Rants and Weekly Raves (RAWR) #331

Trotwood: Snow. snow. snow. As of three hours ago, we only had 12 inches (around 30 cm), but I'm not complaining because other people have had up to 17. It is still snowing pretty hard, too. I'm thankful that I don't have to go anywhere and no one has lost power. I'm looking for something fluffy to pick up where people don't annoy me. Suggestions?

kakashi: Here it's rain, rain, rain. I went to the dentist today and it was anxiety inducing. Too many people about! I got take away for tonight though. I watched All Creatures Great & Small (Panda made me do it) over the weekend, it's cute. But I'm not in the mood to watch anything, I fast forward everything these days.

KOREA

Mr. Queen

People kept telling me to pick this back up. Uncanny Counter is over, and I had some extra time, so I did. I have found the key to enjoying it: I jus have to be resigned to the fact that we may never see Chef again. I know we still have two more weeks, but I'm now just going to enjoy our Queen who is now not only focused on protecting her self but also getting back at the people who tried to kill her and outing hypocrites.  This weekends episodes were very enjoyable because of that. Also, my favorite trope, which is completely under utilized in the drama world--is the main couple working together against the big bad.

Cheat on Me, if You Can (finale)

I went back to this, too, because I really wanted to see what was behind the murder. But what is with dramas that need to ruin perfectly decent endings in the last two minutes? You aren't being edgy. You are just being annoying. The mystery was actually fairly satisfying, combining and revealing everything and all characters with a level of "Aww that makes sense now" that many narratives do not achieve. I'm just going to pretend that the show ended before the last two minutes, and that there is some future time when these two are a thing.

JAPAN

Shichinin no Hisho 

I really thought I had access to the final episode, but I do not. It hasn't been subbed in a month or mainly two, but I found all sorts of sites that claim to have it. It's too bad, because the penultimate episode gives us more of the background of why this team got together in the first place and the long history several of them have with the evil Awataguchi. We also knew that Sa Ran wouldn't completely go to the dark side, right?

Attack on Titan

I almost forgot!!!!!!!! That tells you something about my state of mind. Too many things in there... Let me go and watch it ASAP. 

By the way, I started to watch this with my kid. Not entirely age appropriate, but she can take it. And she LOVES it. Good girl. We're in the middle of season 2. Funny how you watch it differently when you know certain things - and realize how many clues you missed when you watched it for the first time.

THAILAND

Manner of Death

Okay. I cheated. There was no way I was going to be behind another week when I knew episode 10's cliffhanger involved two people being shot and falling over and actual cliff. I mean you knew they were going to live because it was not one but both main characters. And as sloppy as the narrative structure is in this show, I'm also going to admit that I had suspected almost everyone, except our baby boy Sorn, but not the actual guilty of murder person! I know we still have more bad people to catch, but that was a pleasant surprise show. I do have to say "I told you so" when I said early on that I ship Sorn with Tak. I was rewarded in ep 11. I also love how Dr. Bun and Tan watch over them like proud fathers.

A Tale of a Thousand Stars

This is another one of those shows that many of us Thai drama fans have been waiting for for a long time. No seriously, like over a year. There were so many times that they said it was coming "soon" and there were so many stories about the difficulty in filming from COVID, to the monsoon rains and subsequent copious amount of mud, to the fact that the original novel had soldiers but the government didn't like it so they made them all forest rangers that many of us didn't believe it would ever happen. It stars one of our favorite side actors, Earth Pirapat. He's one of those actors that you really like but has really only had one real main lead role (I say one because even though he was in another show, he played yet another swimmer) but generally plays the boyfriend of the main lead's friend or the nice boyfriend of a character you don't like. It's about the change of heart literally of a man who gets a heart transplant and the new world he sees when he decides to fulfill the dream of the young woman whose heart now beats in his chest. Unlike Manner of Death, the first episode did not disappoint.