Dramas that I have, somehow, finished
May. 24th, 2023 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiki_engThirteen! Thirteen dramas that I have finished since covid hit, and have remembered - full-stop, and also sufficiently well to have some grasp of the ending. (There is at least one drama that I definitely watched all of, but I can tell you nothing about the ending; I have emotionally bonded and remembered that part of it, not at all.) So: these are the dramas that I have watched recently(-ish) that I have found compelling. They are basically entirely(?) absurd romantic comedies because I have been leaning hard into the escapism these past few years, and also because: I like a romance, I like a comedy, and I like some crack treated seriously. Some of them are less comedic or absurd than others.
These dramas represent a very small fraction of all of the dramas that I have tried to watch in this period. I fail out of a lot of dramas. I fail out in the credits, in the first or second episode, or half-way through the series. Sometimes it's just not the particular vibe that I want to be watching in that moment. Sometimes I get bored. Sometimes I have to back away for a bit because of my embarrassment squick and then I just never come back. Other times I'll be watching something, like, through my hands with the sound off, and I'll make it through - embarrassment squick isn't a death knell, but it is a challenge. My most frequent nope out of a drama is probably misogyny, or, it's the one that pisses me off the most, because it'll be like I love these characters! They have great chemistry! ...they're doing what now? ...and they're just... going to... continue to keep doing that and also make it worse. Great. Bye. There are levels of fucked up and strange that I can tolerate or be bizarrely fascinated by, which does not exclude misogyny, but ideally things get better. I like character growth and seeing relationships modeled that don't normalise abusive behaviour, so the stuff on this list might contain less of that, or just enough other stuff to have balanced my rage. YMMV.
Modern
You Are My Glory (2021, Mainland China | 32 Episodes)
I had I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys in my head for basically the entire period I watched this and didn't connect the two until episode 29 - it's just the title, that's all, that's the reason. I apparently subconsciously feel that a short capitalised statement that starts with "You Are My" needs to end with "Fire" and then sing the rest of the lyrics to myself. So that was fun. It was fine. It was just a thing.
One of my pet peeves with dramas is: leads get together, man becomes controlling, somehow this is supposed to be romantic? Flames. This is how I fail out of many, many dramas. Not this one! Qiao Jingjing and Yu Tu are both really supportive of each other and each other's careers and it is so nice.
There's a lot happening in this drama, kind of - it starts off with them as reuniting classmates with him as her old unrequited crush and very video game focused with lots of game footage and then moves into being more about their careers (actress/aerospace engineer) and how they have a functional relationship and make career decisions in a way that feels both logical and also genre-flippy. The pacing of this and the shorter episodes (~30 minutes) both really worked for me. This is probably the most Chinese flags I have seen ever; this drama is very Chinese space program propaganda and there are bits where both of their teams exert control over the media.
I enjoyed this drama and the weird little statues of men in space suits that they stuck just about everywhere that had a connection with space.
Promise Cinderella (2021, Japan | 10 Episodes)
A lot of the hook for this for me was the kind of continual level of batshit in this along with weird power dynamics and wait, she's ending up with who now?! Katsuragi Hayame is a housewife who loses everything when her husband demands a divorce. She enters into a dare-based barter system with a spoiled teenager to secure room and board and then things... continue. It's been a while since I've seen this, so trying to write this I'm asking myself things like, does she get attacked after being locked in a storeroom at her historically costumed workplace with the perpetrator trying to frame a ghost? Is that a thing that happens? I don't know. It might be. Highlights include an eccentric grandmother figure, a cartoon villainness, swoon-worthy flower-arranging, and personal growth. Other elements include much ado about shoes (we must justify our title!), a skeevy workmate, some violence, and that thing where a boy/man walks into a space and everyone swoons on some level, basically - implied or actual wind machines.
Her Private Life (2019, Korea | 16 Episodes)
Show of my heart! It gets its title, in part, from the male lead stumbling over pieces of his subordinate's business and trying to stay the fuck out of it because it's none of his business, muttering the title to himself as he backs away. (I really like people who nope out of things and respect boundaries; he also does his best to support queer people, which is nice.) The female lead is an art gallery curator by day and a BNF site admin super fan for an idol in the rest of her time, and this isn't my particular corner of fandom, but I actually really enjoyed this depiction? She is absolutely ruthless about denying and excluding her fannishness in her professional life while her apartment is absolutely full of merch and fanart. She's really big on maintaining the separation of her two identities, which is familiar, and she has a fannish best friend who has less time for fannish pursuits now that she's had a kid. They're both a little obsessive in their fangirling while strictly observing fannish norms like when it's acceptable to photograph idols and how to interact with them. It's a depiction that feels to me like it's coming from a place of understanding.
Featuring: fake dating, secret identities, childhood trauma, accidental allergy poisoning, corruption, mentorship, an over-the-top villain character, stalking, marital problems, and having to meet your idol.
Princess Jellyfish (2018, Japan | 10 Episodes)
Based on a manga and very cartoonish. A group of un-, under-, and self-employed (I think, it's been a while) nerd girls with special interests and shades of agoraphobia fight to protect their historic house and neighbourhood from developers. Led and cheerled by a cross-dresser, their chief weapon is fashion. I really enjoyed the cartoonishness of this and the bits where characters got to have special interests - I want more media with people getting really excited about trainlines in my life. Koibuchi Kuronosuke, the cross-dressing character, was a lot of the hook for this for me - it was really nice to see someone with different gender expression on my screen and I just wanted good things to happen to them. I also really enjoyed the female lead, who we get introduced to when she starts a fight with a pet store for not taking care of their jellyfish properly - I am here for people standing up for animals in general and invertebrates in particular. Featuring: estranged, distant, and deceased parents, an evil seductive businesswoman, public planning meetings, frantic sewing, cat walks, TEAM, and so many drawings of jellyfish. Also: being a good friend in the face of a rival love interest - A+. I have a lot of feelings, still, about how that triangle shakes out, but it's fine.
The Full-time Wife Escapist (2016, Japan | 11 Episodes)
Probably the only time I've consistently watched the end credits for something - it's a lip-synced dance number with the main cast and it's joyful and silly. The drama is about a secret marriage of convenience that originates when a mid-twenties woman with a master's degree fails to gain a foothold in a company and just goes Fuck it, I'm good with cleaning, I can be a cleaner. Do you want to talk about unpaid labour by women in Japan? I sure do, also I would like to sign up for a reverse marriage where we don't have a romantic or sexual relationship and instead you pay me to be a live-in house cleaner because being a housewife is a job, and also this will solve my housing situation and the male lead goes Yeah, okay. The concept of finding a partner for real terrifies me, I will sign up for this service where my window screen gets washed and my house is cleaned to the obsessive standards that I have but am unable to maintain myself because of the demands of my career. ...and it works out for them and they renegotiate their relationship repeatedly and fail at communicating and keep trying to communicate with each other and it's kind of great. There's also a secondary romance that is pretty cute.
Choosing Spouse by Lottery (2018, Japan | 8 Episodes)
Look, sometimes you just want to watch a fucked up dystopian concept and see how it plays out. That's what this drama very purposefully is. To combat a shrinking population, childless singles 25-39 must marry. Spouses are chosen by lottery. Each person may issue two rejections, with a third rejection resulting in enrollment in a highly undesirable military posting. The concept gets explored from the perspective of a nerd bro that starts out from a place of, well, I'm terrible with women, so this might actually be a good thing for me and then, by going through the system that's been set up - going on arranged dates and talking to people - comes around to oh fuck, this is discriminatory and highly susceptible to abuse, which is nice. Personal growth.
My Unicorn Girl (2020, Mainland China | 24 Episodes)
In order to attend her (deceased?) mother's alma mater, a figure skater is forced to resort to Plan B: cross-dressing and joining the men's hockey team, where previous off-ice animosity translates to on-ice chemistry with the team's star player, and they were roommates. I feel like that's all you need. It's a very saccharine college drama with a secondary hi-jinks component. It's also Chinese, so the whole thing is way less gay than it would be if it were, like, anything else.
ONLY JUST MARRIED (2021, Japan | 10 Episodes)
Arranged marriage of convenience/contract marriage. She wants to save her grandmother's livelihood and he wants people to stop asking questions about his personal life. It's an opposites repel and then sort themselves out sort of thing. She's a laid-back and kind of impulsive graphic designer and he's... not. I don't remember what he is. He works in a less creative office and likes order. They become housemates when they marry, have to figure out how to live with each other - neither of them is perfect - and accidentally entwine their lives. They become friends and it's kind of lovely. I really like Akiha, she's very open and frank and curious and the bit in the beginning where she's kind of the audience stand in, daydreaming/nosing about what's wrong with Shu, is satisfying to me. I also like that she's driven and has career goals - she feels balanced. Shu's a little more of a character, because he is less balanced, but I enjoy watching people struggling with how-to-human (while simultaneously being, like, a presentation-giving businessman? in his professional life, so having polished certain facets of his interactions but not others). I also enjoy kind of broken relationships? Where you're like, this is not a functional set-up and you see change with them getting to a place where they can maybe be functional; this is that.
Because This is My First Life (2017, Korea | 16 Episodes)
When Ji-hoo needs a place to live (because her family are terrible misogynistic fucks who force her out of her home) and Se-hee needs a new roommate, their friends set them up. Things are hectic, so they move in together before meeting and they're good roommates and things are going great, until they actually meet and figure out that they're not the same gender so can't live together. ...but they're like, fuck it - I need this house/you're the best roommate I've ever had, seriously, everyone else has been terrible and you are a dream to live with, it's fine - and then everyone else is like, you need to be married to live together and they're like pass, ....wait, no: security: done. There's a thing in the beginning where Ji-hoo plants one on someone unsuspecting that I am not a fan of, but then there's also a lot of stuff about misogyny and how that plays out in basically everyone's lives that is compelling to me. There are a lot of asshole men in this, and I just really like how safe she feels on Se-hee's couch, drinking beer, watching football, and petting his cat. Deals with trauma and navigating careers and relationships and family.
Historical
Mr. Queen (2020, Korea | 20 Episodes)
My actual favorite on this list right now. A chef who's a bit of a skeevy dick finds himself transported back to the Joseon era, trapped in the body of the future Queen. So he's desperately trying to: get back to his time and body, stay alive, and build a power-base. He's also a self-identified straight cis man who is and is not pretending to be a cis woman, so there's all of this queer content around gender and sexual identity nestled into this, and as he evolves as a person and settles into his role in the Joseon era his gender and sexual expression shifts a bit and there's the thing with time travel stories, where part way through the investment in time periods shifts and it's impossible to define a happy ending. I have a lot of feelings about this entire drama that we have about a trans character that has a lot of comedy in it, and also lots of cooking scenes (eventually), and so much political intrigue and murder attempts and secret identities and factions and suicides and really: so many secret identities. (Also: the opening credits are gorgeous and joyful.)
Love Like the Galaxy (2022, Mainland China | 56 Episodes)
So I kind of love Ling Bu Yi? (He's like a scheming woobie robot; it's amazing.) When he first encounters Cheng Shao Shang, she's pretty solidly in scheming survival mode and one of his underlings/friends is like, she seems like she's not in the greatest place, do you think we should help her? and he is just like, that is a woman who does not need our help, like, he sees the moves that she's been making and just totally believes that she's got this, and it's great. She's great. I like how she goes around making friends with people and trying to make sensible decisions about her life and also building things like wooden swings and defensive weaponry. I have feelings about so many of the women in her life - there are a couple who I love and appreciate, and then so many of the others are just absolute dumpster fires - she has multiple abusive family members in her life, for instance. It's a glorious sweeping epic, though - it's the longest drama that I've watched and I would consider re-watching it.
The Blooms at Ruyi Pavilion (2020, Mainland China | 40 Episodes)
I watched this one a while ago and mostly remember it for its high stakes, innovative, and sometimes competitive jewellery making, forensic accounting, sister relationship, and secret society. There's a lot going on trope-wise with this one, and also just a lot going on in general. The leads go from I will avoid you at all costs to I will marry you at all costs, and at least on one side that initial interest in marriage isn't because I have fallen madly in love with you, so there's a bit of a twisty road to love there - I like a kind of rocky beginning and I enjoy the kind of hilarity of I have met this man and I absolutely will not marry him, even though no one has suggested that I do so, and I am just literally dreaming about it, sweating.
There's a strong element of palace drama in this - a lot of people have or develop royal connections. There's plots and assassinations and failed assassinations, corruption and smuggling and blackmailing, secret identities, cross-dressing, spies, traitors, miscommunications, long lost childhood companions, pretend marriage, fake marriage, only one bed, snowed in together, prophetic(?) dreams, a rockstar-famous poet, obsessive destructive loves, jovial criminal accomplices, entrepreneurship, and paternalistic asshattery. I feel like there are so many threads and elements happening here that the odds of you getting invested in something and wanting to see how it turns out are pretty high.
Flower Crew: Joseon Marriage Agency (2019, Korea | 16 Episodes)
Ma Hoon, Go Young-soo, and Do Joon are the most handsome boys. Flower petals float into their path and townsfolk *chinhands* at their brilliant competence at matchmaking. Is Ma Hoon throwing himself away by doing this work while he's really an aristocrat? Maybe, but his dad's a scheming murderous eel, so it seems like a decent enough life choice, to turn all of his deductive reasoning and cunning on making the best matches that he can. When a terrible mishap befalls one of their arranged brides the crew grudgingly adopt her, a veritable street urchin, to trail about in their fabulous wake. All she really wants is to find her long lost brother, and in a tight corner she will... brazen it out or hit you with a stick, probably. Gaettong is great - she's really straight forward and hard-headed with a lot of kindness to her, and she makes a great foil to pretty much everyone. Her intended is also pretty awesome, and has a lot of stuff happen to him. Features: lost siblings (plural!), accidental loves, secret identities, palace politicking, assassinations, at least one actual suicide, shades of Pygmalion, trauma, friendship, believing in each other and supporting each other, blackmailing, and the patriarchy.
All dramas feature the patriarchy, but Kang Mong-gu repeatedly telling his daughter shit like, it's such a shame you're not a man, you would be such a good son to me and as a woman you are nearly worthless really pisses me off. Also: she is a terrible person and I do not understand how anyone with any powers of perception develops a thing for her. But that is a thing that happens. It's probably fine.
It's a really nice mix of characters, actually. I feel like Go Young-soo is a less typical depiction of the fashionable man, and is a bit more delicate in a way that I really enjoy. Some of the side characters are absolute fire. I have a lot of feelings about, like, all of Lee Soo's allies and a lot of the matches that the Flower Crew look into. (They're good characters!)
These dramas represent a very small fraction of all of the dramas that I have tried to watch in this period. I fail out of a lot of dramas. I fail out in the credits, in the first or second episode, or half-way through the series. Sometimes it's just not the particular vibe that I want to be watching in that moment. Sometimes I get bored. Sometimes I have to back away for a bit because of my embarrassment squick and then I just never come back. Other times I'll be watching something, like, through my hands with the sound off, and I'll make it through - embarrassment squick isn't a death knell, but it is a challenge. My most frequent nope out of a drama is probably misogyny, or, it's the one that pisses me off the most, because it'll be like I love these characters! They have great chemistry! ...they're doing what now? ...and they're just... going to... continue to keep doing that and also make it worse. Great. Bye. There are levels of fucked up and strange that I can tolerate or be bizarrely fascinated by, which does not exclude misogyny, but ideally things get better. I like character growth and seeing relationships modeled that don't normalise abusive behaviour, so the stuff on this list might contain less of that, or just enough other stuff to have balanced my rage. YMMV.
Modern
You Are My Glory (2021, Mainland China | 32 Episodes)
I had I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys in my head for basically the entire period I watched this and didn't connect the two until episode 29 - it's just the title, that's all, that's the reason. I apparently subconsciously feel that a short capitalised statement that starts with "You Are My" needs to end with "Fire" and then sing the rest of the lyrics to myself. So that was fun. It was fine. It was just a thing.
One of my pet peeves with dramas is: leads get together, man becomes controlling, somehow this is supposed to be romantic? Flames. This is how I fail out of many, many dramas. Not this one! Qiao Jingjing and Yu Tu are both really supportive of each other and each other's careers and it is so nice.
There's a lot happening in this drama, kind of - it starts off with them as reuniting classmates with him as her old unrequited crush and very video game focused with lots of game footage and then moves into being more about their careers (actress/aerospace engineer) and how they have a functional relationship and make career decisions in a way that feels both logical and also genre-flippy. The pacing of this and the shorter episodes (~30 minutes) both really worked for me. This is probably the most Chinese flags I have seen ever; this drama is very Chinese space program propaganda and there are bits where both of their teams exert control over the media.
I enjoyed this drama and the weird little statues of men in space suits that they stuck just about everywhere that had a connection with space.
Promise Cinderella (2021, Japan | 10 Episodes)
A lot of the hook for this for me was the kind of continual level of batshit in this along with weird power dynamics and wait, she's ending up with who now?! Katsuragi Hayame is a housewife who loses everything when her husband demands a divorce. She enters into a dare-based barter system with a spoiled teenager to secure room and board and then things... continue. It's been a while since I've seen this, so trying to write this I'm asking myself things like, does she get attacked after being locked in a storeroom at her historically costumed workplace with the perpetrator trying to frame a ghost? Is that a thing that happens? I don't know. It might be. Highlights include an eccentric grandmother figure, a cartoon villainness, swoon-worthy flower-arranging, and personal growth. Other elements include much ado about shoes (we must justify our title!), a skeevy workmate, some violence, and that thing where a boy/man walks into a space and everyone swoons on some level, basically - implied or actual wind machines.
Her Private Life (2019, Korea | 16 Episodes)
Show of my heart! It gets its title, in part, from the male lead stumbling over pieces of his subordinate's business and trying to stay the fuck out of it because it's none of his business, muttering the title to himself as he backs away. (I really like people who nope out of things and respect boundaries; he also does his best to support queer people, which is nice.) The female lead is an art gallery curator by day and a BNF site admin super fan for an idol in the rest of her time, and this isn't my particular corner of fandom, but I actually really enjoyed this depiction? She is absolutely ruthless about denying and excluding her fannishness in her professional life while her apartment is absolutely full of merch and fanart. She's really big on maintaining the separation of her two identities, which is familiar, and she has a fannish best friend who has less time for fannish pursuits now that she's had a kid. They're both a little obsessive in their fangirling while strictly observing fannish norms like when it's acceptable to photograph idols and how to interact with them. It's a depiction that feels to me like it's coming from a place of understanding.
Featuring: fake dating, secret identities, childhood trauma, accidental allergy poisoning, corruption, mentorship, an over-the-top villain character, stalking, marital problems, and having to meet your idol.
Princess Jellyfish (2018, Japan | 10 Episodes)
Based on a manga and very cartoonish. A group of un-, under-, and self-employed (I think, it's been a while) nerd girls with special interests and shades of agoraphobia fight to protect their historic house and neighbourhood from developers. Led and cheerled by a cross-dresser, their chief weapon is fashion. I really enjoyed the cartoonishness of this and the bits where characters got to have special interests - I want more media with people getting really excited about trainlines in my life. Koibuchi Kuronosuke, the cross-dressing character, was a lot of the hook for this for me - it was really nice to see someone with different gender expression on my screen and I just wanted good things to happen to them. I also really enjoyed the female lead, who we get introduced to when she starts a fight with a pet store for not taking care of their jellyfish properly - I am here for people standing up for animals in general and invertebrates in particular. Featuring: estranged, distant, and deceased parents, an evil seductive businesswoman, public planning meetings, frantic sewing, cat walks, TEAM, and so many drawings of jellyfish. Also: being a good friend in the face of a rival love interest - A+. I have a lot of feelings, still, about how that triangle shakes out, but it's fine.
The Full-time Wife Escapist (2016, Japan | 11 Episodes)
Probably the only time I've consistently watched the end credits for something - it's a lip-synced dance number with the main cast and it's joyful and silly. The drama is about a secret marriage of convenience that originates when a mid-twenties woman with a master's degree fails to gain a foothold in a company and just goes Fuck it, I'm good with cleaning, I can be a cleaner. Do you want to talk about unpaid labour by women in Japan? I sure do, also I would like to sign up for a reverse marriage where we don't have a romantic or sexual relationship and instead you pay me to be a live-in house cleaner because being a housewife is a job, and also this will solve my housing situation and the male lead goes Yeah, okay. The concept of finding a partner for real terrifies me, I will sign up for this service where my window screen gets washed and my house is cleaned to the obsessive standards that I have but am unable to maintain myself because of the demands of my career. ...and it works out for them and they renegotiate their relationship repeatedly and fail at communicating and keep trying to communicate with each other and it's kind of great. There's also a secondary romance that is pretty cute.
Choosing Spouse by Lottery (2018, Japan | 8 Episodes)
Look, sometimes you just want to watch a fucked up dystopian concept and see how it plays out. That's what this drama very purposefully is. To combat a shrinking population, childless singles 25-39 must marry. Spouses are chosen by lottery. Each person may issue two rejections, with a third rejection resulting in enrollment in a highly undesirable military posting. The concept gets explored from the perspective of a nerd bro that starts out from a place of, well, I'm terrible with women, so this might actually be a good thing for me and then, by going through the system that's been set up - going on arranged dates and talking to people - comes around to oh fuck, this is discriminatory and highly susceptible to abuse, which is nice. Personal growth.
My Unicorn Girl (2020, Mainland China | 24 Episodes)
In order to attend her (deceased?) mother's alma mater, a figure skater is forced to resort to Plan B: cross-dressing and joining the men's hockey team, where previous off-ice animosity translates to on-ice chemistry with the team's star player, and they were roommates. I feel like that's all you need. It's a very saccharine college drama with a secondary hi-jinks component. It's also Chinese, so the whole thing is way less gay than it would be if it were, like, anything else.
ONLY JUST MARRIED (2021, Japan | 10 Episodes)
Arranged marriage of convenience/contract marriage. She wants to save her grandmother's livelihood and he wants people to stop asking questions about his personal life. It's an opposites repel and then sort themselves out sort of thing. She's a laid-back and kind of impulsive graphic designer and he's... not. I don't remember what he is. He works in a less creative office and likes order. They become housemates when they marry, have to figure out how to live with each other - neither of them is perfect - and accidentally entwine their lives. They become friends and it's kind of lovely. I really like Akiha, she's very open and frank and curious and the bit in the beginning where she's kind of the audience stand in, daydreaming/nosing about what's wrong with Shu, is satisfying to me. I also like that she's driven and has career goals - she feels balanced. Shu's a little more of a character, because he is less balanced, but I enjoy watching people struggling with how-to-human (while simultaneously being, like, a presentation-giving businessman? in his professional life, so having polished certain facets of his interactions but not others). I also enjoy kind of broken relationships? Where you're like, this is not a functional set-up and you see change with them getting to a place where they can maybe be functional; this is that.
Because This is My First Life (2017, Korea | 16 Episodes)
When Ji-hoo needs a place to live (because her family are terrible misogynistic fucks who force her out of her home) and Se-hee needs a new roommate, their friends set them up. Things are hectic, so they move in together before meeting and they're good roommates and things are going great, until they actually meet and figure out that they're not the same gender so can't live together. ...but they're like, fuck it - I need this house/you're the best roommate I've ever had, seriously, everyone else has been terrible and you are a dream to live with, it's fine - and then everyone else is like, you need to be married to live together and they're like pass, ....wait, no: security: done. There's a thing in the beginning where Ji-hoo plants one on someone unsuspecting that I am not a fan of, but then there's also a lot of stuff about misogyny and how that plays out in basically everyone's lives that is compelling to me. There are a lot of asshole men in this, and I just really like how safe she feels on Se-hee's couch, drinking beer, watching football, and petting his cat. Deals with trauma and navigating careers and relationships and family.
Historical
Mr. Queen (2020, Korea | 20 Episodes)
My actual favorite on this list right now. A chef who's a bit of a skeevy dick finds himself transported back to the Joseon era, trapped in the body of the future Queen. So he's desperately trying to: get back to his time and body, stay alive, and build a power-base. He's also a self-identified straight cis man who is and is not pretending to be a cis woman, so there's all of this queer content around gender and sexual identity nestled into this, and as he evolves as a person and settles into his role in the Joseon era his gender and sexual expression shifts a bit and there's the thing with time travel stories, where part way through the investment in time periods shifts and it's impossible to define a happy ending. I have a lot of feelings about this entire drama that we have about a trans character that has a lot of comedy in it, and also lots of cooking scenes (eventually), and so much political intrigue and murder attempts and secret identities and factions and suicides and really: so many secret identities. (Also: the opening credits are gorgeous and joyful.)
Love Like the Galaxy (2022, Mainland China | 56 Episodes)
So I kind of love Ling Bu Yi? (He's like a scheming woobie robot; it's amazing.) When he first encounters Cheng Shao Shang, she's pretty solidly in scheming survival mode and one of his underlings/friends is like, she seems like she's not in the greatest place, do you think we should help her? and he is just like, that is a woman who does not need our help, like, he sees the moves that she's been making and just totally believes that she's got this, and it's great. She's great. I like how she goes around making friends with people and trying to make sensible decisions about her life and also building things like wooden swings and defensive weaponry. I have feelings about so many of the women in her life - there are a couple who I love and appreciate, and then so many of the others are just absolute dumpster fires - she has multiple abusive family members in her life, for instance. It's a glorious sweeping epic, though - it's the longest drama that I've watched and I would consider re-watching it.
The Blooms at Ruyi Pavilion (2020, Mainland China | 40 Episodes)
I watched this one a while ago and mostly remember it for its high stakes, innovative, and sometimes competitive jewellery making, forensic accounting, sister relationship, and secret society. There's a lot going on trope-wise with this one, and also just a lot going on in general. The leads go from I will avoid you at all costs to I will marry you at all costs, and at least on one side that initial interest in marriage isn't because I have fallen madly in love with you, so there's a bit of a twisty road to love there - I like a kind of rocky beginning and I enjoy the kind of hilarity of I have met this man and I absolutely will not marry him, even though no one has suggested that I do so, and I am just literally dreaming about it, sweating.
There's a strong element of palace drama in this - a lot of people have or develop royal connections. There's plots and assassinations and failed assassinations, corruption and smuggling and blackmailing, secret identities, cross-dressing, spies, traitors, miscommunications, long lost childhood companions, pretend marriage, fake marriage, only one bed, snowed in together, prophetic(?) dreams, a rockstar-famous poet, obsessive destructive loves, jovial criminal accomplices, entrepreneurship, and paternalistic asshattery. I feel like there are so many threads and elements happening here that the odds of you getting invested in something and wanting to see how it turns out are pretty high.
Flower Crew: Joseon Marriage Agency (2019, Korea | 16 Episodes)
Ma Hoon, Go Young-soo, and Do Joon are the most handsome boys. Flower petals float into their path and townsfolk *chinhands* at their brilliant competence at matchmaking. Is Ma Hoon throwing himself away by doing this work while he's really an aristocrat? Maybe, but his dad's a scheming murderous eel, so it seems like a decent enough life choice, to turn all of his deductive reasoning and cunning on making the best matches that he can. When a terrible mishap befalls one of their arranged brides the crew grudgingly adopt her, a veritable street urchin, to trail about in their fabulous wake. All she really wants is to find her long lost brother, and in a tight corner she will... brazen it out or hit you with a stick, probably. Gaettong is great - she's really straight forward and hard-headed with a lot of kindness to her, and she makes a great foil to pretty much everyone. Her intended is also pretty awesome, and has a lot of stuff happen to him. Features: lost siblings (plural!), accidental loves, secret identities, palace politicking, assassinations, at least one actual suicide, shades of Pygmalion, trauma, friendship, believing in each other and supporting each other, blackmailing, and the patriarchy.
All dramas feature the patriarchy, but Kang Mong-gu repeatedly telling his daughter shit like, it's such a shame you're not a man, you would be such a good son to me and as a woman you are nearly worthless really pisses me off. Also: she is a terrible person and I do not understand how anyone with any powers of perception develops a thing for her. But that is a thing that happens. It's probably fine.
It's a really nice mix of characters, actually. I feel like Go Young-soo is a less typical depiction of the fashionable man, and is a bit more delicate in a way that I really enjoy. Some of the side characters are absolute fire. I have a lot of feelings about, like, all of Lee Soo's allies and a lot of the matches that the Flower Crew look into. (They're good characters!)