Rants and Weekly Raves #37 (RAWR)

becca: Hi, all!
Hi Becca! How's finals prep?
Finals are upon us! But I think the worst part is already over. :)
kakashi: Awwww, becca! Looking forward to having you back! In the land of the KDrama watchers and procrastinators (that would be me, currently).
Aww, reading that warms the cockles of my heart. ^__^ Also! Update! It's been a few days, and finals are over! I'm freeeee and ready to catch up on my dramas!
She is FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE! 
Shuk: I think this is the first RAWR I've done in a long time. Not that my life is any less busy, though, unfortunately. But maybe the warming weather gives me more energy to squeeze extra awake time.
bcook: hi! Been so long. I like what you did with the place.
Cookie!!!!!!! I miss you!
S@ki6 here: looks like I have to pick a new colour. :-)
credit to whoever posted this on Pinterest

Falling for Innocence

Sadly, this has become unwatchable for me as of last week's episodes. What a shit script. And by that, I mean everything but NotPaksa and his Innocence. The very worst (but symptomatic) is Kong Hyun-Joo, who is a bad actress to begin with and got the most abundant and stupid character on top. She plays that Golden Whateverthenameofthecompany's woman, who does nothing else but sit around, smile, and say she wants to completely destroy this, this and that. WTF! Just a tip, writers: characters' actions need to make sense based on who they are and what you tell us about them or they're pointless. Cutie Soo's tearjerk-story is also annoying. Rather than making me sympathetic towards his plight, he just comes across as a lunatic stalker or stalker lunatic. It's not enough to just give a character a hard childhood and then jump right to super-villain. Fail!
Right? No one feels sorry for him at all except for those brief moments where we can forget hating him long enough to 'awww' at Cutie Soo's sad face. They don't last long. I actually find him unattractive most of the time now in this. I KNOW.

Angry Mom (Finale)

This drama began well, continued well, and ended well. PLUS it gave us Ji Soo Puppy. What more is there to say? Oh, I guess I have a few things... I'm glad that after a slow and barely noticeable start, Baro's Sang Tae stepped up and assumed a more central (and quite pivotal) role. I liked the growth of the character and I like Baro as an actor. I think he did well with this, as he has with other things. I can see a day when people don't even remember he was a singer - which he still very much is, in a band that I really like. As for the bad guys - in the end, the only completely unredeemable characters for me were Sang Tae's father and the Minister of Education. Truly despicable men I had no sympathy for, although I could muster up some for Dong Chil and Director Oh even though by overt action, they were probably far more criminal than the other two. 

As for the good guys, well... so much love goes out to them. Kim Hee Sun's Jo Kang Ja was a marvelous woman, a devoted mother and a open-hearted, giving human being. Her friend Gong Joo is the same - she lives her life loud and true and I loved her to bits. Kim Yoo Jung will go far, we've known that for a long time - she brought Ah Ran to life in a very real way. I spent some time thinking that Ji Hyun Woo's teacher was more of a problem than not, but No Ah really stepped up to the plate once he saw what was really going on, and in the end I really liked the character and the portrayal of him.
  
I think one of the advantages of this not being a romantic drama is that it allowed every character a chance to develop in a believable way. Characters like Sang-tae and No-ah, who seemed like they had been all but forgotten at some point, were actually changing, too - just in the background, while someone else took the spotlight for a while. In that way, the world seemed fleshed out and real because it felt like everyone had lives and thoughts that were happening in the background and away from our heroine.

Speaking of whom, I can't stress enough how delighted I am that we were finally given an independent, complex, and kickass heroine who stayed that way through the entire drama. If Angry Mom did nothing else right (and I think it did many things right), it did have consistent and believable character development. And watching all these people grow together and learn to rely upon each other and stand together was extremely gratifying.

Does anyone want to talk about how they seemed to leave it open for a season 2? I'm not sure how I feel about that. I guess I could go for a S2, but the story wrapped up nicely, and I'm done. 

Super Daddy Yeol (Finale)

I liked it. I never stopped liking it. I had a hard time wrapping my head around Mi Rae's choice(s) sometimes, but when I put myself in the character's shoes with the character's life and the character's beliefs, they had a logic specific to her. Which is not to say the logic would have been mine, necessarily, so when I was really flabbergasted by what she did a few times, I just told myself the poor woman was dying and not in her right mind. In any event, I enjoyed the drama. I guess I love sobbing myself into an upset stomach at the prospect of a single mom dying young and leaving behind a daughter she adores, who adores her right back. Not that that hits a little close to home or anything. You know. (Well it would have. I'm no longer young (I'm youngISH, though) and my daughter is grown but she still needs her mama so there's that.)
I have a crush on Lee Dong Gun now, though.
Well, that's a given.

I Heard It Through the Grapevine

By this point, it should be clear that In Sang's parents are complete fools, totally out of touch with reality and in very many ways utterly unlikeable. I can't decide whether I should be laughing or sitting there in slack-jawed amazement as I watch them face off against the household help, but I do know that I don't like them at all.
 

Let's Eat 2

I'm confused. If Admin Officer is being such a nice boyfriend and Writer Baek is having such a nice time with him, how are we supposed to all root for Doo Joon, who HAS to be end game? Not that Doo Joon isn't awesome, because he is, and I prefer him regardless - but there's no shitty second lead here! I'm adrift! I just keep reminding myself that there's no way Admin Officer thinks this relationship could end in marriage.

Plus I can't make up my mind if the airhead princess from the convenience store is insincere or just very upfront about acknowledging that being nice to people means people will be nice back to you, and I never bought that misdirect about the roof boy being a serial killer but I AM worried he's a little unhinged, regardless, and I know I should feel more sympathy for that stupid woman who works with the Admin Officer because CLEARLY she's lying about her life and desperately lonely, but she's so irritating I just feel like she deserves it. I'm a horrible woman.

Plus, is that dog Barassi or just a nod to Barassi? First it was the tricks and now he does the thing where he goes into his crate and shuts the door... except since this is a homeless dog, he goes into a box. What happened to Barassi? Why is he homeless now? Where is Doo Joon's Noona?
 

Other Things

I am still marathoning Justified (well, marathoning as much as possible with my schedule) and while I really liked Season 1, I completely loved Season 2! Woah, intense!!! My favorite character must have been Mags Bennett. I also love what they're doing with Boyd, Ava is getting more and more feisty, I like what's going on in Raylan's life (the actress playing his ex-wife is so beautiful O____o) and I'm interested in every single character in this show. There is not one that is boring or abundant. I only hope they stop killing so many off, because I fear we will run out of the really good-twisted characters soon! Seeing something so well written and acted makes watching KDrama doubly painful for me right now.
I loved Mags! Did you know I'm a Bennett? You must...it's on FB. Never mind.
Haha, actually, I should have known! But it never crossed my mind. Wow. I totally see you as crime boss now.
This is to Mags
I'm watching this interesting show called Hinterland. It's a crime drama set in Wales (love the accents) and the lead is tortured coz of something that happened to his kids, his chief has secrets, his partner doesn't like the young pretty member of their group for some reason and everybody else has issues! I love it. 
That sounds very interesting!! 
I'm also trying to get into Eureka but the seasons are divided up btn amazon and netflix and amazon doesn't work on my tablet and since all I do is stream now... yeah. Also, omg what they did to Derek!
Same stuff as always:  iZombie, The Following (it's been cancelled, Kakashi, there won't be a season 4), and Blacklist. Oh! And Orphan Black and Jane the Virgin. Speaking of... you TeamMichael people must be happy right now. Also I checked out that preview for Jiro Wang's new thing and I might want to see a little bit of that. And who's that Doctor facing the camera in the Viki scroll for Doctor's Affairs because, yowza. 
Now that the semester is over, I've gone back to the daily drama A Well-Raised Daughter/Well-Raised Daughter Hana, and yes, I'm very very hooked. The main plot centers around Hwang-so Soy Sauce, and we spent somewhere between thirty and forty episodes on a competition for succession. Lately, though, the romance is starting to heat up, and I am torn between the two guys. One has my heart and the other has my squees. Oh, and it's a cross-dressing drama. One guy knows and the other doesn't, but it isn't who you'd guess based on these screencaps.

UPDATE: Do-hyun is now officially in the doghouse as far as I'm concerned. Han Yun-chan all the way! (That's the guy on the left.)
My own favorite daily drama has been You Are The Only One, but it's gotten repetitive and now I'm just waiting for the finale. Still, it's been fun, mostly. Just, and this is my gripe with all kdramas, it's gone on at least 25% too long. Also, watching Wolf Hall, Unkind Women and Hwajung. I'd like to say subs do not come fast enough for Hwajung. Ah, and I do watch Sensory Couple too, but it's been losing me lately. Started Empress of China, though, and silly though it is, I'm in love with the costumes, elaborate hair-dos and scenery. Just fabulous!
Sensory Couple remains safely dropped, haven't missed it one second. Cute OTP or not, I don't have patience for half-cooked things

Upcoming

kakashi: I'm getting a tiny little bit excited about Masked Prosecutor. You all know I enjoyed silly and comical Joo Sang-wook (to a certain degree) but he is hottest when he is angsty and brooding. And those stills? FANTASTIC. Angsty, brooding and in a suit. YUM.
Okay, that was before I saw the teaser and that mask. I cringed. And then I thought about crying. This looks like a potential epic fail now.
I'm sorry about your guy, but in a way, you know, the epic fails provide our best source material.
This is true. I frequently go back to re-read a random Birth of a Beauty WookiCap - it's an instant pick-me-up.
Oh yes, those were good! (besides, good on him for working so much, I ain't complaining. Well I am. But it's good he gets so many offers) But I don't really plan to spend much time with the Masked Prosecutor. The only thing I could imagine is do some more caption-caps for you, JoAnne. Definitely no recapping.
Yeah I think I'm sort of ruined for actual recaps for at least a while... but if this one ends up looking funny, we could maybe do that, because I do enjoy the caption caps. I wasn't really thinking about it but then again, I had no idea he was actually going to wear a mask. 
It could have been a good kind of mask. But it's THAT kind. *still shaking head* And no, I didn't like Nacho Libre. 
Ooh, I love Joo SangWook!  Will definitely try.  And he can wear a mask as long as he's not a vampire or a zombie.