Garbage Day

It’s been a few months since I last posted despite this post sitting in my drafts since the end of last year. Between the fact that I have been busier than usual and have been feeling a general lack of motivation to be productive, it hasn’t been completed or published until now that the second anniversary of the blog is here.

There will naturally be changes coming to the blog in this third year but, before that, I wanted to finally do some cleaning. I mean, we have to deal with the bad before we can truly look forward to the good things to come. Therefore, to start with a clean slate, we’re doing away with all the bad and the ugly since you last heard from me.

Does this count as Summer cleaning? Because that’s what we’re doing.

Here’s a post dedicated to all the trash characters drama-land has given us between last year and the first half of this one that we hope to never encounter again.

Let’s begin with the only character who made me drop a whole drama after one episode despite the fact that he was merely a supporting role that shouldn’t have had much bearing on the main storyline, Backstreet Rookie’s Han Dal Shik.

The Jamaican in me isn’t a stranger to tourists getting braids or locs on their island vacations though it’s become far less in the current climate of cultural appropriation being a cause for cancellation. That being said, I’ve never truly been that sensitive seeing non-black people doing what they want with their hair as long as it wasn’t out of some offensive intention.

But this guy–

I assume that it is because of the association Koreans make between dreadlocks and reggae artists like Bob Marley that causes them to refer to dreadlocks as “reggae hair” which in itself is problematic as the two are not mutually exclusive. But from the colours used in what I could see of Dal-shik’s styling, the intention of portraying him as a “Rasta” was clear as day. It wasn’t something that one could argue away as being left up to interpretation. He was very much every offensive stereotype one could associate with a Rastafarian right down to the gross, bug-infested locs on his head. I said before that I wasn’t especially sensitive– but that doesn’t make any of it okay– and in this particular instance I was extremely offended. So much so that I disregarded the fact that I was a fan of both leads and was entertained by the cartoonish humour.

This dutty fake rasta is the first character that needs to be thrown out. Don’t even bother to watch the drama– apparently this is only one of the many issues with the drama anyway. I don’t know if the anger and disappointment of so many viewers will actually make a difference but hopefully nobody else in drama-land will think it a good idea to pass content with such offensive characters in the future. Otherwise, I’ll need to book a flight so I can go all the way there to block road on a film site.

For someone less upsetting in his existence who still managed to piss me off through his actions, we’re throwing out Find Yourself’s Ye Luming.

This guy fell in love with the female lead when he least expected it and that isn’t something to be held against him. His actions after realizing those feelings he had were not going to be reciprocated were what grated on my nerves the most.

He befriended her under false pretenses and blatantly deceived her so she would let down her guard and become comfortable around him. He took advantage of the trust she put into him to give her misguided advice that sewed the seeds for discord in her relationship. To make matters worse, he forced his way into the most personal circles of her life through “coincidences” and curried favour with the people she cared about so that they would also nudge her towards being with him.

Some people may have watched this and found him charming enough to have second lead syndrome but I felt no good feelings towards him. In fact, I felt he deserved the shell of a relationship he did eventually get.

Be it a main lead or a second lead, if these actions are the ones taken by a potential love interest, throw the whole man away!

— Or woman, because girls be out here in drama-land pulling the same creepy stalker business and thinking it’s cute. Case in point, You Are So Sweet’s Jin Yao.

While watching this I saw so many comments from viewers who were actually saying they preferred the second couple and I just cannot understand it. Yes, they started off with the potential to be a great pairing but, in her mission to prove to the second lead that she was the dream girl he had in his head, she did far too many questionable things.

She disregarded his rejection and went as far as to get rid of his assistant and conveniently replace her so she could stick around him even in his work space. Being at a loss, he moved out of the apartment next door to really draw the line with her that even if they now had a professional relationship there wouldn’t be a personal one, so what did she do? She attempted to stalk him to find his new address. And sure the resulting game of chicken between them that she ultimately lost was amusing but it didn’t change the fact that her intentions were to stalk him.

Somehow, it came around to the point where they did eventually end up getting together but throughout the entire development of their relationship I couldn’t help but think if it was a man who was pursuing a woman in that exact manner, she would have at least gotten a restraining order.

But that’s not even to say she was the only problematic one in that relationship. So was the second lead, Xie Fei.

First of all, he had a peculiar personality that kind of grated on my nerves but it wasn’t so bad that I would write him off as trash. It does however affect my ability to judge him objectively since I already had a bias against him through no real fault of his own. This I acknowledge.

However, it would be hypocritical to criticize Jin Yao or the methods she used to pursue him without even batting an eye at his actions. Though admittedly less intense in his approach, he did have a few instances where he too was stalking our female lead because she was the one he believed to be his soulmate according to a very unreliable reading of his fortune.

In addition, he used his position as a boss to pressure the female lead into accepting his feelings and that only resulted in his embarrassment when she still rejected him. He later used his power again to pressure Jin Yao to give up in her pursuit of him. While I didn’t have too many good feelings towards her to begin with, it was still not okay of him to abuse the authority he had over her.

But, I guess there is some logic to the bad ones getting together to save good people the suffering so, I’m sending this whole ship into the garbage.

And since we’re here I must make mention of the worst character of the drama, our main antagonist, the stereotypically vile yet beautiful love rival of our female lead, He Yanran.

Though it was obvious she looked down on the female lead from their first encounter, the fact that she still hired her and was a pretty decent superior had me thinking she would not be too awful but boy was I wrong.

Yanran had known the male lead for about as long as she knew herself and, to no one’s surprise, she harboured romantic feelings for him. It didn’t matter that he had never revealed a sliver of romantic interest towards her the whole time since he showed no romantic interest in no one else either. And somehow she reasoned that, since it was like this, it meant she was the only woman to remain by his side, one-sidedly occupying a sort of unofficial wife role.

This is the same woman who hired the female lead to become her crush’s assistant. Clearly, she expected the male lead to be as bad as she was and completely disregard his assistant as incompetent but no one told her this was a rom-com in which she facilitated the conditions for their love to bloom.

She then proceeded to do so many underhanded things to harm the female lead — some of which honestly should’ve resulted in criminal charges. She played the victim to the ones who trusted her and spoke ill of the female lead while she was at it. The latter would have been much easier to accept too if these people who trusted her weren’t also the male lead’s family.

And if being awful in her personal life wasn’t enough she even compromised the company she built with the male leads in the name of her twisted romantic ambitions. However, the most disturbing thing for me was the way she went about instigating her creepy little assistant to do unethical things that sabotaged the female lead without batting an eye. Honestly, the only good point I could pick out about her was that she was pretty.

Had she been more complex than this purely rotten character, I would’ve disregarded her as any other villain since this garbage post wasn’t aimed at those who were meant to be antagonists from the get-go. But she was just so irredeemably awful that I had to single her out and add to the “toss” pile.

Similar to Yanran in her delusional romantic relationship that is clearly one-sided to everyone else with eyes is Beautiful Reborn Flower’s Xu Ah Li.

First of all, Ah Li’s romantic interest in the male lead made me uncomfortable because he was her younger brother’s friend. This is entirely a me problem as I know it makes no real difference if they are both of age and the feelings are mutual but that’s the bro-zone to me which is more difficult to get past than the friendzone.

So, yeah, after being a secondary parent to her younger brother, she went and developed feelings for his same aged friend. I mean, if the dynamic of her relationship with her brother was different maybe it wouldn’t be as disturbing to me since I do understand the how and why her image of him shifted when it did. This in itself wasn’t a reason to dislike her if you don’t mind and so what if she had those feelings, she could feel what she wanted in her heart.

But that aside, I disliked her as a person because she was selfish and had no moral bottom line. Anything was good if it made her life comfortable and kept the male lead exclusively at her side. If she had to sacrifice a clear conscience for that, she was more than willing.

She discovered quite early that her brother had done something that tragically altered the life of the female lead and covered it up. She later went all the way to Barcelona to meet with the female lead in an encounter that resulted in her backing the female lead right off a cliff. At best, this should’ve been a manslaughter charge on her hands but after pretending to know nothing and to have not been there at all, she returned to China– to the male lead’s side– like nothing happened. She watched for years as he carried the grief and pain of losing the female lead and she just kept existing by his side with delusions that their relationship had developed to something more intimate. Who cared if he repeatedly drew the “you’re like my sister” line?

This is less about her romantic feelings and delusions than it is about her moral character. Like where did she put the remorse that any normal person would’ve been feeling?

And to top it all off she had the audacity to do all she could to get rid of the heroine who later showed up looking exactly like the person she basically killed. I mean, she was given the character setup of an antagonist from the get-go so I should’ve known she was awful but nonetheless I constantly found myself in a state of…

Oh! But she wasn’t even the most garbage person in this drama, in my personal opinion.

Oh no, that honour went to the “good and kind” gentleman who saved a literally washed up damsel in distress and expected her hand in marriage as his compensation. The one and only “misunderstood badboy” Hansen whatever the rest of his name was.

The creators designed this character specifically for me to hate him upon his first impression. As a “Spanish-Chinese” character, dude only spoke two languages while in Spain, Chinese and English. In addition, there was his godawful wardrobe as if it wasn’t bad enough he looked so much older than the rest of the main cast despite all indications that he belonged to the same age group.

Imagine finding a girl washed up on the shore and realizing she is about to be taken away by some dangerous people. Imagine being a good enough human to intervene simply on the basis that this is a bad situation for her. Sounds like a good guy, right? This is someone you could like enough to possibly catch a case of SLS if he maintains this type of character going forward.

Unfortunately, as soon as he saves her and realizes she’s beautiful, there goes any and all noble behaviour. Instead, it’s some caveman mentality of “I saved her, she’s now mine” that takes its place. He takes advantage of her amnesia and the vulnerability that gives her by deceiving her into accepting an identity that isn’t hers. He gives her a life that is in all ways centered around him without her even realizing just what kind of situation she is in. He then uses the fact that he is her benefactor to manipulate her whenever she goes against his wishes.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this abuse?

The writer’s attempts to make him redeemable, hell, the fact that he wasn’t legally punished for the shit he did and was actually forgiven raises my blood pressure just thinking about it.

I just need dramaland to know that if they try to give me anymore of these characters in the near ~~or distant~~ future we’ll have to fight.

And while we’re here, I hope boys don’t grow up like Luo Chen.

It’s not cute to be an asshole your whole life and wait for the one girl who won’t take your crap so you can fixate on her and hope she will be with you and finally turn you into a decent human being.

I also hope girls don’t fall into the trap that is this asshole either. I mean, I know it’s an age old trope that has been played out so much that it’s a cliché but there’s nothing cute about the whole “bad guy meets the girl who turns him into a good guy” trope. If he’s not your son, then you shouldn’t put yourself through the heartache of trying to raise a man.

Honestly, you can’t change another person so easily and certainly not if they don’t actively want to grow and change on their own. It really irked me the way they had that one girl clinging to him the whole drama while he went from being a regular entitled brat to a “heartbroken” vindictive brat after losing the girl he never got the chance to win over and change for.

Luo Chen is garbage and didn’t even really feel like a necessary character tbh.

Xiao Zhi may not be the worst character in this drama but her existence is a very real life lesson when it comes to friends made through a (potential) significant other. Before they are your friend they are your SO’s, they will always be biased towards your SO.

I’m always here for wholesome female friendships but I can’t get behind the friendship between Xiao Zhi and Qiao Man, the female lead. It’s not that she wasn’t a good friend in general but in the moments where she obviously nudged the female lead towards accepting Hansen’s advances was always a stark reminder that Xiao Zhi was Hansen’s friend before she was Qiao Man’s.

She may not be worth a spot in the trash but…

On the note of bad friends, we have Lee Roo Mi from the web-drama XX.

Roo Mi broke one of the biggest rules between friends, she slept with her best friend’s boyfriend.

After seeing the entire situation from her perspective, it was quite clear that she was also a victim in that very incident. In fact, one could say what she suffered afterwards was worse than the hurt and betrayal the female lead faced.

Though her wardrobe was on point and her attitude gave the impression that she was bold and shameless, you could tell that she felt remorse for her actions and was doing all she could to avoid falling into a similar situation ever again.

It can be concluded that she wasn’t a bad person but she wasn’t a good friend either. No matter how much I understand and sympathize with her, I will never excuse the fact that she was pretty much in her right mind when she made the decision to sleep with her friend’s boyfriend.

She may not deserve to be thrown out but we can’t keep her.

The real garbage character in this whole scenario however is unquestionably that boyfriend who dared to mess with a pair of friends, Seo Tae Hyun.

I don’t think it is necessary to mention that he dared to mess with his girlfriend’s best friend. It’s the fact that after doing that, he turned around and threw what they did together in Roo Mi’s face as if she was the one who forced him to betray his girlfriend. It was the fact that after not seeing them for years he dared to show up in front of both Roo Mi and the female lead as if what he did to both of them was nothing.

He is exactly the result of a society that will watch a pair of adulterers and only crucify the woman for the part she played even if the facts revealed her as a victim herself.

And somehow he didn’t piss me off as much as Jung Gyu Min.

I knew from the moment I saw him that he was a cheater. Call it my sixth sense as a professional drama watcher but I saw it from a mile away in all his little gestures.

This man dared to date a woman who was insecure in relationships and actually mentally scarred by the last man she got involved with. He cheated on her and whenever she got suspicious he insinuated that her paranoia was because of her failing to take her medication. Do you know how terrible you have to be to take advantage of someone’s trust and go the extra step to use their mental health to gaslight them?

I legit decided to make this post when this man had the audacity to say “this is why you shouldn’t date a crazy woman just because she has a lot of money”. My mind came to a single conclusion: this man isn’t just trash, he’s the whole damn garbage dump.

I actually dropped this drama despite all the records it managed to break but The World of the Married felt very suitable for a post like this. The thing is I couldn’t single out just a handful of problematic characters.

I really don’t know how the writers managed to do it but they wrote a drama where every character was just so awful. I mean, typically, you get a few terrible people and then they are offset by at least one person who is at least trying to be good.

Like I said before I can’t tell if it’s worth the watch or not since I never made it the whole way through, however, be forewarned that you will be met with a cast of awful characters the moment you get into this one.

Lies, cheating, manipulation, abuse, betrayal– it’s all there and each character is involved in a variation of any/all of those. Of course, with that being the case, there’s no way for this drama to be lacking in well… drama. I just couldn’t get into a drama where the only truly innocent characters were the children and who knows how long that lasted for growing up in such a twisted environment?

So, this went on for much longer than I expected and, well, I’ve seen so many more dramas that have added to my garbage characters list since I started this. So, here are a few more characters that I really wish I’ll never have to see in another drama.