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SECOND_COUPLE

                                             April 22, 2022


                                         SECOND_LEAD
The basic triangle plot frequently
afflicted with Second Lead Syndrome
is an older style of story              Though it certainly hasn't
                                        completely gone away.




There's another style that's been
increasingly used in kdrama romcoms
in recent years:

The story isn't just about one developing
relationship, instead there are around
three of them in play--

While the female and male leads are overcoming
their contrived barriers, there are secondary
characters, each sorting out their own love life.

  And it's not at all unusual to
  see viewers commenting that the
  *main* relationship isn't bad,
  but the second couple is much                 As to why it happens, we
  more interesting.                             might speculate: there's
                                                pressure to have the
  And that's "second couple syndrome".          primary couple conform to
                                                the standard formula, so
                                                there's more scope for
                                                variation in the second
                                                and third couple's.

                                                For one thing, there's a
                                                convention-- which I
                                                personally hate-- of shifting
                                                the lead couple from comedy
                                                mode to tragic, they get
                                                increasingly serious, sit
                                                around looking sad, they talk
                                                very very slowly while they
                                                try to overcome their emotion
                                                to get the words out, and in
                                                general bore me to tears.

                                                The second couple is free to
                                                be sillier, to stay
                                                relatively light-hearted...
                                                and if they do shift to
                                                dramatic-mode, they
                                                necessarily spend less time
                                                on it, because it's not
                                                *supposed* to be the center
                                                of the story.




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