Reading some of the older post I came across this show, being a bit of a sucker for romantic comedies, I found the whole show on YT(not available on Viki for me) and boy was it a doozy!
After watching the show I was not sure if it was a spoof of dramas, but I didn’t find anywhere stating that it was a spoof and it seemed to point to actually being a serious attempt at producing a drama.
(Possible spoilers, as if it could be spoiled! )
The main leads were pretty (male was in a K-pop band or something) That’s about it.
Being 10 episodes of 10 mins each, take out the opening sequence and end preview of the next episodes, 8 mins tops,
time is money in terms of content real estate.
They start with male lead being able to read customer types in the shop he works at for half of the first episode, an intro of the male lead and a vehicle to deliver a few gags perhaps but had no bearing for the entire series.
In trying the electronic door lock, the female lead makes wrong guesses despite her being locked up in the house daily, and she sees the combination a few minutes prior. I thought ‘we’re going to be here all night!’ as she reels out a sequence of 7 digits then the guy is filmed pressing every individual digit of just given sequence, only to find it was incorrect! They filmed 3 pointless wrong attempts, knocking a full minute off a 8 minute episode for what is unknown because they opened the door after the 3rd attempt!
Everyone’s acting was bad.
Which led me to think it was a spoof, were they all deliberately playing bad acting? The male lead I could understand, boy band, looks good, can sing but can’t act maybe.
The evil manager was just short of an evil “Bwaaa haaaa haaa” laugh to go with his ‘I’m evil’ acting.
His evil assistant was so wooden, her acting of evil henchman expression came across as ‘she was doing his bidding reluctantly’. I genuinely did think there was going to be a reveal later on that she was in fact an android with super strength.
The fight scenes were like slow motion play fighting, but with adults.
Everything was bitty.
Maybe budgetary/time constraints but it’s like they edited bits of longer shoots and joined them together to try and form something. There’s scenes that suggest they were cut to save the gags from a longer scene or story arc.(supporting characters). Bits with special effects because we spent so much on it. Also save the stunt woman clips, we spent tons hiring her, where the hero saves the model just as she falls from the rooftop. (she is at one point, being held onto from falling to her death by him pinching onto a couple of her fingers! )
I’ll stop here as this post is way too long already (it could easily double!)
The whole series was like something produced by a high school AV club. But I am grateful that this gem exist, it shows that they tried, they really, really tried! with all seriousness to producing this and committed it to film.
So it got me thinking, given the seasoned drama watchers here, are there any other genuine dramas not spoofs, that could top (bottom?) this? By that I don’t mean ones where maybe you didn’t like a particular actor or actress, etc, but overall bad as exampled above.
Surely China, Japan or Taiwan must have produced dramas of this calibre?
I thought this drama was absolutely terrible, and I don’t get how anyone could’ve liked it. It was utterly ridiculous and I just wanted to throw my laptop across the room because of the pure stupidity of the characters(but I wouldn’t actually do that because it’s expensive).
But if you want to waste your time by watching something that will make your brain twist in knots because of the anger you will most definitely feel by watching this, I highly recommend this to you.
I personally didn’t like Orange Marmalade. The acting wasn’t bad or anything but the story was all over the place. I read the webtoon that it’s based on before watching the show so maybe I’m a little biased but the drama just wasn’t right… The story starts out being serious and emotional but still a good story, and then it turns into an all over the place light happy fluffy story. Honestly the webtoon was a more relatable and attention grabbing story than the drama. (if you would like to read the webtoon, which I highly recommend just go to the comic site Webtoon)
I liked the webtoon a lot, especially near the end. It was very heartwarming and nice and I loved seeing the character development. I think I learned many lessons from it. The art was really beautiful as well. I watched the drama too after I finished the webtoon, and I have to agree it was a bit of a disappointment.
But I did finish it, because I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so to ease my mind I finished it and I terribly regretted it until this day.
One I started and felt the same vibes as the first drama I mentioned, I stopped watching, 'cause I still had not recovered from the other drama experience.
Well the first for sure, I would say, as for the second I can’t guaranty it.
Have fun!
What are the things you are looking for? Since I guess, I haven’t counted for years, but I think there should roughly be 500- 600 dramas I have watched. If I knew some “trigger points”, maybe another drama will come into mind.
For example, I can’t recall the drama’s content that much but it was a bad experience, so I don’t like to recall it that much.
Is it bad acting? A bad storyline? All together?
Everything! Everyone has a few of their favourites and the good ones tend to crop up regularly in a lot of peoples top 10. Actor/actress fanning aside these shows would have most things right, good acting, plots and scripting, filming techniques etc to make them great. Given the shear amount of dramas produced there has to be some that are really bad in contrast failing in multiple areas like in Magic Cell Phone.
It’s just interesting to see these contrasting bad examples that end up at the bottom of the barrel compared to the great ones in a sea of dramas.
Well I don’t know about that one, my instincts told me not to look at it. I will have to look in my “drama diary”, maybe I will have something else for you, I tend to repress the memory of them … And only remember the good, …
Would you like a drama where you can go nuts?
Were the viewers named the main characters Hot Cake, Liver Boy and Brain Fart?
Here you go, for me it’s no longer available maybe for you it is?
Then I must look through my watch lists again.
I remember there was a drama that was promising but went bizarre, but it’s not on here any longer. Never had any experience like that before and after that drama. Found it Stormy Lovers should have had 120 eps but gut cut on 69 episode due to low ratings.
I’ve finished this and yes, it was quite the frustration builder!
Sure, first 7 episodes were out and out slapstick comedy and need the characters to have the intelligence of an amoeba and chains of events for the punchline delivery but results in frustration upon layers of frustration at each non-escape due the stupidity of every character.
Augmented graphics and comedy sound effects added to the comedy section but they overused some, like the ‘Swishhh’ at sudden turn of head, as if the sound engineer had just discovered it in the effects box, liked it and wanted to use it in as many places as possible.
As for the use of trombone for background music of a comedy… oh dear.
The show became quite watchable after the escape and it switched to being a thriller with a bit of comedy but it still kept the frustration pressure building with a double “will she, won’t she?” to the very end of the last episode.
Luckily my monitor is attached to an extension arm bolted to the desk so like your laptop could not suffer any ill effects of throwing ability.
I’m just making a start on Madly in Love and straight out the gate I think it’s going to be a hard watch for me.
I’m not a fan of the filmed in a TV studio daytime soap format. Since this format is a given for:
-The wobbly sets of the ‘room’
-The harsh lighting reflecting off the more follicly challenged male cast members.
-The turn based line delivery.
-They are an endless time sink. (47 x 1 hour episodes is short compared to some daily ones running for years)
-They tend to have many concurrent plots as apposed to the usual single plot of a 16 episode dramas.
-Mundaneness of everyday life time fillers to pad out episodes, as if we don’t have enough of it in real life!
However, I’ll stick with this in small doses as I have literally just finished Helena’s non-recommendation of I Picked Up a Celebrity On the Street with Sung Hoon in it, to seeing a younger Sung Hoon in this! With the first episode having that terrible special effect plastic gash straight out of a B rate horror film, how could I not give it a fighting chance to prove it’s worthiness!
I would say your resolve is stronger than mine as I only made it a little more than halfway though before dropping it altogether. Well no wonder. I was looking at my mdl page, and I noticed I’ve dropped far more dramas than I’ve actually completed. I never knew I was that picky about my dramas.
As frustrating as it was, it didn’t exceed what I could comfortably put up with. Definitely an advantage for finishing the show.
Nothing wrong with being picky given the number of dramas available. If you’re not enjoying it (not even to it’s so bad it’s good) it’s failing in its purpose to entertain you. Abandon show! NEXT!
I can imagine your chocolate selection box has a tray of chocolates with one bite taken out of each!
Small doses is probably the best you can do with this drama.
Oh, I watched I Picked Up a Celebrity On the Street as well, complete from start to finish. At times, I found it stuporous. What should I say, why did I watch it? How should I explain? Sometimes I think it is even refreshing to watch such a drama, because you can easily point the finger on:
-“Oh, they didn’t just do that”, or
-“Really they couldn’t bring the story to this point in another way”, or
-“What have I done that I have to see a scene like this”.
Some may be thinking why analyze a show like that just throw it in the bin already, I guess these are long-term effects from me once joining a writers club. We wrote a lot of stuff and sometime someone came up with story terribly written but a great idea, and we would pinpoint where the problems lie and sometimes after re-analyzing and correcting and another edit, those stories turned into something beautiful.
So sometimes I even feel pity for dramas like this, that there wasn’t probably enough time, not for the actors to get deeper in character nor for the screen book writer or an editor to do a proper job, let’s not start with the director and one of the crucial jobs in a drama the cutter.
That’s why I have not such a high number on giving up on a drama, it must really agitate me to a certain point, that I just can’t watch anymore, without my blood pressure rising.
So at least a “bad” drama can give you a good lesson about how to not tell a story.
It’s a pity that Viki didn’t get the license for Sung Hoon’s first drama, New Tales of Gisaeng that we enjoyed a lot, back then, but with your topic we are not looking for the goodies, right?
Exactly. These shows that from being churned out like strings of sausages, some would fail in multiple or all areas. All combining to to make the finished item a masterclass in how not to make a drama and by natural selection filter down to the lower end of the scale.
Weaknesses in so many areas, often repeated, they draw the viewer attention away from the immersion of telling a story and becomes a game of ‘let’s spot and count how many flaws it has’ as that has become more entertaining in itself.
For me the really bad ones are a fascinating watch because the are the final product and complete opposite of the good intentions set out by all involved in the project.
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it sounded like it could have been an interesting watch!