50FiftillidideeBrain

✒♥️Double Blind Taste Test♨️ °Good for romance junkies°

In the final analysis, BP is a typical Golden Corral spread in which a great chef snuck in and put out a few tasty small plates. Watch to be treated to some of the most romantic words a woman can hear: "What do this credit card & my love for you have in common? They both have no limit." Swoon away, ladies!

I'm irritated. This show is horribly cliche, yet I continued to watch it and like it, for the most part. They gave just enough to keep me going, while at the same time, they revealed how pathetically low my standards are. It really p!$$e$ me off. Going into ep4 I was almost embarrassed for myself. Basically, if you're not a romance junkie, don't watch this. It is not for you. For you romance fans, failings aside, this pair releases dopamine. That's what us junkies crave, and it's the only reason to stick with this formulaic, inconsistent show.

BP might be off-the-rack, but the leads are special. Let's meet them. Ahn Hyo Seop (A Time Called You, Dr. Romantic) is ML, Kang “Tae” Mu. His grandfather is the CEO. Grandpa feels responsible for his orphaned grandson. He wants him 💒married💍. He wants grandkids 👶🚼👶 GREAT-grandkids. Their due-dates are overdue. But Tae is very much an Iceman. He's cold and he doesn't know how to treat a lady. Kim Se Jeong (Uncanny counter S1-8.4 S2-4) is Sin Hari. She's like the girl next door, but she can put on a show, both IRL and also on the dining room table. She sings, she acts, and she cooks like a master. She has a spark and her voice has a throaty resonance that's pleasant to the ears.

Hari is, otherwise, a common girl from a common family. Her job is coming up with new recipes & food ideas as well as packaging innovations ~~> at Tae’s grandfather's company! She's excellent at what she does. What isn't so common about Hari is how she's 1-degree of separation from Kcountry's 1% by way of her rich BFF. Seol In Ah from Twinkling Watermelon & the fabulous Mr. Queen-9, in which she plays a demure lady of the court, portrays Jin Yeong “Seo”. Hari met this heiress-with-a-heart-of-gold at performing arts HS, which is plausible. Seo’s father wants her hitched, and he's been trying to fix her up in a business arranged 🤵👰. She ain't interested. Grandpa's got blind dates lined up for Tae. Dad has blind dates lined up for Seo. What dad don't know is that Seo NEVER goes on her own blind dates! Hari goes as Seo, because Hari is a superb actress, and she knows how to send those rich dweebs running for the hills.

Inevitability comes knocking. When Seo’s dad and Tae’s granddad arrange a date for the two of them, Hari only asks: “Who is it this time?” ‘Oh I don't know; just some schlep from some rich family. Just go take care of him for me, please!’ Seo's answer is something like that. When Hari's date… eh, I mean Seo's date, walks into the restaurant, Hari realizes it's the president of her company😳! Yes, she wore a wig and she looks outrageous, but he's likely to recognize her if he sees her at work. She'll have to make this one quick!💨 Sorry, Hari. This one's for life.

It isn't so much a Pride and Prejudice romance; it's a straight power flip. He's the all-cold, all-business dude with all the power. Her job is to repulse him when she poses as his blind date. After a short night out with her, he's /supposed/ to jump in his hot car and take off without a look back. Instead, though his reasons are murky and clearly driven by his subconscious, he latches onto Hari. For the date, she played a classless harpy with big hair, big jewelry, and big lungs. He was supposed to be horrified. He goes home thinking maybe she's the one! He wants to see her again. There's always a reason to use (see) her again. All she wants is escape. Step by step, he begins pursuit and she plots escape routes. She doesn't realize that he's already ceded power to her. He wants to date her so he can stop all the blind dates, he tells himself. When he learns she isn't Seo, she cops to being an actress and provides a fake name. Alright. Fine. She's an actress, not an heiress. We've all heard of play-dates: He offers to PAY her to DATE him. Her parents happen to need buckets of duckets, so she agrees.

At some point his greatest fear is how he's going to develop a real relationship with her. At the same time, her biggest fear is getting fired. Needless to say, they have a side dish of disconnect to go with their stew of fascination. The show is about taste, and Tae looks like he tastes good 🙄. Actually, they objectify him to the point where it is uncomfortable. It's almost a parody. As beautiful as Mr. Ahn is, the women steal the show. Their personalities and friendship are highlights. Seo is adorable.

The 2ndary couple get off to a front-and-center start, and their romance doesn't feel like an afterthought. Seo meets Tae’s secretary, Cha Seong Hun (Kim Min Gue from Queen: Love and War. He plays a lady killer in Because This is My First Life-7.7). She falls for him instantly and realizes who he is when she meets him again later. These 2 could have stood for more screen time, actually. There were some missed opportunities, and they actually had the groundwork for more episodes if they had let it breathe more.

The actors are not the reason BP has problems. They did fine. It's the dialogue, the directing, and half of the plot that suffers. True, Hari's spastic attempts to cover up her identity are annoying. Fortunately, it doesn't go on for even half of the show. Viewers might be able to relax more knowing this. Besides the boilerplate CEO-involved-with-the-girl-next-door, the show also tosses in other common-as-kimchi plot points. We see MSP (Missing or separated parent(s) and MSS, or mandatory separation syndrome, which is when a couple, once they get together, must separate. ('I love you! Finally, we're together! Now I'll catch you later...' Huh? It's overused). BP isn't bad, it should just be better. It's marshmallow frosting without cake. Plenty of worse shows have more substance, but shows like BP have their place, particularly if one needs to escape anxiety, not add to it.

Part of the story involves illegal taping of women via surreptitiously planted cameras. The penalties don't even rise to the level where they can put the perpetrator in jail! The women suffer trauma, not feeling easy anywhere they are for fear of being watched, yet the law does nothing to protect them. Women's rights are a hot-button topic in Asia because they are decades behind the West in those traditionally heavily patriarchal societies.

BP has its taste sensations. There's clever foreshadowing, foreboding statements that are true in a way other than expected, and other crafty connections. It's not devoid of quality elements. Somewhere around ep5&6, when he decides on his objective, it does get amusing. In ep9 we see some legendary drink making. After their first kiss, which is not in the usual context, there's shots of them lying in their respective beds, split-screen, touching their lips thinking about it. Together, their heads form a heart. It's nicely done. There are several comments about how their relationship mirrors one from a current TV drama about the daughter of chicken joint owners and her own boss. Perhaps the cutest bit is when he starts to resent her boss and the policies of the company she works for (her job is messing up his dating plans!). He never puts together that it's HIM and HIS company that's impeding on his love life.

If they really had wanted to have fun with it, he would have mischievously asked her to put that big-hair wig on again…


〰🖍 IMHO

🎬7 🖊〰6 🎭7.5 💓7.4 🦋7.8 🌞 7 🎨6.7 🎵/🔊7 😅6 😯3 😭3 🤔3 💤2.5 🔚7.6

Age + Language: @$$h0!e, f💣s. She plays the floozy who has names for some of her body parts. Cheating and promiscuity and getting a motel room / one night stands
are alluded to.

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

The screenwriters are Han Sul Hee (Ugly Miss Young Ae) & Hong Bo Hee (High Kick! The Revenge of the Short Legged) and the director is Park Seon Ho (Suspicious Partner).

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

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✒ ⚕️ The New Normal? °good°

Crazy, I'm crazy for feeling so lonely 〰 I'm crazy, crazy for feeling so blue 〽 Worry, why do I let myself worry ? ♻ ¿ Wondering what in the world did I do? 〰 I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying 〽 And crazy for loving you-ooo-oo
~Willie Nelson, as sung by Patsy Cline~

“We all stand on the border between normal and abnormal,” we hear. Normal. What is that, even? One thing that's typical is that, “In a lifetime, we will all experience some difficulties.”

Jung Da “Eun” is a person who loves. She cares. This cruel world isn't always kind to such fragility. One thing I've learned from hitting bottom - from complete and total failure to stay afloat - is that we all have our limit: Mind-over-matter cannot fix everything. We can't power-thru every problem. Each one of us is capable of crashing. DDOS serves as an elementary school primer for mental illness. That is not a criticism. The treatment is gentle and simple, but the facts are true. We see that all types of people, successful and floundering, well-off and poor, from intact families and broken backgrounds, all types of people can struggle with mental illness. Park Bo-Young (Oh My Ghost-10, Doom at Your Service, Strong Girl Bong-Soon) is Eun. I love her. She's legendary in OMG, and she's one of my favorites just from that show. Lee Jung-Eun from OMG is reunited with Park Bo-Young as Song Hyo-Jin. She's my favorite actress right now. Her part as a nurse manager is not a big challenge. She doesn't do much until ep10. It's wonderful to see her onscreen, regardless.

DDOS is a 2023 release that is rated 91 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 12 52-70 minute episodes. The opening credits, artwork and music are spot-on and properly set the mood. Jang Dong-Yoon (The Tale of Nokdu, My Man is Cupid-5.9) plays Song Yu-Chan, Eun's lifelong bff. This is the 1st effort for director Lee Jae-Kyu. Same for the writers: Lee Ra-Ha (webcomic), Lee Nam-Kyu, & Kim Da-Hee. DDOS is a drama that contains some romance, but romance is not the centerpiece. Even so, the primary romance is cute and the 2ndary one is sweet. Yeon Woo-Jin (Thirty Nine) plays Dong Go-Yun. I've only seen him as a recluse in My Shy Boss-6.5. In DDOS, he plays a wacko (in the funnest sort of way). It was great to watch him in such a different role ~ He's funny! Contrary to what one might think, he is NOT a patient. He's a doctor from the next unit over. He's an eccentric - a term used for functionally crazy people of means. Eccentric people often are such because they don't see the point in being fake to fit in with “normal” people. Eccentrics think that “normal” derives from one original and the sheeple who copy that original ~> y’all are nutz.

Nobody can recite the perfect formula or ratio, but a functioning society requires that we all hammer our individualism down to fit in with others. (Keep yourself and your domicile clean. Be polite. Don't lie, steal, or harm. Stop at the red light and go on green. Keep your word. Take your meds. Don't be too loud.) If we are too individualistic we create friction and strife. If we hammer ourselves down too much to fit in, though, we lose ourselves, usher in an oppressive system, and propagate phoniness & depression (Don't speak the truth as nobody can handle it. Don't wear/eat/like that, as people will think you're strange. Do this, don't do that. Join here. Hate those people. Vote this way. Don't disagree. Take your meds. Think this way.) There's not one thing normal about normal. It's often a means to bully others, “What we probably need right now is the courage to face down the hate directed at us. Yet our longing to be loved by others, our need for approval, they cause us to take the knives to our souls and carve out what we want others to see. That's the reason we are always enduring unhappiness and pain,” is one character‘s astute assessment. Gaslighting. Social anxiety. Paranoia. Toxic mothers. Bully bosses. Obsession. Compulsion. Obsessive-compulsiveness. Depression. Narcissism. Suicide. Most odd behavior is linked to pain. So how, then, should we live? Unselfishly, most of all. Authentically, next. And we should re-examine our presuppositions every few years. Remember, it's simply impossible to be human and to be correct about everything.

One patient wants to talk to the psych about obsessive knuckle cracking - it makes his knuckles large and that could “hurt others”. After a couple visits to discuss this weirdness, the doc has had it and cuts him off: “Large knuckles won't hurt anybody anyway!,” is doc's parting shot. Later we see how and why the doc was so tragically wrong. It's funny.

“Strange, isn't it? We always notice other people's flaws before our own flaws. When it comes to that, we're all blind.” Amen to that. They take a deep dive into the stigma around mental illness. The nurses comment about how many of them chose that field due to a sick loved one.
Eun is compassionate. That may make her slightly less efficient at her job, but does it really make her worse at it? She's providing care and encouragement to those who see very little of those human qualities. The mentally ill tend to experience public ignorance, intolerance, and isolation. “It's not that I like my child being called disabled,’ says one mom, “but that is the reality.” What is more difficult for a parent to go through than mental illness in their child? It's not only heartbreaking, but it's also emotionally and physically exhausting. It's Hell's roller coaster and the off-switch isn't working.

Sometimes, all that pain leads to suicide. They couldn't address mental illness without going /there/. A patient’s self-inflicted demise causes multiple ripples through the unit. One of the nurses is so heartbroken that she ends up being committed for depression in the fallout. She doesn't want to come back to work. ‘Can you not take a pulse now? Can you not set up an IV? If you can do your job, who cares what anyone thinks about you?’ Sometimes we want to quit because things didn't go the way we wanted. Well, welcome to the human race! The people who think things are going the way they want just haven't had their troubles yet. Nobody gets everything s/he wants.

The rest of the unit is in pain over the suicide, too. “Self-harm is really a cry for help. Some might want attention, while others have been pushed away so often by society that they start believing they deserve it,” a nurse opines. Cliches contain truth, but are often treated as final truths when they fall short of being so. One cliche that is not entirely false but still does nothing to bridge the gap between logic and emotions is that suicide is an act of cowardice, which clearly isn't entirely true, either. I don't believe that suicide is the answer to anybody's problems, but it is an act borne from unbearable pain. If one hasn't felt emotional pain so horrendous that one wishes s/he was never born, then perhaps, be slow to pronounce callous judgments (shut-up and count your blessings?). The whole unit reacts to the death of the patient, but each professional also handles it personally. “Dealing with death isn't something you can just get used to. It's sad every single time.” One new employee accused the lead doctor of not caring about the patient's demise and gets a talking to. Later we'll see that doctor, who supposedly doesn't care, taking some pills.

Pills. That seems to be what Western medicine is now reduced to. In my case, the pills nearly killed me. I had Serotonin Syndrome, and none of my doctors caught it - Not even when I was experiencing escalating seizures and losing my mind. Doctors don't seem to think in terms of bad drug reactions. Their answer for me was only, ever, MORE 💊. I am thankful to Redditers because they are the ones who put me on the path to recovery. Medication can be a life saver, but the ultimate recovery would be to get off the meds, if it can be done safely. Nearly dying from prescription medication has spurred me onto a journey of health. We have a plethora of chronic illnesses now that hardly existed a few decades ago. If you find yourself overcome with anxiety, depression, or any number of GI or autoimmune diseases, please consider, along with whatever else you are doing, going organic and eliminating sugar. Not only does sugar have highly addictive qualities (so they put it in everything) and zero nutritional benefits, but sugar and grains feed fungi that exist in our bodies, and these fungi can affect our emotional and GI health. This is why you'll hear “health nuts” constantly going on about gut-health. Serotonin receptors are in the gut, not the brain! For me, going off the meds was only part of my recovery. I had to clean out my whole system and it is an ongoing process. We joke about the warnings that accompany drug commercials and all the ingredients in our food that we cannot pronounce, but there is a dark side to this stuff that isn't funny - not one bit. Years before I knew I had a problem (I was on the medication that was slowly killing me for 10 years) I heard cardiologist Christopher Davis, a nationally recognized “Top Doc”, speak. He realized that the medical industry was generating lots of income, but not making anybody well. He now runs a clinic that focuses on the right food as the primary medicine and he's healing people. He's getting them off of the meds. I might not be completely sane, but he certainly is, and thankfully there's a growing number of functional medicine doctors with the same vision, who see themselves as more than a drug-pusher.

In all, shows like this are a public service. This subject is a heartbreaker, so with the remaining space, here's some jokes to lighten the mood.

☄I have generalized anxiety disorder, but it sucks because it affects me specifically.

☄They say mental illness runs in my family. But in my family, we’re all pretty lazy, so it just sort of meandered its way through the generations.

☄I don’t do drugs. I do therapy. Unfortunately, therapy isn’t as fun and it’s just as expensive.

☄I have bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety, disordered eating, and psychosis—which are more friends than I had in elementary school.

☄I never say I’m bipolar. I like to scream it at the top of my lungs while running around naked at the supermarket.

☄It makes perfect sense mental illness runs in my family. I’d run too if I had a family like mine.

☄The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your three best friends. If they’re OK, then it’s YOU.

☄My therapist told me that I over analyze everything. I explained to him that he only thinks this because of his unhappy relationship with his mother.

☄A question that always makes me hazy is, is it me or are the others crazy?

☄They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me!

☄I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth. She was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers and a bartender. (Rodney Dangerfield)

☄Hello, welcome to the mental health hotline.
If you have obsessive compulsive disorder, press 1 repeatedly.
If you are codependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you.
If you have multiple personality syndrome, press 3, 4, 5, and 6.
If you suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, we know who you are and what you want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call.
If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will be transferred to the mothership.
If you are hearing voices, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are manic depressive, it doesn't matter which button you press. No one will answer anyway.
If you are dyslexic, press 96969696969696.
If you have a nervous disorder, please fidget with the pound button until a representative comes on the line.
If you have amnesia, press 8 and state your name, address, phone number, date of birth, social security number, and your mother's and grandmother's maiden names.
If you have post traumatic stress disorder, slowly and carefully press 911.
If you have bi-polar disorder, please leave a message after the beep. Or before the beep. Or after the beep. Please wait for the beep.
If you have short term memory loss, please try you call again in a few minutes.
If you have low self esteem, please hang up. All our representatives are busy.


QUOTE📢

Happiness isn't complicated. Being free to do what you like, that's happiness.


〰🖍 IMHO

📣7.5 📝7 🎭8 💓6 🦋5 🎨7.5 🎵/🔊8 🔚8 ♦ 🌞7 ⚡3 😅3 😭6 😱3 😯4 😖2 🤔5 💤1

Age 11+With a caution about some infrequently scattered PG-13
Language: ($h!+, pr!(k, b!+ch) this is a gentle introduction to the issue of mental illness that reinforces compassion. To that end it is well suited for kids and adults. Rated TV-14


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

Modern Day:
Mad For Each Other 7.8 ~silly fun;
My Secret Romance 7 (if you ff thru overdone flashbacks);
A Witch's Love 7.8;
Love to Hate You 8.9;
Her Private Life 8;
Touch your heart 8.2;
Romance is a bonus book 7.9;
Oh My Ghost 10;
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9;
Love Struck in the City 7.3;
Hospital Playlist 9;
My Mister 9.5;
More Than Friends 8;
I'll See You When the Weather is Fine 9;
Something in the Rain 9

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✒ ⛔️ The Strong Don't Bark Nor Do They Howl‼️°8.7° °Outstanding°

Wanna git that adrenaline blazing through your system? Take a number and have a seat. ASFK's 8 eps appear to be in real-time, but for the many flashbacks that clue us in on what led up to “today,” and a brief stop to see the breaking dawn of the following morning. It's all what's happn’in now, and it appears that it's ALL happening now! Bombs, IEDs, pistols, machine guns, robots, drones, mines, poison gas, regular gas (just add match), slashing, kicking, punching, and, yes, biting.

Jian buried her uncle today. The after party is way more than she bargained for. While the beginning is piece-mealed together, from jump, ASFK is never boring. A sniper has targets in his sights. Two of them are just kids! One of the kids is Jung “Jian”. She's played by Kim Hye Joon from Kingdom-8.3 and Inspector Koo-8.4 where she's a tantalizing psycho. She's unrecognizable here. She spends the entire show in the same track suit and her hair is a mess, but she can be super cute. Jian clearly knows how to fight back. She jumps from the top of the refrigerator to the sofa. Under the sofa is a sniper rifle!

ASFK is a 2024 release that is rated 91 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 8 51-minute episodes. As I started episode 6, I was already sad that it was going to end soon. Another season has been confirmed for release in 2026, thankfully. Just relax and watch. Ep1 raises a barrage (here, “barrage” means a garage and several basements worth) of questions that won't be answered immediately.

While the timeline is uncertain as the show flips around from hour to hour, month to month, and year to year, Jian gets word that her uncle and only guardian is dead. Lee Dong Wook (Tale of the Nine-Tailed 1938) plays uncle Jung Jinman. I've only seen him in Touch Your Heart-8.2, which I loved. I haven't been able to check him out yet in the legendary Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, because I haven't gotten around to getting that Viki pass. Uncle.did.not.commit.suicide. No matter what the police say, that much Jian /knows/. Strange looking twins show up at his funeral. They look like dangerous men.

Locals are at one of the tables gossiping about the deceased. Did he really just sell commercial hoses online? One man says “I heard he used to head up the WASP agency.” Another one says that he heard Jinman was an anti-North spy for the NIS. The viewer has already had a glimpse of the guns and hyper-vigilance, so none of this is surprising. Jian is flustered: “I lived with him for 10 years. Yet I know nothing about him,” she realizes.

It's obvious that Uncle Jinman was not a simple guy. There's more to him than what we see on the surface, and ASFK will take us several layers beneath the surface. Jian had sensed something was off before, and she's now glimpsing uncle's bank balance, which can't be overlooked: Can someone make that kinda 💰 by merely selling hoses? It doesn't seem so. Hoses aren't in that much demand… are they?

One thing that's in plenty of demand is killin. Not many people out there can't think of 1 person they want dead. All that killing requires equipment and preparation. Uncle's Shop for Killers is a 1-stop operation. Uncle Jinman makes killin easy.

We meet young Jian in ep2. She's portrayed by Ahn Se Bin. I'm keeping an eye on this girl's career. She's fantastic. Starting as one of the orphans in Crash Landing on You-9.1, she nearly stole the show Racket Boys-8.3 when she hangs out with the elderly neighbors and teaches them how to read. It helps them get out of a shady deal. In Link: Eat, Love, Kill-6.7 she has a small but very important part as the ML's sister. The whole show revolves around the fact that her character went missing. Once again, she steals the show in The First Responders-7.8 S2, opposite of Kim Rae Won. She is a mega-talent.

Geum Hae Na (A Man's True Colors, The Boy From Nowhere) portrays So Min Hye… I sorta wanna be her. She's so bad@$$, and she looks bad@$$ while she's doing it. When the bad guys learn she's there, they pause the entire operation to negotiate for more money. She shines brighter with each episode. Seo Hyeon Woo (Uncle Samsik-8.4, Flower of Evil-8.9) plays the sleazy Lee Seong Jo. He's totally vile. Wow, long hair is his best look - by far. He tells all his victims to obtain enlightenment. He, himself, is “en-lightened” before the end. He's not the worst of the bad guys. That would be Bale (Jo Han Sun from Hot Stove League & Midnight Thriller). He's a psychopath serial killer type. The great Park Gwang Jae makes an appearance as the funeral bus driver in eps1&8. He's good in everything, like Moving-8.5, Revenge of Others-8.1, Big Mouth-7.4, Flower of Evil-8.9, Kingdom-8.3, & 100 Days My Prince-5.5. As for screenwriters, one is Ji Ho Jin of Newtopia, and Lee Kwon (Shut Up: Flower Boy Band) is the other screenwriter & the director:

There's an amusing sequence in which they have to vacate the home while it is being redone. Jian asks hopefully: “Where will we be staying?” “Jirisan Mountain.” As soon as she logs in the answer, she takes notice of the camping equipment he's gathered in front of him. Hopes are dashed. The next scene is the two of them alone in the dark and cold. His leg is injured and he's in danger of succumbing to hypothermia. She starts complaining. (Why didn't we just go to a hotel? Etc). Sure, who wouldn't feel that way? But her words, tone, and attitude made things worse. Her uncle says: “When you are in a difficult situation, instead of arguing over right and wrong, it's important to find a way to solve the problem and overcome the situation.” I've been thinking about how the phrase, ‘Timing in life is Everything’, is profoundly true. I've never had a good sense of timing. The time to Monday-morning-QB is after the crisis is over, not in the middle of it. Jian chose to feed her own emotional satisfaction at the expense of her uncle's. That brand of complaining is actually cannibalistic.

After some backstory we get back to the day at hand in ep3 - Jian is in the middle of the longest day of her life. Professional killers keep coming in droves just to wipe her off the map. That house redo? It's bulletproof, it's booby trapped, and there's lots of places to hide. Apparently the house is five times as big underground as it is above the surface. The bad guys keep coming. Uncle clearly made some nasty, very motivated enemies. They may get rid of one wave but then a new wave arrives with more weapons, more power, more men, and more technology. At some point Jian is warned: Bael is coming. He's the guy who killed her parents.

Most episodes have flashbacks so that we continue to examine the atypical way that this girl was raised. In a world of murderers, whom can one rely on? She runs into that problem pretty early on. “It's not about right and wrong, but who's strongest… The week must know their place and Choose Wisely” The biggest problem for Jian, with Unc gone, is knowing whom to trust. There's scenes where two other people in the room are each telling her not to trust the other one. It's a shady world and perhaps no one is trustworthy. In every dilemma, she recalls something her uncle told her that helps her. He's still guiding her way, even when he's not there.

By now, funerals are some kind of trigger for Jian. They always end in disaster and then yield way to a new life. In flashback we see Jian when she was little at her grandmother's funeral. Her uncle takes her home and they have a talk in the dark. It's a very creepy scene. On TV a lion is being eaten by cheetahs. They talk about death and how they won't see Grandma anymore. She says “death sucks”. He agrees but tells her to not fear death. The room is dark, death is all around, his voice is low and sultry but much like a typical movie-demon voice, while trepidatious piano music is playing in the background. “Don't be scared. Whatever makes you scared, keep your eyes open and face it,” uncle tells a tween-aged Jian. While this was going on, her parents were being murdered at the funeral home. Her uncle's going to be her guardian from now on.

When they get to his place (and a lot happens before they managed to actually get there) she trips and drops all of her things. She stays on the ground and looks at him. He's opening the door. He turns, and there's a long pause as he studies her. ‘I'm not your parent. No will I ever be. Therefore, I won't be able to do the things for you that they did.’ He turns back and enters the house. She's on the ground with all her worldly belongings scattered around her.

Everything that happened from the death of her grandmother until she arrived at her uncle's house was too much for a little girl. She develops aphasia (a language disorder that affects the ability to communicate. It can impact speaking, understanding, reading, and writing). Jian stops talking. This leads to bullying at school. There's an amusing sequence where they are cutting between a parent-teacher conference and their home life. The teacher asks uncle if he's helping her with her aphasia? We then watch them live out their lives without speaking a word. When she needed money she put a note on the fridge. Later, money appeared under the magnet. What hurts, though, is that kids are not kind to someone who's different. She's bullied cruelly at school. When the teacher brings that up at the conference, Uncle says he believes she needs to work it out on her own. It isn't long before Jian and her uncle are conversing.

They don't neglect the plot, dialogue, or character development, but primarily, ASFK is an action-packed ride with many thrilling elements. There's intense action in every episode. The dog robot is baaaad and scary! Supersonic sound weapons! Booyah! There's cool action before ep5, but towards the end of the episode it's leveled up even more. Totally super-charged. Ep6 continues ratcheting up the adrenaline. It's extra caffeinated.

The story is told cyclically. It starts in the current day, goes to the past, back to the current day, and then it goes further back in the past. The day of Grandma's funeral bookends episodes 1 & 7. Ep8 is not the end; it begins a new day. Jian's small band of allies is pretty beat up, but unlike most of the assailants, they are alive. Bael's alive, too. He really shouldn't be. It looks like S2 will continue his story and hopefully it will conclude it.



QUOTES🗣

There are always blind spots.

Only the weak bark.

We must take responsibility for everything we do.


IMHO〰🖍

📣8.7 📝8.5 🎭8.7 🎨8.5 🎵/🔊7 🔚? 🤗7 ▪ 🌞4⚡8.5 😅2 😭6 😱5 😯5 🤢6 🤔5 💤0


Age18 + violence. Dismemberment. Scary elements. Violence against women and children
Language: R-rated w/ F💣💣, b!+ch, $h!+. Rated: 18+ Restricted (violence & profanity)


Re-📺? booyah!



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

⚡/🚀 -
Flex X Cop-8.5, Love to Hate You-8.9,

Missing: The Other Side-8.3,
When the Camellia Blooms-8,
Uncanny counter season-1 only °S1-8.4 S2-4,
Vagabond-8, It's Okay Not To Be Okay-9,
Moving-8.5,
Why Her?-8, The First Responders-7.8,

Sisyphus 8 (give it 2 episodes, ep1 is confusing),
Tunnel 8.5, Itaewon Class-8.7,
Train to Busan-7.8,

The Cursed 8.3,
Flower of Evil 8.9,
Awaken-8.7,
The Man from Nowhere 8.9,
Beyond Evil-7.4,
Blood Free-8.5, D.P.-8.4,
The Wailing-8.8,
Black 9,
Sweet Home 8.4
Oldboy-9,


〰 Hulu Catalog 〰

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

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✒Mello Yello Pop ⭐ Lo Fizz °6.8° °Sweet But No Tang°

SIMTAF happens after a clash between a reporter and a pop superstar that ends with her getting fired. Next, she seeks retribution - through social media and VERY public demonstrations. The whole spectacle was on display for rabid fandom to devour. What usually follows a spectacle these days? The reality show. The pop star will marry his anti-fan. He quips: ‘Anti-fans are fans in a way after all, aren't they?’

Proximity Alert! The best way to overcome prejudices is through exposure, or proximity. The more we're around somebody, the more we'll see them for who they are instead of what we chose to believe before we knew the person better. (As an aside, color is one of the first things we don't see anymore once we get used to being around a person. There's a few things that are less important than the shade of someone's skin). The more we're around somebody, the more their looks change based on their inner beauty whether for the better or worse.

That's the set up. He's basically a decent guy who's gotten a tad spoiled from being a star. She's an aggressive, intelligent reporter who is the opposite of spoiled. They detest e/o. Thus the show promises us some 💥-sparks-Tension-🔥-PASSION, but we get very little of that. They start with the marriage, which is a sham. She gives him a good scare as she peels out in the convertible: The show creators, thus, reiterated their promise (FIB) that 🎆fireworks🎇 are to follow.. and… there's almost none💢. It's really perplexing as to why they didn't show them bickering while filming their show. That would have been so much more fun. The 1st episode is disjointed, sloppy, and unfocused. It lags. What they ended up with is close to glorified time-killer.

Thank the stars, they cast,actress Choi Soo Young as the FL “Geun” Young. She is special. They mostly squandered her talent. She stole the show, Run On-7, as half of the 2ndary romance. They tossed in the MSP trope (Missing or separated parent(s) which doesn't do much to enhance the plot. The show borders on bland, but it has its moments. The leads are competent and likable, while the writing is insightful in places, and those serve to guard against total floppage.

Choi Tae Joon (Suspicious Partner, Ugly Alert) portrays ML, Hoo Joon. Hwang Chan Sung (True to Love, What's Wrong with Secretary Kim-6.8, My Holo Love-6.8) is JJ / Choi Jae Joon. Han Ji An (Oh Seonam Girls High School Investigators, The Vanished) is In Hyung. Her character drags the series down a peg but she ends up providing some of its greatest depths. True, I hate the look on that girl's face. She's trying to make her singing career work and it's not going well. As her character is under tremendous stress, she holds her mouth tightly and always looks anxious. She's so stiff that it seems as if she has a neck and shoulder injury. She skulks with her shoulders drooped and her head downcast, looking a bit like a chipmunk that's about to barf. It was difficult to watch. She seems to see herself as a powerless victim and is so caught up in her trauma that she isn't once engaging, relatable, or sympathetic. I felt uneasy every time she was onscreen. She gave us a gift, in the end, though: In Hyung concludes that while she's dreamed of being loved by many people, she realizes that she's not a person that knows how to give or receive love. Few people can turn their gaze from one of self-absorption to true introspection and reach that level of internal honesty.

It seems like SIMTAF was shot as a reality show. There's nothing slick or smooth at all. There's little soundtrack, even though we're following the music industry. It's nearly lifeless at times. Geun is always beautiful, but some of her outfits are atrocious.

Yet, there are worthy themes. "In real life we all cover ourselves with prideful wrapping paper." His pride. Her prejudice. They need to crumble. One of the friends is full of hatred and bitterness over a past event which he seems to have misunderstood, to a certain extent. Things became worse over the years, not better, because his anger couldn't be mollified. It hardened into bitterness. He let a person live rent-free in his head for years! That's the same as enslaving oneself, so don't let that happen. How lying isolates us in the middle of the wilderness is another theme. “I came a long way on wings made of lies. But I realized I had nowhere to return to on wings of lies. Whether they are exposed or not, at some point our lies run their course. We who are fortunate reach our dead-ends with enough time left to do some good.” That quote is more profound every time I read it.

To the final shot, though, this could have been tighter, neater, funnier, fit together better, and it could have had a better flow. It could have been alot better, yet it still wasn't bad. As I write this I'm trying to decide if this show is worth watching at all? I'm wondering if I should have abandoned it. This might be worth watching for their first kiss. It's well above average - an 8, minimum. They think no one is watching, and nobody was, but the cameraman left the camera rolling. They are so exposed, snagged, ~oh snap~ Well, lookie here. The fans are going to lose their minds!


QUOTES🗣️

Things that don't fit always become a problem.

You have to tell seven lies to make one lie work.


〰🖍 IMHO

🎬6 🖊️〰6 🎭 7.3 💓68 🦋7 🌞7 🎨65⚡4 🎵/🔊73 😅45 🥺35 😭35 🤔64 💤5 🔚74


Age 12+

Re-📺? pass


It's the we've-been-forced-to-live-together trope! Similar offerings:

My First First Love-8,
A Witch's Love 7.8;
Playful Kiss-7.3,
My Roommate Is a Gumiho-7.9,
Crash Landing On You 9.1;
Oh My Ghost 10;
Mr. Queen 8.5;
Romance is a bonus book-7.9,
Hotel del Luna-8.4,
Because This Is My First Life-7.7,
The Bride of Habaek-7,
That Winter, The Wind Blows-7,

🇯🇵Mischievous Kiss Love in Tokyo-7.8

🇨🇳Well-Intended Love-7.5 19 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine,
Love Between Fairy & Devil 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sword and the Brocade 8.6 - arranged marriage loosely fits in this category

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✒Low Spark ⭐ Lite Static °6.4° °Good° Tween Alert❕

When You Wish Upon a Star ✨ it can cause quite a JO⚡T.

Son Ha Neul (Nam Bo Ra from Lovers in Bloom) works part-time to get by. She's running on fumes as the show opens. One of her jobs is on the set of a music video. On a much needed break, she's among the trees getting some alone time when Yoon Ga On, the rude, dismissive star (Na In Woo from Marry My Husband-7.5) shows up in the same area. He wants to know if it is she who's been leaking photos to the paparazzi? As she's skulking in the woods, she seems guilty!

Ha Neul begins telling him /what💢not/ when a bright light appears in the sky 🌠. They're both knocked out. The next morning, his hands are shooting off electrical charges whenever he comes close to something that is the least bit electrical (that would include people). He cannot touch nearly anything, it seems. One thing leads to another and he soon learns that she'll negate the charge. In order to get ready for his concert (and the big new song he's been laboring over for release at the event), he'll have to keep her with him at all times. Apparently, gloves won't work for this job - just accept it.

Spark is just like those after school specials that were popular in the 1970s. Sometimes this is exactly what tweens and young teens need to see. The romance is simple and sweet; everything works out ~just so~ in the end. Best friends remain friends and even the mean-girl is sorry for what she did. There's little drama, virtually no conflict, and the effect is sugary. It will simplify the 🌎 for a short amount of time.

Overall, this is an innocent, conflict-free romance between two simplified human beings. He's the star who is lonely among friends. She's the purehearted girl who feels like home to him. Other characters include her best friend, the manager, and the horrible rival star. The acting is solid, and the female lead manages some nice moments. In her many close-ups she displays expressions that are evidence of above average acting skills, so I'm looking forward to seeing more of her.

He's the electricity and she's the ground. Their powers and personalities match perfectly in more ways than one. She reduces the static in his life. The whole show is low static. This is a short series consisting of 12 episodes, each with an actual running time of around 12 minutes. That's shorter than Avengers Endgame. It's also short on logic. He should only need to wear gloves to manage his issues, but the viewer has to accept that she's necessary to him. Logical gaps and inconsistencies are near unavoidable in a sci-fi fantasy piece, and the more one can roll with it, the more likely s/he is to enjoy the show. Everybody has their tolerance limit, however. Spark’s illogic relegates it to tween level. So, for tweens wishing to kill some time, this Spark is a quick recharge.


〰🖍 IMHO

🎬65 🖊〰62 🎭73 💓65 🦋68 🌞 77 🎨65 🎵/🔊 80 😅20 😭30 🤔35 💤25 🔚77

Age 10+ Tween appropriate/targeted audience

Re-📺? 🔴 unlikely

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

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✒ ✋️Hands of Compassion Join ✋️✋️ of Healing °6.3° °12 eps stretched into 16°

She sheds lots of tears. She's probably crying right now. Baek Dong “Joo” is going to give /her/ some relief. Just because she's dead doesn't mean she doesn't have feelings!

Joo is a weird woman. We've all heard of deathbed confessions, but she can hear embalming room last requests. She can speak to the dead. Only in the funeral parlor. Only when it's only Joo with the deceased. Only for a few minutes, and that's only long enough to hear last pleas. In ep1 we see a newly deceased Uber driver beg her to find his son whom he abandoned years (decades) ago.

Joo works with Im Il Seop (In Ho Tae from Misaeng-9.1) as a funeral director. Lee Jun Young, w/ the pinch-able round cheeks.(Melo Movie, Class of Lies) portrays Kim “Tae” Hui. He works at an errand service. One day it's his errand to break up with Joo in place of her actual BF, who hired him to do so. “I no longer want to hold your 🤚 because of what you do with your 👐,” he must say to her on behalf of his client. So, /these/ are the things this guy does for 💰? Joo has a few choice words about what Tae does for a living. After the breakup, she hands some cash to him, tells him to report back to the client that /she's/ breaking up with /that jerk/, NOT the other way around. Then she /kicks/ him. No fair! Tae just works here!

Life hasn't been fair. His little brother died years ago, and his family, career, and life “died” then, too. As it turns out, the little brother ties together several characters in the show. Tae's running an errand to the funeral parlor mere hours later. As he enters (limps) in, there's the woman who kicked him, and it still hurts. Ep2 is a string of fateful encounters. They run into e/o any handful of times. He even meets her dad, unawares, at the columbarium. He gets along well with dad, but Tae does not like Joo. Joo isn't impressed with Tae, either.

MIHY is a 20022 release that is rated 89 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 16 70-minute episodes. Director Shim So Yeon brought us Welcome 2 Life, and screenwriter Lee Seon Hye also penned 20th Century Boy and Girl. MIHY is sweet, often cute, and totally forgettable.

‘Stop following me!’ ‘No, you're the one who's following me!’ The fateful encounters don't stop. He's in an errand business. She's a mortician who is getting last requests from departed souls. They're sending her on errands, and he's hired by many families to help clean up after deaths. Consequently, she's been getting in the way of his work so badly that it looks like the complaints she's generated will put his company under, once and for all. But then he finds the check that she told him to look for. He hands it to the disgruntled bereaved, and exits the job, triumphant. As they say in Forrest Gump, now “shrimping is easy”. Once the general public hears about how Tae recovered and handed over a cashier's check for a whopping sum, *everyone* wants to hire him. Now, the jobs are stacked up, and running errands is a breeze.

In spite of it all, the more he sees her, the more he dislikes her.

Lee Hye Ri from Reply 1988-8.6 is our FL. They found a child (Lee Dam) who looks quite a bit like her to play her when she was young. Weirdly, “Lee Dam” was the name of the character Lee Hye Ri played in My Roommate Is a Gumiho-7.9. Ms Lee looks better with black hair, not the brown she's sporting here. Long ago dubbed the nation's “little sister“ she's that everyday girl… if the everyday girl manages to be cute, spunky, pretty, funny, winsome, independent, and appealing, all at once. She has a way of appearing capable, but also in need of assistance. She also has a way of looking a tad bored and unhappy, yet she still makes the viewer smile. She's a charmer.

Song Deok Ho from Link: Eat, Love, Kill-6.7 & Smoke is a local beat cop who falls for Joo instantly. Lee Kyu Han (She Would Never Know-7.3, The Judge from Hell-4.5) plays “Vincent-seeing-other-people-have-fun-makes-me-jealous,” who is Tae’s cousin and boss, Lee Hyang Bok. He's in a perpetual state of distress, especially when the company isn't doing well. Even when the company is doing well, he has to deal with his always-yelling, never-satisfied mother.

Many people react negatively to what Joo does for a living. She hasn't told her father about it. He thinks she's studying for the Civil Service exam. The lies mount up because of that 1 lie. Dad begins to get suspicious. “If you don't do what you want and keep what you want to say inside, it'll end up causing stress… That's the source of all disease… be honest with (loved ones) about everything; there's supposed to be no secrets between two people that love each other. Once you start hiding tiny things from each other, you have a hard time seeing that person because of guilt.” He says that in hopes that she'll open up. Speaking of guilt, we see 1 character smile slightly when he erases evidence. He won't smile again. Not during the course of the show. Not for years. The weight of guilt… well, it /weighs/ on him.

Joo must endure the dead pleading with her to live again, or for this favor or that favor, but she's rarely able to fulfill more than one simple request. There's no time to handle anything more. The first person she attends to whom she knew in life is her friend's grandmother. Joo considered her a grandma as well. In that scene, Joo is the one crying & pleading with Granny to stay. Kim Young Ok (Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha-8.2, Dear My Friends) plays grandma. This actress is so cute. Her earliest credited work is from 1957. She's almost 90 and she looks like she's in her 70s.

In one scene, a woman who was murdered when she was about to give birth pleads with Joo to save her baby. But she and the baby in her womb already perished. All Joo can do is endure it. Consequently, when that pregnant woman was begging, Joo is holding her, trying her best to console her, & Tae is delivering something. He walks in on them. When he enters the room, the beautiful surroundings that appear for the awakened deceased dissipate, and we're back in the cold, industrial embalming room with the departed no longer talking, but back to being a body. All Tae sees is Joo doing something very weird with the body. He really can't stand her. She tries to explain to him that she can talk to the dead, but he's only more scandalized by her odd behavior.

When Joo relays information that helps Tae prevent a suicide, he starts to soften his stance on her. Then he really softens on her. That begins to harden into positive feelings for her. He asks her out for a drink one night and… they are still together the next morning. Nothing happened, except the connection deepened. After several random encounters Dad & Tae become friends - Dad (played by Park Soo Young from My Mister-9.5 & Children of Nobody) makes friends with everybody. In one of those encounters, dad shows him a picture of his “beautiful daughter" and Tae realizes it's the woman that he'd been spatting with. That was before. Now they're starting to spend quite a bit of time together.

“I don't want to die.” Joo has to speak to a little girl who died when her mother committed a murder suicide. It's an act borne of misplaced views on parental love and protection. Parents who kill children because they intend to commit suicide see the children as property, not an individual human being, says the newscaster when reporting on the incident. “I want to live. Please let me live.” “I want to try dyeing my hair, fly on an airplane, have a boyfriend… drink boba tea one more time. I have so many things I want to do. I don't care if I'm poor. I don't care if I'm hungry. Please save me,” begs the child. Some of the conversations Joo has are agonizing. She wonders if what she's doing means anything. Is she helping?

When Joo needs to talk, she hits up father. Father Michael, that is - he's her uncle. Oh Dae Hwan (Life on Mars, Defendant,,Live Up to Your Name-7.6) is the priest. He has a very nice presence about him. He turns out to be old friends with Vincent - yet another connection.

MIHY is a hope injection. Accepting death, managing regrets and living on is the theme. Are we supposed to derive comfort from what the deceased say and request? I think so, and it's not too hard to guess how most deceased would see things. MIHY is more a commentary on death and loss than a romance, but romance is the vehicle that drives the commentary. It surfaces that Tae’s past was not a smooth road. He was in medical school, he had a girlfriend, and now it's obvious that she's not over him. Just as these two leads start to become interested in e/o, Tae’s ex tries to make moves. The local beat cop makes moves on Joo, too. Joo wants to back off when she sees Tae’s ex come back into his life. Yet, she /doesn't/ want to back off, so she just looks very uncomfortable whenever his ex is around. It's pretty much the same with Tae & the cop. At the same time, Joo's friend is falling for her immediate supervisor, In Ho, so love is in the air. (The secondary romance had the potential to boost the show up, but they treated it like a throwaway thing). Regardless of outside interference, Tae & Joo go together like ping and pong. Their relationship is sweet and cozy.

For most of its run, MIHY feels like a quiet space. This duo is comfortable. This is my 3rd look at Lee Hye Ri, and I must bow to her capabilities. For a tiny little thing, she's like a big comfy sofa. She's got that you're-home-now-everything-is-okay vibe mastered. Unfortunately, in the end MIHY didn't build up to anything and then it fizzled away. There is much to like about this show, but when the time came for the big reveal and wrap up, they lost me: It's cobbled together badly, it's half-hearted, and it's wholly depressing. The bad guy's actions and motivations don't make sense, and he's supposedly smart. It's written weakly. This is probably the furthest into the episode count that a show lost me. They don't have enough content for 16 episodes, though they don't run into serious trouble until the last couple. The intangibles can be hard to define, but just like the dead can't cross the threshold of the exit from the embalming room, MIHY can't cross the threshold from avg to good. It's sad.

On the + side, MIHY does the opposite of cheapening life. It reinforces that every life is precious and we have obligations to e/o. It wraps up nicely with a moving explanation of why and how this happened to Joo and why she and Tae are so very perfect for e/o. It isn't the worst, nor is it the best. It will kill some time.


QUOTES🗣

Success is the mother of failure.

Everything's an excuse.


IMHO〰🖍

📣6.5 📝6 🎭7.6 💓6 🦋4 🎨6.5 🎵/🔊7 🔚7 🤗2.5 ▪ 🌞6⚡4.5 😅2 😭5 😱3 😯2 🤢3 🤔3.5 💤1.5

Shazams: Goodbye My Friend, by JAMIE

Age 14+ Language: b!+ch, F💣s - all in the first 20 minutes or so. Then, not much, but it seems like every episode has some R-rated language. Scary elements not suitable for younger children. Rated: 15+


Re-📺? This is fine to watch once, but I'm not in a hurry to circle back.



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

Crazy Love-7.8,
Racket Boys-8.3,
Mad For Each Other-7.7 ~ silly fun,
Mystic Pop-up Bar-8.2,
The Legend of the Blue Sea-7.2 (But for eps 20 &21 it's an 8+),
My Roommate Is a Gumiho-7.9,
Reply 1988-8.6,
Oh My Venus-7.4K,
Love to Hate You 8.9,
Oh My Ghost 10,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Love Struck in the City 7.3,
Hotel del Luna-8.4,
Uncanny counter S1 only °S1-8.4 S2-4,
Be Melodramatic-8.7,
The Golden Spoon-8.1,
Because This Is My First Life-7.7,
Move To Heaven-8.4,
Misaeng-9.1,
Missing: The Other Side-8.3,
Hospital Playlist 9 (give it 3 episodes to get warmed up),
Itaewon Class-8.9,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,
SKY Castle-9,
My Mister 9.5,
Wonderful World-7.8,
Parasite-9,
Mother-8.8
The Wailing-8.8,


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


Consider a Chinese 🎎/🔮 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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✒ ☀ A Warm Family is Wealth ♨️ °8.6° °Excellent°

Ahh, the 80s. Even without the internet men learned to wear pink. Ice sculptures were mainstreamed. No PCs existed, let alone laptops or tablets, but Trapper Keepers were cool. Cameras were a family treasure. Weather forecasts were much more unreliable. Business was booming. The opposite sex was a complete mystery.

R88 is a 2015 release that is rated 91 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 20 episodes ranging from 76-113 minutes. That makes it as long as a Cdrama.

Stresses always mount, no matter the era: Siblings, their stuff, & borrowing it, money, love lives, getting into college, dreams, money, singing contests, new Western style restaurants, money, money, MONEY!… Money isn't the only pressure. School, studying, grades, protests, jobs, counterfeit designer goods, dating, international Go tournaments, THE OLYMPICS! Even food … “In some ways, one's own family is most oblivious… But what's so important about knowing? In the end, what helps you overcome obstacles isn't brains, but someone who will take your hand and won't let you go,” we hear. To live is to experience problems. Problems aren't so bad when we have people close who face them with us.

Director Shin Won-Ho has directed Prison Playbook-8.4, Hospital Playlist-9, and the Reply series, all of which are extremely popular. (HP starts alittle slowly. Give it to ep3. It's exceptional). The writer is Lee Woo-Jung, who wrote HP and the Reply series. The characters in R88 are likable - downright lovable, actually. These actors have gone on to wide scale popularity.

Hyeri (My Roommate Is A Gumiho-7.9, May I Help You-6.3) is Duk-Sun. “Kids these days only know the quadratic formula, not life. You don't know either,” her friend remarks. She's not the best student, but she's the type to bring people together. She's the show's serotonin factory. I almost teared-up in ep1 when she had her moment. In Duk-Sun's family we have sis, Sung Bo-Ra, played by Ryoo Hye-Young. She is one of the leads in Law School-8. It's an amazing transformation from one part to the other. Their brother, No-eul, is the youngest, even though he looks 20 years older. He doesn't sound like it when he talks, but his singing voice is wonderful. Sung Dong Il is Deok Sun's father. With credits going back to 1993, he gets alot of work. My first look at him was the show Sisyphus-8 and I became an instant fan. Lee Il Hwa (The King's Affection-8.3, Lie After Lie) is Deok Sun's mother.

Ryoo Joon-Yeol (Lost, The Night Owl, Alienoid) is Jung-Hwan. Duk-Sun treats him like the last man on earth she would fall for. Ahn Jae Hong (Be Melodramatic-8.7) plays his brother, the obsessive Kim Jung Bong. He is delightful. The more he's on screen the more I love him. Ra Mi-Ra (Black Dog-8.2, The Good Bad Mother) plays their mother, the ”Cheetah Lady” Kim Jung Bong & Jung-Hwan's mom. She can sing and dance! Kiim Sung Kyun portrays that family's dad. He's happy and harmless. Married to Ra Mi-Ra, he's terrified of her. This actor is wonderful in Moving-8.5 & DP-8.4.

Ko Kyoung-Pyo (Flower Boys Next Door-7, Strongest Deliveryman-6.6, Private Lives-8.1) is Sun-Woo. This guy is darling. Kim Sun Yong is Sun Woo's mother. I'm a big fan of hers. She's fabulous in Crash Landing on You-9.1 and Her PrivateLife-8.

Taek is played by Park Bo-Gum, who is a good looking guy. Taek is a dork. He didn't finish school because he plays Go. ALL he does is play Go. He wins, too. Just ask any Japanese or Chinese citizen. They ALL know him. They can't beat him. He needs looking after, though. He would starve if nobody fed him. One can tell he's handsome, but he bears little resemblance to the gorgeous ML in Record of Youth-5.8, where Mr. Park plays a handsome actor/model and is clearly the reason ROY is overrated. He's a cutie; it's understandable. Choi Moo Sung is Taek's father. He is wonderful in Prison Playbook-8.4 and also appears in Stranger S2 & The Nokdu Flower. He can play a bad guy, but he's super-lovable as a good guy.

Lee Dong-Hwi is Dong-Ryong. All he craves is the home life that the others have, but his parents are stern, impersonal, and successful. They're /never/ home. He never gets a home cooked meal. His parents never notice what he's doing or even when he's not there. He doesn't even refer to them as mom and dad, he only refers to them by their professional titles: Chief Jo and the Dean. (BTW, the Dean blows his image when he starts dancing). At one point Dong-Ryong gets a case of piles. I have to look that up; it's just hemorrhoids. What's truly shocking is that it made the paper! The paper was a BIG deal back then. People actually read it. Dong-Ryongcan can sing respectably, too ~ Well enough to win the singing contest, perhaps? Not telling. Yoo Jae Myung plays Dong Ryong's father. I've seen him in Itaewon Class-8.9, Uncle Samsik-8.4, and am currently watching him in Vincenzo. He's different in everything, and he's absolutely superb. His part here is small; it's almost wasted.

R88 is about nostalgia and the warmth of a good family and caring neighborhood. Only one family has some extra w💰n, but even without money, life gets no better. It's time to watch Knight Rider together! Beepers! (I'm proud to say I never had one). They kill time with Cats-in-the-cradle (the string and fingers variety) board games, origami, games played with pen and paper…. There's no phones and video games are strictly at arcades. Speaking of life without cell phones, 2 people arrange to meet on a date. They wait all night on different floors at the same restaurant. They never find out because they can't text e/o.

The dad's work and the moms tend to the home (except chief Jo). When one mom has to visit her family, the 3 men in the house devolve into neanderthals the moment she exits. How they got the place back in shape in time is a harrowing tale and practically a near-death experience.

They make fun of the Korean penchant for keeping the score “even.” One mom needs rice for dinner and sends her kid to get it from a neighbor with some food as thanks. The neighbor sends back kimchi with the rice and this starts the kids on countless food exchanges before dinner. The viewer can't be certain they will even get to eat! Problem solved. They decide to go eat together on the street.

First Comes Family. Then Comes Love. The most crucial decisions kids face are choices of mate and profession. “If you love someone, tell them now, before your fleeting days become filled with regrets,” is the sage advice. One party will hesitate and be out maneuvered by a more determined and proficient strategist. Consequently, we see some truly great kissing in ep19.

They outdid themselves with retro colors, wardrobe, and hairstyles. The kids are RAD, but the moms look like the 1950s. One day they make the best snowman ever! The unreliable weather forecasts play a hand in that episode. Looks like ttey borrowed a motif from Superbad-2007 in ep11. One of the dads does a living room dance that's hilarious. It's pretty good, actually. 🥁“Soonguri dang dang, soong dang dang…”🥁 Woo Hyeon has a cameo. It's a knee-slapper.

The edge of seventeen: Ep17 is the heartbreak episode. Many get their hearts stomped, but ep19 is great, and the wrap-up is wonderful. I took my time working through the show. At first, the sheer length of it was slightly daunting and it took a few episodes for me to decide how much I liked it. Well, I like it. I like it alot. There's really no weaknesses; it's pretty rare for a show, especially a long one, to have nothing to complain about. We'll let the teenagers do all the complaining while the audience can just sit back and enjoy the show.


QUOTES📢

When people get stronger, it's not through their pride, but when they throw away their pride.

Loving someone doesn't mean that you don't hate them, it means that you can't hate them.

Don't act thoughtlessly. A real man should conduct himself calmly, with prudence like a grand mountain.



〰🖍 IMHO

📣8.5 📝8.5 🎭9 💓7 🦋6 🎨6 🎵/🔊7.5 🔚8 ♦ 🌞7 ⚡3 😅5 😭4 😱2 😯2 😖1 🤔4.5 💤0

Shazams: Even If a Memorable Day Comes by Sughum Hong & Lovers Who Struggle by Shin Hae Chul are both good.

Age 12+ for language- B!+ch, @$$, $h!+, f💣s - multiple, but in just 2 scenes. Rated TV-15+

Re-📺? 🆒

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

Boys Over Flowers 8 ~ melodrama to the max;
Strongest Delivery Man-6.6,
The Miracle-7.7,
Racket Boys-8.3,
Private Lives 8.1;
Familiar Wife-8.5,
Cheese in the Trap-7.7,
Law School -8,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,

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✒ ☠ Pawnshop Ghost & Garbage Girl: Dark Knight On Fire ❣ °8.9° °outstanding°

He came outta nowhere… TMFN opens to a 2 month police sting in which only the police get stung.

Won Bin (Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War) is Cha Tae-Sik, the “Pawnshop Ghost”. He lost a wife and child. A child ended up finding him. Kim Sae-Ron (Heaven's Garden, Bloodhounds) portrays Jung So-Mi, the child - Garbage Girl. She's yet another brilliant K🇰🇷kid actor. Her performance is world-class. We are treated to some truly scary psycho bad guys, regular Joe cops, and some Kpop hairdos. Screenwriter & director, Lee Jung Beom, also brought us Samjin Company English Class.

TMFN is a 2010, 119 min release that is rated 90 on AWiki / 💯 on RT. My son has only seen a couple Kdramas. He joked in the beginning of this show that many Korean actors in this film look like Michael Jackson - or perhaps MJ was trying to look Korean? (Korea does have the most beautiful male leads in the world, imo). He quickly settled into the story, though, as the film is fantastic.

So-Mi has a mom who is only 25% there. Most of the time, she's turning tricks and taking drugs. So the little girl often visits the ghost, eh, /guy/ at the pawn shop. He doesn't talk much, and he doesn't seem overly friendly, but she knows he's decent. He frequently feeds her and buys all of the random junk that she sells him. So-Mi's mom doesn't trust him, though. It's obvious that there's something a little different about him.

That police sting? Just when the police were on the brink of making a huge arrest, a rogue criminal element came in and took everything from both parties, the police and the target of their criminal investigation. These criminals got away with lots of drugs and ALL the money. Now, everyone's after them. The police and the jopok (mafia).

So-Mi's mom is caught up in the net and dies while she's being questioned by jopok thugs. They haul off So-Mi to child traffickers. It's heart😳breaking. All of these kids are put to work. Some are sold. Some of them are used to harvest organs. Stories like this are worldwide. Millions of children go missing every year. It looks like this all really goes on. Pause your busy life for a moment and reflect on that…

Tae-Sik learns what's happened to So-Mi and he hits the trail to find her and bring her back. From this point, the film is reminiscent of the excellent movie, Man on fire, starring Denzel Washington. The bad guys have no idea who's coming for them. We're all gonna find out.

The craftsmanship is excellent. Film is a visual medium, and this is a man, and a film, of few words. The story is mostly told visually. You'll have to put down your phone! When he agrees to “run an errand”, things suddenly take on a blue glow / turn a neon blue outside. The director uses a blue filter over some scenes. The color blue is associated with trust, dependability, and stability in Korea. The color palette is, otherwise, heavy industrial grey, which suits the subject matter. Handheld camera work in the action scenes builds tension and excitement. We follow him right through a 2nd storey window down to the street. Hold onto your hat!

TMFN is the perfect Friday night flick. It's inspiring, scary, exciting, and fulfilling. It's also an excellent choice as an introduction to 🇰🇷Korean programming for your unexposed friends and family.

As the film ends, the sun is coming up in Seoul🌇. Warm light bathes the screen. Strength lends strength. So-Mi will live, and So-Mi's life will never be the same.


QUOTES📢

The ones living for tomorrow get f💣d by the ones living for today.

I only live for today. I'll show you just how f💣d up that can be.


〰🖍 IMHO

📣9 📝8.2 🎭8.5 🌞3 🎨7.5⚡9 🎵/🔊6 😅0 😭6 😱5 😯5 😖8.7 🤔5 💤0 🔚8


Age 17+ for Rated R language; Drug trade torture; Torture of a woman in front of her child; A body that was organ-harvested. Rated R - restricted

Re-📺? Did

~ you may also like ~

My Mister 9.5;
K2 8;
Private Lives 8.1;
Sisyphus 8;
Tunnel 8.1;
Signal 8.6;
Black 9;
Squid Game 8.4;
Kingdom 8.3;
Sweet Home 8.4

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✒♥️ The Cutest Jailhouse Romance Ever ☘ °8.9° °Adorable°

Ah, bad boys. I've never understood the attraction. Just because it's not my poison doesn't mean that it's not a /thing/. We all have our crosses to bear. LBF&D is a high fantasy romance. High fantasy is a genre in which the whole world is new & fantastical. Almost everything in this world is magical in some way.

Not only is the universe in which this show takes place a fantasy, but the concept that a good girl can reform the bad guy is also a fantasy. Beyond the fact that it's a fantasy, it is also disrespecting oneself. You. Deserve. Better. Enjoy a story that's based on that idea here, but don't go chasing after /that/ magic sword. You'll only end up piercing yourself.

The premise is adorable. Imagine the most powerful being who has ever existed on earth. His enemies manage to lock him up, but they were not powerful enough to kill him. While they were resealing the weakening roof of his prison, a fairy falls in there! What's /she/ doing here? (She was chasing after her crush). Somehow, in that deep pit, the little orchid fairy and the big, bad felon were subjected to a frightful spell. Now, he /feels/. He feels everything that /she/ feels. And she's an emotional little cutie. He's experiencing everything (emotionally and physically) that she is. Now, killing him is easy - all that someone needs to do is kill her and HE dies.

“Boo’-can-aw!” Balderdash! No one is more powerful than he! This will not control him!

Dylan Wang is Dongfang “Qing” Cang. Qing will get retribution against his tormentors, wake up his 100,000 soldiers, and wipe out his foes. He will burn the world down!... As soon as he can break this curse and shake loose from this simple-headed orchid 🌱 fairy. Until then, he'll have to keep an eye on her. He must keep her safe BY ALL MEANS, and since she's a delicate orchid, she needs all kinds of special care. ("I can do everything in this world," he says. As for raising a plant, how difficult can it be for me?) Little Orchid assumes he has a crush on her and tells him: "There's plenty of fish in the sea. Why don't you go find someone else?"

So, we have the arrogant, very angry, “evil” overlord being controlled by an innocent (who thinks he needs her help 🙄 - What can /she/ do? She's even afraid of the dark!). He'll have to protect her to stay alive, and keep her from harm to keep himself from being harmed. Among odd couples, this is an odd couple. She thinks she's in love with someone else (Chang Heng), and she's trying to get promoted in the Heavenly Realm so that she can be closer to the object of her affection. Her early successes aren't her's at all, though. Qing is helping her from the shadows while she's oblivious. It's silly but not idiotic. It's fun yet still beautiful, and though it's lighthearted, the directors took their work seriously.

All the acting forwards the story. There's no under or overdoing it. She is cuter than the little white cub she finds in the forest, while his fervor for her touches our hearts. Dylan Wang (Meteor Garden-7.4, The Rational Life-7) is a nice looking guy, no doubt. But he's no Dwayne Johnson. So what makes him special? Qing is stereotypical as the condescending, aloof, perpetual bully, but that's because he was love-starved as a child and became emotionally stunted. Underneath that hard shell there's a cupcake. Mr Wang makes a nice romantic lead because he conveys love and (poorly suppressed) desire with intensity. Because of their occasional role reversals, he must act like a woman. He can play a girly-girl! He is fantastic. Later on, though he loves her, there's a point when he has to erase her memory, including her memory of him. We can see the hurt in his face. The eyes are what takes good acting to superb acting. He handles his eyes well.

The romance is a gem. Capital "R" good-girl-bad-boy Romance. It's a separate haven, like Arbiter Hall, tucked away from a world of war that springs up from hatred, revenge, and fear most of all. In ep13 there's a delightful kissing scene, being both fun and funny. His expression is probably overdone, but it packs the comedic punch. Although their lips locked a couple times prior to then, it's difficult to say what qualifies as a first kiss in the show. However, one could argue that the first truly romantic (mostly) mutual one isn't until ep26. The camera moves to show they are also holding hands. Flutters, for sure.

Qing's guard, Shang (Charles Lin from Romance with Blind Master & N Generations) looks like any guy walking in the neighborhoods of Philly: Italian, with a little bit of Irish in the mix. Esther Yu (My Journey to You, Love Game in Eastern Fantasy) is Orchid. She's cute. She plays a spoiled kid in Find Yourself-8.9, a show that I love. Her career seems to be taking off. The handsome-almost-pretty Zhang Ling He (Story of Kunning Palace, The Princess Royal-8.3) is Orchid's crush as the story opens, Chang Heng. Xu Hai Qiao (The Legend of Zhuohua, Marvelous Women) portrays Rong Hao, Chang's BFF and regular chess opponent. Hong Xiao White (Cat Legend, Rising with the Wind) nearly steals the show as Jie Li (When Orchid says her name it sounds like “Jelly” and it's darling).

Screenwriters, Cao Xiao Tian (The Glory) & Bai Jin Jin (Love Game in Eastern Fantasy) adapted original creator, Jiu Lu Fei Xiang's novel. She has several credits, including Back from the Brink & The Legend of Shen Li. The directing by Yi Zheng (Falling Into You) & Qian Jing Wu (The Silence of the Monster) is sheer competence with fresh elements, snappy cadence, and smooth segues. I've already watched this twice. In the second go-around connections, forecasting and ironic lines that aren't as perceptible upon the first watch popped out. It's a tidy work of art with a huge fun factor. Ep2, provides a metaphor: One guy /loses/ the handkerchief he treasured, as it was from his crush. Another man /finds/ the person he loves. The first guy was hesitant, and he lost, while the latter would define hesitation as weakness. He won.

LBF&D's dreamy fairyland is fanciful, magical, & delicate. Most Chinese features are 25 to 80 episodes long, which is lots of time to fill up. The effects budgets generally can't live up to Hollywood standards. Clunky special effects can break up the flow, but the excitement in this show is seamless. They get a lot of bang for their ¥uan💴, particularly with the action; most of the special effects in this are fantastic. The opening episode is quite pretty with impressive effects. There's a battlefield with 100,000 sealed soldiers who look like statues. Qing desperately wants to unseal them, which is a cool concept. The effect that impressed me most is when Chang Heng & Rong Hao take a break from chess and enter an antique pen & ink on faded parchment. They take a 2D boat ride on the River of Oblivion. They, themselves, become 2D. It's wonderful.

There are some minor flaws. Most transitions are excellent, but some are a little bit choppy, or awkward. They pick on an orphan again. Asia is not kind to orphans, and one of the bad guys is an orphan. The pain of his early life's loneliness is part of what drives him. Some actions and motivations aren't sufficiently explained. There's one rescue where we must wonder how the rescuer even knew he was needed. When the two leads body switch, their power doesn't seem to switch fully, but we never get an adequate explanation for it. The ending is too brief. A ten-second wrap-up leaves the viewer feeling cheated. Why they DO dat?! My biggest head-scratcher was Qing failing to grab one of those paintings to take back home with him after their visit to the mortal realm. Thankfully, the flaws are minor and few.

The main theme is how we are led away by our desires. We see the progression: Pride. Self-righteousness - which goes hand-in-hand with self-delusion. Prejudice - which brings hate along for the ride. The Heavenly realm is not heavenly. Though they presume their superiority, they are backbiting, spiteful, and ruthless. Orchid is the only one who appears to have true kindness, along with Chang, a truly good guy.

One of the baddies is just a dupe for the real evil boss His motivations make no sense on one level. Many of us can see someone treading the wrong path and wonder what they're thinking. In this case, this person is drawn away by h/h own desires while lying to h/h self that this is for somebody else. People have a habit of creating big knives that end up in their own backs.

The nature of weakness and strength is another theme. "I am so weak, I have no skills. I'm just an orchid fairy; I can't do much," Orchid says over and over. "She is my biggest weakness," says he. She's more powerful than she realizes. When she stops the whinge and starts working on herself, she gets stronger. Who is the most powerful one in the show? We begin to wonder. Futility is also a theme. War and revenge are a never ending cycle that just foments misery.

All in all, LBF&D is a personal River of Oblivion and a constant flow of smiles. The art is magnificent, the acting, directing, and writing are excellent, and the romance is unforgettable. This is one bad boy who is reformed for good!


QUOTES 🗣️

I will never make my past mistakes again.

Love makes everyone a better version of themselves.

I never thought bringing up a plant could be so troublesome.


〰🖍 IMHO

🎬8,8 🖊️〰8.6 🎭8.5 💓8.7 🦋7.8 🌞7 🎨9.3⚡6.4 🎵/🔊8.5 😅5.5 😭6 😱5 🤢2.5 🤔5.7 🔚 8.5

Age 12 +/- It's practically a kid's show, but there are some scary moments and heartbreaking moments as well

Re-📺? 🔛

Recs:
Douluo Continent 9.4;
Handsome Siblings 8.7;
Ancient Love Poetry 8.6;
Love and Redemption 10

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

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✒ ☄Incompatible☄: A Little Bit of Nonsense ✴6.8✴very cute✴

Here's to the long-distance relationship. Sometimes Love is incompatible. At times, it's downright impossible.

The handsome Fukushi Sota is Toyama Mitsuru, an alien who has been stuck on earth for 400 years. Like The Highlander, he doesn't age, so he has to set up new identities every half generation or so, and he has accumulated enough wealth to live /comfortably/. He actually has enough to live like a movie star, and he lives /exactly/ like one - A popular actress just moved in next door. Together they occupy the entire 30th floor. Sota has many extra-human powers, from spoon-bending to stopping time. He keeps them well hidden - mostly by maintaining a low profile.

Yamamoto Mizuki plays celebrity Sasahara Tsubaki, and she's a universe away from low-profile. Sure she's somewhat spoiled and entitled, but she's actually a decent person, Her mother helps keep her that way. Mom is such a selfish and narcissistic pill that Mizuki doesn't want to be anything like her. Nevertheless, for Sota, who is more like Dr. Spock than not, Mizuki is irritating. She's the type to stumble into his place uninvited, while drunk, and pass out on his couch. He is still drawn to her against his will… She is so like that human girl he was compelled to rescue all those centuries ago. As a college prof, he is NOT drawn enough to her to put up with her stuff, though. When she returns to school to boost her image, he doesn't hesitate to give her a zero for plagiarism. (To think, she paid /good/ money for an originally written paper, too!).

As we get to know them more, we see that their fates may have been intertwined for a long time. Could she really be the reincarnation of that woman he saved so long ago?

MLFTS is a 2022 release that is rated 7.4 on MDL. It is 1 season consisting of 10 40-45-minute episodes. After the credits roll, there's commentary and actor interviews and deleted scenes.
The Bad guy, Imai Tsubasa, is a pop idol IRL. He'd never played a bad guy before. He's almost unrecognizable in his post-show interview; that's some nice acting. The screenwriter is Seki Erika, and this was adapted from Park Ji-eun's original work for the Kdrama, My Love From Another Star, which was released in 2013. Ms Park is also screenwriter for Legend of the Blue Sea-7.2 and Crash Landing On You-9.1. Good stuff. The director is Matsuki Tsukuru, whose most popular piece is the film, Rika: Self-Proclaimed 28 Years Old's Pure Love Monster. Ima plan to watch that. I love the title.

Actresses' lives are loaded with drama. Sota, though he doesn't know why, helps Tsubaki out of a scrape. Then he helps her with another. Now, it's a habit. A rival ends up dead… It looks like a suicide, but the police get involved. Tsubaki is the top suspect. Soon the police are wondering: Who is this strange man appearing and disappearing on the surveillance footage? As part of the investigation, they've examined all the relevant footage. The most suspicious thing they've seen is Sota, because they see him, then they don't see him, and then he appears somewhere else.

A drawback to love is that Sota is allergic to human blood and saliva. Another trifle Is that his ship, after 400 years, is returning with the comet in 3 months. He's headed back home. He's allergic to human blood & saliva, but they make no mention of sweat… it's not optimal, but I think we can work with that. In the anime Fruits Basket, the “men” will transform if a human girl merely hugs them. There's no making that work.

Another obstacle is that he's not very social. “Don't give. Don't receive. And don't expect. That way, you'll never be let down,” he muses. She doesn't understand that philosophy. “Isn't that kind of lonely?” She may not be a good student at school, but she's a better student of life than he. Another roadblock to love is her attitude. “I understand why other people turn away from you. You're simplistic and impulsive.” He forgot to mention that she is fairly self-involved, as well. Unfortunately (or not) for him, his argument is logical but his heart has already boarded and strapped in for the ride.

This is a simple show meant for turning off the brain and relaxing. It is nicely done for that effect, but such simplicity does lower the degree of difficulty, and thus the top score. It also has its outright shortcomings. They're sloppy with the rules that govern his existence. Human blood and saliva make him sick, but he, otherwise, seems completely human. Springing new ideas and developments on the viewer without laying down sufficient hints, foreshadowing, or other elements that constitute good filmmaking is something they rely on. The effect is that it seems like they are making some of it up as they go. It's not a show where nitpicking will make a difference, as there's little mental exertion required to watch and enjoy. Thinking will actually ruin it. Turn off your brain for this one. Just don't look for thoroughness, clarity, or explanations.

The fun factor outshines any problems. Some of the fashion is wonderful and some is weird. Her jewelry is snazzy. There's an excellent sort of frozen kiss in one of the later episodes. She makes an allusion to Hunter X Hunter, my absolute favorite anime, so I appreciated the show from that point on.

Will these 2 reach the point where they soar? Or will they crash to earth? Sota is a natural problem solver, and he's decided the 30th floor is close enough to heaven (and the heavens) for him. He's lost enough, and he refuses to lose Tsubaki or anything else. He's going to iron out this warped drive.

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

Modern Day:
Mad For Each Other 7.8 ~silly fun;
My Secret Romance 7 (if you ff thru overdone flashbacks);
A Witch's Love 7.8;
Love to Hate You 8.9;
Her Private Life 8;
Touch your heart 8.2;
Romance is a bonus book 7.9;
Boys Over Flowers 8 ~ melodrama to the max;
Crash Landing On You 9.1;
Oh My Ghost 10;
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9;
Love Struck in the City 7.3;
Hospital Playlist 9;
My Mister 9.5;
More Than Friends 8;
I'll See You When the Weather is Fine 9;
Something in the Rain 9


〰🖍 IMHO

📣7 📝6 🎭7.5 💓6.5 🦋5 🌞5 🎨6.3 ⚡4.9 🎵/🔊6 😅4 😭3 😱3 😯3 😖2.5 🤔2 💤0 🔚7

Age 12+ PG language; A pregnant woman dies and the police must investigate whether it's suicide or murder along with other violence

Re-📺? Who knows? I have no strong feelings about it. I do want to see the Kdrama, which is immensely popular. I'm still working through the Prime, Hulu, and Netflix inventory before taking the Viki premium plunge. We're talking months until that happens, not years. I've already got my watchlist stacked up.

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⛈ Follow the Light ⛅ If You Will ⛈ °8.6° °Outstanding°

Every night, she's sitting at the bus stop. He tried to assist her once, but communications broke down. The next night she was there with her suitcase, as usual. She's soaked. It's pouring. She says she's freezing and asks to go home with him. We see her later leave his apartment, suitcase in tow. Blood drips onto the walkway marking her path.

At school, some girls are having a discussion. ‘You know there are students… selfies, photos, & video clips is where they show up, and nobody knows who they are. Every class has empty seats. I think that's where they're sitting. They have to be ghosts.’ Hyeon is mortified.

LS is a 2024 release that is rated 89 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of just 8 51-minute episodes. This is the fledgling directing effort of Kim Hee Won who had roles in many features, including Misaeng-9.1 & Moving-8.5. Screenwriter Kang Full co-wrote Moving-8.5, among others. LS is sleepy and hypnotic. It's also scary, but with a dreamlike quality that mutes the fright. It's not agitating. Straightaway, the opening credits are eerily beautiful. I think it's the way things look to the ghosts that haunt the alley. Ep1 is lite bites from varied small plates. It's a sampler. Ep2 is more of the same. They will tie it all together later. In eps1-4 we meet the players, dead and alive. In ep5 we'll meet the ghosts as they lived. Watch to the end. Ep8 is your reward.

“I never noticed the light shop during the day, but it really stands out at night as it's so bright. Are you always open this /late/?” “You could say that.” In between vignettes, customers are coming in and out of the light shop. Jung Won Yeong (Ju Ji Hoon from Kingdom-8.3) is the mysterious proprietor behind the counter in dark glasses. He's all perfunctorily business-like with the patrons until a schoolgirl enters. They're old friends. He offers Hyeon some candy. She mentions that his shop is the only reason she can walk on the street. Otherwise, she'd be too scared: There's rumors of a ghost there! He studies her quietly for quite a while. ‘It seems like you can see things that most people cannot,’ he cautions Hyeon. “It's important that you look at people very closely and if you see something that isn't ordinary, just act like you haven't seen anything. It's best to not let those that you shouldn't be able to see notice that you see them at all. But if they do, make sure you act like nothing important is going on and that you haven't noticed…”

One can't help but notice, it's an all-star cast, folks.

Park Bo Young (Oh My Ghost-10, Strong Woman Do Bong Soon) plays ICU nurse Kwon Yeong Ji. She had an NDE of her own. She's been to the light shop, as not only the dead pass by there, but also the nearly dead. She's met the proprietor. She does everything she can to guide her patients to the light and WILL them to live.

Lee Jung Eun (Oh My Ghost-10, Parasite-9, Our Blues-8.5) is probably my favorite actress right now. She portrays Jung Yu Hui, the mother of Hyeon (Shin Eun Soo from Twinkling Watermelon). Hyeon has an emotional scene with her mother, and she's fantastic. Ms Lee & Mr. Ju put on a non-verbal acting master's class in ep8. I teared up. I recently watched Ju Ji Hoon in Blood Free-8.5 as a romantic ML. He looks meaner, younger, overall completely differently, and it was released in the same year. Here, he looks more ancient and less handsome.

Park Hyuk Kwon (Wonderful World-7.8, Uncle Samsik-8.4) is a bus driver. His performance in Mine-8, is unforgettable. Kim Ki Hae (Duty after School) is a student who seems to be lost. Kim Dae Myung (Misaeng-9.1, Hospital Playlist-9) plays one cool but, according to the detective (Bae Sung Woo), very suspicious short order cook. Kim Seol Hyun (Summer Strike, Awaken-8.7) plays the woman with a suitcase. She spends almost the entire show with long wet hair. Uhm Tae Goo (A Taxi Driver) plays her fiance, Min. Kim Min Ha (The Call, Pachinko) portrays Yun Seon Hae & Kim Seon Hwa (My ID Is Gangnam Beauty-7.5, The Glory) portrays Park Hye Won. There's nowhere to go for them to feel comfortable in their relationship.

LS, on paper, may not be anything particularly special. The script is well written but perhaps not a standout on its own. What makes LS brighter than most offerings in the genre is the superb artistry and acting - it's expertly crafted. Sets, camera angles, cadence, crepuscular light & shadows - it's moving art. The light shop is, at the same time, warm but not too bright, with a variety of lights, lamps, and bulbs. Some are beautiful, some are common. It's hard to describe how the light shop makes me feel. Most of the shots feel closed in and close up. We got a couple pans around, but most shots feel linear and claustrophobic. All I can say is that it's both pretty and unsettling.

LS is old-timey and almost gothic. Is that because the street that the light shop is on is a set? It evokes Hitchcok, being mysterious & soporific. Its cadence is practically narcotic, but it breaks out with genuine scares. There's a big-budget bus crash, which is a big part of the plot. The tall lady ghost in ep2 is super creepy. At one point the detective's eyes are loose. He shakes his head and they move around- it's super freaky. (The Guardians of the Netherworld have reptilian eyes. It feels a little passe but we'll give them a pass). In an ominous touch, a shot of stormy skies fades out and a handprint or clasping fingers fade into a chilling effect. It's super-eerie.

We will frequently see the wet haired Lee Ji Yeong sewing, or weaving some stitches. The whole show is weaved together. Be patient because ep8 is the payoff. These beings are living solitary existences, for the most part. We find out that they're more interrelated than it first appears.

The will to live, or the lack thereof, is the theme. The funeral director looks at his assistant and asks: “Do you know why it is that we hold a three-day wake?” Koreans have had this custom for centuries, he explains. They want to give the dead 3 days to wake back up. (Theologians say: “hmmm”). It's their final goodbye, and a final chance to be reunited with the lost. “Not just the living say goodbye,” he surmises, “but also the dead.” The other theme, obviously, is to not let your light go out. As long as you are alive, let your light shine so that others may also find the way. This is embodied by nurse Kwon. She received a second chance at life and she's not going to waste it.

LS is no waste of time. It's got an old soul while still feeling crisp and fresh. It embodies the longing of humans and the persistent feeling that this life is not all there is. It also reflects the desperation of people living in a pressure cooker society that, with the 3rd highest suicide rate in the entire world, Korea currently is. Park Hye Won & Yun Seonones wish to stay in that dark, creepy alley. It's the first place where they can live together comfortably as a couple. It makes me sad to see people who have been so pressured that their dreams are small. The longer I live, the less appealing this world of woe is. When I think of eternity, I want to experience perfection. The end of misery, sickness, and death. If we'll shine as brightly as possible, perhaps we can get a better taste of the possibilities now.


QUOTE🗣 The light is nice.


IMHO〰🖍

📣8.6 📝8 🎭9 💓5 🦋2 🎨9 🎵/🔊8.5 🔚8.5 🤗7 ▪ 🌞5⚡5 😅1 😭6.5 😱3.5 😯3 🤢4 🤔6 💤0


Age 15+ Language: he!!, f💣, $h!+ - not much but with some regularity. Scary elements, violence, adult themes; Rated 15+


Re-📺? The performances call for it



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

🌐💘 -
Oh My Ghost 10,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Familiar Wife-8.5,
Move To Heaven-8.4,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,
My Mister 9.5,


⚡/🚀 -
Flex X Cop-8.5,
Mystic Pop-up Bar-8.2,
Hotel del Luna-8.4,
Glitch-8,
Inspector Koo-8.4,
A Korean Odyssey-7.2,
The Golden Spoon-8.1,
The First 1st Responders-7.8,
Missing: The Other Side-8.3,
Uncanny counter S1 only °S1-8.4 S2-4,
Move To Heaven-8.4,
Daily Dose of Sunshine-7,
Birthcare Center-8.2,
Moving-8.5,
Awaken-8.7,
Anna-8.1,
Hymn of Death-8.4,
D.P.-8.4,
The Cursed 8.3,
Flower of Evil 8.9,
The Man from Nowhere 8.9,
Mr. Sunshine-9,
Oldboy-9,
The Wailing-8.8,
Black 9,
Sweet Home 8.4

Consider a 🇨🇳Chinese 🎎/🔮 fantasy feature: 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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✒ ❗️Maverick Amuck °VG°

🚨Looks like there's a maverick on the force.

A firefighter, a paramedic, and a cop walk into a bar. It's not a joke. It's a script. It's pretty exciting, too. Watching them investigate is entertaining.

TFR is a 2022 release of 2 seasons consisting of 24 65-minute episodes and S3 is expected to be announced. It is rated 91 on AWiki. The name seems especially generic, so I wasn't convinced when I started it, but Kdramas with boring titles are often a pleasant surprise. These ? stories are downright arresting.

Kim Rae Won (Decibel, A Wild Apricot) is Jin HoGae, one of those universally cool types. His first credits are from 1998; he's been around for awhile. This is my first look at him and I get the appeal. He has several interactions with his father, and it's never been less convincing to me that two actors were related by blood. Their scenes seem slightly off, they're so unlikely to be father and son. HoGae must take after his mother. He's our maverick, and he's completely unpredictable.

In S2, HoGae is being promoted to head of the NOI investigation team. He's at the fancy ceremony. The auditorium is full. He suddenly stands up and announces that he can't accept the promotion. As he walks out of the building, somebody chases him outside and asks what he's doing? “I don't like the color of the building,” he quips. He rides off on his motorcycle. James Dean has nothing on him.

Son Ho Jun (Was It Love-7.4, Go Back Couple) is Bong Do Jin. He's got a nice presence. Both he and HoGae are interested in Song Seol (Gong Seung Yeon from Circle, Re-Born & My Only Love Song-8.7). This actress is a charmer. I'm a fan. There are, once again, amazing child actors. In ep5 a little girl steals the show. She completely upstages our ML. Director Shin Kyung Soo also brought us The Nokdu Flower & Six Flying Dragons, while screenwriter Min Ji Eun penned Partners for Justice.

In S2, ep1, Choi Won-Young plays an arsonist. He's brilliant. I've seen him in The Golden Spoon-8.1, Mystic Pop-Up Bar-8.2, The Heirs-7.3, and the excellent SKY Castle-9. He's different in everything; a real talent.

Oh Eui Shik makes an appearance towards the end of S1 and takes on a more regular role in S2. I've been a fan of his since Oh My Ghost-10, one of my gateway Kdramas. I love it so much that I love every actor on the cast. This guy really does seem to be sprinkled with fairy dust because he's in a lot of features, and they're all successful. I've seen him in While You Were Sleeping-7.3, Familiar Wife-8.5, The Hymn of Death-8.4, Romance Is a Bonus Book-7.9, Touch Your Heart-8.2, Hi Bye, Mama-6.5, My Unfamiliar Family-7.9 Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha-8.2 & Big Mouth-7.4. He gets to be more than a sidekick in S2. I just want to see more & more of him, now.

First responders are police, fire, and paramedics. The ME and prosecutors will also be at a live crime scene. We follow all these careers in the show. Cases that pop up are arson, kidnapping,
suicide under suspicious circumstances, statutory rape, a hit-and-run, missing persons, and all the while there's corruption teeming In the background. Among the decent folk there's the everyday clashes that must occur, especially among sleep deprived adrenaline junkie types who exist on instant food and soju. Jin stops a helicopter with a fire hose~>> B@d@$$. There's the promise of romance, too.

It has its lapses. In the last motif of S2, some things don't make sense. Two of the characters overheard the bad guy on a speaker and they should have been able to recognize him. Furthermore, Detective Jin had an opportunity to tell them who the bad guy was. It's inexplicable that he did not. While they address it later, it is less than satisfactory. The plot gets a tad outrageous in S2, which begins as a seamless continuation of S1. It's still quite a bit of fun. I didn't find it difficult to take the ride with them. Some certainly will. They kill off cats in both seasons. That's a problem Hollywood has had for decades. It's leeching out into Kcountry now.

Overall, TFR is a great ride. S2 has even more high budget special effects, particularly grand conflagrations and massive collapses. S2 also has a good old-fashioned gangland beat down showing about 50 men fighting with fists and sticks. It looks like a 1970s rumble.

Can a maverick go-it-alone forever? To the fiery end? Watch and see. You probably won't regret it. .


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

💘 -
My Only Love Song 8.7 ~ excellent comedy,
Crazy Love-7.8,
A Witch's Love 7.8,
Love to Hate You 8.9,
Her Private Life 8,
Touch your heart 8.2,
Crash Landing On You 9.1,
Oh My Ghost 10,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Love Struck in the City 7.3,
Be Melodramatic-8.7,
Was it love-7.9,
Hospital Playlist 9,
My Mister 9.5,
I'll See You When the Weather is Fine 9


⚡/🚀 -
Flex X Cop-8.5,Missing: The Other Side-8.3,
K2 8,
Private Lives 8.1,
Inspector Koo-8.4,
Revenge of Others-8.3,
The Golden Spoon-8.1,
Uncanny counter season-1 only °S1-8.4 S2-4,
Han River Police-7.4,
When the Camellia Blooms-8,
Moving-8.5,
Law School -8,
Sisyphus 8,
Tunnel 8.5,
Signal 8.6,
Blood Free-8.5,
D.P.-8.4,
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

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✒ ⭐ Upstaged °6.5° °mostly good°

"I didn't look like this a day ago." Our FL is disheveled with dirt smeared cheeks, clothes sloppy, and hair a clump of matted weeds. She just pushed a total stranger against a building and smacked one on him. This was her desperation move; she was eluding pursuers, and they were gaining on her… Desperation? Or was this 💋 from her special reserve power?

These two have more in common than they realize. Each is fleeing (his father's / her grandfather's) chasing band of security, which is a common thing in Asian dramas. She's fleeing her engagement party - but this fool and her money had been soon parted a short time earlier, and she was already reduced to begging for food. Never fear! This maven-of-moxie is not even close to giving in to grandpop just yet. After the immediate threat is passed, our ML, Si Tu Feng, decides she's the perfect way to get revenge against his dad. Before Chen Qing Qing (Amy Sun) realizes what's happening, “His Highness” has dragged her into his father's wedding (his absence being the reason he had been pursued) and announces she's his fiance. Some quick negotiations and the realization that being his “fiance" means she can hide out and EAT, seal the deal. She's engaged for real now. For real profit. That's where it starts, but this whirlwind cruises through classes, jobs, projects, crusades, and iterations. By the end of the show she threatens to upstage °him°, a pop idol.

AIL is a 2018 release that is rated a generous 7.9 on MDL. It is 1 season consisting of 30 30-minute episodes. As is typical for Chinese modern-day features, AIL is seriously flawed, yet it's endearing, winsome, sweet, fun to watch and oddly relaxing. Guo Jun Chen, who plays Si Tu Feng / "His Highness", isn't bad looking but he would never get a (typical) romantic lead role in Hollywood. He looks like an Irish boy with funny ears. He does have a beautiful voice. He makes a pretty girl, too. He can't do math, but he passed grandpa's tests, and grandpa's tests are the hardest. The best looking male actor (by far) is the rebel (Zhao Yi Qin). His voice is dreamy, too. It's gorgeous. His highest rated streamable shows are Fake Princess and Wait, My Youth, so they go into the queue. The FL does look like an entirely different person when she is in disguise. She's supposed to be "ugly” but she's a cutie, and much more alive when in her casual & gaudy garb. Our leads get pressured from all sides: difficult parents and grandparents, nosy classmates, jealousy, a teacher called the witch, crazy fans, and a troublesome talent agency. He falls for her first. By the time she slows down enough to realize she's attracted to him it's too late to reveal her true identity without making him angry. Quandary😞.

AIL is frequently cute but painfully inept at the same time. There's poor acting, bad dialogue, logical faux pas, and general laziness about the quality. There's also some great acting. The leads and Zhao Yi Qin, who plays Feng's enemy, Lin Yi Yang, all do a wonderful job. Guo Jun Chen's Si Tu Feng is a convincing romantic lead. The viewer can feel his attraction to the vivacious Qing Qing. Most everyone else is wooden or stunted😑.

Things might be loosening up slightly, but the documented fact is that 🇨🇳society is not free. There's a fascinating split between the dialogue and acting of modern-day Chinese features and historic/fantasy pieces. In the latter, the characters are fully rounded with a full range of emotions. In modern-day shows and movies they are stiff with stoic expressions. The dialogue is simple to the point of being inane. They never get into deep explanations or deep explorations of intellectual, emotional, or philosophical topics, while the 🔮fantasy and 🎎period pieces can be quite intricate. Everything seems set up to subdue the brain and emotions rather than stir them up. They often have glaring logical gaps utilizing what I've tagged as dream logic: The viewer is required to know or accept things as so without explanations even when things look otherwise, like in a dream when you see your aunt Mabel but you somehow know it's really your younger sister. When your brain and emotions are already frenzied, Chinese modern-day features are weirdly soothing. There's Chinese 🔮 & 🎎 pieces that are among the best things I've ever seen, but there is not one modern-day feature that I would suggest to a friend or use as an introduction to Asian programming. Yet, AIL is surprisingly bright and carefree. The comedic timing is solid. It's actually a good recommendation for ✳10-16 year olds, as it's on that level.

One example of an irritation that must be dismissed is when Chen Qing Qing is looking at photos of her parents with a former schoolmate. She points out a photo from the first night they met, which was at a dance. In the photo her mom is wearing a long white dress, but in the later flashbacks mom's in a short red dress. Another annoyance is how our FL continues to dress up after Si Tu Feng knows her secret, including wearing glasses she doesn't need and drawing freckles on her face. He fell in love with the freckled cutie. Easing into a new look would be understandable, but as is, it's nonsensical. This is the type of sloppy stuff that frequents modern-day Chinese features and makes me slightly crazy - and I'm not fastidious. I can only imagine that people who are cannot abide shows like this, at all. You all know who you are, so be warned. Additionally, AIL drags alittle after the opening episodes and into ep10, but it then starts to get better again. Ep13 is adorbs. For the school dynamic they borrow from Boys Over Flowers, which is like calling out to a classic. They stumble into a gender-fluid school play version of Beauty and the Beast that is pretty amusing. There's also a bit with 2 guys fighting near a leaking helium tank that's funny.

In the balance, AIL is cuddly, spritely, and amusing. The romance is touching. The FL is inspirational - so much so that she's collected her own fans by the show's end. As many fans as His Highness? Maybe not, but give her time; there doesn't seem to be an upward limit to her reach.


QUOTE📢

Don't hurt yourself for a man who doesn't love you.


〰🖍 IMHO

📣55 📝52 🎭60 💓60 🦋50 🌞50 🎨40 ⚡30 🎵/🔊67😅45 😭25 😱25 😯15 😖0 🤔35 💤35 🔚77

✳Age 10+ with the following cautions: PG-13 language + in Ep21 they drop an F💣 and in ep24 they use the word pr!(k.

With what I now know, would I choose to watch it again for the first time? I might skip it, despite its cuteness. The female lead is fun, however, and it's a close call.


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

🌐💘 -
You Are My Destiny 6.5
The Kings Avatar 8,
The Oath Of Love 7.6,
I Hear You 7.3,
Meteor Garden 7.4

🇰🇷K -
A Witch's Love 7.8;
love to hate you 8.9;
Touch your heart 8.2;
Crash Landing On You 9.1;
Oh My Ghost 10;
It's okay not to be okay 9;
Hospital Playlist 9;
My Mister 9.5;

🎎 -
Overlord 8.4,
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8,
The Sleepless Princess 9.1,
Under the Power 8.6,
The Rebel Princess 9.1

🇰🇷K -
My Only Love Song 8.7 excellent comedy;
Mr. Queen 8.5;
My Sassy Girl / Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo 8.5;
The Kings's Affection 8.3;
Mr. Sunshine 9

⚡/🚀 -
Love Between Fairy & Devil 8.9;
Douluo Continent 9.4;
Heavenly Sword 9;
Love and Redemption 10;


Originally 〰🖊 11/2023

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✒ ⏱ Analog Daze ⏲ °7.1° °good+°

"How is this old thing still running?" 〰 "What do you mean, it's brand new." 〰 "Where's your helmet?" 〰 "Nobody wears them!" 〰 "Can I use your cell phone?" 〰 "If you want to make a call, go to the closest phone booth." 〰

It's 1989. Regular folks don't have cell phones yet. "Let me pay for that with a credit card." 〰 "Didn't Visa just launch in Taiwan? How do you have that?"

B289 is a 2016 release that is rated 8.1 on MDL. It is 1 season consisting of 34 or 21 episodes, depending on how they cut them. The overall length is in the neighborhood of 26 hrs. The setup is scant. Our ML, Che, is successful and in between jobs. He's being recruited, so money isn't his concern. What he really wants to find out who his dad is. He visits his failing grandfather in the hospital, who is mumbling pieces of the puzzle in delirium, but his mom WON'T talk about it. WON'T❕ He has a heated argument with her, hops on his motorcycle and rides away, after declaring "I don't have a mother!" She's been nothing but miserable his whole life, anyway😤. Inside of a tunnel he has an accident. When he wakes up, everything looks differently. You just have to accept it. He's gone back in time. It's 1989, and he's about to be conceived.

When he lands on 1989 asphalt, our FL lands on him with her moped. This leads to the conversation above. Che doesn't have much cash, and his credit cards won't work, so now, money's a problem. He needs to get a job. Nothing's more perfect for the savvy time traveler than the stock market! Looks like it's time to invest in tech.

The acting is a mixed bag. Most is wooden and stiff; some of it is pretty good. The characters are still more likable and relatable than not. Marcus Chang (Lost Romance, Mysterious Lotus Casebook) plays Chen "Che". He's a very nice lookin guy, and an overall excellent romantic male lead. Ivy Shao (Hello Ghost!, More than Blue: The Series) portrays Ye Zhen "Zhen". She's girl-next-door cute. ("Are you so gullible?" 〰 "I am! How did you know?" 😆) Che agrees to help her with the moped repairs, but she doesn't even have his pager#! With no valid 🆔, credit history, and a resume that appears faked, Che ends up at Zhen's house, renting a room from her parents. Zhen is his mother's BFF, so being around Zhen is perfect for surveillance. "So this is what it's like to have a father in the house," he realizes.

Mini Tsai (W Series: The Way You Shine, Young Days No Fears) Is Chen Ya Juan, Che's mother. Yorke Sun (Piggy's Counterattack, Home Sweet Home) is the boyfriend that her b!+ch mother doesn't approve of, Li Jin Qin. Chang Chieh (Love, Timeless, To My Dear Granny) as Wang Zhong En, competes for Ya Juan's affection. Ray Yang (The Nipple Talk, Let It Fly) rounds out Zhen's love triangle as the too exuberant Lin Xiao Long. The director is Ker Choon Hooi of Falling Into You, and the screenwriter is Joyce Liu who wrote the amazing Age of Rebellion-9.5.

As the attraction between Che and Zhen builds, she can't understand why he insists that he doesn't like her. Finally, he has to admit the truth to her. This sets up her struggles to figure out a way that they can be together and /stay/ together. All this while he's trying to protect his mother and ensure that she doesn't end up living the miserable life that he remembers her living. As for the romance... this hurts... I really hate to say this... I like the leads;, but they don't completely sell the romance. And he's one fantastic male lead. The love story takes a backseat to the rest of the drama going on.

As with many time-travel stories, the theme is regrets. People don't want to travel back in time to NOT show love. One doesn't /need/ to time travel if one shows love, consideration, caring, forgiveness, and generosity from the start.

"If he were my father, I'd rather not be born." Our male lead keeps an eye on his future mother who is living as a 20-something girl. She's pretty, sweet, and hopeful. She's nothing like the spiky, cold, and distant emotional icicle who raised him. Toxic women tend to drive the plot of many TwDramas. In this one, Che's grandmother is just awful. She's likely the reason his mother grew up to be so miserable. Ya Juan's mother is overbearing, even for an Asian mother. She tries to dominate every aspect of her life including Ya Juan's friends, whom mom shoos away. At one point, she extracts a silly vow. I hate it. Mom's also setting Ya Juan up on blind dates. Our two leads decide to follow along to see if she needs any bailing out. Che's just hoping to get a look at his father. He's never met him, and he doesn't know who he is, so he's watching the situation very closely. The truth ends up being a difficult pill. Another theme is realizing we don't understand everything about our parents and we should try to give them the benefit of the doubt when we can.

There's some fun stuff in the show. His plaid jackets are stunning. Most of the wardrobe is hideous. Every time I reacted strongly I had to remind myself about Wild Wear and what everybody else was wearing in the '80s. Still, some of the clothes hurt my eyes. The music is WAY above average. I Shazamed songs by Alien Huang, Nine Chen, and Gary Chaw. The opening credits song is great. Zhen falls on the way to a party and they do the rip-the-bottom-half-of-the-dress-off thing. She goes from frumpy to adorable. They discuss the barbarism of shark fin soup, which is a relief to me. Many Chinese features mention it favorably, which hurts, because it's cruel.

Apart from the average acting, it could be better. Some Taiwanese / Chinese shows try to get away with feeble writing. At one point there's a mini drama because Zhen screws up a stock order by spending 40K on the wrong stock. The narrative is that she owes the client $40,000. The money is still there, she just brought the wrong stock. Even if it went down in value, the value wasn't erased. Stuff like that drives me nuts. Other people don't care. We all have a different threshold. Our ML's grandfather happens to be a physicist and this is his realm of study so as the story unfolds we meet him. (He's on a business trip until episode 13). They never give an adequate explanation from a scientific sense, but they provide a reason for the timeslip from an astral sense. By ep23 things seem like a right mess. And all-the-while, we are hurling towards that fateful day when Che will be born.

This probably would have been better at 25 to 30 episodes. They resorted to filler in the late 20s and early 30s. Just when I was getting very discouraged, eps33 & 34 make a full recovery. There's a nice twist and things are wrapped up very satisfactorily.

Overall, the show is plain cute. It will pass the... time. The final episode involves Che looking at a photo album and his mother (who exudes warmth and peace) recalls his life. Not everything was exactly the same as he remembered it. There's much less to regret.

QUOTES📢

Being in love is like catching a cold. By the time you're aware of it, it's already serious.

Q - Why doesn't he ever take the next step? A - Everyone has their secret. Maybe he has reservations that he doesn't want us to

My future happiness is my responsibility.

From another perspective, all the barriers to love are there to prove that love exists.

〰🖍 IMHO

📣7 📝7.2 🎭6.8 💓6 🦋5.5 🎨5 🎵/🔊8.3 🔚8.5 🤗4 ▪ 🌞5 ⚡3.7 😅3 😭4 😱2 😯4.5 🤢1 🤔4 💤2

Age 13+ there is a sexual assault and other adult themes. Rated TV-PG-13: Parents Cautioned

Re-📺? Doubtful.

Originally 〰️🖋 3/2025〰

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✒ ✨ JACKPOT! ✨ °8.9° °Outstanding°

'I know a rich woman who hired a young gigolo; she said his skin was as smooth as a 🍼Baby 🐬Dolphin''s,' Fan's BFF wistfully recollects〰

FY is a fairytale for older single chicks. The story of Fan reminds me of the Princess Bride as I imagine it starting w/ the 32y/o Fan sitting in bed. Grandma, sitting bedside, pulls out a 📖 (entitled That 🍼🐬 is Mine). 'Tonight we'll read about the director & the intern who loves her,' starts grandma...

Soon it's all hitting the FAN. Or should we say she FANS the 🔥 of a walking lawsuit? Even in 🇨🇳, "doing" the intern is a no-no, so here we go!

"If humans all live the same way it would be boring, wouldn't it?" Marriage & kids, marriage & kids. It's all the older generation knows. The young-gen isn't much better 〰 'You're pretty & you have it all together. Why do you want to go on blind dates?" 〰 'At age 32, you are considered a leftover woman.' 〰 'Look at your age - Don't be so picky.' 〰 "A virgin can't reincarnate, right?" This is what Fan is up against. She's reaching an expiration date, like the 4th yogurt from a buy-3-get-1-free deal. 'What others say about us is not scary. The scariest thing is when you believe it,' she despairs. What might be scarier is falling for your baby brother's student.

Victoria Song is "Fan". I 💖 her. In ep1 she meets ML#2. David Wang is "Ming". Sure, ML#1, the waif thin Song, is beautiful w/ skin as smooth as a 🍼🐬. He's a compelling ML, but I fell hard for this Ming guy! Domineering? He isn't that, so much as driven. He can take it too far, but as a bf he's absolutely lovely. The handsome actor is manly while being funny & a tad ridiculous. He's also the Sun Tzu of human relationships. Ming's firm is a client of Fan's employer, Amazing Decorations. She has to apologize for a screw-up which places her in his office. He's repugnant. Fan is submitted to a tirade of insults along w/ the news that AD is fired. Fan starts sobbing (really bad day). He relents, but 1st impressions are cemented in. This starts a string of junctures between them.

He's convinced she's stalking him. By the time he realizes his misconception (falling for her utterly in the same moment) she's already fallen for Song. So when they meet up yet again (blind date), Ming switches gears & adopts the "Let's be friends" ruse. He wants her badly. He pre-ID'd his blind date & showed up ready to seal the deal. The viewer almost hears screeching brakes as he wriggles into her life. He 'came to this blind date to mollify his sister'. He 'already has someone' he likes, too. They 'can be friends'. She confides in him as she thinks he's a disinterested party. He jumps on her fumble & runs it back to the 5 yard line➡ he offers to be her romance coach.

The acting excels. Expressions & lines are full of life & wit. We like these people. Song Wei Long is Song. He's perfect at being a sexy, winsome puppy - sweet, loving & cuddly, but not too compliant, w/ a touch of the 🐕 in him. Yang is Fan's brother. He can really yang&bang - he's a college prof & a total playboy. Esther Yu (Love Between Fairy & Devil 8.9) is "Cai", Ming's niece. Her wavery voice is adorable.

Here's the seating chart: FL Fan is Yang's twin & Song's boss at AD. Yang is Song's college prof & got him the job at AD. Yang is Cai's prof as well. Ming, client of AD, is Cai's uncle & guardian as she attends school. She stays w/ him on the w/e. Cai is in 💘 w/ Song. This leads to scenes in which Cai & Ming are both mourning over the same thing - their crush is in 💘 w/ someone else - but they don't know that their crushes are in love w/ e/o.

Fan cannot resist dating Song who is 10 yrs her jr, but 〰 'Do you think that's his gf?" 〰 "No way. She's too old." 〰 "She's not that old." 〰 "Maybe she's rich & he's a paid escort." Standards; Ideal mate; What do you want in a spouse? There's so many topics that Fan now finds uncomfortable! Fan is not a salmon. Going against the current is exhausting. She demands they keep /them/ a secret. She doesn't want to deal w/ professionals, coworkers, college frenemies, family, nosy neighbors, & random people on the street w/ their snark, condescension & judgment. She can't take the pressure! Song's a beautiful 🍼🐬. She's not that, either. She wants to try a relationship in a sedate & carefully cultured koi pond. Ming convinces her to try dating him to distract herself from her 💔. She breaks it off w/ Song. Yes, on 📑 Fan & Ming are perfect for e/o. Analytics will only get you to the playoffs. It doesn't necessarily win championships. When it comes to matters of the heart, the intangibles are what scores the 🏆

"Didn't you play flip the box in Kgarten?" "No, we played minesweeper & the loser had to buy lunch." FY depicts generational disconnect & how rigid the mindset of older people can be. Yet it's gentle w/ the elders & reinforces our obligations of deference & patience toward those who worked & sacrificed before us. Other themes are the disparity between the sexes & tossing out silly taboos along w/ the societal pressure that keeps them in place. Most of all, it's abt lies, including the struggle between truth as we want to see it & actual truth. FY is Fear>Deceit>Pride>Secrets>Relationship hierarchy>More lies>Gossip>Judgment>Expectations>Responsibilities>Finally, Freedom.

"Relationships between adults are usually maintained w/ white lies." 〰 "Where is the line between hiding & deceiving?" 〰 "Sometimes, a lie is like quenching thirst w/ poison." Fan gives it serious thought. "Perhaps lies are ice melting in truth. Eventually, there's no difference." Why do we lie? It's almost always for our own short-term comfort. Lying is like taking drugs. Comforting effects are temporary & the residue left behind is enslaving. Thus the adage: The truth will set you free. Society actually runs on lies, but that's not a good thing. James Spader, who falls for an older Susan Sarandon in the film White Palace, plays a reformed habitual liar in the movie Sex Lies & Videotape. He stopped lying altogether. It's portrayed as shocking. He was still kind - people who won't lie must know when to say nothing.

We lie to ourselves first, & the biggest lie we tell ourselves is that we're okay. The truth is that we all have lots to work on. We're all damaged, hurt, or spoiled in some way. To let go of lying we have to let go of pride. We're all better off without it; pride only obstructs 💘. Humans tend to complicate things endlessly. Fan must sort through heaps of societal garbage to arrive at what's really important. At the end of the day, things are simple. We just have to toss out the trash that's been thrown on top of us by family, friends, society, & ourselves, and grab onto the good.

The writing is excellent. There's humor & an understanding of human relations. The dialogue is snappy. The director is skillful w/ cutting & segues. He plays it well for comedy & there's a bright crispness to the flow. The pace is almost methodical - in the best way. Early on the viewer might wonder how they will fill 41 eps. They do it steadily. I can get a teensy bit stressed when I like a show, waiting for it to go downhill, as so many resort to padding & idiocy to fill the required eps. FY doesn't merely hold the line, it improves as it goes on. It's 1 of 2 modern-day Cdramas I've seen that aren't significantly flawed, (the other is A Little Thing Called First Love-8.5). 🇨🇳 is not a free country & it has seemed like they were at a loss as to how modern people should behave. It appears they've reflected on themselves & decided to get more real. Perhaps we can thank K🇰🇷. FY makes positive references to Kpop & dramas.

Now for the Scooby snacks:

〰"Being friends w/ your ex is the highest level of break-up." Seriously, can it get more 🇨🇳 than that?

〰On the wall of the office is inscribed: If you are always trying to be NORMAL you will never know how AMAZING you can be.

〰The family dynamics are cute. Fan's overprotective brother got in the way of all her romantic relationships when they were growing up. Ironically, he introduces Fan to her first 💘 after blocking 💘 for so many years.

〰The wardrobe contains some duds but has lots of winners. They had fun reinventing mens collared dress shirts. Fan accessories well.

〰Fan & Song play badminton. Determined to lose & not embarrass the other, each claims s/he is not a good player, though Fan could have made the nat'l team. Soon the competitive juices fire up w/ video game animation overlay to enhance the scene. It's very funny.

〰Ming's cousin is his assistant. They strictly set familial vs work boundaries. She keeps it all business on the 🕰 unless she requests a time out to talk to her cousin. Then their expressions, body language & demeanor will change instantly while they talk as family for a tad. Then it's back into work mode.

〰Ming only knows half of the equation & he says, "could it get more complicated than that?" Lol - It already is.

〰Fan protests- "I'm only 31... & 1/2..." The actress delivers superbly.

"A sense of belonging is, 'I am yours.' But a sense of security is, 'You are mine'." Young people want someone they like, older people want to find the right one. What does Ming want? He admits that he's childish, but he wants his destiny. FY tells us that's like hitting the jackpot🎰. Love at first sight is like winning the 🎰. Finding 💘 on a blind date? 🎰. Finding 💘 when a woman is over 30 is definitely like hitting the 🎰. Fan hits the super~🎰~schizzle. Cha-ching!

QUOTES📢

Men have a bad habit of being w/ their exes even if they don't have any feelings left

Siblings are debts from a prior life

Parents' tears drown relationships


〰🖍 IMHO

📣8.8 📝8.8 🎭8.5 💓8 🦋8 🎨7 🎵/🔊7 🔚8 ▪ 🌞7 ⚡2 😅5.5 😭3 😱0 😯3 😖0 🤔7 💤0

Poli-wagging 2/10

Age 14+ The primary couple does get it on prior to marriage and they do 😚 generate some steam.

Re-📺? 🔛

Originally 〰️🖋 5/2024

Older woman & toy boy 〰
🇨🇳The Rational Life-7
🇰🇷A Witch's Love 7.9;

Just for fun 〰
🇰🇷My Only Love Song 8.7 excellent comedy;
🇰🇷Mr. Queen 8.5;

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