[Dramaddictally’s Edition] A recap writer’s most memorable K-drama viewings
by Dramaddictally
IU in When Life Gives You Tangerines
Why a drama sticks in our minds depends on many things. Sometimes it’s timing – a drama that draws up whatever we’ve got going on in our lives at that moment and makes the emotions make sense. Other times, it has to do with where we are – in our lives or the world – and the way we connect with what’s on screen. Maybe we laughed more than ever before. Or cried our eyes out, unable to see the story through the tears.
Some of the most memorable viewings also have to do with who we’re with, whether it’s a close friend on the couch or an online watch party with an endless chat. For me, the experience of watching K-dramas changed when I started writing for Dramabeans, covering series as they aired. A live watch or a binge will always leave a different impression, but my most memorable viewings have turned out to be those that I watched in sync with the DB community.
Kim Hye-yoon, Song Geon-hee in Lovely Runner
Coming back every week to read comments that interact with what I wrote forced me to think harder, watch closer, and replay scenes more than usual in order to say something that resonated with fans – or drove them into ire over my differing opinion.
The list I present below contains my most memorable viewings with an engaged audience, since I began writing for DB in 2022. And it’s no surprise that each of these dramas is among my favorites even now. They’re memorable because they mattered – not just as stories in themselves – but as representations of the fun, openness, and self-expression that comes along with watching dramas “together.”
For me, they also represent a kind of progression – a coming-of-age – as I got my footing and found my voice, which couldn’t have happened without the continuous comments that showed me how it felt when someone laughed at my jokes, cried at my commentary, or told me that they somehow felt seen. With that, how could they not be my favorite coverage? And so, whether these watches were memorable for you as well, or you have other dramas to share, I’ll be looking forward to your comments.
The Interest of Love (2022)
The Interest of Love is a complex story about longing and infatuation, which might be love, but hurts like hell. Based on a novel, the series stars Yoo Yeon-seok and Moon Ga-young as colleagues at a bank, where he has a heavy crush on her and she’s very hard to read.
What I love about this drama is that it’s a little hard to stomach. And by that I mean, the subtle cruelties in the characters’ behaviors – motivated by their upbringings and social circumstances – are realistic, even relatable, but also very unlikable. The female lead is particularly hard to root for, and watching this show became an exercise in trying to decode her psychology and underlying feelings. Many viewers found this uncomfortable and were unhappy with the resolution.
My take on the drama as I wrote about it, was to try to comprehend the female lead while still letting her be unlikable. So much of it had to do with social class and insecurity, the trauma and baggage we all bring to relationships, and figuring out if happiness is really related to getting the one you want.
I let myself be angry and emotional as I analyzed, leading to the first comments of true vitriol I experienced on the site. But also, it was the first time I received so many thank yous, saying that I encapsulated viewers’ feelings or helped give them language for what they felt but couldn’t explain. As much as the story has stuck with me over the years, those words of shared experience and meaning-making tipped this into the category of most memorable viewings, for good and for bad.
Call It Love (2023)
Call It Love is one of those dramas that I intended to watch again as soon as it was over, but then decided I wanted to sit with my initial experience. It’s a drama that’s quiet, tender, and fiery all at once, with a visual perspective that conveys the loneliness of the characters without saying a word. A story of love, longing, and the desire for revenge, viewers were divided over the pink filter that covered every shot, but came together over the intense emotions that this show provoked.
Lee Sung-kyung and Kim Young-kwang star as the tragic lovers whose family struggles lead them toward each other, but then also keep them apart. And my memory of watching this show was a visceral pain the whole way through. Even – or especially – when the characters realize that what they feel is love, the pain is bleeding through the screen and transmitted directly to us.
And so I wrote the recaps with that bloodied heart, unable to keep my sensitivities at bay. What I got back was an outpouring of tears, with commenters confessing that they cried again while reading. Each week, it was a collective crying party, with all of us trying to make sense of how much we felt.
Unfortunately, the final episode disappointed me, but happily, I wasn’t the only one. And even then, we banded together over our frustration at the finale, the journey we’d all just been taken on, and the complicated feelings we were left with. Mostly, we wondered how we’d move on to the next drama after all that intensity. But of course, the answer is always in the next collective watch.
King the Land (2023)
Let’s preface this narrative with the fact that Junho (according to me) is the most beautiful person on the planet. I’ve followed his career, watched him in any video I can get my hands on (as idol or actor), and was absolutely dying to cover one of his dramas. King the Land marks the first time I was able to land that writerly role, and it was one of the greatest watches of all time.
This is a rom-com, set in a hotel, where the rich hotel heir (Junho) falls for one of the staff (played by Yoon-ah). With incredible global viewership, and a lot of praise all over the internet, the commenters on DB were not convinced. But I did not let that stop me from being honest about the fact that I loved this show. In fact, the main critique from viewers was that it lacked conflict – which is precisely what I loved.
And so, each week, I let my squee out in full force, capturing breathtaking images of Junho in the screenshots and not letting the naysayers rain on my parade. But then, a funny thing happened. Those of us on the rainbow-y side of the fence started to be a bigger proportion of the comments, and even those who were unconvinced felt their mood lift with the fun-ness of the recaps.
By the end, we were rolling in laughter, squeals, and our own brand of delirious-over-Junho jokes. Maybe I went a little overboard in the final recap with all those linked videos as a tribute to my bias, but fan service or not, I can say we had a good time.
Lovely Runner (2024)
I wasn’t expecting Lovely Runner to be the hit that it turned out to be but right from the initial episodes, I and a legion of fans were on board. This time-slip drama about a fangirl who has to save her idol crush doesn’t always make perfect sense (I mean, with time travel, it’s tough) and has some extraneous plot points (a lackadaisically motivated killer), but man is the central love story a bullet.
Starring Kim Hye-yoon as the fangirl, Byun Woo-seok as the idol, and Song Geon-hee as the why-is-he-so-attractive third party in the love triangle, the drama mixes sweet, funny, and sad in ways that measure up to perfection. It’s high energy and sometimes hard to follow – but, thankfully, the recaps only aligned with the former (or so I hear).
As I wrote each week, full of the joy and excitement that I saw on screen, the pattern that emerged was that we all loved replaying the moments of the show just as much as we liked watching them the first time. And for a show that was about going back in time to replay certain moments and try to get them right, this seemed entirely in line with the drama’s essence. I also took the liberty to cut out all the boring side stories, which – if we were getting a do over – this drama could have done without.
The comments were a meta-mashup of what had happened, what we wished had happened, and what we thought could happen next, making it a truly sci-fi experience that one commenter said made them as warm as the best fanfiction. With that kind of collective creativity, of course this was an unforgettable viewing.
When Life Gives You Tangerines (2025)
Last year’s mega-hit When Life Gives You Tangerines was by far my favorite drama to cover. A sweeping story about generations of women, family ties, and the cultural and economic turns in contemporary South Korean history, this drama was so phenomenal in so many ways – with an amazing performance by IU in two roles. And as a writer (who’s secretly a sociologist), it gave me a chance to sneak in some social analysis to put the story in perspective.
Since this drama broke records with global views, my writing also had an overwhelming audience that made me sit up straight and take it seriously. On one hand, I felt relief at the thank you notes I received for doing the drama justice. And on the other hand, I was moved by how open people were in the comments, given what the story was stirring up emotionally for many viewers.
The drama is a masterpiece in many ways, and my task was to balance the story we were seeing on screen with what was unspoken, but I didn’t want to tip into melodrama or inauthentic attention. Surprisingly, people wrote to me with genuine gratitude (sometimes in tears), as if there were fear at how poorly it could have been done, and they were thankful that I hadn’t mired something that meant so much to them. In fact, they said, I’d added to the experience.
While some of the essays I’ve written for Dramabeans have received this kind of heartfelt thanks – the one where I feel I’ve actually soothed a nerve – it was the first and only time I felt that kind of connection from a series of recaps, and where I knew I wouldn’t be able to say thank you enough in return. Because it’s that kind of connection that we all seek when we express our thoughts, whether to put them on paper or pseudonymously online. Not for ego, or clicks or likes or views, but because there is nothing more meaningful – or memorable – than knowing your words had an upbeat impact.
Junho and Yoon-ah in King the Land
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