Viewers of tvN Hit Drama Hometown Cha Cha Cha Divided Over K-reporter Article About the Drama Using Crime Repeatedly for the Male Lead to Save the Female Lead and Turn into a Romantic Moment

This week a K-entertainment reporter wrote a long article (here) that critiques currently airing hit weekend drama Hometown Cha Cha Cha for one specific element and it’s a thoughtful take that is worth discussing and even better is the responses from viewers are equally thoughtful, nothing is knee jerk. The writer took issue with Hometown using the “woman in danger from male crime” plot device, multiple times, to give the male lead a reason to help/rescue the female lead. Even worse is that the crime is sorta tossed aside after and simply used to bring the two leads closer together. It also feels so old school using man rescues helpless woman to advance a relationship. I haven’t caught up on Hometown since the merely okay first episode but situationally it would seem improbable that a sleepy seaside village would have the female lead multiple times faced with either the potential for crime or actual criminal behavior towards her. With that said, the K-netizens feedback is split basically 33/33/33 three ways equally to this criticism: (1) group 1 thinks it’s totally a legit criticism, they don’t like the repeat use of this plot device, (2) group 2 thinks the use of the plot device did happen, but eh it’s not a deal breaker as the OTP relationship was building in other ways and this didn’t ruin the flow, and (3) group 3 thinks this is much ado about nothing, especially with the drama using plot devices used in the K-movie is is adapting from so who cares, they love the drama regardless. Hometown is winning on all fronts and I think this critique is the typical reporter parsing drama a little more in depth, and if this is the biggest fault anyone can fine with Hometown then it’s swimmingly along swell and should continue its streak of success all the way to the end.