Rants and Weekly Raves #293 (RAWR)

kakashi: Lockdown partially lifted. My kid went to school this morning. We have way below 100 new daily cases at the moment... fingers crossed it'll stay that way. I might - or might not - try Longest Day in Chang'an.
JoAnne:  Trot, we DID apparently have snow (late last night, and a very brief shower but grainy, hard little clumps like grains of sand.  May 8th!  It was all gone immediately, but I am still offended that it happened at all.
Panda: Howdy y'all!! The days keep blending into each other, and I kid you not the past 2 weeks I completely forgot when to check in, and then when I remembered I was like "eh, I am not watching anything anyway" so I just didn't bother. I am still not watching anything, but today I remembered early!! Whoop whoop. How is everyone? I missed you all. 
Trotwood: Yup. We had freezing rain and black ice and then snow the next day. The sun cam out while it snowed. Then everything cleared up for a day and warmed up a bit. Then we had wind, pouring rain, and lightning with branches down. May has a very bad attitude.

KOREA

The King: Eternal Monarch

Ooooh, plots thicken.

I think I've dropped it. I got bored.

ExtraCurricular

I devoured this in 24 hours a couple weeks ago.  Very well done.  I may have mentioned that last week.  I don't remember, and I'm too lazy to look right now.
You did write about it last week. I found a picture for it. Is it over? Sorry.

CHINA/TAIWAN

Amensalism

I’m not going to lie; I could watch Qui Wang Zi  run in slo-motion through the rain all day long. However, that would not make a good show, but this director seems to think adding copious

slo-motion scenes even when people are just standing around adds to this drama. I know I said this last week, and it’s clearly the director’s style, but unless they needed to fill a certain time slot, there has been no reason for these slo-mo breaks. I’m frustrated because the plot itself is quite interesting, the characters are engaging, and cinematography is on point. Thus, it’s really a shame that this one choice really detracts here. I know some people are mad that Bi Kei Wei keeps denying that she and You Quan are in a relationship, but she’s not being naïve. It actually makes more sense that she would believe that he’s protecting her because they are friends bonded together because of their belief in each other’s trauma rather than him being in love with her. It’s this bond that is going to be more important than romance now that she’s revealed that she is onto the chairman’s secret past. But why did Ming Fe look so worried? I keep watching this show because it’s full of complex, interesting women.

Girlfriend

I didn't watch because I was waiting for more subs to become available to me. Only watching two episodes is not enough at one time for this show.

Ancient Detective

I continue to really enjoy this show, and would watch more if I weren’t so tired after working. I have watched through episode 7, so I am finished with the Puppet Master Li story arc, and I’m going to miss that group of people and was really sad about some of the deaths. It was very Agatha Christie country house mystery with people dying off right when you think you’ve figured out the culprit. I also like the way the show keeps the overall. I’m glad to see Shi Qi’s return. We know that our hero isn’t going to die before the drama ends, but the fact that he is slowly dying and now is a targeted by Shi Qi’s old assassin family puts a little bit of pressure on things. I’m also worried about how broken hearted Zhao is going to be when he finds out who he has fallen in love with. I’m curious how much of her response to him was all an act and how much she might have been swayed by him. 

JAPAN

Rental nan mo shinai hito/Rent a Person Who Does Nothing

We move on along with Shota attending a birthday with a young woman who is going to be turning 21. She doesn’t want to celebrate alone, but she also doesn’t want to burden her friends. Initially, I was feeling sympathy with her because I, too, sometimes don’t want to “hang out,” but the more I listened, I realize that I really think she needs new friends! We also find out more about Shota’s backstory and what happened to his sister when she turned 21, which makes his panic attacks about work make even more sense. I do hope that by the end of the show, he’s not getting tricked by that pamphlet/magazine selling guy.

THAILAND

2Gether

We knew that all the good, cute times were not going to last, right? We still got plenty of cute (when Sarawat tells Tine how he’s completely different from his first love was a melty moment), but there was much pain here. Sure Man may be too immature for Type, but the way Type’s colleagues treated him was just plain mean. There was no reason for any of that, especially since it became clear that Type’s boss only invited him to make fun of him. And Tine spent most of this episode worried that he was going to lose Sarawat to his old girlfriend only to have her show up. The next episode is the end, so I hope we don’t spend the whole time in angst to get 5 minutes of resolution at the end.

My Engineer

I’ve given up on caring about the main couple, which is abundantly fine because the two side couples’ stories are far more compelling than what’s going on with those two. Mek finally confesses to Boss, and though I wasn’t surprised that Boss likes him, too, I was surprised at the way it came about AND how long he has like Mek. They’ve misunderstood each other since they were freshmen! Ugh. And poor Ram. Finding out your dad is having an affair with the neighbor that you’ve always thought of as your older sister? Thank goodness he has King and his squad of friends.