The Battle of Dramas - why Pakistani dramas need to step up

 

Hello folks! I hope you enjoyed my last post, I honestly felt really vulnerable after posting it, but after so much appreciation and support, I felt like it was important to put it out there. And I’m glad I did.

Today, I’ll talk about something I’m currently obsessed with. You can totally skip this post if you’re not interested, but I feel like this is important to talk about. I’m talking about dramas. *readers gasp with horror*

I won’t talk about how good they are, or which dramas I’m interested in, but I’m going to talk about the MASSIVE difference between western, eastern, and Asian dramas. This post is mostly for the ladies who love watching dramas (and gents too, but I don’t know many people other than my best friend who watch dramas). I hope you understand my point of view and learn some good things from this post.

Ah, so let me talk about Pakistani dramas first. I don’t know what trash goes on in the head of people who write these scripts, but they are UTTERLY TERRIBLE (in my opinion, it’s okay if you enjoy family politics). Now, I’ve been observing dramas since I was very young. My parents watched TV during dinner time and only one or two dramas piqued my interest.

The first one was Bunty, I Love You. With the elegant Saba Qamar as the lead, I was so engaged with this drama that I waited impatiently for the next episodes to air. I loved the storyline, the jealousy, the engaging characters, and the dialogues. The end was a bit disappointing, but it made sense. But, I have a question. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD GIVE POISON TO THE PERSON THEY LOVE? AND WHY WOULD YOU DRINK THAT KNOWING THAT IT’S POISON. Proving their love with their words wasn’t enough? The ending was horrible, but their acting was 10/10.

The second drama was ‘Humsafar’. I won’t go into details but the acting, the script, the plot, the delivery of dialogue was EXCELLENT! I really enjoyed it, and it kept me hooked till the end.

The first thing I want to point out is the repetitive script. I’m tired of the ‘saas bahu’ feud. Why can’t daughters-in-law just get along with their saas? I understand, as a woman living in Pakistan, we have to sacrifice many things that we normally wouldn’t in the west. Divorce is taboo, cheating is acceptable, and family politics is the norm. No household is complete without at least one member of the family creating fasaad and ruining perfectly happy relationships. And because of these dramas, toxic households have become acceptable.

For example, one drama that I absolutely LOATHE is ‘Bulbulay’. What even is the point of making a drama like that? I get it, the characters are funny in their own way but the targeted audience is mainly young children. My niece is hooked on that serial and I can assure you, it doesn’t have any positive impacts. First, it promotes cheating. The male leads either fight with their wives or find a way to date other women behind their wives' backs. Adding insult to injury, both the male leads are jobless, and the household has no steady source of income, and it shows that dependency is okay. “Papa Ji will pay the rent” “ask papa Ji for money” “papa Ji didn’t send money this month”, A FATHER-IN-LAW IS NOT AN ATM. I hate the fact that both the female leads are unemployed, under-educated women.

Sigh, in this day and age, women need to stand up for themselves. You never know when the financial-crisis bus will run you over. In my opinion, a successful marriage consists of both educated OR working parties. The wife can support the husband; the husband can support the wife. And this is a way to live COMFORTABLY. This allows you to save up for your children and ensure them a secure future. Plus that drama teaches a lack of respect in relationships. Relationships are about to give and take. You give respect, you earn it back. That applies to ALL the relationships in your in-laws and even in your parent’s household.

I could go on and on about the bad impacts of dramas like these but I’m already crossing the word limit for one topic. Many Pakistani dramas are undoubtedly extraordinary, but… I don’t actually watch dramas, I just listen to the audio of whatever my mom is watching.

Moving on to western dramas, there’s a whole variety of genres of shows you can watch, I specifically found The Good Doctor amazing, but I can’t watch a drama with more than one or a maximum of two seasons. I watched Friends, but never really got interested in it because it doesn’t have a solid plotline. It’s good if you want to cheer up and have a few laughs.

I don’t have much to say about western dramas other than the production. Some dramas stretch out to 3-7 seasons and I don’t understand how people stay interested when the story is stretched like taffy and the scenes shown are unrelated to the story. I found forced humor and bad acting in some shows like iZombie, but some were exceptionally hilarious like Brooklyn-nine-nine. I still watch B99 when I don’t have anything to watch but I’ve completely given up on iZombie (that doesn’t mean it’s not interesting).

We CAN learn good morals from some of these shows, and some are informative too, like TGD, which shows an autistic doctor who’s a genius, and it really pulled me in and made me research upon autism. I don’t really think you have much to learn from western dramas…. That’s just what they are – Dramas.

I started watching K-Dramas after watching Squid Game, which had an amazing storyline, amazing acting, and production. The OST was catching and it was overall an engaging show which left me on the edge of my seat. I watched some law-related dramas, like Law School and Lawless Lawyer which got me completely HOOKED to the story. The best thing about Law School was that it was a complete package of stuff I wanted to see – students studying, exceptionally good and funny study scenes, an outstanding professor who was framed, and electric court scenes that made my heart thunder. There were also some politics and some side stories which were a bit dry, but the dry scenes were (thankfully) short and the negative was made up by showing a study group with very diverse students.

They also have medical dramas with heart-stopping surgery scenes (I wish Pakistani dramas were like that, instead of when someone dies during an operation the doc just comes and says ‘I’m sorry’ LIKE SHOW US WHAT WENT WRONG). I’d recommend Doctor Stranger, Blood (although the acting is bad and the female lead gets cross-eyed when something romantic happens, and the ending is terrible) but it has an engaging plot-line.

I’m not saying all K-dramas are good. There have been instances when I watched all 16/20 episodes and still wondered what the story was about. Some things make no sense, some scenes are dry and unrelated, some use forced humor to cover up the bad production and script. But they are better than Pakistani dramas at least. No ‘saas bahu’ feuds, no pathetic female leads, no show-sha. Even if there are family feuds, like in K2, they’re way more interesting than fighting over something someone said. There’s a lot more depth to some shows, and some are plain bad.

Some Western/Pakistani/Korean shows I’d like to recommend:
- Breaking Bad
- The Blacklist
- Peaky Blinders
- Queen’s Gambit
- Brooklyn nine-nine
- The Good Doctor
- Humsafar
- Khwabnagar Ki Shehzadi
- Alpha Bravo Charlie
- Makafaat
- Kitni Girhein Baqi Hain
- Doctor Stranger
- Blood (6/10)
- Law School
- Lawless Lawyer
- Vincenzo (must-watch 10/10)
- Partners of Justice
- My Name
- Healer

That’s it for today, I hope this post wasn’t dry and boring… if it was I’m sorry… but this is just my opinion.

Take care, and try not to eat after 8:00 pm! Until next time!