I've been trucking along in City Hunter. It started off pretty serious but it got light-hearted pretty quick. These types of shows always have me shaking my head because of the contrivance of convenience required to keep things humming along.
One of the things I appreciated about Breaking Bad was its painstaking dedication to detail. It wasn't afraid to show you every step of the process, no matter how tedious or agonizing it was. Of course, this tapered off near the end when the plot demanded a quicker pace, but it was nice to sit back and watch paint slowly peel in all of its dull glory. My story, Love Sick, is proof of my commitment to minute-to-minute narrative. A day in my head would probably take a year to process.
Since I titled this Event Log "City Hunter," I suppose I should say something about it. It's basically a dark knight wannabe trying to expose corruption in South Korea. The guy's too careless for my liking, but I admire his "no killing" rule since he understands the pain of loss. The whole "push away the ones you love to protect them" shtick is so played out though. I just couldn't wait for the subplot to end. That arc is practically a requirement in every derivative of the superhero genre.
City Hunter was brought to my attention via a recommendation because I was looking for "cool" leading men in kdramas. The main character in City Hunter doesn't quite fit my definition of "cool." I have an old school perspective on the word, so when I think of cool, I imagine Sanjuro from Yojimbo, Blondie from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and Jules from Pulp Fiction. Even a maverick like House fits into that category. I suppose "cool" to me is simply an unwavering commitment to buckling convention.
There are many times when I want to scream at the screen because the characters are helplessly strung along by cliche-ridden plots. Why not throw caution into the world and do what you want? This frustration is especially apparent when it comes to watching works of other cultures. Asia is conservative with its family values. Coming from America, where rebelling against your parents is a rite of passage, their familial live-or-die conundrums seem excessively trivial.
I think that's why Hollywood has such appeal. When you've grown up your entire life bowing your head to everybody, it's refreshing to flip people off and blow stuff up just because that's the American way.
/eventlog
