again. But he didn’t. And when he finally made success he came back with a mind to marry another.
But back to dramas I think the worst scenario of swaying a couple is when it’s the future mother in law plus when superstition is involved. I don’t lnow if you are familiar with that family drama The Family’s Honor (it’s a bit old) when the couple finally got together although there were big differences in social status but then the mother in law got to know that the FL’s first fiancee died in a car accident. He was driving and the FL was the passenger. So the mother of the ML (the new guy) said no to their marriage bc the FL was “cursed”. OMG I just couldn’t believe this kind of makjang.
I think the young girl-very much older guy was acceptable in generations past because up until the late-20th century (lol!!), women were economically, financially, socially disadvantaged. One sure way (and easy way) of moving up the social ladder is to get married to a rich man. Then, unless the woman is herself a scion of a wealth or titled family (in which case, she marries somebody of her own social class), she would have a better chance of attracting a rich man who’s self-made (e.g., he and his family wouldn’t be so averse to him marrying a poor or middle class girl). But to be a self-made millionaire, he would have to grow his fortune over time (e.g., he’s old. lol)
Nowadays, with women working and attaining success on their own, there’s less necessity or pressure for a woman to marry a man in his dotage. 🙂 Women can pick and choose.
However, there’s a reversal, too. For instance, do you know that here in the US, more women are college-educated than men? I’m looking forward to a time when we’ll see romcoms between two socially unequal couples… and this time it’s the man who’s inferior, at least in terms of educational attainment, professional status, and wages. For example: a woman with a PhD and a man who’s a high school graduate. 🙂
@Packmule3 there was this Korean film I wached recently called The Name (it’s on Viki) where the FL is a chaebol heiress, probably well educated as well, art curator and the ML is a poor and rough artist selling his works somewhere in a park at Han river. He even sleeps there ocassionally. There is a backstory to this romance but I don’t want to spoil. The film had some weird moments but overall I liked it. There is also a special premise which I won’t reveal in case anyone wants to chec it out but I know it’s not for everybody (normally I avoid this kind of story as well but this time I just dived in).
I was thinking that this thread would be catnip to @WEnchanteur. I miss his posts. Any news from him?
@L8nn3a, You make a good point about the p ractice 9f medicine here. Our hero sh0ould not have been referred to the psychiatrist who has too much history with the urologist to keep him from having prejudices regarding the patient. He should be impartial. And our urologist, in the real world would know better. These are medical ethics c problems that the writer ignored.
Prostate exams have been used for comic relief in so many shows internationally. It is rare that you see it taken seriously and that`s a pity.
All of that being said, I find myself attached to this drama because I have chosen to suspend disbelief and ignore some truly sensitive issues. Another area where I think there would be issues is the whole thing about how the color pink comforts our hero. I am waiting to see how much homophobia is expressed here. Different countries take different approaches to the subject and Korea is somewhat conservative here. We see a lot of ambivalence.
So, for those of you who may find this drama offensive, I hear you. That’s why we are blessed with many choices for our viewing time.
@packmule3 and our fellow BODS, I was thinking about all of those male shower scenes, bath scenes and bare chests(with nipples), enjoying the view and comparing and contrasting physiques. That being said, I admit that I still look. But seriously I have to say that unlike many European and American shows, K Dramas value and support the female gaze. While most American shows go for the maoevgaze with t and a-breasts and bottoms, K Dramas give women the male views. I think our western shows are far more gratuitous and less tasteful. You rarely get to see male bottoms and they always make a big deal of full frontal men. Luckily we don’t have to see this in K Dramas. And k Dramas seem to generally appeal to female viewers because these views do not go beyond certain standards.
@packmule3 and @Linnea, I was also thrilled by the quote from Persuasion. It is a favorite novel and there have beensome great BBC series adaptations. I am still partial to the Amanda Root, C I aran Hinds version with the Sally Hawkins, Rupert Penry Jones version coming in second. There will be a new adaptation, The casting is strange. Dakota Johnson has been cast as Anne Elliot(reason for me to say no to this. I thought Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma was just wrong) and common Jarvis as Captain Wentworth. They cast Henry Golding as Mr. Elliot. I guess they’re making it for the current generation but I have a bad feeling about it.
I keep thinking about spinsterhood and life expectancy in those days. I also see how marriage was so transactional. We have this romantic notion that seems so modern by comparison.
This also isn’t TMI. I just found it unbearable when a scene was played repeatedly episode after episode. I understood that was really important to the story but there was no need to show it 10+ times.
The same goes for kshow. Whenever someone says something funny, they always repeat it, which annoys me as much as canned laughter.
@Linnea, the cursed survivor trope is driving the plot in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha. The male lead, having been orphaned at age six, then in middle school losing his caretaking grandfather to a heart attack, overhears funeral attendees commenting he brings death to those around him. He, then, carries that belief about himself into adulthood.
@Packmule3, Ginger Rogers not only danced the same steps as Fred Astaire while in heels, but much of the time backwards! (As the saying goes.)
Also, @Packmule3, in pursuing my hobby of genealogy, I’ve encountered many marriages with a big age gap between husband and wife. Before governmental social safety nets were implemented for widows and widowers with minor children, most remarried. Men who’d lost wives–often during childbirth–needed someone to care for their children and homes while they worked as their family’s source of income. Women whose husbands died while their children were young were in a dire situation, as losing their primary breadwinner threatened to tip the family into poverty. A lot of marriages in the past were results of economic necessity, not romance. For a girl just entering adulthood, marrying an older but financially stable man had its benefits, especially if his prospects surpassed her likely future as a single woman. Blended families also happened. And I have a great grandmother, widowed in Switzerland with five children, who in 1886 married a single man fifteen years her junior. Noona romance? He was only eleven years older than her oldest child. They went on to have three children, as a family of ten immigrated to the USA, then had another three children, my grandmother among the last batch.
@packmule3 <3 you quoted Persuasion, which is my ALL-TIME favorite, beloved Austen novel!!! <3 (sigh; heart eyes <3 ) (I wanted to bring the novel up when @Phoenix was talking about autumn and Keats in one of the older threads, but well, I didn't anymore. Heehee.) Re Brahms, YES, the heroine was weak. The middle part of the show lost focus and ran out of steam — the plot wasn't really moving forward, and they made so much ado about nothing — though I think the show somewhat pulled itself together (though not completely) by Episodes 15 and 16 again. My takeaway in that show is that the couple had the most boring dates ever. zzzzzz. lol.
Anyway, just peeping in because of Persuasion (sigh; heart eyes <3 ) and Do You Like Brahms. Off to read everyone's posts on TMI stuff. 😀
@OAL, @Linnea — I posted too quickly upon reading @packmule3’s Persuasion post and hadn’t read your posts yet. Weeeeeee. <3 Virtual group hug! hahaha <3 I thought the Amanda Roots/Ciaran Hinds adaptation was more faithful to the novel's tone (no Anne Elliot running in that version!), but Rupert Penry Jones was so handsome (lol). Didn't know there will be a new adaptation! I'll look it up. 🙂
Anyway. Back to KDrama talk. 🙂
@Old American Lady, when you mentioned spinsterhood, it reminded me of my brother and his fiancée. They bought a house together in Chicago in the late 1980s. On the deed, the lawyers referred to her as Spinster. I was gobsmacked.
Right, @Fern?
@Wenchanteur would have lots of gripes about kdramas to share.
I hope he’s okay.
Ho ho @pm3, your comment about 20th century women marrying rich men for financial stability reminded me of a dialogue in Little Women that Amy March says to Laurie (just watched the 2019 adaptation few months back) — “Well. I’m not a poet, I’m just a woman. And as a woman I have no way to make money, not enough to earn a living and support my family. Even if I had my own money, which I don’t, it would belong to my husband the minute we were married. If we had children they would belong to him, not me. They would be his property. So don’t sit there and tell me that marriage isn’t an economic proposition, because it is. It may not be for you but it most certainly is for me.”
Anyway, not a TMI situation, but I find the childhood connection trope in KDramas to be the most absurd thing in fictional universe period. It maybe partly because I’ve never encountered it myself/known anyone in that mould either — I mean, my parents have been “around” each other when they were growing up i.e., in the same vicinity, parents had common sets of friends and distant relatives, etc. — but NOT ONCE did they meet F2F (I questioned them a zillion times just HOW they never ran into each other) — maybe that’s why I find this trope to be irksome. If you’ve met someone when you’re younger, you most definitely would remember them when you’re all grown up, or at least throw around a “you look so familiar, did we go to school together, XXXX batch” some such quip.
Of course, dramas don’t imitate life, but the fact that this concept is so heavily promoted, when in a world of more than a gazillion people and rising, what are the odds that two people meet more than once in their lives and not recognise each other? Unrealistic doesn’t even cut it, even worse is that kdramaland has this compulsive need to romanticise/normalise it. It’s so terrible with KDramas that now I actively look for signs if ML/FL have a childhood connection and when the plot reveals it, boom, I check out immediately lmao (HP was tad better in this regard, thank God, so was Start Up, a much more worthwhile mention ❤️).
Waiting to read other opinions, and of course, haven’t seen most of the dramas on your list, thank God 🙂
@dashman1010, I won”t be dispute your childhood meeting tripe comment for fantasy but I do thinkugr is full of coincidences. I met my husband at work. Be wof not have worked there had his mother also not worked there
His dad a stopgap nib while he waited for emoymemt in his field. We were initially lunch buddies.My mother died when I was a child. My husband’s mom was a minolt high and high school friend of my mother and s friend ofy.aunt. were it not for my mother in law, I would not have met my husband. Happy coincidence or match made in heaven
Definitely K Drama trope
LOL
Hello! What an interesting discussion!
@AOL although I didn’t like the perspective on medical ethics in You raise me up I haven’t dropped the drama. The subject is unique so I’m curious how they are going to develop it, so I’m waiting for the rest of the eps to get subbed.
@Aol and @Pandamilktea how nice to see some other Persuasion fans When it comes to adaptiations I’ve seen the one with Ciaran Hinds and I liked it but I mus admit that I’m so attached to the later one starring Sally Hawkings and Rupert Penry Jones. I’ve heard also abt the new one coming, but for now I’m sceptic, both abt the casting and a possible direction this Netlix adaptation may take. I’m afraid it’s going to be more Bridgerton style. And I liked Bridgerton on its own but it’s not Jane Austen and I don’t want Netlix to spoil one of my favourite novels.But maybe I’m just oversensitive here.
@Welmaris, thank you for the info abt HCCC and the curse theme there. I’m not watching this show yet, but I’m meaning to marathon it later.
And I liked to read abt your personal family stories.
As to the childhood connection trope som @Dashman1010 mentioned personally I don’t mind it that much but I know many viewers are tired of it. And it is kind of unrealistic. I identify it as culture-specifics that the notion of first love and fate is particulary strong there. There are some shows that try to defy this, at least to some extent, for example now I recall Queen of reversals with Kim Nam-jo and unfortunately scandalised Park Shi-hoo where the latter was the “second guy” coming after FL’s first love and the first love was still there in the picture. And guess what, the first love guy turned out not to be the right one for her. Maybe I shouldn’t spoil further.
@OAL see, there’s always a link (here, your MIL was acquainted with your mother/her relatives) so she “kind of” brought you and your husband together :)❤️ That’s believable.
In kdramaland though, the ML+FL meet by chance like once when they’re kids, move apart, and then meet again many years later with no recollection of their earlier acquaintance. What’s the probability of two random people meeting again? I’d give it max 10% (this is a generous estimate, if I’m being honest) — and to normalise this? It makes very little sense to me.
Not saying that this doesn’t happen at all, but it’s not the norm like kdramas purport it to be.
@dashman1010, I guess that’s why we suspend disbelief. But I can see how the trope us overdone, It’s lazy writer syndrome LOL
@OAL absolutely, that’s it haha
Thanks so much for sharing your story here 🙂 Praying that your mum’s in a better place now, watching over you always ❤️