1. I was wondering about this, how many dramas do you think end well, or a more liberal criteria, actually had a good 2nd half & didn’t go down hill?

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    2. I think the percentage of shows that get bad towards the end of their run is higher than the amount of shows that are just outright bad.

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      I also think so.
      One of the rare dramas that had a better second half than the first part was Healer.
      There are shows that have a perfect balance between first and second part (Forest of Secrets, S1 and S2), or to mention a couple of this year: Memorials, My Unfamiliar Family and The Good Detective.
      There are dramas that have a good balance on both parts, but somehow you feel the end could have been a little more… more… like When the Weather is fine and It’s Okay not to be Okay.
      As for the rest, I’m usually a little (or a lot) disappointed on second half: Flower of evil, Do you Like Brahms, Memorist, Oh my baby, When my love blooms, Hi Bye Mama!

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        ☝️ Second Memorials and MUF as #noslumpdramas!

        I’m add Hyena, Mystic Pop-up Bar and Zombie Detective to the #noslumpdrama list. For me, this has been a good drama year 😄

        Also, Netflix shorter runs worked well for Extracurricular, Kingdom and School Nurse Files, though I’m not sure if we can classify these as “typical” dramas

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          I think Extracurricular might fall in the category of dramas that got better as it went on!

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            Extracurricular is THE drama I recommend to non-drama watchers. Found it extremely good

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          MPUB is just perfect.

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        I think the problem is that scripts don’t actually have enough content to last the whole run. And then you throw in the fact that things are shot Within a few days of airing, and sometimes with scripts of future episodes still being written.

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        Interesting, I thought IONTBO’s second half was disappointing. I thought it lost a lot of its sparkle in the last few episodes in particular.

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          I was terribly disappointed with the whole Nurse Park/Mum story, but I felt they it was sorted out right and the last episode was sweet enough for me to almost forget about that forgettable part of the show.

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            I think I was overall disappointed with how they handled Moon-young’s condition and Sang-tae’s autism. With respect to the latter especially, it seemed like ST’s autism just became an amusing quirk about him by the end of the show and I found that disingenuous as well as off-putting.

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      No doubt about that! I have my own very short list of #noslumpdramas 🤣

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      Two dramas from this year that I liked and which I think had stronger endings than beginnings are Lost Romance and A Piece of Your Mind.

      Dramas from this year which I liked and which were pretty even throughout include Diary of a Prosecutor, Hyena, Hospital Playlist, I’ll Find You on a Beautiful Day, Memorials, and Forest of Secrets 2.

      A ton of dramas started off good this year but declined in the second half IMO: Dinner Mate, Flower of Evil, Do You Like Brahms?, It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, etc.

      Overall, I think the really rare dramas are the ones which get stronger as the drama progresses. I think there are very few of those.

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      It’s ep 12! In a lot of dramas, once they get the OTP to kiss, the plot basically looses momentum and Writers start throwing in random stuff to create tension… I guess most romantic centered dramas just don’t have enough going on to fill up all those hours

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    For me it’s pretty uncommon to find a show that doesn’t go downhill at the end (or at least goes off the rails around ep14/15) even if they pull it back for the final.

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      I keep notes on MyDramaList and there’s not many that say ‘good all the way through’ 😄, maybe three out of 60-something.

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    The ones that have a shorter episode number tend to stay the same for the entire run. Some that I thought got better as episodes went by were The Package and Mystic Pop Up Bar, Zombie Detective, all only 12 episodes. For longer ones IOTNBO had a mostly decent second half. Drama writers should consider an episode cut if they don’t have enough material to sustain the story for 16-20 episodes. I feel that especially for romantic comedies there tends to be a huge tonal swift towards the end and instead of cute comedy they turn into melodramas.

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      I totally agree with you. Dramas don’t have to be 16 episodes just because. There are a little number of dramas that “deserve” such number of episodes and don’t have a couple of “fillers” that make your eyes roll.

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        Yes! Rom-coms turned into melos are one of my biggest peeves in Dramaland! I totally hate it when I get lured into a shiny quirky romcom just to get hit on the head with the kdrama trifecta:

        a) childhood trauma / awful parents
        b) noble idiocy fueled separations,
        c) senseless time-jumps to get the growth-free OTP together for the last 2 minutes of the show

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        I have been saying for YEARS, and have written much about it too, that the majority of 16 episode shows should be 12, and the majority of 20s should be 16. A few could make 14 work too, and very few should be longer overall.
        But on the whole, I am a staunch supporter of the 12 episode format.

        I am of the belief that stories are hard to end. And so with kdramas that rely on their own formulas and tropes probably too much, many writers don’t even know where the story is going, or what they’re going to do with it, let alone how to end it, and so ofc, it inevitably derails.
        I also think that Kdramas are still learning to break their own formulas, and use what is best of that formula (because much is, despite everything) in the best possible way for the best possible outcome. I would have said two years ago, that they hadn’t learnt it at all yet- but we’re seeing a rise of shorter dramas now, and excellent ones at that (MPUB and Extracurricular are perfect examples of this) which do play with or break the formula.

        I am also of the belief that many storytellers (tv show writers, novelists etc) these days are not actually taught how to tell stories well, and certainly not how to END them well, and that storytelling as a craft and art is dying and being replaced with fast food entertainment; things that sell and are consumable (mostly: to the masses a lot more is palatable and tolerable anyhow) rather than a piece of art. Obviously there are exceptions, but I think they are getting rarer and rarer, and you see this in kdrama as well.

        To answer your question, ElKwesi, on the end of this: for me personally I would classify about 8-15% of the dramas I’ve watched as good and reccomendable.
        I would probably agree, as a generalisation, that yes, there are more dramas that go down hill in the 2nd half/ end badly than overall bad dramas- however I would also argue that a) all bad overall dramas have bad endings as well and b) the bad ending of a show can make the whole show bad, or call into question what was even good about the first half, and expose holes that where there from the beginning that were not noticeable before.

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