Asian-Drama

Ready, Set, Love – Part 3

It’s finally time for the finale of the Thai drama Ready, Set, Love (เกมชนคนโสด)! When we last left off, our group of contestants had decided it was time to create a revolution by exposing the TV show as rigged. Why the populace would suddenly rise up against the government because a realty show wasn’t entirely real is not explained. Anyway, their first step is to try and make Chanel win the next game. Considering the whole thing is supposed to be rigged for Chanel, the fact that they feel the need to make Chanel win anyway really speaks to how poorly the powers that be are rigging the game. Anyway, Sam has major issues with the next game as a concept, but regardless, Chanel wins and the the conspiracy group manages to get a secret recording of her mother admitting to rigging the games. However, Jenny busts the conspiracy wide open, somehow, and makes them all return to the game except Valentine, who she has arrested. Valentine escapes and magically manages to find her way into the facility where all the mothers who had been unwilling to give up their sons are being imprisoned. As she flees with the footage of the facility she’s shot off a bridge and falls into a river. Meanwhile, Day’s sister May is taken by the government to a hospital and magically cured of her disease. Chanel’s mother explains to Day that this was done, and that she better get in line and play the game right, although since May was already cured, she really has no leverage. Day does not pick up on that fact. As the final game nears, can our group find a way to be with the ones they love? (Hint: Not if they’re Bovy) Will they escape this repressive regime? Will Sam finally a get a game in the show he actually likes? Find out all that and more in this thrilling conclusion!

Ready, Set, Love – Part 2

Danielle takes us back to the dystopia this week in part two of the Thai drama Ready, Set, Love (เกมชนคนโสด). We rejoin Day and the rest as the games continue on the set of Ready, Set, Love. Well, there’s one game for the show which is far too few for Sam’s liking. However, Day finally realizes she knows Sun from when he was a runaway child and they became friends. At the the same time, Valentine realizes that Almond is her long-lost brother that was stolen from her family just after being born. Also at the same time, Paper is introduced to a radio program by City Ground, a resistance movement against the government, and starts texting the singer on the program somehow. Don’t ask how. Later, Day, Sun, and Paper all sneak out to visit The City, which is surprisingly easy to do, they even have a hilariously impractical car waiting for them in the woods as if by magic. In the city, Paper spends time with his maybe crush, the singer from the radio, who explains that he, and the other members of City Ground, tried to start a revolution, failed, and decided singing the same song on the radio once a day was the next logical course. Valentine is caught sneaking around by (there are so many freaking characters in this) but Valentine reveals to her that the government has been stealing male babies and drugging or imprisoning the parents if they refuse. Jenny, pregnant with a boy, is so distraught she just kinda lets Valentine go. Around this point Sam realizes that, like most dystopian fiction, the government is so freaking dumb at holding power, and that if he and Danielle weren’t so lazy, they’d figure out how to do it right. Regardless, Paper, Day, and Sun meet up with Valentine to start planning the next revolution!

Ready, Set, Love – Part 1

This week Danielle returns to the Thai dramas with the 2024 series Ready, Set, Love (เกมชนคนโสด). In an alternate world where a mysterious disease has not only wiped out most men but also made the male birthrate plummet, the only way the to figure out who the precious few men will procreate with is a reality dating show competition. If this makes as little sense to you as it does to Sam, get ready for a wild ride. Day is your average food loving girl with no interest in the impending reality show competition that will pair five lucky women with five of the available men. Why pair each man with only one woman? Don’t ask reasonable questions, this show has no time for your logic. However her spunky, cancer-riddled younger sister May enters her into the lottery to be on the competition since she’s obsessed with the men in the way only a tween can be. Day reluctantly agrees to participate to get her sister the autograph of the main hunk Son (get it? subtlety!). When she learns that if she wins, her and her sister can live in the fancy estate for the men called The Family and her sister will receive the best medical care possible, she goes all in it to win it. Making the baffling choice to abandon and betray an alliance with some of the other girls immediately, Day secures her spot on the show. Son is at first utterly uninterested in her, but when he sees she has a specific necklace Son realizes he’s met her before under mysterious circumstances when they were children. So join us for an episode that has Sam completely hung up on the fact that the future of the human species is seemingly being left up to a reality show competition.

La Pluie – Part 1

This week Danielle brings the first part of the 2023 Thai drama La Pluie (ฝนตกครั้งนั้น ฉันรักเธอ). Tai is your normal twenty-something, except he has a not-uncommon condition where when it rains he goes deaf, except for the voice in his head which is his soulmate and they can talk in their heads, but only when it’s raining. Got that? As amazingly bonkers as that premise is, unfortunately, the first half of this series isn’t all that interested in answering the many, many questions Sam and Danielle have about this horrifying universe. To make matters worse for Tai, his parents, who are also voice-in-head-when-it-rains soulmates are getting divorced, and it’s caused him to reject the soulmate voice in his own head and he refuses to meet that mystery man. The concept of time, as usual, is a shambles in this TV show, especially as it’s told primarily through flashbacks, but at some point Tai takes a cat to the vet and discovers the super-hot veterinarian Phat is actually his soulmate, and he starts to regret rejecting him. There are also some shenanigans where Tai hears Phat making-out with someone (what a constant horror-show this world is) and pegs him as a bit of a playboy. At another point, Tai’s ridiculous brother Thian blows up at someone named Lomfon in a bookstore for picking up a book. Tai’s smooths things over but, uh oh, it looks like Lomfon may have a crush on Tai, but double uh-oh becuase Lomfon and Thian are in the same film class and Thian might have a crush on Lomfon. It’s at this point Sam taps-out and all but begs for the high-school relationship drama to end and the crazy rain shenanigans to resume. For better or worse, Danielle leaves him wanting more as she promises that part two ratchets up the insanity. But just before ending, she leaves us with this cliffhanger: Tai, after hooking up with Phat, accidentally walks in on him being kissed by his ex-girlfriend, dun dun dunnnnnnnnn! Join us next time for the thrilling, and truly insane, conclusion.

The Man’s Voice – Part 2

This week Danielle shares the conclusion of the 2021 K-drama The Man’s Voice. As we pick up from last week, the mysterious woman with cat revenge fantasies, Jenna, has been visiting a detective agency to gather information on her romantic rival Mi Rim. Meanwhile, Tae Hwa takes Mi Rim out for some day drinking followed by a day trip to Busan using his pilot powers. Towards the end of the night, Tae Hwa flips a bottle cap to decide if they’ll spend the night in the city, but unsurprisingly, Mi Rim decides to ignore the bottle cap and call it a night. Also, there’s supposedly a talking cat in the show, but no one seems to care about Natsume while out on the town. A few days later Mi Rim is interviewing for a job, which is something that is apparently a plot, but since the show decides this plot line isn’t important, we won’t say any more about it here. Mi rim is also continuing to watch Natsume who is still hurling abuse at her for no apparent reason. Everything is going well when Jenna inserts herself back into Tae Hwa’s life, and through a series of sit-com level misunderstandings Mi Rim becomes convinced Tae Hwa, who she’s had all of two dates with, is cheating on her and refuses to see him again. This leads to an interminable period of the show for Sam where Mi Rim spends weeks mourning the loss of her relationship that consisted of, and this cannot be over-stressed, two whole dates. Tae Hwa, meanwhile, handles the breakup by stalking Mi Rim’s house in a vain attempt to run into her, instead of just going to the place he knows she works. During Tae Hwa’s next flight, Jenna decides to put her cat revenge plans into action by…having the cat hotel bathe the cat too much; simply diabolical. Taw Hwa is also grappling with the choice whether to accept a new, and better, job, but doing so would mean he’d have to leave Mi Rim, the woman he is not dating and who doesn’t want anything to do with him. Will Jenna’s evil cat revenge plan work? Will Tae Hwa and Mi Rim ever reconcile? How does a cat based version of The Parent Trap factor into all this? You’ll have to listen to find out, but one thing is clear: Sam in convinced everyone is this show is actually a serial killer.

The Man’s Voice – Part 1

K-dramas are back as Danielle brings Sam another K-drama rom-com with the 2021 show The Man’s Voice. Mi Rim is a normal young woman working in a convenience store and pining over the handsome co-pilot who occasionally comes by to shop. Through a series of contrivances (primarily the pet hotel being closed for a day) the co-pilot, Tae Hwa, is left with no one to watch his large, fluffy white cat. Inexplicably, Tae Hwa decides leaving his cat with the virtual stranger Mi Rim is the best option. As Tae Hwa jets off to Paris, Mi Rim takes the cat home but it quickly escapes into the night. Mi Rim catches it just as a storm rolls in and she is struck with lightning and her skeleton is illuminated like a cartoon. Instead of doing the sensible thing and dying, Mi Rim wakes up the next day, the cat sitting beside her, and suddenly she is able to hear the cat’s voice in her head. The cat, in the voice of a middle aged man, proceeds to abuse Mir Rim to no end, and rather than simply exerting her authority as the human part of this relationship, she rolls just over and takes that abuse. Meanwhile, Tae Hwa calls and texts Mi Rim from the plane he is supposed to be flying, to check in on his cat which, again, he left with a complete stranger. The cat, Natsume, is dead-set against Mi Rim’s designs on Tae Hwa, and manages to outwit her several times, even though he’s a cat and she’s a human. As the first half of the series draws to a close, a new character makes an appearance: A mysterious woman who demands “Revenge on the cat!” What does any of this mean? Maybe part two will explain it. Maybe.

Love Cells Season 2

Danielle is super excited to return to the the K-drama well with season two of the series Love Cells (연애세포 시즌2). If you, like Sam, remember anything at all about the first season of Love Cells previously shared by Danielle, that’s a real shame because it will only serve as a source of confusion as season two seems to be completely unrelated to the first series, with the notable exception of the return of the return of Navi, the love cell cat girl thing. If you don’t remember the first season of love cells, that sentence was indecipherable, but don’t worry, as Danielle explains the show it will definitely become no clearer what’s happening. This season includes a love cell bank and a devious scheme by the love-struck co-host of a cooking show stealing the love cell of her chef crush from the bank and then implanting a kill device in it when it’s eaten by a cat and turns into a girl and using that threat of death to force the love cell cat girl to trick the chef into dating her. We promise, there is no clearer way to state that. Sam is, understandably, lost and Danielle does her best to explain all the characters’ machinations, but they both get lost in the weeds of trying to find any semblance of logic in this show. So join us for one heck of a ride, and if you stay to the very end we might even solve the movie Cats for you; you’re welcome.

Love Cells – Part 2

Danielle shares the second half of the Korean drama Love Cells (연애세포) and it is pure, concentrated nonsense. If you were confused by how love cells worked, prepare to understand, somehow, even less than before. The (rather perfunctory) love triangle continues while our potential suitors struggle with scandals, kidnapping, and tiger costumes, none of which are as exciting as they sound (except the tiger costume, it’s cute as heck). The fate of the love cell in human (cat?) form hangs in the balance as the show careens towards a conclusion that is as thrilling as it is baffling.

Love Cells – Part 1

Danielle shares our first TV show with part one of the Korean drama Love Cells (연애세포). This show teaches important life-lessons, mainly that if you don’t date for long enough your love cells will wither and die. In a last-ditch effort to save themselves, these love cells may even take human form to help fix your dating life. “What’s a love cell,” you ask? Great question.