Welcome to my Saturday blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching, whether at the beginning, middle, or end. Whatever I want, because I’m petty that way.
This week I recapped Not Me episodes 5-6, in which a screaming flail while jumping from roof to roof brings about an important epiphany. There’s also a love strangle. Go read about it.
I also finished recapping Jack & Joker with episodes 11-12. I go into details about what didn’t work for me there, but I’ll give a general review about my admiration and frustration with this show below.
But first, I started something this week:
When the Phone Rings – 지금 거신 전화는 – 2024
Currently airing Korean romantic thriller, I’ve watched 3 of 12 episodes.
A husband and wife are living separate lives when she gets kidnapped. His response leads to exciting, ridiculous, regressive, over-the-top, fun dramatics.
Abandon common sense and logic and enter a world of rich people behaving badly. We’ve got a politically powerful husband who hasn’t learned sign language to understand his wife who has selective mutism. His secret wife who is keeping a lot of secrets from him.
Then the phone rings
It’s the kidnapper! He has the wife and she can do nothing but listen to her husband’s replies to the kidnapper’s demands. They’re less than satisfactory. Will she give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s putting on a show? No. Does he deserve it? No!
I don’t want to tell what happens next because the fun of this show is watching the situation snowball as each bad choice and miscommunication leads to more horrible situations.
But don’t be too hard on our sexy married liars with secrets, it’s the world they live in. A world of powerful families forging alliances and being cruel to get more power to… pass the time. Our sexy married liars with secrets are actually the good guys.
The show is being very sparing with the backstory so far. We know there’s some long, convoluted history between our married couple and their families, but we’re going to have to wait for more.
The phone is going to keep ringing
And things will keep getting worse. And as things get worse we’ll learn more about our lead couple and they’ll learn more about each other and there will be intense staring.
This is not the show to watch if you need heartwarming, healing, caring empowered individuals who respect each other’s personal space. I’m hoping for lots of criminal activity and bad behavior, and that our lead couple gets closer and cruelly destroys their enemies.
Please, no redemption for anyone except our leads.
And here are my final thoughts on:
Jack and Joker – Jack & Joker ทำไมต้องเป็นเธอทุกที – 2024
Recently aired Thai crime BL with 12 episodes.
A sweet young aspiring Taekwondo athlete meets a well-intentioned thief and there’s an instant attraction before things go very wrong.
Here’s a link to my initial review.
For the first 2/3rdish of the show, we had a fun, silly adventure with nonsensical heists and some minor messaging about poverty and power. Then in the last 1/3rdish of the show Things Turned Serious as message and drama became the priority. There was a lot of crying.
I will not fault this show for it’s ambitions
Is it a good idea to aspire to be Lord of the Rings, City of God, and Ocean’s Eleven all at once? No.
But there’s nothing worse than a show where it feels like no one cared and this is very much the opposite. I mentioned it in my midpoint review, this is an ambitious production. There are a ton of locations, characters, camera angles, action scenes, fighting, redemption arcs, shipping, comedy, crying, hospital visits, precocious children, schools for the underprivileged, Taekwondo, debtors, cruel rich people games, cleaning shrines, stealing the same necklace repeatedly, disguises, gadgets, and more.
It’s too much. Many things don’t make sense and are left hanging. I admire it for trying.
And I’m disappointed that it’s trying to do so much that the characters and love story get lost.
Jack OR Joker
In my initial review, I called this show a slow burn, having completed the show I take this back. Jack and Joker are attracted to each other from the beginning. Outside of the initial issues of the first quarter of the show, they have no reason not to be together.
It’s just the plot kept getting in the way. They didn’t get together because things kept happening that kept them too busy to spend time together.
I find this more frustrating than engaging. I wanted to see them work through their feelings and their emotional issues to come together but there was no time for that. They barely worked together on their problems.
On top of that, I get the sneaking suspicion that either the writers and/or the actors wanted to be sure they had ACTING scenes. This meant characters acting unreasonably so we could see crying and dramatic yelling.
The actors can act. Their chemistry sells their attraction. I wanted to see more of that and less action and crying. I like this show best when being goofy and silly.
Besides them, most of the secondary characters feel half-baked. You learn a little about their situations, but they don’t have real arcs. A few don’t have arcs so much as instantaneous epiphanies. I felt the most cheated out of a potential second couple that never got developed.
This show is worth watching if you measure your expectations
You’re going to get a big story about class and poverty and the difference one person can make. It won’t always work, but it’s trying. There will be rings involved. It won’t quite make sense but it’s trying. There will be silly goofy heists. Don’t take it seriously.
There will be two guys in love who can’t catch a break. They’re really cute together.
If you want goofy fluff and low-stakes conflict, skip this. If you can’t stand to see another engineering student and architect fall in love and like your shows like The Sign or 4 Minutes, this is for you.
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