Bear with me here. I am not talking about Cancer Dramas, where the cancer is built into the premise and you know what you are getting into from the get-go ala Uncontrollably Fond or Marriage Contract. I am talking about when you are watching something else entirely, say a happy fluffy rom-com, when things suddenly take a sharp left turn and one of your main characters gets cancer. So be warned — there will be major spoilers below.

After reading Lollypip’s entry on Marriage Before Dating, a known catnip of mine, I looked up and watched Wonderful Life, the only show she mentioned that I hadn’t already watched and loved. I was watching it in bits and pieces, an episode here and an episode there, in between my live watches. And very much enjoying it. And then the baby got leukemia. And suddenly I had watched 5 episodes in a row, and it was 4am and I needed to be at work in only a few short hours.

Now, I’ve been a drama addict for a few years now, and I’ve got it mostly under control now. (Shut up! I said mostly!) I’ve figured out the secret to avoiding all night marathons, and this no longer happens to me. So I was caught by surprise when I wasn’t able to put Wonderful Life down. Which got me to thinking about the last time this had happened.

Single Dad in Love. You’ve probably never heard of it since this is an old and not particularly good show. I found it while browsing through DC and liked the title (single dads being a favorite trope of mine). Read the summary — titular Single Dad falls for Heroine, whose stepmother happens to be his ex — and decided I had to see how they were going to navigate that mess. Cause you know Koreans are not just going to shrug and say, “Well, this is going to make family dinners awkward.” So I started watching it, and it was cute. Nothing to write home about, but cute. And then the hero discovered the family connection. And then the kid got cancer. Since apparently “my baby-mama is my potential mother-in-law” does not provide enough angst. So I kept watching late into the night to see if the kid got saved. He did. Yay! But then the hero got cancer too. I kept plowing through, waiting for them to clear up the cancer so they could get around to sorting out the family stuff. But no. Apparently the writer decided to take the easy way out and ended the drama right before the hero went in for brain surgery to remove the tumor. Gah!!!!

It was the exact same thing both times that had suckered me into pulling an all nighter watching dramas. I tried to think if this had happened before, mentally going through my list of dramas to see if these two shows were flukes, or if I had been sucked in by this before. And I remembered Bad Couple. This one I watched early in my drama-watching career, when all-nighters were not such a rarity.

But yes, when the heroine suddenly got cancer, I got sucked in even deeper. (I am saying even deeper because I was already in love with Bad Couple well before the cancer. I recognize that it is not the best show out there, but I loved it. It was my first Favorite KDrama that I watched multiple times. I still look back on it fondly. And still have a bit of a lingering crush on Ryu Soo-young left over from that show.)

Anyway, that is what I meant when I say I discovered a Stealth Catnip. I don’t go out looking for dramas with a cancer plot-twist. As a matter of fact, I find it to be manipulative and lazy writing. If I know about it beforehand, I will avoid it. But, dagnabbit, it works. At least on me. Blindside me with cancer and I will be glued to your drama late into the night and biting my nails to the end.