What is your angstiest drama?
Flist's collective freak-out over the angst in City Hunter prompted me to wonder - what is the angstiest drama you've seen?
I think to qualify as angsty, for me, there are two components - (1) bad bad bad things happen and (2) I care for the characters to whom these things happen and so am emotionally embroiled in their pain. A much lighter drama that makes me care will be angstier for me than one chock-full of bad stuff that does not - e.g. For me, My Girl is angstier than Bad Love even if the former is a romcom and the latter an ott melodrama because I adore My Girl leads and couldn't care less if entire cast of Bad Love drowned in the lake.
For me, the indisputable winner of "angstiest drama I have ever seen" is 2009 hit IRIS about an agent betrayed, framed and hunted by his agency. It may seem weird to pick a thriller-revenge drama and not one of many anxtolicious melodramas Korea is known for, but there it is. Part of it is that the number of truly horrific thing that happen to Hyun Joon do almost beggar belief (and that ending!!!) but the main reason is that I was so emotionally invested in Hyun Joon that it was almost unhealthy - the screen seemed to almost dissolve and grab me into his world due to Lee Byung Hun's amazing intensity and acting. And to see a character I felt so much for (Hyun Joon remains my favorite drama character ever) go through what he did with little reprieve and be rewarded by that horrifying "evil wins" ending , shot as he was finally within reach of happiness, of peace, lying there unable to move or call out or reach to his love, reaching, the proposal ring there by him, tears out of his dying eyes and such longing - they really eviscerated him and made him die in the worst despair. And Kim Tae Hee's character waiting, happy, unknowing, punished too, perhaps a target for punishment more than Hyun Joon. I cannot imagine what happens after. I don't want to.. This was almost more than I could bear. I remember crying on and off for a week afterwards.
There are runner-ups, of course - Mawang, Karei-naru Ichizoku, A Love to Kill, The Outsiders. But nothing to reach IRIS levels for me.
How about you? I fully realize everyone's threshold is different.
I think to qualify as angsty, for me, there are two components - (1) bad bad bad things happen and (2) I care for the characters to whom these things happen and so am emotionally embroiled in their pain. A much lighter drama that makes me care will be angstier for me than one chock-full of bad stuff that does not - e.g. For me, My Girl is angstier than Bad Love even if the former is a romcom and the latter an ott melodrama because I adore My Girl leads and couldn't care less if entire cast of Bad Love drowned in the lake.
For me, the indisputable winner of "angstiest drama I have ever seen" is 2009 hit IRIS about an agent betrayed, framed and hunted by his agency. It may seem weird to pick a thriller-revenge drama and not one of many anxtolicious melodramas Korea is known for, but there it is. Part of it is that the number of truly horrific thing that happen to Hyun Joon do almost beggar belief (and that ending!!!) but the main reason is that I was so emotionally invested in Hyun Joon that it was almost unhealthy - the screen seemed to almost dissolve and grab me into his world due to Lee Byung Hun's amazing intensity and acting. And to see a character I felt so much for (Hyun Joon remains my favorite drama character ever) go through what he did with little reprieve and be rewarded by that horrifying "evil wins" ending , shot as he was finally within reach of happiness, of peace, lying there unable to move or call out or reach to his love, reaching, the proposal ring there by him, tears out of his dying eyes and such longing - they really eviscerated him and made him die in the worst despair. And Kim Tae Hee's character waiting, happy, unknowing, punished too, perhaps a target for punishment more than Hyun Joon. I cannot imagine what happens after. I don't want to.. This was almost more than I could bear. I remember crying on and off for a week afterwards.
There are runner-ups, of course - Mawang, Karei-naru Ichizoku, A Love to Kill, The Outsiders. But nothing to reach IRIS levels for me.
How about you? I fully realize everyone's threshold is different.