- and oh, ok, tell me, what you want from dramas this year?

Amen and crossing fingers for your wish, the future-related drama certainly sounds interesting.

Watching Producer, i really love its first 2 episodes because it's funny in a very unconventional way and still informative (all the bts broadcasting stuff). I want more of that, more of mockumentary-style drama, or at least more of unconventional drama setting in general.

Amen on your wishes for 2016 dramas especially about the awkward and shy guys.

I think for this year, I want directors/producers who are not afraid to experiment and stick to their premise especially when the story shows promise. Don't bow down to the netizens!

Also for Kim Seul-gi and Yoon Doo-jon to star in a drama. I need this two to be together again.

in other news, I have become totally obsessed with our new superstar and listening to his songs about 25 times a day. He has a deep, low voice, but with higher undertones like a stereo...I feel like it does something to my very DNA.

What do I want from dramas this year?

1. everything alua said - better scripts, good writing and less characters used purely as plot devices. Actors alone can't save a drama if the script is too sloppy.

2. For god's sake, can they please STOP casting terrible actors (idol and otherwise) in major roles. Open up more roles to girls like Kim Seul-gi, Park So-dam etc. Obviously this is only a pipe dream, too many shit actors got lead roles in major stuff in 2015. Like *shudder* Orange Marmalade.

3. Yoon Doo-joon and Kim Seul-gi paired up again. (in a good project, goes without saying).

4. Ji-soo and Jung Eunji as OTP in a drama (same as above).

http://dramacool.cc/reply-1988-behind-episode-1.html

ah, this! Ra Mi Ran - Mother, meet Father! (I assume it is like that). And the actor playing Jung Bong is so cute with his wavy hair, why couldn´t they keep it like that??? "Jung Hwan" giggling so much that they don´t get any practice done haha. Seems like Ra Mi Ran is making them all laugh.

"Goldfish bread" is the Korean version of Japanese taiyaki, a waffle cake filled with, typically, red bean paste. The Japanese version is named after a sparidae species (porgy/bream), but the Korean one (Bunggoppang) is named after a carp species. Hence the translation "Goldfish bread".

“Goldfish bread” is the Korean version of Japanese taiyaki, a waffle cake filled with, typically, red bean paste. The Japanese version is named after a sparidae species (porgy/bream), but the Korean one (Bunggoppang) is named after a carp species. Hence the translation “Goldfish bread”.

Happy new year!!

I like your question, talking about nostalgic feeling :D

1. Goong (Princess Hours). But it was Jewel in the Palace that made my whole family practically glued to television every evening

2. They were impressive (yes, even Goong. Being first kinda has its perks). But it didn't develop my kdrama passion. Years later when i got into college, conveniently my housemate introduced me to SKK Scandal and Paradise Ranch (yep, imagine the horrible experience watching Shim Changmin, and i am cassie LOL) and it kinda started from there. Then it was Dream High and City Hunter which seal the deal.

My first drama was A Man Called god, but I didn't get truly hooked until MTETS and BOF. What got me hooked and what keeps me coming back is one, the fact that their romances are so modest. The lead pair aren't hopping into bed in the five seconds after meeting, there are few exceptions though like in cable dramas. This main point has ruined me for all other industries. Also, the fact that their stories always manage to evoke such deep feelings in me. I never knew what feels were until I started watching K-dramas.

I'm very odd in that my first k-drama encounter was with several episodes of Age of Warriors in the early 2000s. I spent quite a few years trying to find the entire show (or similar shows) and finally discovered the DVDs of Jumong on Netflix. This led me to the newly launched streaming sites and the rest is history. I'm not sure that particular watching strategy would work to get most folks hooked though.

1. Goong or Princess Hours! Fond memories of awful subtitles and binge watching.

2. Goong didn't spark my interest in kdramas. It wasn't until I saw You From Another Star that wanted to watch more. The need to feel the void was far to great.

My first kdrama was Pasta and I watched it 10 times at least, unaware that there was an entire kdrama world out there waiting for me. It is often the kdrama I recommend to first timers.

My first dramabeans thread kdrama was Faith where I discovered that discussing my angst and joy with other fans was wonderful therapy to get me to the next week's episodes. Not to mention the recapper's insights. There was no turning back.

Happy New Year beanies kdrama community!♥

I watched jdoramas and taiwanese before kdramas, I am sure I have mentioned before what my first was, but I can´t remember now. watched bits and pieces of different things before sticking to some, but I always watch several at the same time. some of the firsts were You Are Beautiful, My Princess and The Return of Iljimae, and Last Scandal. the drama that first made a strong impression though was My Girl.

The first K-drama I ever came across was "Men of the Bathhouse" during the 90s. I didn't particularly like it, but compared to weekend dramas today, it was quite good.

It's funny how a lot people said Goong because that too was my very first kdrama (however i ended up finishing Full House first because I was waiting for the last few episodes of Goong to be aired) lol

Back in those days - subtitles took DAYS and were not nearly as accurate or precise as the amazing job volunteers do these days!

Hanzawa Naoki is FANTASTIC. Don't let the fact that the hero is a middle-aged banker put you off, it's fast-paced and action-packed as any thriller, and Sakai Masato is great as the eponymous hero.

"Hanzawa Naoki" is amazing, this drama is what brought me to watch jdramas again after so many years without it.

Thanks for the recommends - and thanks for the "yes" or "o" comments - I've been looking for another jdrama to watch.

Special category: Best Multiple-Character Performance
Several shows this year tried different variations of this. And considering the hourly rates of the actors involved, I bet the show-runners thought that: "Pay once, get 6 additional roles for free" was a good deal.

Nominated are:
* Kim So-hyun (School 2015)
* Ji Sung (KMHM)
* Hyun Bin (Hyde, Jekyll, Me)
* Park Soo-ae (Mask)
* Park Bo-young (Oh My Ghost)

Special category: Timeslot Champion
Timeslots are not what they used to be. Still, let's take a look at the primetime lineups this year. I picked the three most convincing (in my opinion) shows per channel.

Nominated:
* KBS Mon/Tue (Healer, I Remember You, Sassy Go Go)
* MBC Wed/Thu (KMHM, Angry Mom, She Was Pretty)
* SBS Mon/Tue (Punch, Grapevine, Mrs Cop)
* tvN Fri/Sat (Oh My Ghost, Twenty Again, Reply 1988)

Special category: Best Couple
Being the crabby old geezer I am, I hate couples. Especially happy couples. But what can I do, they are an/the essential ingredient to any K-drama. Let's give them an award and hope they stay off my lawn.

Nominated:
* Mask: Choi Min-woo & Byun Ji-suk (Joo Ji-hoon & Park Soo-ae)
* Healer: Seo Jung-hoo & Chae Young-shin (Ji Chang-wook & Park Min-young)
* Twenty Again: Cha Hyun-suk & Ha No-ra (Lee Sang-yoon & Choi Ji-won)
* Reply 1988: Sun-woo & Bo-ra (Go Kyung-pyo & Ryu Hye-young)
* Punch: Park Jung Hwan & Lee Tae Joon (Kim Rae-won & Jo Jae-hyun)

Best Screenplay
Writing a story, writing the characters, writing the scenes, and writing everything in a way that it works together rather well is awfully hard. On top of that, I admit that my individual concepts of "good screen writing" and the K-drama premise of "good writing" are very different. Even after so many years, I still insist that writing shallow characters, beaufitul but pointless scenes or copy-pasting stock story-lines is not good writing, no matter how often people keep telling me the opposite. I guess my learning ability got lost over the years.

Nominated:
* Twenty Again (tvN)
* Awl (jtbc)
* Heard It Through The Grapevine (SBS)
* I Remember You (KBS)
* Reply 1988 (tvN)

A few shows from the short-list didn't make it by a hair. For example, "Healer" had serious issues with its overall plot and the writing became sub-par towards the end; and "Punch" lost out due to its repetitive and uninspired plot writing in the second half of the show.

Best Production
This award recognises the shows that excelled in scene direction, set and costume design, camera work, audio and visual editing, this kind of thing, as a means to support the show as a whole (and not just because).

Nominated:
* Healer (KBS)
* Reply 1988 (tvN)
* I Remember You (KBS)
* Heard It Through The Grapevine (SBS)
* Punch (SBS)

The final shows not to be nominated from the short-list were "My Beautiful Bride" and "Last", resulting in a strange underrepresentation of cable dramas. It did feel like the public network productions upped their game in this respect.

Best Lead Acting

Nominated:
* Seo In-gook (I Remember You)
* Kim Hee-sun (Angry Mom)
* Jo Jung-suk (Oh My Ghost)
* Park Bo-young (Oh My Ghost)
* Park Min-young (Healer)

Another very long short-list to handle. Last names to drop were Ji Chang-wook and Go Ah-sung. Go might have shown an even stronger performance than Park Min-young, but with Go's credentials and experience, I'm less inclined to forgive her the small lapses she showed in "Grapevine".

Best Supporting Acting
I confess, this category is plain stupid. There are thousands of supporting roles (with only two or three lead roles per drama), and a good portion of them are portrayed by fantastic actors and actresses. It took me days to get a "short-list" that was even remotely manageable, and more days to come up with five nominees.

Nominated:
* Park Hyuk-kwon (Punch, Unkind Women, Producer)
* Ra Mi-ran (Reply 1988)
* Kil Hae-yeon (Miss Mamma Mia, Grapevine, Assembly, Sassy Go Go)
* Sung Dong-il (Reply 1988)
* Yoo Ho-jung (Grapevine)

I feel a bit bad, especially towards the younger generations, who had a very good year with many solidifying or break-out performances. But what can you do when the middle generations are so freakingly strong.

Best Ensemble Acting
Some shows are all about their breeding pair and don't want to waste resources on anything else. That's great and all, but let's appreciate once in while when the casting director*, the writer, the film director and the acting ensemble really commit to their profession to give life to the show.

*) Sometimes I wonder whether K-dramas actually have casting directors or whether they really do it in the way K-dramas themselves depict the process: simply based on favouritism, nepotism and corruption.

Nominated:
* The Village (SBS)
* Reply 1988 (tvN)
* Punch (SBS)
* Heard It Through The Grapevine (SBS)
* Oh My Ghost (tvN)

LOL! GRUMPY awards! Does that mean we choose the best or the worst? Should we choose the one we grumble about the most? :D

new season comes soon....so maybe something will grab you.

I never really felt YSH but now!!! wow! the feels!

Have a wonderful new year!

I did use an example from OMV to explain what kdrama-ness was to a non-watcher:

On Christmas Eve, the aimless young man - a street fighter - who was taken in by a compassionate Chaebol (rich heir of a top Korean conglomerate) with his own history of suffering, gets a phone call from his birth mother who hasn't seen him since she gave him up after he was born in jail that she wants to see him. Chaebol is happy for him, tosses him his keys and tells him to take his car to meet his mother. In the meantime, the overseeing loyal director of the Chaebol's affairs discovers there is a plot by a disgruntled family member-in-law to kill the Chabeol that night. Realizing that the murderer is going to ram his car, and of course he is not the one driving it, Chaebol dashes off the intercept the planned accident which results in him being badly hurt and laid up for a year. All of his childhood memories of painful treatments for cancer (not to mention losing his mother at the same time) flood his mind and he is troubled. He keeps himself in isollation from those who care about him to "work through it" for a year. And that's just one in-the-middle episode :)

I'm not sure the scenario convinced him to watch a kdrama., but certainly is is an example of a typical convoluted kdrama plot. That's what I love so much about them!

Carole ~

Glamorous Temptation: The crazy is there waiting for your return.

Carole -

Oh my! I'm already interested in ep 25 of Six Flying Dragons! ...... I'm barely up to ep 18 though. ...... It's truly a fantastic drama. I'm glad you're enjoying it also.

I'm looking forward to Descendants of the Sun also. I'm curious about the whole pre-produced situation and how that affected, if it did, the final product that ends up on our screen.

Happy New Year to you too!

OOOOoooo I'm going to go watch Dilwale tomorrow and am hoping I like it as much as you did. SRK and Kajol are my favorite OTP since I could understand Hindi so I knew I'd have to check it out.

On other note though - have you seen Bajirao Mastani?! Oh goddess, it's absolutely breathtaking...I walked out wishing I could capture every single frame of that movie and making it into a poster. Also fantastic acting by the cast and despite Priyanka Chopra not being the main lead in the movie, she stole the show.

Is miss korea that good? I started watching it,but then lost interest at episode 4 or something.

azka -

"Lee Bangji's groupie" ..... *smiling*

Six Flying Dragons is quite amazing indeed! Glad you're enjoying it!

well, I would like to see Bogummie in Running man as well. <But 1N2D might also be good, I would like to see his cooking skills or something like that