Rants and Raves #5

kakashi: A hearty hello from me! But I'm not even here. I'm on holidays (and once again, my biggest fear is that I might not have internet. Been there done that last year). Have fun without me, but not too much, thank you! (Mary: *takes out best wine and orders lots of pizza and cake while kakashi is away*) (Our Rants & Raves posts get a ton of hits ... not sure why that is, but let's just pretend it's because people LOVE to see us go oooooon and on about things)
bcook: *confused* That might not be why? It's obviously coz we're awesome. Though I think it's coz of Jo's gutter mind.
JoAnne: Are we awesome? We're a bit NSFW, but that's not just me. Is it, Mary.
Shuk: [innocent look]

On Marriage Not Dating

Lafer: Marriage Not Dating, my new crack. I think the writing is really inconsistent, the intentions of the two male second leads is confusing, and I'm questioning the intellectual capacity of a writer who thinks that a guy will be near death after 48 hours in a bathroom! Lol what?! Well depends on how hard he tried to go... or how much is coming out. I have to watch this now. (Haha - he was locked in the bathroom and passed out from what I'm assuming was supposed to be dehydration and lack of food. Uhhh - the last time I checked you could live on water for several weeks. But I guess he forgot to turn on the faucet!) In spite of that - the characters, especially the leads, are so adorable that I have to see what happens next. (Are we supposed to pick a color and stick with it? All I can figure is the main writer has black and JoAnne has red. I don't really like green from last time. I know, Whine whine whine - which makes me wonder is 11:00 am too early for wine? [I think you can pick any color, but Jo does feel territorial about red]) (So now I'm just blinding everyone with my color since someone said it looked too much like becca's)
bcook: Just like oppahjusshi... purple is mine!
JoAnne: We loves our precious red, yes we does. Ahhh, Marriage Not Dating. Does anyone get a sort of Hepburn/Tracy vibe out of this? The madcap-ness? The rom? The com? The sometimes really witty, rapid fire dialogue between our two leads? Can't just be me...Anyway, LOVE IT. LOVE THEM. Love my Beaked One, too. Sigh. He's so dreamy.
Becca: It is very reminiscent of the old screwball comedies. (And now I want to rewatch Bringing Up Baby.) And oh, Chicken Beak. I am in love. I don't quite understand his motivations yet, but I like him. Just look at that smile! *dead*

On High School King

sdfsdfsfd [Why?] Place holder :)
bcook: I watching, I laughing...I'm so behind :(
JoAnne: So I was momentarily blinded by SIG's predictably awesome kissing and kissing-related maneuvers into a bit of swooniness, but then they went on their date and it is glaringly apparent that he is a kid and BAM just like that my swooniness was gone. And then, too, Vampire - man...he is the perfect bad boy. HOT beyond belief, deeply tender and sensitive inside, lashing out in pain and learned bastardliness because 1)he likes her and it hurts 2)he desperately wants to please his father with SOMETHING and it hurts 3) he hates Min Seok because a)she likes him and THAT hurts b) Dad likes him and oh guess what, that hurts too. Can someone just please put that poor lovely creature out of his misery? With kisses? Can it be me?
Shuk: I so want him to end up the girl it hurts, too. No matteer how I look at it, Min-seok and Soo-young make no sense, no chemistry, no squees. Oh sure, SIG kisses like a Dyson Volcano set on Stun, but it's an unequal battle. Now, Soo-young and Jin-woo, I totally get. She's silly enough to knock him out of his way-too-adult mentality, and he would steady her down. Please, writer-nims, let's be different and let Vampy have all the fun! Min-seok can time-skip to awesome maturity and find a hot babe to date. Or date JoAnne, if he happens to like New England. (I don't want to date him. I would like to get one of those kisses though.)
Becca: I'm a few episodes behind, but I'm enjoying the show. Not on the main ship at ALL, though. It just doesn't make sense to me on an emotional or mental level. But the men... oh, the men in this show are beautiful creatures. I might have to fight you for Lee Soo-hyuk, Jo.
JoAnne: Who've you got for trades?

On Temptation

Lafer: Yes! I have started Temptation. Omo, Omo, Omo! I love me an older yet gorgeous cast! Ok, I know this will be sleazy and immoral and very melo - yeah, right up my alley! (Before you judge, let me just say my husband benefits greatly when I watch these kind of shows.) This first episode was a set up of all the characters, while the second moved swiftly into the plot. Much to my surprise, it did NOT go the way everyone was thinking, and now I am fully intrigued as to what will happen next. I have my melo!
bcook:I think i've finally figured out kdrama season. First 4/5 months are just dry and crappy. Maybe a drama or two are worth watching. Then things start heating up over the summer as they slam you with awesomeness/disasters/awesomedisasters and finally the fall is when they pull out the big guns. Eagerly anticipating fall.
JoAnne: I haven't seen it and I had no desire to see it but someone is saying it's not like what she expected exactly so now of course I feel like I need to check it out.

On The Three Musketeers

Mary: So I started reading The Three Musketeers to get ready for that fusion sageuk starring Lee Jin Wook (What? Lee Jin Wook? Will there be kissing???) (There had better be!!!) and Yonghwa, and I must say, TTM is one big book of WTF***. D'Artagnan (the lead) is such a rash, inconsistent, and annoying character. What do you think about it? Do you see him that way too?
kakashi: You're such a smart and good girl! It's been YEARS since I read that book, I remember zero.
bcook: I loved the book and the movies (watch the one with chris o'donell and keifer what'sit..you know the 24 guy). That's the best.
Funny thing is, this book is totally a kdrama. There's the incredibly stupid, but incredibly lucky lead whose redeeming qualities are his huge sense of honor and loyalty. There's lots of plot contrivances. There's fate. There's villainous villains who are smart when the story needs them to be, and blind and stupid otherwise. There are seemingly important characters who pop up from nowhere and get ignored later on. There's even a [SPOILER ALERT?] totally un-explainable, last-minute change-of-heart from the antagonist.
My initial impression of musketeers was from the movie The Man In The Iron Mask: adventures, intrigues, disguises, and plotting by a group of smart men warring with an equally cunning king. I was skeptical of it being translated to kdramaland, but after reading the novel, oh gawds, it's totally all over the place and fits your typical kdrama. So I'm now (weirdly enough) excited to see this and I don't mind that we have flower boys as leads, because this will be just a fun caper. (Although I still hold out hope that it's going to surprise us. Don't we all expect the worst and wish for the best in our dramas?)
Lafer: But who will Lee Jin Wook be kissing? Because that is truly his forte. I'd watch it for that.
JoAnne: Oh this will be watched. There will be squeeing. Did you SEE the teasers? I loved The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask and The Count of Monte Cristo and now, of course, I wish to read them all again. The Count, in particular, begs a remake by KDrama. (I am convinced that all revenge stories are a remake of The Count.) I kinda want to squeecap this one, my fellow Providers of Squee. Is anyone thinking they're interested in participating in a project like that? I haven't decided. Because there's also that Eric/Sung Joon thing coming and man, you wanna talk about squee? THAT'S squee.
bcook: hmm I might pop in once in a while to snark about yongwha's acting. If there will be kissin' I won't be missin' *runs away ashamed at bad rhyming*
Becca: I'm still doing WTFDoc, and I might be sharing Yoona's Street recap duties. But if there are Lee Jin-wook squeecaps, I'm definitely in for comments! (Lafer: I may be able to add a comment or two if I'm not too busy wiping up drool.)
*** Which is why I'm reading the sequel, and will probably read the third one in the series.

On Fated to Love You

JoAnne: Sigh. So good. I want to adopt Mi Young. She squeezes my heart with her tiny face and her squeaky little voice and her kind, kind heart. Jang Hyuk when he is touched by her sincerity...his face. Sigh. And of course it goes without saying that Choi Jin Hyuk was always going to be yummy. So basically, I just spend all my time daydreaming that they're fighting over me. In my daydreams, Daniel is not my brother. Just to be clear. You should be very very clear that there is not a hint of sibling relationship in anything that happens between me and the two men in question.
Lafer: Oh, I need to catch up on this. I can't believe this is macho man Jang Hyuk I'm watching!
Shuk: Taiwan FYLY: Gag, pftooie, yuck, blech. On my sheer horror of actually watching that to the end, I won't touch this with a ten-foot cattle prod. Have fun, my chingus! I'm going back to my lakhorns.
bcook: I just started to watch this. Liking it so far. I'm pretty sure Jang Hyuk is parodying Greatest Love and Cha Seong Won with that laugh. Kindda worried about getting committed given Shuk's reaction to it. :/

On Joseon Gunman, On You Are All Surrounded, on Flower Grandpas, on Hi! Love On or whatever it's called, what else is there? Anybody watching All About My Siblings?

bcook: You are all surrounded is Goood! I haven't seen LSG in anything crappy and I hope it stays that way. *makes offerings to DramaGods*. It's got funny moments but it's quite heavy on the makjang. (LSG does screaming rage will a single tear threatens to fall quite well). I think there should be an award for that. The story is pretty tight, the relationships build on past episodes. It's definitely something I'll recommend to a new victim addict drama fan.
The only place I can find Joseon Gunman (uninterrupted and streaming) is dramafever which you all know I hate with a passion. I tried watching the first episode yesterday and the sound was crappy, the subtitles missed the true meaning (that I picked up with my limited korean) and it kept buffering. Two very unhappy thumbs down to dramafever.
Becca: I've been watching JG at DramaCool and DramaGo. The subs aren't that great, but the players are better than at DramaFever.
Some day soon I'll watch the Flower Grandpa show.
JoAnne: I'm watching all of the above, of course, and probably other stuff too. You're All Surrounded is Over now, but I won't spoil it for Cookie. I watched the ending. I'm quite happy with it. It was good all the way through for me. If there's any complaint I could make it's that I wished for just one more encounter between Birkin Bitch's son and his Jjangjjang Man, because I loved them together.
Shuk: Joseon Gunman is the shites. Seriously. It makes my motor hum, especially in HD on my big screen. But our gunman seriously needs a better mask. Or Velcro. Or maybe just some Marine facepaint? That cloth is too floppy and hides that lovely lovely neck.

On Roommate

Shuk: What about Roommate? Woori lafer has been hard at work squeecapping that show. I find the interactions between the celebrities, for the most part, to be endearing and positive. Is it staged? Does the Duck Dynasty family really sleep under RealTree sheets? But still, I love the show, with maybe the exception of the live octopus and NaNa's carnivore instincts [shudder]. I'll be watching 11 this weekend.
Lafer: Oh, I do love Roommate, even though there are times when I swear I hear the director yell CUT!
bcook: Me too! Roommate is pretty awesome even though it's edited to the last cough.

On Any And All Other Non-SK-Related Stuff

Shuk: The sheer amount of good shows to watch is bind-moggling. I mean mind-boggling. My TW and Thai plates overrunneth. I've peeked at a couple of JDoramas this week, but nothing made it to the list. Maybe Kimura's new one "Hero"? Anyone else watching it? I do wish we knew how many episodes "Falling in Love With Me" will be, so I can apportion the appropriate headache medications. I'm praying for a maximum of 23. After all, Leo's about run out of every thoughtful look he could possibly come up with.

Mother Hen Reminders From kakashi

kakashi: Please post on Friday or Saturday, thank you! (goes back to worrying she might not have internet, because ... Joseon Gunman. Jangbori.) [So you'll miss them, but not us? *sadface*] oups. I miss Kakashi. And Mary has been absent since early this week, and Becca went to BAND CAMP or some kind of camp.
Becca: Pfft! It was a church camp. There were screaming children and bugs and I'm happy to be back home, bruises and all. :) I was without internet, dramas, and squee for FOUR DAYS!!! *hug attacks all the unnis*
bcook: Don't let RL suck you in! Remember the Squee!!
Lafer: Well judging from the amount of answers I've gotten to the trivia contest (0), I surmise we're just like cotton candy--sweet, fluffy, totally enjoyable but gone from the lips in an instant. No matter, we will carry on with the squee!