She looked great in Misty.

So how long do you keep them? For example, the cute donkey in JA?

we... uh... forever.

Now I like the idea of the Bead Boy Mythos self-perpetuating and you just making up who you think he is hahahaha. You should still do that.

But he also deserves a proper explanation so-

Bead Boy, actual character name: Park Tae Seo, played by: Lee Jae Kyun.
He was one of the antagonists of the show, the abused bastard son of the villain, whose main motivation was the acceptance, acknowledgement and love of his Villain Father, who treats him poorly due to his bastard status. He goes through a process of realising that his father is actually just manipulative and abusive, and doesn’t care about him, and uses Tae Seo’s need for love to get him do things, terrible things, and use him for his own gain.

He was dubbed Bead Boy by yours truly due to this^ being represented through the recurring motif of his Gat Beads, which were given to him by his father, and he sees as a sign of this acceptance. There is a fantastic scene where he rejects his father’s false love and manipulation by removing the beads once and for all.

I latched on to him fairly early, he was attractive and compelling (and had purple hanboks~ win!), and wanted the best for him, even if the writing was always subpar. He DOES get a sort of redemption arc near the end, which I was SO happy about because I was rooting for that. It wasn’t the best done, but it was STILL there!

It’s basically like a less well written version of Zuko’s arc in Aavtar: The Last Airbender, except if ATLA had a tragic birth secret and also killed off Zuko instead of letting him live to properly fulfil his redemption arc…

Because yes, unfortunately, that’s what the show did to my beloved Bead Boy, giving him a birth secret revealing that he was the REAL son of his father all along, and so was robbed of that which he always sought after, although it would’ve been cheap and shallow from such a man anyway, because he was used by all those around him for their own purposes, and then killed off, needlessly, by his own half-brother, who stabs him in the back, literally.
Thus cheapening his character’s existence in the process, and making him out to be a tragic plot device for the Villain’s eternal suffering, instead of treating his character with due respect on his own, and letting his tragic relationship with his father have a satisfying resolution, and him being able to overcome that and live on.

And I will FOREVER be mad about that, because I didn’t really like the show at all apart from him, and loved him much more than his writing deserved, and so it will always be blacklisted, and I will always be salty, and I will never shut up about him, and also I eventually want to immortalise him in the Court of Melonia somehow.

Yes.

Here ends the Tragic Lay of Bead Boy.

Neither one was on my radar. I’ll check them out. Thanks!

There are two Bravo My Life dramas one from 2022. Which one are you recommending?

@Reply1988 I thought only the one about the fashion designer was from 2022, and that's what I was talking about. But now that you mention, if I recall correctly, the other one that I thought was older is also kind of family-related drama too.

Yes that’s the one I watched part of, the 2022 one.
Mother of Mine is a favourite too! There is lots going on in that re the complications of family relationships.

Thank you 👍🏾 I hope others come back to this post and see this request if not would be good to put on Open thread. I just list the show with a rating the genre country, one line plot summary and what I liked or disliked.

Thanks a lot! I realise I'm not writing anything apart from keeping the list of show titles I like.
I think I'll start writing the time stamps of the scenes that really moved me (because of the acting, scenery, ...) or at least my favorite episode, to be able to go back to them whenever I want.

I find that the additional information—especially the ratings and streaming service—is helpful when I’m trying to decide what to watch next. I thought about adding a column for genre, but there are a lot of shows that don’t fit neatly into a particular category. For now, I note only if it’s a sageuk.

I agree with the genre issue but I just list them all: rom com with slice of life, fantasy/time travel.

Since @reply1988 asked...
My spreadsheet has several tabs.
T "seens" for dramas that we are watching or have watched. Each drama has its own column.
There are some administration lines : title, number of episodes, number of ep I'm on, number of ep my friend is on, year the drama came out, chanel/network.
There are some type defining lines : sageuk, adapated from book or webtoon, comedy, romance, action, thriller, melo, SF, medical, revenge, law/police, musical/star system, army/bodyguard, sport/university, art/cinema, healing drama.
Some lines are for a short evaluation : cinematography, chemistry, charm of the leads, music.
Then the line that call back the final notation (from another tab).
The line with info about the cast : 3 main females and males. (used on another tab to count how many time we have seen someone)
And then the tropes lines (currently 168) cause I like to count and kind of play dram-bingo...

The "next dramas" tab : one line per drama.
Columns are :
- title
- note of my interest
- note of my friend interest
- product of the two previous notes, so as to define the next common watch
- actors : mains leads, or those we know in the cast (only the mains)
- short summary of the plot
- avaibility (netflix, viki...)
- genre (pick-up list : 1% war of life, action, BL, college, comedy, documentary, fantasy, food, healing, horror, intrigues, law, life, makjang, medical, melo, musical, mystery, police, revenge, romcom, romance, sageuk, SF, sport, thriller, wuxia)
- country (Korea, China, Japan)

Then, one tab for the actors and one tab for the actresses.
One line per person.
Columns:
- name
- name in Hangul
- number of time this person is mentionned in the "seen" tab (calculated automatically, and with a colour that change when it increases)
- surname 'cause sometimes it's easier to remember
- performances evaluation
- verdict : favorite / person to follow / person to check (with colour depending on the ratings in the previous columns)
- name of the drama most recently seen or the drama where this person was a lead (cross-referenced from "seen" tab)
- birthday

Then, there is a tab for my notes (one line per drama, several criteria), one tab for my friend notes (several other criteria). It is in these tabs that the order of viewing is recorded. I am on my 109th kdrama (and 56th cdrama). My friend is at 186 in total (3 cdramas, 5 Jdramas, 171 kdramas).

The newest tab is the "week repeat".
Because sometimes there's a specific scene that happen twice in a week despite not being a trope (yet).
One line per scene, with names of the dramas. If a scene is recognised in 5 five dramas it becomes a trope in the "seen" tab.
Examples : Lead is in the middle of big cross-walk with a lot of cars around ; ice-skate date ; lead need to recharge by holding the other lead; use of condiment or food to explain a situation and get advice.

@darwi - All I can say about your spreadsheet is: 🤯 !!!

@darwi If this is the PhD approach to cataloguing my approach would be listed as kindergarten level 😆
Thank you for sharing @frenchfan see Darwi’s comments for THE drama template spreadsheet that leaves others in the shade.

@reply1988 thank you for tagging me
And thank you @darwi for sharing your spreadsheet. You are very thorough!! I'm glad I asked! : D

Love your creative use of Excel! It sounds like a great way for you to dive really deeply into kdramas and to bond with your fellow drama/Excel geek.

I created my spreadsheet for strictly utilitarian purposes—to keep track of shows I’d watched, as well as ones I want to watch sometime in the future. I added view dates to my spreadsheet when I realized I might want to revisit some shows I didn’t particularly like (or even dropped) in my early kdrama viewing days. There have been a few shows I loved when I gave them another chance, after I had become a more seasoned kdrama aficionado.

You could earn enough for a two week all inclusive 5* trip to SK if you sold your template to fans on here and my dramalist who want full control of their watchlist.

@reply1988 Do you want my template ?
It's a google.sheet with two users. I can clean it up and make a few changes so that it's for 1 user.
And add a few explanation (the tables do not expand automatically as in excell, so the new column need to be added in 2nd position...)

Yes please! Was my ‘asking for a friend’ approach too obvious🤣 It’s because I want to track the Watch and Discuss Korean Drama Club monthly watches.

🤣 yes it’s a real skill and that’s why when they get it right it’s a keeper.