Can you recommend some dramas with strong sassy female leads?

Ooooh, this could be fun! Some may lean more towards strong and others more towards sassy, and some may have a few ladies I consider strong and sassy even if they aren’t the lead, but here goes:

  • History of a Salaryman
  • Protect the Boss
  • Dalja’s Spring
  • Miss Korea
  • Reply 1997
  • Don’t Ask Me About the Past
  • Ex-Girlfriend Club
  • My Name is Kim Sam Soon
  • Wild Romance
  • I Hear Your Voice
  • All About My Romance
  • Coffee House
  • Me Too, Flower
  • City Hall
  • When It’s At Night
  • (basically anything with Kim Sun Ah, because even if her dramas aren’t great *shakes fist at Masked Prosecutor* she’s usually awesome)
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Did you make a post about last year’s top 10 drama? I love seeing that post from you every year but I think I missed it this time.

No, I didn’t. December gets pretty hectic for me and so I’m not organized enough (or remember enough about what I watched) to craft a good post. (Or I’m just lazy. That too.)

Plus 2015 just wasn’t a great year for me, drama wise. I had to go digging for the list of dramas I completed last year and it made me go “oh, yeah, I watched that!” because I forgot about so many of them. I’ll make a quick run-down, starting from my favorite to least favorite of the shows that I watched through until completion (there were a bunch I never got past the first few episodes):

Valid Love – my top drama of 2015. I’ve written about it a lot.

Last – I went into this show with no expectations or knowledge about what it would be like, and it’s vying for my favorite of the year.

My Beautiful Bride – such a good.

Midnight Diner – apparently I’m one of the rare persons who adored this little show, but it was the pleasant pick-me-up I needed in my drama drought.

Ex-Girlfriend Club – this is the only true rom-com I enjoyed last year.

Bubblegum – yes, it got a little (okay a lotta) sad in the middle, but it was still a beautiful drama with an excellent cast and a perfect use of music.

Seonam Girls High School Investigators – not a perfect drama, but I really liked that it used actual teenage girls as the leads and it felt realistic to the genre. Plus it tackled issues that other shows geared to adults would probably never touch.

The Lovers – this little sitcom was hilarious and tackled relationship issues that are more true-to-life than you might see on other dramas. 

Ho-gu’s Love – for some reason I literally forget this drama exists until things pop up to remind me about it, but it was a good little drama for what it was. A little off-beat, but in the best way, and I just enjoyed the way it tackled various issues. I’ll forever have a soft spot for it – when I remember it, that is.

Girl Who Sees Smells – it was cute and enjoyable but I really don’t remember much about it except for the smell-o-vision FX.

Persevere, Gu Hae Ra – I loved our little underdog team, and the music was great, too. The plot was a little “eh” – I wasn’t a fan of that whole “long-lost twin” thing or the love triangle.

Oh My Ghost – I really wanted to love this show as much as everyone else, but I just didn’t connect with it as much as I should have, despite it having all the hallmarks of everything I’d love (especially the cast!).

Hidden Identity – this show had a lot of flaws, but it was a nice popcorn action-drama to watch over the summer.

I Order You – all I really remember was that it was cute and fun in the moment, and that Yunho did a better job than I was expecting.

Let’s Eat 2 – I will forever be bitter about the complete erasure of Soo Kyung noona. If the show hadn’t made the misstep in the romance department, and also somehow made the food as appealing as it was in the first season, I would have enjoyed it so much more, since it was cute enough in it’s “we’re clearly being sponsored by the Korean cultural/tourism department” way.

Producer – I liked the first few episodes and was excited about getting a behind-the-scenes peek about the craziness of running a variety show. Instead I got a boring love quadrilateral that wasted the talents of my beloved Cha Tae Hyun.

D-Day – there was so much potential here and yet it made me want to tear my hair out because no one cares about the evil hospital director. NO ONE CARES!

Masked Prosecutor – I demand recompense for the hours I spent watching this and a promise that my favorite actors who starred in it will not be cursed by a show this terrible again.

Also I just pulled up a list of dramas aired in 2015 to make sure I didn’t miss anything, and I realized that I didn’t put down Spy on my original list. That goes to show how memorable that drama… wasn’t. But now I’m sad because I could have had an extra bean! *pout*

What are your favorite and least favorite dramas and kpop songs of the year?

Gonna make this a “five things” just for some structure:

Favorite dramas:

  1. Valid Love
  2. My Beautiful Bride
  3. Last
  4. Midnight Diner
  5. Ex-Girlfriend Club

Least favorite dramas:

  1. Masked Prosecutor
  2. Producer
  3. Hyde, Jekyll, Me
  4. D-Day
  5. Let’s Eat 2

As for k-pop songs, I didn’t really pay attention to groups except the ones I already like, so instead I’ll just make a quick list of the 10 songs that were my favorite since I’d have to think really hard about the ones I didn’t like (since I wouldn’t play them and thus, don’t remember them):

  1. miss A – “Love Song
  2. FTISLAND – “Pray
  3. MFTBY – “Rebel Music
  4. Zion.T – “No Make Up
  5. Wonder Girls – “One Black Night
  6. Big Bang – “We Like 2 Party” (tbh all of BB’s songs but I’m trying to restrict myself to just one song per group and this was my summer jam)
  7. MBLAQ – “Mirror
  8. Infinite H – “As Long As You’re Not Crazy
  9. Jonghyun – “Hallelujah
  10. Amber – “Beautiful

I wanna know which of the following you’ve watched, and a few words on what you thought of these if you did see them!: Liar Game, Pride and Prejudice, Angry Mom, Ex-Girlfriend Club, Oh My Ghost. These are some of my favorites I watched this year and I wanna know what you thought!! (I’d put in Misaeng but I already know what you thought of it :) ) ALSO make sure to watch reply 1988 when all the episodes are out!! it’s one of my top 3!

Yay! My first question! Extra cookie for you!

Liar Game

I really, really, really love the jdrama and while the kdrama was enjoyable enough on its own, it was missing elements that I enjoy most about the jdrama/manga. So, eh… I can see why others might love it but I was disappointed by it in many ways.

Pride and Prejudice

I watched the first couple of episode (or at least the first one) but it didn’t stick with me, so I dropped it.

Angry Mom

Didn’t watch.

Ex-Girlfriend Club

I loved this little show. It was one of the rare rom-coms I watched through until the end and enjoyed every step of the way. I feel like the premise was a little misleading, because one of my favorite parts of the show was all the women working together and being awesome. It was my kind of show and while I know it wasn’t popular with others (*cries over the fact it was cut-down to 12 episodes*), it was one of my favorites of the year. Maybe it wasn’t a great drama, but it was magic while it was airing (and that’s just not my inner Byun Yo Han fangirl speaking).

Oh My Ghost

Park Bo Young was amaaaaazing. She did an incredible job. Of course I always love my girl Kim Seul Gi, and Jo Jung Suk is forever a fave (and seeing the adorable Kwak Si Yang is welcome) – plus I can never get enough of Im Joo Won, even when he’s playing a baddie. But I didn’t feel the magic in this show. There were certainly interesting characters to fill up the space (which is always important to me – minor characters are so much more important than people think!), but I didn’t buy the romance, so it was hard for me to care about what was the central plot. I liked everything else around it, though. Still, except for PBY’s amazing acting, it’s a forgettable show for me.

Reply 1988

I totally plan to watch this one it’s over, and I am a little more optimistic about it because even though the episodes are once again bloated, I’ve heard there’s more focus on the characters and less on the “who’s the husband” love-line. So I’m already prepped to enjoy it a lot more than I did 1994.

(And yes I adore Misaeng and think it’s pretty much a perfect show – it’s one of the few dramas I actually own, as in, shelled out good money to buy in DVD. The other one, btw, is Reply 1997. Which is just to tell you how much I loved that drama if I’d pay overblown import fees to have a hard copy forever and ever.)

Thanks for the question! ^_^