I loved Kingdom and was eagerly looking forward to the writer's next project. That was Jirisan, which I dropped after one episode.

I really really don't believe in following screen writers' works.

Chief Kim is a top favorite show of mine but I hated Fiery Priest to the very end, and dropped Vincenzo after some episodes.

Scent of a Woman is also a top favorite, and the other shows from the writer weren't bad, just boring and uninteresting.

One less reason to be disappointed, hurray?

You know that poem "when she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad..."? That's how I feel about Kim Eun-sook's writing. I watched The Heirs soon after I saw Goblin and I'm still not fully over the shock of that disaster.

All writers have ups and downs, and there are a lot of reasons why things can go off the rails, but there are two big disappointments that stand out:

Shark: Kim Nam-gil & Son Ye-jin in a revenge thriller by Kim Ji Woo based on the Orpheus and Eurydice legend? What could possibly go wrong? Oh, wait - so, so many things. The childhood section was lovely, and I actually liked how Son Ye-jin's role was written, but Kim Nam-gil spent most the show brooding while staring at a fish tank and the plot jumped the, uhm, shark multiple times before its nonsensical conclusion. Fortunately, Kim Ji Woo's shows since then have been much, much better.

Arthdal Chronicles: How exactly could the combo of the writers who created Queen Seondeok & Six Flying Dragons and the director of Misaeng and My Ahjusshi create something this alarming? Blue people? Glam goth elf boys? Magic Horse? I don't know what wonders (horrors?) part 2 has in store, but I really hope that Kim Young-hyun and Park Sang-yeon go back to writing actual sagueks instead of whatever the hell this was.

Oh no this is real, the hurt from having a great writer fail you stings badly. I remember when The Hong sisters first disappointed with Big. Not long after, Warm & Cozy came to whatever that was. But overall, they're top-notch and keep delivering.
Little Women by Jung Seo-kyung was a let down, but there other factors that ruined the drama.

Park Yeon-Sun wrote the great Age of Youth 1 and 2. But when the second season was very loved and people had hopes for the couple Ji-Won and Sung-Min or for a 3rd season, she just killed one of characters and killed every hope in the same time... it was pretty cruel.

Myung Soo-Hyun, Baek Sun-Woo, Choi Bo-Rim were the trio who wrote A Poem A Day and decided to follow the public's opinion and changed the ML. If they did well by not destroying the growth of their past ML, I could have accepted it, but they were not good enough for that. The end of the drama was pretty bad.
Myung Soo-Hyun wrote Monthly Magazine Home too and wasted Jung So-Min and Kim Ji-Suk's chemistry.

So Hyeon-Kyeong for 49 Days, I will never forgive her for this end...

The same for Choi Ran and God's Gift - 14 Days!

Mine is less about being impressed with one work and then dealing with the disappointment of the next and more about dealing with the disappointment of the current drama. It’s hard to convey the reasons for being disappointed in the screen writing without giving away spoilers. Also it’s hard to know how much of the problem is the story and how much is the acting or director led changes. This is my attempt to share some thoughts on this topic.

Kim Eun - Something in the rain for writing the most frustrating female lead combined with a status hungry mother. The mother literally added nothing to the table her parenting style was emotionally abusive as was her relationship with her husband, but felt she was in her rights to point out everyone else inadequacies; her husband because he had no status once he retired, the children of a friend because their mum was dead and their dad had remarried and abandoned them. It was a big enough ask to expect an audience to watch these two characters but then we had a toxic ex boyfriend and a beyond ridiculous patriarchal work place thrown into the mix. It was too much without any hope of a happy ending to cleanse the palate so I think she was forced to change the ending to give something to the audience.

Kim Jieun - Why her for the most unrealistic relationship for a strong female lead. But salt was adied to the wound with the WORST ever use of a truck of doom equivalent as a plot device to get rid of a character that they clearly felt unable to work into the ending they had concocted.

Kim Ruri - Race was an excellent marriage between the story and the way it was told; the soundtrack, the beautiful transitions between the scenes etc. Then went and pulled a modern twist on the struggles within the main leads love story. I still rate this as a great drama but a very disappointing treatment of the love story.

Jo Ryeongsoo - If you wish upon me a beautiful story of healing for a young man who was horrifically abused as a child by integrating him into a found family working in a hospice which unofficially granted the residents final wishes. The writer felt character growth and a love story could only be shown through sexual exploitation, the impact of living with someone with an untreated personality disorder, and gangster level violence 😬 The love story also involved teasing this vulnerable character in a way that was quite difficult to watch knowing he was inexperienced but was doing the best he could to step out of his comfort zone.

Wow @missvictrix you do not like "Reflection of you"? I liked it because it kept up with the mystery well and had miserable characters with a complex story elevated by good acting.

I generally do not go by screenwriter's work, but once I drop a show I always check the list of dramas that the screenwriter has previously worked on to get better understanding of why a particular drama did not work tor me through their experience.

In one particular instance, I pushed through the drama (Grid Kdrama) based on their writer's credibility, but I later realized that it was not a wise decision because I regretted wasting my time on it.

In 'My Liberation Notes' when Mr Gu, after spending three solid years drowning in a bottle of liquor, single-handedly beats up a room full of generic (and much healthier) mobsters. Who is he meant to be, Jackie "Drunken Master" Chan?

I can write volumes about this topic but my approach would be more like @reply1988, the drama that went off on the right foot and then went awry, leaving you feeling like what is going on!
The most recent example is Mrs. Durian. After a memorable premiere, we got repetitive cliche tropes and a love story for the chairwoman lead that felt out of place and was left undeveloped. Why introduce a new plotline in the last four episodes?
And then the effect our time-traveling ladies had on the present? I don't think anything happened other than getting them transferred from house to house after making the lady of the house jealous.
Taking that time to introduce birth secrets or having Dol-sae's character wrestling between the love from his past life and his current life would give the drama the depth I hoped for. Perhaps making Eom his son in the present timeline too might have added to the excitement.
The ending felt abrupt and unexplained. They left it to our imagination though watching what happened to our characters would be more entertaining to watch than having the daughter-in-law fight with her brother over the mother-in-law.

I loved Mr. Sunshine, but Goblin bored me and The King: Eternal Monarch confused me.

I guess this is why the favorite writers listed in a previous thread tended to have short resumes - it's hard to keep a streak going, especially with the vagaries of production (including writer changes mid-series). But I'll list Love in Contract as a recent big disappointment since it started out with great characters and a fun premise and copped out on everything, even the ToD. I started to wonder if the writer was held hostage in a room and writing these scenes as a message for help.

I guess at this point I'm somewhat of a drama semi-veteran (My Name is Kim Sam Soon & Coffee Prince were my first K dramas) and have been let down countless times by screenwriters. Ah, they're such a fragile bunch. When it comes to great scripts, the belief I have formed is a combination of "lightning never strikes twice" and you can only have one first love. That amazing drama which you fell in love with? Congratulations on winning the drama lottery and finding a work that stirs something in your heart. But it is a lottery and winning once is already beating the odds. Accept the fact that it's probably going to be an one time occurence. So savor every minute and every line of it. Writing a drama is the equivalent of writing 8 movies (16 episodes =8 feature films). It takes a lot out of you. If you're smart, just write movies because movies can make a lot more money with a lot less energy expended. If you happen upon a winning formula, and then proceed to repeat the said formula in your next works, you will be accused of repeating the same formula in all your works (re: Makoto Shinkai) But the older and more financially comfortable you get, the harder it is to write something original. And if you try to ignore what the audience wants and just focus on what you're interested in writing about, the audience will accuse you of ignoring them and just writing what you want to write about. The best thing to do is to just accept that the wildly successful drama you wrote was anomaly that can never be repeated again: that one time everything came together perfectly, and you had the perfect screenplay, director, actors, set design, costume design, etc. You have reached a pinnacle in some ways. As a creative, you're lucky to have even one successful work. If you think about it, most of the popular actors and actresses have only one or two great dramas to their names. There's drama that made them famous, but they haven't been able to strike gold twice, despite all their fame and money. There would always be more talented actors and actresses than there are enough great screenplays to go around. This is why I have always been more attracted to the writing side of films and dramas, and have always secretly pitied actors and actresses, as handsome and beautiful and well-spoken as they are, they are nothing without a good screenplay.

Any writer that includes a serial killer in a rom com.
Insert gif of loan sharks kicking someone

Writers that use a time leap as cover for garbled messages and weak endings

30 yr olds in school costumes , that’s the director tho.

I ADORED I Hear Your Voice, and enjoyed all the screenwriter's dramas that came after... until Start Up. I am still very bitter about how the romance of that one ended. Oi.

Ohh there is alot, especially when knowing their previous work is my favourite.

Jang Yung Cheol And Jung Kyung Soon: Incarnation Of money and vagabond. After producing the absolutely delightful great drama like History of The Salaryman and Giant. Those two drama is becoming a huge letdown.

Kim Ji Woo: Shark. It seems like she is really feels burden to the superstar vehicle in Kim NamGil and Son Ye Jin. There is no complexity and heart like she usually has in her drama.

Kang Eun Kyung Dr romantic 3. Not a fan of overall her work but Really love dr romantic 1 and dr romantic 2. But dr romantic 3 feels like a huge letdown. It's just produce for fan service dr romantic fand but it didn't work at all. All case feels formulaic and the character doesn't feel relatable at all. The only storyline I like is Dr Jung in Soo's storyline.

Park Hae Young in My lebaration Notes. I Don't know why I don't feel connect at all with any of the character except Lee Min Ki's char which I relate so much after I connect so much with her previous leading lady in another oh hae Young and my mister. Does it the acting? The writing? I can't pinpoint.

There are some screenwriters that disappointed, like the Hong Sisters. i loved their previous works: You're Beautiful, Greatest Love and Master's Sun. Then they disappointed me with A Korean Odyssey and Alchemy of Souls. I skipped Big and tried watching Warm and Cozy but eventually droppes it. So their track record is very bumpy recently.

I still like Kim Eun Hee for Kingdom, Signal and Revenant. Jirisan was a mess but hopefully she will continue to do well with her Kingdom series.

Baek Mi-kyung, who wrote the hugely popular 'Lady of Dignity' (2017), then went on to write the execrable 'Melting Me Softly', the touchstone for bad K-dramas. Watching the actors struggle through that series was like watching a hostage situation.

I think my biggest disappointment was DDSSLLSol.

I just loved Shopping Wang Louie and Terius Behind Me too much. I love shows with lovely characters and supportive relationships. Something cute and light.
And that's how DDSS started but then it became... That.
It felt like the most random writing of the year. Not even daily dramas with their weird revelations and plot twists feel that random.

I also liked Chief Kim and The Fiery Priest but I wasn't able to finish Vincenzo (it's on my "on hold -forever-" list). But since everyone seemed to liked it I started to wonder if I was the one with problem. Maybe it wasn't the writer. It didn't feel like a bad show but I just didn't fell in love with the characters like in his previous works. I guess I just had really high expectations or I was waiting for another type of chemistry and dynamic from the cast. I'm not sure.

When writers let me down...
That'll be Monthly Magazine Home and Oh! Master. For MMH, it's more of extremely dissatisfied with the ending, to the point of putting it away for more than a year. And on the side of Oh! Master, it was it taking a step forward and two steps back with it's main lead Han Bi-soo. If not for Se-hee in Because This Life Is My First, I don't think I'll be forgiving and understanding of Lee Min-ki.

Trolley let me down immensely in ways I don't want to bring up anymore in details for the sake of my mental health. I do know it made me averse to any future drama giving a hint of such themes and leading me to dropping them despite loving them earlier on. I loved Trolley. I still love it. It is a highlight of my 2023 dramas, but it also became the beginning of my sour tastes with kdramas this year.

On a lesser note, recently Not Others disappointed me with the lack of emotional growth between mother and daughter. While I'll always laud them for championing the school of thought that family isn't only by blood, I was left fearing for Jin-hong and Jae-won. I feel like this two people should stay metres away from the two ladies. It's not that their ladies do not love them enough, it is that they didn't convince me enough that they'll be able to make their leading me. a priority in the same vein this men make them priorities. That's now growth to me, despite applauding them for the appending the found family school of thought.

There's one screenwriter that let me down in a way I wasn't expecting - Crash Course In Romance. And it's not the serial killer storyline that was hovering around the storyline, or them making the sweet supportive TA Dong-hui the serial killer, although those two hurt me a great deal. Not to talk about them making him commit suicide instead of a shot at proper therapy and a statement to the extremely competitive educational system that has guardians - parents or not, losing their sense of sensibility. Its them succumbing to the media pressure and making Choi Chi-yeol address Nam Haeng-seon as Noona. I was let down a great deal by the screenwriter. I am sure that scene where he addressed Haeng-soon as Noona was reshoot, that's if the show was pre-produced. It was a huge letdown.

There's one thing that rings true in the midst of my choices. It wasn't that there was no way out of the way they wrote their dramas. There were other outes but they choose that one.

I also don't track screenwriters like I do actors/actress works. Just as with any successful script, it takes the director, actors and crew to make it a good to great production.

But in recent years, Beanies have noticed some very strange good start/horrible finishes to series. The suspects for the horrible let downs are various: a director with his own viewpoint, "star" actors who make changes on set; a nosy network wanting changes to get higher ratings; financially thin studio trying to squeeze in more PPL; and public negative comments about a show forcing anxiety ridden writers to switch course.

I had expected that this whole post would just be Kim Eun-hee and Jirisan.

Mine is Oh Ji-young and Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol, but not because of the ending -- this show was dead to me when the writer made Lee Jae-wook a high schooler. Why? Why did he have to be 19 (in Korean age)? Why did the writer have to ruin my cute same-aged romance? Why did the writer have to insert the most unnecessary plot twist ever? I was so disappointed not only because I loved the first five episodes, but also because I loved the writer's previous drama Shopping King Louie, where nobody was a minor.

Let there be blood, mwahahaha!

Anyway, there are just too many examples to even know where to start, unfortunately. Like screenwriter of ARANG AND THE MAGISTRATE (arguably the best fantasy sageuk ever) and MISAENG (never saw that one, but heard only good things) also created BRIDE OF HABAEK (why?) and some idol nonsense - and that's it. I just don't get it, honestly. What happened?

Same with author of MARRIAGE NOT DATING who's following work was the abomination - and utter waste of YWJ at his best - called INTROVERTED BOSS. It was so darn bad that they had to hastily rewrite the drama DURING airing - and the result was still horrendous.

As much as I enjoyed REVENANT, nothing other than Season3 where ML rethinks the idiocy of S2 finale and takes his well-deserved throne back will ever make me forgive the writer for ruining KINGDOM after nearly two great seasons. JIRISAN was too bland to evoke any feelings from me, so I'll give her pass on that one.

Hong sisters have my utmost disrespect since MY GIRL. If you've ever wondered why LJG never did a romcom after that show - blame them, they gave my man a trauma lasting nearly two decades now lol. I've seen few other of their dramas, even somewhat enjoyed them, but every time they're doing casting rounds for a new project I pray "not my faves pls!". I do keep fond memories of MASTER'S SUN... well, its first 12 episodes or so. Pretending that few last hours never happened makes the show almost perfect.

Most other famous and beloved among kdrama fans names don't evoke much sympathy from me either. Esp those known for their romcoms/romance melos. They have their ups and downs but most of the time I just don't care.

P.S. Suggestion for the future: "Writers that you KNEW you shouldn't trust and they proved you right/still managed to let you down somehow". Sounds very ragethought-provoking to me^^

SHY BOSS had the same writer as MARRIAGE, NOT DATING. I still do not understand why and how the same writer could have stumbled so badly after writing the masterpiece which is MND.

Yup, Reflection of You was an epic train wreck.

I don't usually put too much expectation on dramas. But yes, there are a few cases where the writing was seriously unbelievable.

1. God's Gift 14 Days; after a rollercoster of emotions throughout the series, suddenly the writer felt it was cool to crush our hope in the worst way possible.

2. CCIR; I was so psyhed watching the queen of Korean Movie industry on my screen just to find the writing was such a mess. I had no idea where the writer got the idea that happy ending means all characters getting love line. And don't get me started with the way they ended the culprit.

3. I think Taxi Driver was my only hate watching drama so far. The writer needs to get the fact straight; did they write fantasy or action thriller? I wouldn't care AT ALL even when the ML raised from the dead if it's fantasy. But if not, they need to research better; it's outrageous!

I have many more in store for other dramas like Shadow Detective, The First Responder, Jinxed at First, Moon Lovers, but let's just say that dropping the shows reflected their bad writing.

That said, yes it's impossible for any writer to always write amazing script. I've yet to watch Grid from LSY but I'll still follow her even if it turns out to be a dissapoint.

Han Jung-hoon wrote one my favourite dramas of all time! SQUAD 38. I love fun heist capers. And this drama delivered and then some!

So do you know how personally attacked I felt when I watched the ending of MISSING NINE??! Which also just happens to star one my favourite actors Jung Kyung-ho??!

I know and agree that the ending of HEARTBEAT was WTF

But nothing I mean NOTHING has topped the ending of MISSING NINE. We literally have our protagonists playing with paint and laughing merrily with a SERIAL KILLER who KILLED THIER LOVED ONES. WTF WTF WTF 🤬🤬🤬

So when I saw praise for MY FELLOW CITIZENS and looked up the screenwriter, instant flashbacks flooded my brain. I was traumatised y’all and I don’t I’ve forgiven Han Jung-hoon to watch SONG OF BANDITS, it looks good but can’t help but be suspicious…

I have no screenwriter in particular to point out. I do want to give a special shout out to all the screenwriters who try to force the destiny trope down our throats by having the leads bound together somehow in childhood. Please stop. It is beyond tired as a plot device.

I have one that most people will not agree with. But Kwon Do Eun, who as far as I can tell has only written two dramas, is in my opinion enormously skilled in writing not just storylines but also characters and dialogue. But after Search WWW, which I thought was excellent (although I wasn't thrilled at the FL noona's qualms about the guy who loved her) then wrote 25-21, which was also excellent IN PARTS. But its big flaw was a writing one, not directing or acting: the retrospective framework of the narrative, which in the end meant that the ending was just an enormous letdown. If the show had ended with the bittersweet goodbye between the FL and the ML then I would have said another classic. As it is, I felt really let down. Still I really want to see another drama from her.

The drama love of my life is City Hall. So, I do keep track of the writer, the now super famous Kim Eun Sook. I don’t know how to say this, nothing has lived up to City Hall… I love a little bit of every of her drama, but not as whole heartedly for the wit and chemistry in City Hall.