It seems 2023 was the year of badly executed endings. By that I mean, the ending either ruined a series because it was so bad or the ending was below par of an otherwise great series. Why do you think that is, as the trend seems set to continue in 2024?
In western media we‘d say that they must have changed writers towards the end as this kind of shift in quality makes it feel like both halves of the series were written and created by completely different people/teams. (lol)
I don't think this is anything new at all. It's the main reason I gave up live-watching Dramas several years ago. K Dramas have ALWAYS had a history of botched landings, and after a few years of putting up with (2014-2018) I gave up and only start shows after they've aired. Strictly from my limited experience and in personal opinion, possible reasons include:
A change of writers is a common reason - it happened A LOT back in the day. Other factors that are less common now than formerly (but still do happen) are when shows have their episode count changed - either extended or cut, according to ratings. That destroys works without fail (King2Hearts!) and is often not the writer's call.
Genre-mixed shows might also be part of the problem. For example, basically every K Drama "romance" now has to have a serial killer/psychopath included, and often Dramas with very different genre elements may be written by a writer skilled in only one of those genres. Or, the Drama is a collaboration and the different genre contributors don't gel. And finally, there's the issue of series length. I'm hoping that this may become less of an issue as shorter K Dramas become the norm, because Dramas that depend on pointless filler to pad out runtime often crash and burn in the finale
That makes a lot of sense.
Unfortunately even though shorter K-dramas are becoming the norm, I find that not much has changed in regards to the structuring of episodes. They still have useless filler episodes in the middle, which with less episodes makes the endings feel even more rushed and like some of the story is missing/underdeveloped.
I didn’t know that change of writers was a common thing in the K-drama world. We’ve been calling them bipolar for so long. Turns out they ARE different people (haha). That also explains a lot.
Now that you’ve said that about genre mixing in romance K-dramas, I’m starting to see it. You’re right that the writers/show-runners are either skilled at romance or psychological thrillers but rarely both.
You’ve given me a lot of food for thought. Thanks for posting. :)
