Potato Star and the Dilemma of Long Dailies

Here's something you may be surprised about. I've been watching Potato Star 2013QR3 for the past few weeks or so. The reason why it may be surprising is because this is a daily drama. With 120 episodes. That's a whole lot of hours I could've used for something somewhat useful. Whatever that is.

The premise of Potato Star starts with Na Jin-ah (Ha Yeon-soo) and her mother Gil Sun-ja (Oh Young-sil). They live in a shabby house on the outskirts of Seoul. Jin-ah dreams of working in Kong Kong, a toy company who's origins also involves her late father. Despite her father's contributions to the now large corporation, the family only receives one bag of rice a year. One day, a young man that goes by the name of Hongberg (Yeo Jin-gu) moves in to the old house next door. The house is basically abandoned, so he often visits the Na family for basic needs like bathroom, food, and electricity. Meanwhile, Kong Kong's president, Noh Soo-dong (Noh Joo-hyun) decides to retire. His son, Noh Min-hyuk (Go Kyung-pyo), an arrogant Harvard graduate, takes over the company. His somewhat nontraditional approach gains him a few enemies. On the other hand, his new policies would grant Jin-ah her entrance to the company. Suddenly, a potato-like meteor strays off its predicted course, possibly crashing to earth itself. This brought chaos to the world, and a few changes to the lives of our characters.

Here's the catch, the occurrences that I've mentioned above happens in about 9 episodes. That's a lot of episodes, if you ask me. But considering the total number is 120, 9 episodes isn't that many. Afterwards, a ton of things have happened to the characters which I probably won't talk about that much in this post since it'll be way too long.

That's the thing I'm worried, though. That this daily sitcom is just too darn long. I'm always complaining about dramas being gluttonous of their length. An average rom-com drama eats up at least 16 hours. This sitcom though, while each only 30 minutes long, will be a grand total of 60 hours. That's right. If you decide to marathon this sitcom, it will take you 2 and a half days. Non-stop.

Time issue aside, I'm currently on episode 90 (almost there!) and I still find it funny. Sure the abundance of bathroom jokes in the beginning can throw you off. And the characters can be extremely annoying at times. But there's lots of great moments since then. Obviously these characters aren't exactly your average family next door. They have super quirks, they fight with each other, make fun of one another. They're not what you would call a model family of any kind. On top of that, the story line does get ridiculous. But hey, that's what fake sitcom families are for. The crazier the better.

So here's to my first foiree in Korean dailies. The characters aren't the most complicated out there. They're more like American sitcoms of yore (and present too?). Caricatures more than characters. But they sure are funny. Because of their stupidities or daily happenstances, this sitcom definitely cracks me up sometimes. And this is not an exaggeration. While 120 episodes might not be your cup of tea (I sure thought it wasn't mine), I think it's nice to give it a go. Since Potato Star is produced by the team behind High Kick, the Korean sitcom franchise that I've been hearing so much about, I wonder if I should give any of those a go.

Have you watched any Korean sitcoms? What do you think about them?

Photos courtesy of tvN