Yumi’s cells 2 - I thought when it was so close to the end and the anticipated webtoon ending hadn’t taken place yet that they were going to change who she ended up with and as he was my favourite I became very happy but instead we were left hanging. Season one ended and I felt gutted because there was no conclusion. I found the webtoon because I needed closure so for season two to not have the wedding I was very disappointed.

I would say Love is for Suckers (the reasons are already well elucidated above) but I actually think mine goes to Let Me Be Your Knight. I LOVED this drama so much starting out. I even followed it as it was airing in Korea on Twitter, which I only have done for a few dramas--that's how I know I'm super into one. Anyway, it just got so bad around the last few episodes. The FL's big secret just being drawn out, and then when she finally tells the ML he doesn't show any growth. Then they spend time that could be used to resolve this on a silly kidnapping plot that felt very out of nowhere and unnecessary. Add on top of that a time skip (these generally are disappointing in themselves) and then an open ending. I mean, sure, they probably got together but I wanted to see it. We never even got a real kiss between the two! Every kiss was one being caught by surprise. I really wanted to know more about how their relationship would play out especially with his idol status, but NOPE.

You know that it was a bad year for Kdramas, when everybody almost mentionned a different drama and you agree with them and there are still other choices...

I was disapointed by actors I usually like :
- Lee Jong-Ki in Again My Life
- Nam Goong-Min in One Dollar Lawyer
- Seo Hyeon-Jin in Why Her?
- Park Min-Young in Forecasting and Love in Contract
- Son Ye-Jin in 39
- Seo In-Guk in Cafe Minamdang
Etc...

Oh hey now this I can do with my 2 sad little beans. 2 go to Yumi's Cell S2. Man, she never matured. Ever. Not even the tiniest bit. You would have thought she was 16 and not 30. If they get around to season 3, I would have to really like the ML actor and see some proof that Yumi matured. And have some friends to share the possible pain throughout....

I have so many sad beans I can make at least a big bowl of my mum’s amazing bean salad. My mum has been gone for some time but I love and miss her so much including her amazing cooking and her bean salad which when I make it, never tastes the same.

I was expecting you to name Why Her? as greatest disappointment @daebakgrits . Love is For Suckers did a very good job at one-upping Why Her? from that position. It truly was a mess. Whatever happened to doling out friends to lovers while touching on matters like anorexia and bipolar disorder. I can't believe LiFS just glossed over these topics with criticism, and played for dramatic effects.

My Bean of Disappointment goes to Why Her? Why exactly? Having just concluded Undercover a few weeks/months ago with the lead actress not doing so much to match Heo Jun-ho's gravitas, I trusted in Seo Hyun-Jin, having seen her in You Are My Spring, to deliver that counterbalance to equilibrium and yes, she did. Add in Ji Seunghyun, Choi Young-joon and a chance to see the acclaimed acting of Hwang In-yub and I was sold into the world that was Why Her?. However it descended into what I didn't understand.
For a show that didn't need romance, the romance was an ingredient that ruined it for me. Add in the other nonsensicals they added and it became a mess and wtf vibe. This show definitely needed no ToD but it reared its head in.
I am still 6 episodes short of completing this series, the recaps did enough telling what happened.

I bestow my bean of disappointment on the romance part of 2521. The current timeline of the same drama also deserves a big bean of disappointment.

I agree this is a bad year for Kdramas because it drove me to watch dramas from other countries and there are only 5 Kdramas I finished this year (if you also count Silent Sea).

Thought I was pretty disappointed with the final 3 eps of A Business Proposal, I have to give my BoD (Bean of Disappointment) to The Sound of Magic for all its absurdity and all the wrong things that happen to all the leads. The FL is abandoned by her father, sexually harassed by her boss, bullied by school friends, maltreated by her teachers, etc. The Magician should be cared for because of his mental health, and not abandoned to live alone in an abandoned amusement park (and where is the police? Can he just create his own room and live there without any permission?). It’s true he is innocent and has a pure heart, and that’s why he deserves better care and respect than what he has got. The ML, if he can be called ML, should seek psychological or psychiatrist help. From the way I see it, he already suffers some mental health problem, and these things won’t be miraculously cured just because he drops out of school; this is especially true with the final scene showing him having some delusional visions and collapses.

To put in other words, this show was billed as a musical but instead it is a total mess. It shows bad and uneducated treatments of mental illnesses without educating the audience on this front (tbh, I wasn’t even sure the show knew what it was doing), and it fails to provide logical and reasonable solutions to any of its characters’ problems. So to me, this one gets the BoD of this year.

I am awarding the bean of disappointment to Business Proposal. It hurts me to have to do this but for me the show completely derailed in the last few episodes for me, losing all rational development of character and storyline.
I loved this show, so it hurts me to have to do this😡😠

Doctor Lawyer
premise was so dumb, i couldn't believe So Ji Sub kept a straight face while playing the role. was it just me?

Most of the time I am able to drop a bad show early, which I did with LOVE IN CONTRACT- I was gone after four episodes. This was not a good year for Park Minyoung.

But I and my wife stuck it out for LOVE IS FOR SUCKERS, which should have been great but just fell so far of the mark, thereby earning from me this year's coveted Big Rotten Bean award.

I was only disappointed in Love in Contract, as that's the only new show I was optimistic about, even resubscribed to Viki just to watch it. In contrast, I dropped Love is for Suckers at the first sign of boredom and didn't expect much from Gaus, but that was a pleasant surprise every episode.

I have to go with The Fabulous, which disappointed from the very beginning, so to speak.

::sigh:: I would like to give my bean of disappointment to the year of 2022 in kdramas—if that’s allowed.

I think it was just me and being burnt out on dramas and online content in general. It just seemed like so many shows needed to involve crime, mystery, lawyers, chaebol/politic shenanigans, etc that there weren’t many shows I was excited about watching this year. And, most of the shows I did start, I ended up dropping due to disappointment.

Don’t get me wrong. I found a couple of gems that truly surprised me with how much I loved watching them (looking at you My Liberation Notes and Gaus Electronics), but I enjoyed dramas as a whole much less this year than in the past. I’m worried I’ve become a jaded viewer 😩

My bean of disappointment goes to May It Please the Court. On paper it has everything to elevate the recycled genre of law drama and thriller: Lee Kyu-hyung (finally in a ptoject I could feel excited about), the ever fabulous Jung Ryeo-won, bickering chemistry that led towards important epiphanies, and what should have been an intriguing mystery.

The execution was pretty bleh, though. Confusing and bland, and with each eps we left the only good part of the drama (the building friendship and the satisfying character growth) behind. I was disappointed enough that I dropped it halfway through. Imagine how much more disappointed I was when I found out from other beanies that its central theme was actually the police brutality during the militer regime in Korea. I mean they have a solid and unique theme, yet somehow spent eps after eps talking about other boring corruption cases. Why??

I really wish this was handled by a more capable writer. It's such a shame to have perfectly good idea transformed into this yawn-inducing mess.

I’d like to give my bean of disappointment to Disney+

I have two contenders for my bean of disappoinment.

Again My Life - I had a lot of expectations for Lee Jun Ki's revenge drama. Sadly it under-delivered and I ended tuning out/ffwd through most of the latter episodes just enough to still get a gist of the ending. The ending that was unsatisfactory though.

Love Is For Suckers - I started this with zero expectations. I enjoyed the fun bickering of the lead couple in the first 6-7ish episodes. Their story turned mopey and sucked all the joy in the story. Good thing it has my fave alternate OTP which made me watch the rest of the episodes just for them. Occassionally ffwd the leads' whatever rebound shtick just to find out about Chef and Jiwan.

2022 so bad that, positively, it brought me closer to Cdramaworld (80% of my drama quota). I insist that the influence of western money (netflix and disney) is contaminating and watering down the magic of Kdramaland. For an entertaining and cultured examination of why Western entertainment is on the decline, I recommend typing "why modern movie sucks" on YT (Critical Drinker).

My Beans of Disappointment goes to Forecasting Love and Weather and Extraordinary Attorney Woo

I think I enjoyed the smaller dramas this year since I go in with little or no expectations, such as Let Me Be Your Knight, Never Give Up, and now The Forbidden Marriage. My biggest disappointments would have to be Love in Contract and Why Her. Though Go Kyung Po was absolutely swoonworthy in the first few episodes, I didn't feel like continuing after a while.

Seo Hyun Jin is my favorite actress so I definitely tuned in for the first few weeks of Why Her but it got too convoluted for me and I couldn't continue after 2 or 3 weeks.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo because the show was great until episode 9 and then I couldn't even bring myself to finish it.

There were a lot of bad 2022 dramas that lacked in story, execution and endings. But to be a disappointment, one has to have reasonable expectations that were seriously broken. But again, drama viewing is very subjective so I know some really liked the show and what they got out of it.

I have written about this several times in review, but the most disappointing show actually paralleled my best show since each used the same story blueprint. You can one blueprint to two carpenters: one can built a mansion, the other a compost shed.

The big disappointment was THIRTY NINE. It had all the elements for a poignant slice-of-life drama: 3 unmarried friends turning 40; relationship issues; health issues; friendship dynamics; how change is difficult to accept.

THIRTY NINE's friendship should have been a foundational core but the series centered around SYJ; her bossy and over-the-top emotional demeanor washed away the other lead characters. As such, we never saw in any depth how and why the leads were close friends. Even in adulthood, they rarely interacted in grand friendship style, creating new memories and adventures. Joo-hee was put aside as a spare tire in the story vehicle.

The health issue lacked the civil boundary of respect. Mi-jo could not accept Chan-Young's terminal condition or her desire to live her remaining days her own way. This could have been the centerpiece on how the friends could bond one last time, from childhood memories to building final memories. But again, Mi-jo emotions and not accepting the situation was the center of attention. (Fans of the show state that SYJ was the conduit of the emotional events as the narrator of the situation, but I disagree that this direction was the best choice to tell their collective stories.)

The romance angle hit many the wrong way. Chan-Young's long term emotional affair left many viewers angry, disappointed and disgusted. She wasted her life opportunity for happiness on a married man. Likewise, Mi-jo's dating lacked any chemistry, dynamics or passionate scenes (in fact the first bed scene was deleted). It was more a distraction than a romance. Joo-Hee was never given a chance.

And the ending was as flat as a pancake. We did not see in her final moments Chan-Young's final reconciliation of her regrets; no funeral eulogies; we did not see Mi-jo get married (just a jolting adoption scene with no context) and Joo-Hee left with nothing to hold onto with Chan-Young's passing.

Why THIRTY NINE was so disappointing was that BECOMING WITCH had the exact same story elements (cheating, romance, health issue, death, and friendship) but was a much better show with the three friends actually doing things together; sharing their problems; showing how their friendship lasted so long; how their diverse personalities worked well together; and how they had each other's back. Lee Yuri was over-the-top as an unhinged woman but it made comedic sense against her cheating husband. Hee-soo...

I am a very forgiving drama watcher, so it takes a lot for me to find a show truly disappointing, especially as I'm watching it. But with the benefit of hindsight, I think the biggest disappointment for me was Cafe Minamdang. There was so much that I loved about this drama, and I think I enjoyed it longer than most people did. I was never bored watching, but I also wasn't invested, and looking back now, I don't remember that many moments from it. It was my first Seo In-guk drama, and he was as good as everyone said, but he could not save this drama from its violent FL, a secondary couple that I could never decide how I felt about (are they cute? just annoying?), and a mystery that never felt particularly mysterious. This drama was at its best when the cafe crew were pulling chaotic shenanigans and letting SIG to be wildly extra, and it seemed to forget that at some point to its detriment.

Moonshine: As a huge Sageuk/fusion Sageuk fan I have a pretty high tolerance when it comes to the genre (I'm one of the 4 people who actually enjoyed Lovers of the Red Sky), but this one earns my bean of disappointment because it did so much so well (unique premise, awesome female characters being independent and badass, some great sis-mances) but then ruined it by overly dragging out the mysteries, a really poor implementation of the childhood connection trope, and the most incompetent set of male characters to ever grace my screen. Also Cliff of Doom But Not Really since not one person who fell off it actually dies and the pointless suicide scene ever. Such potential, wasted.

There were a lot of good drama this year. Unfortunately they were mostly buried behind paywalls of a half dozen different streaming services and the remaining stuff available to the general viewer was less than stellar. I've never seen to many romances between pairings with *no* chemistry before.

Saw so many great (??) responses from DB staff and commenters that I wholeheartedly agree with, but my biggest disappointment this year has to be Again My Life.

I am what you might affectionately call "Lee Joon-gi trash," so when it was announced that his next drama was a time travel revenge story, I was soooo ready (even though a certain actor I hate to watch was the main antagonist). When I love an actor as much as I love Lee Joon-gi, I can remain pretty hopeful that a lackluster start might turn around if I just stick with it. However, I barely made it through the episodes I did watch before dropping the show altogether.

Nothing here worked. Not the introduction of the time travel element, not watching the character make moves against the antagonists, not the...was it supposed to be a romance with Kim Ji-eun character? Whatever, it didn't work. I knew I had to drop the show when the writing made me find Lee Joon-gi himself boring, and I am STILL scratching my head about that. I watched all of Moon Lovers!!! I can stick beside my fave through a bad script!!!!

Anyway, I have decided my New Year's resolution is to believe that this drama simply never happened. And I am going to be so much better for it.

Yumi's Cells2. (Didn't see YC1) The story left me cold, (as do most Kim Go Eun dramas). The cartoon cells which are supposed to be cute, I found annoying and ff'd through them. Somehow the linking of cartoon characters geared to the 5-year-old crowd with a highly adult romantic relationship, well it came off as weird.

2022 is not really the best Kdrama year because I've dropped several shows this year. But the one that I felt disappointed the most is Cheer Up. Trailer looks so promising: colorful & vibrant youth, college, friendship, and romance! I hoped that this would be the college drama I'm waiting for so long. But nope, the drama turned out to be such a mess. The writer dragged the love triangle element for so long that I felt tired already. It would be so much great if the drama just chose to focus on Theia's members growth and reaching their own dreams while doing their passion which is cheerleading. I loved the OTP so much and I still think the ML, Jungwoo, deserves so much better treatment especially on the writing aspect.

I would have to go for Adamas sadly! The drama had the cast, had the whole story and setting, a solid start and thrilling turn of events, but the last final 2 episodes didnt meet up the expectations. Yes, there were some grand dramatic and satisfying moments in between, but overall, this drama could have ton a lot better, specially the ending. The open ending, and the evil still intact, really broke my heart.

I would like to dedicate my BoD to Time.
All those Time and Energy I lacked to watch so many dramas, take my 🫘 away.

The sound of magic and Café Minamdang are two good (or worse?) contender for my biggest disappointment.
The supposedly musical fairytale was a horror story of children poverty and/or neglect.
And the funny crime investigation was devoid of suspense (because I read the book just the month prior) and added grotesque to the substitution of an interesting female inspector by a grumpy faire-valoir. I, for one, did not smile to the overdone ridiculous antics of the caffe crew.
I love my SIG serious, and my JCW with short hair.

The bean of disappointement goes to Caffe Minamdang as I had no real expectation for a musical with students.

I think mine goes to Glitch. I was so underwhelmed by this one.

The premise was interesting, the first couple of episodes had me thinking that it would be fun... but then, splat. Bo-ring. As I sit here right now trying to remember the ending, I cannot. And I know I watched it... I just apparently didn't care even a little bit.

Runners-up would be Sound of Magic (*what* was that?), Little Women (lost interest on this one pretty quick too... just way, way too dark and heavy to slog through for 3 hours a week), 25/21 (I'll be honest, I never finished this one either, I think I made it to episode 3 or 4), and Good Job (ditto...which was a shame since I actually looked forward to this one, and it started out pretty entertaining. It just didn't stay that way).

I don't know where to start.
I have to say these shows were not bad, but I was disappointed on them, maybe because other people had loved them, maybe because I was expecting something different.
- Business Proposal.
- The end of Yumi's cells 2.
- Our Beloved Summer.
- Soundtrack #1.

And now I'm watching Alchemy of Souls (13 episodes so far) and I hate to say that it could be another disappointment, but I hope the next seven episodes can mend it.

Oh, I have a couple I don't see listed here XD Let me see...

- One of the biggest disappointments for me was *Love All Play*, especially because I loved the two main characters and they were just the cutest for the first 8 episodes. Then everything turned into tragedy and by the end of the drama I wanted everyone dead XD
- Eve... pure trash. And not even fun trash. Gah!

Other dramas I really disliked but were mentioned aleady: thirty nine (what a waste!), If you wish upon me... insipid and boooring.