Trotwood: I've got good news and bad news, and if you are anything like me, you'll want to hear the bad news first.
Bad news: I've already told Kakashi that I can't do RAWR anymore after July. I have been put in charge of an additional department, and starting in July, I will be overseeing twenty different departments/offices. As you all have seen, my drama watching has already taken a hit before, it's going to trickle down to a smaller amount with the new semester.
Good news: I'm still going to do RAWR through the end of July, meaning the July 27 posting with be the last one. This means that we can all have a long good bye, and because of that, I'm going to include a couple of new features as we do the countdown.
1) Personal blog favorites: Here I am going to post links to some of my favorite blog posts each week. I hope people will start thinking about this themselves and share on the last day. This week I would like to alert people to the squeecaps for Nailshop Paris. I think the recaps are better than the show. They were so fun to read, and I reread them when I want a guaranteed laugh.
2) Comfort Drama: As for many this past year, work life just gets more and more stressful. This makes me less and less likely to want to start new dramas but instead just want to rewatch old favorites. For the rest of the weeks, I'm going to highlight an old drama that I've probably watched ten times. Please see below. Please share your old comfort dramas in the comments. Some of these are really hard to find now, so if you have suggestions for where people can find them, please share.
Once again, a week has gone by with truckloads full of new dramas. Just posting pictures here of the ones that I found interesting, but I know I'm never going to watch.
Lots of people are super excited about Korea's very popular Hospital Playlist coming back. I never finished the first season, so I'm definitely not starting this season.
I'm hearing lots of good things about the fluffy body swap Chinese drama The Day of Becoming You. People are squealing Steven Yang being cute as a girl, although I've heard just as many people (some of them the same people) complaining that they don't know any women over the age of twelve that act like he does.
COMFORT DRAMA week one
Oh! My Lady (Korea--2010)
Now when I talk about comfort dramas, I'm not necessarily talking about quality dramas. These are the dramas you watch because they make you feel good, and I come back to this drama again and again because it makes me feel good. It stars Chae Rim as Gae Hwa, a woman with a young daughter whose husband has an affair and they split up. He belittles her because she is more of a mom than the sexy young thing that he thought he married. She ends up working for Choi Siwon's character, who finds out early on that he, too, has a daughter. He needs to keep this a secret (he didn't even know the old girlfriend was pregnant) because he's a top star. Hijinks ensue, jealous exes are part of the obstacle as is his job in the spotlight, but the biggest obstacle in Gae Hwa herself who has been so belittled by the world for being just a mom that she denies any feelings that she may have for the young star. Chae Rim is always a very natural actress and despite the dowdy clothing and bad hair, she's still lovely. A young Choi Siwon is, off course, wonderful to look at, and despite being very green as an actor, shows comic chops and potential for subtlety. When I had time to watch dramas last week, I actually watched this instead of most of the new ones out.
KOREA
So I Married and Anti-Fan (final)
I finished this show, and I'm not mad. It didn't promise anything more than it delivered although with everything they decided to pack into the last two episodes, one does wonder if they should have started the ending arc earlier when nothing seemed to be happening. The search for father plot was much more complicated than I gave the writer credit for, but there could have been more development and explanation. I'm also not sure I like the justice that was given out to some of the characters either, but the OTP finally gets to grow as individuals and then together, which is more than we often get. There were also some FANTASTIC coats in this show.
Voice 4: Judgement Hour
Lee Ha Na and the Golden Time crew are back for another round of violent police/serial killer stuff. I'm not generally a squeemish person, but I feel as though the show is trying to outdo itself every single time in horrible crimes. I just don't need to see it all to be afraid of the bad guys in these shows, and I find it interesting that they will still blur a knife, but let us see everything else. Song Seung Heon plays a detective from LA who somehow is able to talk himself and his crew into being able to be police officers in Korea while being their on some international crime gig because his deaf sister gets caught in the serial killer's trap. He hates Lee Ha Na's Kwon Joo because she was wrong about where his sister was, but we all know the big bad tricked them. And why can the big bad trick her? Because the villain here not only looks exactly like Kwon Joo (Ha Na is dual role), but she also has the same hearing skill as well. I'd be lured back to play another season if I not only got a new test for my character but also got to play the evil doppelganger. I had to laugh though when out LA cop gets warned that her partners tend to die. Why don't people say this about more of these kinds of characters? I'd literally walk out of a party if the woman from Murder She Wrote showed up.
CHINA/TAIWAN
Please Feel at Ease, Mr. Ling
I feel as though every week I talk about this show that no one else seems to be talking about because I love our OTP together. They actually discuss things and respect each other, so no matter what the machinations are, they get resolved pretty quickly. Such a mature couple. This doesn't mean it is smooth sailing because there are tests for both of them at work and this show gives us some really problematic second leads. Last week, I particularly loved how the ML stayed quiet and let the FL figure things out on her own and get a project on her own, then used the opportunity afterwards to make clear that he is dating her. It's a strategy I've often wondered such smart people don't use in these dramas. We have one more week to go, but the 2nd leads seem to be out of the picture. In fact, one of them is working with the ML now, so the only fight is going to be about who gets to be in charge of what really happened to Anxin's mother.
JAPAN
Love Kome no Okite: Kojirase Joshi to Toshishita Dansi/Romantic Comedy's Rules
I knew this was going to happen when I was so delighted up until now. The annoying brother does ask Ruri to break up with Ryo. Well, isn't he a selfish bastard. He basically made Ryo not feel there was a place for him in the company for years. Ryo left home and has made a life for himself--a happy one mind--but now he's back because he's overworking himself at the CEO and he wants someone he trusts to take over the European branch. He knows Ryo won't come back because, uhm, he has a job he likes and a woman he's loved for two years. Oh, yeah, did you forget your were an ass to him? We are heading for noble idiocy land I'm afraid. Chef wa Meitantei/ Chef is a Detective
I only found the fist episode subbed. I usually don't start Japanese dramas when there is only one episode subbed because I don't want to get interested only to be disappointed, especially when the first episode aired on May 31. But I will do a lot for Nishijima Hidetoshi cooking on my screen again. He plays the chef of the title, but he's not solving crimes,. He, according to his sous chef and sommelier, is a meddler. He razor sharp observation and deduction skills, which he uses to remember recipes but also to help solve the personal problems of his customers. I like the other staff members at this restaurant and their familial-like relationships. The dead pan humor made me laugh out loud more than once. I don't mind waiting. The one episode, like the various dishes made during it, was a dish to be slowly savored.
