Welcome to my weekly blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching but not recapping.
An update first: This week I recapped the powerful episodes 8-9 of Pit Babe, wherein our racing team investigates human trafficking. I also recapped episodes 3-4 of The Sign, wherein our Special Investigation Team takes a vacation in Nong Khai and then pursue a serial killer.
FYI, for funsies this update includes a rant against a trope, which you can read after this initial review of:
My Happy Ending – 나의 해피엔드 – 2024
A currently airing Korean suspense-thriller, I’ve watched 6 of 16 episodes.
A woman who may or may not be able to trust her own perception of the world discovers she may or may not be able to trust those around her.
This show is the third in my trilogy of descriptive-three-word-titles-featuring-central-women-characters shows. Unlike Perfect Marriage Revenge or Marry My Husband, this one doesn’t seem to involve any time travel. Honestly though? I wouldn’t rule it out.
What we have here is one of my favorite genres
The “are they paranoid or is everyone out to get them?” genre. Frequently, though not always, starring women, this genre has a lot of great movies but this may be the first drama I can label this way.
It has all the right tropes. We’ve got an extremely unreliable narrator. She’s got a history with mental health issues and is popping pills. She runs a big company and is overworked and not sleeping enough. Her behavior is erratic and dramatic. We definitely can’t always trust her perception of reality.
But can we trust those around her? Because of her position of power in a big company she’s got enemies in power. People who want her money, who want to destroy her and her company. People who are more than happy to lie to her to get what they want from her. People who will pretend to help her while plotting behind her back. A lot of bad things have happened to her and she has reasons not to trust people.
Maybe she is paranoid. And maybe everyone is out to get her too.
Which puts it in another one of my favorite horror/thriller set-ups, who is the real monster? Is she the monster for behaving the way she does? Or is someone/everyone around her the real monster for doing this to her? Maybe they are all monsters, so who is the biggest monster?
I’m quite enjoying this, but I have warnings
In a game of “who is the monster” there aren’t much in the way of likable characters. Even the nicer characters may be hiding horrible secrets. If you need a sympathetic main character to cheer, this probably isn’t for you.
The show, at times, relies on people talking to each other like they’re space aliens imitating earth speech. Characters don’t ask obvious questions or give reasonable explanations. This could all be because of our main character’s mental health crisis. If it isn’t, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Because of that, it’s very hard to know what’s going on. Even things that seem certain might turn out to be unreal in the next episode. The show is off the rails and anything could happen. Maybe time travel, why not? For me this is interesting and exciting. For others I can see it being frustrating and annoying.
This show could easily crash and burn. All of this mental confusion and potential evil conspiracies could add up to something very lame.
But it’s the kind of show I’m going to have to watch to the end, so I’ll let you know if at least I find it satisfying.
Now to talk about what doesn’t make for a happy ending for me:
I Hate The Break-Up-Time-Skip-Trope
I’m not going to name names, but recently this trope has been jumping out from behind bushes to attack me when I’m just enjoying my nice day. No country is guiltless. No time period is immune. No combination of genders is safe.
If you’ve read this blog enough you know I’m good for all the tropes that force characters together, no matter how ridiculous. Cohabitation. Contract Marriage. improbable falls and catches. Shoe tying. Hair blow drying. Mouth food wiping.
But this trope is inherently designed to pull our characters apart so that they can “grow as individuals” and become worthy of being in a relationship.
I have a number of reasons I dislike this:
- I don’t watch romances to see two people grow as individuals apart from one another. There are other genres that exist if you want to watch individuals grow as individuals. I’m watching romance because I want to see two people grow together in a relationship.
- Not that we often get to see the individual growth. Usually we just see that annoying on screen text “x months/years later”. That amazing, relationship healing growth happened off screen, freeing the writers from the burden of writing something hard.
- And what happens when this couple hits their next big conflict? Will this be the solution next time too? Why shouldn’t I believe it will be?
- If I wanted to watch a “second chance at love” story, I’d watch a “second chance at love story”. It’s unfair to force me to watch a “second chance at love” story against my will in the last episodes.
- Extra “seriously why???” points to couples that break up just because one of them goes to school/gets a job in another country. Guys, we don’t only have letters and phone calls now, we have video chat. On our phones even.
What I’d Rather See
At the end of the day, one of the things I MOST want to see in a romance is how people work through their conflicts together. And the idea that people have to be at a certain “individual growth level” to be worthy of romance really bothers me.
Breaking up is just avoiding that hard work (for the writers and the characters). Please, show me how reasonable adults in a relationship can work together to overcome anything.
(For the record, I am sure there must be some people who like this trope. This trope is so common I’m not worried about them. We could reduce the number of shows that rely on this trope by half and they’d still have a wealth of shows to enjoy.)