Rants and Weekly Raves (RAWR) #352
Trotwood: Long week and long weekend. I'm writing this at 3 am my time after returning from a full very very hot day in NYC with my younger daughter. I'm awake because I took a really long shower to get off all the sweat and deal with the blisters I have. We ended up walking 11 miles!
Eager to hear about what everyone is watching, especially if you are watching either of the shows in my "Interesting, but I know I am never going to watch" category below:
Falling Into Your Love is an e-sports drama. I love getting more sports dramas. This one has a love story as the main part of it I gather. Anyone watching?
Last week, I mentioned that I was starting two new features as we count down to the end of RAWR.
Personal PotUp Favorites
I mentioned the squeecaps of Nail Shop Paris last week. This week, I need to mention our various discussions of hair. you should go to the hair posts link, but really you should also go to the recaps of BG and look at the comments as well. We included hair retrospectives in the comments for the following:
- Kimura Takuya episode 1 recap
- Mamiya Shotaro episode 2 recap
- Eguchi Yosuke episode 5 recap
- Takenouchi Yutaka (not in show but just cause we like him) episode 6 recap
- more KimiTaku episode 8 recap
- Takay Kamikawa and Fujiki Naohito (not in show but just cause we like him) episode 9 recap
Comfort Drama of the Week:
This week's comfort drama is Taiwan's Down with Love (2010) starring Jerry Yang and Ella Chen. This is a show that I rewatch almost every year, too. Sometimes fastforwarding through the annoying second leads just to get to my OTP. Ella plays Yang Gao, a woman who is looking for a job and has ben dumped by her boyfriend for not being feminine enough. Her sister gets her a job as nanny for her boss (Jerry Yang) who is guardian for his niece and nephew, but who is fed up because every nanny either can't handle the kids or falls in love with him. His secretary tells him her sister is perfect because she is a lesbian who loves kids. Hijinks ensure. He falls for her because she is actually wonderful but has to watch as she starts falling for someone else. Jerry is fantastic in this and so are his button down shirts. You know when I'm rewatching because I just start posting screenshots of him in in his button down shirts.
KOREA
Voice 4: Judgement Hour
Thought I was going to have time to watch this, but I didn't. Still keeping it on the docket to see if the plot is enough to get me past the gore.
CHINA/TAIWAN
Please Feel at Ease, Mr. Ling (finale)
This show was a complete delight. You know why? Not because we didn't have a crazy 2nd FL who thought she deserved the male lead's love since she had known him longer. Not because we didn't have an adopted brother who didn't want to be a brother to the heroine. And not because we didn't have the stereotypical goofy best friend. This show was a delight all the way through because it does exactly what I always ask of a romantic drama: have the leads fall in love and then fight the obstacles together. What the show proves is that we do NOT need drawn out strife between the couple to have conflict. I was suspicious of the big bad early on and then the show tricked me into believing I was wrong, partly because we ended with two big bads. I liked to see the new alliances replacing the old. I can see myself looking to this as a comfort show in the future.
JAPAN
Love Kome no Okite: Kojirase Joshi to Toshishita Dansi/Romantic Comedy's Rules (finale)
I'm glad ai was able to watch the last two episodes together. I was loving this show until the unnecessary noble idiocy occurred. There was so much time spent apart in tears for no reason, especially when we find out the brother was just testing his younger brother again to see if he would run away. What is with all the testing?!?! I still recommend the show. Watch up through episode ten. Skip eleven and go right to twelve.
Chef wa Meitantei/ Chef is a Detective
Our chef continues to "meddle" while feeding people's bellies and their souls. He clearly has great observation skills not just about what is happening but also about what is really motivating people. Episode two about the man who finally proposes could have easily gone either way, and that's what I like about Japanese dramas. In a Korean drama, it would have been first love all the way. The side commentary by the restaurant staff is hilarious. 
THAILAND
Fish Upon the Sky (series review)
This was the show that replaced Tale of a Thousand Stars in its time slot. A good idea because the object of the one of the lead's crush was one of the leads in that show. It had a good structural premise with a straight rom-com for one of the plots and then a narrator-led Japanese crazy style other plot. The show even brought up some important points about social media and the crazy fandoms of even campus moons and the way they want to be part of the object of their fandom's life, even controlling it. They had some great points about people being pushed too hard to fall in love, especially when they've been bullied or made fun of their entire lives and what a struggle it really is to feel worthy. Unfortunately, there was no sustaining of these conversations as if the writer was embarrassed to address real issues or worried about offending said fans. Also, there just wasn't any need to throw in a love triangle in the last 20 minutes of the show either, ruining a best friend character for no reason. It was an episode too long at least. I know people are going to want to continue to pair Phuwin with Pond, but Phuwin is a much better actor. No surprise there since he has been acting for years, and Pond practically walked off his campus moon's stage (yes he was his campus moon) onto the filming set of this show. 
