Rants and Weekly Raves (RAWR) #389

Anne: Happy Lunar New Year Everyone!

To celebrate the New Year, I went to my aunt's for an early New Year's Eve dinner. Of course, the evening cannot end without a round of mahjong with the elders. In the end, I still lost $15, in poker chips. This is why I do not gamble, I was just not born with that type of luck. 

Despite spending most of Saturday at my relatives' and spent the rest of the week trying to dig myself out of a gigantic hole at work (which I only ended up getting enough done to peak at the ground above), I did finish the two dramas that have occupied my nights for the past few weeks. 

Reset

Yes, I did finish this drama ahead of it's Viki release date (mostly because I have a patience problem). I will say that the ending is quite satisfying, and it does end. There is no possibility of a second season or a continuation. While there is still no explanation as to why He Yun and Shi Qing got pulled into the loop, I guess they were trying to go for the bigger meaning of being psychologicalky stuck in in time due to a life event. And the only way to get out of it is to discover the truth, for both couples, the younger one physically stuck and the older one mentally arrested. 

The ending itself may be too well put together for the type of drama that it had been since the beginning. And in a sense, the entire reasoning seems so uneventful. But in the people that have to live through it, the impact is significant and life altering. It is one of the best dramas I've seen, and we've only barely entered 2022. 

Bad and Crazy

After waiting an entire week for episode 12 to finally air, I've saw the end! This show, hands down, has the best bromance I've ever seen (it doesn't matter that it's technically a man with his own self). Soo Yeol welcomed K into his life with open arms, and while we don't see K appear in "person" again for the rest of the episode, the ending kick has all the hallmarks of K. The main archnemesis, Shin Joo Hyuk, was finally caught and "dealt" with. 

While it wasn't a complete surprise at how Joo Hyuk ended, it is obvious that she never planned to stay in prison for any length of time. She always followed the path that would get her what she wanted, and she needed Soo Yeol to get her close to the man she needed. This woman does not disappoint. The ending completely sets up for a continuing season.

Shining for One Thing

I actually started this because it kept popping up on my iQiyi feed. I didn't expect much from it, but I found the show to be one of the cutest "school" dramas with an intriguing start. Lin Bei Xing is a woman in her thirties who was dumped 10 days before her wedding to her boyfriend, Zhan Yu, of 8 years. Now, tell me how does a man spent 8 years with a woman whom he didn't even like? In her attempt to win him back, she tried to remind him of their high school romance, she dug out her old cell phone. She realized that when she deleted a message from this old phone, she is zipped back to her high school year. However, she is immediately zapped back into her current life around 6:30pm after her college entrance exam, when a school mate of hers, Zhang Wan Sen, dies from falling off the lighthouse. 

Convinced that she can relive her childhood and better her life, she finally is able to go back far enough to spend about a year before the college entrance exam day. She made it her goal to save Wan Sen from dying so she can stay in her "new life". She finds out about all sorts of stuff about her classmates. She "sees" her ridiculousness of chasing after Zhan Yu all through high school and beyond. She makes new friends and finally began to realize the role Zhang Wan Sen plays in her life. Super cute, super sweet, very light and fluffy, and with a mystery to reveal. Love it!

Have a great week everyone! Happy New Year!