Drama Thoughts part 2

To get the positives out first: I liked Hongdou and Zhiyao as a couple. I like that it didn't force Xiaochun to get back together with her ex. I liked that it emphasized that it's bad to hide things from your partner to "protect" them. I generally liked the fellow residents of the guesthouse. However, I found it hard to get into the relaxing atmosphere because the show was also constantly shoving Wholesome Family Values down my throat. For example: the show portrays parents & grandparents hitting their kids as funny and necessary in preventing kids from misbehaving. A lot of shows do this so I thought i could somewhat brush it off. But then near the end it has this sad moment around how xiaochun's ex-husband was beaten by his father. the show's been constantly playing this kind of thing as good and cute and now it's tragic? Another annoyance pertains to how damai and nana's relationship was treated. Like I mentioned before, they had a very cute relationship. damai even points out how they have similar traumas from the internet. nana is also friendly w/ xiaxia, but the show portrays this as platonic-until damai leaves near the middle of the show. then it starts shipteasing xiaxia and nana. then there's an arc near the end of the show where nana's old online "scandal" gets resurfaced, leading to her becoming depressed and hiding from the public. damai returns to yunaan when she learns of this to support nana. however, when nana gains the courage to face the public again (a recovery that felt a bit instantaneous tbh), her interactions w/ damai kind of disappear? and it seemed like it was in the interest of further ship-teasing nana w/ xiaxia. but the show doesn't even follow through on hooking them up. and like good, i didn't want them to get together, but it annoyed me nonetheless.

A bit like "what if Just Between Lovers had time travel". I became really fond of so-joon and ma-rin. while i think the jump to so-joon being all lovey-dovey w/ ma-rin before the wedding was a bit sudden, I really did find their dynamic sweet overall. Was a bit frustrated on ma-rin's behalf when she kept getting lied to [if so-joon wanted to keep his time-travelling secret why didn't he put more effort into hiding his furturistic stuff?] but at least by ep10 she's in the know. i disliked how after clearly portraying ma-rin's mom as the exact kind of person that would push her kid into the entertainment industry, the show later portrays her as just overbearing but overall well-meaning. The last eps in general fall into the trap of using contrivances to move the plot along. The death of Ma-rin's father felt impossible to take seriously because of this-Ma-rin just recklessly runs into the road to retrieve a piece of paper. Doesn't help that it's at the last minute+filmed in slo-mo and is smash cut away from to years later. Plus I found it kind of weird So-joon's just back to time-travelling again at the end. But I can't say I didn't have fun.

after getting through "Meet Yourself" I will compliment this show for clearing the low bar of not advocating for beating kids & for not forcing in a reconciliation between yrw and her family, but this might be one of the dumbest shows on here that I've watched. the actual story is nonsense. it's not a narrative but a bumrush through Romantic Tropes w/ characters who only vaguely resemble human beings. As someone who does consider themself a bit of a klutz, the way these people were tripping all over the place in order to manufacture Shippy moments was embarrassing to watch. The self-aware humor also didn't work great when it tried to lampshade how weird it is that HQY gets WG to take pictures of women because...HQY wants to find a woman from his dreams. yes it's later revealed that the woman is QYY, who HQY vaguely remembers from the accident, but it still makes HQY and WG come off as deranged. Also, for someone whose job is helping people through their traumas, it's kind of pathetic how quickly qyy is pressured into breaking up w/ HQY because "she'll eventually trigger his lost memories". I think something in me snapped when the show brought up hypnosis as a genuine way to bring back lost memories.

I had a great time watching this. It's crazy funny and I love the main 3 women. Cha Hyeon is a particular delight w/ her violent tendencies while also genuinely being a wonderful friend. The whole Barro team is great. I liked the portrayal of Brian as a genuinely good work superior, but also not someone that's Tami's "found family". When shows try to put that framing on people who are just coworkers I find it dishonest. I think it's kind of odd that a number of the negative reviews of the show single out tami as being awful to morgan. If anything I thought it was morgan that was a bit of an acquired taste. He's very forwards and persistent towards this woman he's only just met. Given his abandonment issues I understand why he feels marriage is an ideal, but I also think Morgan does try to push marriage on Tami a bit-he downplays her offer to move in together because it's not marriage. However, I did buy that they made each other happy, and while we don't know if they'll last I could understand that they didn't want to lose the warmth and comfort this relationship gives the both of them. Cha hyeon's little romance w/ sjh was adorable and sgg's relationship w/ jinwoo was intriguing, but I also felt alot of romantic framing between sgg and cha hyeon.

It's a good time- a fun "odd couple" storyline and has a nice "through divine intervention jackass learns a lesson" throughline for cym. I genuinely did find cym and kst's dynamic endearing. I also liked soo-jung & kst's relationship, it was sweet. It was also nice that cym & jsj were able to patch things up even if I truly did not get the logic behind cym's "I'm going to start the relationship over by pretending I don't remember and acting like a jackass again". The base premise for the show did seem kind of nonsense to me tho- even if kst is a huge nepo baby how on earth was he able to just skip cadaver dissection in med school? Surely the school would have a bare min attendance requirement? and The way ghosts worked in the show was distractingly inconsistent. ghosts can only make ghostly copies of what they want to pick up but also ghosts can open doors and type on computers and pick up blankets w/ no problems and no one ever notices? And I was bothered by how much soo-jung's grandfather was possessing this poor cleaning lady. Was she ever conscious at work? But I've gotta say I like that the show didn't take the easy way out and have all of the side coma ghost characters wake up and remember everything.

In terms of grounded chinese romance dramas, I definitely prefer this to "Meet yourself". Lya & ssc are a really sweet couple with some very natural interactions, the friend group that developed in the tennis club was cute, and it was nice to have a show outright say a woman's worth isn't defined by whether she can have kids. However I am a little iffy on ssc's mother, who the show framed a bit too apologetically for my liking. and it was sweet that ssc & an cong were able to become closer, but given how friendly an cong is I was really confused why he was in love with Tong Lu and seemingly let tong lu treat ssc however she wanted. Given this setup, I honestly I thought it would have made more sense and been more interesting if ssc had initially resented an cong specifically because an cong had never stepped in to protect him from tong lu. Also while jjj and liang tao did eventually win me over as cute, it was absurd that the writer thought it's actually totally awesome for two 22y/o's who have dated for 4 months and have barely any money to get married. I could not believe chen ke in particular was so encouraging given she also married at 22 and ended up being miserable for years. Also the show's not above doing cheap "lol this super skinny character actually has belly fat" fatphobic jokes.