Th-Drama: 2gether (8.4/10)

If you haven’t watched a Boy Love (BL) drama but love dramas, you are missing out. Honestly, throw you pre-conceptions out the window. They are truly some of the greatest dramas out there.

I love them because a lot of them remind me of 90’s American high school and college movies like She’s All That, 10 Things I Hate About You and Never Been Kissed. The kind that are so fun to watch and always have happy endings, but have mostly disappeared. Thai Bl’s are helping fill this void.

2Gether is about a freshman college boy who is basically being stalked by a guy that has a crush on him. At this point the lead is sure he is straight and can’t seem to get the guy to leave him alone. He tries a fake girlfriend and when that didn’t work, he and his friends decided he needed a fake boyfriend instead. It is a little unclear why they went this route or why they picked the guy did, but it was a plot point they had to forward, so I guess it’s ok.

The guy the lead picks to be his fake boyfriend is a school heartthrob who plays in a band but is otherwise quiet, cold and introverted. The heart throb repeatedly turns the lead down until eventually giving in.

The fake relationship turns into real love, as it should since this is what dramas are all about. BUT this evolution isn’t formulaic, which is something I really liked about this show. The person doing the running after the other is unique, and the story behind it and the responses they get are mostly unexpected. There is also some time spent on the lead character trying to work through whether they really like their fake boyfriend or if they are just infatuated with having someone so hot and sought after next to them,

I should mention that the fake boyfriend is PRETTY. Every episode he got more and more attractive to me. Some study found that the humans that people find universally attractive are the ones with symmetrical features and this guys are pretty perfect. The character also turns out to be adorably shy versus conceited so it is too easy to ship this couple.

There are reviewers out there who didn’t love this drama, but I think that it depends on what a viewer is looking to get out of one. I loved it. It was light-hearted, sweet and romantic, I didn’t get too invested in the second lead love triangles, and I ended the drama feeling even happier as a person than when I started it. THAT is what I watch dramas for.

I highly recommend giving this show or other BL’s a try because they really can be adorable and sweet and funny – basically the perfect pick me up. Love by Chance, 2 Moons and Scotus 2 are my fav, and 2gether just got added to that list.

K-Dramas Have Me Nostalgic for My Most Romantic Date

Since most of the dramas I watch have some sort of romance in them it got me thinking about some of my past romances.

My very best date was with my former fiance before we were engaged (I dated him after too but that’s a story for a different day). We were living in California and I was living in a small town filled with apple orchards and berry fields while I saved up to go to Europe.

It looked like this only it was eggplant and claret and the top was ruched.

That day we dressed up. Him in a suit and skinny tie. I wore a purple dress reminiscent of a ballerina costume, backless with a strap that went around my neck and a floaty skirt. We made a really gourmet dinner (my ex loved to cook and bake and had hoped to open a bakery). We packed it in a basket, along with a bottle of wine and headed to a really cozy park nearby where people rarely went on weekends since there were only picnic benches, trees and a small art center, which was closed for the day. We spread out a blanket on the picnic table and ate there.

As the sunset filled the sky my ex put on music in his truck which was parked close to the table and asked me to dance. We danced for the next hour until the sky was dark and a chill was in the air. Then we drove home full, drowsy and completely contented.

That was my best date so far. Here’s to hoping I get more like that in the future.

Thai-Drama: Great Men Academy (8.6/10)

Y’all I highly recommend this show. I had no idea what to expect when I started it, and to be honest, during the first episode I wasn’t sure if I should keep watching. This is because there was strange mix of the realistic, girl wants campus hero and gossips with her girlfriends -and fantastical – she finds a unicorn who grants her a wish, to be with her crush, but the unicorn puts its own spin on it and turns her into a boy.

Thank God I pushed through to episode two because I got to watch a show that I really enjoyed.

Summary:

The main character Love has always been a fan of the popular guy Vier of the famous Great Men Academy but has never had the chance to meet him. One day, she sees the mystical unicorn rumored to fulfill wishes and wished for her love for Vier to get a chance. Unfortunately the unicorn interpreted her wishes in a different way and Love wakes up to find herself… as a guy? (c/o of MyDramalist)

What I enjoyed:

The actors were great

The plot had a little of everything: thoughtful moments, comedy, fantasy, action and romance.

The way the love story played out was both unexpected and very sweet. I won’t tell you what made it unexpected, but I will say I have been hoping so hard that a drama would do what this one did. And it worked!

The story was engrossing and dealt with some interesting dilemmas and ideas around love. The main one was about the capability to love someone no matter what gender they are since the main character transformed back and forth from a girl to a guy. It’s a very Thai theme that I appreciate since I wholeheartedly believe that #loveisloveislove and that everyone deserves to be loved.

What I didn’t like:

There were some moments where I was confused about how something happened, mainly about the unicorn wishes and a contest that students participated in and would have liked some more clarification.

Freaking love triangles. I hate them. The heartbreak of some second and third leads – or sacrificial lambs as someone once ingeniously called them – made me sad.

Random Trivia:

The cast is part of a company created ensemble group 9×9 that also stars in Family We Trust.

Overall:

This drama is fun and interesting and it’s easy to root for the lead. I give it two thumbs up.

C-Drama: Le Coup de Foudre (9.5/10)

I’ve had Le Coup de Foudre on my list for awhile now, but with 35 episodes I put it off until recently. OMG is it good! It’s about two high school desk mates and their feelings for each other in school and as adults, and the friends who surround them. It is very mellow so even the dramatic scenes didn’t stress me out. Some viewers may not like this type of pacing, but since I watch to get away from the stresses and chaos of real life, I really enjoyed it.

Characters

The characters are well developed. I didn’t hate any of them and my favorite at the end was not someone I would have thought would be my favorite when I started the show. They grew on me over the course of it (#FeiDaChuanforlife). The leads Janice Wu/Wu Qian, who I last saw in My Amazing Boyfriend and Zhang Yu Jian were both great. My only critique of the female lead,character is that she played with her hair a lot, and her choices didn’t make sense. And I have nothing bad to say about Wu in this role. And Zhang played the cold stoic type better than any other actor I’ve seen so far. Both of them also had to perform a range of ages, since the plots follows their high school and adulthood years and they were impeccable.

The other actors were also fantastic. My appreciation for Actor An Ge who plays Fei Da Chuan is mostly because his expressions are on par with Aaron Yan and the best Korean drama actors. You can tell what he is trying to convey without him saying a word, which I think is the height of talent. Plus the character is kind of adorable in his kind, but cluelessness.

Plot development

The story was really sweet, and took real life considerations into account, which I really appreciated. It even focused on some situations that people face in the real world like abuse, injury, unexpected pregnancy, terminal illness and bankruptcy, but in a way that was interesting, not depressing to watch. I think the male lead, albeit cold, was the most loving character I’ve watched in a long time. I like that there was a good sismance. And I LOVE that the love triangle didn’t leave me feeling heartbroken for the second lead the way a lot of them do.

There were also a lot of funny moments. The times when the leads were feeling jealous of someone else were usually scripted as comedy. And the second to last episode had me laughing out loud through the whole thing which helped end the show on a really high note. The ending was also nice and happy and didn’t leave me hanging the way a lot of c-dramas do.

My one critique is I have zero idea what the female lead was thinking for part of the show. Some of her choices did not make sense to me, and I wonder if scenes got cut that would have explained it or if the directors and everyone else involved just failed to see that this part of the plot was really unclear.

Fashion

Kudos to the stylists who worked on this show. While not all the clothes characters wore were fashionable, I can only assume it was out of extreme thoughtfulness by the stylists. The lead female wore plain Jane clothes until the last few scenes. Her best friend was a bit hipster boho. Her brother was clean cut and even her parents dressed like parents. The lead male was really clean cut and simply dressed while his closest relative wore clashing clothes with a lot of gaudy patterned shirts, which is what, if his character were real, he’d probably wear. And a second lead female who was meant to be a heiress was extremely fashionable. I want almost all of her outfits to be in my closet, even though she is the size of a blade of grass so I strongly doubt they would fit me. And their is a running joke about a mink coat and how ugly it was that I really appreciated. My only criticism is that some of the pants people wore were ill fitting and ugly, which is a trend I see in a lot of c-dramas and would likely see on the streets of China, although I hope not. If so, China, please put the mom jeans and bell bottoms away. Please! For your own good.

I am really sad that this show is over because I enjoyed it so much. Lucky for me, it’s based on a book titled I Don’t Like the World, I only Like You, and some angel has translated it into English. Yay for that : ) Here is the link for it: https://www.novelupdates.com/nauthor/qiao-yi/