Rants and Weekly Raves #285 (RAWR)

kakashi: Corona destroyed my entire work week and sucked the life out of me. Now that we have some clarity - school is closed until 26th April, no teaching at my university anymore, move to home office in part - I hope that I can get some work done. I wonder whether all of this makes it more likely that I can write a book until the end of May. In any case: have some kittens!
UPDATE: We are now on total lockdown until 19th April. 

Trotwood: I'm in charge of helping to switch my uni to remote work, including providing support to the move to doing all the rest of the semester's coursework online and providing safe, potential isolation protocol amenable housing to homeless and housing insecure students. The news and directives sometimes change every hour. We meet daily sometimes multiple times a day including weekends, so please excuse some of the problems below. I erased a bunch of my reviews by accident this weekend and had to rewrite at least half from memory.

Panda: It's 2nd day of the lockdown and I curiously feel better. I think I was so busy and stressed last week till yesterday that today just feels better by comparison. Lots of prayers to the people on the frontlines, may they be safe. Amen. 

KOREA

I'll Find You on a Beautiful Day

There were no episodes last week.

Hospital Playlist

I’m familiar with all the actors in this but not the actress, but I really like her. This show is only airing one episode a week, which I like especially if they are all going to be over an hour. The show is about a group of doctors who we find are all friends who met when they were first-year medical students (it’s a new version of friendship meet-cute that I can get behind). They have clearly been friends for years and wind up working together at the same hospital. The first episode shows how all of this happens. It’s going to be interesting how this new set up and a friend’s goals may conflict with the overall goals of this new hospital post. I’m really happy with the friendship; I sort of hope that there will be no romance, but I’m sure I’m alone in that.

The Game: Toward Zero (Finale)

I’m glad the show is over, so my curiosity about the ending could be satisfied, but talk about stretching! The penultimate episode was actually quite suspenseful. I really didn’t know who was going to live or die, especially since most of my tlist wanted the OTP dead (smirk), and that would have actually made sense. However, when everything seemed resolved 20 minutes into the finale, I though what are they going to do with the rest of the time. What we got was nearly 50 minutes of boring voiceover and “resolution” probably because the writers recognized that they had to punish the serial killer but also because they probably realized that the serial killer was probably the person a lot of viewers liked the most. Frankly, I did like the team a lot, and would have rather spent more time with them than our OTP. At least we had interruption by coma for a bit.

Tell Me What You Saw

CRAP! I knew someone on the team was going to die. You never have that happy group pic in a crime drama without someone dying, but it doesn’t mean it hurts less, and frankly there are people that I’d rather see die. Still, I even though I get trauma, I don’t understand the new alliances that have happened here and led to what I see as unnecessary deaths. We see both the team leader and Hyung Jae so intent on their own revenge that a good person dies that didn’t need to. But the villain here; oh how I hate him. I know we are supposed to hate villains, but I just find him really disturbing and hateful in ways that go beyond many. I’m still not getting his motivation either. Is it just to show up Hyung Jae to the the point of killing off his own people?

Kingdom

Season 2 dropped last Friday and I started but had to pause because I was so busy. On episode 3 right now, and this is definitely not suffering from sophomore slump. I am so enjoying this! Loving the pace and revelations. As always, it's proved that humans are the real monsters and not the zombies.

CHINA/TAIWAN

Because of You

So odd. Odd all the way through. I can’t understand why they made this show. We have this giant premise. We have three couples. But It was cute watching them all finally admit that they were in love, and I’m not going to lie. With more COVID-19 cases happening this weekend and working on rapidly changing government directives that will affect thousands of my students, it provided exactly what I needed: two 15-minute pieces of fluff with handsome actors who all deserve better stories than this.

JAPAN

Kono Otoko wa jinsei Saidai no Ayamachidesu/ This Guy is the Biggest Mistake of My Life

We finally get the reason why Amagi hates being praised. I felt so sorry for him because he actually wants to be a better person than he’s allowed to be. Because everyone was so quick to cover and forget what he sees to be a serious mistake, he doesn’t trust what anyone says to him, especially because no seems to talk about his faults. He seems really lonely when he tells Sato that he feels like no one really sees him. When he talks to her like this, you can see that she really listens but then he goes all jealous crazy stalker like and . . .

Shiranakute Kariyama/No Need to Know/Off the Record

Episode 6 was a very moody episode in the best way. As I’ve been saying, the show really shows us that Kate and Yuichiro Odaka should never have broken up. She recognizes that she made a mistake 8 years ago and has accepted that he’s moved on, gotten married, and has a kis. She’s even been able to work with him and remain his good friend. However, this crisis with finding out her biological father is a murderer and her fiance’s reaction to it has pushed her to have to understand the real loss that her decision caused. Episode _ is all about facing truths. I’m with Odaka concerning her obsession with trying to prove her father was innocent when he himself admitted the crime. She needs to let that go; she also needs to distance herself from Odaka before they do something that they both regret.

Sousa Kaigi wa Living de!/The Investigation Meeting is in the Living Room

Our favorite crime fighting family is back. Slow episode though with the mystery/crime taking not just second stage but backstage to the contrast of what this family brings to this community vs. the woman who thinks they’re criminals. But there some more background set up which seems to be leading to a bigger story I hope.

THAILAND

Why R U?

These couples are practical married already. Geeze. I’m glad we get to see Sai help ZOn get through his stage fright which is what I think leads Zon to finally admit his feelings. Fighter and Tutor were just cute in their plans to go to the beach. The best female friend thing at concert seemed to be unnecessary particularly when the jealous bit was over so quickly. But I love just staring at Zee as Fightor, so I’m not complaining. I was watching all silly shows trying to distract myself from crisis management work, so it was perfect.

2Gether: the Series

Sarawat doesn’t just flirt with Tine; he comes right out and tells him that he wants to be with him. However, Tine is completely oblivious because this type of sincerity is not part of his reality. He can’t imagine that Sarawat would do anything but tease and make fun of him, especially because Sarawat has a legion of fans. It’s frustrating to watch, but when I take a step away, I understand it. It would never occur to Tine that Sarawat might be gay. It’s not the gay part; it’s the Sarawat part. It doesn’t occur to him that a guy that could have any girl he wants, that has a fan club at school that brings him snacks, would instead be chasing after him, a guy who has had a series of dates but not a steady girlfriend. 

Girl Next Room: Motorbike Baby

So I’m thinking that this show is going to have completely different stories for the different “Girl Next Room” because none of the other “girls” were in this episode at all. It focused exclusively on Sundae and her past with the motorcycle taxi driver from the previous episode. He was her senior in high school and pursued her. He wasn’t even put off by the scary challenge of her clearly alcohol challenged mother. But we can see what the problem is going to be; he’s going to have to work to take care of his sick father and will have to give up on university. So here they start seeing each other again when she is a freshman, and he’s driving taxis full time after he’s disappeared for a couple years. I know everyone feels sorry for them. I know I’m supposed to route for them to get back together. But part of me wants to act like a mom and say to her, she needs to focus on school and her future and not get tangled up in his problems again. She’s going to have to feel fine about the way he is acting around her new college friends.

My Engineer: The Winner of the BL Weekend Engineering Battle

Okay so the title of the show is really My Engineer, but I’m calling it that because Thailand tv decided to premier two BL dramas about Engineering students in university on the same weekend. This is hilarious to many of us because the running joke is that according to Thai tv, 80% of university engineering students are gay (really so many BL dramas have gay engineering students), but it was also a mistake because the quality of the two couldn’t be more disparate. En of Love is the other show, and one of the main leads is downright creepy. Neither the acting nor the flimsy reasoning behind anyone’s actions make up for the creepiness. My Engineer is not a great show, but it has the level of earnestness and humor expected out of the genre. There are so many couples though that I’m sure I’m going to be annoyed because none of them are going to get the development I want.