Same Old Troupe, Brilliantly Executed

I started this drama not expecting much or, actually expecting it to be somewhat like Itazura Na Kiss, in that the female character (Sakura Nanase) is so in love with the male character (Tendo Kairi) that she would do anything for him and at the same time be completely stupid. Boy was I wrong!!

Story:
The story revolves around Sakura Nanase, who fell in love at first sight with Tendo Kairi and from that point on, decides to dedicate her life to making sure she would meet him again, this time as a nurse in the hospital he works at as a doctor. At first, she appears to be stupid, without any practical knowledge, but this is quickly shown as simple inexperience and nervousness. In this case, Sakura-san is quite an observant and kind nurse, who loves to learn, with the goal to become a good nurse. Even-though, the reason she became a nurse is because of Tendo- sensei she does not live for him and is constantly looking for self-growth.

On the other hand we have Tendo-sensei, who is a brilliant cardiologist, very focused on his work and known throughout the hospital as the Devil due to his exacting and hight standards for patient treatment. In the beginning he is not impressed with Sakura-san, since she openly declares her love upon meeting him and her not being up to par in patient treatment. Most importantly he never mistreats her or makes fun of her to the level of Irie Naoki, which in my book makes him a great human being. Although, he immediately notes her care for the patients is sincere and life-saving several times, as is show in several episodes of the drama, so he starts to slowly respect her as a colleague, which allows for later on his developing feelings for her.

Acting/Cast:
I like the two main actors, and their performance is good for this tv series. I feel that Sato Takeru shines in the serious tsundere type of character, which let it be said also makes it rather easy for the actor, since the character does not show a wide range of emotions. In the case of Kamishiraishi Mone, her character is consistently shiny, kind ad lovable, which also does not allow for a wide range of emotions, but I believe she did a good job of it. The side characters do tend to be a little over the top, but that is something common in all of Japan's romantic-comedies.

Music:
It is a pleasure to hear the track called "I Love..." by Official HIGE DANdism which is spectacular and I can listen to it continuously. The downside is that, this tack is the only one I clearly remember, so that speaks a lot about the variety of the music used and the impact it had on the audience.

Rewatch Value
Definitely rewatchable!! It is cute, it is short, it hits all the right buttons, and every one watching it will love it. What I like about this drama is that, even-though it is a romantic comedy, with some over the top embarrassing moments, the rest of the story far outweighs them and we can clearly see character growth in the leads. It is a simple and fluffy tv series, that will let you relax after watching some heavier stuff.

Leggi di Più

She should have SUED that family, with the exception of sweet uncle!!

I started this drama because of the good reviews found here and because of the lead actor, who I loved in My Husband In Law, but imagine my surprise that when I saw it, I felt as if I traveled back in time to the bad old golden times of unbelievable Mexican melodramatic telenovelas, where the male lead is god incarnate and the poor female lead has to accept all the horrible treatment dished out to her, until he finally consents and graces her with his "love".

Story:
The story started with an interesting setting, where the ML (Arthit) didn't hate from the get go the FL (Paeng), who is a 16-year-old high school student. This drama can be divided in three: the death of Paeng’s parents and Arthit’s tragedy, the redemption of Paeng and Arthit’s prisoner’s guard Mexican telenovelas torture cookbook tendencies, and finally when Arthit falls in love.

The first part was the introduction, which was excellently presented to explain the second part. Poor Paeng lost her parents at the early age of 16, while going through changes in her life and experiencing hardships all related to her over reliance on her parents, since she has difficulties making friends. On the other hand, we have Arthit, who is living a perfect university life, surrounded by friends and family. Unlike Paeng, he remembers their connection and at first, he tries to understand her, being her first real friend and the only one that actually cares for her. This leads to Paeng making Arthit her anchor in life, which leads to the tragedy waiting to happen. Arthit’s mother and maids are horrible, the only one who is nice in that family is the father, seriously I lost all possible sympathy on the mother early on, such a horrible two-faced character, bullying a kid who just faced unbelievable loss, even though she does not know the whole story, she knows Paeng lost both her parents!! Then the tragedy happens, while trying to attach herself to the only person who likes her and treats her well in that family, she unwittingly creates a misunderstanding; leading to Arthit having an important accident and she get all the blame for it!! I mean, I understand that she precipitated it, but he had a big share of the blame!! He drives while drunk and upset, but noooo, all the blame is put on Paeng. This goes on from episode 1 to episode 5, and I have already lost my patience with mom, the two maids and by episode 3 with Arthit too.

The second part, is where we see the personal growth of Paeng and are finally introduced to the real person she is, a nice girl trying to live her life. She was sent to Bangkok to continue her education and to get over all the tragedies she suffered, with the help of Arthit’s father, who is the most likable character of the show. Arthit’s character goes through a reversal, where he becomes a thoroughly heartless, merciless, bastard, full of his own importance, who only lives in the past and derives great joy in torturing poor Paeng. What I do not understand, is why, oh why, she put up with all the abuse dished out by Arthit? What any normal person would have done was, leave that bloody farm as soon as possible, at least until Arthit’s father arrived! Say to uncle, “I tried to do what you want, but I will not put myself through the sheer physical and mental torture that horrible son of yours wants to put me through, since it is quite obvious everyone here lives in the past and no one has forgiven me, nor wants to give me the benefit of the doubt that I have grown up. Your bloody son still believes I am dying to be with him, that he is still my ideal and will continue to harass him, when that is furthest from the truth as to be laughable at this point in my life.” As you can see, I totally hate this storyline, since it reminds me of the horrible Mexican telenovelas of the bad old days, where the FL suffers through all the indignities and abuse that the ML and his family consider their right to dish out to the poor FL. I believe in this day and age, we have grown up from those horrible times, and can accept that women have their pride and dignity, and that no man should be able to treat you as he bloody well pleases, just because he believes you deserve it. This part goes on from episode 6 to episode 12, where I dearly wish that Arthit would jump from a CLIFF and leave Paeng alone, at the very least I would be quite happy if he does not get his happy ending, because let me be clear, HE DOES NOT DESERVE IT!

The third part is, as I mentioned before, where he finally acknowledges his love for Paeng, and now he has an uphill battle to convince her of it, since all he has done before does not help his case at all. I would have enjoyed him suffering more than he does here, but let’s face it, it’s a “romantic-comedy” of course he will get the girl at the end and since he is the ML, with almost zero groveling and making up for his past actions. Here, he just decides he wants her, and he gets her. Although, Paeng does make it a “little” difficult since she does not fully trust him and continues to doubt his intentions, but accepts his 180º change sooner than I would have expected. I concede that when Arthit does realize he loves her, he is deeply in love and quite cute in trying to show it to Paeng, I am totally convinced of his love for her by the end of the tv show, it’s just that his earlier behavior for me was unforgivable, more so since he never does apologize for it. At least, in the end he does concede that his accident wasn’t wholly Paeng’s fault, but that he does share some of the blame as well. This part goes from episode 13 to episode 19, and it is the most watchable of the tv show, since the torture is over and lovey-dovey scenes are here.

Acting/Cast:
The main actors, Mark Prin and Kao Supassara were great in their portrayal of their characters. But of them deserved special mentions, because they portrayed such different emotions.

Mark was simply amazing, you can see him change from being a super nice guy, then to exasperated, then to deep hatred, to starting to fall in love, while being confused and finally to when he is deeply in love. His facial expressions and voice intonations, are perfect, considering I don't know a thing of Thai, it is remarkable the emotions he transmits and makes the audience feel. I respect the character growth he went through and the excellence he demonstrated of his portrayal of an unsympathetic character, who is very easy to hate deeply and who very slowly tries at the end to gain my sympathy. I never understood Arthit, with his unreasonable hatred for Paeng, when he shares a lion's portion of the fault for his accident, and his need to be as degrading as possible to her, to the point where a normal human being would sue him for mistreatment. But that is the point of a good actor and I respect the portrayal, if not the horrible character.

Kao was great in showing a poor 16-year-old, who is suffering and confused, who is looking for that someone who understands her and cares for her, leading to her having her first love, which quickly turns to obsession and brings tragedy to the male lead. I never hated her, because I was acutely aware that she is just a teenager, who has suffered unbelievable loss, and who knows that in the house only Arthit (first 2 episodes), his father and her two maids understood her or at least they tried. She goes through some personal growth that leaves you awed at the pure strength of will required to accomplish it, and boy does she succeed! When she returns to the farm, she is more of a mature adult than anyone there, with the exception of the Arthit's father. The actress is so good, because she managed the transition naturally and made you root for her from beginning to end, unlike some other characters in the show. She is so understanding and has learned her lessons, wanting to atone for the wrongs she committed, being an amazing human being, deserving much more than Arthit at the end, she deserved a prince or someone much more wonderful.

Music:
I loved the music, the three songs I remember were great and had a great message in tune with the story. I still listen to the music, because it is so good, the rhythm and the lyrics were amazing and I loved it.

Rewatch value:
Nearly nonexistent, I couldn't stomach the show since episode 3 up to 13, which is nearly half of the show. Arthit, his mother and his mother's two-house maids, should have been accused in a court of law for serious mistreatment, violence, cruelty and torture of Paeng, since at times it was physical as well as mental. His falling in love so slowly is understandable to the story, but what is not is Paeng staying at the farm, where she is seriously mistreated and accepting it as normal, any other woman would have sued that horrible family. I don't understand how she could be in love with him after all that she suffered at his hands, she should have left the bastard behind as quickly as she could and leave him to be miserable for the rest of his life. Any sympathy I could have felt for Arthit was lost by episode 8, and I was hoping that Paeng would make him suffer more before he gets his happy ending, so I was seriously disappointed with the outcome. I can only stomach to rewatch from episode 13 to 19, and only certain scenes.

Leggi di Più

Love it so much!!

I loved this drama so much!! So let me get started...

Story:
I loved the story, it is very interesting in that the main male character (Thien) "has to" marry the main female character (Muey) to keep out of trouble. I've never seen this done in any of the dramas I've watched before and I liked it. The rest of the story goes on as one would expect, Muey is unbelievably in love with Thien, I do not completely understand it, since he loves to tease her and does not pay her any attention, to the point where he knows almost nothing about her. But there you have it, the mysteriousness of love, we never know why we fall in love with someone, so this is true to life.

Story-wise it can be dived in 4 parts: early marriage, hacking phase, Myanmar construction and noble idiocy/pregnancy. I will start by mentioning that I did not enjoy the hacking phase at all, not because of its relevance to the story, I do believe it fits and it is quite understandable, what I did not like was Thien's reaction and action towards Muey. I find he was too cruel and hurtful to her, so much so that I seriously considered dropping the drama altogether. I mean, I know he was mad, since he thought she was doing corporate espionage, but it was uncalled for the way that he played with her feelings in one of the scenes. I also understand that he did not know Muey at all, so he really thought bad of her, but for god's sake he's lived with her for years and knows she is in love with him, would she really damage him?? Of course not!!

The early marriage and Myanmar construction phases were highly entertaining and I love them. This is where the romantic comedy genre could be felt, it brought so much levity and lightness to the show before/after dark hacking phase and the drama of noble idiocy/pregnancy phase. I particularly enjoyed the Myanmar construction phase, because there were so many laugh out loud moments, just watching Muey using so many cringe worthy phrases to hit on Thien was a joy to watch and her invading his personal space.... Thien's reactions were priceless!! He was always affected by her, but since he had early on labeled her sister thanks to his mom, his mind refuse to countenance any other possibilities. Although, his labeling her sister didn't stop him from feeling jealous of Kob numerous times, even before he admitted to himself that he loved her.

Now I've read some reviews where they complain that Muey changes her mind to much, that when Thien finally wants to be with her, she surprisingly doesn't. But I do not feel that way, because he never mentions how he feels about her, he is just too arrogant and narcissistic to communicate his love, he just wants her to follow his lead and that's it. He continues to tease her and is not clear to her, while this would have work in the early marriage phase by the Myanmar construction phase it is no longer feasible, because by this point she is completely convinced that he does not love her and will never love her. She needs reassurance, which he does not provide and at the end of this phase, after Thien discovers all that she did for him, he unilaterally decides that he must leave her without speaking to her about it. I totally understand her reticence to accept him in the noble idiocy/pregnancy phase, which was enjoyable because finally we see Thien begging and going after her, being loving to her, which is a HUGE change. I could have done without the kidney drama, which I believe was not relevant at all, I think they could have found another way to prove that Thien now loves her more than his own life and more than she does him, but it kind of worked.

Now the last episode was weird, the editing seemed so odd, since they interspersed a lot of scenes from the past between present ones. I could not follow the story of this chapter, but since the story was consistent for much of the drama, I will not hold it against it and only deduct a half point for it.

Acting/Cast:
The main actors, Mark Prin and Mew Nitta were great in their portrayal of their characters. I especially loved Mark, because in his case, Thien goes through many changes and does experience personal growth that is tangible to the viewer. Unlike Mew's character Muey, I believe she is consistently nice, shiny, bright and lovable in the course of the story, so we do not experience nor see any of the drastic changes that Thien goes through. The rest of the cast was great, I especially love Thien's and Muey's mothers, both in their own way loved their children and wanted the best for them. What I didn't much like were Thien's and Mueys's friends, I found them to be too cartoonish and loud in their portrayal, I don't know if it is a cultural thing, but there it is.

Music:
I loved the music, especially the opening song and the cover that Mark Prin made, my god, the man has such an amazing voice. I still keep listening to these songs even after finishing the drama!!

Rewatch value:
Really high!! Like seriously, I still keep watching this drama even after finishing it. I admit though, that I haven't watched it from beginning to end again, but from episode 8 to 15... of which I am a total fan!! I so enjoy it and have found out little things I hadn't noticed before.

Leggi di Più

Lovely start, draggy anti-climatic ending!!

Let me start by saying, that I loved this drama so much until episode 25, when all the misunderstandings started. I could have dealt with it, if they had not lengthen the misunderstandings until the last episode.

Story:
The overall storyline is great, I really do believe that this story is way better constructed and more logical than the Taiwanese and Korean versions. The main complaint I have and the reason why I grade it so low is, as mentioned before the minimal time spent in the happy ending, because it did not resolve all my feelings of anger and felt too rushed. This left me with a very bitter taste, because the happy ending lasted at most 10 minutes. I feel the ending is too rushed and the misunderstandings kept for way too long, to the point where you question the great "love" the main female character has for the main male character.

The strength of this story lies on it being more real, and on us seeing the main male character falling in love, unlike the Taiwanese version, where I believe the main male character realizes his love when the main female character has the accident. But this version makes the main female character too prideful in her denial of her love. I mean in the last episode she already knew all that he went through the past 3 years and how much he loves her, he's been literally begging her for another chance, and she still keeps her intention of leaving?? WTH??

Acting/Cast:
This was so great, I've got no complains there. Xing Zhao Lin and Liang Jie have great chemistry with each other and literally shine when they are together. I love the rest of cast, especially the Grandma and Mom of the main characters. Anson was a surprise, I know his character is to provide comic relief and he did his job very well. This is the version where Anna, is the most obnoxious and terrible human being, with so little self-esteem that she wants to be with someone who patently does not love her, but that was the way the character was written, so the actress did a great job. Dylan in this version was lovely and not at all pushy in his love for Jia Xin, unlike the Taiwanese version.

Music:
It was the best!! I love the rhythm and the lyrics, so appropriate to the story and the characters. To this day, I still listen to them!!

Rewatch Value:
For me is close to non-existent, because of the lengthening of misunderstandings in this version and the very poor wrap up off the whole story at the end. I will not put myself up for that kind of torture again, I may watch some sweet and funny scenes again, but never the whole drama. Which is a shame because it started so well, grounded the drama in so much "reality", unlike the cartoonish Taiwanese version and the sometimes cringy Korean version, but this Chinese version left me feeling so much anger and hopelessness!! If they had at least added one more episode, to give the viewer sweetness overload after all the bitterness we swallowed, it would have been the greatest version of them all.

Leggi di Più

A perfect slice of life!! Lovely drama!!

I totally love this drama, the story is so good and original in its realism, without the unnecessary drama of some other series. Completely love the medical stories, albeit they were sometime heartbreaking.

Story:
It was a great story focused on the life of 5 doctor friends, who've been there for each other so much that they are essentially family to each other. I loved the interactions they had when together and how each one has their own style when dealing with patients and other medical professionals and staff. The medical stories were great, so well explained that a non-medical professional could easily follow it and so greatly immersed in the overall plot that was so well planned.

Now, regarding the love stories, it was fascinating how they were developed, from the get go we know Dr. Jang Gyeo Wool has a big crush on one of the big 5 (Dr. Ahn Jung Won), who is less than impressed with her people and empathy skills. She then proceeds to slowly change in the course of this first season and continue to grow as a doctor. On the other hand, we have Dr. Chae Song Hwa, which I will admit, at first I thought that Dr. Kim Jun Wan had a thing for her, but as the show keeps developing, we can see he always saw her as a friend, unlike the other 2 guys of the group, Dr. Lee Ik Jun and Dr. Yang Suk Hyung. In this case Song Hwa had already rejected Suk Hyung, and Ik Jun to not hurt his friend further didn't confess, but now as he divorces his cheating ex wife, finds himself falling again for Song Hwa, and now he cannot avoid confessing. It turns out that she already has a someone crushing on her, her resident Dr Ahn Chi Hong, whom she is at first unaware of his feelings and later on has to deal with him. I find very interesting how the relationship of Jun Wan and Lee Ik Sun will develop with her out of the country for years on her master's degree in the UK, hopefully they will not break up. I am also eating too see what Suk Hyung ex-wife wants with him and why he says he feels apologetic towards her, I honestly hope that at the end Dr. Chu Min Ha finds someone deserving of her, I think she is a great character that deserves someone who appreciates what she can offer. As anyone can see the relationships are complicated, but they get very well developed and one can totally see how they go forward. I am waiting impatiently for the second season.

Acting/Cast:
Great acting from all the main and secondary cast, even the guest actors were great. All the dramatic scenes were very well developed and managed to transmit the feelings that they must. I think that when a drama can make you cry watching it, it is a great one and a sign of amazing acting ability by the actors. They all show different feelings and do not remain static (like Jun Wan being tsundere all the time, he sometimes acts cute and silly), this shows amazing acting ability and allows the audience to see how far the actors can go.

Music:
So pretty and the message that they convey great for the scenes and episodes where they are used. The Ost consists of a lot of different songs, which I realize are oldies in South Korea, but are so good to the ear as they are not the typical K-pop songs we are used to now.

Rewatch Value:
Very High, I continue watching it because I love it so much.

Leggi di Più