I can understand Son Ye-jin crying a lot in Thirty-nine, after all, the writers made her lose the love of her life AND find out about her crappy birth mother in the same drama. It's certainly not her fault they wrote such a downer of a storyline. Seems like an appropriate reaction, tbh.

But Lee Ju-yeon has no such excuses in Love is for Suckers. Things are going great for her, and if they aren't, those circumstances are 100% her fault. No sympathy here.

This year I watched a lot of Disappointment.

The voting here is more difficult, because there are so many dramas included that I never watched or dropped early.

I'll trust Seo Hyun-Jin in Why Her? to defend me over anyone in that list. I know I'll win.

I seem to have successfully avoided nearly all the worsts. Hurray?

Just voted for Why Her? in every category even if it wasn't nominated.

Love in Contract is in line to win the Razzie Award of Kdramas!

Can we do write ins? Worst truck of doom, Jinxed at first.

Also, I haven’t finished Big Mouth or Golden Spoon and was planning on finishing them both. Looks like with them both being on “worse ending” or looking like they spiral out of control by the end, I guess that’s my cue not to finish them??? 😆

It’s almost the only category in which I’ve seen enough shows to have an opinion - but does “Stupidest Love Triangle” mean:

- It was stupid of the show to set up a love triangle when it wasn’t needed?
- You’d have to be stupid to think there’s any chance for one leg of this triangle?
- All three of the people in this triangle are stupid?

Because my answers would be different for each of those.

I just wanted to point out that the one category here that doesn't fit is most over-used dramaland profession, since voting for any one of these would mean that you were singling out 3/4s of all dramas of all time--although I did notice policeman/policewoman wasn't there, a major oversight.
I would have substituted a different category: most contrived combo profession of the year:
a. doctor/crossing guard
b. prosecutor/kendo swordsman,
c. art professor/dating show star
d. shaman/barista

I CC any vote any of these because I haven’t watched almost every drama mentioned here! I should be glad!

I cannot vote on so many categories because I have not seen most of these dramas... I guess it's good.

I haven't watched a lot of Kdramas this year, (looks like I didn't miss much), so I ended up voting for either Love In Contract or Forecasting Weather. Can't tell you how sad that makes me, 'cause I have a lot of residual love for PMY. Please, please, pick better projects next year!

So I wasn't the only one thinking the leads in Link cried too much. Good to know.

This pool was great since know I have like -20 shows on my watchlist or at least I know that if I watch them I need to be careful.
And it's good to know I didn't watch most of the worst shows of the year lol.

I got almost all of them right except two: For the most stupid love triangle, I was looking for Cheer Up to pick out. I guess if it were to be among the polls, it'll be 100%.
Someone in the marketing team of that writer must have told her that Love triangles makes drama plot thick and holds more weight than any other scene factor. "So even when the FL refuses, make the 2ML continue to pester her, remember, we have 16 episodes to fill", they must have said.
Holy crap, seeing this poll just reminded me of the nonsense I had to drop this year. 2023, do me a favor and don't make me go through this again!

I am so proud of myself because I barely saw any of the most mentioned dramas here.

*pat, pat*

Park Minyoung really had a terrible year.

WOORI THE VIRGIN was a remake of a remake. How did this happen?

Saw this blog post & was ready to vote *Love is for suckers* everywhereeee
It extra annoyed me because I actually finished it breaking my long held rule of not watching mediocre dramas & dumping as soon as possible but I had such hopes for the story. They didn't even need to do too much to make it good!

Not an arc, but for worst redemption, I need to write in ML's terrible dad for Forecasting Love and Weather. Like why??

I liked FLAW for depicting flawed characters. It did a great job intertwining love with weather; characters are unique, interesting professions; and I didn't even think PMY and SK were the worst couple. BUT the way the drama insisted on redeeming the terrible and totally not self-aware people in that drama was clunky. Not that they shouldn't be redeemed, but there are limits especially when a show only covers a few months of the characters' lives. The show even tried to redeem the cheaters' troubled relationship with a baby.

I haven't been in dramabeans for a while and idk where this come from but..... I might be enjoying these kind of post a tiny lot less than what we have always had as in talking bout only the goods in dramas and stuff... While that's prob just me....

I’m surprised cafe minandang was not an option on this list. Definitely worst couple for me.

I'm honestly still baffled that people consider TwentyFiveTwentyOne a WTF ending... they told you how it ends in the very first episode, then continue to tell you how it will end every episode or two.... people WANTED a WTF ending would be more accurate than saying it had a WTF ending, I mean people were making up wild conspiracy theories right up to the last episode instead of believing what the show told them over and over.

Special Mentions for Alchemy of Soul:

Most Frivolous Waste of Talent for a Villain
⚔️ Jin Mu

The “I Waisted 19 episodes For A Grand Reveal but He Was Just A Mage Gone Rouge”
⚔️ Jang Gang
Yes waisted, because my wait was wasted.

I completed the quiz and thankfully noted that I had avoided most of the dramas on the list or ducked out early, yes Jinxed at first, I am talking about you.

2020 & 2021 were golden years for me in terms of finding dramas old and new that got me through the mess that was life during a period of Covid. 2022 started well with Business Proposal and Twenty five, twenty one and then Sh**ting stars was my first experience of the bitterness that my joy was being tarnished with unnecessary negative vibes from the salt woman, and friends turned enemies plot lines which just didn't need to be in there. The suicide of the friend was all the sad reality of fame that was needed and worked well with the rest of the story which generally used humour to show the hardships of working in the industry. From then on a lot of the dramas I watched continued to add unnecessary sub plots that to my mind didn't work with the genre I had purposefully chosen to lift my mood.
I am very particular about what I allow into my home and mind and I am finding that the rom com, slice of life dramas feel like they are being contaminated like ordering a vegan pasta only to find the sauce contains pieces of bacon instead of peppers.

Where are Cheer Up, Summer Strike and Love All Play? They were unquestionably the worst of 2022 for me.

Cheer Up sidelined its own ML and had a redudant murder mystery. It was just objectively bad.

Summer Strike...sighs. Biggest waste of potential - simple finding yourself premise a la Little Forest with moving to the country and slowing down. What could go wrong? Oh, EVERYTHING. One could make a drama where the FL's obligatory tragic backstory is basically her time in this rural town.

Love All Play episodes 9-16 undermined all the good vibes and character development of episodes 1-8. Park Taeyang should have gone to therapy and Park Taejoon should have considered soul-shifting with someone who is NOT related to Park Junyoung in any way, shape or form. That way he can escape his emotionally abusive mother (hands down worst dramaland mother of 2022 btw) and be with Taeyang without his family triggering her depression. (His golden-retriever-likeness will be missed though.)

To be fair about Gaus Electronics, it was a comedy and Team 3 was meant to be absurdly bad workers. The other folks in the other dramas, though, were unintentionally awful workers.

Feeling very validated in my decision to drop many of these dramas (Love in Contract, Big Mouth, Forecasting Love & Weather, ). I'm especially glad that I wasn't the only one that despised the romance in Forecasting, since my roommate was utterly smitten with it.

As for the ones I did complete (Love is For Suckers, Law Cafe, Kiss Sixth Sense), well, I still enjoyed some things. Here's to hoping for better things this year.

There are a couple of dramas that are still on my watch list that showed up in a few categories (Thirty-nine, My Liberation Notes, Ghost Doctor). I'll hope that their lovely bits outshine the eye-rolling stuff. Let me know if I should avoid any of them, though!