What I watched:
Dramaworld Season 1
What I saw:
K-Dramas vary in different themes, and can have a ton of twists and turns; but ultimately they all have the same structure. Poor girl likes a nice rich guy who is seemingly out of her league. Then coincidence causes a rich jerk who acts like he doesn't care enter her life, and he ends up falling in love with her and lavishes her with gifts. Poor girl, due to modest living all poor people have, rejects rich jerk at first. But then she ends up falling in love with the rich jerk leaving the nice rich guy, who by now has also fallen in love with her, by the wayside. Oh, and the rich jerk has a rich "bitchy side character" who is throwing herself at the rich jerk the whole time but he constantly rejects. Now anything can happen in between all of that. There's hit and runs, other side characters could be killed, people get put on trial for murder, literally anything can happen. But, one thing for certain is that all the elements I just mentioned remain the same.
Dramaworld takes all of those tropes, and turns it on it's head. The main character, Claire, is a huge K-Drama fan because it is crazy yet predictable world. It's a world where there are rules and everything happens for a reason, unlike the real world where her mother has recently died from illness, leaving only her and her dad. However, all she does is watch K-Drama, and her life is at a standstill. Then, while cleaning up he dad's deli shop, she magically gets pulled into the show she is watching, where she learns there's a whole world where K-Drama shows play out. This world is called (you guessed it), Dramaworld. There, a man named Seth explains the two of them are facilitators, people chosen to create all the coincidences that bring the leading man and lady into a happy ending. All the far-fetched coincidences that happen on the show are deliberate, which become funny to watch someone like Claire take on the challenge of facilitating.
There's a book of rules and laws of Dramaworld, which basically is a list of all the funny tropes of K-Dramas; such as a leading man can never let a girl fall and hit the ground, drunken girls are given piggybacks without question, and if you save someone's life they instantly fall in love with the rescuer. It is entertaining to see all of those things get listed and played out at random throughout the show (while the quality of the audio and music aren't the greatest, it runs through some of the tropes they play off of).
Claire ends up messing up and goes from creating events in the background to being a strong presence on the drama she is watching/facilitating. She goes from not "being a main character in her own life" to taking charge and figuring out what's really going on in the show. Side characters end up playing a larger role in this show, which I thought was interesting since it broke the mold of traditional K-Drama. The message is even if we feel like there is nothing going on for us in life, all you have to do is take charge and make decisions, which will cause change in one way or another. We have the power to break the mold of our lives, if we choose to.
The show has really good storytelling elements, and the episodes run at about 10-15 minutes so you can binge watch them all on Viki or Netflix in a couple of hours. It's definitely geared to fans of K-Dramas, so if you haven't seen at least a few real dramas then you probably won't get some references or cameos of actual K-Drama stars. That being said, I showed it to my mother who has never watched a K-Drama and she still really enjoyed it for its own story (although it probably helped that she used to watch telenovelas, which are just Mexican Dramas). If you have a couple of hours to kill, I recommend giving it a try.
Are there any K-Drama fans out there? And if so, what are some of your favorite ones? Let me know in the comments!
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