The Evolution of My Watchlist | Beyond Hollywood

I was a fan of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and The Librarian, you know that one with iconic character Flynn Carsen. They both were the series I grew up with. I know, others at my age watched How I met your mother, Big bang theory, and Friends. But those two I mentioned earlier are more to my taste. Then, there were the walking dead that I followed dearly until the story went all over the place and I lost interest in it. It wasn’t happening only on one but plenty of similar American production series.

Safe to say, my attention span is of a goldfish. These American series lasted for seasons with each season having more than 10 episodes. Do you know how long that is? For my watching style, I love watching a series in a day or two, American series did not really cut it. With American series it can take months and even a year to finish one title. Somehow, as I got older and in university, I became a lot more accustomed to watching South Korean series.

It is so unfortunate that they get bad rep because over here, the one that aired on television is mostly the rom-coms. These days, they have plenty of series from fantasy, action, drama that are better than the romcoms. It’s like a phase. At first you get introduced to the rom coms and eventually find yourself exploring different genres.

Since I got into South Korean series, I began to slowly watch less and less American series. It’s like now, whenever something new comes up, I don’t really care that much unless the storyline and trailer hooked me enough to care. With excessive SJW and appropriation including cancel culture, these American productions are no more appealing to me. While I like controversial topics, anything excessive isn’t good.

At the same time, while exploring South Korean series, I noticed that they tend to have smaller seasons and episodes. As time goes by, they even tone down their 40 episodes to sometimes 12 and even 6 these days. They also limit it to one or two seasons and keep the story rather short with quite conclusive resolution whether you like it or not. But for someone like me, that 6 episodes only translates to 6 hours of my time and the same goes with the 16 and 12 hours one; they can be watched within a day.

Recycled stories, Bold Breakthroughs, Cultural riffs

The only thing that makes South Koreans a little inferior is that sometimes they recycle popular American stories and attempt to make it in their own style. For example, I recently checked out the South Korean Suit. Basically it tells the story of boorish lawyers and a super smart nobody who becomes a lawyer. They both teamed up and in a cut throat world of law, they attempt to survive while having some type of character development.

While there are only slight similarities, the overall vibe and music definitely mimics the original suits. While there are cultural nuances that make it different, the vibes and overall scene are way too similar. However, another thing that also bothers me is that sometimes South Korean productions aren’t bold enough and still shy away from talking about taboo topics in their society. Only lately, they are bold enough to explore it, especially the productions that are netflix based.

I am not saying that now I dislike American production, it’s just that if I were to watch an american production, it would be the old series rather than the newer ones that are available on netflix, prime or HBO.