Corny TV has been around since what feels like the dawn of time. Classic sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and Seinfeld ruled the airwaves for decades, and nowadays, modern young adult romances like The Summer I Turned Pretty and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before are more modern takes on the naïve sentimentality that’s come to define a truly corny TV show.
With the expansion of global media, I’m here to declare that there’s a new ruler of corny TV: Korean dramas. Despite my personal love for them, Korean dramas, or K-dramas, are what many would call not great, but that’s not what’s important.
There’s a lot to love about K-dramas. They’re entertaining, they’re comforting, and not everything you watch has to be super deep or artful.
- A Formula of Love
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From fantasy to romance to comedy, K-dramas have done it all. Many of the most popular K-dramas are based on manhwa, Korean comics. High school and college romances featuring the nerdy girl and the cool guy are a dime a dozen, with workplace romances and fantasy adventures ruling the trend cycles as well.
A good chunk of the corniness that rules every episode of even the best K-dramas is the formulaic stories that many of them follow. The CEO falls in love with his secretary, or the main character has a crush on her brother’s best friend, and then they fall in love and live happily ever after, all within 16 one-hour-long episodes released every Tuesday and Thursday.
One of my personal favorite aspects of a romantic K-drama is the slow-motion scene backed up with an original song that happens every time the two main leads hold hands or meet eyes across the room. When the other woman walks in, and a different villain song plays, it just makes me love them so much more.
- Live Shooting
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The filming schedule is also one of the most unique aspects of a K-drama. Unlike the TV that many of us have grown up with, episodes of K-dramas are filmed following a live-shoot model, where most episodes are filmed and edited within the same week that they’re aired.
This odd schedule gives the actors, writers, and directors time to react in real time to the public’s response to the relationships, issues, and actors as each episode releases. My favorite thing is when you can see the actors start to change how they act to make certain characters or relationships happen differently than originally planned.
- Love What You Love
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There’s something comforting about the predictability of it all: knowing that everything is going to be alright in the end, the guy will get the girl, they won’t lose the company, and the world will be saved.
I can fully admit that sometimes the shows aren’t that good. The jokes don’t always land, the wigs can look really bad, and even some of the acting performances are lacking, but that’s part of the fun.
Enjoying media, despite what people may say about it, is something that’s made so many parts of my life much easier. There’ll always be naysayers touting how every piece of media should be deep and have far-reaching meaning, but I just have to disagree. Sometimes, brainless fun is the perfect remedy.
To be corny is to be sentimental and repetitive, but that doesn’t take away from the humor and comfort that you can feel just watching along. Looking outside of the media we know already, different cultural presentations of romanticism can change the color of everything you know and love.
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