Rants and Weekly Raves #61 (RAWR)

JoAnne: Oyyyy, it's cold. Colder than cold here in New England. Yes, the colors are lovely. You know what? Who cares! It's frigging COLD. I don't care about color, I care about HEAT. I come home to my cold house because dammit, I will NOT turn the heat on until November 1st, and I wrap up in something, and then I turn on the heating pad (fuck you, it's not cheating) and lean back against it, settle in to watch some dramas and....go to sleep. It's too damn cold!
kakashi: It's been really mild here ... without-coat or even jacket mild. Lovely colors as well. But not very lovely Real Life. I'm just stressed. And I don't even dare look to closely at my agenda....
I know what you mean... don't need to get into it here, but yeah. Things are Stressful. Thank God for distractions!
bcook: You think you're stressed? pft
Nabi: It's lovely weather in California! But yeah...stress here, too. :-(
Jaehyu: Well, it's not particularly cold here in the mid-Atlantic, but I've had a bad cold (aw, you too?) and am behind on all sorts of work, so I'll just leave this cutie as a hello and goodbye here: 

You all thought I was going to stick in Jaehyo, didn't you?
Fei Lui!  You cutie pie! He looks like that Airbender kid.

Twenty Again

I miss them! A lot!
Yeah, that was a good bunch.
becca: Awww.

Nirvana in Fire (China)

I'm of a mind to start recapping this. Which is crazy. 54 episodes, I have no time, and viki is far ahead of me, so who will even read? But do I care? A bit, for now.
I need to start this soon, I think. So many dramas!
I'm at episode 20, due to my immense workload, BUT I WANT TO MARATHON! The most amazing thing about it (apart from the superb acting) is the script. I get so annoyed by all those script-blunders in Kdrama. There is not a single one in this so far. Every sentence matters.  
Exactly. Makes it perfect by any standards.
BTW, I'm getting my hands on a 1080p version. Gorgeous in very much HD. 

Good Times (China)

This is everybody's go-to drama while waiting for new NiF subs, haha. Hu Ge is one hot piece of man, yum.
I don't really feel that way about him. Now, Wallace Huo, on the other hand...

I don't have much to compare as NiF is my first venture into C-Drama. But Hu Ge is a helluvan actor and that is why I'm watching him, not because of his looks (Wallace Huo too? Oh wait... Wallace is Taiwanese, right?). I watched two episodes of this last night and it's the standard story we know from KDrama ... cute and successful guy with a travel agency has a girl after him (major DISLIKE) and meets another woman by accident. And there are tons of accidents between the two. It's pretty clear where it'll all lead to, but something I enjoy is the DIFFERENCE to Kdrama. In how they tell the story and how these people interact with each other. They are not huge, but they are there nonetheless. And seeing how tired I've grown of standard KDrama, this is just what I need (this below is a vomit-force-kiss. Very romantic, yes :) 

For a standard story, it's very well-acted and written. 
It really is! I just caught myself thinking: are all the C-Actors better than the average Korean actor? I mean, even the annoying second lead girl acts really well and is only sometimes annoying. And wow, it is CUTE.  

The Disguiser (China)

It's being subbed! Two episodes are ready. And DAMN, it looks good. It's movie quality (the cinematography is WOW) and everybody from Nirvana in Fire is in this too (looking very different, of course, but the voices help)
Where is it being subbed and where can we watch?
Veeeekeeeee

A fan channel, hence the ugly grey space where subtitles appear. I'll go for a nice HD version once I find it. It looks absolutely stunning

She Was Pretty

I'm current on something! I suppose the way they handled the reveal and the aftermath of that reveal are a bit different than I was expecting, and I like it, so far, but I wasn't expecting my heart to hurt for all FOUR of our star-crossed lovers, and it DOES.
Reveal? what reveal? what happened? no don't tell me. no. wait. dm me. i need to know!! (i'm so happy to be feeling the feels again.)
Everybody knows who everybody is, and everybody knows that everybody knows who everybody is.
I feel like this should have ended at ep 12.  It could've wrapped up nicely with that.  Shtill love Shiwon.
Shoot, I'm behind again.

The Village: Secret of Achiara 

Excellent show with complicated characters I can't get into right now. I just don't understand, though: why is the daughter so keen her mother be upset over Teacher Hye jin's death? Even a child should know not to expect a woman to mourn her husband's late mistress. And a child should at least care about her mother's feelings first in a horrible situation like that. 
Right, but when the child is weird, plus furious, which that child is...
But what is she angry about? And no matter how much I got angry with my mother as a child, and there was a lot to be angry about, there were some lines that could never be crossed.  Which is why I don't sympathize with this brat. 

D-Day

I started watching this but got interrupted by life. It actually had a pretty interesting start. Maybe i'll go back to it after She Was Pretty.

Yes, I liked the first few episodes myself.  The problem with not being current with stuff is I sort of forget where I am.  I need to go back to my lists.  For a while I wasn't watching enough to need that.

HATE the guy from D-Day. Will post this instead

Six Flying Dragons

Current on this, too! Man, I love it. The kids were good (of course, they always are) and there wasn't too much of them. Now we're into the grown ups and I feel like, in particular, Shin Se Kyung needs a mention. A lot of people don't like her. I used to not like her, based on WAML, and then I saw her in a couple of other things and she was SO different and adorably bubbly and cute that I fell in love. This time around she has managed to keep the adorableness in a not-so-bubbly role, and I love her forever as a result. She's feisty and emotional and I just want to squish her. So does future Prince Bang Won (Yoo Ah In) by the way. AND Future Kingly Bodyguard Moo Hyool, otherwise known as Tall Hyung from Pinocchio. (Particularly funny and sweet and here.) And ohhh, Byun Yo Han. He's so good. So damned good. He's so good that I can barely even squee about Yoo Ah In and I can ALWAYS squee about Yoo Ah In.

Not current :(( want to be though.

Get current: it's really good (in my next life maybe). 
I might not actually be current. Are there 10 episodes out? If so, I'm two weeks behind. Dammit. 
Nope, Ep 7 is out today.  To be current as someone who uses subs, ep 6 is enough until tonight.
Another one that I've yet to start but am very excited about.
Ditto.

Awl

Not subbed yet, right? I want to watch this though.
Same guy who wrote Misaeng, I think?  That would make it worth checking out, for sure.
Pretty sure it's a different writer, but there have been comparisons made, based on the webtoon and expected tone and subject matter of the drama. I'm really just hoping that this drama will be the return of Ji Hyun-woo to the kind of wonderfulness that he was in Queen In-hyun's Man.

Kiss Me (Thai) 

Should we bother to keep this here? They just continue to soften the edges of the things about Playful Kiss that we all agree were a problem, and Mike and Aom just continue to be the most fricking adorable babies in the Thai universe. What else is there to say? It's not like everyone doesn't know the story!
Hey! This one I've have started! One episode in, it's cute, but… yeah. Not much to say about it.
WHAT's WRONG WITH HIS HAIR??!

Moon River (Taiwan) 

Oops...I forgot this week. Oh well, no time now. I'm not dropping though! Skating Grandma and Tiny Mouth are just too cute.

The Girl's Speech (Japan) 

Why on Earth can there be two dramas called Gakko no Kaidan, and both be completely different? Like, totally not related in anyway? 'School Ghost Stories' and 'The Girl's Speech'. Tell me how that is related, Japan. How do you get from here to there with the same words? TELL ME. Not even my Japanese friend at work could explain it... but in that case, I think English was tripping her up.
I have absolutely no clue what you are talking about.

Glamorous Temptation

I'm enjoying it, cautiously. I've never really had a drama make me furiously angry with characters, to the point of having a stomach ache, in two episodes. But the woman playing Hyeong Woo's mom...I hate her in everything. Not her, but her characters. And honestly, I hate her voice. But what's really pissing me off is that I dislike Hacker Ahjumma's character in this as well! Blasphemy! And Sang Yi, the girl who comes to live with Hyeong Woo, the one who is not Kim Sae Ron the Future Queen of All Things, I just can't trust her. I keep thinking she did shit, and it turns out she didn't, and I keep thinking she'll be a backstabbing liar and then she never is, and it's frustrating me. Big is his usual adorbs self, thank God. And I loved my few minutes with Thighs, brief though they were.

New Tales of Gisaeng 

Sung Hoon, my love, I am coming back.

Cheer Up! (aka Sassy Go Go) 

This is seriously cute. And simplistic, yes, but with good core values. And just look at these two dolls:

And don't forget Bok-Donggie! Here he is shaking his pom-poms:

Yes, literal pom-poms. Sorry.

Other Stuff (Basically, Stuff from the USA) 

Yeah, so they're doing what they're doing on Jane the Virgin: double love and pregnancy. I don't like it much, too be honest. TeamMichael!
#TeamRafael for a lot of reasons, but damn, Michael is a good guy. I can't deny that, but I really don't want this 'torn between two men' piece to be a serious focus of the season, though. It makes me tired just thinking about it. Isn't there enough to mine, plot-wise, with the decision to build a family with a man you barely know, his cray-cray family situation and the included ties to shady characters, a grandmother who may or may not be deported, and your idiot lovable parents finding their own path to familial happiness enough? Why does Michael still need to be part of this? The answer is: HE DOESN'T. He could stick around as the cop who helps deal with the afore-mentioned shady characters, he could swing between maybe pining a bit for a Jane and maybe growing a pair of balls and realizing that ship has sailed, okay, I'll go for that. But NOT THIS. And freaking Blondie, with the pregnancy? Noooo. COME ON.

Sleepy Hollow ......... nope. They are not good enough to save this... "they" being the writers and the producers. I might continue watching because I don't watch much else, but I don't enjoy it. There's no story to fall in love with.
I'm not even going to start, then. Sad.Very sad.

Izombie....omg so weird. so weird. but i'm still watching
Huh. I'm loving this season. But I'm worried about Major and kind of fed up with how little my Detective Bambineaux has to do. He's barely even in the episodes! I demand character development!

Looking Forward to...

Oh My Ovaries! Descendants of the Sun! (.....which may or may not air in 2016, you mean?) I think there's not a lot on my horizon that I'm curious about...but I could just be forgetting stuff. Or, it could be that the power of So Ji Sub and Sung Hoon together in a drama where the premise sort of requires them to spend time less-than-fully-dressed makes it impossible for me to think of anything that isn't as important as Song Joong Ki.
So Ji Sub gets nakkid?! (or atleast partially) count me in!
That new show with Sung Hoon and So Ji Sub.
Bubblegum. And, um… other stuff. I have no idea what's upcoming. I barely know what's currently airing.
Bubblegum has started!