Yes, it may seem a little extreme, but at the same time I am not kidding. Over winter break, a family friend told my family that we had to watch this South Korean drama on Netflix called Crash Landing on You. She set very high expectations to say the least so when my parents and I sat down to watch it, we were expecting a good show. What I wasn’t expecting was to watch a great show. Great shows only come around every once and awhile, the ones where you completely lose yourself in the story and are a little too emotionally involved with the characters.
That is this show. This show is great.
Crash Landing on You is a South Korean drama that came out a year ago on Netflix. The plot surrounds a businesswoman from Seoul who gets into a paragliding accident and lands in North Korea. Of course, beautiful and messy conflict ensues. Because I want you to watch it, I can’t tell much more without spoiling but this story will break your heart, make you laugh and have you on the edge of your seat. It seriously does it all. One of the best parts of it is surprisingly the subtitles. Since it is spoken in Korean and has English subtitles, you have to pay attention. As much as we don’t like to admit it, probably 50% of the time we are bingeing a show, we are simultaneously scrolling through Twitter. But here, you are completely emerged in the story and are rarely thinking about your phone which is an extremely refreshing experience.
With episodes averaging out at 80 minutes each and 16 in total, one would think that the Gen-Z attention span wouldn’t be able to handle this lengthily of content, but this will send you through a time warp. I would look forward to the nights that me and my parents would hunker down over break and watch hours of television and feel like no time had passed. This show is escapism at its finest and the perfect distraction to our pandemic ridden world. Seriously, one day we accidently watched five hours straight and had no idea that much time had passed.
Since we are usually used to watching a 22 to 44-minute shows with around only ten episodes, that type of content is of course limited. But here, the best way to describe what it’s like watching this show is that it feels like you are watching a really good book. As weird as that sounds, books have time to sit with characters, actually live life with the characters and spend so much time with them that it feels like you are in on the journey with them. There is so much time in each episode, and those moments are included. There are intimate moments that seem like they don’t necessarily propel the story in any way but a couple episodes later, you realize how important they are.
Something else that makes the show just so good is the cultural differences in storytelling. American entertainment has its classic tropes it loves to use and rightfully so because they work. For example, in the Netflix show we were all obsessed with not too long ago, Outer Banks, the classic people-are-chasing-us-so-lets-hide-but-when-the-bad-guy-catches-us-we-all-of-a-sudden-disappear-because-we-snuck-out-last-minute trope is used more than once to create suspense. Not to bash on Outer Banks by any means, because it worked on me every time, but these tropes don’t exist in South Korean entertainment. Since I was so accustomed to this happening when the scene seemed like it was going to go in that direction, I was completely floored and that much more invested when it didn’t happen. Also the soundtrack is extremely catchy that by the fifth episode I was humming along and immediately downloading the album.
Yes, I seem to be overhyping the show but let me tell you that is just not possible. This show deserves all the hype it can get. Do yourself a favor and sit down and get comfy and snuggle up with Crash Landing on You.
Oh, did I mention that virtually everyone in this show is extremely attractive?