kdrama: SKY Castle
Jan. 12th, 2019 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreToday, JTBC’s SKY Castle made kdrama history by pulling 19.2% ratings, making it South Korea’s highest rated cable drama, after becoming the network’s highest rated drama about halfway through its run, and the second highest rated airing drama, after KBS’s weekend drama, My Only One, which is expected because the KBS weekend drama is always the highest rated airing drama. (Not a slight as they tend to deserve it, just an observation.)
SKY Castle debuted with ratings of 1.7% with very little fanfare and moderate promotion, and has since become a legitimate cultural phenomenon with almost unstoppable ratings. While most kdramas tend to have ratings fluctuate at the halfway point, SKY Castle’s ratings have consistently risen or remained the same with the exception of one episode (That was at the end of December, and I think there was something going on?). While cable dramas have had several runaway successes in the lat couple years, none of the others have been as dramatic as SKY Castle’s debuting at barely average ratings and rising to the top of the cable heap, and all have had one or multiple big names attached. Both the PD and writer of SKY Castle are reasonably popular writers who’ve had successful dramas before, but neither is big enough to be considered a guaranteed success, or too have a following. And the cast? There isn’t a single person in it generally considered lead actor material. Instead, the cast is almost entirely made up of well regarded actors in he 40ish-50ish range who typically play supporting characters, along with some up and coming (and almost totally new in some cases) younger actors. Plenty of actors who are well liked, but none who are typically considered a big draw.
So what happened? Word of mouth and a borderline flawless production about a topic that hits home for many Koreans, but framed in a way that still accounts for a degree of escapism, combined with a network that liked to push boundaries and recognizes the financial and critical benefit of woman-centric stories. If you’ve ever watched a kdrama involving teens, you’ve encountered the families of SKY Castle. There are always rich families who hire private tutors for their children and pass money under the table and use professional influences to get their kids into special programs and contests that the working class student who is the protagonist can’t get into. SKY Castle is about those families. It’s a dark satire about the rich families obsessed with getting their kids into the best schools and the pressures put on the students, filtered through the POV of the mothers who are given the responsibility of doing so. “Getting your kids a good education” is a fairly universal desire, with the intensity and level of education varying based on any number of factors. SKY Castle explores that separated from the realities of life for the vast majority of Koreans by setting it among rich people in a gated community, and portraying the world through the POVs for 4 very different mothers. Getting into the characters is spoilery, and much of the thrill of the show is twists and seeing how and characters develop, and going in relatively cold might be best in some cases, but suffice it to say they (and most of the cast in general) are fascinating and complex. Sometimes monsters (often in the case of some characters) and sometimes not, even they characters I would normal be annoyed or bored by fascinate me here.
The show is also almost perfectly executed. There isn’t a single weak link in the acting-even then points that looked like they might be weak links have proven not to be-and the direction and music are almost flawless, and there is almost nothing in the way of throwaway or filler scenes. Everything in the show serves a point, and I can’t think of a point where a character has acted in a way that seemed out of character or forced to do something to drive the plot the way the writer and PD wanted that didn’t work. While there are a few points where the writing might drop the ball in the end, I’m doing my best to have faith. (I still have not recovered from Misty, which was also a near-perfect show until we got to the last 3 episodes where things suddenly started freefalling into a terrible ending that we do not speak of without threat of tears.) Even characters that would typically bore or annoy me-well, no one bores me (there was a scene with two of the father using each other professionally and laughing evil kdrama father laughs that I would normally have been itching to fastforward through that I instead giddily laughed my way through because the actors were so funny) and characters who annoy do so the way they’re meant to.
Is it for everyone? Probably not. Despite being a domestic runaway hit, it hasn’t made too much of a splash in international fandom, though I don’t know of anyone who checked it out and didn’t end up liking it. As a warning, there are some scenes of domestic and child abuse, thought rarely physical and usually in the form of emotional and/or verbal abuse. It isn’t dismissed or treated lightly, but it is there.
SKY Castle debuted with ratings of 1.7% with very little fanfare and moderate promotion, and has since become a legitimate cultural phenomenon with almost unstoppable ratings. While most kdramas tend to have ratings fluctuate at the halfway point, SKY Castle’s ratings have consistently risen or remained the same with the exception of one episode (That was at the end of December, and I think there was something going on?). While cable dramas have had several runaway successes in the lat couple years, none of the others have been as dramatic as SKY Castle’s debuting at barely average ratings and rising to the top of the cable heap, and all have had one or multiple big names attached. Both the PD and writer of SKY Castle are reasonably popular writers who’ve had successful dramas before, but neither is big enough to be considered a guaranteed success, or too have a following. And the cast? There isn’t a single person in it generally considered lead actor material. Instead, the cast is almost entirely made up of well regarded actors in he 40ish-50ish range who typically play supporting characters, along with some up and coming (and almost totally new in some cases) younger actors. Plenty of actors who are well liked, but none who are typically considered a big draw.
So what happened? Word of mouth and a borderline flawless production about a topic that hits home for many Koreans, but framed in a way that still accounts for a degree of escapism, combined with a network that liked to push boundaries and recognizes the financial and critical benefit of woman-centric stories. If you’ve ever watched a kdrama involving teens, you’ve encountered the families of SKY Castle. There are always rich families who hire private tutors for their children and pass money under the table and use professional influences to get their kids into special programs and contests that the working class student who is the protagonist can’t get into. SKY Castle is about those families. It’s a dark satire about the rich families obsessed with getting their kids into the best schools and the pressures put on the students, filtered through the POV of the mothers who are given the responsibility of doing so. “Getting your kids a good education” is a fairly universal desire, with the intensity and level of education varying based on any number of factors. SKY Castle explores that separated from the realities of life for the vast majority of Koreans by setting it among rich people in a gated community, and portraying the world through the POVs for 4 very different mothers. Getting into the characters is spoilery, and much of the thrill of the show is twists and seeing how and characters develop, and going in relatively cold might be best in some cases, but suffice it to say they (and most of the cast in general) are fascinating and complex. Sometimes monsters (often in the case of some characters) and sometimes not, even they characters I would normal be annoyed or bored by fascinate me here.
The show is also almost perfectly executed. There isn’t a single weak link in the acting-even then points that looked like they might be weak links have proven not to be-and the direction and music are almost flawless, and there is almost nothing in the way of throwaway or filler scenes. Everything in the show serves a point, and I can’t think of a point where a character has acted in a way that seemed out of character or forced to do something to drive the plot the way the writer and PD wanted that didn’t work. While there are a few points where the writing might drop the ball in the end, I’m doing my best to have faith. (I still have not recovered from Misty, which was also a near-perfect show until we got to the last 3 episodes where things suddenly started freefalling into a terrible ending that we do not speak of without threat of tears.) Even characters that would typically bore or annoy me-well, no one bores me (there was a scene with two of the father using each other professionally and laughing evil kdrama father laughs that I would normally have been itching to fastforward through that I instead giddily laughed my way through because the actors were so funny) and characters who annoy do so the way they’re meant to.
Is it for everyone? Probably not. Despite being a domestic runaway hit, it hasn’t made too much of a splash in international fandom, though I don’t know of anyone who checked it out and didn’t end up liking it. As a warning, there are some scenes of domestic and child abuse, thought rarely physical and usually in the form of emotional and/or verbal abuse. It isn’t dismissed or treated lightly, but it is there.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-13 06:39 am (UTC)You're so timely :D Healthy New Year to you, Megan!
no subject
Date: 2019-01-14 12:49 am (UTC)To you too!