My year in drama: in praise of friendship

I was away and therefore too late to submit this for Theme of the Month, but for me this year has been all about (female) friendship. If I think about the dramas I watched, and what’s stuck in my mind, it’s been the friendships shown on my screen. Two of my favourite dramas this year had female friendships at the centre. The three long-term friends in Be Melodramatic were fantastic. This was such a realistic friendship. Search WWW went one step further and showed both the power of friendship, making new friends, but also how much it hurts when you break up with a friend.

A less-beanie-watched drama, Spring into Spring had two women as the OTP. It’s a body-swap drama (I love body-swap dramas) where two women keep ending up in each other’s body and basically destroy the other’s life. Their journey from adversaries to friends is really fun. Even more than Search: WWW it uses OTP tropes to show the friendship growth – including dragging someone away from their wedding. To be honest, I thought they would actually go one step further and make them a romantic pairing too, but for K-drama that would probably have been a step too far. Still, I loved the frenemies-to-friends journey a great deal.

I love these depictions of female friendships and even in dramas where friendship has been less at the centre, it’s played an important part, like the friendship between Dong-baek and Hyang-mi in When the Camellia blooms and as the besties in Love with Flaws , Kim Seul-gi and Oh Yeon-seo are just awesome

Even in Real Life, kdrama has stood in the theme of friendship, as this has been the year where I’ve been meeting Beanies in RL. It’s been so much fun! Beanies are the best and it’s strengthened my belief that the only thing better than watching dramas is to talk about dramas. It’s made me very happy to make friends across that great divide – yes the age-gap. All the beanies I met (and their sisters) are at least a decade younger than me (and maybe two, or two-and-a-half *gulp*). It makes hanging out even more fun. And thanks for allowing the ahjumma to join you!