Rants and Weekly Raves (RAWR) #342

Trotwood: I'm just trying to get through the end of the semester with the typical April stress and all the April events. It seems like there are even more since they are all virtual and everyone is trying so hard to give graduating seniors wonderful things to remember after such a hard and bizarre year. A 3-day weekend meant nothing when I had to work all of Saturday. I feel like I get to watch less and less and have energy for watching less and less. I just want to sleep.

Law School premiered last week, starring one of my favorite actors, Kim Myung Min, but I know I'm not ever going to get to it, so here's this week's picture. 

kakashi: OMGaaaaaaawd, it's Tuesday again! lmao, forgetting to post RAWR in time is my new normal. Someone pointed me to a NYT's article yesterday and I self-diagnosed as yes, indeed, languishing. I don't feel like watching anything except for Nanatsu no Taizai with my kid. We're running out of episodes so we will start on Season 4 of AoT together soon, then watch Fullmetal Alchemist.

KOREA

How to Be Thirty?/Not Yet Thirty (finale)

I made it to the end of this show still loving this friend group and wishing that we got more of the secondary couple, but so be it. I liked everyone, but I hated how they made our heroine feel like she had to take the blame for everything that happened. Why do women do this? Why do women fight each other when they are the ones to whom they made promises? She feels like it is her fault because she was suspicious that he had another woman? But the last time he ever said "no" was when he didn't say anything to her confession when he was in middle school. He was the one who approached her, so it was okay for his ex-girlfriend to trash her in the press? Gahh. Thank goodness they show her in a good place at end. At least the stupid wiffle-waffle guy is alone at the end as he deserves.

Sell Your Haunted House 

This story is much more complicated than it appear on the service with our Jang Nara playing a woman who heads up a real estate agency that will help you sell your haunted house by getting rid of the ghosts first. I think it balances out the different tones well--from melancholy to humor to drama. I thought the pacing of the first episode was slow--too slow, but the ingredients are all here to make up a fun and even heartfelt drama. Jung Yong Hwa plays the scam artist who turns out to actually have a real gift with ghosts. I know some people are really loving this already, but I don't yet. I think I could though.

Miss Monte Cristo (daily)

Eun Jo still loves her fiance, and it's clear he still loves her. But she was ready to walk away and focus on revenge, but it's getting harder and harder with everything she is learning about his life and how he was in despair and almost killed himself when she died. We also have the complication of Bo Mi finding out her secret, which is going to put her in danger as well as Ha Jun's growing suspicions. He said he was okay with her using him, but is he really? Also, my suspicions of her adopted mother are coming back. She seemed to be too angry at her for her weakness. What's that about. We are only a third of the way through this show, and people are starting to crack--some in a good way and others . . .? Well, let's just say that my chatgroup that watches dailies are already taking bets on which character's redemption arc is going to involve institutionalization. Because the best part of good revenge are when the villains have to reckon with the horrible things they have done.

CHINA/TAIWAN

Word of Honor ep.26-27

I know. I know. Everyone else has moved on and forward, but I was only able to watch two episodes this weekend because I had to work most of it. I find that I need to really pay attention to details and my mind wasn't in detail mode after so many work hours. Partly, because the show is making me more an more anxious, causing me to take more breaks while watching. I know there will be more deaths coming. Why am I still watching when I know everyone will break my heart? I love the look  that Wen Ke Xing gives Zi Shu when Zi Shu sticks up for him even knowing who he really is. The wonder at such acceptance and love still . . . Great scene.

HIStory 4: Close to You

So let me talk about the good things this week. Li Cheng finishes his confession and though sad and surprised at Mu Ren's rejection, he acts like an adult and works on moving on and maintaining their lifelong friendship. Mu Ren is clearly shaken, but we have him also address this with the girl he started dating to help him through his gay panic. And of course Xing Si is the great friend throughout all of this. But then we have the stepbrother story. A stepbrother who we though might be showing progress (even without the therapy he so clearly needs) by telling Xing Si that he wants to be brothers if they can't be lovers. He even takes the blame, admits to what he did, and confesses that it's a one sided love in front of their parents. HOWEVER, he filmed himself assaulting Xing Si and thought it a good idea to show their dad in effort to take all the blame for himself. Geeze. Why didn't we get a show about these three and their wedding planner business? That would been a show to love. I realize I keep watching because I love their friendship so much.

We Best Love: Fighting Mr. Second (special episode 6.5)

This special episode focuses on Shou Yi and Zhen Xuan and fills in a lot of confusing gaps left from the finale. When watching that, I couldn't figure out how they went from SY sending ZX away to where they are at the end with the wedding. I can see why they didn't include as much of that story as they had in the finale since clearly there was 20 minutes that would have made the finale too long, but they could've given a bit more. Here we get to see more of their background and more of the reconnecting as adults and what SY gets out of the relationship with ZX and not just the other way round. You should watch just to see ZX dance.

JAPAN

Nemesis

We open this show with a passing of the baton (we think) from Eguchi Yosuke's Kurita, as a successful detective who is retiring, to his successor played by Sakurai Sho. It's clear that Kurita is retiring because he wants to concentrate on one case, but it's also clear or becomes so very soon that Sho's character, Kazama really doesn't have the skills to be a detective. I think Mikami is the adult version of the baby their dead friend swore to protect in flashbacks, and she (with her very strange food tastes) is really the new brains of the organization. It looks like we are going to get a case of the week in addition to the search for the plot behind their old friend's disappearance. The case of the week will probably be as goofy/Agatha Christie as the first, but there is darkness in the old case. I'm in.

Koi wa Deep ni/Love Deeply

Ishihara Satomi is one of those actresses that I will watch at least the first episode of every drama she is in just because I like her so much. She plays a marine biologist who has been having dreams about a disastrous project only to find out that said project is really going to happen in real life. This show initially seems like every Hallmark Christmas special: good, kind heroine meets gruff, cold hero who comes to town to build a resort without knowing or caring that it's going to hurt (take your pick): orphans or an ecosystem. This one is an ecosystem. However, a twist is revealed at the end of the first episode that makes it a much more quirky show. I'm interested in seeing how our heroine's special gift plays out and what is in our hero's dark past relationship with oceans and his older brother.