How Not To Do A Drama

Note: This might have a few spoilers. I apologize in advance.

Last week I watched a short drama, sort of to pass the time since I'm still getting used to being on the night shift again. It's an unusually short drama, only 10 episodes, called Nail Shop Paris. It has an interesting concept of a internet story writer disguising herself as a man -- a common trope in K-Dramas -- to get a job at a nail shop, where only men work -- another common trope -- in order to be close to the muse of her latest story. It has the usual flock of flower boys that are included in this kind of drama, and I really enjoyed watch it. It was a train wreck from the start, but still fun to watch.

So the story is Yeo-Joo is a writer who was recently accused of plagiarism and needs to write a new story that will clear her name. After her roommate Ji-Soo suggests she go people watching to find her next story she witnesses a man rescue a woman in the subway from a crazy person, and she decides to follow him. Turns out this man is Alex, a man who works as a manicurist at a high end nail salon. Yeo-Joo decides she wants to get close to him to find out more about him. Fortunately the nail salon is hiring. Unfortunately it is only hiring men. So of course she disguises herself as a man and joins the crew at the nail salon where she meets Kay, the resident ice prince, and Jin, the 'smiley angel.'

And then of course, wacky things happen because this is a woman pretending to be a man in a nail salon.

Throughout most of the drama, I liked it. It was a weird kind of like, because of how bad a lot of it was. I mean, there was a lot of good, but the bad and the underwhelming got in the way. It was a fun, mostly fluffy feel good kind of drama, which I like sometimes, and I liked enough of the characters to care about what happened to them Though looking back, that might have been because of the actors, not the characters themselves. Like people say, hindsight is 20/20.

While this was a good, light drama to watch, it was also the first drama I've come across that I ended up not liking in the end. Here's why.

Mostly, it was the final episode and the ending. It was horribly rushed, and they tried to fit three different very huge revelations in the last ten minutes. It was confusing, and poorly done. If things had been  spread throughout the last half of the drama, instead of the last half of the last episode, then I might have liked it better.

Then there was the main character, Yeo-Joo. She was a good character, I guess. I can't really pinpoint anything specific that I didn't like about her, but as the drama went on I didn't like a lot of the things she did and she just didn't seem like a very strong person. By about the middle of the drama I realized I didn't consider her as female at all. Maybe it was just that she actually looked male, or maybe it was that she rarely acted feminine. Even when she was with people who knew her secret, she still acted the same. And then in the last two episodes when she finally did start acting more like a girl, it felt flat and forced.

Then there was the romance. Honestly, I felt a bit conned by the end, because I had gone into the drama assuming one thing, and it ended up completely different in the end. I'm usually pretty good at picking out who the lead guy is, and who the girl's going to end up with. Not so with this one. The usual signs were there, but they were almost like false signs. So the one I thought throughout the whole drama was the second string guy -- Kay -- turned out to be the lead guy. That left me with a bit of a nasty taste in my mouth. And on top of that the love triangle wasn't handled well at all. First, the 'main guy', Alex treated her like a loved little brother for most of the drama, and then suddenly BAM! he has deep feelings for her as a woman.

And the real main guy, Kay, did one of the dumbest things I have ever heard of. Near the end, when it was getting close to the time for Yeo-Joo to chose which guy she ends up with, both guys know that she's a girl, and both guys know that the other guy likes her. But Kay has been dating her, sort of secretly, and it's only been recently that Alex started liking her, or at least showing that he liked her. And when Alex, in his own way, said that he would give up for Kay, Kay got all pissed off and claimed that he didn't want to be seen as pathetic. For some strange reason. And demanded it be made into a contest. What?

The other thing that really got me in the end was she didn't end up having to really chose between the two guys. She ended up getting to keep both of them, which to me felt like cheating. Much like how the Twilight series ended, the girl got everything in the end. Which is not how it is in real life. There is always going to be a loser in real life, and sometimes I wish dramas would show that. Yes, we all want to know that the other guy or the other girl gets a happy ending too, but not if it weakens the rest of the story. And plus, all I could think of how hard it must have been for Alex to continue being around the woman he loved while she was with another man. So not only did it not make sense, but it caused pointless heartache for the second string guy, when it should have just been ended cleanly so he can move on and find someone else.

Of the two guys in the love triangle, I much preferred Alex, the guy she didn't end up marrying. He was softer, gentler, and always put others first. Always. Even when it came to the girl he loved. I would have chosen him, instead of the other guy who was jealous and anxious and picked on the girl, even after they got together.

But then, that's just me.

Overall, I enjoyed watching the drama, for all it's faults. It was entertaining to watch this train wreck of a drama, and there was a lot of things that I did like about it. I might watch it again in the future, if only to watch Alex, but I will most definitely not watch the last episode. Just thinking about it makes me shudder.

So, dear readers, have you ever watched anything -- K-Drama or not -- where you hated the ending? Tell me about it in the comments!

Thanks for reading!