Big_Red_1011

Sometimes lighting in K/C-dramas can be strange, especially when they shine a bright light behind someone 😎
But recents examples of great lighting & cinematography are dramas like “Can This Love Be Translated” (K) and “Pursuit of Jade” (C).

Haha… I love HIMYM but don’t remember that. So many great moments 🥰

Viki and MDL rating scale is kind of like video game rating scale — it’s very skewed to one side. On Viki 1-6 practically don’t exist and on MDL 1-5 are the same. Even terrible / very bad dramas get rated into 6.x on MDL.

Personally, my rating scale (when translated to MDL) is: 10 for great/groundbreakibg dramas, 9 for very good dramas, 8 for good/average (so most dramas fall here), 7 for so-so/below average, and 6 for really bad. This drama is “very good” tier in my mind for now, but I don’t rate anything until the end. How the drama ends is very important to me; but some people rate dramas highly even if the ending clearly is bad which I don’t quite understand.

I use the app because it’s very convenient. The main feature it lacks is not being able to rate individual episodes but it’s fine otherwise. There are ads in the app, but not a lot.

You could be right. But Chinese dramas are still very long (usually) even when they licensed to streaming companies. Pursuit of Jade was 40 episodes long and still set all kinds of records on Netflix :)

For all we know, by the time the wedding happens, the Prince may be the King 👑

Hope so! 🙏

There was an American show called Chuck which was in danger of cancellation until Subway stepped in and rescued it by having them open a Subway shop inside their Best Buy-like electronics store. Now THAT resulted in a lot of product placement! Subway product placement in this drama is more like a nostalgic throwback because Egg Drop has taken over Subway’s role as the major fast-food sponsor 🤣

It’s not really a limit, just based on preferences. There have been 14 & 16 episode dramas recently too. It probably depends on a screenplay too. Oftentimes when dramas were 16+ episodes, writers would be lazy and just add 3-4 episodes by having leads be separated for some stupid reason and then in the last 1-2 episodes they’d be reunited. Same thing with C-dramas where some episodes were clearly padding.

It doesn’t sound like there will be a wedding soon. They are just remembering the kiss that happened at the end of ep. 6. It really seems like that the wedding will happen in the last episode after all the obstacles are going to be cleared and all bad people will be dealt with.

Yes, it’s much better for our sanity to just block trolls/haters and downvote reviews which are clearly biased. People love different things but giving 1 or 2 to this drama while handing out 8/9/10 to similar or worse dramas is clearly biased. On MDL even bad dramas have 6-7 rating 🙄

Wait a sec, have they confirmed Hidden Shadow release date? 🙏

The MDL rating system is such that a very bad drama will have high-6/low-7 rating. So rating a drama 1 or 2 is a good sign that a reviewer may not be very fair, especially if they are a clearly new account or had given out high marks to average dramas in the past.

That’s what other people who kept up with the developments said (I was away for a few days to avoid spoilers). Apparently haters of the lead actress showed up in force (lots of mean comments) and then, to ass fuel to the fire, not-very-smart fans of WuWu CP decided to downrate drama because that couple supposedly got less time/were less important (that would have been ridiculous even if it were true, but it’s not even correct and this is coming from someone who liked the WuWu couple slightly more). Delusional fans can be worse than antis… what’s been going on with ENHYPEN is the best proof 🙄🫣🤯

Thank you! It was on my list already (fan of both leads), but haven’t gotten around to watching it yet. Too many dramas out there! 😳

Did MDL just add this finally?

in case anyone is interested, check out some photos here —
https://www.facebook.com/share/1B8ZwBiMCj/?mibextid=wwXIfr

I enjoyed Love Between the Lines quite a lot. That actress was really great in Love in the Clouds too. Shine on Me came out about the same time and was also good (same for Gu Man’s other drama/novel “You Are My Glory”).
I’m more of a fan of HE or optimistic OE and that’s where historical dramas are dangerous (also, too many fall prey to repeating annoying cliches/tropes even if they have S+ budget, like Flourished Peony, especially its second season 🥺). Recently, I loved “Pursuit of Jade” (plot isn’t super tight but at least it’s not annoying/tired) and “How Dare You!?” (starts off more funny but becomes emotional/serious… can’t remember last time I cared so much about fate of secondary characters, especially since they are book characters not real).

WWWSK had an amazing start and then fizzled 🥺
Meet Yourself is on my list (keep hearing it’s excellent) but there’s also a hidden gem called Meeting You (2020).

For costume dramas my favorite is probably “Are You the One”. MDL synopsis is kind of weird but it’s one of the rare dramas when heroes behave logically, don’t do dumb things and actually outsmart villains instead of falling for trope-y traps . It starts off more chill on a small scale but later expands to military events & empire-wide matters. I’ve rewatched it multiple times whenever my “annoying screenwriting” frustration meter fills up because of other dramas 😳🤯🙄

Fair grades. I enjoyed Hometown CCC (9/10); Pnce Upon a Small Town was also good — it’s way, way better than its MDL rating 🙄 (and delightfully short). But, yes, I’m not sure there are even many quality pure romcoms being made — they love to throw in a lot of drama/angst.
FWIW, probably the funniest drama I’ve watched is “The Day of Becoming You” (China; 2021).

It probably should be a little higher, but MDL ratings are only slightly more reliable than Viki’s because of constant attacks by haters/antis/trolls. For now the drama has been very good as long as you are okay with it being mostly a romcom (with some more serious aspects) and not a super serious drama. Episodes 1 & 2 seemed slow to some because they had to lay out the ground work, but people’s excitement keeps rising with each episode and episode 6 has been the best so far (so much so, that the Korean broadcaster is re-airing 1-6 before 7).
Word of advice: don’t miss epilogues which are in every episode except ep. 2. In 1/3/4/5 they put them after previews of next episode so many people missed them. In 6 it’s at a more logical place — after photo montage.