After such a stellar chat last week about great dramas with great first episodes, we’re on to the obvious opposite topic: great dramas that did not start out great at all. We’re talking about those shows with misleading first episodes — the ones that made you question whether or not you wanted to keep watching — but that just got better and better as the episodes went on.
For me, one such show is Run On. I LOVE this drama. It’s one that I’ve always planned to rewatch one day, and that I don’t think got nearly enough love when it aired. (Although, it might’ve gained a little dedication from Kang Tae-oh followers after Extraordinary Attorney Woo. He’s just as adorable here.)
But great as I think this drama is, the first episode is terrible. I mean, it’s a good thing I did not start watching until Week 3 when I had enough episodes to binge because otherwise I would have shut this thing off and never turned back. It’s disjointed and campy — maybe even a little cringe — and it really doesn’t match the tone of the later episodes once the story hits its stride. In the opening episode, we have our female lead pouring beer over the head of a drunkenly out-of-order professor and our hero holding a gun. With that start, I would never have expected the warm-and-cozy comforter of a story that this ended up being — with all its lovely life lessons tucked into the folds.
What dramas do you consider great that started out crappy but got better as they went along?