Romcom-mon Sense Deficiency

There's a large difference in how romance is presented between cultures - today, I want to take a look at how romance dramas are marketed in Korea, and what it means for TV in general. In recent years, a pattern of behaviour has appeared that I've created a term to describe: Romcom-mon Sense Deficiency.

To put it simply, Romcom-mon Sense Deficiency implies the characters being written to do nonsensical things - although sometimes, this is to progress the narrative, the more important function this serves is to progress the romance. 

  To give an example, I watched the first two episodes of Her Private Life this morning. In a scene in the second episode, heroine Sung Deok-mi is fired from her job as a curator and bitterly helps out at her friend's coffee shop, where her boss Ryan Gold is a regular. He realises that firing her was a mistake and comes to re-hire her, and in revenge, she spikes his drink with coffee since she knows he doesn't drink it. Funny, right? As a result, he ends up in hospital for the night due to a caffeine allergy - after apologising profusely, Deok-mi gets her job back, and they wind up a little closer. 

  This reason this completely ignores common sense is because I would like to think that no person would normally think it's a sensible idea to mess with someone's drink order. Even though Deok-mi essentially has no training in this area, she's usually a very smart woman so it should already occur to her that doing so could have enormous consequences.

  Except, it has no consequences here. The writers purposely included this in the story because it's fun and keeps things interesting. Her tending to him in hospital is a classic romance drama scenario - the problem with reaching this via Romcom-mon Sense Deficiency is that by nature, this kind of interaction could not have been reached organically. And such is the nature of this problem. Romance dramas in Korea are becoming more and more far-fetched because writers, in trying to create fresh and inventive stories, in this instance end up robbing the characters of simple courtesies and their common sense. 

  What if, because someone had watched Her Private Life, assumed that putting themselves and their object of affection in a similar situation would create the same results? It's far-fetched, sure, because real people should have common sense, but with dramas like this targeted at impressionable younger people I still think there's a chance.

  Korean romance drama is already problematic enough in that it creates unrealistic expectations in the audience for what their prospective romantic relationships should look like once the couple are together. Now, on top of this, the younger demographics are not being taught how to approach a romantic interest in an organic way. Admit your attraction and ask them out on a date? No, says Korean drama! Force touching by pulling them down on top of you until they share your feelings!

  Now, Her Private Life is an example I actually enjoyed despite the sometimes contrived writing. It's funny, whimsical, and has a strange Barbie-like aesthetic that I'm really digging! But the next one I have to talk about, What's Wrong with Secretary Kim, lost its quality after the second episode. Episodes three and four, as a result, suffer massively from Romcom-mon Sense Deficiency and also demonstrate quite succinctly why I tend not to like workplace romance dramas. Twice were the main couple caught in this kind of embarrassing and compromising situation - by this drama's standards, Young-joon pulling Mi-so on top of him (3), and forcing a hug on her (4) could not by any means be perceived by her as sexual harassment. No, no, they're infallibly romantic. What's Wrong with Secretary Kim was praised by the people who loved it for not being cheap with the skin-ship, a rarity in Korean drama, but to me the abundance of these up-close situations just show no imagination as to how these two could have possibly fallen in love after being boss and secretary for so long.

I think I've made my point, so that's all I have on this for now. To conclude, Korean romance drama seems to be going in a direction where the pressure to keep the plot moving and the romantic development compelling, characters are doing things that are not particularly clever, which on occasion may insult the intelligence of the audience. Of course, it's not always a problem, and there are plenty of good dramas that don't suffer from Romcom-mon Sense Deficiency. I suppose I'm not satisfied being thrown fun tropes like forced cohabitation in situations were they make no sense - it's so clear that they just want to make a shallow hit, that it offends me.