A bit of a rant
Ok, so Powerful Opponents ended.
You know what else ended? My brief attempts to watch dramas as they air.
I dislike it and it always comes back to mess me up. PO would be only the third drama I have ever watched as it aired all the way through. The other two were Hana Yori Dango 2 and Hong Gil Dong. This experiment has officially failed because I get RAGEFUL at endings 66.7% of the time. I love Iljimae but I will wait until completion.
Of the three, the only ending which made me happy was Hanadan2, and what do you know? I already knew how it ended because I read the manga so not too surprised Domyouji didn’t off himself with a machine gun.
The end of HGD gave me a heart-attack, even if storywise it made perfect sense. I liked HGD ending narratively, but I think I would have preferred to know that ending going in. And now PO! While HGD ending made narrative sense and I don’t have a problem with it, other than on a deeply emotional level, the completely open ending of PO pisses me OFF!!!
I have loved some rather controversial endings in the past with total love (Bali, HGD, Legend) and I have certainly adored dramas which had endings of varying degrees of openness (Dog/Wolf, QSS, Robbers, Capital Scandal).
But that is the point! The ending has to both be in character and make narrative sense even if it’s controversial! The ending for HGD made sense seeing it was set in a world with “horrible fixity of aristocratic privilege” (tm lesbiassparrow) and HGD was a rebel bucking that system. The ending of Legend was brilliant (and actually also rather open-ended :P) because it addressed issues of humanity and free will and determination that ran through the whole drama. As to Bali, yes, I would have loved for Jae-Min and Soo Jung to get a small hotel in Bali and a heck of a lot of therapy, but it was pretty clear that with a cast of users and abusers around them, and their own severe traumas, it would end nowhere good.
And open endings are usually (a) not entirely open, but with hints for the future (b) conclude the narrative arcs of the story!
Look at Legend! It concludes the entire story that went on! It gives one room to imagine things that happened as DD’s reign continued after the events, but the story is done. Or Capital Scandal! Obviously, seeing that it is the 1930s and Korea doesn’t get liberated until 1940s, not every dot is crossed, but those personal stories are concluded…Or Dog/Wolf, most open-ended of the bunch: Su Hyun is too messed-up to be with his OTP when the story proper ends, but there is hope for the future, and the story of his revenge and demons has been dealt with. QSS ends with a new beginning. Robbers ends with a character who is ill but enjoying new life with his new family. All the stories are narratively concluded with a little hope and/or hint for the future.
PO was 16 eps going nowhere! And I thought the ending of MLP sucked. PO is worse because I actually liked the characters...
You know what else ended? My brief attempts to watch dramas as they air.
I dislike it and it always comes back to mess me up. PO would be only the third drama I have ever watched as it aired all the way through. The other two were Hana Yori Dango 2 and Hong Gil Dong. This experiment has officially failed because I get RAGEFUL at endings 66.7% of the time. I love Iljimae but I will wait until completion.
Of the three, the only ending which made me happy was Hanadan2, and what do you know? I already knew how it ended because I read the manga so not too surprised Domyouji didn’t off himself with a machine gun.
The end of HGD gave me a heart-attack, even if storywise it made perfect sense. I liked HGD ending narratively, but I think I would have preferred to know that ending going in. And now PO! While HGD ending made narrative sense and I don’t have a problem with it, other than on a deeply emotional level, the completely open ending of PO pisses me OFF!!!
I have loved some rather controversial endings in the past with total love (Bali, HGD, Legend) and I have certainly adored dramas which had endings of varying degrees of openness (Dog/Wolf, QSS, Robbers, Capital Scandal).
But that is the point! The ending has to both be in character and make narrative sense even if it’s controversial! The ending for HGD made sense seeing it was set in a world with “horrible fixity of aristocratic privilege” (tm lesbiassparrow) and HGD was a rebel bucking that system. The ending of Legend was brilliant (and actually also rather open-ended :P) because it addressed issues of humanity and free will and determination that ran through the whole drama. As to Bali, yes, I would have loved for Jae-Min and Soo Jung to get a small hotel in Bali and a heck of a lot of therapy, but it was pretty clear that with a cast of users and abusers around them, and their own severe traumas, it would end nowhere good.
And open endings are usually (a) not entirely open, but with hints for the future (b) conclude the narrative arcs of the story!
Look at Legend! It concludes the entire story that went on! It gives one room to imagine things that happened as DD’s reign continued after the events, but the story is done. Or Capital Scandal! Obviously, seeing that it is the 1930s and Korea doesn’t get liberated until 1940s, not every dot is crossed, but those personal stories are concluded…Or Dog/Wolf, most open-ended of the bunch: Su Hyun is too messed-up to be with his OTP when the story proper ends, but there is hope for the future, and the story of his revenge and demons has been dealt with. QSS ends with a new beginning. Robbers ends with a character who is ill but enjoying new life with his new family. All the stories are narratively concluded with a little hope and/or hint for the future.
PO was 16 eps going nowhere! And I thought the ending of MLP sucked. PO is worse because I actually liked the characters...