Drama: AlRawabi School for Girls 9/10

This show is so good.

Netflix gets it wrong a lot, and recommends shows I’m not interested in, but they got it right this time.

The show is one part typical high school drama, with popular and unpopular kids, girls doing makeup in the bathroom, talking about boys and dancing to BTS. It’s about bullies and the bullied, the effect bullying has on a teenager and also the lengths they will go to to get justice. But it’s more nuanced then that, which is what makes it especially good.

The leads are all girls who go to a girls high school in Jordan. This includes popular girls, who are externally confident and unpopular girls who claim not to care about their status.

The main lead is not popular with her peers but she lives a good life She is good at studying, has a long time best friend, another friend who seems to have a crush on her, no money worries and loving parents. But overnight thanks to the bullying of another student who has more money and credibility then her, her life is tattered and she loses everything. At first she is miserably depressed and shocked by the sudden change but her grief turns to anger and she becomes determined to get even.

At this point in the show, there are clear delineations of good versus bad. Who to root for and who to dislike. And the revenge plot is fun to watch. At first. But then the mixed morality of the characters is introduced and it makes it harder for viewers to choose one side over the other side so easily, as the characters also grapple with this.

All this is happening as the characters careen toward destruction and possible tragedy in the last episode, which end on the worlds greatest cliffhanger.

The show is a great introduction to Jordan, which is beautiful. It also hits on themes related to Islam, and the role of women and girls within Muslim society. I saw an article that was critical of the show for this reason, but I felt the portrayal was true to life and also showed the tension between modern society, teenage hormones and religious traditionalism.

There were so many facets to this show, all of them interesting, and the acting was great. I was fully immersed in the story by the end, and I highly recommend watching this season and the second one, which is officially coming.

Sp-Drama: Elite (8.9/10)

MY HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA REVIEW SERIES

(Spain)

Wow. This drama is intense. It’s like Gossip Girl and 13 Reasons Why had a baby. In Spain.

The show, which is on Netflix, takes place at an elite private high school in Spain that accepted scholarship students from across la ciudad (city) after their own school was destroyed. The students are:

Samuel: The white sheep of his small family who is somewhat unassuming and not particularly good with girls at the beginning of the show, but starts to have feelings for one of the rich students, Marina, who isn’t obsessed with her status as an elite like the others. He is best friends with Nadia’s brother Omar (see the description of Nadia below).

Christiano: An outgoing guy who doesn’t let snobbery or adversity keep him down.

Nadia: A Palestinian Muslim who starts the year extremely devout with an academic chip on her shoulder.

The rich kids include Paolo and Carla, a high school power couple who have been together forever, siblings Ben who is a spoiled jocky type and Marina, who is a free spirit or hot mess depending on how you look at it, Lu, one of the top students and a snob who has a thing with Ben, Ander Munoz*, the gay son of the high school principal, and later four additional cast members show up. *He is soooo cute.

As you can imagine, the scholarship students are not welcomed with open arms. They begin as negative novelties to the wealthy kids, but a devastating incident occurs that changes the dynamic between them all.

Kids rally to find the truth, to defend themselves, to seek revenge or to figure out who they are in light of the incident and other high school drama.

Every one of the kids becomes embroiled in the incident or its aftermath. They also find that the boyfriends or girlfriends they were with might not be the ones they wanted to stay with. The relationship musical chairs is a lot like Gossip Girls. So is the slick production. Between the sets, which includes the school. mansions, a low budget apartment, a market and more, and the amazing fashion, the show is pretty high quality. The OST is on point too and includes Mala Rodriguez who I love.

The acting is good too. I got immersed in some of the characters, forgetting at times that they were actors. This show was also similar to 13 Reasons Why. They showed the devastation that an event can cause, and focus on the humanity in everyone, and the potential for redemption.

There were a few things in the show that I did not like.

One was the transition one character made from being good and sweet to a lying superficial puto hell bent on vengeance. It made sense in the story arc but I hate to see anyone turn from goodness towards the dark side. In real life or on TV.

One character was cheated on and shows with cheating, especially when the cheater has no guilt or the cheaters end up together always irk me. I always have a hard time liking the characters who are cheaters.

I also had a slight issue with the fact that these kids who are rich and young and gorgeous, and live in Spain where there are miles of beautiful beaches and art and music and sangria were miserable most of the time. I just wished they had gone to the beach, met some other pretty people, had some wine and garlic butter shrimp, the kind that wafted through the air when I was at the beach in Barcelona, and enjoyed their extremely privileged lives more

What I really didn’t enjoy was the ending. I won’t give it away, but it was reminiscent of the ending of another show whose ending I also loathed. The show is still worth watching to the end, just beware that if you are a bleeding heart like me you may not be cheering for everyone at the end.

Season 4 is coming out on June 18, so hopefully this will resolve my mixed emotions about the last season. I am not hopeful since I hear a new plot begins and half the characters are replaced with new ones, including my favorite. Does that mean I won’t watch? Heck no. I am there for all of it.

Lastly, before you rush to see it, I should mention that Spanish nudity standards are different than other areas of the world so there is a lot of bare skin. The show also brings up ideas around sexual identity and fluidity and shows love between multiple types of partners. I love this because love is love is love but since it includes some super sexytime scenes I think it’s worth mentioning.

Best & Worst High School Dramas from around the world

This is my first blog introducing a future blog, but my reasons are good. I hope you’ll like them.

If you’re like me and enamored with high school dramas (I am and I’m not afraid to say it) than I present to you (drumroll please) my upcoming blog series:

Best and worst high school dramas from around the world

I will review new and old dramas full of teens in high school hallways, on beaches, covering up murders and other wholesome activities like that. The shows I think are amazing and addicting and the ones that made me roll my eyes and change the channel.

To start this off, here are the links to my past high school drama reviews:

13 Reasons Why (America): https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/862

Le Coup de Foudre (China): https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/472

Love Revolution (Korea): https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/746

Never Have I Ever (America) (technically a dramedy): https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/668

Great Men Academy (Thailand): https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/546

A Love So Beautiful (China): https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/56

Just Dance (Korea): https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/593

The Big Boss (China) (technically a dramedy): https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/123

Proud of Love (China) (also technically a dramedy: https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/177

I offer this series as a public service to you all for the following reasons:

It can help you decide which shows to watch
It may open up a new geographical viewing area to you. So many countries have great shows.
If you have already seen one you can compare your opinions on it to mine and see where we agree and disagree on things like the plot, production, characters, cast talent and hotness.
It can change your mind if you don’t like the high school drama genre

Warning: Series reviews will be sporadic since I work a lot and sometimes I can’t face any more typing when my work day ends, which is why my blogs are posted randomly. Please also note: I will continue doing other reviews of movies and non-high-school themed shows as well.

Th-Drama: Senior Secret Love: My Lil Boy (7/10)

Why God why did I watch this? Even the name is stupid.

Ok, I know how I ended up watching this. It looked like a cutesy Thai high school drama, and sometimes I like them. Unfortunately, I did not like this one so much and fast forwarded through most of it. Mydramalist.com gives it a 7.4, so it looks like most people didn’t like it much.

Here is the summary for the show, which is called Roonpi on Netflix:

Belle is known for her beauty throughout the entire school and she has always been successful getting the man she wants. Yet her charms don’t seem to work when it comes to a junior boy named S that she has taken a liking to. Determined to get S, Belle asks for the help of her two best friends.

My major problem with the show was the lead girl Belle. She was basically a stalker. S, the male lead, told her over and over and over that he wasn’t interested in her and she refused to leave him alone. She lied to be near him, she followed him home, and found any reason to be near him. She also had her girls help with her obsession. They went as far as getting the boy injured to get the two together.

I didn’t find Belle’s consistent stalking charming. I also didn’t understand what made the lead boy so much of a catch to the girls around him. The girls crushing on him wouldn’t stop crying, which was not cute. And randomly, I wondered about the lead actor and rubix cubes, since he has been in c=two shows now where he plays with the cubes a lot. Weird.

This is one show where I did not have any interest in seeing the leads get together or care what happened to them later. The actors were ok though, and the show filmed at a number of places, which helped break up the stalking monotony. Those are the only compliments I can give it.

A-Drama: 13 Reasons Why (8.6/10)

Trigger warning: This show and therefore this blog touches on suicide and other topics that are sometimes hard to talk or hear about.

I had no idea what this show was about when I started it. It was on Netflix and at some point I had added it to my list, based on whatever description of the plot that they gave.

The summary did not accurately reflect the plot. It turned out that the show was about a high school girls suicide and the 13 reasons she gave for why she made that terrible decision. The show is about many of the things that teens / young adults go through in school and with their friends that traumatize them and lead them to make terrible choices.

The first episode was a bit of a lift to get through because the writing was very teenybopper, and I was also surprised by the subject matter, which was somewhat dark. From watching so many dramas though, I’ve learned to push past to the next episodes if there seems like there’s any hope for a show.

It turns out that was a good decision because I really enjoyed the show despite the depressing overtones.

The main characters the first season are Hannah, who died but narrates her life from before and beyond the grave and Clay her work and schoolmate who is clearly crushing on her. Other characters include a few popular jocks, the friends Hannah first met when she started at her high school, and a bullied yearbook nerd. There are also parents, a mom grappling for answers about her daughters death and others concerned about their own children, as well as the principal and high school counselors.

It didn’t seem to me that people were all that broken up about Hannah’s death until they found out they personally contributed to it. Some started to care a little and some began to mourn for her after that. Maybe this is natural, but it was sad to see. Hannah’s death was a tragedy and the show does a good job of pointing to all the little cuts she got from her peers that eventually became a very big wound, large enough to make her feel like life was not worth living.

Viewers also learn that Hannah would have had more love than she knew if she had lived.

Hannah’s character was interesting to watch, although I did not always agree with her choices, especially the big one. After considering it, I didn’t really love any of the characters. Like people in real life there were glimmers of good in everyone but a lot of self absorption too. Some just had more than others or handled situations with a little more kindness or grace.

Clay, the male lead was very loyal, but he was also on his high horse all of the time. There were stereotypical jocks, too entrenched in sports hero culture, students who were bullied, and others who were in between. Most of them, no matter how popular or unpopular were secretly insecure, some of them facing family problems, issues with their cliques, high school gossip or worries over growing into men.

Most of the time I was riveted by this drama. Sometimes I felt pretty sad or frustrated while I watched. It is especially sad that all the issues this show pointed to are the same ones so many kids have in real life. Some of the characters were struggling to redeem themselves after making really bad choices and the show gives viewers the space to grapple with their humanity and what types of consequences they deserve.

I don’t know if the acting was good. I think it was a mixed bag, but the show was intense and interesting enough that it didn’t really matter.

The show has a lot of trigger warnings and disclaimers before the episodes started, which makes sense. Most had the actors speaking in them, including the girl who played Hannah. She is apparently British, which is weird since the show is meant to be at a high school in California and she is meant to be all American. Could the casting director not find one actual American girl for this part?

Because I’m me I managed to watch a show filled with traumatic themes and still spend a good portion of it wondering which people I considered the most attractive lol. The guy who plays Clay is very much my type looks wise. Blue eyes and dark hair are my kryptonite, along with dimples and razor sharp cheekbones. His character was not my type, it was too judgey and too broody for my taste. Many of the guys and girls on the show are pretty people, although everyone is distinct and thankfully there is diversity among characters.

Watch this show, if you haven’t already and you can handle themes of teen suicide, sexual abuse, guns and drugs, to name a few. If any of these are too upsetting to you, then I recommend giving it a pass.

Best Dramas of 2020

BEST DRAMAS OF THE LAST YEAR

AMERICA

Never Have I Ever

This show from Mindy Kaling and found on Netflix is soooo funny. It’s about the life of an Indian-American, very smart, slightly lewd high school girl in California. I laughed through every single episode and am extremely excited that there is going to be a second season. Here is my longer review for it: https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/668

CHINA

Lovely Us

The show is called Lovely Us and it really is lovely. I enjoyed it a lot. It was less of an addicting marathon and more like sips of hot cocoa with marshmallows. It’s a drama about friends, family and first love. This show is funny and sweet. The leads are five high schoolers. Three are underachievers, two who squabble all the time. The other two are top of the class and much more sedate. All of them love each other completely and are loyal to the core. The show is also about their families, many who are struggling in various ways. Marcus Li who played Tan Song stole the show.

Twenty My Life On

This show is about girls in their last year of college who share a dorm together, straddling youth and adulthood. Three of the girls are close friends and one is less than friendly. All of the characters personalities are very different and interesting. The script is great and has one very unique and refreshing quality. Parts of it are far more realistic than most dramas, making it less formulaic and more relatable. I really enjoyed this show and looked forward to every episode. I highly recommend it if twenties slice of life dramas are your thing. Also, I just learned they are coming out with a season two. Yes!

Nothing but Thirty

This show started slow, but then it picked up speed and got interesting. I ended up invested in the characters and watching it through to the end. The story is about three women in and around age thirty and the trials and tribulations they face in their work, home and love lives. And the blessing that friendships can bring. Like Twenty Your Life On, some aspects of this show are more realistic than other dramas. Not all people, including the leads are selfless, not all choices are fair and not all endings are perfect.

I liked Twenty Your Life On better, if I had to choose, but both shows are good and worth the time spent watching them.

KOREA

World of the Married

This is my favorite show of the year. I wasn’t even planning on watching it. But I gave in and watched one episode. Then I was completely hooked. This show is the definition of drama. It’s crazy. But it’s a well written, well acted crazy that makes it a fun ride to go on. Here is my longer review for it: https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/715

Love Revolution

I adore this show, which is based on a webtoon. It is light hearted, quirky, funny and sweet. The actors, some of whom are amateurs, did a great job. There is no show I looked more forward to watching in 2020 than this one. Here is my longer review for it: https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/746

Kairos

This may be the best scripted Korean drama I have watched. Mr. Sunshine and This is My First Life were also very well written, so it’s hard to say for sure, but the dialogue and the twists and turns are ingeniously written. The acting was also phenomenal. Here is my longer review for it: https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/735

Nobody Knows

This is a show about a serial killer and the police officer tracking him. I am not normally into shows like this, but it was so well written and acted that I watched it anyway. I still don’t like shows like this, but I have to give credit where credit is due. It was a truly good drama.

THAILAND

2Gether

This BL is a sweet college romance, with a few surprises in the plotline that make it a little less formulaic. Here is my longer review for it: https://wordpress.com/post/ckdrama.home.blog/677

BEST OLD DRAMAS I WATCHED THIS YEAR

Money Flower (2017)(Korea)

I LOVE this show. It’s about someone getting revenge on a Chaebol family, how they do it and the consequences it has on them and everyone around them. I didn’t watch it before now because I am not always in the mood for a makjang, and when I am, I watch Thai Lakorn’s, which are always waaaay over the top. But the show was on my watch list for a long time, and I was in the mood, so I put it on while I worked, and got completely sucked into it!

The acting is great and the plot is intriguing – and infuriating. This has all the makings of a good makjang including cheating, murder, embezzlement, and revenge. By the end of the show I hated the male and female leads and did not wish them any happiness, but this didn’t make the show itself worse. I don’t think I was supposed to like them both. I ended the drama liking it even more then when I started it and will probably watch it again.

Game Sanaeha (2018)(Thailand)

This is my new favorite Lakorn. It has all the things Lakorn’s are famous for. It has rich versus poor, hatred and revenge, slap kisses, misunderstandings and some really, really stupid decisions. It is also unique because some of the characters are fairly mature and others gained some self awareness, learned from their mistakes and had personal growth throughout the course of the show. It was really refreshing and very entertaining.

A-Drama: Never Have I Ever (10/10)

Never Have I Ever on Netflix is my new favorite show. Too bad I finished it (insert very sad face). Now I have to hope beyond hope that they have a sequel on the way. Or I can impatiently twiddle my thumbs until I forget most of the plot line so I can watch it again (my personal rule for re-watching movies and shows).

The show is great because it’s really, really funny. I wouldn’t expect less from producers and writers including Mindy Kaling, a guy who wrote for The Onion and a guy who worked on Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who is America. I laughed through every single episode.

It’s also heartfelt. And it’s a teeny bopper rom-com, which is where my heart lies entertainment wise a lot of the time – probably because I enjoy them. but don’t get that personally invested (except for Dance Academy, that was a 150% investment lol).

Never Have I Ever starts off with a dramatic scene where the main character Devi’s father dies in front of her and she becomes paralyzed for months after that. This is definitely not the way a comedy usually begins, but it shares just enough of Devi’s heartbreak for viewers to understand her angst and empathize with her, even when she’s in the wrong.

Devi is a funny, loudmouthed, first in her class teenager who swears and says indecent things on the regular. She is an Indian American that relates a little more to American culture and considers her mom to be overbearing and overly critical.

Every episode is Devi trying to find her place in the world, more specifically her high school and the LA valley where she lives. Devi is also navigating friendship, how they work and how they survive with her two multicultural teenage dork friends.

What Devi wants more than anything is the school stud Paxton and she does some crazy things to try and get him. She also has an arch nemesis, her rich, obnoxious, academic rival Ben.

What sets this apart from other teeny bopper shows is definitely the humor. It’s a little raunchy, so if you’re under 16 be aware. And there are scathing jokes thrown in that are completely nuanced, so I don’t know how many people will get them. One of my favorites is when Devi tells someone that her volunteer experience includes reading Bill O’Reilly books to veterans. This is hilarious if you know that some American veterans love the former Fox News Host and his bestselling novels even though the books are trash and he is a total perv and %$&@#.

There is also a lot of mainstream humor. Usually it’s when Devi says something without meaning to, like saying “damnnnn” out loud when her school crush sits down in front of her in class (damnnnn in the catcall whistle you’re pretty hot kind of way) or a scene with a coyote that I won’t give away. I especially loved Devi’s cousin Kamala mentioning that all the Riverdale actors were really the same age as Devi’s mom since I rant during the shows and on this blog about how old high school and college age actors really look, example: Noah Centineo who has to be at least 35.

Also the show has narrators, including Andy Samberg and someone totally unexpected. Listening to them do crude teeny bopper talk is hilarious.

Here is a preview:

Truly, this show is sooo good. As mentioned above I give it 10/10 and recommend it 100%.

K-Drama: Hi, Bye Mama (1st Impressions)

This is a drama on Netflix about a woman who dies and becomes a ghost. As a ghost she spends years watching her husband grieve and then re-marry, and her daughter, who was born the day she died, grow up. When her daughter is in kindergarten something happens to her and as a result the woman gets 49 days to come back as a human.

I LOVE this drama more than I can say. The main theme is grief and dying , but it is sweet and fun and funny – and sad.

Most of characters are torn about what they should be doing. The husband has a new wife so he doesn’t know how to properly communicate with either woman. His first wife, the main character doesn’t know who she should reveal herself too and how she can be a mom to her daughter when her daughter doesn’t know her and her stay is only temporary. She also has to save her daughter from some trouble. The new wife doesn’t know that the first wife is back from the dead, but meets her, a woman who looks like her husbands deceased wife who has an attachment to their child, and is not sure how to handle it. She is also having some trouble communicating with her husband and with the mean treatment that she gets from the other neighborhood moms.

There is also a cast of characters who are all ghosts that live in a crematorium together. They don’t want to go to the afterlife because they want to continue to be there – in spirit – for their living family members. They all interact with a shaman who can’t bear to make any of them move into the afterlife if they don’t want to go. Although they mostly drive her crazy.

This drama will make you laugh. There is a scene with a sliding glass door that makes me laugh every time I think of it, and so many other scenes that I laughed my way through. And there are great sismances and bromances that are enjoyable to watch. And NO villains, which is so refreshing.

This show will probably make you think about the value of life and how you will be remembered when you are gone. It might make you cry. I think I’ve gone through at least one box of tissues so far because death can be so unfair to the people who pass away and the people they leave behind. This is illustrated in the main story and most of the side stories that are told.

You may also end up addicted to this show. I am. It is so hard to wait week after week for new episodes because it ends on the best cliffhangers. I am halfway through it now and already know it will be going on to my list of favorite shows of all time.

Drama Burn Out? Please Help

K-Drama, C-Drama, J-Drama, T-Drama, Th-Drama, A-Drama, UK-Drama burnout?

I am genuinely wondering if I am having drama burnout. I usually watch in the moments when I am home after a hectic day or week (which is every day and week) to relax and be entertained. I watch a lot of Asian dramas but really I watch shows and movies from all over the world. As long as they are interesting, fun and/or funny I’m in. I have a long My Drama List list of plan to watch shows, but somehow I haven’t been able to settle on a show. Maybe I am burned out or my attention span has become so small it’s invisible or maybe the shows I have left to watch just aren’t as good. I’m not sure.

This week has been a little crazy because I was sick and now I am working to make up for the work I didn’t do while I was sick and there is nothing I would like more than a great drama I can kick back too. Maybe one I can watch on the weekend since we have a house rule that Saturdays are lazy days where we don’t get out of our pajamas if we can help it. But I HAVE NOTHING TO WATCH 😲😲😲

I am currently watching one great Taiwanese drama which is a billion episodes as usual. I love it but am not always in the mood for it. I also have another half dozen shows I have been shuffling between that are varying degrees of good.

One show I want to watch is Itaewon Class, but I know if I start watching before the final episode I may get addicted and I am a complete fail at waiting patiently for new episodes to air, same with the Thai BL drama that is ending in March. So what else is there? New? Old? Asian? American? European? Australian? African? South American? Anarctican, I’ll even take that.

For reference my fav (type) shows are comedies al a Arrested Development, Coming to America and The Big Boss, competition shows and movies and dance dramas like Dance Academy and Dirty Dancing, slice of life dramas like Fight for My Way, romance such as This is My First Life and Some Kind of Wonderful, Romance slice of Life’s like Coup de Foudre, K-Historicals like Scarlet Heart Ryeo, Mr. Sunshine and Rebel and any good action movies with obvious villains and badass good guys/ladies.

If you have a show you recommend PLEASE tell me because I’m dying here.

TY,

Rachel

C-Drama: Ghost Bride (7.8/10)

I recently watched the show Ghost Bride, which is airing on Netflix. The preview was interesting enough to make me want to watch it.

Summary:

A young woman in 1890’s China is in love with one man from a very rich family, but his cousin who is dead forces her to marry him by threatening the life of her father. Her dad was especially dear to her because she had already lost her mother. The woman comes in contact with a policeman from Heaven who is after the ghost and they work together to try and stop him. During that time the woman ends up in some sort of afterworld purgatory and will die if she doesn’t stop the wedding from happening.

The best parts:

The actors were good
The special effects were great
There were some funny moments
There is a mystery whodunnit that wasn’t easily solvable
It’s a short drama (thankfully)

Things that were’t great:

The young woman had no empathy for the guy she was in love with or his cousin. I get that being forced into a ghost marriage will make you hate your fiance, but they guy, as bad as he was, actually liked her and clearly had a messed up upbringing. I felt a little sorry for him and thought he could change his perspective given some effort, but she clearly didn’t and preferred to see him rot in hell (not a figure of speech).
She was also forgiven for doing something that I thought wasn’t easily forgivable and she also jerked someone around in a way I didn’t like.

My recommendation

If you like fantasy and ghost dramas and good special effects than it’s probably worth watching, just don’t expect perfection.