50FiftillidideeBrain

✒The Reverb of Ugliness: Must the Top Be So Lonely? °6.8° °good°

String theory is the most recent attempt to reconcile traditional physics with quantum physics. It postulates that, on a subatomic level, the universe consists of vibrating 1D strings. Perhaps that's a reason why music, which consists of glorious vibrations, moves us. It connects what's seen and unseen. It blends the dimensions. I believe music and art are divine gifts.

ⓂSoT is a 2023 release that is rated 86 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 12 60-minute episodes. It's a drama - a high-end soap opera, really - about a small orchestra. They've been coasting, not thriving. It's time for a shake up; a reset. Seeum brings many changes with her as she takes the podium, and the musicians don't appreciate any of it. She makes enemies, and soon her enemies are acting out. Managing Hanphil Orchestra is a handful.

The use of sound in Ⓜ is so good it's almost astounding. The show creators have a deep appreciation for music, and they sell it. The soundtrack isn't an afterthought: It's woven into the fabric of the series, elevating it to float with the clouds, at times. Classical music fills Ⓜ, and it fills it on tempo, beautifully enhancing scenes. Low hanging fruit: At the height of the drama they start practicing Beethoven‘s 5th. It's coming to end, by MADDY, and Story, by Kim On Gi, are VG. Ⓜ, with its attention to detail, is small and tidy, yet it's expansive. I liked Ⓜ. I didn't love it. As the episodes went on, it diminished, somewhat - they peaked too early. I wouldn't care to see it again as it left me a tad underwhelmed. But I have respect for Ⓜ and the many moments of blended harmony it generates.

It opens dark and slick. Classical music fuels the energy. These people are at odds. “I hope I never see you again.” “I'll still come to your funeral.” That's the final exchange of another conductor and the woman, Cha Seeum, who briskly returns to her homeland. Less than 5% of conductors are women, but she is among the best of the best. She's also scary as he!!. Her reputation is not one of warmth.

In Korea, she takes the helm of Hanphil Orchestra. The first thing she does is force the top violinist to step down. That he used to be her music teacher and is close to her father didn't help him at all. Call ‘em like you “See-um” is her rule. Emotions are not a factor. No one wants to play 2nd fiddle. He resigns. Most of the orchestra resigns. She has to get them back. She chooses the stick, not the carrot.

Lee Young Ae is the FL. She is a superb actress who can carry a whole production on her shoulders. In Inspector Koo-8.4, she plays a kook-savant, an investigative genius who is correspondingly poor at self-care. In Saimdang-8.5 she shines as a modern-day art historian as well as a Joseon era artist. Saimdang was a real person. The show gives us a peak back, juxtaposed against a look at the contemporary art scene in Kcountry. They limited the dramatic license with the historical portion, therefore the ending isn't an ending: The show drifts away, which some viewers surely won't like, but it is excellent, nonetheless. In Ⓜ, Ms Lee's acting is her everyday superb. She IS a conductor. I love how they make sure her hair gets messed up ~just so~ to showcase her energy and state of mind.

Seeum is a loner. So much so, that she's difficult to identify with. This is probably true for alot of exceptionally talented people. They just don't have many peers. She's obsessed with her work to the detriment of all other relationships. She is also one to avoid unpleasantness. Her mother is afflicted with Remingtons disease, a slowly encroaching degenerative condition that is not unlike Alzheimers. It rots away the body and mind gradually, over years, and Seeum has a 50% chance of inheriting it. That has her so freaked out that she won't visit her mother.

Kim Young Ah (Hyena, Be Melodramatic-8.7) is her BFF, Lee Hye Jung. Ms Kim is a competent actress, but she doesn't have much to do here. They don't build up the relationship so she's on the periphery and seems irrelevant. Having said that, let's get the rest of the bad news out of the way. At one point Seeum's talking about resigning from her post and even suicide, when she hasn't even been tested for the horrible disease she might have. She resists being tested over the years, but once she starts exhibiting symptoms, being tested is the only thing that makes sense. We have to suffer through her epic avoidance disorder. As ep10 began, irritation started to well up in me. Furthermore, I would have liked the show a tiny bit more if Ajin would just take her hand off of her stomach! She started to rattle my nerves. The lighting and/or makeup were off in some scenes. I was surprised to realize how distracting it is to see noses that are 2 shades lighter than the face they are attached to & covered with large pores. The villain and other surprises don't generate any thrills as the build-up is missing something. That last concert is arguably silly, but even so, it was exciting.

Lee Moo Saeng (Blood Free-8.5) is Yoo Jeong Jae. He had a past relationship with Seeum that she seems to want to forget. He's the opposite: He wants to relive their time together. So he buys the orchestra. Kim Young Jae (Mouse, Mother, Under the Queen's Umbrella) plays Seeum's husband, Kim Pil, or “Phil,” as in philharmonic. Lee Shi Won (Misaeng: Incomplete Life-9.1, When the Camellia Blooms-8) portrays Lee Ajin, the horn player at Hanphil who is a thorn in Seeum's side. She becomes more and more loathsome as the show progresses. It was frustrating to not be able to slap her. Choi Yoon-So (Love to Hate You-8.9, Woman of Dignity) is Go Yu-Ra, a reporter and Yoo Jeong Jae's ex. Hwang Bo Reum Byeol (The World of My 17, School 2021) plays Lee Roo Na, the new first violinist and Seeum devotee. Ye Soo Jung portrays Seeum's mother, Bae Jung Hwa, who is disabled and mostly non verbal due to a degenerative disease. She's a superb actress. Her resume is jammed with hits: Land of Happiness, Stranger, Prison Playbook, Mother, The Worst of Evil… I've seen her in Link: Eat, Love, Kill-6.7, an average show in which she's one of the best things, Black Dog-8.2, Strongest Delivery Man-6.6, the Along With the Gods films (7.2/6.7), Train to Busan-7.8, and as the moral center of Mine-8. She's always an asset. The director is Kim Jung Kwon (Love to Hate You-8.9) and the screenwriter is Choi Yi Yoon of Love Tractor.

“No matter how hard it gets, keep going!” Seeum almost sounds unhinged. That's because her life has become unhinged. Bickering~Plots~Jealousy~Resentment~Gossip~Rumors~Hatred~Partiality~Phoniness. It's lonely at the top. The stage is like a battlefield, Seeum asserts. Talent alone isn't enough. It takes perseverance, hard work and knowing when to give & take, and when to make demands.

Obsession is a string that ties some characters together. Seeum is obsessive about conducting, Jae is obsessive about Seeum, as is the perpetrator. I can't say that obsession is always a bad thing. It propels people to do magnificent things - People like Seeum. But obsessing over a person is never a good thing. One-way crushes and obsessions are not only a complete waste of time and emotion, but they are often based on illusion. Most one-way crushes are about a projection of what we think of the person, not the real person. They are a poor substitute for self-improvement. Put your time and energy into being the best version of you. Love and friendship will follow.

‘Are you capable of doing anything on your own, without me?’ Seeum queries her spouse. At first, Phil seems like the salt of the earth - A decent guy, certainly… Right? Wrong! He's just quiet. As we get to know him better, we'll see that he's actually obsessed with himself. He hasn't composed anything in 3 years. People who are self-absorbed often can't create art that will speak to others; they lack a view of the bigger picture. Kim Pil married a person more skilled and accomplished than he. If he truly loved her, he would be thrilled at her successes. Instead, this egotist only felt smaller next to his wife. Self-focused people don't like feeling smaller. They're the biggest thing in their own little worlds and they don't like their delusions being interrupted. He struggles to find relevance in all the wrong ways. The measures he takes to hold on to his cushy life only reveal how unworthy he is of Seeum's devotion. To be fair, it doesn't seem that Seeum is the easiest person to be in a relationship with (though Jae doesn't feel that way). It's a 2-way failure, but Phil has more of the fault than does Seeum. His attitude probably led to her withdrawal. For years he fed the self-monster. People prefer lies to truth, particularly the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. He believed the lies he told himself about himself, so he failed to learn and grow. When things got rough, he had no core. He had no clue about the right thing to do (not that he would have done it anyway). He implodes. Then he rebuilds himself into a soulless, ego-feeding villain.

There's a romance playing (almost) in the background, albeit a minimalist one. Jae is devoted. He's easy to read, but she's an ice sculpture. Most men would have given up or frozen to death. The closer the viewer watches her performance, the more we get from it. He carries his flaming torch for the whole show, while her expressions morph subtly as the show matures. In ep7, suddenly, these 2 characters start to (unconsciously) match their clothes. There's no true romance until she cracks a smile towards the end of ep11. What they manage to convey in the last scene, by way of minimal dialogue and micro expression, is really impressive. It ends on a high note.


〰🖍 IMHO

📣7 📝7 🎭8.3 💓5.5 🦋4.5 🎨7 🎵/🔊8.3 🔚8 ▪ 🌞3⚡4 😅1 😭4 😱4 😯4 🤢3 🤔5 💤2


Age 13+ Violence and scary elements, affairs and pregnancy. Language: relatively rare PG-13 verbiage like @$$h0le, $h!+

Re-📺? Doubtful. The music is wonderful as is Lee Young Ae's performance, but there's a long list of better dramas that would queue up in front of this one which would place it on the back-burner indefinitely. Perhaps I conduct my own Lee Young Ae festival one day and catch this again. It is worth watching for her alone.



⛔SPOILER⛔

They never reveal the test results. Seeum opens the envelope, reads them and walks away with Jae. She's moving on with life. She's going to live - and not alone. It doesn't seem like she has the disease.

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

Modern Day -
A Witch's Love 7.8,
Love to Hate You 8.9,
Touch your heart 8.2,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Love Struck in the City 7.3,
Why Her?-8,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,
Misaeng-9.1,
Call It Love-8.4,
Mine-8,
Anna-8.1,
My Mister 9.5
The King's Affection 8.3,

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Lay It On The ♻ Line Time After Time °VG°

Is Tomorrow Another Day After all?

This drama is tense and could trigger anxiety in some - Fair warning. While it could (SHOULD) have been better, I would still say hop on the train and give TWY a ride. True, the ending wasn't that difficult to figure out. Despite that, the director still manages to set the tone with tension being a focal point. The pressure continues to gear up until the very end.

Ma-rin prefers to be behind the camera now, and in TWY her pain is framed explicitly; Shin Min Ah is superb. All the actors did a solid job, and the side vignettes are all enjoyable. Lee Jeong-Eun has such luminosity: She shines once again as Mar-in's mother. She is one of my favs. (Check her out in Oh My Ghost-10; odd title, amazing show - Some of her scenes are astonishing. Her portfolio has impressive depth of field and is jammed with highly rated shows and movies). The villain's storyline works well enough, with the actor delivering a tangible portrayal of his descent from a respected businessman-to-murderer with unfiltered evil saturation. Yes, he was originally a little crooked, but that wasn't in anybody's viewfinder.

I've noticed that Kdramas often show individuals who experience a marked character arc. Often these persons have a skewed aspect-ratio, and are initially cringeworthy in bursts of nervous awkwardness. Since these dramas are mostly 16+ hours, the characters may not start to improve for many episodes. The directors have a long time to build up or distort who the individual is. They can then put the focus on slowly developing protags from black-and-white to full RBG color.

Ma-rin is like this. Her over-exposed childhood kept her adult self shuttered in a darkroom. She had become so insecure that it was actually challenging to watch her in the first few episodes. In time, she has a wonderful transformation from dull to glossy. It is satisfying to see how she develops into the model of a confident and strong woman by the end. One might say she bloomed into a picture-perfect flower.

So-Joon also enlarges as a person. While he's clearly good-hearted, he is also a portrait of immaturity and laziness in the beginning episodes. He later becomes patient, caring, harder working, more responsible, and more loving. Since his time-traveling exploits make operating his business so easy, it's doubtful that his lazy streak will be completely edited out.

The two leads initially display a lack of chemistry. It actually seems that So-Joon is just using Ma-rin. His motives are blurry. He is an enigma, always with a matte look on his face. The director deliberately injected acidity and unease into their relationship so that we can watch it develop. The viewer is concerned for Ma-rin. Eventually, we can be happy for her. By the middle of the show their marriage is the image of warmth and love.

Ultimately, this story, and the love this couple shares, is quite charming. Like a photo in solution, TWY progresses from indifference and hesitation, to warmth, then love, and finally to sharply detailed commitment and intimate love. (Though they are adorably still too shy to strip in front of eachother.)

I adore stories about time travel. They are so much fun, but logically it's easy to encounter under-exposed plot points. The show is not without those. Why So-Joon would go near the subway on the day that he knows he'll disappear is grainy logic. I also don't know why he would take Ma-rin to the fireworks. It's not clear why his focus wasn't to get them out of town, or to not leave the house for a few days. It's a little frustrating, actually. It's understandable for the plot development of a time travel tale. A plethora of miscommunications and a catalog of flawed judgments are practically necessary, and fate always shadows Kdramas. If Mar-in's father, Doo-Shik, had jyst been more candid with So-Joon... if they had each opened their apertures a little wider, it would have been a panacea. I suppose, then, the show would have been wrapped up by episode 8.

The optics regarding time travel get distorted. In some scenes the future is pictured just as So-Joon observed from the past. Seemingly the message exhibited is that the future is set and laminated. In other scenes, though, they manage to change the future, suggesting that the future is a moveable pose. It's also unclear why So-Joon, after recovering from his coma, couldn't get back to the past when riding the subway, or why he was able to run on the tracks and get to the past. It makes no sense, at all, that the two men can time skip, while Ma-rIn cannot.

The very end displays a small snapshot of their lives 3 years hence. It falls flat with a dull thud. I didn't like the tone of their bickering, and how Ma-rin was nagging So-Joon. A little of it would have been okay if they had pushed by it right away. However, it's portrayed as entrenched behavior.

Earlier, when they had been fighting and later separated, Ma-rin concluded that she shouldn't have been so pushy towards So-Joon. She determined that she should reset her meter and back down from her insistence that he not ride the subway. To see her revert back at the close of the show is disappointing. And where's the kids? We were promised 3 kids!!!!! Instead of petty bickering they should have committed the 3 kids to film.

Now we'll point the zoom lens at one of the worst screw-ups. The director left the So-Joon who managed to get to the past hanging there. That tasty mystery should have been a resolved. So-Joon-in-the-past flashed by the screen twice - like a cartoon character - and then faded away. How could they not know that we would want to know how he got to the past! Something should have changed because of his presence there. Since he knows he somehow shot back to the past, it would make sense for him to work harder to get back there as it would have been easier to remedy their situation from the past.

Another thing they left out of focus was an explanation as to why So-Joon was in a coma. Per the doctor, there was no reason for him to be in one. The doctor shouldn't have said it if they didn't intend to explain it. (Shoot, did I miss it?)

As another reviewer so deftly put it: 'It took 16 hours to learn to not run into a busy road.' Mar-Rin shouldn't have been anywhere near that intersection at that time. Since they were there, So-Joon should have been holding on to her. If they had filmed the scene at normal speed, if she stopped and turned briefly when the certificate flew out of her hand, it would have played better. The way they chose to film it makes Ma-rin look very foolish.

The flaws might be more than minimal, but the good comfortably outweighs the bad. If romance is your thing, especially if romance and time travel are among your interests, than TWY should go on your watchlist. My "7" rating translates to "very good." It may not be picture-perfect, nevertheless, there is beauty to behold as time goes by.

IMHO...

🎬Directing 6
🎭Acting 8
🤔IQ 6
⚡Action/Excitement 6
💓Romance 7
🦋Flutters 5
🌞Warmth 7

Suggested Age 12& up.

Recommendations:

Oh My Venus-7.4 (same FL),
Love to Hate You-8.9,
Oh My Ghost 10 & Our Blues-8.7 (same director & supporting actress),
Familiar Wife-8.5 (time travel),
My Only Love Song -8.7 ~ excellent comedy & time travel,
Mr. Queen 8.5
Live Up To Your Name-7.6 (time travel),
Saimdang 8.5 (time slips),

The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8,
Sisyphus 8 + Tunnel 8.5 + Signal 8.6 (time travel),
Black 9 (time slips),

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✒⛴ Mouse & Lighthouse /or/ Never underestimate the power of a good hairdo °8.5° °angelic°

“As long as there's a lighthouse you'll never get lost.” Mom’s an optimist. Even still, business has been bad. Hopefully this location near the lighthouse will turn it around. Speaking of lighthouses, not all are mere buildings: Some people can light our way.

Every element of ALTCFL is solid. It is the best modern-day Cdrama I've seen. Headed up by women, writer Zhao Qian Qian is a force for good w/ A Love So Beautiful-7 (already adapted into a Kdrama), Put Your Head on My Shoulder-7.3 & The Love Equations to her credit. The director is Qi Xiao Hui of Consummation. Gentle piano playing & soft techno-pop create a soothing effect. Spotify has the playlist.

That doesn't mean it's blemish free. It has typical Cdrama quirks, like when characters complain about the heat, yet they don't take off their jackets, smh. Kai’s father falls in the water. In Cdramas, going into the water is treated as a threat of imminent death. Just swim w/ it as a traditional representation rather than realism. Such small foibles can add up, but ALTCFL doesn't have many. What's probably the most offensive is how, when Miao is in her ugly stage, her skin is darker. Asia is under a shared delusion that pale skin is most attractive. Sure, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but just like a sunset is undeniably beautiful, so is nicely copper-toned skin. For Asia, this isn't really a looks-based preference at all, though. It's an antiquated fashion based on a prideful perspective from the days when fair skin was associated w/ wealth. Field workers were the ones w/ the tanned skin. The important people were the pasty ones. Psst- Hey, Asia!! - Pasty isn't prettier than a lovely tan.

Lai Kuan Lin (Don't Disturb My Study) plays ML & human lighthouse “Nian”. I've gotta admit he's delish. Even his coach seems to have a crush on him. He's kind to kids, including Miao's sister. When he says Miao’s name, he makes it sound scrumptious. Think his voice is a rich & woodsy bourbon? He was a pop star before he acted. Call him Mr. Asia: He's Taiwanese, a K-pop star, & is now a Chinese actor. He's also a superb romantic ML. What they did nicely in My ID is Gangnam Beauty-7.5 they do even better here. He sincerely seems to find her cute when she's in her “ugly” stage. The viewer believes he's being drawn into her w/ his eyes doing the majority of the work. At times he seems more likable than 🍦… or did I mean lickable? 😜

Zhao Jin Mai (Princess Royal) plays the homely Miao Miao. Her name sounds like “meow-meow”, but she's not a 🐈, she's a 🐭. She's got awful teeth & worse hair (it looks like a scotchpad scrubber). She ain't Ugly Betty. UB is a cutie. One can tell Miao’s impy face is cute, but only barely. Miao struggles w/ math, but she is good at making doll clothes for her sister's enjoyment. (When mom finds out why her curtains keep getting shorter - they've been using the fabric - it's not Miao's happiest moment. Mom is scary.)

Alone at a new school, Miao is transfixed by Nian. With her new house ensconced on his route to school, they /always/ seem to run into e/o. He is /always/ kind. Miao is seatmates w/ the surly “Kai” who is antagonistic towards his cousin, Nian. He's got a “thing” for family members: It's love or hate. But even he is patient w/ our sweet 🐭 who gets into everything, everywhere. The prim “Xin” initially is awful to our 🐭, but after a couple random acts of brave kindness they become friends. Xin appears snobbishly self-important at 1st, but she has a warm 💗 & she's true. Wang Yi Miao is the special topping on this confection as Miao's lifelong friend, 'Xia’. I'm jealous. I want a 'Xia’ too. She doesn't get to shine until the summer before college. Miao's Mom has a sharp tongue. Dad is warm & quietly content to let mom take the lead, but will step up when bravery is required. Miao's alot like dad. Little sis is a touch entitled & bratty but still endearing (she's alot like mom).

Soon, Miao starts to want to do more, to be more. Like a 🐭 grabbing crumbs & dedicatedly working the wheel, it all starts to add up to something good. In bangs she reminds me of actress Maisie Williams who plays Arya Stark. Like Arya's journey, this'll take awhile. Miao's teeth are even worse than her hair, & the viewer has to put up w/ them until the end of ep4. The braces don't come off until ep7. She still has dreadful hair, but she is a cutie-pie w/o a doubt. Ep7 also sees Nian going to college as the other 3 go into grade 12.

ALTCFL is a superb romance. They slow-walk it, yet every moment is delightful. I had just finished watching Ms📝Zhao's PYHoMS, which starts strong, but falls off in the 2nd half as they drag out the romance in a frustrating way & don't seem to have enough content for all the episodes. In ALTCFL the director stretches it out perfectly. Nothing feels like filler. Nian excels at everything he does, afterall. So, when it comes to love, we shouldn't expect anything less.

Physical appearance is a theme. Many truths are parallel despite seeming opposite. “There are no ugly women in the 🌎 just lazy ones,” Xin avows. ‘No matter how pretty a woman is, someone out there is tired of putting up w/ her $h!+,’ on the other hand, is a common saying. People love to complain about the privilege of beauty, but it seems that 90% of us are part of the problem. Respecting, trusting, or going after a person merely for looks is as common as it is foolish. Drying up the deep-end, too many people treat beautiful people like collectible figures, & shallowness begets shallowness. Be that as it may, we will never stop people from judging external appearance, & looks will never NOT be a part of romantic attraction. Protesting it is like protesting the color of the sky. Wrongs should be called out, but complaining & name-calling are rarely (if ever) the right tactic. You will never complain your way to the top. (Complaining is a communicable disease that attacks emotional health but will never change core designs. It just drives them underground). True, beautiful people have a great advantage in life, but most of us are average. The good news is that confidence is the sexiest thing, & true lasting beauty comes from w/in.

Too little focus on appearance, on the flipside, is almost as imbalanced as too much. The physical, emotional, intellectual & spiritual are the 4 legs of the table that is humanity. To be fully developed, a person should work on & derive pleasure from each. Humans, by nature, take everything too far - people aren't good at balance or moderation. I've noticed that many of my fellow nerds refuse to compromise, believing they shouldn't have to change a thing to fit in. That's choosing to believe a lie. (The word for such a person is: Mumpsimus). We ALL need improvement, & most people should pay more attention to their looks (even moreso, their health). Don't spend 1 moment feeling sorry for yourself, Miao teaches. Keep going forward. Keep picking up crumbs. Keep improving. Steadily foster good habits. Life can get hectic & our busy schedules can be murder, but if all your energy is going into your job or being a mom then you aren't a wife or a completed woman. Try new looks - accessorize - put on makeup - try a new hairdo (it grows out, don't be scared) - pick up HEALTHY habits. If all your energy is going into work or worse things (like sports or video games) then you aren't a husband or dad. One could argue that there's a self-indulgent arrogance to neglecting one's appearance, especially if one is married. That person is saying that their mate is not worth the effort.

Don't want to put in the effort? That's a personal choice. Just accept the truth about the likely outcomes of your decisions. Don't carp because things align w/ the standard profile. “Just because I'm fat doesn't mean that I'm not aware of how society operates,” snaps the zaftig Xia. Xia inhabits reality. She understands what she must accept. She's made her choice about who she is, what she's about & she doesn't complain. She embraces life & she elevates the lives of those around her. She will always be loved just the way she is. She's the healthiest person in the show & the one we all want to hang with. If one looks at a photo of the writer, Zhao Qian Qian, it's easy to imagine that she wrote herself into Xia. I'm a fan, so I'd like to think she did. My biggest criticism of the show is that in the 2nd half, Xia devolves into a caricature of herself. She becomes a background eating machine as her character stutters & goes into neutral without continuing her arc. After building her up, they left her half done.

Finally, don't be part of the problem. Awareness is the key. Attractive people are given more deference & generosity. That ain't fair. Try to ignore looks & treat everyone the same. Don't be the 10,000th person to make a height joke or ask about a scar, birthmark, or some other anomaly over which a person has no control. Can you imagine having to hear the same jokes & comments from everyone that you meet? What a nightmare. Scripture talks about how when we help a stranger we might be helping angels, unawares. If angels do exist among us they probably do take on the appearance of street people more than celebrities. So be an angel & treat everyone w/ respect. You never know…

“You never know what the future holds.” The math teacher encourages Miao after she failed the exam. (Only one other student failed, & he's been absent since a serious accident). Her teacher wants her to keep plugging away. Don't give up. That's the theme: Stay on that wheel. Adjust. Try things. Maintain hope. Always be decent. Do your best. No quitting. Soon, YOU will be the lighthouse.


QUOTES📢

This is learning. You learn because you don't know it.

Attitude is Altitude

〰🖍 IMHO

📣8.3 📝8.5 🎭8.2 💓8 🦋7 🎨7.5 🎵/🔊7 🔚8.5 ▪ 🌞7 ⚡2 😅3 😭2 😱2.5 😯3.5 😖0 🤔3.8 💤0

Age 11+

This show can be appreciated by a wide age range of viewers. There's nothing objectionable. There's little physical contact. The relationship progresses slowly. No kisses until the mid to late eps. Rated- Per IMDB it's TV-G: General Audience & per MDL it's TV-PG-13: Parents Cautioned

Re-📺? Definitely


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

♥️ -
C: Well-Intended Love 7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine;
I Hear You ‘19 7.3, so cute but w/ many flaws
You are my destiny 6.8 ‘20 cute & sweet & 1/2 padding
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1
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;

Period -
C: Overlord 8.4,
Under the Power 8.6,
The Rebel Princess 9.1,
The Sword & 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

Fantasy
C: Love Between Fairy & Devil 8.9;
Once upon a time in Linglian Mountain 7.5;
Douluo Continent 9.4;
Eternal Love 8.3,
Ancient Love Poetry 8.6;
Love & Redemption 10

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

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POW Match‼ Sang-gu vs Tree is Lights-Out-Knockout‼ °8.4° °Outstanding°

The title didn't recruit me, I'll admit. It looked like an afterlife show that takes place in Heaven. The ratings were too good to be ignored, however. So I wagered my time on this contest, & so should you.

In typical Kdrama fashion, they introduce people that, early on, are impossible to imagine caring for each other in a neutral corner. Geu-ru is a 20 y/o w/ Aspergers Syndrome. It's on the ADHD spectrum w/ bonus challenges. Aspergers victims are akin to fragile angels. They tend to be highly intelligent & focused on a narrow range of topics that captivate their interest. They have no social skills, no comprehension of non-verbal communication, body language, or other such subtleties. Innately pure, they would never understand stealing, cruelty, or even white lies. They don't have the resources to roll with the punches. Without proper oversight & gentle handling at home, they won't make it. Geu-ru's intellect is the glove on the hand that prepares him for a counter punch. His name means “tree”, and like a tree, he's hard to move.

Geu-ru & his father are "Trauma Cleaners." Cleaning up messy deaths, crime scenes, & the aftereffects of deaths occurring at businesses or other properties is what Trauma Cleaners do. But Geu-ru & Dad don't just clean. They respect the deceased. They also console the "survived-bys". Geu-ru and his father would doggedly follow the departed's wishes regarding disbursement of their worldly goods. Absent explicit instructions, detective Geu-ru pieces it together w/ the evidence at hand.

Many of the early episodes are about the work-ethic and care Ge-ru has adopted from his father. Geu-ru is inspired & compelled to scry the deceased's wishes & carry them out to the shock of the bereaved. These scenes are emotional. Don't get Caught Cold: Hankies out!

Geu-ru is suddenly left alone. His father had pre-bequeathed a domicile & occupation to his brother/Geu-ru's uncle, Sang-gu. - as long as Unc cares for Geu-ru in dad's absence, that is. Sang-gu is a pugilist and a boxer who competes in underground fights. He's suffered a series of low blows in life. Just released from prison post an attempted murder sentence due to a tragedy in the ring, his life is on the ropes. Geu-ru, unaware of the arrangements made by his father, had never met his uncle. Unannounced, Sang-gu arrives at the house one day. He takes a dive onto the couch, & demands a beverage. He's angry, impatient, flippant, & aggressive - the scary variety.

Sang-gu must carry on the business w/ Geu-ru or lose the income & the sofa (Geu-ru won't allow him in daddy's BR). Their first job together is cleanup of a corpse that had been there a while. The scene is... unpleasant. Sang-gu has the heaving & hurling reaction one might anticipate. It progresses from there. It's hilarious to drive w/ them for the 1st time. We'll just say that Sang-gu is not methodical like his brother. He's a brawler, in & out of the ring. Upon landing, Geu-ru cites every law Sang-gu had just violated, along w/ the fines & imprisonment levies. Sang-gu starts to see that he's moved, not to a house, but down the rabbit hole. Sang-gu additionally learns that he can't win a battle of the wills with Geu-ru. As he's rarely wrong, Geu-ru is, in essence, landing a Bolo Punch to Sang-gu's hard shell. It's starting to crumble.

The distance characters must cover, to reach the main event and eventually unite, always makes the journey better. The bigger the better. In MTH, a vast quest handed down to viewers. The main 3 characters did an excellent job. Tang Joon-sang, as Geu-ru, is authentic. In the same year, he starred in Racket Boys-8, an adorable show, playing a hot-headed & uber aggressive/competitive athlete. Then there's Crash Landing On You-9.1. He's in that,and he's convincing in the roles, to his credit - a trifecta! (Don't miss CLOY, btw.)

Lee Jehoon is fantastic as Sang-gu. I'cve seen him effectively play a romantic lead, but he really dazzles in this sort of role. Did they speed up the camera for Sang-gu's punches, or is he actually that fast? He's ripped, too... Convincing body suit? I think not. He beats up people (all are in acute need of it) by slapping them. As a boxer, he could be arrested for attempted murder again if he punches anyone. Given their power, fists of some boxers may be considered lethal weapons. Sang-gu forgets all of that when he schools that abuser, though. Dude hit a nerve, after all.

There's no glass in Na-mu's jaw. Geu-ru's friend from across the street is played by Hong Seung-hee. Na-mu's a brawler herself; an indefatigable one. Ms Hong is an upstart with only 3 bouts on her card, but all of them are winners. In fact, having just finished Run On-7, in which she's part of the 2nd couple's story, her talent is evident. She steals the show, along with her other half, in convincingly playing the "poor" little rich girl. She looks leaner, taller, & as hot as burning thermite. (Apparently, nothing burns hotter than thermite). Anyway, between the 2 roles she's barely recognizable.

Having already been plagued by a twisted desire for Na-mu to hook up with Sang-gu in a S2, I now see that Ms Hong's potential to rock Sang-gu's world is just "Mama-said-knock-you-out." Can you imagine how stunned he'd be, once he realizes that Na-mu would outmatch any ring girl? It writes itself. Oh please, please, bring it on! We should keep her in the family, shouldn't we? Given her competitive hostility toward him, it would be hilarious,. While the cop who's been scouting her is a better man than Sang-gu - at the moment - she was quite tenderized by S1's final ep. Sang-gu should be a contender. The ending is oblique. Hopefully they are leaving an opening for a S2. More rounds with them is a good thing.

Let's now take an intermission to evaluate proper treatment of those with special needs. In several scenes Geu-ru is misunderstood & mistreated. Sufferers of Aspergers are human beings, and being so, they long for positive interactions & relationships. The tragedy is that they are denied the skills to satiate this longing. For example, they are unable to make small talk, but they love to talk about their favorite topics, as with Geu-ru & fish.

Ignorance begets fear. Modern day living does as well. Our innate reaction when confronted with somebody different, is to recoil. Understandable; it's a dangerous world. Here's a challenge to help make the world a better place: Stop for a moment & assess. Whether you sense danger or not, utilize politeness. An "Excuse me" will do. If you recognize that this fellow human merely wants to talk about h/h favorite subject, be an angel & exchange a few smiley sentences. Watch their beleaguered guardians un-tense as warmth replaces protective anxiety. Always be safe, but also be decent.

While Geu-ru has no obvious affliction at first glance, many precious humans do. We have friends w/ a severely disabled child, and it's obvious to spectators. I had the honor of escorting this little soul down the boardwalk one night. His parents never warned me about the looks. People blanched unpleasantly at the sight of him. At least we were afforded the benefit of a wide berth, lest they get too close. Being taught when growing up that every person is of the same value, I was naively shocked - More than that, I was ready to slug someone, People will subconsciously act casually cruel. We all love us some Rainman... in a fictional tale. In real life? Give it some thought. Shining the spotlight on our repulsive behavior should be the cure. Seriously, who is truly repulsive in the prior scenario? Not me & my boy. Kindness is free. It costs you nothing, yet it provides life's highest rate of return.

As this bout ends, we go to the Cards for a decision: Right before Sang-gu threw in the towel, Geu-ru calculated his final move for the win. Sang-gu hits the canvas in round 10. Geu-ru is the new champ.

You'll also feel like a champion after spending time with this group; this family.

QUOTE~

You see things as you are.

IMHO…

🎬8.5 🤔6 🎭8.5 ⚡5 🌞 6 🔚 9

Directing 8.5
Thought provocation 6
Acting 8.5
Action/Excitement 5
Warmth 6

Age 13+

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✒Choose: Keep the Bitter Score or Live More °7.8° °VG°

♻ “Everything started with the incident that summer.” What started was a cycle of hurts followed by vengeance between parties on the periphery. Meanwhile, the 🕷 relaxed smugly in the center of the 🕸.

The opening episode is heartbreaking. Eun “Soo” Hyun is a successful writer who is married to a reporter. They have a beautiful son together, but he disappears one afternoon when he is 6, leaving a single shoe on the sidewalk. Emergency crews eventually find him, but he's badly injured from a hit-and-run. He doesn't make it. After the perp's trial in which he's released, and it appears connections and corruption are playing a hand in the leniency he's granted, Soo falls apart. Her husband falls apart. Everything falls apart.

WW is a 2024 release that is rated 86 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 14 60ish-minute episodes. It is painful to watch. I could only handle 1 ep/day. The pressure doesn't start to let up until ep11 or so, when the main characters make a directional change. Like the best among us do, Soo takes her pain and attempts to channel it for good. She sets out to protect other children from suffering like her son did. Before all of that, though, she is compelled to dispose of some trash.

Her reward for taking out the 🗑 is a prison stint. She bonds with another inmate, Jang Hyung Ja. Soo's new friend is in jail because she had set fire to the room where her husband was having an affair and ended up killing several people, including an entire family, save for their 8 year old boy who survived. Jang Hyung Ja elicits Soo's commitment to contact that boy upon her release as it looks like Jang Hyung Ja will never be released: She's dying. She's too ashamed to face the kid anyway. As it turns out, this 8-year-old boy, who is now grown up, is loosely involved with disrupting corrupt men. Meanwhile, Soo's husband has been investigating🔎 connections between the man who caused the accident that killed their son and his corrupt cronies, including judges and politicians.

By the time Soo is released, her husband is on foreign assignment. The one time she accepted his visit during her incarceration was to tell him to leave her be - She had nothing left for him. On the first day of freedom Soo falls asleep on her son's grave and wakes to a young angelic looking man holding an ☂ over her. Does she know how he will factor into her future? Of course not. Right now she's an aimless wanderer. No direction. Nothing to live for. Dead inside. Yet she promised Gunwoo, her son, that she would survive and live a meaningful life. The first order of business is her promise to Jang Hyung Ja to find that boy who survived the fire.

Soo finds her cellie's 8 y/o victim; it's the boy with the umbrella. Otherworldly looking Cha Eun Woo (Rookie Historian-7.6, True Beauty, My ID Is Gangnam Beauty-7.5) portrays Kwon Seon Yul, now fully grown. Soo sees that he's not living a quiet, safe life. He also isn't pleased to get the message she's delivering. He shuns her, but they continue to meet. It's as if strange forces are drawing them together.

To err is human; to forgive, divine. Forgiveness, release, and going on with life is WW's theme. Not only are there huge things to forgive, like the killing of a family member, but also cheating, lying, general indiscretions, and everyday insults are thrown in the path as well. Mistakes are creating roadblocks all over the place. Most of the characters in WW have committed grave blunders and have also been greatly wronged. Once forgiven, a perpetrator may feel release, but the person who benefits most from forgiving is the one who is doing it. It isn't easy (not by any means!) but to hold onto anger, unforgiveness, and bitterness is to rot oneself out from within. It is the opposite of a free life. It is being controlled.

“I won't ask for forgiveness…” we hear that several times. The logic behind the statement is that the wrongdoers feel too much shame to ‘ask for forgiveness‘. So don't. Don't ask to be forgiven. However, a person that has done wrong should apologize - without excuses, qualifiers, demands, or reservations. That is what decency demands. It's what a person of good character and principles does. A mature person will understand that everyone makes mistakes. Learn from them, make it right and move on, burden free. An immature and self-absorbed person will turn an apology into an excuse fest, a look-at-me-I-am-not-so-bad-think-better of-me party. Pathetically, this doesn't work, it only shows poor character, and it doesn't make anyone like you more. Denying one's mistakes and not apologizing is a form of living in denial and lies. One can't face h/h shortcomings because s/he needs to think better of h/h self. That is a contemptible life of delusion. Let your ego go. Nobody else likes your ego; only you do. Let it go. Be free.

😢 Going into ep9 ain't nobody free. All I could think is: ‘What a downer! This show is so sad!’ Just in time (almost too late), there's a plot shift that allows the viewer some breathing room. Things move into the deep end, more evidence comes to light, and not everything is what it had previously appeared to be.

WW is a quality production. The acting, directing, and writing all supplement the show. Kim Nam Joo (Misty) is FL Eun “Soo” Hyun. Kim Kang Woo (Circle) plays Kang Soo Ho, Soo's husband. The intrinsically likable Kang Ae Shim from Bad and Crazy & Be Melodramatic-8.7 plays Jang Hyung Ja.

Kil Hae Yeon (If You Wish Upon Me) is Jung Myung Hee, Soo's mother i/l. This woman excels at playing a supreme b!+ch. I've seen her in Beyond Evil-7.4 & Law School-8. I've also seen her in 2 shows that are like stamps of eachother: In Something in the Rain-8.6 she plays the ultimate narcissistic mother who ruins her family. One Spring Night-7.8 is nearly the same show (same director/writer combo) except it's the father who's a narcissist and Ms Kil is a sweetheart of a mom. Both shows are good, but OSN is like the 2nd, lighter stamp. It doesn't mean much on its own, its value is as a follow-up to the heavier, gut-wrenching Something in the Rain. Regardless, this actress has a powerful presence.

Im Se Mi (Terius Behind Me, When the Weather Is Fine-9) is Han Yoo Ri, Soo's BFF and unofficial sister. Won Mi Kyung (The Hoechun Gate, Great Vocation) plays Oh Go Eun, Soo's mom. I've only seen her in My Unfamiliar Family-7.9, and she's wonderful. The screenwriter is Kim Ji Eun (Lie After Lie) and Lee Seung Young (Voice S2, Special Affairs Team TEN) directed.

The direction is competent with flashes of excellence. The color palette is dark, muted and grey, but the colors in Soo's memories are so vivid! The tempo is steady. The show never rushes and it never drags. Stopping at 14 episodes may have been the smartest thing the director did. Too many shows suffer because they don't have enough content to fill 16-20 episodes competently. The 🎶 is quite good as well. The classic, Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, makes an appearance and Imaginary Future & Kina Grannis do a melancholy, jazzy cover of What a Wonderful World.

🌱 Soo is able to find justice, release, and peace by the time the credits roll. This painful show ends up with a positive message that is brilliantly summed up when Soo declares this:
“Let's not live like a bare tree anymore. Let's sprout and live.” Only free people can say and do that.


QUOTES📢

In the middle of life's journey, I got lost and wandered. I've heard no matter how much time passes, losing someone precious to you will always be lonesome. But I will try to keep going. If I keep going, one day the pain will lessen. I hope all those grieving find comfort. I hope the world will be more friendly to those in pain. I hope a beautiful world will come while you overcome your pain.

When you live this long, leaving someone properly is as important as meeting someone.


〰🖍 IMHO

📣7.5 📝8 🎭8.3 🎨7.6 🎵/🔊7 🔚8.3 ▪ 🌞4⚡4.5 😅1 😭5 😱2 😯5 🤢2 🤔6 💤0

Age 14+
Mature subject matter.

Re-📺? Possible but unlikely. It is definitely worth watching once.


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

Modern Day -
A Witch's Love 7.8,
Love to Hate You 8.9,
Touch your heart 8.2,
Law School -8
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Love Struck in the City 7.3,
Hospital Playlist 9,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,
Anna-8.1,
My Mister 9.5,
Blood Free-8.5
Mother-8.8

Action/Crime/Sci-fi -
K2 8,
Private Lives 8.1,
Why Her?-8,
Tunnel 8.5,
Signal 8.6,
Flower of Evil 8.9,
The Man from Nowhere 8.9,
Squid Game 8.4,
Kingdom 8.3,
Sweet Home 8.4

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✒⚖Sleeping B!+ches Bite °Excellent°

Su Jae (SJ) “sure is acting up.” That's her boss's reaction after he learns that she's snatched files & replaced them w/ manhwa (comics).

WH is about Power & corruption & the abuse the powerful heap onto those below them… esp women. The context is the pressure cooker that is Korea. In ep1 we see a suicide: Korea has the 4th highest suicide rate in the world. Exams, constant bullying, gossip, & impossible parents are ubiquitous themes in Kdramas. Under extreme pressure most will hunker down & go w/ the flow, too many will commit suicide, & some may act out. When they try to toss SJ away w/ the trash, she acts out. Bravo!

Is the plot alittle outrageous? Sure. It actually holds together very well, but it's not free of logical problems. For instance, remains are found at a construction site when it makes no sense that the bad guys would have allowed them to be found. It's sloppy. Also, a tragedy occurs at the end of ep14 that feels especially painful & completely unnecessary. Though it lends to symmetry in the plot development, the scene is ham-handed.

However, there's plenty more + than -. The closing scene is beautiful. The music is excellent. ‘Beautiful’ by DOKO & ‘What about us' by HAJIN are both Shazamable. Craft-wise, they send messages w/ color. SJ's wardrobe is almost always ⚫ & ⚪ which represents the hard lines she's adopted over time. It begins in ⚫ & ⚪. Our female lead is wearing white. Then the director introduces the color red: Red lipstick & red blood splatters. SJ wears rich blues for trials - apparently, juries everywhere like blue. All of a sudden, in ep3, she shows up in a bright peach suit. Maybe that doesn't sound pretty, but it looks fabulous on her. Why the color change? Well, she's had a significant emotion-altering interaction w/ Gong Chan. (It would be too difficult to describe it, you'll just have to see it for yourself). She has softened up. By the show's end, she is in color regularly. She's freely living a full spectrum life.

Seo Hyun Jin plays SJ. I've seen her as a new, bright-eyed teacher in Black Dog-8.2 & a fed-up woman who can't get a break in Another Miss Oh-7.5. She's beautiful, but she's got that down-on-earth neighborhood girl quality to her which goes beyond looks or acting capability; it's presence. She can act, too. K-actors act w/ every muscle in their bodies. Her walk kills me in WH. She's stiff as a board, yet so eloquent. It is completely different from how she walks in other shows. Extraordinary. Her performance is the best thing about a very good show.

SJ is a trial attorney. A formidable one, specializing in undermining the credibility of an opposing witness's testimony. The more we learn of her backstory, the more her behavior makes sense. At the start she was a nobody who couldn't look her co-workers in the eye, but now /they're/ terrified of /her/. But! The old-boys-club cannot tolerate this capable woman in their chauvinist sphere.

SJ's a fundamentally decent person w/ a dream to go all the way to the top - that dream cannibalizes decency. Initially, she seems impervious to everything. We learn that she's been /refusing/ to show her fragile side. She's ‘gritted her teeth, held it in, & held her ground.’ Flashbacks show the sweet girl she was, the way her father raised her, & the way her immediate underlings are fiercely loyal to her. Yet she's rude to a waiter, she's disdainful of children, & she's a monster to clients of opposing attorneys. She's starting to act like the 1%ers. In ep1 she's on the cusp of becoming a blood sucking parasite. But irony comes crashing down, splattering her & shaking her conscience loose. The crashing irony is a tragedy arising from one of her cases & public opinion turns toxic. Her boss sends her into hiding: She must ride out the scandal while being an adjunct prof at law school. The rich-and-powerfuls were happy to make use of her at their convenience, but now they're letting her know exactly what she is: Disposable. SJ screams her vow to the waves: “I'll stand in a high place & look down on them all!”

Hwang In Youp (The Sound of Magic) is Gong Chan. He's changed his appearance, so SJ doesn't recognize him, but she represented him yrs ago in a murder case. He was innocent. The reason he's in law school is b/c she inspired him back then. He c💓mes 💓n str💓ng & it works rather well. The romance gets crankin pretty quickly. In fairness, Gong Chan seems to have had it bad for yrs. But when SJ learns who he truly is, what will she think?

Heo Joon Ho (Missing: TOS-8.3) owns the law firm as Choi Tae Gook. He seems level & fair, but he is something else behind closed doors. His sons 💘 SJ. Bae In Hyuk (My Roommate Is a Gumiho) plays Choi Yoon Sang, his youngest son & admirer of SJ. What dimples! An avg student, in the past she tutored him. Now he sits in the back row of her new class. Lee Cheol-Min (My Only Love Song-8.7, Love to Hate You-8.9, Mr. Queen-9 & dozens more) usually plays a goof but he does a nice job as a “bad guy” in this. Everything about him is different -.I recognized him, yet I still had to look it up to be sure. The director is Park Soo Jin of The Hymn of Death-8.4, While You Were Sleeping-7.3, & Dr. Romantic.

It all gets off to a rocky start. SJ is no softie & the students‘ initial response is to rebel. SJ shows up at her 1st class w/ abt a minute left. She writes on the board: “I will never let my client go to jail.” Chalk drop. Exit. In class 2 she brings case files & requests verdict analyses. It's only 50% of the grade(!) “How do we do it?” A student wants guidance. “Figure it out,” is her laconic response. Immediately, her class is under threat of being canceled, but putting college students in their place is child's play for SJ. She's never going to coddle her students.

The class is seated by GPA & teams are grouped for projects accordingly. The last row forms their motley band; then they form a bond. Two of those students already have a connection to SJ - her boss's son & her forgotten former client. Other members of the last team are a middle-aged woman who is a former cop, a girl who was sexually harassed by a prof, & another boy who was weak - The student council bullied him and he refused to testify on behalf of his abused friend for fear that it would affect his standing at school. SJ gives him strength enough to find his footing.

The theme is to treasure those you love & live a clean life worthy of them to avoid future regrets. This is also very much a girl-power show. SJ is a minority w/ educational & background disadvantages. It's a higher hurdle in 🇰🇷 than it is in the 🇺🇲. Like other minorities, she gets no benefit of the doubt, no head start, & 🚫 2nd chances. No room for error. It's a triple-thick glass ceiling. She has to be 10×s as good as her competition. She'll have to make some pretty bold moves.

It's true that women's rights aren't settled in the 🇺🇲, but Asia's record is worse. Stalking & harassment protection are decades behind. SJ is reluctant to help the student who was molested b/c the chance of success is slimmer than SJ's legs. She encourages the victim to focus on her goals. That's practical advice & sometimes it's the best course. But there's another side to the coin. Gong Chan challenges SJ, pointing out that if the prof gets away w/ it, he'll do it again. “Then it won't be {Professor Seo’s} wrongdoing, but ours,” he explains. When no one challenges abusers they are emboldened. Weakness enables evil. To be a woman is to be subjected to sexual misconduct, indignity, molestation… & worse. Besides the inappropriate remarks there's the inappropriate touching. Men shouldn't be touching you, ladies. I know what it's like to have that happen & freeze in the moment, only to be furious at myself later for not doing anything. It often happens in a place where the power balance is out of whack, like a doctor's office. If you knee their nethers that is what they deserve. We need a dense fund, I suppose.

A good society is one where people stand up to wrongs. We shouldn't let anger control us, though, as there will never be an end to wrongs on earth, and none of us are mistake-free. “Is the world a fair place? Unfortunately, the world is never fair. So is it impartial? Not even for a moment… unfairness & partiality will continue… it may become worse. However, we have our last bastion. That is the law - In the world that's never fair, where things have never been impartial. While applying the law to everyone fairly & impartially, all of you must fulfill your duties & responsibilities. Lawyers must rectify the law that waivers in the face of money & power & defend justice.” Beautiful words from baddie, Choi Tae Gook. True words - even when spoken by one of the perpetrators of partiality & unfairness. It's fascinating how many intelligent, successful & wealthy people may know how to say the right things, but they've severed their hearts from their brains. People for whom the system is working are never motivated to change it. They step over the homeless & never give it another thought. Since the world's been good to them, they easily accept it as fait accompli. It's called compartmentalization. They still thoroughly believe themselves to be right, decent & good. The human 🖤 is quite deceptive. We are all blind to our own stuff.

In the end, SJ adopts a more others-focused life & steps out of the rat cage. Her conclusion: “The fact that every day is entirely mine. That I move & decide w/ my own will. The results are also entirely mine. Those things were more decent than I thought. Whether the results are good or bad, I rejoice in the good things, & if not, I just say, “so what?”, curse, & move on… I'm content w/ myself living this way.”

Smart girl.


QUOTES📢

I'm so sick & tired of money.

A single “I believe you” can help a person breathe & move on.

Nothing is more powerful than honesty.

Don't give power to the greedy; don't give money to the ignorant; & don't give a sword to the insane.

“It was a shameful life, looking back.“

I didn't want to suck.

His pride in cooking is almost a disease.


〰🖍 IMHO

📣8 📝8 🎭8.5 💓7.6 🦋5 🎨7 🎵/🔊8.4 🔚8.3 ▪ 🌞4 ⚡4.5 😅2 😭4.5 😱2.3 😯3.5 🤢2 🤔4.8 💤0

Age 15+
R-rated language, F💣s
Murder, affairs, pregnancies, violence.

Rated TV-14: Parents Strongly Cautioned.

Re-📺? Sure someday


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

Crazy Love-7.8,
A Witch's Love 7.8,
Another Miss Oh-7.5,
Love to Hate You 8.9,
Touch your heart 8.2,
Oh My Ghost 10,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Love Struck in the City 7.3,
Inspector Koo-8.4,
Familiar Wife-8.5,
Hospital Playlist-9, Black Dog: Being A Teacher-8.2, Law School-8,When the Camellia Blooms-8,
Call It Love-8.4, Blood Free-8.5
My Mister 9.5,
I'll See You When the Weather is Fine 9

Read More

✒⏳ Ashley Wilkes & Rhett Butler Vie For a Pixie Urchin °8.4° °Excellent°

“When I was a little girl, I wished I could grow up faster… become the lead actress and save the world... But when I grew up, I realized I'm just an ordinary girl. But being ordinary doesn't cause youths to lose their brilliance… if you compare youths to a song, some songs are fast. Some are slow. Some are pop songs. Some are classical songs. Some are at the top of the list. Some are not cared for... But I believe no matter what kind of song and melody they are… when sung, someone will be touched and gain a lot of strength from it. We are racing against time in our lives. How many times have we clenched our teeth wanting to sprint forward? …Wait for a while. Please wait for a while more. Let us cherish it more, embrace it, and shine once again.”

Thus concludes WMY. So what happens before the end?

First of all, Su Cancan just adores Lin Jiaze. It's been about 6 years. Why can't she get near him? She's always running into his prickly misanthropic friend, Lan Tianye. He's nothing like the cheerful, fresh-faced Lin Jiaze. Lan Tianye is downright mean.

WMY is a 2019 release that is rated 82 on MDL. It is 1 season consisting of 24 adorable 45-minute episodes.

We meet them in middle school. Su Cancan & Lan Tianye are deskmates for 6 years. We go to college with them. Some go abroad for a stint. Grad school. Career. Some of the romances work out, some don't. Some are tested to the max.

Li Jia Qi (Liars in Love) is Su Cancan. What an adorable little urchin she is. Zhao Yi Qin (Butterflied Lover, Hard to Find) portrays Lan Tianye. His voice is delish. It's like warm butterscotch sauce over chocolate cake. I've only seen him in Accidentally in Love-6.5, a very cute show with B-level scripting, acting, and directing, but it is still fun/strangely relaxing to watch. He is one of the best things in the show. This guy is a superb romantic ML and the reason WMY is so good.

Li Ge Yang In (Blossom) Lin Jiaze, our Ashley Wilkes. He's wholesome and handsome and perhaps lacking in sex-appeal compared to our ML. Wu Shuang Yi (Run for Young) is Tao Ya Ting, the gorgeous top student & top musician. She's perfect. So perfect her female classmates loathe her. Xu Meng Yuan (Love in Between) is Su's BFF, the irrepressible and vivacious Xu Mei Li. She's loyal and true. Leo Dong (Immortality) plays Tang Xing Yi who shares a hate-to-love relationship with Mei Li. The director is Shen Qin Yuan of The Eyas.

The Romance is well above average including the kissing scenes. The ML sells this one. Su is no Scarlett O'Hara, but the two guys remind me of Ashley Wilkes and Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind. Ashley may hang around, but he doesn't really have a chance if the exciting Rhett Butler's around.

I find it difficult to not compare this show to other Chinese teen-to-adult romances that I've seen recently. The first 10 or so modern-day Cdramas I saw were of very low quality, with stunted scripts, wooden acting, and subpar filming. (They still have their charm and are oddly relaxing, so I kept tuning in). At the same time, Chinese historical and fantasy works were superior - some of the world's best. It was almost like China, a country that lags well behind in the area of freedom of expression, didn't know how people should behave in the current day. They seem to have gotten the feedback. All of a sudden, their modern-day features have improved dramatically. Cdrama or otherwise, WMY is one of the best youthful romances I've seen, along with A Little Thing Called First Love 8.5. Both of them don't have alot of room for improvement. They are the full package with likable characters, good scripting, directing and acting, solid romance and plenty of flutters in the stomach. They feature tension and drama. Two other excellent romances are When I Fly Towards You-7.8 and Hidden Love-7.8. Both of them are as cute as cute gets, yet they both lack complexity and tension. That can be a good thing for times when the anxiety is up: Such shows can be better than Valium. But these shows have a lower degree of difficulty. They are flatter road than WMY and ALTCFL which have higher highs and lower lows. Regardless, all 4 features are worth a romantiphile's time. For the even more devoted romantiholic, some other shows that might resonate are: You Are My Destiny 6.8 (cute, sweet and 1/2 padding); Put Your Head on My Shoulder-7.3 (with the first half at 8+ and then a big drop off in the second half which is a 6); Meteor Garden-7.4 (70% flowing 30% dragging, and Boys Over Flowers is better); and I Hear You-7.3 (so cute but with many flaws).

One reason the romance works so well is that, regardless of how oblivious Su Cancan is, Lan Tianye is focused on her. He is very attentive and patient. He's thoughtful & kind. He's very attracted to her. And he's gorgeous every moment he's doing all of that. It's all swoonworthy. Su Cancan may not be the most beautiful girl, but she's the cutest cutie. She has a comfortable warmth that draws a person in. It feels authentic that boys would be attracted to her.

The music is quite good. Find Your Way Home was the one title I caught. Most had no English titles available.

Another recent change in Cdramas is the shout outs to Kdramas, which must be huge in China. Shows from 2019 forward frequently make reference to watching Kdramas. WMY is no different. A couple characters mention Kdramas with affection. It seems to me that China is tipping its hat to the party that motivated their improvement the most.

In WMY, we all benefit from that!

〰🖍 IMHO

📣8.3 📝8 🎭8.4 💓7.5 🦋7 🎨6.5 🎵/🔊8 🔚8 ▪ 🌞6 ⚡3 😅3.5 😭4 😱1 😯3.5 🤢1 🤔3.5 💤0


Age 13+
Language: rare PG-13 words- @$$, $h!+

Re-📺? For sure!

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

♥️ -
C: Well-Intended Love 7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine;
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1
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;

Period-
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

Fantasy-
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


RATINGS
Directing 8.3
Writing 8
Acting 8.4
Romance 7.5
Flutters 7
Art 6.5
Sound & music 8
Ending 8

LEVELS
Warmth 6
Action 3
Laughs 3.5
Tears 4
Fright 1
Tension & Anxiety 3.5
Gore 1
Thought provocation 3.5
Snores 0

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✒River Cops Red Smoke & Golden Ferrys °7.1° °VG°

HRP is a cop drama that not only stays afloat, but it actually sails at times. It opens like a typical police action thriller. The bad guys, their big guns out, bust up a cruise and take hostages. Where's the police when you need them? Trust me, the police are all over this one.

There's nothing atypical in HRP, but coming up with entirely new things with any regularity is getting to be largely undoable. So we must look at the execution, and the execution is competent. Nothing more, nothing less. If you enjoy cop dramas, you should like this one. HRP is a 2023 release that is rated 83 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of a mere 6 55-minute episodes. It's miniscule compared to most Asian dramas that typically go on for 20+ hours.

Here's our misfit heroes:

Kwon Sang Woo (Why Her?-8, Queen of Mystery) is officer Han Du Jin. He's a specimen and a dedicated officer. He's tasty enough to inspire a crush or two. Bae Da Bin (It's Beautiful Now, Do You Like Brahms?) plays “weirdo” Do Na Hee. She's tough. She did military service. She can fight. She's a man's man, but she's a woman. She's also head over trotters for Han Du-Jin. He acts like he doesn't like it, but… She's awesome - the very best thing about the show.

Kim Hee Won (Misaeng: Incomplete Life-9.1, Moving) plays Lee Chun Suk, a River officer who can't 🏊 swim ~ the only one of his kind. He isn't one to seek out danger or extra work, either. When the time comes, we see that he will get the job done. Shin Hyun Seung (So Not Worth it, Be My Boyfriend) is Kim Ji Soo, the fresh faced kid on the force.

The prolific Sung Dong Il is Chief Do Won Il. He has a special relationship with Na Hee. I like the guy. So Far I've seen him in 200 Pounds Beauty-6.5, Along With the Gods 2: The Last 49 Days-6.7, Reply 1988 (still working on it) The K2-8, The Legend of the Blue Sea-7.2, The Cursed-8.3, Hospital Playlist-9, & Sisyphus: The Myth-8. The only show in which he felt slightly out of place is The Cursed. In everything else he shines.

On team-villains we have:

Lee Sang Yi (Once Again, Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, When the Camellia Blooms-8) is the overly privileged bad guy, Go Ki Seok. He's a tad cartoonish, not that people like that don't really exist. The actor is with a prostitute in one scene and acts out having an org@sm - something I've not yet seen in a Kdrama. Like everything else the character does, he is all-in. It's a very convincing and intense climax. The scene is not gratuitous as it underscores his pathetic loneliness. He's also a baseball fan. I like that about him…

Jung Young-Joo (Move to Heaven-8.4, Lovely Runner) is the scary Madam Choi, another excellent character for which this actress is perfect ~ Total Dragon Lady. Choi Moo-Sung (Stranger S2, Prison Playbook, The Good Bad Mother, Reply 1988) is top villain, Hwang Man-Dae. I've only seen him in Reply, and he'll always be a big cuddly bear to me. Even as a bad guy, he's teddy-felon. Screenwriter & director Kim Sang Cheol (The Forgotten Bag) is primarily responsible for this show.

This is a simple but competent crime thriller and it is solid for the subset. The characters are fleshed out well enough and the tensions are mostly credible. There's great action and moments of brutal violence. One very cool underwater scuba fight is reminiscent of Sea Hunt and other 70's adventure shows. There's also a fantastic fight in a cramped car. HRP probably won't convert anyone to this genre, however. It serves to feed an established appetite.


〰🖍 IMHO

📣7.3 📝7 🎭8 💓5.5 🦋5 🎨7 🎵/🔊6 🔚8 ▪ 🌞4.5 ⚡7.6 😅3 😭3 😱4 😯2 🤢5.5 🤔3 💤0


Age 16+ Sex depicted - even without nudity it is graphic. Language: $h!+ dhead, F💣 @$$h0le, but it is sparse. Rated TV-15/TV-MA

Re-📺? Probably not, but it is worth seeing once. I wouldn't miss a S2.


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

Modern Day -
Love to Hate You 8.9,
Crash Landing On You 9.1,
Oh My Ghost 10,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,

Action/Crime/Sci-fi -
Descendants Of The Sun-8.3,
Inspector Koo-8.4,
Vagabond-8,
When the Camellia Blooms-8,
Law School -8,

K2 8,
Private Lives 8.1,
Sisyphus 8,
Tunnel 8.5,
Signal 8.6,
Blood Free-8.5
D.P. -8.4,

The Cursed 8.3,
The Wailing-8.8,

Flower of Evil 8.9,
The Man from Nowhere 8.9,
Black 9,
Squid Game 8.4,
Kingdom 8.3,
Sweet Home 8.4

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✒Gold Spoons, Dirt Ones & Keeping Up the Act °5.8° °bland°

Here's a recording of beautiful people. There's beautiful actors, beautiful wardrobe, beautiful makeup, and tepid drama. This record is dinged from overplay.

The charming Park Bo-Gum (Reply 1988) plays ML, Sa Hye-Jun/HJ, a man who is hustlin. He models, auditions, and acts. He earns actual 💰 by being a bodyguard… and serving tables at a BBQ joint… and slinging 🥙🌯🥗 at Subway. What does he want? He wants what top⭐star Park Do-ha has. Like Do-ha, HJ has lots of fans. He has fans at every gig, including Subway; he just doesn't have enough to lift his career out of the sub-floor. As the sun rises on the show, it's setting for HJ and his career aspirations. Ep1 features scene after scene where he is chided, cajoled and cheated in an effort to convince him to cut away from his dream. He's been putting off his military service, but he's at the point where he's about ready to get it over with. Grandpa is his primary supporter; grandpa, his BFF Won Hae-Hyo, and though unknown to him, also makeup artist An Jeong-Ha/JH. In reality, JH is his biggest 😍 fan. As it turns out, JH is given a chance to do makeup at a fashion show that HJ will be in. So they meet.

ROY is a 2020 release that is rated 87 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 16 67-81 minute episodes. The FL, JH, is played by Park So-Dam. She looks sweet and her smooth face says young innocence, but “She's gotten weird after starting college. She only speaks the truth.” She's so genuinely nice that her character becomes boring. In Parasite-9, she plays the conniving Kim sister, Ki-jung, and she's anything but boring. I didn't even recognize her! That's acting. In ROY she's crazy bout HJ. She hasn't lost her head though. On one level she understands that she's in love with the /idea/ of him. Anytime we have a crush from afar, whether it be somebody famous or somebody we see everyday, we only have a crush on the idea of that person. Remember that before getting too lost over crushes and obsessions for people who you don't even know. “I think giving love is easier than receiving love,” JH says. She loves the feeling that love gives her, so she rides with it, but she doesn't take it too seriously.

Kim Jin-U is played by Kwon Soo-Hyun & Byeon Woo-Seok plays Won Hae-Hyo. They've all been friends since grade school. Hae-Hyo is HJ's BFF and an aspiring actor/model who comes from a wealthy 🤑 family. His cloying mother, Kim I-Yeong (Shin Ae-Ra from Ugly Alert and Iron Daughters-in-Law) has been in the shadows working towards his success with every mean$ at her disposal. Mom is always at odds with her domestic helper, Han Ae-Suk (Ha Hee-Ra). There's little she can do about it as Han Ae-Suk's son is HJ, her son's best friend. Furthermore, she has grown reliant on Ms Han. Those facts leech contention into their relationship. Mom is jealous of the love, respect and attention her maid gets from her son. She is a narcissist in designer ruffles and blatantly talks to her kids as if everything about them, ultimately, is about her. Every thought in her head is about her. We've all seen destructive parents like that.

The director is Ahn Gil-Ho (Stranger, Memories of the Alhambra-7, The Glory). His works are very popular. I've only seen ROY and MOA, both of which have positives and negatives. Both could be better. Writer Ha Myung-Hee (Temperature of Love, Doctors) hovers mostly in the 6's on IMDB. ROY fits their resumes; it's okay but not great. The spark is missing.

With an IQ hovering around 85, ROY is designed for relaxation and is neither excessively idiotic nor intelligent. The plot and dialogue are simple to the point of exasperation. It passes the ⏳. Eps1-10 are solidly around a 7. Then it starts to drag. This is another example of content perfect for 10-12 episodes (but not 16) that gets degraded when it's stretched too far. It forces the viewer to have internal conflict: I like this show, that slow part is no big deal… that poor plot point, that idiotic conversation, that irritating scene are no biggie… not /really/…right? It puts our logic at odds with our emotions. I'm tagging this problem malcontent - MAL-content. It causes discontent. Logically and technically, ROY is not good. Emotionally, it somehow is with its relax-a-while charm.

Into ep6 I was startled to realize that very little has happened. That trend continues. In chill-out fashion, the viewer hangs out with these characters for awhile, but for a slice-of-life piece to work, the characters have to draw us in. The viewer must enjoy hanging with them, and the human factor must feel authentic. ROY flounders in those categories. For instance, the FL is horribly boring. As this actress is not boring in other features, we must look at the writing and directing. In ep12, ROY starts becoming less pleasant and more of a chore to watch. By this time less is happening, not more, and it seems obvious not much is gonna happen, and if something does happen (it doesn't) it will be too little too late.

“When it comes to 💘, I'm a 9 year old kid,” muses JH. Her parents split when she was younger and the hurt never healed. This is a romance between 2 decent, almost saintly people. In real life that is as lovely as it gets, but for entertainment, tension is needed to create something truly special. Early on, I felt nothing between them. She's bland; he has a tinge of aloofness to him.

“Being shallow isn't bad, it's all about your preference,” says HJ's mgr, Min-jae (Shin Dong-mi - She's adorable). That's essentially ROY's justification for itself. It seems like they set out to create a show around Park Bo-Gum's good looks. Nothing more. Whether that's enough to overcome its record of mediocrity is up to personal taste. (I'm not even saying that's an easy decision. He's nice to look at and quite a good actor. I find myself wavering 😛)

There's praiseworthy samples as well. “I'll uphold my values no matter what.” The two leads are excellent role models and if young teens will watch the show, it is a good choice for them. “To an actor, a spoon is just a utensil,” opines HJ. Gold spoons and dirt spoons are a topic, referring to the “haves" and the “have-nots”. Some kids get the benefit of money from their parents and some inherit values like honesty and loyalty. Few get both.

It gets warmer, and the director does have his moments. In ep3 they are out in the rain and look into eachother’s eyes. The rain stops and then starts again slowly. It's a very nice shot. In addition, the 🎶 is VG. ‘Shine On You’ is worth a Sahazam.

The best takeaway is when we hear this ~ “There's 3 ways to male the best use of your time: Live in the present, learn from the past, plan your future.”

Should your future include a viewing of ROY? I must vote “Pass.” In fact, with the benefit of foreknowledge I wouldn't opt to watch it for the first time. However, Park Bo-Gum does shine. If you are a fan of his then you'll want to go on the record with ROY.


QUOTES📢

"There's no worse punishment than having to put up with your child talking down to you all the time."

The con artists are the problem, not the victim... Anyone who goes on about being the victim is rarely the victim... The biggest @$$hole in life is somebody who goes on about being the victim when he's the assailant.


〰🖍 IMHO

📣6 📝6 🎭7.5 💓5 🦋4.5 🌞4.5 🎨6.7 ⚡ 2.5 🎵/🔊7.5 😅2 😭 😱1 😯2.5 😖3.8 🤔2 💤3.5 🔚6

Age 13+ ROY is relatively clean with the following cautions: Language - b!+ch, b!+chy, $h!+, $h!++y - it's rare. A designer propositions a model - also relatively mild. Rated TV-14: Parents Strongly Cautioned.

What do I recommend? Glad you asked!

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

Modern Day -
Crazy Love-7.8,
A Witch's Love 7.8,
Love to Hate You 8.9,
Her Private Life 8, 99 days with the Superstar-7,
Touch your heart 8.2, Another Miss Oh-7.5,
Crash Landing On You 9.1,
Oh My Ghost 10,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Because This Is My First Life-7.7,
Love Struck in the City 7.3, Familiar Wife-8.5,
Hospital Playlist 9, More Than Friends-8,
My Mister 9.5,
I'll See You When the Weather is Fine 9


Historical/Period -
My Only Love Song 8.7 ~ excellent comedy,
Mr. Queen 8.5,
My Sassy Girl 8.5,
Saimdang 8.5,
The King's Affection 8.3,
Mr. Sunshine 9

Action/Crime/Sci-fi -
K2 8,
Private Lives 8.1, Descendants Of The Sun-8.3,
Sisyphus 8, When the Camellia Blooms-8,
Tunnel 8.5,
Signal 8.6,
The Cursed 8.3,
Flower of Evil 8.9,
The Man from Nowhere 8.9,
Black 9,
Squid Game 8.4,
Kingdom 8.3,
Sweet Home 8.4

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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✒♥️ Yourself {but don't LUV yourself ;)} °7.5° °VG°

Han Seo Yun (played by Park Ji Yeon from Imitation) dreams of being a model, but she always seems to fall a little bit short ~ She's simply not tall enough. She hasn't given up yet, though. At a tryout where top models are the judges, she encounters supermodel & judge Na Jin Wook (Kim Dong Ho from Undercover). He seems to think it's his job to yank off the bandaid - he tells her to give up. She'll never be a model. Not unless she grows a few inches. Seo Yun is devastated. Later that evening her friends are consoling her at the karaoke bar while he, at the same time and place, has been dragged out with his friends for some karaoke.

Then things go sideways. They both end up on the roof when a big jolt of lightning strikes. Just like that, and FLA⚡H: Body switch! She's been a fan of his for a long time (until he was so rude). He has nothing but disdain for her, but they'll have to work together so that neither of them ruins their respective lives. She's going to have to be a model - a male model. He has to go to school and take tests. They must quickly figure out a way to ‘undo the done’! Now, no one can understand why Jin Wook is now taking orders from a HS girl.

Quite coincidentally, my “watch roulette” landed on a string of shows dealing with appearance and/or body swapping. Listed in order of low to high quality, I ended up watching MR in tandem with these shows: Abyss-4.7 (plenty of good elements and promise, but It ultimately fails miserably) 200 lb Beauty-6.5 (excellent elements but they fail to fashion it tightly & neatly. It'sworth watchingfor the FL's performance) The Miracle-7.7 (great for tweens & older: It's excellent), and now this. It's a common device that is useful for putting our mind and emotions inside of another person. Also a common theme in anime, it's a look from a new perspective.

The leads scorch this runway. These kids can act. He has to play a teenage girl, and she has to play a man. And they do it very well. Watching her, in his body, interact with her girlfriend is particularly funny. Sometimes laugh out loud funny. In the USA we have some fantastic actors, without a doubt, but we have many more personalities. It's not a criticism, it is merely factual. For example, I have loved watching Ray Liotta ever since the 1986 movie Something Wild with Melanie Griffith. Regardless of the feature, he seems to only play: Ray Liotta. He's just one of many - actors who deliver delight with every moment on screen largely by playing identical roles. The point is that Hollywood's a little bit out of balance when it comes to personalities6 vs serious ACTORS, and many of our most talented actors are imported from the UK. Americans who aren't watching foreign features are missing some of the best acting the world has to offer.

The romance is good. The situations, the timing, the writing, the acting, the directing - it's all done with a skilled hand. It seems like it will be a shallow and empty show, but it maintains its self-respect. The interactions feel real and the attraction seems genuine. It's in their eyes. Good romance is conveyed through the eyes, IRL and on film.

There's weaknesses. It falls short in some areas. They could have played up the new difference in strength a little more. She is now he. She can push him around some - and he definitely has something coming. They missed some opportunities to have more fun with that. There's some plot devices that feel wedged in poorly, like the mini drama in which an ankle injury might get in the way of an important show. The weirdest thing about it is how they become attracted to eachother. Can you imagine kissing yourself? I can't. I know we're supposed to love ourselves… but that doesn't mean we're supposed to LUV ourselves…

Nevertheless, at a mere 6 25-minute episodes (it's short!) this is a great choice for teens and romance fans.


〰🖍 IMHO


🎬7.4 🖊️〰7.5 🎭8 💓7 🦋7 🌞 5 🎨7 🎵/🔊 6.6 😅5 🤔5 🔚8

Age 14 minimum ~▶ A$$, assh0!e, sob, bi+ch; reference to anal sex (in the context it was a rumor and the comment was for humorous and ironic effect)

Re-📺? Not opposed


Recommendations for Kidz viewing

4+ My Neighbor Totoro-8.2, Ponyo-9.1

5+ Balto-8.3

6+ D4DJ-7.5

7+ Cardcaptor Sakura-7.4

8+ Spirited Away-9

9+Trollhunters-9.5 (slightly scary. Worst language is “butt snack”)

10+ C🇨🇳 Accidentally in Love-6.5 B-level scripting, acting, and directing, but still fun/strangely relaxing to watch,
Holes-8,
Howl's Moving Castle-8.9,
K🇰🇷 A Love So Beautiful-7,
My Dog Skip-8,
K🇰🇷 Part Time Idol-5.5 (suicide addressed),
Paulie-7.4,
Saiki-8,
K🇰🇷Spark-6.4,
K🇰🇷 Strongest Delivery Man-6.6

11+ Belle-8.5,
K🇰🇷 Flower Boy Next Door-7,
Girls Und Panzer-8.1 (1 each d@mn, he!!),
Labyrinth-7,
C🇨🇳 A Little Thing Called First Love-8.5,
Love Chunibyo And Other Delusions-8.4,
K🇰🇷 The Miracle-7.7,
One Piece-7.5 there is scattered PG-13 language,
Watership Down-8.5


12+ K🇰🇷 99 Days With the Superstar-7,
Colourcloud Palace-8,
Farming Life in Another World-7.7,
Goonies l-8,
Here Comes Miss Modern-7.8,
Hotel del Luna 8.4,
Jumanji-9,
K🇰🇷 My ID is Gangnam Beauty-7.5 ,
C🇨🇳 Love Between Fairy & Devil-8.9,
Piano In The Forest l-8,
K🇰🇷 So I Married My Anti-fan-6.8,
Your Lie In April-9

13+ K🇰🇷 Boys Over Flowers-8.3 ~ melodrama to the max;
K🇰🇷Cinderella and the 4 Knights-5.6,
K🇰🇷 Heirs-7.3,
K🇰🇷 My Shy Boss-6.5,
K🇰🇷 Playful kiss-7.3,
Princess Resurrection-7.6,
Senryu Girl-7.5,
Special A Class-8.2

14+ My Runway-7.5
Princess Principal-8.6,
Toradora-8.5,

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✒Sista Twista ❕Tween Alert❕ °7.7° °So Cute°

Shi-ah/🅰 (Kim Na Hyun from I Started Following & Tale of the Nine-Tailed 1938) and Shi-yeon/¥ (Hong Yoon Hwa from Wok of Love) are fraternal twins. 🅰 is a mean girl, ¥ is a lost girl. 🅰 is perfect, beautiful, in a dance group, and has 3-million-with-an-"M" followers on social media, while ¥ is obese and rarely leaves her room. During a "family" interview with 🅰, ¥ is cloistered in her room. They won't reveal the embarrassing, ugly sister to the general public! When out of her room, ¥ tries to slip by at school without being noticed. She's counting the days til graduation. In HS, the sisters never see eachother; partly because ¥ is in self-imposed solitary confinement. When they do come across eachother, they're always 2 terse syllables away from triggering a fight.

The Miracle is a short Kromcom consisting of 12 15-minute episodes (about the length of Avengers: Endgame). If you're used to watching Kdramas with episodes that can be easily north of 90 minutes, this goes so quickly it's jolting. It is perfect for tweens and teens. It grabs the viewer right away, it has a positive message, and it's as cute & sweet as a kitten shaped lollipop. These kids can act. Kdramas spotlight one child actor after another who are just spectacular, and these girls are no exception. Everything's pretty in the show without being overdone. Not a high budget feature, it still flows seamlessly without ever calling too much attention to itself, its sets, or its costumes. It's all a clean canvas for the human story, which is the star of this feature.

While 🅰, the beautiful sister, is out leading a glamorous life, ¥ walks through the neighborhood looking for her lost dog. There's a lady flat on her face in the grass! She pulls her up, dusts her off, and takes her back home. This beldam does a card-reading as a "thank you". One thing leads to another... ¥ leaves the shop with a wish granted and a magic talisman necklace. Then tomorrow comes. Each sister collapses simultaneously. When they wake up, they've switched bodies. They did NOT switch personalities.

Switching bodies means switching lives. School, career... each has alot on the line. Now each has to be the heroine in her sister's life, Girl group? Dancing? How can ¥ do that? Fortunately, she's been dancing in her room. She knows all the moves. What ¥ doesn't know is that everybody hates her sister. 🅰 isn't the kindest. But ¥ is a sweetie - she isn't the least bit hateable. At the dance gig, ¥ lays eyes on the male teen idol. She would never have a chance with him. But maybe she does in 🅰's body... 🅰, in the meantime, has to go to school as the shy, fat girl. She steps into an environment where everybody mocks her sister. Well~~> 🅰 doesn't take much to mocking. She is going to shake everything up. What will people think?

That's what the show is about. TM reinforces the value of inner beauty and shows how cruelly people (still!) treat those they consider unattractive or beneath them. No matter how much we all preach against it, this is a common human failing. Think of it like taking your vitamins, the work is never done. When the sister swap occurs, 🅰 is able to experience ¥'s miserable life. They have to switch rooms, so 🅰 ends up reading ¥'s diary. She imbibes the excruciating humiliation and the utter hopelessness that her sister's been feeling.

The show reinforces that inner beauty with confidence and courage are what harmonizes a life best. 🅰 had the looks, but over time, she became an ugly person. ¥ is regularly called ugly in the show, but she's kind, sensitive, thoughtful, and has the voice of an angel. {Per Hong Yoon Hwa's bio, she's an actress and comedian but not a singer. She's convincing with the lip syncing, though} ¥'s first interaction with an outsider in TM is when she's helping a woman who's in need. Sadly, she's relegated her best qualities to the emotional prison of low self-esteem. Low self-esteem is a form of self-absorption. It's not healthy, and it's not okay. Any person too wrapped up in h/herself will become miserable. Finally, while confidence is the key, too much confidence leads to arrogance. It should always be tempered with humility because there's always somebody out there smarter, better looking, and more talented than you are, then I am. Overconfidence is living a lie, and is toxic not only to oneself, but also to everyone else.

Confidence, in healthy doses, is always the sexiest thing, but ¥ would never be able to find it on her own. Parents of unattractive children need to love and emotionally nourish them more, yet studies show that /even parents/ love and respect unattractive kids /less/! Children in danger of being ostracized over looks (or anything else) need to be handled tools by which to survive. We had a kind-hearted kid in our life who experienced some bullying at school. It's nothing unusual. When we talked about what one boy was saying to hurt his feelings, we worked on some comebacks. Fortunately, it worked like a wonder. Not everybody's a natural humorist but humor is the best diffuser, and humor can be learned. We told him to not defend himself, just make a joke out of it. He was able to do that. (I'm still working on this. Watching your charges surpass you is certainly a thrill).

Sibling relationships are also examined. Now that the girls must interact once again, they start to recall the fun they had when they were kids. In the run of these 12 episodes, ¥ does NOT lose any weight, even though the looks-oriented 🅰 is in her body. In fact, 🅰 can't stop eating when she's in ¥'s body. At first, like on a holiday, she enjoys eating everything in sight, to our amusement. She tries to go out and exercise. When she passes an open restaurant with the food displayed out front, exercise is over. "I can't stop these cravings!," she moans.

The experience broadens their perspectives and gives them a new view on life. They each come out better for it. ¥ is able to gather the pluck to show at a music audition. 🅰 gave her the info with a threat: "You had better go, I pulled a lot of strings for this." They end up improving eachother's lives. ¥, the sweetheart, makes friends out of 🅰's enemies. Chubby or not, 🅰 still has that confidence and she puts ¥'s enemies in their place - DOWN.

The show is amusing. While there weren't laugh-out-loud lines, I grinned through the whole thing. One of the cutest scenes is day 1 of the switcheroo. 🅰 hands a shirt to ¥ and says "Wear this". ¥ looks at it and comments on how it looks like children's clothes.

Whether the clothes fit or not, TM will definitely fit into your family viewing time.


QUOTE🗣

I guess not everyone can fit in children's clothes


〰🖍 IMHO

🎬 7.7 🖊〰 7.8 🎭8 💓7.7 🦋6.7 🌞8.2 🎨7.1 🎵/🔊7.6 😅6.5 🤔 7.1 🔚8.3

Age 11+ this is perfect for tweens and young teens and adults will like it too.

Re-📺? 👍🏽 I'm looking forward to showing this to some of the young girls in my life.

Recommendations:

10+ C🇨🇳 Accidentally in Love-6.5 B-level scripting, acting, and directing, but still fun/strangely relaxing to watch,
🇺🇲 🕳💄Holes-7.6,
Howl's Moving Castle-8.9,
K🇰🇷 A Love So Beautiful-7,
My Dog Skip-8,
K🇰🇷 Part Time Idol-5.5 (suicide addressed),
Paulie-7.4,
Saiki-8,
K🇰🇷Spark-6.4,
K🇰🇷 Strongest Delivery Man-6.6

11+ Belle-8.5,
K🇰🇷 Flower Boy Next Door-7,
Girls Und Panzer-8.1 (1 each d@mn, he!!),
Labyrinth-7,
C🇨🇳 A Little Thing Called First Love-8.5,
Love Chunibyo And Other Delusions-8.4,
K🇰🇷 The Miracle-7.7,
One Piece-7.5 there is scattered PG-13 language,
Watership Down-8.5

12+ K🇰🇷 99 Days With the Superstar-7,
Colourcloud Palace-8,
Farming Life in Another World-7.7,
Goonies l-8,
Here Comes Miss Modern-7.8,
Hotel del Luna 8.4,
Jumanji-9,
C🇨🇳 Love Between Fairy & Devil-8.9,
K🇰🇷 My ID is Gangnam Beauty-7.5,
NiNoKuni-6.5,
Piano In The Forest-8,
K🇰🇷 So I Married My Anti-fan-6.8,
Your Lie In April-9

13+ K🇰🇷 Boys Over Flowers-8.3 ~ melodrama to the max;
K🇰🇷Cinderella and the 4 Knights-5.6,
K🇰🇷 Heirs-7.3,
K🇰🇷 My Shy Boss-6.5,
K🇰🇷 Playful kiss-7.3,
Princess Resurrection-7.6,
Senryu Girl-7.5,
Special A Class-8.2

14+ My Runway-7.5,
Princess Principal-8.6,
Toradora-8.5.

Originally 〰️🖋 8/2024

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Goodbye Concentration Camp ⛺️ Hello Glamping °8.4° °excellent°

CIL is a show that shows us what happens when a stormy cloud latches on to a gloomy front and electrifies it. It brings together the manic and the depressive in nature's way of bringing balance to the force. "Joo" hates her father, who had abandoned them (her, mom, sis/Haesong, & bro/Ji-Gu) for his mistress (THAT woman) yrs ago. Watching her is like watching the backstory of a supervillain. If she had a theme song it would be The Rolling Stones' Paint It Black. She attends dad's funeral (in a leopard dress & 👠) and lets it be known.

"Jin" is a slumped pile of suffering on long legs. He exudes depression more than Joni Mitchell or Radiohead. More than Eeyore, even. Jin's hands are often bleeding. He's always getting cut. His mother abandoned him when he was a kid and his GF dumped him a few yrs back. He's been slowly bleeding out for most of his life. His one 💖 is camping. His company brings together vendors for outdoor living fairs and exhibitions. (He does all the work and his partner does all the golfing). He is also the son of THAT woman. Crashing the funeral wasn't enough. Joo decides she's bringing Jin down.

Soon, Joo realizes she'll have to queue-up to bring Jin down. He's down already because of his ex. The only thing he has going is his company. The crows & raccoons have rifled through most of that already. As she's implementing her plan, she grows more uncomfortable with her goal. Jin is not the bad guy. All the critters around him are. Though morose, here's a handsome, perfectly good man. He's been dropped in the dirt, but all she needs to do is brush him off alittle. To begin, all she needs to do is take his hand...

Joo let heartbreak make her hard & mean. She decided to be hateful. Sis, Haesong, put her efforts into becoming lovable. She looks to boyfriends as substitutes for her father's 💘. Brother, Sim Ji-Gu, is played by Jang Sung-Bum, who has a voice like an angel. He's the baby and is somewhat insulated by the women in his family from the pain. He dreams of a singing career while Joo insists he spend all his time studying for the Civil Service exam.

The Romance is a tranquil 🏕 with a warm kindling 🔥 except... She's been out to destroy him. He promised himself he would not be hurt, nor would he be abandoned, ever again. Will we get to see them smile freely? As we get to know all the characters more, the more wary we are of the truth being told - It is going to hurt.

The themes revolve around hurt, revenge and weakness - and the enslavement those bring - but also endurance and forgiveness, with the freedom they bring. Revenge. 'Do you crash your ex's wedding?' He sincerely wants to know. Her: 'Yes, you get revenge by any means possible. You trip your ex if you have a chance.' Him: 'No, you'll have to live with that horrible memory and that empty feeling the rest of your life." CEO Shin demonstrates the point: "I've been living like a crazy person as if I was possessed by something. I ended up coming this far. I wanted to stop, but... I don't know what else to do with life. I'm so terribly sorry." In the end he was left with regret, which leads us into ~> Forgiveness. All of our protags are called upon to forgive.

The filmcraft is excellent. CIL drops tasty tidbits along the trail to keep us following along. There's connections made with good use of dialogue, camera shots, and the actors themselves. Many lines have double meanings. Juxtaposition is used cleverly. CIL is often accompanied by pensive, somewhat melancholy piano and the whole show is like a concerto of such music. It's sad, hypnotic, emotional, and oddly relaxing. What Can I Do, by Hyunji, is Spotifyable.

"I think I'm going to cry," Haesong says happily, because she sees Joo holding a man's hand. The camera pans to a woebegotten pharmacist... In one episode, Haesong is wearing a top that has two fabric straps hanging from her left shoulder, and her work name tag is pinned in such a way that they make a big "A" on her chest, resurrecting Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter. Haesong has dated alot of men.

As moody and methodical as the pace is, there's smiles to be found. "His house is big, but there's nothing in it. Just like him." Jin's misery is reinforced to the point of humor throughout the show. "How could you 3 make so much drama every day? You guys make trouble one after another. It's almost like teamwork, " remarks Jun. "I'll pretend being ignored is all in my head," is cheerful CEO Sun-woo's response to Joo's non-response. 'It's good to be gathered with you all - You who trust me least in this world, but cherish me most,' Jiju quips at one point.

One beautiful irony is that his mother had been an obstacle in all of his relationships, but she ultimately brought him together with Joo. She is the broken road that led them to eachother. Forgiveness paved the road. God bless that broken road - They don't have to hike alone ever again.


〰🖍 IMHO

📣8.3 📝8.5 🎭8.5 💓7.7 🦋7 🎨6 🎵/🔊7.8 🌞6 ⚡1 😅3.5 😭4 😱2.5 😯4 😖2 🤔6.4 💤1 🔚8.5

Originally 〰️🖋 4/2024

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⚘ Expires Before Episode 10 ⚘ °6.4° °somewhat good°

A brief encounter with Dae Hyun, our saintly male lead, prompts orphan Jung Saet Byul (who is currently raising her younger sister) to fall in love. He goes on with his day, but she is smitten for life. Fast forward 3 years and she goes to work for him at his convenience store. While people of her status are overlooked by the world, she manages to distinguish herself with her hard work and intelligence. She, “inconveniently,” puts the hook-kick to his love life, however, through a series of misunderstandings and other blocks. There is no mistaken understanding when it comes to her, though: She's marked him for clearance; /her clearance to purchase him/ that is.

Rated 7.6 on MDL, BSR is much like unexpired convenience store fare - edible, somewhat good, but not very good. It degrades from being pleasant to being a bit of a chore in the last third. Knowing what I now know, would I go back and watch it again for the first time? That's almost a coin flipper. My answer is "no", but many people will enjoy watching this show - for good reason. Everyone is entitled to h/h form of wind-down entertainment, and BSR has obviously done the job for many viewers who have received it well. There are gems tucked away like Korean beef and fresh green onion in the 🍲. They have plenty of good ingredients, but they didn't incorporate them well. Just go into it with your eyes open(ha!). If your enjoyment level starts declining, know that it doesn't get better later. It fizzles and flattens.

Let's talk about the fizzle first. They have fun with the girl fights. There's flying kicks & flying bodies all over the place. They even do the Matrix Reloaded burst-out-of-the-pile-up. They have animation overlay to show eyes with hearts or to bleep out some language. All of it's cute and fun. I was thrilled with the first couple episodes.

They lay out clear character contrast in the opening shots of ep1. She's leading a gang brawl. He's saving a 🐈. (Gimme the perfect combo, indeed!) Sadly, he doesn't notice her for 2/3 of the show. Forget her, /I/ was frustrated! Most viewers want to see him take notice in little ways early on - let's get those 🌭 on the warming rollers! It takes a while for them to get toasty, right? It's a pity that all we see is his pity, or his overlooking her. Very gradually, they bond - soon the two communicate naturally by intricate hand ✌🏽👐🏼 signals. Nobody else can understand, but they somehow do. It's one of the cutest things about the show.

There's a handful of excellent scenes… brilliant really. "Let me go through the expired goods," she says, when the girlfriend walks in the store. He goes to a college reunion and everyone is practically dressed in monotone. They look a boring bunch. He has the most color in a pale green sweater, which could signify that he's still green. He's still a bit naive. She doesn't have a HS diploma, but she is not green. She loves green things and 💐, though. Our FL knows the meaning of every flower. I loved it and it makes me want to learn more of them.

We will see each female lead have a talk with the other that leads to a situational change. It's skillful mirroring. Kdrams love the 💘 🔺. (It's not a love triangle if a third party is interested in one of them, but they only have eyes for eachother, is it?) There's some truly funny moments that are muted, slightly, by other clumsy humor attempts that fail. The closing of episode 12 is fresh - stunning, even.

The best thing about BSR is Kim Yoo Jung playing Jung Saet Byul. She's gorgeous. Her smile is brighter than 🌞. If she went past the freezers she could "melt all that stuff". Also, she can wear tan or white and look good, which shouldn't be allowed - I hate her, lol. Her friends are likable, as is the ML's BFF. The secondary romance is painfully goofy at times, but overall I enjoyed that couple more. Kim Sun Young as Kong Boon Hee, Dae Hyun's mother, is a blast. She commands the screen. Watching her makes me happy. I suppose I'm a true fan.

As for every other character… yuck. His father is contemptible. I want to strangle him every time he's on screen. It's not okay to be that lazy and irresponsible. They get offended when somebody hurts dad's pride. He deserves so much more than hurt feelings! What °pride? ...Pride in what? Breathing? Dae Hyun. He's the ultimate good guy, but they fail to sell "everybody's doormat " as a romantic lead. He is in a current day relationship with a woman when the show begins, and it's a mostly positive relationship; at least, his GF is not the cartoonish villain that they'll often show in romcoms, which is appreciated. He's a wonderful human being, but he's missing sex appeal. He's too wimpy! Ji Chang Wook plays Choi Dae Hyun. He plays a similarly nervous guy who is upended by a woman, in Lovestruck In The City, which is far better than BSR. He's great in K2. It's not the actor's fault, it's how they wrote and directed him.

Our leads' °besties° have instant 🎇. Their relationship is easily more fun than the primary romance. "If I had love in My heart, I'd want the expiration date to be ten thousand years away." "Just call me ten thousand years." Yep, that's how GMO the dialog can get in the show. To be fair, that's between a pair that is comic relief, and they say a lot of very slurpee things. It's almost slapstick, but hey, they're fun. The director tries to wedge in a little too much nonsense, so the eyes will roll at times.

BSR becomes a bit of a slog to stick with it as the episodes roll on. Despite many nice touches like animation overlay, snappy cutting, and pauses that enhance, they don't have enough content to fill more than 10eps competently. Most of the characters are not relatable enough to truly draw the viewer in, and many of the plot drivers and vignettes are boring. Unfortunately, after the initial taste sensation, the expiration date is met long before the episodes expire.

〰🖍 IMHO


🎬72 📝57 🎭70 💓60 🦋40 🌞60 🎨45 ⚡ 🎵/🔊70 😅43 😭20 😱30 😯45 🤔40 💤40 🔚75

Age 13+ The show is tame. No language cautions. They touch on eroticism via the friend's webtoon. Fighting.

Re-📺? Never

{BTW, our ML is BFF with a guy that actually has a tan! Eum Moon Suk plays
Han Dal Shik (Dae Hyun's best friend). He looks so much like a friend of mine (who happens to be Hispanic) that I could only smile and smh every time he appeared on screen. I never plan to go down a 🐇 ⚫, but here we go: When you watch East Asian dramas you would think everybody there is paler than Tom Brady, which is tedious. East Asia's multi-millenia love of pale skin is connected to wealth & status. Field workers are tanned by the sun while the wealthy have a cave-dweller-like vitamin-D deficiency. We will hear Dae Hyun's family talk about their pride more than twice, and that is what it's all about. I am in love with 🌏Asian entertainment. I hesitate (or voice qualifiers) before recommending it to my African American friends and family, though, because it's as colorless as the show Friends. People insist on judging people based on things for which we have no control. Is anything more meaningless than a person's looks? Nobody has a choice of parentage or their skin color, so what is there to judge? Furthermore, much of history has been bleached. Early pictorials of Jesus showed a milk-chocolate skin tone until racism gripped the middle ages. Bible scholars will tell you that there aren't any white people in the Bible, except perhaps, some tangential bad actors. (In Poland they never adopted the Caucasian Jesus and kept the old paintings). The legend of the leprechaun was probably based on real-life Africans visiting Europe with gold. Africa was loaded with gold in ancient times, and there were Africans that navigated the world in canoes with gifts and exotic animals. They were masters at reading the sea currents, or the superhighways of the sea. The legend degraded over time to what we see now. That's two examples from a whole universe most people didn't know existed, Other than the good old vices of pride and prejudice, I cannot tell you why our 🌍 history has been color-lifted, but it is a fact. So, if we point at 🌏, three fingers are pointing back at 🌎. The result is that we remain divided. We should challenge them to diversify more, but also be patient with Asia. We all have deficiencies to work on. I am respectfully and patiently calling them out on this tired old mindset. Let's not start on the way they beat up on orphans…}

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

Reformed by Love:

Crazy Love-7.8,
My First First Love-8,
Boys Over Flowers-8 ~ melodrama to the max,
The Legend of the Blue Sea-7.2 (But for eps 20 &21 it's an 8+)
Oh My Venus-7.4K,
Call It Love-8.4,
That Winter, The Wind Blows-7,
Itaewon Class-8.9,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,
SKY Castle-9,
My Mister 9.5,

Out of Reach love:

A Love So Beautiful-7,
99 days with the Superstar-7,
Crash Landing On You 9.1,
Oh My Ghost 10,
Love Struck in the City 7.3,
Something in the Rain-8.6,


Romance junkies only -
My Secret Romance-7 (if you ff thru overdone flashbacks),
The Bride of Habaek-7,
Heirs-7.3,
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

Originally 〰️🖊 8/2023

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✒ ☕️ Snack on Cotton Candy & Put Stalkers On Ice °6.7° °good°

Assistant chef, Jin-Hu (Lee Suk-Hyeong from Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha & Lovestruck in the City-7.3), is walking down the street in a tucked-away neighborhood. His boss's new restaurant is set to open there. He looks to the left at passersby: 'That woman shoved a man's body in a refrigerator with the help of' (his head moves from 🕘9 o'clock to 🕚) 'her daughter and' (🕐) 'granddaughter'. His head turns to 🕒. 'That woman tried to stab someone last night.' His head keeps moving right to 🕠. 'And that man struck a pedestrian with his car and attempted to bury him alive.'

Tough neighborhood. What do you even /feed/ a crowd like that?

Eun "Gye" Hoon & No "Da" Hyun: Here's 2 people living a very unhealthy lifestyle. She can't sleep (stress, bills, past due notices, unpaid rent, lying to her mother about her office job - she quit - Oh, she's got a stalker, too). He can't sleep because he has this weird synchronicity thing where he's suddenly feeling her emotions. So, when stress keeps her up, it keeps him up, too. When she cries he probably won't be able to hold back the waterworks. He's a chef, so he cooks to settle himself down. They aren't sleeping, and they are eating in the middle of every night.

That's not the beginning, though. As Link opens, Gye is buried in grief ever since his twin sister went missing, presumed murdered, at age 10. His family died that day. The family of his friend, Ji Won-Tak (Song Duk-Ho - May I Help You, Cheer Up) also died that day because Won-Tak's father was accused of the murder. Even though he was acquitted, the stigma remained. The phrase "insufficient evidence" is not sufficient to clear a person's name. Da is overshadowed by a shady past - it's literally shaded from her view. She has no memories of her childhood. She's only partially present and living. They are each a half.

Link is a 2022 release that is rated 87 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 16 60ish-minute episodes. Yeo Jin-Goo (The Crowned Clown, Hotel Del Luna-8.4) is ML Gye. His voice is delicious. Gye is a high level chef. ("When the cook is emotional you can taste it. I won't tolerate any personal feelings in MY kitchen." He sounds rough, but a moment later he tears up and passes out. What is that about?) Mr. Yeo looks completely different from his HDL days. The shape of his face used to be triangular; now it's more round. Triangle or circle, he usually plays a square, & he's pretty uptight as Link opens. FL, Da, is brought to life by Mun Ka-Young (Welcome to Waikiki, True Beauty).

"These aren't my tears I'm crying right now." Gye is 😭 and 😜 all at the wrong moments. He's been through this before. He once had synchronicity with his sister. He experienced her emotions and reactions as if they were his own. Now it's happening again. His sister couldn't be aIive, could she? No, he's certain she's gone. He felt it. He could feel her terror, and then the connection broke; that was 18 years ago. Now, he must get himself together in time for the Gourmet Fair.

'You shouldn't be too perfect or you won't be approachable,' Da's mom points out. Little does mom know that Da is far from perfect. That company job that mom is so proud of? Da quit that a long time ago. She scrambles to work part-time jobs and she is behind on all of her bills. Hopefully she'll bring in some good tips from the Gourmet Fair. Soon she's slinging too many trashbags and dirty 🍽 to even think. Love? Notta thought. Da has never had a good man in her life.

Link is cotton candy, not gourmet fare. It's loosely linked together, but it will pass the time pleasantly for many. It wasn't until the later episodes that it started wearing on me. Here's yet another show that suffers from too many bread crumbs in the meatballs. They don't have enough good content for 16 episodes, but its problems go beyond a good edit. After 10 eps or so, it degenerates into decline & collapse mode, like a botched soufflé. The supposed premise of the show, his synchronicity with her and his ability to feel what she's feeling, adds very little excitement through ep11. It's almost besides the point. Perhaps it helped draw him to her, but people fall for eachother anyway. Synchronicity need not apply. They don't clearly lay out how he knows he's feeling /her/ emotions. The first couple eps are slightly haphazard. The logic behind some of the actions, reactions, and motivations is weak, unconvincing, and downright tasteless. I was stuck in Link's terminal lukewarmness - it wasn't bad enough for me to abandon but neither was it good enough to enjoy. By the end I lost hope that it would recover and was dreading watching the 1 ep/day I forced on myself like bad leftovers. Worst of all, Link attempts to lighten the load of heartbreak, but it comes right up to the line of making light of heartbreak. The plot is sad, and what happens stings. What's most sad is that it could have been better.

It's ironic that this show features a top level chef, yet the show itself is barebones. No extras. No garnish, no special sauce, no BAM. The premise of the stalker and the refrigerator is a tad weak. Jingeun is irritating. And how does Da's family even make enough to live? Nobody is ever in their restaurant. They should have some weirdo regulars. They don't do a good job building up the tension. This is a town where everyone should be a suspect. We should get to know each one and be shocked when the true killer is revealed. The bad guys shouldn't drop from nowhere when the show is 60% done. It feels like cheating. We don't know this person. We know this person has done bad things but we are detached. We don't hate, like, or fear this person.

Formulaic is a criticism, but there are formulas for good storytelling. If show creators want to deviate from the formula, it had better be good. Link isn't all that good. Ep15 is VG. It starts out weak because it must clear up a mess left by previous eps, but it puts the show back on track. Ep16 is also good. It's mostly a wrap-up, something sorely missing from too many Kdramas. They also had more opportunities for laughs and better romantic moments. Hong Jong-Chan also directed Her Private Life-8 and Live Up To Your Name-7.6, two shows that are rock solid with few deficiencies. Writer Kwon Ki-Young's Hello Monster & Suspicious Partner are quite popular. This is just an off project for them.

Link Is not fusion food; it will only feed romance junkies. It doesn't cross genres well and it will not attract new regulars to Korean programming. Anyone who doesn't like romantic and somewhat sentimental features might want to skip it. Still... I believe it's worth watching once. Some of the tastier selections include Da's Oma and grandma, who seem like they have a dark side🔩. Grandma turns out to be a profoundly good person. They manage a plot twist or two. Their 1st date is urgent care and a CT scan😆. We learn that we can't bury /everyone/ who bothers us - the problem is there's not enough land. I like the 2ndary relationship with the cops.

"I don't have the courage to be happy," Gye admits. Truth is the 1st step in healing. The average person tells 3 lies a day, and some psychologists say that we lie more than 200 times a day, we're told. That includes the lies we tell ourselves. The most common lie that people tell is: "I'm okay."

"Some people don't look forward, they look backwards. They live with regrets, bitterness and longing." It occurs to Da that these people do not see her, they see someone missing from their past; Da is just a placeholder.

In ep15 they cover if, if, IF ~>> Endless self-reproach, accusations, and regret. One character had faced cruel and entirely unfair judgment and cannot forgive h/hself. There are a couple of characters who feel a weight of responsibility when they did nothing wrong. In a vat of self-absorption, they feel compelled to turn themselves in, and it is less than convincing.

The vibe is somewhere between offbeat and strange. The characters are only half-baked. Mom and grandmother are a bit inconsistent but they grew on me. They're somewhat ridiculous but charmingly ruthless (Ye Soo-Jung from Stranger and Mine-8 is always good, and she's clearly having the time of her life in this role). This is not Gordon Ramsay's kitchen, it's more Flo's diner. However, I appreciate the good, which outweighs the bad.

It does contain some of the most romantic words I've ever heard: "Do you want anything to eat? Whatever you want, I'll cook for you." Whew. 'Scuse me while I sit and fan myself...


QUOTES📢

Yummy food brings you joy.

Life is a comedy in the long-shot and a tragedy in close-up. ~Buster Keaton~

Questions are more important than answers ~Einstein~


〰🖍 IMHO

📣6.5 📝6.5 🎭7.5 💓5.3 🦋5 🎨6 🎵/🔊7.3 🔚7.7 ♦ 🌞4.5 ⚡5 😅2 😭6 😱4.7 😯3 😖3 🤔4 💤3

Age 14+ Scary and violent elements; Language: $h!+

Re-📺? This one's in the good-to-pass-the-time category, but I may never pass this way again....

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

Mad For Each Other 7.8 ~silly fun;
Crazy Love 7.8;
Love to Hate You 8.9;
Touch your heart 8.2;
Crash Landing On You 9.1;
Oh My Ghost 10;
Private Lives 8.1;
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9;
Love Struck in the City 7.3;
When the Camellia Blooms 8;
Tunnel 8.1;
Signal 8.6;
My Mister 9.5;
Flower of Evil 8.9;
The Man from Nowhere 8.9;
The Cursed 8.3;
Black 9

Originally 〰️🖋 5/2024

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?Don't Boo Talented Kids! ~❎️~ This Couldn't Be Cuter? °8.3° °Excellent°

This is a charming coming of age tale against the backdrop of country life and high school sports.

RB is a great show for families to watch together, as long as the subtitles aren't an obstacle. Qualities that the show reinforces include: Loyalty, standing up for what's right, defending the weak, hard work, compassion, respect, and teamwork.

It follows badminton teams from schools in rural Korea. There's not alot to do in a town that doesn't have sufficient population to support many forms of entertainment. It's even difficult to get wifi. Sports and friendships are what the kids work on most. We follow them through regular match-ups, individual and team competitions, and various family dynamics, as they gradually become a cohesive unit. The show, additionally, addresses the problem of vicious hazing and other abuses that can arise in a group of uber competitive Type-A personalities.

Positive cross-generational relationships are displayed in RB. The elderly couple that lives down the road loves to host the kids. They share a meal and, more significantly, their wifi. In return, the kids help them with reading and operating their cell phones. It's darling.

YIKES! A Fight❕ We see another side of the coin in a town hall where a village elder and one of the young players tackle eachother over conflicting ideas over how to generate more business in town. The problem, apparently, is that they have matching personalities;)l. Neither one of them has good ideas anyway, smh. It's a funny scene.

The kids help plan a birthday party for the oldest grandma in town. The whole thing is precious. As grandma is from Busan, can you guess what movie they played? Yep, the Zombie thriller: Train To Busan. All Young-tae saw was that the title contained the word "Busan." Some of the party-goers didn't open their eyes for 2 hours, lol.

It's impossible to review this show without addressing the controversy that has arisen around it. In ep5, an athlete was met with some boos while playing in Indonesia. There were some that saw this as an insult to their country. In The West we generally don't understand much about Asian culture. It does appear that they are sincere about their complaint as it is a matter of their honor, and we should accept that. However, being offensive was obviously not the intent of Netflix & the show creators.

Instead of giving feedback, a world wide vocal group took to their keyboards and attacked the show and Netflix as if insult was intended. It spread over social media and the ever-outraged went out of their way to give the show a low rating. Most Kdramas have under 3000 viewers on IMDB registering their ratings of a given show. Contrast that with RB, which had a whopping 24k ratings of "1" weeks before all the episodes were out❗ I actually watched RB to find out how bad it was. I'd never seen such a low rating on IMDB.

I wonder if most of the people on the train-to-umbrage actually saw this show before they rapaciously rambled down the tracks? Anyone posting a review having never watched the show is neither genuine nor trustworthy. The show creators are much tougher on their own country than anywhere else. I initially breezed by ep5 and never noticed anything offensive. (To be fair, I'm originally from right outside of Philadelphia, where the fans are notorious for being ill-behaved. I'll grant that my bar must be a little skewed downward by that;)

There's no perfect country. Perhaps everyone should unclutch their pearls, remove the shuttlecock from their eyes, and take a wider-angle view of the issues here: What happens in ep5 is trivial compared to what actually goes on in sports.

Fans in Wembley Stadium have booed during other team's national anthems.

It's shocking to hear that fans in Spain have done monkey chants and thrown bananas at African players⁉️.

Sadly, fans in Philadelphia really did boo Santa and throw snowballs at him.

Suspicions were raised against the New England Patriots that they had listening devices planted in the away locker rooms. Peyton Manning would not discuss anything sensitive in the locker room at Gillette Stadium. Tony Dungee would not allow his players to have possession of their playbooks as anything left in their Boston hotel rooms was liable to end up with Belichick's staff prior to the game. There's other stories of away locker rooms with poor lighting, bad smells, no heat or the thermostat not working right, no hot water, etc etc. Are the outraged here even sports fans? If so, they would know that some fans can be rabid maniacs. Right or wrong, sports is a venue that fans utilize to vent their frustrations.

I've even seen reviewers sneering at badminton: They write that it is a poor concept for a show. Badminton happens to be quite popular in all of Asia. The competition is intense, with the shuttlecocks, or birdies, typically flying off the racket at speeds up to 250 mph. Speeds have been recorded as high as 267 mph. This makes it the fastest sport in the world. That shuttlecock would win its share of pro drag races at those speeds.

Most of the actors in this show are KIDS. They all delivered first rate performances. People are heartless to trash the WHOLE show into which these kids clearly put their whole hearts. Their efforts deserve praise. Kang Hoon-kim (Yong-tae) is particularly special. He is a scene stealer; a top-shelf talent. Tang Joon-sang, who plays Hae-kang, is also quite talented. He plays a boy with Aspergers in Move To Heaven, and the sweetest North Korean soldier ever, in Crash Landing On You {Don't miss that one, btw}. The parts are characters that are completely unique from each other, and he's convincing in these roles. Ahn Se-bin plays the coach's youngest daughter, age 5 or so. She steals every scene she's in, and she also teaches the elderly couple how to read. It's cuteness overload.

Finally, the whole show is cuteness overload. It couldn't be more adorable, and these kids could not be more precious. So give it a fair go and cheer these kids on; even if you are a Pats fan :) ;)

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