American television doesn’t want me anymore.
I realized this a couple years ago when I downloaded the first season of “Breaking Bad” for distraction on a plane flight. Although I admired the clever structure of the pilot, I discovered I wasn’t curious about what would happen next. Even though I’ve worked as a high school teacher and I carry debt for hospital bills, I couldn’t relate to Walter White. And perhaps because I’m a female writer in my late thirties, I thought Walter’s late-thirties writer wife Skylar was an unrecognizable stock character. I lost interest without finishing the short first season, and it’s still sitting on my hard drive whispering that I must be lacking in good taste.
The idea among television critics that we’re living in a “golden age” for American television overlooks the fact that some of us find critically-acclaimed American television boring. The shows that get the most buzz are smart, it’s true. But they aren’t necessarily entertaining. This isn’t a golden age of television for all Americans. It’s a golden age for people who prefer intricate plots over empathy. Who can enjoy a show even if they don’t like the characters.
Television can still move me deeply. But in the past year, the television producers who make it with me aren’t the guys in Hollywood or New York. It’s the guys in Seoul, South Korea.
I was surprised by my out-of-the-blue interest in Korea, which began while I watched the first episode of my first subtitled show. Internet video-streaming sites (including Netflix and Hulu) offer large libraries of these “K-dramas,” as English-speaking fans call them. And several million Americans are watching with me, though it’s hard to quantify the online viewership. One of the largest sites, New York-based Drama Fever, serves about six to seven million US viewers a month, of whom roughly 80% are native English speakers. That’s roughly the number of people who watched the penultimate episode of “Breaking Bad” in 2013. (Independent research firm comScore confirms the site’s audience is growing, but estimate the audience at a somewhat lower 3.4 million. For comparison, that’s roughly the average audience size for the first two seasons of Game of Thrones.) Most viewers are women, according to Drama Fever—and that’s about all we have in common. The audience includes all races and a variety of tastes.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the rise of subtitled Asian shows this summer with a touch of horror, but there’s no reason to look down on Korean television. After years of government investment in the industry, their production values are excellent. Their aesthetic is different from ours, which can be jarring in mediocre shows, and they can be as corny as a Frank Capra film bathed in the collected tears of Steven Spielberg. But when the cream rises to the top, the best shows are suspenseful, funny and heartfelt. And even though I don’t speak Korean and I’ve never visited Asia, the cultural differences are minor next to the fact that I can relate to the characters in a way I haven’t related to anyone on American television since Dana Scully and Buffy Summers left the air.
One reason to watch Korean series is for three-dimensional female characters. K-dramas have their fair share of stock characters, Korean versions of season one Skylar, but they also have a good record of developing great roles for women. The characters popular with fans in recent years include an ambitious pastry chef, a tough cross-dressing tomboy, a scatter-brained spirit medium and a cynical defense attorney.
Another thing drawing some women may be that popular Korean series have a much lower body count than popular American shows—roughly one-eighth corpse per episode (my unofficial estimate), versus the US rate of nearly five corpses per episode (three if you omit cable). Korean characters tend to die of illness or in car crashes, while most fictional American corpses are the result of murder or zombie apocalypse. The numbers themselves are less important than the narrative style they suggest. American television producers have faith in stories about crime, politics and violence—and they do a good job with these subjects. But it’s increasingly hard to imagine an American drama that doesn’t have crime, politics or violence. In contrast, South Korea makes prime-time one-hour shows about families, growing up, romance, friendship—the good stuff in life. Some series are comedies, some are weepy melodramas, but most of them touch in some way on the human capacity for mixed emotions. Here in the U.S., shows about families and romance tend to be placed in the 22 minute format time-slot, which officially makes them “comedies” by Emmy standards, even when a show like “Nurse Jackie” challenges the drama-comedy distinction.
It’s tempting to attribute Korea’s growing appeal to the declining number of female writers in American television. After all, 75% of American television pilots are developed by writing teams made up entirely of men, while the vast majority of writers for prime-time Korean series are female. Superstar writers like the Hong Sisters even become household names à la Aaron Sorkin. The worldwide hit romantic comedy “Coffee Prince” had a female director as well as writer. But this fact doesn’t explain much on its own. After all, it was male writer Joss Whedon who created a few of my favorite female television characters.
What distinguishes K-dramas isn’t their subject matter or the gender of their writers, but their tone—and it’s hard to ascribe a gender to tone. Korean series are less cynical. The heroes are idealists underneath their flaws. The anti-heroes aren’t quite as despicable. The loners aren’t quite as alone. These are all aspects of the central fact about K-dramas: they need to entertain a wide swath of the population to make money. The successful K-drama provides pleasure to as many people as possible—like American television did twenty years ago before DVRs and Netflix.
Korean television shows aren’t “gritty,” and this makes even their action thrillers very different from ours. The big 2011 hit “City Hunter”—based in name only on Tsukasa Hojo’s 1985-91 manga—looks pretty dark on paper. It follows a mysterious vigilante looking for justice against the men who caused his father’s death. Dozens of people die in the first ten minutes of the first episode. The first episode also features a terrorist bombing, a kidnapping of a baby, a bunch of commandos slitting throats, a noisy shootout at a Thai drug plantation, and a leg severed by a land-mine. Though the following episodes contain less killing, the plot still revolves around betrayal, manipulation and corruption. There are knife-fights, gunfights and a really cool walking cane with a sword concealed inside. In episode seven, we watch the hero dig a bullet out of his own shoulder.
But despite the violence—which is presented mildly enough for Korean network television—the show interrogates violence from an idealistic point of view we haven’t seen on American television since before Sept. 11. The hero, Yoon-Sung, is the adopted son of a ruthless drug kingpin who raised and educated him to be a professional revenge-seeker. But in the first episode he’s already questioning his father’s quickness to shoot first, ask questions later. The guy’s got great moves in combat, but he prefers to tie his enemies up, put them in a refrigerator box, and drop them off at the district attorney’s office along with conclusive evidence of their crimes. Take that! The emotional and moral heart of the 20-episode series quickly becomes the conflict between Yoon-Sung and his father over whether to achieve their goals through killing or MacGyver-esque stunts. And the MacGyver-esque stunts are way more fun to watch.
The style of humor in “City Hunter” also steers away from cynicism. Instead of relying on snarky one-liners, the show finds humor in the characters’ internal contradictions. It’s funny that Yoon-Sung’s earnest middle-aged sidekick is addicted to the home shopping channel. It’s funny that Yoon-Sung preserves his secret identity by pretending to be feeble in front of his judo-chopping girlfriend. Leading man Lee Min-Ho has great comic timing—he’s starred in more than one popular romantic comedy—making him an action hero more in the mold of a young Cary Grant than Vin Diesel.
And like Cary Grant in a Hitchcock movie, the hero often finds himself at the mercy of the women in his life. More than once the hero’s survival depends on his crush Kim Na-Na, a fifth-level black belt who works for the Korean equivalent of the Secret Service. She occasionally needs rescuing herself—she’s not quite Buffy—but she sometimes rescues the hero in turn. A second woman, a divorced veterinarian, provides crucial help (no spoilers here). And an important secondary narrative follows Yoon-Sung’s birth mother, whose life we learn about in flashbacks. These women aren’t accessories to the hero, but the people who make his success possible.
None of these elements—the idealism, the humor, the women with original personalities—are particularly “Korean” or calculated to appeal to women. We once found these things in abundance on American television. The idealism is particularly familiar. Our film and television spent the forties and fifties plumbing idealistic questions about the moral use of violence much like the ones in “City Hunter”—they’re at the heart of the classic Westerns by John Ford, Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher. But today, these elements make for a thriller that feels unlike anything on American television right now. It’s a story about characters I want to root for.
Plenty of people enjoy America’s gritty shows. But a few million of us are bored by the joylessness on television. Before another long work week starts, we want someone to tell us a good story. If it’s a story that makes us feel like we’re living in a golden age of television, that’s even better. But first, tell us a story with characters we care for, with stakes that matter.
We didn’t leave American television. American television left us.
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Odessa Jones has a lot of degrees in a lot of subjects and she puts it all to good use in her commentary on subtitled Korean romances, including “City Hunter,” at K-Drama Today.
I wonder if you’d like “Outlander,” Odessa? There’s lots of violence and despair, but, as you say, it’s not gritty — because it’s built around romance, and because the characters are likable.
It’s also had trouble finding a critical place in the Golden Age of Television, I think. It’s had some coverage, but way less than OITNB (which it’s pretty clearly superior to in most ways, I think, though OITNB’s diversity I think has rightfully made it a source of critical attention.)
While I’m not entirely off American television (my wife and I loved the recent True Detective), I do relate to the hard-to-get-interested thing. The number of shows I’ve left unpursued after one or two episodes is a little embarrassing. Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Supernatural, Community, other stuff that just plain escapes memory. The last US show that really grabbed my attention (apart from True Detective) was Lost.
A few years back, we discovered Korean dramas. Our first was City Hunter. We were skeptical, but a friend highly recommended it. The first episode was actually not that great, but it felt like prologue so we gave episode two a shot. Then it was binge-watch-city from their on out. We finished the series in an irresponsible amount of time. Then on to another show. Then another. Then another. Coffee Prince, Love Rain, Queen In-Hyun’s Man, Sungkyunkwan Scandal, Dr Jin, My Love From Another Star.
I think part of the allure was what you pinned down, Odessa—the utter charm of the characters and the crisp tone of the shows. But for me there was another huge factor.
I really do like plot. Maybe not more than empathy, but certainly in empathy’s neighbourhood. Korean television was doing something that US television just flat wasn’t. If I can use a comics comparison, US television functions like Marvel or DC comics while Korean television is more like graphic novels. Plotwise, at any rate.
The trouble with American shows is that popularity determines duration. So long as a show is popular, it continues unabated. It’s only when a show loses steam or interest that its producers decide to wrap it up. This makes for a terrible sense of story arc. It’s like Marvel books in that way. The only way that Spider-Man will ever end is if the character just becomes unprofitable to any longer produce—and by that point, nobody will care and the good writers have all shuffled off to more fulfilling projects.
With Korean television, most stories are finished in a single season. No matter how popular City Hunter was, it wasn’t going to stretch into more seasons. At most, a second series (a City Hunter 2) would be ordered and that series would also have a stand-alone story in it.
I feel confident going into a kdrama, knowing that a story I grow attached to will come to its intended end. That it will have just enough room for its literary structure to play out. And that it will climax as intended.
No more Alias, where a sudden burst of popularity and then a sudden waning popularity demolished the show. No more abruptly cancelled shows where an “ending” had to be shoehorned in. No more shows that dribble along til no one any longer cares.
I think this might be why I liked True Detective so much. Eight episodes. A conclusion right where it was intended.
I haven’t seen “Outlander” yet, but I’ve heard good things through word of mouth. I love Gabaldon’s novel, which has, as you say, likable characters and a lot of romance. In Korea, it could be a gigantic hit. In the States, though, the show may be running into problems of genre.
Even though the novel is well-written, it took a long time to find a publisher because it didn’t belong to a genre. It wasn’t formulaic enough to belong to “romance,” but Gabaldon was told she spent too much time on romance and family for it to be science fiction or historical fiction. (Though I know some male military history buffs who love the book for its accurate details.) And it’s not literary fiction because it’s narrative driven. Gabaldon refused to cut out the romance, so it fell between genres. It’s amazing it ever got published. For years after its publication, bookstore owners were at a loss where to shelve it, apparently.
OITNB can claim to belong to the established genre of Grit, which gets a lot of critical attention. While Outlander runs into the critical prejudice against “romance.”
It’s frustrating to see Outlander get stuck in a pink ghetto. It’s an adventure story full of action. I mean, the heroine kills a wolf with her bare hands, for Pete’s sake! But the inclusion of a heterosexual relationship told from a woman’s point-of-view somehow cancels out the action for genre purposes.
Without seeing the TV version of Outlander, I can’t say for sure. But I suspect critics aren’t sure how to write about a less “gritty” show. It’s a cultural blind spot here in the States. Thanks for giving me a chance to shine some light on it, Noah!
@ Seth, Good point. Some of my favorite American shows I had to stop watching in later seasons (X-Files, sigh). The Marvel vs graphic novel comparison is good. You wouldn’t get “Sandman” if Neil Gaiman had to make sure the characters could keep going for decades. A K-drama at least has the chance to wrap up the loose ends, while an American show has to leave things unresolved for possible future seasons.
When I asked visitors to my site why they watch subtitled K-dramas, I was surprised that “having a real ending” was one of the top reasons. But those 16-episode shows can deliver great endings, in a way few American shows manage. (Even “You from Another Star” had an emotionally satisfying ending, though I found “mysterious worm-hole solves everything” unsatisfying in narrative terms.)
I think Korean TV producers wouldn’t mind if they could keep shows going longer and milk them for more money, but with rare exceptions, it usually doesn’t work. Stars don’t want to do second seasons. And since all the male stars have to head off for two years in the army at some point (before age 30), you wouldn’t be able to keep a cast together for long. Imagine if “Community” had to rotate cast while everyone did their military service! But those 16-episode shows mean that a star like Choi Jin-Hyuk managed to squeeze in three more entire shows in 2014, with the last one wrapping less than a month before his deadline to enlist.
Have you seen “King of Dramas”? It’s a K-drama satire about making K-dramas–a very entertaining look at the Korean system, which has a totally different set of commercial pressures than the American TV industry.
I haven’t seen it, but now I’ll look for it. Queen In-Hyun’s Man has a little taste of the behind-the-scenes (since the lead is a C-list actress on an in-show drama), but just a taste.
The romance in the Outlander adaptation was pretty unsatisying and certainly half-hearted apart from the wedding night stuff. Which actually demonstrates another difference between K-Dramas and Cable Romance – the lack of nudity and onscreen sex. I don’t think either of those is necessary to create mushy feelings (though they probably increase ratings). The most interesting (and disappointing) thing about Outlander was actually the violence.
I think the problem with primetime American goes way beyond a deficit of romance. I don’t think I’ve seen very many convincing friendships depicted on TV either. In fact, the one that springs to mind immediately is always Alicia+Kalinda in The Good Wife Seasons 1/2 – which also happens to have a female co-showrunner. And that was sometime back.
“But today, these elements make for a thriller that feels unlike anything on American television right now. It’s a story about characters I want to root for.”
I’m not entirely convinced of the merits of City Hunter based on this metric. It does sound a bit like what the Whedon machine is trying to do on Agents of SHIELD for example (which has no definite ending but has got better). American shows are darker but they aren’t completely devoid of complexity with regards questions of good/evil. Even Game of Thrones seems better in this department then Outlander (so far). And Fargo is better than True Detective which more or less went into a nosedive with its second half (a clear ending in this one too).
The big problem with K-Dramas is repetition and formula. It’s a thing in K-Pop as well. There seem to be a bit of repetition in plot lines since productions are on a treadmill. I have a soft spot for My Name is Kim Sam Soon from 2005 and I can’t say if very many K-Dramas have improved on it in the last decade. I’m open to viewing suggestions of course! (I’ve only watched 2 ep. of You From Another Star and nothing of City Hunter)
I’ve only seen about twelve different kdramas, but of those, few have suffered from regurgitated plots. There’s been some measure of recycled tropes, but that’s fairly common across the board with storytelling. Queen In-Hyun’s Man has been my favourite and was unlike anything I’d seen before. Even City Hunter, which follows many standard revenge-quest vectors, does so in a way that was unique (at least to me).
Part of the allure for me might be my relative unfamiliarity with the culture and stories of the Korean social envelope. Maybe these stories are timeworn there, but they feel unique and fresh to many Western audiences.
I should be clear that the “problem” only applies to me. Since some kind of template or expected relationship trajectory for the female/male leads can be entertaining and comforting for viewers. I mean, that’s the reason why people rewatch their favorite romances over and over again right? Even if the lovers are not together at the end (I suppose this could be the biggest uncertainty in these shows).
I did not watch many American Dramas,but the last character I really like is Hiro from Heroes.I think American shows tends to think characters must have “unique characteristics”,violent scenes = close to reality,and sometimes with values I can’t appreciate (eg Breaking Bad),the plots are twisted,characters’ motives and personality are inconsistent for the sake of moving the plot to lengthen the no of episodes they can milk.And even with comedies it gets old,such as Big Bang Theory .I applaud Nolan and Bale for ending the Batman series(DK) for keeping its quality.
Not saying KDrama doesn’t have this issue.Some of the writers try to put in pointless plot twists,misunderstanding inside a KDrama,but they can normally mess up to 16 or 20 eps(so number of plot twists are limited) or being axed by its station due to lack of viewers.
I’m really a cultural outsider in terms of US Drama,but I do knew that in shonen manga(Japan comics) that romance rarely gets mixed in.Was it an unfamiliarity of writing those scenes,or is a fear of being not gritty enough?
Talking about comics though,I’ve been very tired of watching another Marvel movie/drama coming.It does seems to be a new format of milking instead of keep producing new seasons for a comic book character.
I did watch some UK drama.Not all of the dramas are long winded and never ending,or it has the sense to not to shoot too many seasons.I’m thinking of watching Nordic crime series but I’m not sure what it’s like?
But KDrama is quite interesting for me,so now I watched more KDramas and almost stopped US Dramas .It’s entertaining and comforting.There’s a sense of both familiarity and alien quality in a KDrama.Some has depicted fabulous relationships between people (leads/family/friends) that I did not feel in an US Drama.
I’ll suggest Nine Times Travel and Misaeng.I think Nine has one of the best time travel premises (written and directed by the same team of Queen In Hyun),while Misaeng is on work life.It’s as anti-kdrama in terms of tv tropes,but it’s very inspirational,and the directing,acting and characters are one of the best I’ve ever watched.
@ Ng Suat Tong, Interesting about the TV “Outlander.” As I say, I haven’t seen it, I just know the book (and because I like the book I’m a bit reluctant to see the show).
@ Ng and Seth, I agree with Seth that the Korean formulas are newer to American viewers, which makes them more enjoyable. But I would also argue that all television shows have some formulaic elements. Korean shows are about the same as American shows in this regard.
Most people want a mixture of novelty and familiarity in story-telling. “City Hunter” is entertaining because it incorporates ancient story formulas (like father-son conflict) and introduces new wrinkles (modern political corruption, screwball comedy gender battles). When it uses familiar elements, it does so with a twist, keeping it surprising. This mix of old and new helped give it high ratings and good press.
But though American shows also use familiar elements (crime, more crime, vampires, crime again), the US and Korean industries market their shows very differently. In the States, marketing emphasizes novelty. In Korea, the advertising emphasizes formula–even for shows that turn out to be unformulaic. The reason Korean producers emphasize formula (even when they’re misleading viewers) is that they’re trying to get 30% audience share. No one has achieved a rating like that in the States in years.
The few K-dramas Americans hear about tend to be the ones with big ratings, like “My Love from Another Star” with its plus-30% Neilsens and a shelf full of Baeksang awards (Jo Insung, you were robbed!). “Another Star” builds on the storyline that “Kim Samsoon” introduced to K-dramas in 2005: professional woman in career crisis meets weird rich guy. It’s pretty well-constructed, but not the most innovative show of 2014.
But among Korean shows with smaller audience ratings, there’s huge variety–and creativity. Misaeng, for example, gets great praise for its depiction of the ups-and-downs of office life (I still need to watch it now that its wrapped up). My personal fave of 2014 was hands-down “It’s Okay, That’s Love,” about lovers with mental illnesses. And every year Korea produces character-driven romantic-comedies that show a rom-com doesn’t have to follow the beloved Samsoon model.
@neovd, Interesting point about shonen manga. US TV is influenced by American superhero comics, which may be even more uncomfortable with romance than shonen manga is. (If Full Metal Alchemist was an American comic, the character Winrey wouldn’t even exist.)
Since K-dramas are somewhat influenced by manga, they show the influence of shojo manga, not just shonen manga. The US has never had shojo manga or an equivalent–most Americans would be surprised to learn girls’ comics even exist. And before I discovered them myself, I would have thought “girls’ comics” meant stories about female superheroes. We’re trained over here to expect crime or supernatural adventures in comics. It’s a surprise to encounter shojo manga, with its coming-of-age dramas, romances, and slice of life stories.
When American TV producers need a story quick, they turn to Marvel comics and get…superheroes, not stories about young women making career and relationship choices. (Or they turn to DC/Vertigo comics and get…dissolute superheroes.) Korean producers in a hurry draw on “boys” adventures (shonen manga) and also “girls” romances and melodramas (shojo manga), giving them more elements to play around with.
you hit your mark here. I love dramas for all the reasons you mentioned and more. I love them so much I began writing transnational romance novels to combine the beauty of Korean writing w American girls. My first published novel The Living Miracle A Love Story will be available early 2016. Asian men are beautiful with loads of charisma with an old taste of being gentlemen. Refreshing!
This also applies to Canadian, Australian, British Dramas, sitcoms etc. The Murdoch Mysteries, Miss Fisher Mysteries, (I wish someone would show Sea Patrol), Doctor Who, Heartland (sadly if this had been made in the U. S. set in the U. S. it would have probably not been great. Sad that another country took an American book series and made a great series that was relatable)
Not to mention some other countries treat kids and TV shows way better than the U. S. does
@Odessa you should google Romance comic books. We used to have them in the U. S. too