Month: January 2021, Mutable Books

Sam-Who-Likes-Nothing: The Mandalorian

Sam-Who-Likes-Nothing recently finished watching the second season of The Mandalorian and, same as the first season, he was unimpressed. Some of it was fun, some of it wasn’t, and too much of it was just plain stupid. Though it was good to see Luke at the end, the whole Deus Ex Skywalker of the resolution was pretty meh. Not to mention that Star Wars has now descended to the level of bad Star Trek when it comes to the crappy rubber masks and thick gloves that now pass as aliens. It looked cheap in 1977, but it looks even cheaper now. Even worse, the writers don’t even pay lip service to the science part of science fiction anymore. The business of flying to a neighboring star system in a couple of days without hyperdrive is almost as stupid as seeing four different planets in four different star systems blown up in real time in the sky from the surface of a fifth.

Or having hyperdrive capability on an x-wing.

Why do I watch K-Dramas? Sky Castle, which my wife and I just finished, is an excellent example. It’s too long (twenty episodes rather than the usual sixteen), is an over-the-top soap opera, and has a central plot about high school students. (Boys Over Flowers? Blecch.) If Sky Castle were an American show we wouldn’t even pick up the remote. So why did we watch it? And like it?

Because K-dramas frequently leaven their histrionics with humor, something I can’t remember ever seeing in an American soap opera unless the show is also a parody. (Dallas, anyone?) But Sky Castle is no parody. Sky Castle takes its characters as seriously as any four-hankie weepfest. Even as it skewers those characters and the insanely competitive Korean educational system that is its ultimately satirical focus, the show demonstrates as much sympathy and understanding for its villains and buffoons as it does for their tortured victims.

I can’t imagine any American show combining straight-up melodrama and biting satire in the same way. In Korea, the two meet up in surprisingly sweet and horribly funny combinations all the time.

Or maybe I just need to watch Big Little Lies.