Welcome to my weekly blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching, whether I’m at the beginning, middle, or end. Whatever I want, because I’m petty that way.

This week I started recapping Thailand’s take on My Love Mix-Up! I’ve recapped the Japanese version, so I’m eager to see how this longer version tackles the plot. So far, there’s a lot more about the magic of erasers.

I also recapped episode 5 of Korean fantasy High School BL Love for Love’s Sake. If you want to watch a cold, closed-off teenager transform into the most adorable, shy guy ever, this show is for you.

This week I leave Thailand and end up in Korea. What did I watch? 

I started:

My Sweet Mobster – 놀아주는 여자 – 2024

Currently airing Korean romantic comedy, I’ve watched 4 of 16 episodes.

An ex-mobster trying to change the lives of other former criminals comes into conflict with a children’s content creator and comedy ensues.

Here’s a trailer.

The title of the show is spot on, so far the mobster is the main selling point 

He’s got serious cheekbones, a low menacing voice, and a heart of gold. Leading a group of other ex-cons, he’s building a business despite other’s judgments and difficulties with his employees. All of them look good in black jackets with black shirts and black ties.

The show veers into (too much) wackiness in the first few episodes, but not at the expense of the characters. Our mobster does silly things and silly things happen to him, but he’s still believable as a menacing ex-con.

None of this is to say there’s anything wrong with the female lead. 

So far though, she’s a standard female lead character. She’s a children’s content creator, disillusioned to discover the business is more about the money than the children. She’s got one of those kdrama all-consuming obsessions with a missing childhood friend. In the first few episodes, she learns a few hard lessons that upend her life and put her in the orbit of the male lead.

But to be fair to her, it’s this contrast of a typical heroine with an untypical hero that has me intrigued, romance-wise. I want to see how two characters who belong in different shows end up together.

I’m also here for some good found family, which I think we are going to get from the mobster’s employees and the female lead. We’re still in the early episodes, but I anticipate a snow-white-and-the-seven-dwarves situation coming soon. I anticipate with excitement.

The plot is just getting started, so it’s hard for me to judge

There’s some kind of criminal activity and a prosecutor who may be (but probably isn’t?) the female lead’s childhood friend. There’s the female lead’s changing work circumstances and the male lead’s efforts to build his company. It’s obvious where some of this is likely to go.

But as usual, I’m here for the characters, and they’ve got me hooked.

I also watched the entirety of:

Lovely Runner –  선재 업고 튀어 – 2024

A recently aired Korean timey-wimey romance with 16 episodes.

A woman’s life is changed by a popular idol who dies tragically, but then she gets a chance to save his life by going back in time.

Here’s a trailer.

So this show has been seriously popular and, hot take, I didn’t love it as much as everyone else. But I think I get why so many people loved it. 

What we’ve got here is two genres for the price of one

It’s a timey-wimey mystery and a romance together in one show. It’s not the first time we’ve seen it, the combination is a popular one. And there’s a lot you can do with them, Marry My Husband is very different from Love in Time.

In this case, the romance half of the show is another popular romance subgenre: the super hot, famous character with the fan character. Our male lead is a popular idol while our female lead is a plucky, determined, down on her luck super-fan of his. Never in a million years would she dream that this popular idol could fall in love with her.

This leads me to one of the biggest selling points of the show, the male lead is really, really, really good at being in love. Staring adoringly at her, smiling at her, getting all soft with her, he pulls it off spectacularly.

The female lead holds up her end of the relationship too, it’s just that for a while she only sees herself as a fan. Despite that, the two of them together have great chemistry, and their intense yearning and love is the heart-squeezing kind.

So it should now be obvious what I found less satisfying, and that’s the timey-wimey stuff. 

This timey-wimey stuff is the core around which the fluffy idol romance is built. The male lead’s impending doom and the question of whether she can save him or not is the cause of most of the angst. And I found it weak.

With timey-wimey stories, typically something unexpected happens time-wise to one or more characters. For a few episodes they flail around, discovering the rules of their strange situation through trial-and-error, learning what they can and can’t change and how it affects the future. Once they know the rules, they have to figure out how to work within them, or manipulate them, to get what they want (usually save lives).

The problems for me started nearly at the beginning. Our female lead is thrown far enough back in time that she can’t see any long-term effects of any changes she makes. Even when she sees them, it’s not a lot to work with. Small changes make little difference, and the big changes don’t appear to have a downside. Except for one particular rule, the female lead spent very little time discovering what she could and couldn’t do. At times she knew things and I wasn’t sure how.

As the show went on the rules and how the time stuff worked grew weaker and felt less and less important to the story.

Because the real focus of the show was on the romance

And I think that’s why it’s so popular. People watched to see a besotted idol and his plucky fan. The timey-wimey stuff was interesting, but it was mostly there to put our characters through as many emotional hardships as possible.

So while I might have wished for more time spent on the dark, thriller part of the show, I can recognize a lost cause. That’s not why people were watching. And that’s how I’ll recommend this show to people: Don’t watch it if you want a time-mystery, watch it if you want a heart-squeezing romance.