50FiftillidideeBrain

Nao & Ue @ U °7.6° VG

S2 opens with Nao dreaming of a wedding. First comes college. They're going to colleges across the street from eachother. Neo spies on Ue's campus the first day. He's voted the new campus hottie (of course). Someone comments on how ✨ all the girls are in college. Neo looks around and notices that all these girls do seem to sparkle. She's getting nervous.

Nao picks up a new friend at her campus. Yoshida Madoka from Fujoshi, Ukkari Gei ni Kokuru plays the adorable Ota Kayo, who is known to sport two high ponytails that she's fashioned into buns. They almost look like fairy horns.

Another friend they pick up is Natsume, who seems like an insincere and cavalier womanizer on the surface, but he's actually a good guy. S2, in part, revolves around him and Neo getting into all kinds of situations that would be considered romantic if they were each unattached. In this case, it's only fodder for Ue's jealousy.

Ue & Nao each separately get talked into going to the matchmaking mixer, though he was only told there was a party with food. Nao was a little bit angry at him and decided to step out on her own. Ue walks in just as Marina is lying, saying that neither she nor Nao ever had a boyfriend (😳❕). Ue's voted most popular, Neo is voted most submissive.

Ue ends up working in the school lab. The main lab assistant is a beautiful but nerdy woman who is borderline unhinged. She's a blast. Takahashi Maryjun from Avalanche & My Dear Exes is Kumanomido Saeko. Yes, it sounds like “Psycho.” She's got some luscious lips for a woman in a lab coat.

In S2 it becomes clear how much growing up this pair has to do, emotionally. They started as roommates, so they continue to live as roommates, and do not get very romantic with eachother. Neither one of them seems to know how. Neither one of them has very much experience. Ue seems to think it would demean him to be jealous. Nao takes that as him not carrying at all

Abe decides to write and produce his own play. His prince and princess become ill at the last moment and have to back out. Nao ends up being his new princess. Ue refuses to play the prince so (🥁🥁🥁) Natsume gets the role.

This time around I thought eps6-8 started to drag slightly. Nanase's pained expression gets really old really quickly. Weirdly, the first time I watched I thought the entirety of S2 was pure confection and the payoff for suffering through S1. So, please don't argue with me. I'm doing fine all by myself. The mood one is in when watching a feature factors heavily into the perception.

“Don't make me laugh. You're afraid, right? That she might leave you herself. And that the other guy might make her happier. That's your excuse. You're just running away to avoid getting hurt. In the end, the thing you hate the most is getting hurt. You still love yourself more, right? Right,” says psycho. She stabbed him. She pierced Ue's 💔. His jealousy makes him believe something because he /fears/ it's true, even though the irrefutable evidence is that she's only loyal to him.

Nao doesn't know how to tell Ue about a pass another guy made, so she keeps it quiet. Her friend tells her it's smartest to say something right away. ‘The longer you wait to tell a secret the more important or big it seems’. That's good advice. Another method, though, is when a guy (especially your boyfriend's friend or family member) makes a move, punch him in the jaw, or opt for the low attack. Done and over. Easy peasy.

S2 ep5 is entitled: “Playing a tragic heroine is fun.” All that attention is fun, until it's not. It only satisfies for a few moments. Furthermore, when everybody else catches on to that, then ALL we have is tragic heroes & heroines (just look at social media). Furthermore, more and more minor things get built into tragedies. If we're all tragic heroines, then almost none of us are. We're miserable because we're totally consumed with our own miserable selves. The key is to forget yourself once in awhile. One of the best ways to do that is to go volunteer or help somebody. Another way is to watch Chinese dramas. They'll teach you about suffering, lol. They make me feel better.

It seems like all Neo talks about is her love life. While she tries to help her friends, even a lot of that is about her. Her kindness is at times about her. We see that in society today. In the name of kindness, alot of it is actually about feeding pride. Many kindnesses undermine people and hurt them in the end. Nao really does love everybody around her. That doesn't mean she can't be prideful and her actions aren't wrapped around her ego. There is nobody among us who does not have a pride problem. That's part of being born 100% selfish, as we all are. It chameleons into many different colors.

Onlookers can sense fragility in their relationship and most try to help. Two others concoct a plan to split them up. The 2 plotters come around in the end. The look of relief on their faces is noteworthy. When you Let It Go - all those pretensions - the selfishness, the devious plans, the lying - especially lying to ourselves - When you Let It Go, it's such a RELIEF. Take all that energy and work on yourself: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. People get pulled away from the light by what they want: Jealousy and covetousness. Hand in hand, they're of the fabled seven deadly sins. We get to see them under the microscope in S2. In this beautiful but flawed world, we are always tempted to do wrong. That's because we're born 100% selfish. Maturity is all about learning to be unselfish; to have a loyal, kind, forgiving, and true character. Doing the right thing & choosing the right thing is always the hardest thing to do, but it's worth the effort for the freedom it supplies.


QUOTE🗣

You're the type that hurts others without even knowing about it.

You decided all on your own and went ahead changing it…. That means you're only thinking about yourself.


IMHO〰🖍

📣7.8 📝7.5 🎭8 💓7 🦋5 🎨7 🎵/🔊7 🔚 ▪ 🌞7 ⚡3 😅4.5 😭2 😱1 😯3.5 🤢1 🤔4.5 💤0 🤗5.8


Age + S2. sexual situations and discussion

Language: F💣

Rated S1-G, S2-15+

Re-📺? Did

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⭐ A Stage of Their Own ⛩️ °8.5° °Outstanding°

OH, the acting, The Acting, THE ACTING! Every episode that's what I thought. Every muscle twitch of Ra Mi Ran's set my heart aflutter.

It's 1931. It's COLD. Kang So “Bok” and her father (played by Choi Jung Woon & Lee Deok Hwa) stop at the local theater. Dad needs his daughter to have a place to call home - times are tough. The theater owner looks skeptical, but when Bok begins to talk, it's obvious that someone special is before them.

Next, it's 1956. Wartime.

Jeong “Nyeon” has an astonishing voice. She's digging up shells in low tide with the rest of the women. When her mother finds her singing along with them, she drags her daughter off. “I knew she would get angry as soon as Nyeon started humming along,” says one of the marms. We then watch thugs selling “protection” come through, upending stalls, and terrorizing the smallfolk. Nyeon distracts the gangsters by singing. That's what got Moon's attention.

“Moon” Ok Gyeong (Jung Eun Chae from The King: Eternal Monarch-8.3, Pachinko & Anna-8.1) is riding in the back of a car, like a celebrity. That's because she IS a celebrity. Here's the shocker - she's dressed as a man, and it's pretty convincing. This was a time when the men were off to war and the women kept everything going, including live theater. Moon plays male leads, as gorgeous as she is ~ and this gurl is a looker. Straightaway, after complaining that everything is boring for her now, even singing, is when she hears Nyeon's warbling. Moon exits the car to hear Nyeon demand money before she'll sing again. No problem there. Moon makes sure Nyeon will gladly sing again.

Directed by Jung Ji In (The Red Sleeve, Late Night Hospital) and adapted from the webtoon "Jeong Nyeon," about Pansori theater. Written by Seo Yi Re, JTSiB is a 2024 release that is rated 92 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 12 70-minute episodes. Per AI, “Pansori is a traditional Korean narrative singing style where a vocalist (sorikkun) and a drummer (gosu) tell a story through song, narration, and stylized gestures. It combines expressive singing, spoken narration, and dramatic movements, accompanied by the rhythmic drumming of a buk. “Cheonguseong" refers to a clear, pure, and melodious vocal quality, often associated with traditional Korean singing, particularly pansori.” In the show they describe it as a clear and strong voice, gifted from the heavens, immersed with a feeling of deep sorrow. "Gukgeuk refers to a unique genre of Korean all-female theater. It emerged after Korea's liberation from Japan in the 1940s, gaining popularity in the 1950s, particularly during the post-war period. In gukgeuk, women perform all roles, including male characters, often blending traditional pansori with Western opera influences.” Of all the Cheonguseongs in the world, Nyeon‘s voice is the Cheonguseongiest - just like her mother's. Moon gives Nyeon tickets to that night's performance, but MOM threatens to shave Nyeon's head as a punishment for singing in public. Mom sure does hate singing. Waddup with that?

On the other hand, the village women are quite impressed with Nyeon's singing, and they're /very/ impressed with the tickets. Nyeon wasn't sure what she would do, but their begging her to take them to the performance spurs her to attend. It's not hard to guess that Nyeon was blown away by live theater. Moon played the prince. The entire theater erupted in glee at the closing - they sealed the performance with a kiss.

Enticed by Moon's coaxing, Nyeon dramatically escapes her mother's clutches and passes through the audition - barely. Ra Mi Ran (Black Dog-8.2, Reply 1988-8.6, The Good Bad Mother) is grown up Bok, whom we met in the opening. She now manages the theater. She explains to Nyeon that, since Moon brought her, she has to work from the bottom so that everyone can see that she made it by merit, not connections. She then asks what her mother's name was? Bok looks surprised when she doesn't recognize the name. Nyeon's singing had taken her right back to her friend from her youth. Nyeon seems like the ghost of Pansori past. The whole audition scene is mesmerizing.

Nyeon‘s presence, on the other hand, is disturbing to most of her classmates. She's a bumpkin. She's a fishmonger. She smells! Yet MOON brought her /personally/. They are disgusted AND jealous. Kim Tae Ri from Space Sweepers-7.6, Revenant-7.4, & Mr. Sunshine-9 plays Nyeon. She really shows her range here.

Shin Ye Eun (Revenge of Others-8.1, More Than Friends-8) portrays Heo Yeong “Seo”. She wouldn't admit to breathing the same air as Nyeon. Her background is OPERA. Her mother and sister are FAMOUS. Her family's RICH. Her acid reflux is in major flux: She is appalled by Nyeon ‘s presence. So, she pulls a stunt to try and set Nyeon up. The trainees are putting on a show in 10 days. One of the girls who had a lead part as the jokester, Banja, had to back out of the role, so they need a last-minute replacement. Seo offers it to Nyeon, hoping she'll crash and burn. This is not an easy part. Nylon doesn't mind a challenge, though. It doesn't look like things are going well, because Nyeon skips the last two practices. She's even late for the performance! But she goes out and knocks ‘em dead. She's been practicing with a street performer all week, and now she's got ~moves~. The audience loves her😍. Her enemies hate her all the more😬. The competition between these two is beginning to heat up, and it's one of the major drivers of the plot.

Kim Yoon Hye portrays Seo Hye “Rang.” She's ruthless as the star FL player in the troupe. I've seen this actress in My Sassy Girl-8.5, which I consider to be woefully underappreciated. In MSG she's haughty, cold, and not given to many words. It's not completely dissimilar to Rang, yet she keeps the personas thoroughly distinct. I've also seen her in Vincenzo-7.9 and never knew it was her! She plays someone geeky, quiet, and slightly goofy. For the record, e'erbody in Vincenzo is slightly goofy, at a minimum. Here, they never have her looking her best. Her makeup is always thick and garish while her hair is over-coiffed in 40's permed perfection. They don't put her in complementary colors, either. She's her most beautiful when she's broken down and crying; when she's not in neon makeup, her natural beauty shows. Her crying scene is exceptional.

With regularity, art imitates life in JTSiB. The play in ep10, along with the lines that Moon and Rang must deliver, mirror their current reality. “How could the heavens only gift him with this great talent, but curse me with only the eye to recognize such talent?” That's a line from the last play that they perform, and the dialogue mirrors Seo & Nyeon's situation. JTSiB is about competition, hard work, not giving up, and legacy. The rivalry between Nyeon and Seo is the primary vehicle. Jooran (Woo Da Vi from Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist & Dear.M) gets caught in the middle. She and Nyeon are close, but after she co-stars in a play across from Seo, Seo starts to rely on her, too. Nyeon has the talent, it's harnessing it that is the challenge for her. She makes mistakes, and her enemies among the thespians instinctively know to capitalize on them.

Nyeon nearly goes off the rails in ep8. It's difficult to watch. I suppose if I have a complaint, it's that we see mostly struggle, while a bit more triumph would have lifted the weight. JTSiB is heavy. Nkw, I feel like a hypocrite since I frequently complain about shows dragging because they have too many episodes for the available content. JTSiB should have been 1 episode longer to allow it to breathe more. I guess I'm never happy, sigh.

As is, the show is superb. The acting is especially superb. The directing and editing support it crease-free. Does mid-century and 40's fashion get anybody else's heart racing? When they finally do the changing room scene and update Nyeon's look, it gave me a thrill. The color palette is soft and often borderline overexposed like an amateur snapshot. JTSiB, itself, deserves to be “overexposed.” It's is one of the best Kdramas on the Hulu stage.


QUOTES🗣

He's a… WOMAN!?

The path of an artist is very long. You'll be going through countless ups and downs in your life. As you endure all of that you'll find yourself at the highest summit looking out further than anyone.

I do not understand myself either.


IMHO〰🖍


📣8.4 📝8 🎭9 💓5 🦋6 🎨8.5 🎵/🔊8 🔚8 🤗7 ▪ 🌞6.5 ⚡4.5 😅2 😭3.5 😱2 😯4 🤢2 🤔5.3 💤0


Age 13+ Rated: PG


Re-📺? Would


In order of ~lite&trite~ to ~heavy&serious~ you may also like:

Dabbling in the Arts

My Only Love Song-8.7 ~ excellent comedy,
My Runway-7.5,
My Secret Romance-7 (if you ff thru overdone flashbacks);
99 days with the Superstar-7,
Her Private Life-8,
Touch your heart-8.2,
Oh My Ghost-10,
Run On-7,
Romance is a bonus book-7.9,
Be Melodramatic-8.7,
Hospital Playlist-9,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay-9,
More Than Friends-8,
Nevertheless-7.6,
Saimdang-8.5,
Anna-8.1,
Hymn of Death-8.4,


〰 Hulu Catalog 〰

A Shop for Killers-8.7
Big Mouth-7.4,
Blood Free-8.5,
Call It Love-8.4,
Crazy Love-7.8,
The First 1st Responders-7.8,
Flex X Cop-8.5,
Gangnam B-Side-7.2,
The Golden Spoon-8.1,
Han River Police-7.1,
High School Return of a Gangster-7,
The Judge from Hell-4.5
The Legend of the Blue Sea-7.2 (this show is marvelous except for taking a quality dip in eps 20-22)
Light Shop-8.6,
Link: Eat, Love, Kill-6.7,
Maestra: Strings of Truth-6.8,
Moving-8.5
Pandora: Beneath the Paradise-3.9,
Parasite-9,
Revenant-7.4,
Revenge of Others-8.1,
So I Married the Anti Fan-6.8,
Uncle Samsik-8.4,
What's Wrong With Secretary Kim-6.8,
Why Her?-8,
Wonderful World-7.8,
The Worst of Evil-7.7

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Plural Marriage ⛩⛩️⛩ Fallout Edition °10° °masterpiece° Lite spoilers only!

This is why I don't give out many 10's. I save them for shows like this, that are far above the rest. SOYP is in its own stratosphere.

Talk about hate, love, HATE… Welcome to the Forbidden City, where the trees are treated better than the people. “This is power.”

Forget the trees, the Forbidden City is about to get a shakedown. Many will be killed, several will kill themselves, others will be executed, and 1 or 2 will go completely mad. “Even if you know, you should pretend that you don't know. That's how you live a longer life in the palace. That's how you can be the last one standing and laughing.”

SoYP is a 2018 release that is rated 8.8 on MDL. It is 1 season consisting of 70 exquisite 45-minute episodes. I was so caught up in watching this that I didn't take many notes. Any show that causes one to be sad around ep26 because it's already 1/3 over has got to be pretty dang good. Right from the start this looks and feels like Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace, which was released the same year. {Ruyi's episodes 1-49 are a 9.3. While looking up its historical accuracy, I learned how heartbreaking the rest of the show is. It's over 80 episodes, so that's a hella-lotta hurt. I am not up for it now, so I stopped at episode 49, which is a perfect ending. I cannot recommend eps1-49 enough. It's nearly perfect).

We're following Ying Luo (YL), who is pretty, talented, smart, resourceful, and strong minded. She makes friends wherever she goes. She also makes lots of enemies. Smart? She could arguably out-talk Joan Rivers. Even the Emperor walks away befuddled. Wu Jin Yan (The Double) is the extraordinary FL. She inspires anger and jealousy from many other women. She enjoys teasing overly serious people. Teasing? Certainly, yes. But she's also capable of torturing those who take themselves too seriously. That includes His Majesty.

We follow these actors through many years. The characters begin young and they age; their performances near magically reflect that. Nie Yuan (Will of Steel, Three Kingdoms) is Emperor Qianlong. Oh.My. He is superb. Qin Lan (The Magical Women, The Rational Life-7.7) plays the lovely and fragile Empress Fuca Rongyin. The scrumptious Xu Kai (Once Upon a Time in Lingjian Mountain-7.5, Ancient Love Poetry-8.6, Falling into Your Smile-5.7) is guard Fuca Fuheng, brother to the Empress. He looks dreadful with a mustache. Still, all the young (and not so young) girls love Fuheng - all the girls love the cherub-faced Xu Kai, but His Majesty is the daddy of all. Charmaine Sheh (Winter Begonia) portrays Consort Xian. Tan Zhuo (Dying to Survive, Game Changer) portrays the heinous Noble Consort Gao - she's a feisty one. Jenny Zhang plays Consort Shun. She was stunning as Wu Huan in Ancient Love Poetry-8.6. Here, she doesn't show up until nearly the end. The directors are Hui Kai Dong (Winter Begonia), Wen De Guang (Forever Love) & Guo Hao (Scent of Time). Screenwriter, Zhou Mo, also directed Royal Feast.

I wouldn’t classify this as a romance. It's a historical drama that contains some romance. ‘I like you… you /bad/ girl.’ YL and Fuheng gravitate from dislike & distrust to love. But His Majesty has his eyes on YL, too. YL isn't thinking about love when she arrives at the palace. She's investigating her sister's death. Her sister died under suspicious circumstances at the palace a couple years back. YL knows suicide would never have been an option, so she's sworn to catch the killer and administer retribution. This requires a lot of finesse. She questions people but she must do it delicately. They mustn't realize they're being questioned. She also refuses to play along with the mean girls. That, coupled with her unusually aggressive style and undeniable talent, queues up her adversaries. As soon as one enemy recedes, another rears its ugly head. 70 episodes allows for an array of dramatic vignettes.

Women's cages are “meticulously created by the men of the world.” YL soon learns that her sister is rumored to have had indiscretions with a man, and she may even have been pregnant. YL believes that if any of that is true, it wasn't voluntary on the part of her sister.

“I am the empress, before I am a woman.” Duty is one of the primary themes. That includes a duty to justice which is what our heroine seeks. Another theme is the dignity of every human being. Our protagonist is a “lowly” servant who shows that she isn't so lowly, in reality.

“If you give too much importance to gains and losses, how can you win? …If you encounter a huge hindrance on your way forward and you cannot move on, don't just keep thinking of your goal. Try calming yourself down. Focus your attention and do your task well… I want you to remember that not everything will go your way. As long as you are a human, you will have failures. So you must learn to wait patiently... Wait until you are strong enough. Wait until one day, you're not being restricted by anyone. Wait for the right time…“ Smarter than most people, YL is always thinking 20 moves ahead. I got upset with her once or twice, only to realize several episodes later that she had a long-con going.

Perhaps the main theme is about the nature of pride and power. The Forbidden City is not a nice place. All the toxins roll downhill. Even servants abuse eachother. People are terrified, under an unbroken threat of harsh (brutal!) punishment or death. The wives and concubines eat eachother over power and prestige, but they also long for love from his “majesty”. The children even moreso. A simple life with a single loving family would be better. Chinese historical works make the palace seem like the worst place on earth.

“Pain can awaken your senses.” “At this point, grief won't do anything. I'd rather think about how to take advantage of this incident to benefit myself the most.” This from someone who just lost her father. There's characters who seem decent but they get twisted, because power and privilege are corrupting. “People won't change that fast. If she really has changed, you must not have noticed it before.” One of the palace maids is able to make an upgrade through marriage. She becomes a cruel, power-hungry snob. It's part of Yanxi's dissection of the nature of humans and power, and one character points out that the current version of this person is the true individual. Once she became free to be what she wanted to be, that is what she chose.

Everything about this show is exceptional. The writing is like a mousetrap. Our FL will get into what looks like impossible situations. Her superior wits and sheer moxie is what saves her time and time again. The directing is superb. The relationships are subtle. The acting is stellar. The costumes, set, design, and overall artistry are sublime. The opening song, by Lu Hu, sounds almost silly with its heavy & ancient opera inflections, but I grew to love it. It seems to be loaded with irony. There's a waltz in ep51 that is lovely. The corner piece of the piece is YL's interactions with the emperor, which are priceless. He wants to kill her so badly he can taste it. But he knows he would be less of a man if he did so, and the empress won't let him, anyway.

In the last handful of episodes they go forward several years. The princes and princesses are in their teens. YL & the king's relationship is adorable and she's apparently “the fun mom.” About love: According to YL, the one who says it first, loses. Later, the emperor tries to coax her into saying it (👁💘👉) and has a many tantrums when she won't. But YL isn't one to bow to pressure. “Your majesty, regarding my answer, it's going to take a lifetime to know. Just be patient.”


QUOTES📢

If you talk too much you will surely make a mistake.

A woman's hatred is the most horrible thing.

How can the murderer escape punishment, while the victim gets trampled?

The more grudges you have in your heart, the more pain you will feel. The more gratitude you have in your heart, the more blessings you will have.

Being indecisive always leads to trouble.

Do you know what it feels like to be jealous? It's like a poisonous snake gnawing at my heart every moment.

One's vision and insight need years of cultivation. If a day won't do, then a year. If a year won't do, then 10 years. My skills are lacking but I will make amends with diligence.

Life is like moving against the current: One will fall behind without moving forward.

To obtain what others can't, one should endure what others can't.

Over time, I forget more and more who I am.

The world is so vast; how could anything be impossible?

Look at the galaxy above. Actually, no matter how noble people are, even if he is the descendant of an aristocratic family, he's still just insignificant within the vast galaxy. So who can really be more noble than anyone else?



〰🖍 IMHO

📣10 📝10 🎭10 💓6 🦋5 🎨10 🎵/🔊9 🔚10 ▪ 🌞5⚡5.5 😅3.5 😭5.5 😱3 😯4.5 🤢3 🤔7 💤0

Shazams: Opening credit song: Lu Hu 看 (電視劇《延禧攻略》主題曲)

Age 10+ Language: b!+ch, jack@$$ but there's very little of anything remotely objectionable. As soon as kids can keep up with subtitles, theu can watch. Rated TV-PG-13: Parents Cautioned

Re-📺? Most definitely.


In order of ~lite & trite~ to ~heavy & serious~ you may also like:


🎎 -
C🇨🇳: Overlord 8.4,
Under the Power 8.6,
Legend of the two sisters in chaos 7.7 - bittersweet,,
The Rebel Princess 9.1,
The Sword and the Brocade 8.6 (in ancient Chinese opera style),
The Rise of Phoenixes 9

K🇰🇷:
My Only Love Song 8.7 excellent comedy;
Mr. Queen 8.5;
My Sassy Girl 8.5;
The King's Affection 8.3;
Mr. Sunshine 9

🔮🐉-
C🇨🇳: Love Between Fairy & Devil 8.9;
Once upon a time in Linglian Mountain 7.5;
Douluo Continent 9.4;
Handsome Siblings 8.7;
Eternal Love 8.3,
Ancient Love Poetry 8.6;
Love and Redemption 10

⚡/😱 -
C🇨🇳: Heavenly Sword and Dragon Slaying Saber 9-Kung-fu!;

🌐💓 -
C🇨🇳:
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1
K🇰🇷 :
Love To Hate You 8.9;
Crash Landing On You 9.1;
Oh My Ghost 10;
It's Okay Not to Be Okay 9;
My Mister 9.5;

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✨️ The Left-Footed Phoenix °6.8° °good&bad°

The 2-sentence review: This is a show for lovers of 🇨🇳fantasy. It's a tasty snack for the initiated, but it will not win over new fans to the genre.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” wrote William Congreve. It's a good thing I looked it up because I thought it was Shakespeare. Anyway, women scorned are the primary conflict generator of this show.

DotP Follows the 🇨🇳fantasy template of Immortals, or Cultivators (think ancient superheroes), sailing through the sky over ethereal blossoms, bamboo forests & bouyant waterfalls. We will see many warriors, men and women alike. Their swords can act like both magic wands and flying carpets.

There's plenty to enjoy in DotP, however, it is still one the lesser 🇨🇳fantasy pieces I've seen. If I watched this before Love Between Fairy & Devil-8.9; Douluo Continent 9.4; Handsome Siblings-8.7; Ancient Love Poetry-8.6; or Love and Redemption-10, no doubt, I would have loved it. Stacked against the greats, it doesn't measure up.

At least, that's what I wrote in my original notes. But I never finished the review and a couple years went by. I put the show on to brush up on some facts now that I'm circling back to reviews I never finished due to extreme illness, and I got sucked right back in again! Clearly, I didn't dislike it as much as I first thought. I initially scored this a 5.8, amended it to a 6.3 but now I see this as closer to a 7. I've also since watched a couple 🇨🇳fantasy shows that are much worse (The Legend of White Snake-4.9 being an example). Fantasy fans will want to see this. There's many great elements. It's a shame there's a flaw to match every positive. On the 2nd watch, I realized this show is marvelous through the mid teen episodes, at which time it slows significantly and loses its spark.

Meng Yuan is in medical school, but not for long. We don't get the details until the show's nearly over, but she was magically transported to an alternate reality and now lives in the personage of Feng “Wu” (Yang Chao Yue of ‘Love You Seven Times’, who looks quite a bit like a female Xu Kai with her round face and full cheeks). Wu was born with ultra powerful & rare phoenix blood. The only other person who carried the same power was the legendary hero, Mu Jiuzhou who conquered the demons but mysteriously disappeared just before he obtained immortality.

So, Wu's a child prodigy. The family wasn't able to keep it on the down-low. She garners lots of attention; not all good. When Wu was young, her father passed away which ushered in bullying of her & mom. Wu walks the forest one day in frustration over it. What's this? 😮 She looks down to see a strange ring in the middle of the forest. When she looks up, a man is standing before her! Mu Jiuzhou's spirit was in that ring! He offers to be her master - he'll teach her how to cultivate power and protect her mom. Why? Mu was the last person to live with powerful Phoenix blood. Wu is his spiritual heir. Soon, Wu's one of the most talented & powerful young cultivators on the continent. There's only 1 other woman who can rival her. Unfortunately, that woman doesn't want a rival. She ambushes Wu & steals the Phoenix Blood by dark means. Then she kills Wu.

Or did she?

Wu woke up! She's in the forest with no memory and no cultivation base and Master Mu is watching over her. First things 1st: To restore her power she will need to restore her base. For that, she'll need the Nine Transformations Spirit Restoration Pill, which is made from the Celestial Fruit. (Nobody outdoes the Chinese when it comes to naming things🏆). Mu continues his info dump, but all Wu is thinking is: “Who IS this weirdo?” Memoryless Wu simply has no clue! Wu must snatch a fruit that ripens every 60 years. It won't be easy, as every cultivator on the planet will be after it. Even if she gets it, she won't be allowed to keep it. She will go in disguise. Before any of that, she needs to /understand that she needs it/. She brushed off most of what her master told her; it was too.much to process. The show does a poor job with the exposition, but this is likely when the soul switch occurred - this is when her personality completely changed. It changed so drastically that her family sent her away to live in a hovel near the border. Everything about Wu's life is now a mess. She resorts to selling medicine at the border town. For some reason, she now has a passion for medicine.

Before we get too ahead of things, let's check in on Wu at the Tea House enjoying a nice snack with her friend when AHBL (all hail breaks loose). A monstrous creature (The Firecloud Giant Hawk, which looks part dragon) raids main street. The cultivators come in to expel the threat, but just before they're about to clip the Hawk’s wings, it snatches up Wu and flies away with her. Jun was there. In fact, when he reached his hand out to summon his sword, Wu put her hand in his thinking he was offering to help her up. He shook it off like she was covered in slug slime.

So much for first impressions.

Jun follows after Wu. They end up in Frozen Forest where the Celestial Fruit is. The whole forest sequence does not feel unlike a Harry Potter book; there's even dementors. Cultivators are already wandering around looking for the fruit. Jue's rival, Mingye, the casual, almost cheerful evildoer, is there. He gets the most enjoyment from competing with Jun, but he actually takes no glee in anything. "In the best case scenario, I won't kill anybody on my birthday as a way to celebrate it.". He does what he does and there doesn't seem to be any difference between doing it or not doing it. His heart just isn't in it. He seems like more fun than the CP, Jun, with a more complex character. While in the forest, he falls for a plain girl (Wu in disguise) based on her personality and tenacity. (True, he saw Jun help Wu. It seems Jun cares for Wu, therefore, he MUST have Wu for himself. It next turns into true feelings). He wishes he had met her earlier in life, before he was tainted by what he was forced to do while growing up. He's also sincere about Wu. It might be a better story if those two had ended up together. No kidding. By contrast, CP-Jun is a little dull (though handsome and decent); Wu will have to be the life in the relationship. He may be a bit boring, but he does have true passion for Wu. She is adorable, and she makes the show fun, but I'm not always convinced that she loves him. The secondary romance is just straight glazed icing. It's a sweet light cover over the feature.

Reality is cracking and demons are wreaking havoc, we learn. Wu has a vision in which the Firecloud Hawk (in the form of a tiny bluebird) talks to her. These are dangerous times, and she must figure out a way to wake up Master Mu. He gave up the last of his Phoenix blood to save Wu's life, so he's in a coma.

As for the players, Xu Kai Cheng (Novoland: Pearl Eclipse) portrays Jun. At 30, he's alittle old for the role and it shows, but he does a good job. He's so serious! In Well-Intended Love-7.5 he seems stern at first, but he's an affable goof. He & Wu were engaged before they ever met, but Jun canceled the engagement a few years back. As for Wu's rival, elegant beauty, Jinna Fu (Heroes, You Are My Destiny-6.8), plays Zuo Qing “Luan”. Usually the most beautiful woman in any feature in which she appears, this is the 2nd time I've seen her land in 2nd place for the affections of a man. In some ways, she represents outward perfection. The ML passes on perfection, favoring the more human-fun-down-to-earth woman. Luan makes quite the descent in the course of the show, from a perfect goddess to a hardened mean girl who cannibalizes her own heart. It started when she couldn't contain her jealousy.

The king is silly and overestimates his own importance. He seems to believe all the nonsense that people say in his presence. On the other hand, the queen is diabolical. In some shots it's easy to tell that the Queen is a beautiful woman. However, they managed to make her look creepy. She's never in a truly flattering color or hairstyle. Her lipstick is too dark for her face, her ghastly makeup is caked on but colorless without the accent of rouge, and weirdly, her teeth look the same color as her skin. The effect is unsettling in a way I've not seen before. In all, the character molding is weak and ill-defined early on, but things take shape as we reach the halfway mark.

They go to magic school! Located in the capital and more like a grad school, Junwu Academy is the most prestigious of all schools. This is where the mean girls kick it into high gear. (Jun is such a starched shirt. He cannot believe his 😲 eyes when he looks across the row and sees Wu sleeping in class!) Not everyone is a fan of Junwu. The Dark Knight Court is opposed to the place and actively fights against it. This goes beyond mere school rivalry - it's racism, too. The DKC is composed of demons, and in Chinese fantasy, demons are merely another race. Most shows expect the viewer to accept or already know about the tension between humans and demons. In another fantasy show the explanation is that it takes much more time and effort for demons to cultivate. One shortcut is eating humans, as consuming one human is worth decades of cultivation for a demon. Some demons succumb to that temptation and the whole race is tarnished by it. No one wants to trust a demon.

DofP is truly wonderful in the opening episodes. The first pothole we encounter is in ep7. Wu's cousin is jealous. She loses her mind one day and attacks Wu (Dong Yan from Sword Snow Stride is Feng Liu). They were using the scene to awaken some of Wu's abilities, but it's ham-handed. The saddest thing is that for every good element there's a handful of problems. It's sloppy and lackluster. They took shortcuts, cut corners, and didn't tie up loose storylines. There's poor, or unrelatable motivations, characters acting out of character. The problems lead to dead ends and unnatural cutoffs. There are unclear origins for some of the plot devices - things spring out of nowhere, and that is NOT an example of good writing. In the 1st couple episodes, Wu is under an ugly curse. The way they represent that in China is, sadly, by darker skin, freckles, and bad hair. They caked on the bronzer. It's quite a contrast to the other actors who are almost as white as their silk robes. Ah, tan skin, messy hair, and freckles - arguably, that version of Wu is cuter. This millennia's old light-is-right mentality has roots that aren't as deeply planted in ethnic hatred as they are status. Working in the fields is associated with darker skin and therefore a lower status. Not all the old ways are worth perpetuating. The overall effect is emotional flatness. In fact, toward the end, it became too difficult to maintain focus. Riveted to the screen, I was not.

The art, costumes, sets, are very pretty. There's nice camera work. From a technical standpoint, the directing is good. There's no lag & the timing's good for half of the show, Their first (intended) kiss, for example: She turns. He catches her hand and pulls her back as the camera looks way up at their silk & locking lips from a mouse's view.

Some special effects are clunky and nearly antique appearing, which is evidence of budgetary constraints rather than skill. The demonic beast in ep10 is fantastic, but more of the effects are distracting in their lacking. Generally, one has to put up with this to watch Chinese fantasy shows. As every other element is magnificent, I find that quite easy. What I don't find easy is films in which all the money goes into the effects and the plot and dialogue are awful. (Deliver me!) There's some fun, positively catchy music. The old school bell is magnificent.

Suspicions abound. Wu seems very suspect to Jun. Part of the conflict is Jun working through his feelings while wondering if Wu will turn out to be evil. Evil is even closer to home, though. Sometimes this dynamic is funny: When Wu is being questioned by Jun in front of Bai, the ancient potions master, she fake-cries. Bai's expression is priceless. He is astounded at her boldness and doesn't seem to think she has much chance of convincing anyone. They keep suspecting Wu of being in league with DKC, especially after she befriends Mingye, but it's another bigwig who is working with the villains. “No matter how chaotic the world is, be kind and don't stoop to evil’s level,” Mu tells his student.

After watching twice I'm still conflicted. Guilty pleasure? Don't think it qualifies. 1st of all, it doesn't give one enough to feel guilty about, and the pleasure trade-off is not enough, either. Guilty pleasures are something that is generally panned or disliked, but you just like it. You like it enough to watch it again. Maybe again and again, even though you know it's bad on many levels. This is a show that is mediocre part of the time, fun part of the time, and exciting part of the time. The worst thing is that the very ending is lame - it's awfu/l❕ I have to pretend it didn't happen.


QUOTES🗣️

It's good to be kind. But kindness without principles and bottom lines is just cowardliness.

Don't argue with those who are nothing like us

No matter how tough a man looks, he must have a soft and vulnerable side.

Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division decide the universe.


〰🖍 IMHO

🎬7 🖊〰6 🎭7.2 💓5 🦋6 🌞4.5 🎨7. 3⚡6 🎵/🔊6.5 😅2.7 😭4.5 😱3.5 🤢2.5 🤔4 💤3 🔚3

Age 13+ $h!+ hell, violence 5/10


Re-📺? My first thought is NO WAY. But, eh, never say never. I love 🇨🇳fantasy. My ratings aren't my personal favorites list. I can like a show that I've given a 7 rating to more than I like to show I've given a 9. At the end of the day, technical confidence matters but ultimately, it doesn't have a chance against what touches the heart. Once a show is in the 6's I would probably never want to rewatch it… until this one. I liked it more the 2nd time around. This show is like a dirty diamond. It still has plenty of sparkle.

2020 release. Episodes: 30 @45 min ea. Director: Chan Ka Lam (The Untamed, The Last Immortal), & Wang Zhu Ming (Weaving a Tale of Love).



🎎 -
C🇨🇳: Overlord 8.4,
Under the Power 8.6,
The Rebel Princess 9.1,
The Sword and the Brocade 8.6 (in ancient Chinese opera style),
The Rise of Phoenixes 9
K🇰🇷:
My Only Love Song 8.7 excellent comedy;
Mr. Queen 8.5;
My Sassy Girl 8.5;
The King's Affection 8.3;
Mr. Sunshine 9

🔮🐉-
C🇨🇳: Love Between Fairy & Devil 8.9;
Douluo Continent 9.4;
Handsome Siblings 8.7;
Ancient Love Poetry 8.6;
Love and Redemption 10

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⛴The Sea of Destiny & Its Wild Wave °6.6° °half good°

(To the Brady Bunch theme music)

🎶Here's the story ⛴
of a lovely lady ⛴
who is tirelessly working at her job ⛴
At the office they don't bother much with Thank-yous ⛴
they only holler more ⛴
Until one day the bespectacled young lady ⛴
She decided to sail out on her first cruise ⛴
So did our young handsome bossman Mr. Wang.

But out at sea, they both lost their only la-oves ⛴ (and in misery they partied and married)

Twas a mistake. (Just look at those awful specs!) ⛴
Twas a mistake (Divorce will set this straight!) ⛴
O, the big mistake is sudden pregnancy. ⛴

And that's the way they became the Wa-ang Bunch!🎶

Xin is a plain, subservient girl in big ugly round glasses that she's always pushing up when she's not putting a sticky note on something. Her employer is a high level law firm with high level corporate clients. She's given the run-around at work and constantly barked at, yelled at, and abused when she makes a mistake. She's never thanked when she does things right - which is most of the time. She's thoroughly and completely unappreciated. YAMD is the story of how she earns the appreciation and respect of her boss. She earns his love, too. Despite the ugly work situation, Xin works hard and never complains. She also says “sorry” way too often and never stands up for herself.

Xin doesn't know that destiny is marching towards her… eh, 🚢 sailing for her, that is.

Those who don't consider themselves at least 7/10 on the romance scale, shouldn't expect to like this. Don't expect to even finish it. YAMD is a sweet, but melodramatic romance in 36 eps of 45 minutes each. (It's more like one long movie with the episodes drifting away, sometimes in the middle of a scene, and then the next one drifts back into the frame at the same point. It's typical of Cdramas. Just coast with it.) They manage to float as many good elements as poor ones, so in that way, YAMD manages to be good. Maybe it's on the “good” list by way of a sticky note, but it made it.

There's lots of bad elements to dissect, but first the better half. As a romance, YAMD has plenty of positives. Xin treats herself to a cruise. Yi is planning on becoming engaged to Anna on that same cruise. Skipping from A to D, a mix of misunderstandings and alcohol leads to a one night stand, pregnancy, and the family forcing these 2 into marriage. They, the family, all fall in love with Xin, she's so darling. It takes Yi more time and a trip across the globe, but he'll come around too. They both actually have lots of growing up to do. All Xin's subservience, apologies, and sacrifice were a misguided attempt to use weakness to get people to like her. {Forget that! It doesn't work. Apologizing for everything, particularly things one didn't have a hand in or situations one isn't responsible for, is a weird backdoor way of arrogantly injecting ourselves into situations. It's self absorption. The worst thing about it is that it doesn't work. It never brings a person respect, dignity, or true friends.} Yi will eventually see that he didn't have real love with Anna. He was there to fill the gaps for her, but they were never going to be a team. She was just a pretty possession that he would never truly possess. Yi realized he needed true warmth and an equal teammate.

Xing Zhao Lin (The Eternal Love series, Lucky's First Love) portrays Wang Xi “Yi”, the rich kid who's working hard and doesn't have a head for nonsense. Liang Jie (The Day of Becoming You, and also The Eternal Love series) is Chen Jia *Xin”. She's authoritative, pre-possed, and coy in Handsome Siblings-8.7. Here she's sweet, shy, awkward and endearing. This gurl has range. Jinna Fu (Shining for One Thing) is Yi's ex, Shi Anna. {She's the beautiful bad girl in Dance of the Phoenix, a show that I watched a while back and rated a 6.3. About Dance of the Phoenix: I got behind on reviews and pulled up my notes to complete writing about it and got sucked back into watching it again. I think I may have underrated it. It's one of those shows where the beginning is great and then it loses its way. Now, I'm trying to pin down when it loses its way. I'm currently on episode 27 out of 40 and it's still really good.} Li Jiu Lin (Decreed by Fate) rounds out the leads as Dylan / Di Lun. Director Ding Ying Zhou also brought us The Autumn Ballad & The Love You Give Me.

YAMD mostly takes place in gorgeous Shanghai, and is Chinese in origin. 🇨🇳 produces elevated and stunning programming, and also kicks out shows that are less polished, a little klunky, and of lower budgets. This was particularly true of their modern-day romances produced prior to 2018, though YAMDis a 2020 production. They've come a long way since then. Even some of these weaker shows are worth the effort, as they are relaxing and have a prozac effect. This keeps fans watching despite shortcomings that appear to arise from, at times, near elementary school level filmmaking, or a lack of authenticity regarding what is being portrayed. The hospital scene would be a good example: Medical emergency! A protag gets hit by a car and sustains widespread internal bleeding! They must rush to save her life! We cut to the hospital - the patient is lying on a stretcher with no IVs or telemetry; nobody's in a rush, nobody's working on her, the doc is calm, the surroundings are everyday business as usual... It's hopelessly bizarre. Yet one actor did a great job sobbing while crying for help, like a jewel in a mud puddle.

As cute as the story is at times, one can't help but notice that many scenes aren't fluid. The actors may seem a little stiff or detached, as if they didn't practice the scene enough. Perhaps it's the director's failure to draw human feeling out of the actors, as at other times, they do a great job. So, it's off and on again. Many 🇨🇳 sets are sterile, though in YAMD they did a much better job with contemporary sets. The backgrounds and settings in YAMD are quite pleasant. Much of the filming is pretty. Most of the interiors are also attractive, though some have that model-home feel. The editing is dull; the furthest thing from crisp. It creates a choppy feel at times, like a tiny electric jolt that interrupts the flow. Modern day 🇨🇳 features that take place in the city feel slightly off due to over-staging: There's hardly a speck of dust anywhere, and while Shanghai's cityscape is stunning, there's hardly any traffic - human or automotive - going on. They go to an amusement park. Everything is pretty quiet: Nobody's there! We get no explanation.

YAMD is overly sentimental. That's also common for 🇨🇳modern-day offerings, but the trade off is nuggets of elevated dialogue and words of wisdom that, if heeded, we Westerners would find beneficial. The biggest drag on YAMD is the last 10 or so episodes that aimlessly drift with no purpose, containing too much back-&-forth along with wearisome melodrama. If they didn't have enough content, they should have made the show 10 episodes shorter. YAMD is sloppy. Logic took some long coffee breaks in the show's run. There's some real head scratches. There's scads of missed opportunities. Some scenes were set up to be brilliant, but they never crossed the finish line, letting things fade away instead of delivering a KO punch. Finally, Anna gets pretty annoying.

The makeover? We will get it. When Xin finally ditches the specs, she's amazing. In all, YAMD will pass the time warmly for romance junkies who aren't in the mood to overthink anything. There are better romances out there if your time is limited and, Xin, you don't get out for many breaks or vacations.


QUOTE🗣

There is no "if" in this world.


Age 13+ (unintended 1 night stand that leads to pregnancy. )

👁📺again? Not likely

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Her Furture Sealed with a Kiss °6.8° °goodish°

“I love the way the lobby feels when it's raining.” Sul gazes outside wistfully. Her coworker can see that she must have lost her mind: “It's sunny out! You're working too hard!” “I saw it. My 6th sense…” 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… ⚡🌧 🌩 Sul can't finish her sentence before the deluge begins.

💋6S is a 2022 release that is rated 88 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 12 70-minute episodes. The show, being just 12 episodes, ends before things get too stale. It's nicely paced throughout. It has wonderful moments and some lovely shots. The blood moon over the lake shot in eps11&12 is really nice. Overall, the show is a mixed bag and, pretty much, tops out as acceptable time-filler.

There's a reason the divine has not granted mere humans the power of seeing the future. We would never live today if we were always consumed with tomorrow. If I had known some of the tragedy headed my way, I would have had a different life, and while I would go back now and change quite a bit, knowing what was coming would not have improved anything. I suspect it would have made things worse.

Sul sees death, misfortune, rain… too many scoldings she lives through twice - the preview and the main event. Sure, she sees some good stuff, but it's mostly bad. She kissed her father's hand at the hospital and saw his death. When she kissed her boyfriends, she always saw another woman in their futures. Not her. ALL of them. She decided she's not kissing anyone. Ever. Never again.

Sul is an AE, which means she works her sleep-deprived rump off in advertising. Her supervisor, Cha, is a legend. He's so good at handling clients that he almost reads their minds, it seems. Sul has learned everything from him. And she's hated him at every moment. He /finds/ ways to torture her. She doesn't believe he can sleep at night unless he's stomped on her self-esteem. He's rude and gruff. When we look into her memories, he might be saying horrible things like her clothes aren't acceptable, but he also pulled out a credit card and told her to go get something to wear. He pulled out his credit card on a couple of occasions, so his hands aren't the problem. His mouth is.

Yoon Kye Sang (The Kidnapping Day, The Winning Try) “Cha” Min Hoo. I've only seen him in Chocolate-6.5, and he's completely different here as a blunt, almost omniscient-seeming man. Seo Ji Hye (Dinner Mate-7.2, Crash Landing on You-9.1) plays Hong Ye “Sul”. She comes over as sincere and comfortable. She's a very good FL. Kim Ji Suk (When the Camellia Blooms-8) is Sul's ex, Lee “Pil” Yo. He's now a celebrated director and he'll be doing one of the agency's ads. We learn that he wants to see Sul again. Why is this guy the one who usually doesn't get the girl? I think he would be a solid ML. He can project comfort and sincerity. He gets the girl in My Unfamiliar Family-7.9 (that isn't a spoiler) but that show isn't really a romance. It's a drama about family relationships. The director is Nam Ki Hoon (Tunnel-8.1, Destined with You) and the screenwriter, Jeon Yoo Ri, brought us Radio Romance & Last Summer.

Now Sul… she's clumsy. We see her trip and fall several times in the beginning of the show. (It should have happened in the later episodes too, at least once, for consistency's sake). As ep1 closes, she and Cha are cleaning up a filming site… for a BED commercial (I know. T😄😃 easy). It's been raining so everything's wet. She slips, falls onto him, next their on top of the bed, and she's on top of him, and their lips touch. She's instantly treated to augering Future-Them getting hot and heavy. Very hot. Very heavy. He had a (fully healed) scar on his back when she foresaw the future. He doesn't have one now. This won't happen right away.

Next we'll see that Cha can't kiss without significant fallout either. He becomes very sick and Sul has to carry him up to his apartment on her back. He's still sick the next day. We learn that kissing women causes him near unbearable pain for several hours. He puts on dark glasses and noise canceling headphones because his senses are heightened. He can hear a mouse step on a cotton ball - from across the street. In the next episode he carries /her/ on /his/ back when she's drunk. They are already mirroring eachother.

Why was she drunk? Pil showed up. She's the project lead for the commercial he's directing. She'll have to see him a bunch, and she didn't handle Day-1 well. He wants to get back together. He sprang that on her Minute-1. So she drinks-dranks-drunks, and Cha ends up tending to her. She tells him her secret, so he kisses her to test it out. Sadly, the next morning, she can't remember much. If she saw the future after that 💋, she has no memory of it. All Cha knows is that, for once, he's not experiencing the agonizing symptoms that he usually does after contact with a woman. Sul goes to work that day in a confused state. Pil corners her pushing guilt over the past in order to extort three dates from her. He wants a chance to win her back.

Later that day, Sul tells Cha she was too drunk to remember if she saw anything. He suggests they check again: Ep6 ends with a romantic montage that is very lovely. It's all in the future, it hasn't happened yet.

While all this is going on, Sul & Cha's two best friends have met, coincidentally. They're completely unaware of the existing connection between them. Their romance is actually pretty cute - all fun and sparkle, and a lot less complicated (though they do have static).

They have Sul doing something that doesn't make much sense in order to forward the plot. She tells Cha what she saw and then asks him to do what she saw so she can just put it behind her. That seems out of character. One would guess that Sul has been biting back her words all of her life and keeping her visions to herself. Why spill the beans to someone now? The most obvious guess is that she's ready to burst, coupled with these two being attracted to eachother (seems like 💯% on his part). The viewer shouldn't have to guess about things like this. It feels more like lazy writing than good writing. *see mini spoilers below

Someone wants to sabotage Cha and leaks their client's hush-hush secret new car design online. The company punishes Sul for the incident. Pil took the photo, so the 3 of them are poking eachother in every kind of way. At the same time, a mystery surrounding Sul and her father emerges. A burglar broke into her house and stole all the pictures of dad.

💋6S has a Western attitude towards sex. Sul's work friend is crass at times when discussing sex, and her best friend is pretty loose about the subject as well. Once again, this fits with Hulu's Westernization trend of more violence, blood, gore, swearing, and sexual content. There's a distinct difference between Hulu‘s K-atalog and the Kdramas on other channels, overall.

In the way of criticism, things get muddled midshow. There's too many moving parts and not sufficient clarity. Cha doesn't seem all that romantically compelling to me. They lay down a couple of clues about the final drama that's connected to the past, but they could have done a better job with the foreshadowing. It feels like more of an add-on and not an integral part of the plot, because they failed to set it up well. We watch a woman toss her head in a way that causes her hair to brush Sul's face and Sul glimpses that woman's future. Any contact her lips make with another triggers this. I wonder if any other viewers are wondering if Sul can kiss herself and see the future? She probablycan't, but they should have laid down the rules and parameters better. The explanation for the entire phenomena is poorly supported by the script. The viewer has to roll with it.

“You'll never see a bad future with me. I won't let that happen.” They haven't been dating long, but Cha's getting pretty romantic. Overall, their romance has some lovely moments when it gets clicking. Leading up to it, the show was unconvincing. The secondary romances are cuter and could have used more screentime.

IMHO〰🖍

📣7 📝6 🎭7.5 💓5 🦋4.5 🎨6.5 🎵/🔊7 🔚7.4 🤗3 ▪ 🌞5.5 ⚡4.7 😅3 😭2 😱2.5 😯1 🤢2.7 🤔4 💤1

Shazams: Stay With Me by Grizzly; No Matter How Hard I Try, by KIM DO HEE

Age + Language: $h!+, d@mn; Rated: 15+

Re-📺? For me, this is a one-time-use time killer.


Love @ work

99 days with the Superstar-7,
A Witch's Love-7.9,
Blood Free-8.5,
The Bride of Habaek-7,
Call It Love-8.4,
Cheese in the Trap-7.7,
Crash Landing On You 9.1,
Crazy Love-7.8,
Descendants Of The Sun-8.3,
C🇨🇳: Find Yourself-8.9,
Flex X Cop-8.5,
Her Private Life-8,
Hospital Playlist 9 (give it 3 episodes to get warmed up),
Hotel del Luna-8.4,
Iris-8,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Itaewon Class-8.7,
The King: Eternal Monarch-8.3
The King's Affection-8.3,
A Korean Odyssey-7.2,
Love to Hate You-8.9,
Marry My Husband-7.5,
My Mister-9.5,
My Sassy Girl / Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo-8.5,
My Secret Romance-7 (if you ff thru overdone flashbacks);
Never Give Up-7.6,
Oh My Ghost-10,
Romance is a bonus book-7.9,
Rookie Historian-7.6,
Run On-7,
She Would Never Know-7.3
Signal-8.6,
So I Married the anti fan-6.8,
Strongest Delivery Man-6.6,
Touch your heart-8.2,
Tunnel-8.1,

〰 Hulu Catalog 〰

A Shop for Killers-8.7
Big Mouth-7.4,
Blood Free-8.5,
Call It Love-8.4,
Crazy Love-7.8,
The First 1st Responders-7.8,
Flex X Cop-8.5,
Gangnam B-Side-7.2,
The Golden Spoon-8.1,
Han River Police-7.1,
High School Return of a Gangster-7,
The Judge from Hell-4.5
The Legend of the Blue Sea-7.2 (this show is marvelous except for taking a quality dip in eps 20-22)
Light Shop-8.6,
Link: Eat, Love, Kill-6.7,
Maestra: Strings of Truth-6.8,
Moving-8.5
Pandora: Beneath the Paradise-3.9,
Parasite-9,
Revenant-7.4,
Revenge of Others-8.1,
So I Married the Anti Fan-6.8,
Uncle Samsik-8.4,
What's Wrong With Secretary Kim-6.8,
Why Her?-8,
Wonderful World-7.8,
The Worst of Evil-7.7


⛔

⛔

⛔


⛔*mini spoilers⛔
So, she suggests to him that they jump in the stack together, and “no, she won't regret it later, and she'll be fine around him.” How naive is she? He tells her to come over and discuss it. When they do talk about it he starts giving her the third degree trying to elicit as many details as possible. None of what she saw sounds like him ~ /to him/. He agrees to go along with her idea, but he has a condition. He says he doesn't sleep around. He only sleeps with women he's interested in. If she wants to sleep with him, she'll have to date him. This clearly appears to be a manipulation on his part. He's into her.

By ep6 things have taken shape. Cha admits his feelings. Pil overhears and the two men are in the mood to fight a few rounds.

WKEWY - Now to address: We Knew Eachother When (We Were) Young. {The "K" is silent; it's pronounced "Whey," which is what "WHY??" sounds like in Korean. It's MY word. I can do that😜. I also know that “each other" is two words, however I'm on my own little campaign for more compound words. I think we need alot of them, not alittle.} It turns out Cha and Sul had a deep connection as kids. He's always loved her, but she lost her memories from a trauma. At that same time, their powers kicked in. WKEWY is usually a worn-out, 15th-hand, dried out plot point in which kids, who have a relationship of some sort, later, as adults, fall in love after years of separation. It's a tied to a couple being “fated”. They often forcibly wedge it in and it's often awful. Here, it IS the plot, and that's fine. They failed to tie it in skillfully, or drop enough hints to make wondering about it fun, or to apply the rules to this weird-world stuff consistently. There's lots to like in 💋6S; it should just be better. Thus my rating.

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That Yapping Puppy Gonna Steal Your ♥️ °good° °minor spoilers°

Indefatigable. That isn't a word one gets to use much. Soli is indefatigable.

The completely adorable So Ju Yeon (Festival, Seasons of Blossom) plays Sin Soli. She isn't stuffy or fussy. She is 🌞 itself. She is exuberance, and all of her solar energy is focused on Heon. Kim Yo Han (The Winning Try) is our ML, Cha Heon. He's the one who's stuffy and fussy. This is a HS fabled about the Pixie & McGruff.

ALSB is a 2020 release that is rated 89 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 24 20-minute episodes. The source material is the Chinese novel, To Our Pure Little Beauty, by Zhao Qianqian. China did their version of the story in 2017. I've started that one and it appears to be almost exactly the same plot. So far, the Cdrama is also very cute. This is a story of five high school friends and their journey through HS and on to adulthood.

Seventeen-year-old Shin Sol-i (So Joo-yeon) repeatedly confesses her love to Heon, who appears distant, but is, in fact, awkward when it comes to expressing his feelings. Woo Dae-seong, a nationally ranked swimmer, transfers to Chun Ji High School and falls in love with Shin Sol-i. This drama takes place mostly in HS. In the late teen episodes it starts time-jumping. When they're adults we'll meet Dr. Seo Ji-Su, played by Yang Yu-Jin. She's fabulous - just oozing with beauty and personality - and this is her only credited work! I hope she does more.

Soli and Heon live next to eachother, but the similarities stop there. He's serious, a top student, and generally good at everything. Soli is none of that. She's delightful, all the same. In the beginning of the show Soli is always chasing, Heon is always running. Ever so slowly, Heon starts warming up to this embodiment of warmth. Heon's little brother is one of those precocious-I'm-cooler-than-you-older-brother types. It never gets old. He's really cute. HE'S in LOVE with Sol-i!

Soli follows Heon around like a yapping pupoy, and Kang Ha Yeong is always around her friend, Soli. Played by Jo Hye Joo (Just One Bite, Reborn Rich), she has a crush on her teacher. Jung Jae Oh (Govengers, Ga Doo Ri’s Sushi Restaurant) is the bespectacled Jung Jin Hwan. He has a crush on the beautiful Ha Yeong. The 4 of them hang around eachother more and more and become tight friends as the show progresses. They also pick up a new student, “Woo”. He meets Soli almost the moment he steps onto the school grounds. He's so impressed with her moxie that he takes to calling her “brother.” It's too cute! He is smitten with her immediately: Yep, it's a l♥ve tri⛰ngle. The whole 'brother' bit is adorable, and it's one reason that Woo won ME over. I love this kid, so my vote is that Soli chose wrongly. Be that as it may, Soli made her choice years ago, long before Woo swam on the scene. There's no turning back. Screenwriter Jang Yoo Yeon also brought us Drunk in Good Taste & Ga Doo Ri’s Sushi Restaurant.

I guess this is no longer a review, but the start of a Yeo Hoe Hyun fan page. So, I'll continue. Appearing in hits like Leverage & Short, Mr. Yeo is unforgettably charming as “Woo” Dae Seong. In ep9 his acting is breathtaking. Soli received a love confession letter from him that clearly won't bring him the result he was hoping for. He tells Soli the note from the "secret" game was "just a joke," to So-li's relief. The scene is stunning. The reversal of expressions adds up: Soli shows unrepressed concern + he's carefree at first until he sees he's to be rejected ÷ he quickly adjusts - represses his feelings + he blows it all off as nothing + Soli is happily relieved - Soli doesn't notice the despondency and pain on his face = dazzler. Cut to swim practice, next. He dives into an infinite pool of tears. Woo outshines Heon in every single category. So-li just might be an idiot. Everybody is at one time or another, and love can make idiots of us all. In ep9 my heart started to hurt. I found this show by googing cheesy Kdrama rom-coms. This is not what I signed up for! This isn't cheesy at all.

The dynamic is that Heon is put off by Soli's unrepressed attentions. He avoids her but he's watching from a distance. He ends up helping her quietly here and there, though she doesn't know that. Over the years he acclimates to her and it does turn to love. Soli never wavers, but when they are grown Heon will have to show how much she means to him if he wants to seal the deal.


QUOTES📢

Good gravy Marie.

I put my pain before yours.

I will cut out the middle of this long winter night ~
Coil it up in a blanket warm as a spring breeze ~
The night my beloved comes ~
I will slowly unwind it.
~Hwang Jin-i~


〰🖍 IMHO

📣7 📝7 🎭7.5 💓7 🦋5 🎨6 🎵/🔊6 🔚8 ♦ 🌞8⚡3 😅4 😭2 😱0 😯3 😖0 🤔4 💤0

Age 10+ Rated TV-PG-13: Parents Cautioned;

Re-📺? Not impossible. Is there a chance Woo Dae Seong will prevail in the 2nd go-round?


Young 💔

🇰🇷My First First Love-8,
Racket Boys-8.3,
Reply 1988-8.6,
Boys Over Flowers-8 ~ melodrama to the max,
Heirs-7.3,
Nevertheless-7.6,
Cheese in the Trap-7.7

🇨🇳The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8,
When I Fly Towards You-7.8,
Wait, My Youth-8.4,
A Little Thing Called First Love-8.5,
Hidden Love-7.8

🇯🇵Special A Class-8.2,
Maid Sama-10,
True Beauty-7.5,
Toradora-8.5,
Love Chunibyo And Other Delusions-8.4,
Kayuga Sama Love Is War,
Your Lie In April-9

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✒✌ The Goose & the Gander's Warminuous Family ✋️ °7.9° °Excellent°

Maybe a good test of how strong a family is would be a week's vacation in which it rains every day. If it's still a good time, y’all are doing great❕ This family couldn't handle a lite misting. Dad is never home. He either drives a truck or hikes trails. The sisters don't speak (‘If words could kill, my sister would be a serial killer,’ notes Hee), and they treat Lil bro like an annoying waiter. They were able to ignore their problems until Mom announces she's separating from dad. Weirdly, she calls it “graduating from marriage.“ Secrets come out. Years of misunderstandings create new wounds. Dad is not what mom had built him up to be in her head. “The problems in our family are like forgotten boxes piled up in storage. The door was opened, and the baggage started falling out all at once.” That's the plot of MUF, a 2020 release that is rated 84 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 16 70-minute episodes. They drop a small bomb at the close of ep2. They do it again at the close of ep3. Like Hee says, "This kind of story is all in the details.“

Speaking of love & marriage, oldest sis Joo keeps separate rooms from her husband, and middle sis, Hee, broke up with her long-term bf - the hard way: After 9 years of dating him, his gf of THREE YEARS confronts her and calls HER a cheater😲! Han Ye Ri (The Nokdu Flower) plays Kim Eun “Hee”. What's off about Hee's look? The moment she appears in a black and red top sporting some red lipstick it's obvious that the light colors and pastels they've had her in for 90% of the show is dead wrong. One can't turn fall into spring and that's what they tried to do. Ms Han would be even prettier if she softened her hairstyle with a side part or some wispy bangs. In the last scene, she does! But for the run of the show, Hee's a bit of a mess. Always late. Takes her anger out on the wrong targets. Frequently immature and confused. She gets confused around Im Geon Joo (Shin Dong Wook from Stars Falling From the Sky & Dr. Romantic); he's her new boss. Hee feels things deeply, and she's a reader - such a reader that she works in publishing, and new boss & VP says her books are the BEST🎖. Apparently, he came to their office already a fan of hers. Hee, in a weakened state from her break-up, made the mistake of having a one night stand with new-boss. She'll go to Hyuk in a panic.

Joo (Choo Ja Hyun from Arthdal Chronicles) is married to Yoon Tae-Hyeong (Kim Tae-Hoon from My Demon and The Guardians) who is described as “sensitive”. Their marriage seems lifeless and, after years of trying, Joo has given up the idea of pregnancy. She's irritatingly “bad at being bad”. Keeping everything under wraps, feelings sealed in a pressure cooker, she's irritatingly “bad at being bad”. An attorney, by vocation, her personality reflects that there's little else she's qualified for (other than bureaucrat). She's so coldly logical & matter-of-fact. (Joo finally cracks a smile in ep15. I had given up hope). These sisters are nothing alike and frequently contentious. Yet they /are/ alike. They often say the same things to their parents (Joo always calls dad and Hee always calls mom) and they spout identical phrases in arguments. When Lil bro Ji-woo (Shin Jae Ha from Evilive) tries to intervene, it's: “Yes, yes. Let's crush him to pieces,” Hee agrees, after Joo says they need to teach him a lesson. They turn on him and attack him together, speaking the same words in unison.

Kim Ji Suk as Park Chan “Hyuk” is the only cast I've seen before (When the Camellia Blooms-8, in which he plays a clueless jock). Here he's genuine & affable, which is completely different. He accuses Hee of using him like a trash can. She tells him things that she can't tell anyone else, just to get them off her chest. This trash can sorts: “So.. you must be worried: What if I run into him at work on Monday? Should I just quit over the weekend? Should I be cool and ignore him? No, what if he spreads gossip everywhere? (Exactly) What if he doesn't even remember it? (You're having fun, aren't you? ) Anyway, just forget about it. If it spreads, so what? Just be embarrassed. Time goes on. If something bigger happens it'll be forgotten soon.” That's his advice, along with Hee's interjections, in the aftermath of the tryst with new-boss. We see self-sabotage between Hee & Hyuk. They are attracted to e/o. Both try to kill it before it grows. Romance is a part🤏 of the show, but it is a family drama 1st.

Baek Hyun-Joo (The King's Affection-8.3 & The King: Eternal Monarch-8.3) has a small part but she's refreshing. Her presence feels completely natural. Kwon Yul (Dali and the Cocky Prince) is a character that reemerges in Joo’s life after her marriage falls apart. He's utterly adorable and completely hilarious. In ep9 we get a cameo from two actors who play a couple in Familiar Wife-8.5: Oh Eui-Sik & Park Hee-Von. This is screenwriter Kim Eun Jung-'s high water mark. Next is Hello, Brother. Director Kwon Young Il also brought us Doom at Your Service.

The words ‘family ‘ & ‘familiar’ share the same root, and we all know what familiarity breeds. “What is family?” That is how ep15 closes - without an answer, just a “I still don't know.” I'm reminded of a funny toast from the show Call It Love-8.4: ‘It's good to be gathered with you all - You who trust me least in this world, but cherish me most.’ Another protag's view: “Do you know what the problem with family is? They don't say what they have to say. They let it settle until it hardens when they can just shake it off. Then suddenly, it explodes one day.” But some memories (and hurts) can't be shaken off. When Hee breaks up with her bf, she explodes at her sister (who wasn't sympathetic) and Hyuk (he knew but didn't tell her). She cut ties with them for years. Hee used them as trash cans for her rage. It's emotional cannibalism. In ep1 their relationships resume. In time, Hee will say this to Joo: “I came to see you every time something happened. And every time I did that, you never comforted me. I know that so well, so why do I always think of you? The words of comfort are sweet for a short moment, but your hurtful words, disgusting words, and critical words make me react to them a few days later, and give me strength to get back up.”

The beginning of the show is getting to know the players, their perspectives, & their assumptions, which taint everything they see & hear. We will then learn the truth of things. Then the healing can begin. It always starts with the parents. In the beginning of the show, Dad goes missing and ends up falling & contracting amnesia, a device that is too common, but in this case it is used effectively. Dad thinks he's 22 again. He's acting like he and mom are dating - and he's super INTO her. He's completely forgotten the long years of small insults and petty denials that cooled their love. Dad is young and in love again. Mom is beside herself!

In his many “counseling“ sessions with Hee, Hyuk is the one that tells us what the writer is trying to communicate. “A scientist said that we know more about the materials in the solar system than the materials inside the earth. We think that there's no need to learn about Earth since we live on it. That's how families are.” Family members know plenty - they just don't care to understand. “Family members know the weak point that others can't see so well. They can always strike a hard blow whenever they want.”

Secrets. Going solo. Miscommunication. Wrong assumptions. Horribly wrong assumptions. Slowly, characters begin to realize: “I don't know my family.” They don't know themselves, either. “I didn't know I was this petty.” “You aren't petty… you're only like that to your sister,” Hyuk expounds. “I'm sure you want me to be brave and honest, and not do things… slowly… If a human being lives his or her life in such a just and honest way all the time, the heart can't handle it and explodes. So you need to make excuses from time to time. Use tricks when you can't help it. And realize that you're cowardly and repent. This is the way to make your heart handle things.”

Anger and family. Family and bitterness. Treating family with the contempt of impossible standards and using them as targets for our misdirected anger - these are the themes. I've taken to calling this social and emotional cannibalism. We keep our eyes lateral and lash out at other's expense. We should keep our eyes focused upward on the highest standards. Anger turns into unforgiveness which hardens into bitterness. It is, as the adage goes, like drinking poison and expecting someone else to get sick - it only hurts us. The best time to forgive is right away, before it solidifies into an insurmountable obstacle. Forgiveness is releasing ourselves from a burden. It is letting go of the anger and sourness that consumes us and steals our joie de vie, our joy of life. I call it leveling-up. To level-up, a person needs to let go of pride. Our anger often stems from our pride being dinged. Instead of looking at relationships horizontally, endlessly comparing ourselves and feeling superior or inferior, level-up into a higher form of life. Don't step on other's heads to advance yourself. Try to bring along others when you advance.

Now, back to problem parents: Mom and dad had become 2 strangers under one roof over the years. Dad held on to mom's ex more than she did! His jealousy (born from pride) corrupted the marriage. Joo has a different father, though none of the kids know that. It comes out that Dad had many temper tantrums over the years because he felt inadequate. We'll learn this began when he overheard people gossiping at the wedding. Gossip is a horrible habit. Why does a person get pleasure from it? The basis of gossip is pride. We love to feel better than other people by comparison and, thus, we enjoy other people's misery. Here, it ended up tearing a family apart for years.

“People say a biological parent doesn't matter at my age. Divorce doesn't matter at my age. Should anything matter at my age? What does my age have to do with anything?” The scene where dad talks to Joo about how he felt about her, even before she was born, is precious. Who is her real father? It's always bothered me that adopted kids often go find their bio parents and forget all about the people that put years of work, money, sacrifice and emotion into them. No one can fault a person for finding their family by blood, but it must be heartbreaking for the parents who get left behind. There is no perfect parent, and it's human to fantasize about the parent who isn't there. What we construct in our head is always better than what flesh and blood people are capable of. The ones who put in the work, the ones who put out for the child, will always be the parents. Love multiplies as we give it out; it doesn't run out. Joo struggles with this and starts to go solo ~ Just like the rest of the family ~ She's showing her common DNA.

“There was a time when there was only the two of us in the world, and we were everything to eachother,” Mom dolefully recalls. M&D allowed little hurts to fester unresolved. It led to more misunderstandings and then, Mom admits, she deliberately left some things unresolved out of spite. Mom and Dad deconstruct their marriage and what went wrong. Their angst was over a whole lot of nothing. Plenty of divorces have happened that way. Some divorces are for the best, but many aren't.

Soon, it's: “Mom is having a fling!” Even though Mom and Dad have separated, they have to keep meeting up over this situation or that predicament. They end up unwittingly dating. “I saw young people drinking this and I wanted to try it too”, Dad says, as he hands her a drink. Dad's actually arranged to meet her at popular dating sites he's found online. ‘I don't know why everybody here is young…😅” It gets very cute. Even cuter is how Ji-woo, who still lives at home, figures out that his mother must be dating someone. There's flowers and vases, and tags for new clothing & Mom's out a lot.

“I thought my family was normal, but we're not.” Idk what normal is. Much of human behavior follows patterns, but “normal” seems to be 85% phoniness. Finding the right mix of individualism and compromising enough to fit in (don't lie, steal, cheat, do wash regularly and wear clean clothes) is an art. People who level up won't squash their personality down to nothing to fit in with or attempt to impress others. That is enslavement. The crowd is so rarely in the right it is truly a false flare. Don't let the crowd enslave you. Be warned, they might hate you for your freedom. It's a good way to sort out who is genuine.

Another theme is being gay in a society that is intolerant of it. A character leads a double life while he tries to balance his family (in denial) marriage (a lie) and work (his reputation would be ruined). He's miserable. Everyone around him is miserable, too. No matter our personal feelings or religious leanings, there is no call to persecute others or cause such pain. The only reason people are so cruel is because of pride. Ironically, a superior human will be humble and show compassion and love. Those things are never wrong. Condemning others while never taking a moment to try and see things from their perspective is always wrong. Always. The show also features a sexual assault survivor & the trauma that she's experiencing. Asia is notoriously male dominated. Such an imbalance leads to lack of respect, abuse, and general mistreatment of a group.

MUF is amusing in its apt portrayal of diverse personalities trying to keep their familial relationships afloat. “Nevermind. Let's just try to understand this separately. Things will get worse if we try to convince each other. I have no energy.” 😅 I like the way the writer put that. I intend to steal it immediately. In all, this is excellently acted and written. It's insightful and well worth the time to watch at least once.


QUOTES📢

These things happen.

Bad hunches always come true.

〰🖍 IMHO

📣8.2 📝8.5 🎭8.5 💓5 🦋4.5 🎨6.5 🎵/🔊7 🔚8.2 ▪ 🌞4.5 ⚡2.5 😅3.5 😭3 😱2 😯2 🤢2 🤔6 💤0


Age 15+ It's mostly tame but there's one night stands and unexpected pregnancy issues along with other adult sexual situations. Rated TV-15

Re-📺? It is possible


In order of ~lite&trite~ to ~heavy&serious~ here are some other family-centered dramas:

Modern Day -
I'll See You When the Weather is Fine 9
Racket Boys-8.3
The Bros7.1
Reply 1988
Move To Heaven 8
Minari
My Liberation Diary 8.9
Call It Love 8.4
HeirsMine 8.1
One Spring Night 7.8
Something in the rain 8.6
When the Weather is Fine 9
Mother 8.8

Historical/Period -
Saimdang 8.5,


Romance junkies only -
My Secret Romance 7 (if you ff thru overdone flashbacks),
Boys Over Flowers 8 ~ melodrama to the max,
The Bride of Habaek 7,
Heirs 7.3,
That Winter, The Wind Blows 7,
Something in the Rain 9,
C🇨🇳: Well-Intended Love 7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine,
You are my destiny 6.8 cute, sweet & 1/2 padding,
A Little Thing Called First Love 8.5,
Find Yourself 8.9

Consider a Chinese 🎎/🔮 romcom: The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8, Love Between Fairy and Devil 8.9, Love and Redemption 10 or Japanese romcoms: Maid Sama 10, Mischievous Kiss Love in Tokyo 7.8, Love, Chunibyo And Other Delusions 8.4, or Toradora 8.5

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✒ Plan-A ◀️⏸️▶️ Eason Down the Road - °7.5° °VG°

“Don't go chasing after happiness. Let happiness find you.” Someone told Ru that awhile back. She believes it's true.

7-11 isn't the club (going to clubs is chasing after happiness), but one can meet interesting people there. That's where our FL is having a snack when a man points out a wallet at her feet. That's got nothing to do with her ~ not her wallet. Still, they start talking. She's gussied up her ramen superbly, so she shows him how. We learn later that Yan was chasing happiness. This wasn't a chance encounter.

LPA&B is a 2016 release that is rated 7.5 on MAL. It is 1 season consisting of 6 90-minute episodes. Huang Tien Jen (Someday or One Day, Amidst a Snowstorm of Love), & Wang Shau Di (Fantome, Ou es-tu) are the directors and the screenwriter is Mag Hsu (Mars, In Time with You). Per AI: “Taiwanese Q Series dramas are a collection of TV series produced by Q Place Creative Inc., with the aim of fostering world-class audiovisual production talent and innovative entertainment in Taiwan. These dramas, supported by the Republic of China (Taiwan) Ministry of Culture, are known for their high quality. ” Ep1 is fine, though it's no feelgood jaunt, but by the end of ep2 it opens up to provocative and impressive depths.

These two start dating. Ru has a chance to go to Shanghai; it’s triple the pay. Yan applies for and lands a position at a Shanghai firm. They start making plans, but right before they're set to go, his father lands in the hospital: Complete upheaval ensues. “Sacrifice doesn't always lead to fulfillment,” Ru's supervisor knows this from her own life. The only reason Ru got the promotion is because her supervisor, married with kids, cannot make the move. The woman goes on about how she's not appreciated at home, they resent her working long hours for low pay, and they nitpick over everything. “I let so many opportunities pass me by because I married young,” she complains. “I just want my life to be less mundane,” Ru whines.

Yan's father will need fulltime help. The family can't afford that, and mom cannot take care of him herself… Yan won't be going to Shanghai. That was Plan-🅰. Plan-🅱 is stay in Taipei, take care of dad, and make it work. Yan wants Ru to stay. In fact, he wants Ru to quit her job and be dad's helper! It would ruin her career and professional reputation to back out now, though. She already accepted the position. Yan's not even her fiance; she has no blood ties to his father. The company will NOT understand, her boss promises. Ru weighs her options. She weighs them again. She weighs for days. She finally decides to “bet on Plan-🅰.” She's going to Shanghai.

Rainie Yang (Devil Beside You) plays the FL, Zheng “Ru” Wei. I've only seen her in Drunken to Love You-7; the show would have flopped without her. She carries it. She can do that because she's adorable. Ru is determined to make her ordinary life less ordinary. Kenny Yen (Happy Enemy, Golden Dream on Green Island) portrays Tang You “Yan”. I don't like one thing about Yan. He's self-centered and weak. He does have good points. He's certainly a wonderful son, but he's not a good bf or husband… Husband? Didn't Ru leave? How does the viewer get to see Yan as a spouse? The show alternately follows Plan-🅰 and Plan-🅱 to see how things work out.

Plan-🅱 is a mess. Yan's mother takes Ru for granted (she's horrid!). Yan's sister flies home from 🇺🇲. For weeks, mom prepares: She's getting herself excited. Their apartment is 3 bedrooms and Ru’s been using the spare one. But sister's going to need it, and Mom won't let Ru sleep in Yan's bedroom. So, Ru is going to go visit her uncle for the holiday week. Given how Ru has devoted her life to caring for dad, it's a gut-punch.

Mom will get her own gut-punch. Sis walks into the hospital room, looking West-Coast-Fabulous in thigh-high boots and a shaggy alpaca jacket. We get to watch mom's face drop as she realizes that sister won't be stepping a toe inside their place! Her husband's waiting in the lobby (‘hates the smell of the hospital’), and he can't be bothered to come up and say “hello”. They have a client in town and they'll be traveling around Taiwan with the client ~ even on the holiday, because the client's interested in local customs and how they celebrate. Yan starts a big argument with his sister (in English, so the parents don't understand). She storms out. Her visit clocks in at under 10 minutes!

Back to Plan-🅰. Ru is settled into her new place & new job when she gets wind that Yan was in a car w/ a woman, and it looked “off”. It looked intimate. Ru panics & submits her resignation. Her new boss, "Eason” (Johnny Lu) is sex-appeal in a 3-piece suit. His baritone is so rich he is close to a base. He probably does Barry White in Karaoke. So many of these Asian actors have divine voices. He asks her why she quit? She's evasive. So he suggests they discuss it over dinner. He narrows it down to the issue at hand, but Ru isn't /certain/ she's been dumped - not 💯%. “Your Heart probably knows the answer,” he supplies. ~💡~ Ain't that the truth! If we're constantly running around busy & emotionally charged w/o a care to logical analysis, we'll never figure it out. Stop. Reflect. Act accordingly.

I sometimes look at these situations as a simple case of mistaken identity. Ru had identified Yan as a good life mate, a person who was committed to her and would be loving and loyal for the length of their lives. If Yan can cheat on her so quickly, he can't be the things that she had projected onto him. She had loved a lie. What does one do when one realizes that one chose to believe a lie? Some will get angry. True idiots get angry at the other woman/man, a practice that I've always found completely ridiculous - /that person/ isn't the cheater. But some will play it smart and just walk away. What's going to provide more fulfillment later? An emotional scene or silence w/ dignity? Some cannot handle loneliness at all. That isn't an excuse; the same circumstances and challenges are completely different for different individuals. I don't subscribe to the concept of there just being one perfect mate out there for everyone. Potential
love interests can be analyzed as 1-99% propositions. It looks like Ru and Yan are a 70% match. They get along great, but they fall short of being optimal. She has dreams and plans. He really doesn't. She's thinking big. He's thinking small. To be together forever ~for them~ means one or both of them will have to change - sacrifice. It's usually the woman. It's better to hold out for a 85%+ match. Invite the left brain in to analyze your love life. The right brain cannot do it alone! In Yan's case, he's probably the type that would be true - as long as everything goes well. He has a soft core: He'll cheat the 1st time something goes wrong. We see who he is when he pushes Ru for sex when she's sick in bed from exhaustion (Plan-🅱 scenario). He sees her more as a possession, not a human being. Ru is a tuffy. I don't think she'd ever cheat on her mate. She's projected that part of herself onto Yan. She saw what she wanted to see, and not the truth. This is a human failing. This is what we all do.

Back to Ru & Eason. “You insist on hearing him say it,” (Mr. Sexy Voice sounds more like a berceuse). “But why? Why should YOU be the one thrown away?” Why indeed. His solution: 📌❇🔸 “Don't focus on the things you've lost. Count the things that you could have.” He promises to give her the next step once she learns the first one. The entire scene is riveting.

Ru starts alleviating her sense of loss with possessions. Shoes. Bags. Clothes. They're a temporary high, but ultimately, they leave one more hollow, not more fulfilled. The Goodwill stores are full. Our hearts are empty. She says she has the things and the look that she wanted. She equates that to having the life that she wanted. The only thing she's missing is a person to eat dinner with, she reasons. An inebriated Ru shows back up at Easton's place demanding to know the second step. She wakes up the next morning on his couch and tries to slink out, but he has breakfast set out for her. 📌❇🔸 “Break up with him. That's the next step.” He'll later say, in the post-break-up-break-down, that they sound more like 2 people who “don't hate e/o and are afraid of being alone.” He wonders if people need love or just a way to ward off the loneliness? He suggests they experiment together. “Do you hate me?” She shakes her head. “PERFECT.”

📌❇🔸“Don't allow anyone in this world to really understand you,” is his next tip. “Won't that make you feel lonely?” She wants to know. “It's human nature to feel lonely,” he replies. “Only love, as well as marriage and family, can comfort the fear of being alone. It could never solve the feelings of loneliness.” “One day, you'll have an epiphany. Even if there was a person who understands you completely, you would still feel lonely. Therefore, being afraid of loneliness is the most stupid thing.” I know this is true. Get sick. Struggle mentally and emotionally from it. Watch all your relationships evaporate. On one level, I understand it. I never expected anyone to be there for me, primarily because I never expected to be in need. My experience has turned my sights upward, spiritually, and backwards to what I learned in Sunday school. “From a really young age, I trained myself to enjoy loneliness and to enjoy the feeling of not being understood,” claims Eason. Ru studies him, but she doesn't understand him.

The primary theme is complications of womanhood. There's a huge disconnect between the lies we've chosen to believe about how women should live their lives and reality. Like rain falls from the sky, everything falls on the woman. This is true even when she works full-time. At the end of ep1 they have a Plan-🅱 scene in which she becomes a wife & a mother. She's treated like a servant, nothing is good enough, and she's practically criticized for the way she breathes. At the same time, she's being pulled in a dozen directions.

Women are sneered at if they choose to be housewives, though everything a housewife does is work that must be done. It's not just full-time, it's overtime work. For career women, they're criticized for how they don't keep it together or give enough. Most careers are not fulfilling. The workplace can be dismal. Spending a third of your life in a cubicle is a level of hell. How much of what we do, do we do because it's expected? Are we really happy with our choices? Most of us seniors would do things completely differently if given the opportunity. There's no one-fits-all answer. Before a woman makes a decision between Plan-🅰 and Plan-🅱 she should weigh it for days. Following a career path for which you have a passion has a great chance of being fulfilling. Following a career path only for pride has almost no chance of being fulfilling! Being a housewife for a man who adores and appreciates you is fulfilling. Being a housewife for a man who fails to love and respect the wife will be crushing. Carefully weigh the costs. After factoring in wardrobe, transportation, lunches, and childcare, most women are hardly making minimum wage. Your job will never love you back. Even if you're the CEO, it will go on without you. You build love and fulfillment through your family.

Another theme is that one should not mold their life around anyone until one is married. Until that lifetime selfless commitment is spoken and sealed, work on yourself and become the best you can be. Some women will be happy as a housewife and raising kids. That can be a beautiful life but Ru isn't ready for that yet, and holding e/o back is not the way. That only generates resentment.

Back to Plan-🅱. She’s feeding Yan's father. He's depressed. Ru mentions how devoted his wife is. “We stopped loving a long time ago,” Dad dolefully admits. “We just feel bad about leaving.” At work, things turned sour since she turned down the Shanghai opportunity. Her future at her job has faded to black. She is going to quit. “I don't want to drag you down,” says Yan. It's a little late for that, though, isn't it?

There's no better feeling in the world than having an adult child who one is proud of. In Plan-🅱 we see parents who spoiled a child so badly that her life is a mess. Nasty divorce. No friends. No prospects. No skills. She fights with her mother and blames mom for all her deficiencies. Raising kids is hard. Growing up is hard. But the alternative is the WORST. Back at Plan-🅱, the marriage is on the rocks. It's about his family all the time. Yan complains how awful it is to constantly feel gratitude and guilt (HUH😬?). It's too much pressure. He tries to claim that he's made sacrifices too, and they've made them together for a better life… that ain't fair! Everything is for his family, and while his father is extremely appreciative, his mother and sister are repulsive.

Plan-🅰 is fraught with lonliness and loss as well, though she ends up with plenty of money. The show continues toggling until the end. Actually, both plans work out in their own ways. Taiwan has the second highest divorce rate in Asia, and the birthrate is very low. I suspect they're trying to encourage people to stick with their families. The main message seems to be that life isn't easy, and it's up to us to find a way to make it work. I'm Plan-🅰 all the way. Yan and his mama can have themselves.


QUOTE🗣

Your Heart probably knows the answer.

You can't save a love that's already expired.

You have to smell with your nose and observe with your eyes, but never listen with your ears.

You can't exchange sacrifices for happiness. You have to find yourself first. Then, your happiness will approach you.

IMHO〰🖍


📣7.4 📝7.6 🎭7.6 💓6 🦋6 🎨6 🎵/🔊7 🔚8 🤗4.5 ▪ 🌞4 ⚡3 😅2 😭3 😱1 😯3 🤢1 🤔7.5 💤0

Shazams:
年輪說 by Rainie Yang


Age 13+ Rated 15+


Re-📺?

In order of ~lite & trite~ to ~heavy & serious~ you may also like:

🌐💓 -
C🇨🇳:
A Little Thing Called First Love 8.5;
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1;
Wait, My Youth-8.4


K🇰🇷 :
A Witch's Love 7.8;
Love To Hate You 8.9;
Touch Your Heart 8.2;
Crash Landing On You 9.1;
Oh My Ghost 10;
It's Okay Not to Be Okay 9;
Hospital Playlist 9;
My Mister 9.5;

🎎 -
C🇨🇳: Overlord 8.4,
Under the Power 8.6,
The Rebel Princess 9.1,
The Sword and the Brocade 8.6 (in ancient Chinese opera style),
The Rise of Phoenixes 9
K🇰🇷:
My Only Love Song 8.7 excellent comedy;
Mr. Queen 8.5;
My Sassy Girl 8.5;
The King's Affection 8.3;
Mr. Sunshine 9


Japanese🇯🇵 lite romcoms: Maid Sama-10, Mischievous Kiss Love in Tokyo-7.8, Love, Chunibyo And Other Delusions-8.4, Toradora-8.5

Romance junkies only: Accidentally in Love-6.5 ‘18 B-level scripting, acting, and directing, but still fun/strangely relaxing to watch,
Well-Intended Love-7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine but many object to an outrageous stunt the ML pulls,
Boss & Me-7
When I Fly Towards You-7.8,
You are my destiny-6.8 cute and sweet and 1/2 padding,
Meteor Garden-7.4 - 70% flowing 30% dragging and BOF is better,
Hidden Love-7.8


🇹🇼Taiwan
Age of Rebellion-9.5,
Autumn's Concerto-7.2,
Back to 1989-7.1,
Black & White-6.8,
The Fierce Wife-8 - worth sticking with,
Inborn Pair-4.2,
Love, Now-3.6,
Love You-7,
Office Girls-7,
The Perfect Match-5.5 (ep 1-9=8,1-17=7.5,1-22=5.5)
Two Fathers-7.5

Read More

✒Pineapple ⚜️ Persuasion °7.4° °VG°

Shen Yue (A Love So Beautiful, Be Yourself) is Dong Shancai. She's just an ordinary girl. Some even call her ugly, though this actress is a cutie. She's been accepted at Ming De University, and that's a big deal. That's where rich and privileged kids go. It's not long before Shancai learns that “rich and privileged” is a term interchangeable with monsters. There's some mean guys that are at the top of the school's hierarchy (they really aren't that mean, however). Shancai has a run in with one of them right away. She doesn't care who they are, they should be brought down a peg!

Dylan Wang (The Rational Life-7) is the worst one as Dao Ming “Si”. Don't misunderstand: Mr. Wang is an excellent ML. He isn't everyone‘s type. He regularly plays the tortured guy who's chosen to become the torturer. Toxic, angry, and bitter seem to come naturally to him. He can also express intense love and desire, and he cleans up well. I'm a fan. In Love Between Fairy and Devil-8.9 he's fabulous. You guessed it, Wang's the DEVIL. The two leads in that show must role-reverse, and it's shocking to see him act the innocent girl ~ He's fantastic. In MG, he gets cuter with every episode ~ All because of Shancai. In the beginning, he tells his friends that their idea of the perfect date sounds “gross”. He's childish and has some growing up to do.

Darren Chen (The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty) is Hua Ze Lei, Si's best friend. Shancai falls for him first. Most women do. Lei is genuinely kind and sincere. At times, Lei's character is ill-defined and often difficult to u/s. He is actually boring. He makes some mistakes along the way, too. The other two friends are more on the periphery and fodder for 2ndary romances. Caesar Wu (Strange Tales of Jiang Cheng, General's Lady) plays Xi Men Yan, and Leon Leong (Definitely Not Today, My Love, Enlighten Me) portrays Feng Mei Zuo. For the record, Qinge (Liu Yin Hao from Swordsman's Romance) is caustic. His character is awful.

Based on the Japanese manga series Boys Over Flowers written by Yoko Kamio, MG is a 2018 release that is a remake of the 2001 Taiwanese show. Other than Japan, Korea did it first in 2009. Their production of Boys Over Flowers-8.3 hit the international scene and took the world by storm. That show not only changed Korean culture, but it started Kdramas’ climb to world domination. They're just about there, now.

Si, not accustomed to hearing the word “no” falls for Shancai. Falling for him would never occur to her; she hates him too much. However, he starts to adjust to her. His sister is on board. She can see how good Shancai is for Si. But Si's mother will not stand for this riff-raff influencing her son.

Back to sis. SIS-a-Li-cious! I love her. She notices Shancai's talent for cooking and starts working with her. (Her first step? POETRY! 😅) Shancai enters a contest and wows them with a recipe she devised based on the oh-so-common everyday dish, 8 treasure noodles. She did it with a 🍍 sauce. Si's food favs are: Kung Po chicken, braised eggplant, sweet and sour pork ribs, and DanDan noodles. ME TOO! Don't watch this hungry.

Why doesn't somebody tell Shancai that what's happening with her friend is none of her business? She can't be there to protect her friend from life. That doesn't do her friend any good, anyway. Shancai is taking on a friend's problems as if they're her own, and as if she can fix them. We are supposed to support our friends but there's a thin line between altruism and arrogance, sometimes. Furthermore, Si deserves to have her priorities on him. I know of what I speak. Relationships are optional. No one should enter one unless that person is willing to make adjustments and sacrifices in order to have a successful love life. It's a big adjustment, melding your life with someone else's. We have to be able to whittle down some parts of our personality, however, we shouldn't do too much of that. It's a delicate balance.

Si has fallen for a practical girl. He buys her 520 roses. She counts them and comes up with 519! She counts again a couple times. And then she lets him know: They gipped us one. Can't she just enjoy herself? Si is adorable, but he is inclined towards tantrums. Early on, it's: “If I'm a stupid pig, you're the stupidest pig ever!” He's just passionate, and Shancai is no shrinking violet. He has justifiable anger that he expresses in wrong ways, but he loves fully and completely. It takes awhile, but he starts to cuddle her and she starts letting him. Si won't waiver, and he's never boring. What more can a woman ask for? You have to wait until ep33 for their first kiss, but it's swoony.

“I'm very frightened of your fighting spirit.” Shancai is tough. She's going to need every scrap of her scrappiness. The show is comprised of them falling in love and then Si's mother trying to rip them apart. Mom's ruthless. But, I don't think Shancai knows that quitting is an option. Eventually, the four boys begin to acknowledge Shancai's unyielding personality that is like her namesake: a weed that can never be destroyed.

Eps48&49 are loaded with flashbacks & dreams. It's too much. However, the last half of ep49 is wrap-up and pay-off. We get dividends of warmth and glimpses of life going forward for many of the characters. After so much drama, pay-off is nice.

That the bones. When it comes to the filmcraft, there's 50 episodes, so lots of the show is just living life with these folks. It's intermittently clunky and then smooth. It's mostly nice, but some stretches are slower than others. There's a bar in the show where people tell the bartender what mood they're in and what they want their drink to represent, and he brings them something. That's actually inspired… in-spirit-ing😉. There's a Casablanca reference that is pretty impressive writing. The filming of the Ep1 kick is great. Their parties look like a fun time. I was wishing they could have spared us the BOF amnesia motif, and God bless them, they did. I'm downright jealous of some of the fashion. Many of the women are gorgeous, but there's just as many a female character who is not looking her best. Oh my. That outdoor house. It's one of the swankiest structures I've ever laid eyes on.

So, let's Compare MG to BOF, one of my gateway Kdramas.

BoF feels like a pageant or a stage production compared to MG. They are each unreal, but in different ways. BoF feels more alive. MG feels ,more like a dream sequence. They ask much nosier questions in the Chinese version, but much of the dialogue in pre-2019 🇨🇳modern-day dramas is unrealistic and wooden. MG is much better than the average from that era and modern-day Cdramas have come a long way.

Cdrama men are more masculine. They're not as pretty. They are much less emotional. It seems more culturally conservative than BoF, except it's more forward, sexually. There's a comment that these 2 are both adults and what they do is up to them. That would have scandalized our BOF crew.

Kdramas tend to glorify wealth too much, while Cdramas project unease over wealth. It's too close to capitalism, apparently. Si describes to Shancai what her benefits are by becoming his gf. It's pretty tame. Just in trying to woo Jandi, Jun Pyo spends 20k on a makeover. On the flip side, I love Si's house. It's just a touch industrial with muted shades, soft lighting and beautiful artwork that blends in perfectly. MG shows rich people with a fraction of the service staff that the Gu house has in BoF. In MG, rich people fix their own leaky pipes. The F4 gang in BoF are ridiculously 💲wealthy💲. The Chinese dudes are described as men who are very accomplished in their studies. They have money, but the focus was more on their accomplishments. The BoF boys are much meaner - mainly Gu Jun Pyo. He's a monster.

MG is adorable. Bof is melodrama at its best. It starts funnier but turns into more of a tearjerker. MG didn't tear me up much until around episode 30. Jun Pyo is a more needy ML and there's more love triangle tension. Korea just can't get enough of it for some reason.

MG has better 2ndary romances.The one with Zoe Cana is outstanding. MG's warmth radiates more. Some especially warm scenes are when Shanghai has dinner with one of the housekeepers. It's very sweet. They spend more time dedicated to the side romances and there's much less drama. I love the extra time with the rest of the gang. It's nice having more time to breathe with the characters. It would have been nice to see a little more of Jun Pyo & Jandy having fun together.

The story, in all of its iterations, is for romance junkies. I like it enough to watch it in all of its iterations. I do think BOF's execution is superior to MG's but they are both great watches.


QUOTES🗣

Some things are only meaningful if they happen right then and there.

It's so hard to face my own feelings

Even the spring wind wants to chase your smile.

The dark circles under your eyes accentuate the beauty and sadness of a broken heart.

You have to learn to express your emotions in order to {see things clearly,} face reality and make the right decisions.


〰🖍 IMHO

🎬 7.5 🖊〰7 🎭7.5 💓8 🦋7 🌞7 🎨8.5⚡5 🎵 8.6 😅7 😭5.5 😱2 🤢0 🤔4 💤5.7 🔚8

Age 13+ violence and blood dating adult situations (tame)

Re-📺? Doubtful

In order of ~lite & trite~ to ~heavy & serious~ you may also like:

🌐💓 -
C🇨🇳:
A Little Thing Called First Love 8.5;
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1;
Wait, My Youth-8.4

Romance junkies only: Accidentally in Love-6.5 ‘18 B-level scripting, acting, and directing, but still fun/strangely relaxing to watch,
Well-Intended Love-7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine but many object to an outrageous stunt the ML pulls,
Boss & Me-7
When I Fly Towards You-7.8,
You are my destiny-6.8 cute and sweet and 1/2 padding,
Hidden Love-7.8

Read More

✒♨️You Crave Family & Warmth Now ♨️ °7.3° °VG°

In Sarasota one can visit the Ringling Estate which is located on grounds of stunning beauty and some of the area's most magnificent Banyan trees. The Ringling Mansion is on-site as well. It's a magnificent mix of grandeur and whimsy. It had fallen into such disarray that the movie, Great Expectations (Deniro, Paltrow, Hawke), was filmed there ~ it was the most dilapidated mansion they could find where two people could conceivably still live. That prompted the city, county, and state to restore the place. They did a fabulous job. The mansion was originally completed in 1926. Mable, (Mrs. Ringling), died in 1929 and John Ringling in 1936. They hardly got to enjoy it! They had no children. The government owns what they had, now.

That's the cannibalistic society in which we live. There's mansions like Ringling’s all over the place. Some have been restored, others are just abandoned. NO ONE took ANYTHING with them. Ringling made his money through hard work, passion, and vision, and most of what he owned went to the state. In NGU, Madam Money (Park Won Sook from Chief Inspector-1971 & Miracle, Dear My Friends) made her fortune through loan sharking, which is seedier than the circus. She focused on money most of her life. Now she's alone. She's sitting in a big, beautiful mansion surrounded by treasures, yet she's miserable.

Goo “Pil” Soo and Nam Seong “Mi”, Pil's wife, are pretty miserable, too. They can't afford the rent and they're about to be homeless. Poor people believe that money will make them happy. Rich people know that isn't true. Having enough, but not too much, being content and not letting greed take over, are the 🔑🗝🔑🗝.

As the show opens, we follow a couple different parties. One is Pil's family. They are trying to give their son, Jun Pyo (who is very bright), every advantage, but they are on the brink of going under. We're also following 3 young men - app developers. They need financing for their startup.

NGU is a 2022 release that is rated 87 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 16 70-minute episodes. It's warm and enjoyable the whole way through. It stays simple and never tries to be lofty. That's the secret to a happy life.

App developers Seok and Minjae have opposite focuses (foci?). Minjae wants to create an app for the top 1% and “sell desire.” Minjae wants them to focus on Golden Cupid. Seok wants to bring neighbors together; his passion is Nextdoor, eh, /Neighbor24/ I mean. Yoon Doo Joon (Let's Eat) portrays Jung “Seok”. He & his buds created the Neighbor24 app. They're trying to raise funding. Seok wants to do something for the regular folk.

Kwak Do Won (Ghost, The Wailing-8.8) plays Pil. He's no chicken🐔comb (that good-for-nothing worthless frill on top of a chicken's head). Pil runs a 🐔 joint (You Crave Fried Chicken Now. It's Seoul-lickin good!). He cleans the floor with leftover Soju! That brought on a 😅. His partner in crime is his former coach, Noh Il Dam (Kim Young Woong from Happiness & Vincenzo-7.9. His first credit is from 2000) Pil makes fabulous 🍗, but his son is still embarrassed of him. Slinging chicken is hard! There's never enough money. Now the landlord is kicking them out. The value of their apartment has skyrocketed but the law only allows a 5% increase in rent per year. “Move out when your lease is over,” the landlord says. Han Go Eun (Love and Ambition, Me Too, Flower!) is Mi. Life is exhausting, but her son keeps her going. She's a stunner. Back in the day, Pil won her with his fighting 🥋 prowess, but her old college friend is in town. He's handsome, manly, and wealthy enough to buy the penthouse where the rich people live. At one point, Mi is looking at her old friend and it seems like they might kiss. The moment goes on for a long time as her eyelids flutter but no words are spoken. The acting in that scene took my breath away. Jung Dong Won (Mr. Trot: The Movie, New Normal) plays their son, Koo Jun Pyo. This actor has a singing voice like an angel. Jun Pyo got into a great school, where the privileged kids go, but he has to study every waking moment to keep up.

Seok eats at Pil's. Other than the fact that one likes the other's 🍗, Pil & Seok didn't hit it off. Seok critiqued one of Pil’s new recipes by informing Pil that his ingredients, when combined, are toxic. Pil had no right to take offense, but he just couldn't help it. Then, Seok got completely sloshed after visiting his father in jail. He threw up all over Pil, one night, and then forgot to pay the bill - the dashing Seok turned into the dine-and-dashing Seok.

Jung Da Eun (Justice High, Café Minamdang) portrays web designer Oh Seul “Ki”. I was sensing Crazy, Stupid, Love vibes and thought she would turn out to be Pil & wife's older daughter (she's even a martial artist), but that's not the case. Like father, like son. Jun Pyo is talking to / on the verge of officially dating an official hottie. Kim Ji Young (Do You Want to Eat?, Cha Ta Gong In) portrays Jo Anna, an aspiring Kpop girl group singer. She recognizes Jun Pyo's singing talent. Kim Ha Eon appears in ep7 as a 10 year old son of an alcoholic. He's getting lots of work. I've seen him in May I Help You-6.3, Link: Eat, Love, Kill-6.7, & Oh My Baby-6.7, and he's been in mega hits like Mouse and S2 of Missing & Sweet Home-8.4. The director is Choi Do-Hoon from Eccentric! Chef Moon, and there are two writers: Son Geun-Joo penned Backstreet Rookie-6.4 and Lee Hae-Ri wrote Under the Gun.

At the end of ep1 we see a potential, albeit thin, connection between our two groups. Seok is running from creditors. His father's partner ran off and the company went under. Dad's in jail and creditors are harassing Seok ~ Madam Money included. His dad owes her 700M. Just after dad explains how scary she is, we see Pil rescue her from purse snatchers. She invites him to live at her place - yes, bring the fam. As ep1 concludes, we hear: “Back then we had no idea what kind of events were waiting for us in this mansion.”

Mini spoilers⛔ As Pil & family are getting ready to move in, Seok is getting ready to move out. There's seizure tags on all of his possessions. It's even worse than he thought: Minjae has betrayed him😨. One of their potential investors, VC Genie, turned them down but poached Minjae (Jung Jae Kwang from The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call) out from under them. What hurts most was losing his friend. Like father, like son. Seok's father's in jail, but it was his partner that stole everything and fled. Seok wants to rescue his dad's company and find the true criminal. He approaches Madam Money to ask for more time and an investment in his new app. He ends up moving into her house, too, much to Pil & Mi's unease. NOW they're connected. Seok keeps running into Ki. They become friends, even though Ki is working for Golden Cupid, Minjae's new company. Things are turning ugly, and Ki is monitoring her boss's dastardly actions. Golden Cupid ganked Seok's tech, filed a proprietary patent on it, and then had Neighbor24 shut down. They're playing hardball. They're worse criminals than the loan shark! Ki actually got the two executives on tape admitting as much when she was walking around practicing v-logging. She'll have to decide if her job, or her new friendship with Seok, is more important. ⛔

Towards midshow things coalesce into what they will be: Their landlady is a loan shark. She's nearing the end of her life and seems tired of it all. She has some items that were given to her as collateral that aren't worth anything to her, but to the original owners these items are priceless. A chef relinquished a knife that had been passed down through generations of family chefs. She wants Pil to find his son. Naturally, when they're trying to find someone for a loan shark, the people 🏃🏃🚴🏇🏃💨 skedaddle. So this job is difficult, but with Seok's help, Pil gets the job done. Then their land-shark-lady gives them three other jobs to do. Pil and Seok are bonding, but Pil isn't tending to his restaurant at this time. A new chicken joint opened up a couple blocks away to great fanfare (and free unlimited beer) so he doesn't have customers anyway. He's painfully concerned about his marriage but he must secure their living situation before anything else.

The plot gets involved, I'm leaving lots out. One funny bit is the rappers. Anna has Jun Pyo at the studio with her. The producers see his talent and want to develop it. He's supposed to spend all of his time studying, so this will be a problem. (Studying is NOT living, Anna tells him. It's already a problem.) While this is going on, Seok, with help from Pil, opens a memory lounge on his app. They do a big write up of the 2002 World MLS⚽ Cup win. Mi’s brother posts a pic of Pil celebrating with underwear on his head ~ it goes 🌐viral🌐. The rappers & music producers love it and decide to start a “most embarrassing picture” contest on the Neighbor24 app. The app explodes, The restaurant explodes! Now, selling chicken is easy. Jun Pyo's situation comes to a head. His mother is terrified to let him depart from the established path. But he's miserable. These parents must stop and reevaluate their priorities, their lives, and their relationship with their precious child.

This is a show about friendship and family, but web designer Oh Seul Ki & Seok provide us with romance. They're quite cute together. They let some things go by the wayside, slightly. Ep16 is a soft landing and wrap up. Overall, NGU is a warm interlude with a message of hope and love. Remember, keep it simple and do your giving while you're living!


IMHO〰🖍


📣7.7 📝7.4 🎭8 💓6 🦋5 🎨6 🎵/🔊6 🔚🤗6.5 ▪ 🌞7⚡4.5 😅4 😭3 😱3 😯3 🤢2 🤔5 💤0


Age 11+ it's pretty clean and tame with a simple but warm message
Rated: 15+

Re-📺? Even money



In order of ~lite&trite~ to ~heavy&serious~ you may also like:

FAMILY FUN

Playful kiss-7.3,
99 days with the Superstar-7,
The Miracle-7.7,
Racket Boys-8.3,
Prison Playbook-8.4,
Reply 1988-8.6,
Crash Landing On You 9.1,
Our Blues-8.5,
Oh My Ghost 10,
The Golden Spoon-8.1,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
My Unfamiliar Family-7.9,
When the Camellia Blooms-8,
Revenge of Others-8.1,
Familiar Wife-8.5,
Birthcare Center-8.2,
Move To Heaven-8.4,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,
Call It Love-8.4,
Heirs-7.3,
One Spring Night-7.8,
Saimdang-8.5,
Train to Busan-7.8,
Mine-8,
Moving-8.5,
That Winter, The Wind Blows-7,
I'll See You) When the Weather is Fine-9,
SKY Castle-9,
Something in the Rain-8.6,
My Mister 9.5,
Light Shop-8.6,
Parasite-9,
Mother-8.8,
The Wailing-8.8,
Oldboy-9


💘 -
Romance junkies only -
My Secret Romance-7 (if you ff thru overdone flashbacks),
Boys Over Flowers-8 ~ melodrama to the max,
The Bride of Habaek-7,
Heirs-7.3,
That Winter, The Wind Blows-7,
Something in them Rain-9,
C🇨🇳: Well-Intended Love-7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine,
When I Fly Towards You-7.8,
Wait, My Youth-8.4,
A Little Thing Called First Love-8.5,
Find Yourself-8.9,
Hidden Love-7.8
J🇯🇵: 7th Time Loop-7.9,
True Beauty-7.5
Why Raeliana Ended up at the Duke's Mansion-8.4,

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✒⚗⛓Why We Can't Trust the System⛓⚰ °7.2° °rough but good°

It starts with the raid at an illegal club. The police scoop up one of their own there. When the officer is being questioned about his criminal activities, he says he was just “making a delivery”. It was the “first time” he “ever did anything like that”, and what are they “going to do, arrest /everyone?/ ❓ The whole violent crimes unit is involved in this,” he says❗ GBS is a 2024 release that is rated 90 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 8 50-minute episodes.

We cut over to a party where the women aren't being respected. Jenny makes a run for it and she doesn't leave empty-handed. She has a dangerous video. Now she has a target on her back.

Jo Woo Jin (Alienoid: Return to the Future, Happiness) is detective Kang Dong U. He won't take bribes. He insists on putting perps in jail, even if their uncle is the mayor. He was involved in cleaning up the last police scandal. He got awards, but that was for show. He's been a pariah and has been pushed to the side ever since that award winning heroism. His wife is a stunningly gorgeous, smart anchor woman. /Ex/-wife, that is. And his daughter’s in psychiatric care. She's been brutally bullied and she's not coping well. We see video of her slamming her head on the table. It's heartbreaking. She's discharged from inpatient care, and as he's driving her home, she begs him to find her friend, Jaehee (Jenny), who has been missing for weeks. “I need her to live,” she explains.

Ji Chang Wook is Yun Gil “Ho”. Ho runs ho's. He's a pimp! I don't know what to think of this guy. He's top tier ML, both action and romance, it's just that for every good casting choice, he's also made a poor one. He's the lead in The K2-8 - one of my gateway Kdramas & a top notch action thriller, he's the romantic lead in Lovestruck in the City-7.3 - really a fabulous romance (I've had the nagging feeling, for a while, that I've underrated it, I'll have to watch it again), he's solid in the crime thriller The Worst of Evil-7.7, but Backstreet Rookie-6.4 has way too many problems and he lacks sex appeal in it, while Melting Me Softly-4.9, has a declining IQ that dipped under 70 before ep14. It has some nice moments, but overall, it's awful. So, pimp is a new look for Mr. Ji, and he's /killer/ in this role. His performance is exceptional. All the acting is exceptional. The writing in the 2nd half is what keeps this show from flying high.

Ha Yoon Kyung See (You in My 19th Life, Umbrella) is prosecutor Min Seo Jin. She grew up poor. DA, Tak, recognizes her as someone whom he could use. He knows she can be bought because of her deprived background. BIBI- I pretty much fell in love with her while watching The Worst of Evil. She has unlimited potential. Here, she plays Kim Jaehee / "Jenny". Ryu Hye Young from Law School-8 & Reply 1988-8.6, is one of the cops, Seo Ji Su. R88 is 20 episodes that are around 90 minutes each. Once a person's spent that much time watching a family, one feels adopted into it. I'm thrilled to see sister Bora working and doing such a great job. Jeong Man Sik (Iris-8, Vagabond-8) is Tak Ju Il. When he's fully dressed, all I've noticed about him is his kind looking face. That doesn't mean that he can't play a tough guy, but there's something likeable about him. In The Worst of Evil, he's a gangster. There's a shot with him shirtless showing his muscularity and, in that show at least, he's covered in tats. It was impressive looking. Park Noo Ri (Money) directed and co-wrote with Jo Won Gyu (Argon).

By the end of ep2 my thought was: O-shizzle-me-fizzle, this is good! GBS has some multi-layered complex humor to it. Jo Woo Jin as the Detective and Hyun Bong Sik as Kim Jang Ho have a few scenes together. We're following a grizzled, hardened cynical cop... He went state's witness and locked lots of his buddies up. He needs help from one of them, now. His old partner is now a gangster. Jang actually has the gall to go ask him for help! The way they write their dialogue and interactions is marvelous. These 2 can't help but lapse into recollecting the old times. They're on a stakeout together and the gangster starts reminiscing about what they used to eat during their past stakeouts. The acting is aspirational - it's divine. I've seen Mr. Hyun in DP-8.4, Our Blues-8.5, & The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion-7.6, just taking him for an off-the-rack bad guy. He's much more. I'll be paying closer attention from now on.

The show does get a tad outrageous, but anymore, I expect that for everything I see and hear, reality is that bad or much worse. The world makes more sense since I've adopted that view. We have 2 male leads. The cop wants to save his daughter. The pimp wants to save Jenny. This isn't a world in which everyone gets what they want, not even all the bad guys - and there's an endless river of bad guys. Most of the good guys turned bad a long time ago, and this problem goes higher than the police department. It'sbigger than the DA's office, too. We get a depressing look into the seedy side of Gangham, Seoul's most affluent neighborhood. The timing and the editing are crisp. Most of the music is techno noise. The opening credit song is dystopian sounding technopop.

This show is for those who enjoy hard hitting crime and action, who won't get triggered by violence - severe violence - against women as well as men. There isn't a scene in which Ho's face isn't battered and bloody, and yes, you should see all the OTHER guys - they're in the morgue.



IMHO〰🖍


📣7.3 📝6.7 🎭8.4 💓🦋🎨7 🎵/🔊6.5 🔚🤗2 ▪ 🌞2 ⚡7 😅3.3 😭6 😱6 😯3 🤢7.7 🤔5 💤0



Age + Language: R-rated w/ F💣s
Scantily clad women. Drug parties that seem like they'll soon be origies. Violent, bloody knife fights. Killing hookers. Betting on fights to the death. Brutal stabbings.


Re-📺? Probably won't subject myself to this again




In order of ~lite&trite~ to ~heavy&serious~ you may also like:


⚡/🚀 -
Flex X Cop-8.5,
Missing: The Other Side-8.3,
Inspector Koo-8.4,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay-9,
Descendants Of The Sun-8.3,
Itaewon Class-8.7,
When the Camellia Blooms-8,
Uncanny counter-S1-8.4;S2-4,
Vagabond-8,
Why Her?-8,
Sisyphus 8 (give it 2 episodes, ep1 is confusing),
A Taxi Driver-8.4,
Beyond Evil-7.4,
Blood Free-8.5,
Tunnel 8.5, Iris-8,
Revenge of Others-8.1,
The Cursed 8.3,
Flower of Evil 8.9,
Awaken-8.7,
A Shop for Killers-8.7,
Moving-8.5,
D.P.-8.4,
Light Shop-8.6,
The Man from Nowhere 8.9,
The Wailing-8.8,
Black 9,
Sweet Home 8.4
Oldboy-9,

〰 Hulu Catalog 〰

A Shop for Killers-8.7
Big Mouth-7.4,
Blood Free-8.5,
Call It Love-8.4,
Crazy Love-7.8,
The First 1st Responders-7.8,
Flex X Cop-8.5,
The Golden Spoon-8.1,
Han River Police-7.1,
High School Return of a Gangster-7,
The Judge from Hell-4.5
The Legend of the Blue Sea-7.2 (this show is marvelous except for taking a quality dip in eps 20-22)
Light Shop-8.6,
Link: Eat, Love, Kill-6.7,
Maestra: Strings of Truth-6.8,
Moving-8.5
Pandora: Beneath the Paradise-3.9,
Parasite-9,
Revenant-7.4,
Revenge of Others-8.1,
So I Married the Anti Fan-6.8,
Uncle Samsik-8.4,
What's Wrong With Secretary Kim-6.8,
Why Her?-8,
Wonderful World-7.8,
The Worst of Evil-7.7.

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✒ ❔️Drifting Relationships✍️ °7.5° °VG°

It opens to a casual dinner party of 5 friends. It seems harmless enough, though they are quite the food critics. “It's kind of hard to suit all of you, don't you think?” Our host is slightly flustered.

But wait. One of the diners is entirely butt-naked!

The host, Michima Shi (“Mich,” a novelist) is played by Noda Yojiro Yell from Fune wo Amu: Watashi & Jisho Tsukurimasu. A few months ago, 5 unfamiliar women showed up to live in his old multi-bedroom house. As we meet them, they're having dinner and attempting to agree on the name of their new kitten, an adorable orange & white calico with scrunched ears, sitting patiently in its box. Mich has a touch of the prototype Japanese-anime-pure-hearted-blushing-maiden-male-protagonist. He's sincere. He's kind. He's sensitive. And he's completely shut off, emotionally. His parents did a number on him. Dad killed mom while she was "en flagrante delicto” with another man. Then dad killed the man. Then dad killed the police officer who first showed on the scene.

These women all received invitations to live with Mich. He doesn't know who sent the invitations, but they came with rules: He may not ask them any questions. He may not enter their rooms. They must eat dinner together. He must look after all of them, including the nudist. Why, O Why would anyone go along with this? They each pay him 1M/mo in rent. That's 💱6752.05 dollars as I write this. The kitten, in the meantime, seems to prefer the name “Cat”. It's generic, but no one can claim it's not fitting.

Based on a manga by Shunju Aono, M💴W is a 2017 release that is rated 91 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 12 25-minute English subbed episodes. It's what they call in manga-land a “harem” piece. After a 5 minute intro, we go back 6 months. Mich walks home to a pigsty and Tsukamoto Hitomi (Matsui Rena from Yawao to Katako) is sitting at his junk-laden table. “Didn't you send me this invitation?” She's genuinely confused. She hands Mich a million yen which helps allay his concerns. The others shortly followed. Mich won't learn what the invitations said until much later. The viewer has to wait until the end of the show.

Back in present day, Mich is meeting with his editor, who totally believes in his abilities. While that's going on, Mich receives a threatening fax. The air is saturated with foreboding. He's got a fax machine… that alone is weird. He claims to be inept with gadgets. He doesn't even own a computer: As he is an author, therefore, we must assume that he's into self torture. He admits to the air that he doesn't have a cell phone because he has no family or friends to contact.

He's a writer, but Mich’s characters don't die. He's seen enough death already. Mich's first novel was accepted for publishing 3 days after ‘the incident’. His father's actions took all the joy from his life, so he's been living a half life. He wonders: Just because one has a reason, does that justify murder? It wouldn't be a competent drama if that musing wasn't put to the test, now, would it?

In ep2 the boldest of the women decides to take Mich to work with her. She's not legal, though. “If you don't want to die, never repeat anything you see tonight.” Then she makes some moves on him. He really is a poor, helpless 🐣 in a world of vixen. Mich seems low energy and hopelessly commonplace. One literary critic despises him, feeling the need to compare him to a celebrated author, “Yuzu” Hanaki in an article. That critic has to re-visit his summation when Mich arrives at the literary gala with 5 hot dates! One of them is a celebrity in hiatus! For the record, Minami's a nudist, but when she wears clothes, she's indomitable. The black & white mixed geometric pattern halter she wears to the literary gala is amazing!

Alas, Yuzu got the reader's choice award. Yuzu-1 Mich-0. This stings. At least Yuzu is stung a tad as well. He's a huge fan of Hiraki Nanaka (Araki Yuko from DOPE: Mayaku Torishimari Bu Tokuso Ka) the sweet and fragile film star who is currently taking a break. She's on Mich's arm tonight.

Takeda Rena (Isekai Izakaya "Nobu": Shinobu to Efa no Gokujo Suitsuhen) is Suzumura Midori. She has a menacing thug from her past who has been demanding money from her. She's clearly terrified of him. She's just a HS kid, still! Minami tells her to toughen up, and then gives her a lurid demonstration. By lurid I mean: This show is not suited for kids. Wagatsuma Miwako (Kamen Rider Gavv) plays Kobayashi Yuki. She isn't single! She drops that bomb on the group one day. Her spouse is a bit of a surprise. Yuki is quiet, and you know what they say about the quiet ones….

Three screenwriters adapted this: Yamada Yoshitatsu (Tengu no Daidokoro Season 2), Murooka Yoshimiko (Kurokawa Morio, Arubaito Sagashitemasu!) & Nakazono Yuuya (Uchi no Bengoshi wa Te ga Kakaru). There's 2 directors: Fujii Michihito (The Last 10 Years) & Hara Hiroto (Mahjong Takarayu Ki Ishiwa no Kame Hen / Ito no Kuro Panther Hen).

The show sets up Yuzu as a type of rival for Mich, though Yuzu wouldn't see it that way. Yuzu's more successful and the critics prefer him. Yuzu thinks he's in love with Nanaka. Unbeknownst to him, Mich is wiping the floor with him in that area. As Yuzu is wondering how he can date Nanaka, she's jumping into the bathtub with Mich, much to Mich's shock.

These women have backgrounds that aren't typical. They help with getting Mich's new novel (Drifting Emotions) noticed, like some coachless, unorganized team. Just as Mich is at his happiest (I think he cracked a smile, or something almost like it) everything comes crashing down in a most unexpected tragedy. Yuzu actually tries to appropriate that tragedy and twist it to his benefit. (He's a high-level narcissist, afterall). Finally, the living situation is busted up by a fire. Mich learns the truth of things: There's a bad actor running around making trouble. That will set up ep12.

The theme is ego trips, fanfare, hullabaloos, and greed 🆚 quiet peace, simplicity, sincerity, and self-sacrifice, or: Pride 🆚 Love. Yuzu and (arguably) Mich's dad serve as the representation of team pride, while Mich and the most of the remaining characters are team love. Minami is in a category of her own. She's about strength, but she aligns with one of those sides well.

This is not what I expected. I would have said that I had no expectations, but my surprise at events belies that idea. It's dark and there's an underpinning of unease about the piece. I wasn't so bright-eyed going into episode 12, but boy, does it start with a jolt. It ends tranquil. After being on the fence for most of its run, I quite liked M💴W by the time the credits rolled.


QUOTES🗣

If everything is decided we will be restricted.

The person who is best at telling lies will be the last to survive.



IMHO〰🖍

📣7.5 📝7.7 🎭8 💓5 🦋5 🎨6.8 🎵/🔊6.8 🔚7.9 ▪ 🌞4.5 ⚡5 😅2.7 😭4.3 😱3.5 😯3 🤢3 🤔5.5 💤0 🤗5.5


Age 17+ Language: F💣s, Sex acts depicted, prostitution and sexual banter 5/10. Rated: 18+


Re-📺? Not opposed


From lite&trite to heavy&serious, here's some recs ~

⚡/🚀 -
One Punch Man,
The Eminence in Shadow 8.8, Mob Psycho 💯-8.5,
Akiba Maid War 7.5,
Love Chunibyo And Other Delusions 8.4,
Parasyte the Maxim 8.9,
Solo Leveling-9.5


💘 🇰🇷These hapless men don't stand a chance:
A Witch's Love-7.9,
My Shy Boss-6.5,
Ho-Gu's Love-7.4,
Touch your heart-8.2,
Love Struck in the city-7.3,
Love to Hate You-8.9,
What's Wrong With Secretary Kim-6.8,
Oh My Ghost-10,
Hotel del Luna-8.4,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Love Struck in the City 7.3,
Be Melodramatic-8.7,
Rookie Historian-7.6,
When the Camellia Blooms-8,
Itaewon Class-8.9,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,


💘 The magic of anime ~
The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies-8.2
Ouran High School Host Club-8,,
Ao-chan Can't Study-7.8,
Special A Class 💓8.2,
Maid Sama-10,
Why Raeliana Ended up at the Duke's Mansion-8.6,
Mischievous Kiss,
Kayuga Sama Love Is War,
True Beauty-7.5,
Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun-7.7,
Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady With the Lamp-6.5 (tweens),
Colourcloud Palace-7.5,
Hakkenden,
7th Time Loop-7.9,
Honey & Clover,
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU,
Princess Principal 8.6,
Sugar Apple Fairy Tale-7.5
Real Girl-7.5,
Toradora-8.5,
My Happy Marriage-8.3,
Nina the Starry Bride-8.4,
Your Lie In April-9,
Violet Evergarden-9.5


My 🇯🇵 live action catalog ~
Blazing Transfer Students-6.5,
Fullmetal Alchemist-5.5 (film),
Map for The Wedding-7,
Mischievous Kiss Love in Tokyo-7.8,
My Love from the Stars-6.8,
Samurai Gourmet-7.5
School Live-5.6 (film

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✒ ⛈Friendship Can Be So Fragile ⏲ °5.7° °avg°

We open to some truly creepy credits and then cut to HS kids on a camping trip. They're making a video time capsule. They've agreed to come back to the same cabin in 10 years and watch it together.

We toggle between the HS camping trip and the reunion, years later. They lay on the foreshadowing thickly. In the past, they played ‘Mafia,’ a game where the secret killer must be identified. They also play a prank on one friend with red paint and pose as if they were all attacked and murdered. It helps set the mood.

In current day, the group is surprised to see Hong Xiao Tong show up. She was so angry at them back then! Bai Xinyi (Blue Lan from The Best of Youth) hid Lan “Yi” Cong's cell phone to give him some payback for all the jokes he's played. Later, at school, photos of Xiao Tong from that phone were posted all over the place. She ended up expelled. Yi, from a wealthy family, was merely instructed to reflect on his actions. Tong is there, but Xinyi hasn't arrived yet. The group doesn't know where she is, but viewers know that her car broke down. She can't get cell reception. She flags a passing motorist.

CYEBID is a 2016 release that is rated 7.4 on MDL. It is 1 season consisting of 7 80-minute episodes. Per AI: “Taiwanese Q Series dramas are a collection of TV series produced by Q Place Creative Inc., with the aim of fostering world-class audiovisual production talent and innovative entertainment in Taiwan. These dramas, supported by the Republic of China (Taiwan) Ministry of Culture, are known for their high quality.” Gotta disagree on this one. CYEBID is not good. If I was going to rate it on how much I like it it would be a “3”. It has some good points, and I want to be fair, but I don't think this is worth watching once.

Some shows get away with having no likable or relatable characters, but that's a difficult hurdle that CYEBID fails to clear. The list of characters who are truly unlikable is long (Mrs. Fang, Liu Cheng “Fang”, Yu “Hsiu” Huang, Yi), while the only somewhat likable ones are the cop and Li “Zi” Shuo. Xinyi seems likable, but she's murked in ep1.

Jian Man Shu (Gourmet Affairs, On Marriage) plays Xiao Tong. She was in a relationship with Yi (Trent Chen from HIStory3 & I've Walked Through the Love's Wilderness) in HS. He took the suggestive photos of her that were distributed all over school. That ended their relationship as well as her friendship with the gang. She blamed all of them for her embarrassment. Ironically, she's a model. She should have gotten over her pictures being distributed by now. She clearly still dislikes her old bf, Yi, so she's /not/ over it yet. He clearly isn't over her.

Bryan Chang (My Bittersweet Taiwan, The Nipple Talk) is Lu Bai Cang. He's been with Fang (Bean Sun from Little Big Women & On Marriage) since HS. They're married now and he's a doctor. Yen Tsao (Lion Pride, The Last Thieves) is Zhou Ruo “Qing” who has his disagreements with Yi's family's construction business and their latest expansion plans. Sheng Ping (What the Hell Is Love, Go Go Squid!) plays Hsiu, but the role is horrible and it's very difficult to watch her weak and ever whining character. The 3 screenwriters are Lyra Fu (Detention, Man in Love), Wu Han Jie (Back to the Good Times, Q Series: A Boy Named Flora A), & Wang Kung Cheng. Director, Chen Yu Hsun, brought us My Missing Valentine & Zone Pro Site: The Moveable Feast.

Xinyi is LATE. They have dinner and decide to go up and get the time capsule, which is at the end of the mountain top trail. It's not there, though. During the hike it starts to rain: A storm is brewing. After dinner is when they find Xinyi's car. Her wallet and luggage are there. She's not. The rain comes down pretty heavily - typhoon heavy, and the storm resulted in mud slides that have cut them off from civilization for a few days.

The cabin where they're staying has a caretaker (Mrs. Fang, played by Tammy Darshana Lichtenberg from Wave Makers & Encore Martha). She constantly has a look of fear and pain on her face that is old before ep1 runs its course. It is so bad that it's almost comedic, and it is a black mark on the production. Her son (Shang Ho Huang from Endless Love plays Wang “Guang” Wei) is on the special needs scale. He's functional, physically, but when it comes to emotional IQ, social skills, and intelligence, he's behind. His facial expression looks scary, but the caretaker assures the kids that he's kind. In one strange incident, he grabs Xiao Tong's arm when she's walking by, and won't let go. She has to yell, and the others come upon the scene and separate them. Guang seems to have issues with pretty girls.

Then Zi (Jake Hsu from Shards of Her & HIStory3) finds Xinyi's body stuffed into a suitcase in the trash dump. 8 friends are now 7. The most suspicious character is Guang. He so obviously knows more than he's letting on. IRL, he'd likely be the killer, but this is a mystery. The viewer should be reluctant to latch onto the first possible suspect. After Yi ends up shot, they really want to get out of there. They attempt going through the old mineshaft, a dangerous thing to do, but staying seems dangerous too. What they encounter is a police officer who's heading 🆙 through the mineshaft. The rest of it had collapsed behind him, so they can't get out that way. The cop is Xinyi's bf. He hasn't been able to reach her and was getting frantic. When he learns what's been happening and he commences his investigation.

More people end up dead before we start to narrow down the suspects while learning more of past hurts and present desires. The plot is not terrible, but the overall production is frightfully average. It drags. Most of the acting is substandard, though the poor directing and editing have much to do with it. It's sad and empty feeling. They do a nice job with the sounds, especially when it comes to building dread. There's no scary thrills, though. It's just a big downer.


IMHO〰🖍


📣6 📝5.5 🎭5.5 💓🦋🎨6 🎵/🔊7 🔚🤗2 ▪ 🌞2⚡5 😅1 😭5 😱4.7 😯3 🤢3.8 🤔 💤4


Age 16+ violence, gore, someone flips the bird; Rated 15+.


Re-📺? Should've skipped the first time



In order of ~lite & trite~ to ~heavy & serious~ you may also like:

⚡/😱/🚀 -
C🇨🇳:
The Kings avatar-7.9,
Heavenly Sword and Dragon Slaying Saber 9-Kung-fu!,
The Untamed-8.6,
Bloody Romance-7.3;
K🇰🇷:
K2 8;
Private Lives 8.1;
Sisyphus 8;
Tunnel 8.1;
Signal 8.6;
The Man From Nowhere 8.9
Black 9;
Squid Game 8.4;
Kingdom 8.3;
Sweet Home 8.4


🇹🇼My Taiwan Catalog ~
Age of Rebellion-9.5,
Autumn's Concerto-7.2,
Back to 1989-7.1,
Black & White-6.8,
The Fierce Wife-8 - worth sticking with,
Inborn Pair-4.2,
Love, Now-3.6,
Love You-7,
Office Girls-7,
The Perfect Match-5.5 (ep 1-9=8,1-17=7.5,1-22=5.5)
Two Fathers-7.5

Read More

✒Popsicle Debacle ⛸️ Captain Korea & Buck'em Keep it Cool °4.9° °poor°

“Cryopreservation experimentation can no longer be considered something for the distant future.
The USA, Russia, & SK are estimated to have preserved about 600 people in capsules all around the world. As long as human beings exist, there is no limit to what scientific technology can do… Eternal life is no longer a future fantasy.” Thus, MMS starts. Once they put it onscreen, it's old news; they're already far beyond that point. People who don't think the rich and powerful are feverishly working on all methods of immortality, including cryogenics, should consider whether they've really studied human nature.

It opens dark, mysterious, and in the last millennium. It's 1999. Ma “Dong” Chan's fresh face is in stark contrast to the sickly greens and greys. He's offering to help. Next, we see him in a chamber made of super-hard polycarbonate glass and special alloy metals. He's about to become a human popsicle along with 5 others. Very few directors are willing to get their hands dirty, but Dong is willing to put his body where his vision is. He's the director of infinite Experiment Paradise, an immensely popular science /entertainment/ show. “I'm considering something others won't do,“ he announces when a reporter asks. He's still at room temperature, but headed for sub-zero. “But you can't stand the cold! You never even put on the AC,” his gf protested vehemently. Dong had already decided, though. He's beyond arguments. He just needs 1 more test subject. A female.

“20 years from now you'll meet your true love,” Go “Mi” Ran's fortune-teller blurts out. She's there for advice as to whether she should take the cryo job or not - she's thinking “not”. “20 YEARS! I'LL BE 44!” Mi doesn't consider this good news. She won't be with her current boyfriend for 20 more minutes, though. She caught him cheating. (Dong witnesses Mi take down her (now) ex-bf. He's impressed. He actually dreams of her that night). This isn't love at first sight, though. She's been in practically every one of Dong's shows, yet he still doesn't know her name.

Mi starts the following day with a phone call. She didn't get the job she wanted. She's been doing all kinds of crazy stuff for money, and it looks like that won't stop any time soon. But there's no FREAKIN way she's going to let them freeze her! Well, ‘the director, himself, is participating,‘ she's told. Flat refusal. ‘We'll pay you 5M won.’ ‘Okay.’ It went sumpin like that… Eh, close enough.

MMS is a 2019 release that is rated 90 on AWiki / 7.6 on MDL / 6.9 on IMDB. It is 1 season consisting of 16 65-minute episodes. Prime auto-started it after another show ended. It didn't seem promising, but I gave it a shot, and by ep10 I was still undecided. It's a pleasant but empty watch through ep10. It's quite silly, but the two leads are compelling enough. It proceeded to decline and became unwatchable by ep12. The plot never did get off of the ground. What MMS offers is below avg escapism and an extended look at 2 beautiful leads.

These 2 beautiful leads are to be frozen for a brief time and it's all going to be on TV. Just as things are underway, a shadowy figure attacks the lead scientist, and he's the only one capable of waking them up. He secretly developed his own method by using protein found in Arctic fish. The assistant shoves doc into a cryo-chamber and everything goes black. Dong and Mi are going to have to chill for a while. The show's title, Melting Me Softly… well, it isn't true. Out of fear, Dong's coworkers keep the whole thing a secret. These two will get a pretty rude awakening.

Ji Chang Wook is Dong. He's a perfectly good ML. I've seen him in Lovestruck in the City-7.3 & The K2-8, which I loved, The Worst of Evil-7.7, which I liked, and Backstreet Rookie-6.4 which was more miss than hit. He can sing! He does a karaoke scene and he's really good. Won Jin A (Just Between Lovers) is Mi. Her voice is a gorgeous alto. Bangs took away years of her life. She looks 10 yrs older in She Would Never Know-7.3. Some of her outfits are adorable with a classic retro vibe in navy & white stripes or starched bright white cotton. She would look cute in anything.

Mi's mother is portrayed by Kil Hae Yeon, who is fabulous in Something in the Rain-8.6, One Spring Night-7.8, and Beyond Evil-7.4. Yoon Na Moo is Go Nam Tae, Mi Ran's special needs little brother as he was in 1999. This kid was fantastic in When My Love Blooms-7. As a grown up he's played by Yoon Na Moo from Dr. Romantic. Yoon Se Ah, who is marvelous in My Sassy Girl-8.5 and SKY Castle-9, portrays Na Ha Young, Dong's gf since 1999. In 2019, she's 20 years older than him and has 20 more years of information and experience. It is a huge gap, & too much to overcome. I like this actress, but I may not have if this was my first look at her. They do up her hair and makeup dreadfully. She seems faded and colorless, like an old photo. She only looks at Dong with a face full of pain, and it's tiresome. She starts to come back to life, though, toward the end of the show. Her looks improve and she does the most to crack the case. Her character is smart. Kim Bup Rae plays the CEO of Unsung group. He's a bad guy in the show, but his rich dark velvety voice is always good. Director, Shin Woo Cheol, brought us Gu Family Book & Secret Garden, while Screenwriter, Baek Mi Kyung, penned Mine-8 & the enormously popular Strong Woman Do Bong Soon (one of the main reasons I'm about to get a Viki pass).

Eventually, the leads are reanimated. Dong finds out his supposed “friends” from work left him to rot. In ep5 he has a talk with his old gf that's quite striking. He's the one who's been through it, but she turns it all around back onto herself. Obviously, it wasn't easy for her, but when he tries to ask her about the effect her actions and inactions had on HIM, all she wants to talk about is the toll it took on HER. They are making the break-up easy. Given the lack of information, everyone thought Dong was missing all this time. Same for Mi. Dong feels very guilty about what happened to Mi, so he takes her under his wing. They don't like e/o. She's got a lot of energy, and right now she's putting it into anger. When her old bf (he's OLD now!) starts coming onto her strong, Dong will defend her. “Maybe you shouldn't smile at guys. They might think you're cute 〰 not that I do🙄” As she slurps her noodles we see him smirk at her. They are thawing out rather quickly.

‘Don't do anything that'll get your heart rate going,’ Dong cautions Mi. “You have to maintain a 31.6° body temperature.” (88.88° F). Getting overheated for these two can be deadly. The doctor also made it out alive, but he is ill and forgetful. He hasn't been able to complete their treatments. Therefore, they are in danger of dying if they become overheated, so they probably have no business hanging around together. Their attraction must have grown invisible roots underground while they were thoroughly unaware of it, being focused on so many other things. When they're out scouting locations, she gets overheated and passes out. He's tending to her frantically when it starts to pour. They're drenched. Suddenly, she 💋smacks one on him. Boy, did it get awkward, later. The car ride back was extended, uncomfortable silence. Radio? Only Love songs were playing that day. When they got to her driveway, he wanted to talk, but she absolutely did NOT. She bolted. Eventually, she calls him and apologizes, explaining that she thought she was going to die and wanted to kiss /somebody-ANYbody/ before she did. Well, that made him feel special. “What man could be kissed against his will?” Back at work, the manager is talking to the group about sexual harassment and bats away that silly question. His response was so immediate and forceful that both our leads are taken aback.

“If you keep this up, I will… I'll fall for you, that's what.” Mi stands there, Frozen. Her telemetry is burring and blaring, though. More than a confession, Dong was issuing a warning… to himself. From the time of that utterance, he's in a fight with himself. He pushes Mi away. Then, he relapses and tries to draw her in. He'll brag about himself or try to make himself more attractive to her. He both wants her and he wants to push her away. Next, he picks a fight with her when she sets up view-blocking books up between their opposing desks. One thing is obvious: He's hyper-focused on her. It's a little unnerving for Mi. These are 2 great leads. Their interaction is good, and the attraction is tangible. They keep it (sort of) rolling for 11ish episodes but no more.

What's wrong with MMS? MMS is shallow and low IQ. The writing is sloppy. The cast are all fantastic, but they can only do so much with these substandard lines. The villain is a bit of an eye-roller. Dong’s family is too nonsensical. It's actually uncomfortable. Mi's ex is just icky. Not only do they not have enough content for 16 episodes, but the plot hardly goes anywhere to begin with. Halfway through I was thinking it might be a 6 or 7, but then it started a freefall. Prime may have the best Chinese catalog, but I'm beginning to question the caliber of their Korean selections.

What's good about the show? Too little. When he wakes up his family is called to the hospital. The reunion is pretty funny. They've all aged, but he hasn't. The family & healthcare workers are completely flabbergasted. Mi gets right back into school. On the bus, she whips out her Walkman and headphones. A kid looks at her incredulously, and she shoots him flashing eyes and an aggressive “What?” gesture. It's all non-verbal, which makes it better. Being frozen for 20 years really messes up Asia's rigid status system. They technically maintain status over their younger siblings even though they're still really kids.

My favorite scene is when friends are at church together. The one friend is married to Mi's ex, and he ain't acting right. The shaman is in between the other women (yes, Ms Shaman attends services), and she has a talent for inspiring people as displayed by her prayer, which is quite poignant. “This poor child, dear Lord… her husband has been out of his mind….. The love between a couple comes to an end, but the temperature they reach is different for each person. One of them might still feel the warmth, but the other might be cold as ice…” Solemn piano music strikes up in the background. We see the wife crying and praying in church and the husband checking into a motel room. He's left her. The scene is beautiful sadness.

While everything else is going on, shady figures have been trying to kill the doctor. The doc, suffering from memory lapses, is trying to replicate the formula to normalize their body temps, but not before our 2 popsicles start to mutate and fall apart. The last few episodes deal with the race to save their lives and expose the bad guys that caused this popsicle debacle.

Eventually, Dong will kiss Mi. When they both heat up, the shower remedies that issue. They make us wait until ep11, but they reward our wait with an epic kiss. It doesn't have enough heat to prevent the show from being tepid, though. I'd have to recommend “pass” for this one. Even for romantiholics. The only reason to watch MMS is if one is a particularly ardent fan of the leads. For everyone else, MMS is as appealing as room temperature ice cream.


QUOTE🗣

We define our own psychological age.


IMHO〰🖍


📣5.5 📝4 🎭7.5 💓5 🦋6 🎨7 🎵/🔊7 🔚5 🤗2 ▪ 🌞4.5 ⚡5 😅3.5 😭2 😱3 😯2 🤢2 🤔3 💤4

Shazams:
Ice Doll by Parc Jae Jung, Drip-Drip, by Yu Na


Age 11+ Language: one or two occurrences of $h!+; Rated: TV-15. This is more on a lid level than an adult level.

Re-📺? Not gonna happen. The better question is: Is it worth watching once? Not at all.



In order of ~lite&trite~ to ~heavy&serious~ you may also like:

🌐💘 -
My Only Love Song-8.7 ~ excellent comedy,
Crazy Love-7.8,
99 days with the Superstar-7,
Live Up To Your Name-7.6;
A Witch's Love-7.9, My First First Love-8,
A Love So Beautiful-7,
Playful kiss-7.3,
Racket Boys-8.3,
The Legend of the Blue Sea-7.2 (But for eps 20 &21 it's an 8+)Marry My Husband-7.5,
Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha-8.2,
Familiar Wife-8.5,
Reply 1988-8.6,
Oh My Venus-7.4K,
Love to Hate You 8.9, Touch your heart-8.2,
Romance is a bonus book-7.9,
Our Blues-8.5,
Crash Landing On You 9.1,
Oh My Ghost 10,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Love Struck in the City 7.3,
Be Melodramatic-8.7,Because This Is My First Life-7.7,
When the Camellia Blooms-8,
Cheese in the Trap-7.7,
Call It Love-8.4,
(I'll See You) When the Weather is Fine-9,
That Winter, The Wind Blows-7,
Misaeng-9.1,
Hospital Playlist 9 (give it 3 episodes to get warmed up),
Itaewon Class-8.9, More Than Friends-8,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,
Something in the Rain-8.6,
My Mister 9.5,
Wonderful World-7.8,
Parasite-9,
Mother-8.8



Romance junkies only -
My Secret Romance-7 (if you ff thru overdone flashbacks),
Boys Over Flowers-8 ~ melodrama to the max,
The Bride of Habaek-7,
Heirs-7.3,
That Winter, The Wind Blows-7,
Something in them Rain-9,
C🇨🇳: Well-Intended Love-7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine,
When I Fly Towards You-7.8,
Wait, My Youth-8.4,
A Little Thing Called First Love-8.5,
Find Yourself-8.9,
Hidden Love-7.8


Consider a 🇨🇳Chinese 🎎/🔮 fantasyfeature: The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8, Love Between Fairy and Devil 8.9, Love and Redemption 10 or 🇯🇵Japanese romcoms: Maid Sama 10, Mischievous Kiss Love in Tokyo 7.8, Love, Chunibyo And Other Delusions 8.4, or Toradora 8.5

💘 Anime
Ouran High School Host Club-8,,
Ao-chan Can't Study-7.8,
Special A Class 💓8.2,
Maid Sama-10,
Why Raeliana Ended up at the Duke's Mansion-8.4,
Mischievous Kiss,
True Beauty-7.5
Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun-7.7,
Colourcloud Palace-7.5,
Hakkenden,
7th Time Loop-7.9,
Honey & Clover,
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU,
Princess Principal 8.6,
Sugar Apple Fairy Tale-7.5
Real Girl-7.5,
My Happy Marriage-8.3,
Nina the Starry Bride-8.4,
Your Lie In April-9,
Violet Evergarden-9.5

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