Three Underrated K-Dramas That Somehow Kept Me Watching
Lately, I've noticed that I'm not enjoying K-dramas as much as I used to.
And that's actually weird coming from me because there was a time when I could start a 16-episode drama at night and somehow finish the entire thing before deciding that maybe I should sleep. I was THAT invested. I followed actors, waited for new episodes, had opinions about everything, and once I started something I liked, good luck getting me to do anything else.
These days, there are so many dramas airing with popular actors, including people I genuinely like watching, and yet I keep finding myself disconnected halfway through. Sometimes I'm intentionally sitting down because I really want to watch something, and then one boring scene comes along and that's apparently enough for my brain to say, okay, bye.
It's not even that the dramas are bad. Some are really good. I know they're good. I can see why people love them. I just don't have the same patience anymore to wait for something to get interesting. Before, I'd give a drama three or four episodes. Now one unnecessarily long conversation and I'm already looking for something else to do.
I don't know when that happened.
But while thinking about all the K-dramas I haven't finished lately, I somehow started remembering the ones I did finish. And strangely, three that immediately came to mind are dramas that people seemed to hate.
Not underrated dramas that I'm about to convince you were secretly masterpieces. No. People had reasons for hating them, and for some of them, I completely understand why.
I just liked them anyway.
Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol
This is probably one of the easiest ones for me to understand why people got annoyed.
Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol follows Ra-ra, a pianist whose very comfortable life suddenly falls apart. She ends up starting over somewhere completely unfamiliar and meets Jun, this quiet and mysterious guy who somehow keeps getting involved in her increasingly chaotic life. It's basically music, romance, weird neighbors, ridiculous situations, and two very different people slowly becoming important to each other.
And I loved how light and cringey it was.
I know calling something cringey isn't exactly a glowing recommendation, but that's part of why I enjoyed it. Ra-ra was ridiculously bubbly, Jun was painfully serious, and the contrast between the two worked for me. It was simple, cute, sometimes stupid, and very easy to watch.
Also, Lee Jae-wook.
That man was such an eye candy for me here. The masculine, quiet Jun opposite this incredibly bright and sometimes ridiculous woman? Yeah, I was sold.
Then there's the ending.
I know. I KNOW.
People hated it, and I completely understand why. The final stretch made some very questionable choices, and I'm not going to sit here pretending everything made perfect sense.
But apparently, it didn't matter enough to ruin the entire experience for me.
I had already spent so many episodes enjoying these characters that by the time the show decided to do whatever the hell it was doing at the end, I was already there.
Sometimes I don't need my K-drama to make perfect sense. Sometimes I just want pretty people being ridiculous while someone plays the piano.
And apparently, that's enough.
Run On
If Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol was cute chaos, Run On was almost the opposite.
The story follows a national track athlete who's spent most of his life living according to other people's expectations and a film translator who's much more comfortable living life on her own terms. Their worlds meet, but instead of immediately throwing every possible K-drama problem at them, the show spends a lot of time simply letting its characters exist.
And maybe that's exactly why I liked it.
It's light. It's funny. Sometimes nothing particularly huge is happening, and somehow I was completely fine with that. The characters have jobs, family problems, friendships, ambitions, awkward conversations, and struggles that don't disappear just because someone falls in love.
I also really liked how it handled its queer storyline. It didn't feel like the show suddenly stopped everything to announce that it had representation. It was just there, woven into the lives of the characters. And I liked that it touched on something very real too, developing feelings for someone close to you, knowing those feelings might not be returned the same way, and still having to figure out what happens to that friendship afterward.
It wasn't made unnecessarily dramatic just because the feelings involved were queer.
I appreciated that.
Even the humor worked for me because it didn't always feel like the show was desperately trying to land a joke. There were awkward moments, ridiculous moments, and characters who occasionally annoyed me, but they still felt like actual people.
Maybe some people found Run On too slow.
I found it comfortable.
And sometimes that's really all I want from a K-drama.
Love Alarm
Okay.
This one.
If there's one drama on this list that I will probably defend more than I should, it's Love Alarm.
The premise itself is already ridiculous enough to get my attention. There's an app that tells you when someone within a certain distance has romantic feelings for you. Suddenly something as private and complicated as attraction becomes measurable, visible, and impossible to completely hide. And somewhere in the middle of all that are Jojo, Sun-oh, and Hye-young trying to figure out their own feelings while technology keeps getting involved.
People have A LOT to say about Love Alarm, especially Season 2.
It's boring. The acting is bad. The writing is terrible. Season 2 shouldn't have happened. The ending sucks.
I've heard all of it.
And while I'm sure people have completely valid reasons for disliking the show, I still feel like a huge part of the anger toward the ending boils down to one thing:
Jojo didn't end up with Sun-oh.
She chose Hye-young.
And that's exactly why I liked it.
Why does the first person always have to be the final person?
Sun-oh was the obvious K-drama choice. He was the first big romance. There was chemistry, history, pain, unresolved feelings, and everything you'd normally expect to eventually bring two characters back together.
But life doesn't always reward history.
Sometimes the person you desperately wanted at one point in your life simply isn't the person you eventually choose. Feelings change. People change. And sometimes someone else quietly shows up, stays, makes the effort, and eventually becomes the person you want to be with.
That's what I liked about Hye-young.
He didn't win because the other guy disappeared. He didn't suddenly become the choice because the story needed a twist. He was there. He made an effort. He waited, but he also allowed Jojo to make her own decision.
And I liked that she eventually did.
For a drama built around an app supposedly telling people who likes whom, I actually found it beautiful that the ending wasn't ultimately decided by technology, destiny, or who fell in love first.
It came down to choice.
Maybe it wasn't the choice most viewers wanted, but isn't that also kind of the point?
You don't always get the person you want. The person you once loved doesn't automatically remain the person you're supposed to love forever. And sometimes the relationship that looks less exciting from the outside is the one someone actually chooses to stay in.
For something with such a fantastical premise, I found that surprisingly realistic.
And no, I still don't hate the ending.
Sorry.
Anyway...
These aren't necessarily my favorite K-dramas of all time, and I'm definitely not saying everyone was wrong about them. They're just three shows I remember genuinely enjoying even when it seemed like everyone else had something bad to say.
And I actually have a few more in mind.
Maybe I'll talk about those next.
Assuming I don't lose interest halfway through writing it.
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