strawgal

Good spot.

The men I know follow sport or gaming, they support a team or join a group to go to matches or game over the internet. They can be a bit geeky about merch, cards and character toys but never really about personalities. The nearest they get IME is going to the big gamer/comicon events. I just can not imagine any of them obsessing like women do. Most are just too glued to their chairs.
My husband likes to fall a sleep in front of F1, although we have been to the GP races in the past.

What age are people supposed to act like adults now, because I can not even begin to understand why someone over the age of sixteen being obsessed over any entertainer of any sort.
I have met some very famous people in passing, its like looking at someone you know vaguely, then it clicks, ah that is why they are in films. The most funny thing was being stood behind a member of a super group at an event and thinking he gets dragged to things he has no interest in by his wife like anyone else.

The thing I like most about this drama was nearly all the female characters were not portrayed as brainless selfish idiots, but not saints either.
Jiang Yi Di has to be one of my favourite characters because she seems to me more like the women I know, just trying to do their best, but flawed.
I liked the fact they discussed fertility and gynae issues for women realistically, that its painful and it effs up your body.
I got bored towards the end, just a plot line I lost interest in. I not sure I like how all the man were portrayed, yes men do tend to get tunnel vision about work and life in general, but they are not all aholes and unfortunately the pressure for success and status is even greater in Asian countries.

I think the only person FX lied to was himself. He didn't know what love looked like, and because he couldn't appear weak he needed a tough shell and something to hide behind to explain his actions.He lives in a pecking order and he has to maintain an image.
When he was confronted he froze because, suddenly he realised the game he was playing was not a game. He was literally speechless under a tide of recriminations. Its a common trait in men when they are confronted IME.
I think he not deliberately bad, and dangerous to know, just a product of an environment where if he seen as weak prey, he can see no other alternative.

SL spends time worries about what other people think, he is 'kind' and consolatory because he gains peoples approval, even if its grudgingly, he is a dog waiting to be kicked. I think his whole reaction was about losing control, he picks partners who are convenient and where he is in control, where his goodness is a trade. FX he thinks he has no control over, because FX needs nothing from him The relationship is a risk, because FX is young, rich and very smart. So when he thinks he has been tricked he reacts blindly, When he beats FX and is cruel to him FX never retaliates, what SL sees as control is a misguided attempt to help. He doesn’t the actual effect, only that he doesn't want it even if it's of actual benefit to him, cutting off his nose to spite his face.
I do wonder if SL after a while gets a bit of a kick from it, after the initial anger.Everyone admires his ex and he dumped him first, he didn't actually get dumped. he can be as mean as he likes and FX comes back for more. He only gets upset again when FX says he will not contact him and he knows he means it. I think at that point he is actually realising truly what he losing because FX is
completely on his side. unconditionally, someone he doesn't need to trade care for respect if not love.
As a drama I find the writing and direction is complex and layered. I know my interpretation is perhaps different from other peoples, but that's the beauty of good writing and characters that are three dimensional.

I think its actually in the story, as I read it. Going the whole way with any preparation is enough to make anyone anxious.

I agree the end was a bit forced in more ways than one.

Well that was more serious than I thought it was going to be.
Love the cut of the suits.

I do not think I can stand this level of syrup, I'll drop. Shame.

I have decided that the ML need to eat more pies and sausage rolls. https://www.ginsters.co.uk/
And WTF is going on with the eye brows and make up, a ghost has more facial definition.

This was my pre Christmas gift to myself, and I tried not to binge but failed at the end
.
I grew up in this time, and I am used to most drama taking the pee out of that hippy dippy time, but this took seriously the wash of change that started in the sixties, and how it spread and formed in different places in different ways. Where standing up for change, accepting difference was starting to become normal and not elite thinking. That if you had an idea, you argued and debated , but for some it ended in damage. In many ways I think thinking has become more fixed now because people can filter out what they do not like, where as then you grew up quickly to the realities of life, and you had little choice in filtering out reality and other peoples opinions.
It was a time when everything felt possible, that normal workers could talk to the rich a poweful, because there was less social barrier. My out of the norm experience was at sixteen talking to the ex ambassador to China in his music room that was bigger than my home listening to Joni Mitchell, and then a few weeks later missing a bombing because friends decided to go to a different club.

My normal gripe about drama is the script, but this was so layered, no character was a stereotype, and side characters added to the layering and was not just an add on.
It was like a modern Shakespearean tragedy/history play where happy endings are not for all characters, but that made but the sweet things when won more poignant.
The performances, direction, camera work and seem a cohesive, with no flaws, apart from the dodgy French,

Special mention for the OST.
We live in a time when although there is more choice in music but you have to make an effort to break out of the homogenous chart music that is pushed. The soundtrack depicted that time where just about every genre rubbed along together, you would be exposed to alt rock, folk, pop tunes, jazz style on any radio play list, and it managed to produce music from that inspiration rather than the
cheap way out.

Thai productions this year have surpassed themselves in making great accessible drama, with original story telling. Being able to make a drama that makes you care about characters but also have commentary on society is a hard task to pull off well and this did it.

The dementia part they almost got right, only it was just a plot device not to address anything, and it's really funny she was complaint in dementia, and not the aggressive untidy, manic,incontinent sort but that would have been too realistic. In real life the estranged husband wouldn't be seen for dust, I ME.
I suppose what really pees me off is the depiction of the child. Now I have worked with children of that age, boys are very adapt at covering up their emotions, but it comes out somewhere, usually in some sort of self harm, anti social behaviour or aggression. He and his school friends behaved like mild aged marionettes. If it's normal to expect their children to behave this way it perhaps explains so sort of abnormal behaviour I have seen in my work.
The leads, two adults in search of some sort of normal emotion, who avoided making active choices, which is fine for them but not when a child is involved.
The friend became a scape goat for all actions of adults, so the FL had some sort of vent, but really she had been manipulated as well, I suppose her biggest sin was she didn't fess up sooner, but she thought FL was leading her best life., while she was stuck in just being ordinary.
Then you have the absent father, well no real hard conversation with him, and he ends conveniently in a chair, tidy that.
No one gets untidily upset or angry except for the female friend, which perhaps has the most range of emotions, which must obviously make her human and bad.

You can only work with what you are given, but they need better agents.
Who ever cast the younger versions of the actors did a good job, that is my only positive.

One of my lowest ratings, 6, I usually make at least a 7 for effort if the production values are OK.
This has left me fuming, rubbish writing, a plot which perhaps would have passed in the 80's c drama, just and a depiction of MH health problems which has no grounding in actual research, someone’s idea how a long standing double trauma, grief and abandonment can be solved by, moving on.

Nothing new, but really well done. A peaceful watch because every character is a positive one with out being abnormal.

This is such a rare thing, a proper rom com, which is not cringe and played seriously.
I huge fan of comedy that takes something that most of us could imagine happening, just taking it a bit further and then playing it straight, so the reaction is not forced.
I once worked in a school where a new foreign student dressed in long tail coat and bow tie when he wasn't in school uniform, I think he had been watching too much 19th period English drama.

She treated him like some obnoxious teenage girl, couldn't make her mind up but still wanted him under her control.
There are very few people that meet their life partner when they are very young and stay in that relationship until adults because you change so much as you get older, so as a trope its a pretty unrealistic one.
I have friends who met in school when they were fourteen and have never dated anyone else, and married and have been together for over fifty years, but they are very similar in temperament and back ground.
The construction of the plot is all based on the ML having little control and doing things to make himself worthy, and she must be well aware how much control she has, she is also told how it made him unwell.
Its not in any sense a healthy relationship, Her other love interest is also treated badly. If she was male I think it would perhaps seen that she is more manipulative, even if she is not aware of her behaviour.
I was bored because it was so predictable, it was the role reversal of the normal idea that the FL has to be good and worthy. I didn't even think the FL was that charming, her personality pretty beige.

Just boring. A circular plot that goes no where really, too many flashbacks just to extend the eps. If it was 10eps perhaps there would have been a enough plot too sustain it.
I hate the fact that yet again a women is acting like an immature teen, and who ever dressed of room it looked like a teenager was living there.

There all types of adult female clothing, not everyone over the age 20 dress es the same, but if you work in an office you often have workplace guidelines on what is suitable to follow.
If costume helps define a character, some actors start with the shoes, what does the costume say about this character. Child like, undefined? Which would be fine if that is what they were trying to hint at, but they way she is acting is really a bit like pantomime, over exaggerated, which clashes with the rest of the cast clothing, acting and set dressing, which is mainly realistic.
I hate when stories make women look stupid, because in my experience most I the young women I have known are not, and even if they are not the sharpest knife in the draw, I have never seen one behave like this, they have grown out of this stage by 12.

I watch a lot of drama of all types, and I am comparing on the range of those dramas and the actors that are in them.
So I am not sure if the director wants her to act that way or its just her normal style. It's just my POV. I just find it very unrealistic and expressionless but it obviously appeals to some people.
There is this tendency in Asian drama either to make the FL a good girl, or infantilise them, which in my experience of young women most have a lot to say for themselves,often very loudly.

It looks obvous that the money must come because the casting but OMG is she seriously miscast and the wardrobe they have given her doesn't help. She looks about twelve 'trying out' grown up clothes and failing.