Rants and Weekly Raves (RAWR) #346

Trotwood: I am back to strong internet, so I have been able to watch dramas. I had a great time with my mother, ate pie, and bought hats. Still, I feel as though, there are so many dramas that are out that I am just never going to see, and I'm much more fine with that than I was before. 

I love both Lee Bo Young and Kim Seo Hyung, but the new Korean drama, Mine, has nothing about it in which I'm interested, so it's a pass for me although I'm sure with the two of them the acting is going to be on point. 

Also, is anyone watching Miss the Dragon? The people on my t-list either hate it or find it comic for the wrong reasons. Everyone looks really pretty, though. 

Kakashi: I still have no desire to watch anything. The last thing I ffwarded was Shadow and Bone. Only for the Darkling scenes though. Poor misunderstood bully. Occasionally, I wonder about the Fated General and its fate.

KOREA

Doom at Your Service

I wasn't sure what you think of this show after the first episode. I usually like the characters that Park Bo Young plays even I don't like the drama itself, and the same is true here. Her reaction to finding that she has a terminal degree is played with a really intricate combination of disbelief, bitterness, and refusal. I also like the way she is responding to Doom. She asks the kinds of questions I would ask. I also like her relationship with her her writer friends, and her colleagues (led by the perfectly droll Lee Soo Hyuk--thank good NOT the 2nd lead here) is great. I'm not sure about her relationship with Doom or his relationship with her. If I were pretty sure the writers weren't going to make this into a romance, I'd probably be fine, but I don't know how you get past someone threatening you will taking the life of the person you love the most if you aren't prepared to give up your own.

Sell Your Haunted House

I'm glad that the secret is out about who Oh Im Bum really is, so we can concentrate on the real problem here . . . the fact that the police are super slow. Not seriously, the real problem is that they still seem to be a step behind the construction company that seems to be at the root of all evil in this town. We all know that the end of last week was a fake out. Our leads can't die this soon, but I need to find out the secret the secretary is keeping, so I hope they don't kill her off, too. Also, when Ji Ah finds out about this betrayal, I'm not sure how she's going to handle it.

Nobleman Ryu's Wedding (series review)

Eight episodes of about 10 minutes each, starring three of the leads from this past year Korean drama's foray into the world of BL. Short and some cute, even lovely moments, (and the poetry competition was funny) but the plot is fairly lightweight and the gifts of all the actors seem under utilized. I know you might be thinking that we should excuse the rather thin plot because of the time constraint, but we've all seen super short web dramas that packed a punch in character development over the last year. So this is not longer an excuse. Writers clearly knew they could make some quick money with this cast.

Dark Hole

Only had time to watch one episode of the two last week, but I wanted to say I was not as bothered by the plethora of genres in this show, as I was last week. Don't tell me if the pregnant lady doesn't survive!

Move to Heaven

I don't think I have cried so much in a drama in a long time. I practically sobbed through the first episode. It's been completely subbed with the whole thing out on Netflix, but I've only see four episodes so far. A friend recommended it as a slice of life drama about healing, and there is a LOT of that going on with the work this family does in cleaning up spaces after people die. It makes me wonder what a stranger would make of the things I have left in my desk and what they would say about me.

Miss Monte Cristo (daily)

Things get crazier and crazier in the two weeks that I missed. Now Ha Ra not only knows her mother's secret but also that the woman she thought she has killed is still alive. We still have 40 episodes more to go, so I'm not going to get worked up about any of this yet. I do want to give a shout out to the bromance in this show. The writers could have easily made Seon Hyuk and Ha Joon at each other's throats because they both love the same woman. However, despite some earlier rivalry, their long standing friendship is what they both need to get them through the crazy that is Ha Ra. Ha Joon never thought Seon Hyuk should marry his crazy step sister, and she proves that every day. It helps that Seon Hyuk really never wanted to be president of the company and is doing his best to help his friend get that role. I hope they stay friends throughout. Ha Joon is going to need Seon Hyk's strength when he finds out what really happened to his mother.

CHINA/TAIWAN

Word of Honor (finale)

I'm going to say that I did NOT cry as much in the last episode as I had been warned that I would. In fact, as much as I was touched at the sacrifices they made for each other, the final episode fell a bit flat for me. It was the penultimate episode and the disastrous wedding that packed the biggest punch for me. Maybe I was just drained from that, but I hurt at that wedding. I know some of you will laugh at this because I really disliked Gu Xiang in the beginning, and to end the show feeling the most broken hearted for her says something about her character development. I rarely watch Wuxia dramas, but I found this one interesting, and it fed much of my bloodlust that my work often induced during this period.

HIStory 4: Close to You (final)

Another finale I thought weak. I just really don't like the stepbrother couple and can't feel happy for the lesson the show sends with them which is , It's okay to rape your stepbrother as long as you really love him and your cute and your mom says sorry. Pfft. But even the other couple's closure was underwhelming. The revenge they had against the leech that assaulted Mu Ren happens off screen, and we spent far too much time at the wedding of their friend, which honestly, just made me bitter that they gave us this when they know we are all still mad that they killed half of the couple we liked best for no reason in that other HIStory that shall not be named. Bringing all the characters from that show back to attend this wedding was salt in the wound.

My Handsome Roommate

After all the crying and dead peopl, I was looking for fluff. This is another one of those web drama with only ten-minute eps. I watched around ten of them during the recovery stages between dramas. I'm not understanding the time travel bit or even the need for it since they knew each other in the past anyway but he's from 2015 and she is from 2020. She is now an artist, too inspired by him from her crush when she was in middle school. I wonder if he is ever going to remember who she is.

THAILAND

Song Sanaeha

As soon as I saw Kimberley Woltamas was going to play twins, I said I was in. And then when the show opened with a wedding where at least two people get shot (typical lakorn wedding--shootings happen so often that I actually watch the handbags actress carry during these scenes to see which one of them might have a weapon), I thought this is fantastic. Then we go back in time to find out how this all came to be. Of course, one twin is evil and selfish and a popular actress while her sister is a lovely person who wanted to do the more popular stuff but was shamed out of it by her sister and has grown to believe that despite the fact that they look EXACTLY alike, the evil actress twin in prettier and smarter. What I like about this show is that the ML, played by James Ma, figures the secret out right away and of course really likes the nice sister.