Happy Weekend Beanies! I'm curious how the new comment loading method will fare with the 100+ comments this thread usually gets 👀.

COMPLETED
The Kidnapping Day - Although I know the point the show was making through Hye-eun's character, I wish we'd gotten a little more focus on our leads for the finale. So happy we have Hee-ae and Ro-hee together now (with Myeong-jun in the future). A show to add to this year's rather short list of "was good until the end".

The Worst of Evil - A combination of some really good individual scenes, and suspenseful moments, and an overall trite plot. So much story was crammed into the last episode. Jun-mo at least had a whole character arc. Gi-cheul on the other hand was just sort of there in the background - even his ending was decided for him by Jun-mo. I liked JCW's performance.

ONGOING
My Dearest Part 2 - I found my interest wandering. The conflict between the grand, sweeping romance and the reality of the times they lived in is becoming more apparent. So the romantic moments actually take me out of the immersion. I'm too worried about Jong Jong to swoon over Jang-hyun's "Gil-chae-ya" show 😠.

Strong Girl Nam-soon - These episodes were boring and offensive. Somebody needs to remind Grandma consent is like tea, somebody needs to provide actual help to Nam-in and the Chief, and somebody really needs to reduce the scenes with the mom because they are disruptive and strange. I don't know why they keep trying to induce comedy into her scenes. Bread Song? Really?? 🤦‍♀️

Twinkling Watermelon - From the first 'fight' scene, these set of episodes were destined to be cute and hilarious. Loved the Yi-chan and Chung-ah scenes. Also playboy Eun-ho is still the best boi I will not be taking questions.

A Good Day to Be a Dog - N/A

Planning to watch Castaway Diva of course. The trailer suggests N will be the Han Ji-pyeong of this show. Bracing myself for the fan-wars 😅.

C-DRAMAS
Will complete Romance on the Farm over the weekend. Will try out Ripe Town, while I wait for Rising With the Wind to start on Monday.

CRICKET - Matches aren't competitive. Teams are winning big but then we get the 1st very heart beating fast match and today another match is going on which is turning out to oh oh time.

Afghan doing good

England totally lost it - they are 2019 world cup champions

Live Watches
The Killing Vote: With the events in Maine, this show was just too much for me. But I’ll catch up on the latest episode and be back in the hangout later this weekend.

The Kidnapping Day: Oh Myung-Ro, what am I going to do without you each week? We laughed, we cried, we were unsettled, we were comforted. The confrontation with Hye-eun was so perfect, because Ro-hee tricked her into confessing but it all would have ended in disaster anyway were it not for Myung-joon and his gigantic heart. It was such a fitting way to wrap up the entire situation. Now where can I get an endearing lawyer like Taek-kyun to manage my estate?

A Time Called You: I haven’t seen the original of this, but I really loved this version. I know some folks wanted more from the epilogue, but I thought it was perfect. Like a callback to Your Name.

Tale of the Nine-tailed 1938: I watched the original season earlier this year with the express purpose of watching this one, but then things got away from me and other dramas happened and I’m just now getting to it. I imagine that the creators sat down and just thought, “What did we love about the first one? Yeon being powerful? Korean folklore? Fraught bromance? Ah crap, we killed him off… What if Yeon time traveled?” I’m here for whatever ridiculousness they are ready to throw at me.

Older Dramas
Revenant: Up to episode 6 at this point. I’m not finding this as addictive as dramas sometimes are, but there’s no denying that it’s very good. I’m hoping/expecting to see more range from Oh Jung-se - I know he’s got it, but his character has been quite stoic so far and I’d love to see him put through the ringer and hung out to dry. Kim Tae-ri is beautiful and chilling, as expected, and I love folklore, so no surprises that I’m into this.

This week, Live Your Own Life was less warm than I wanted (and with too little Hajoon I could grin over). Luckily I was able to balance it out with Unpredictable Family and get my happy grin back. (I'm not that difficult to be pleased, a simple scene of a loving father discussing with his daughters the new job of the youngest one made me happy enough (make notes, Hyoshim show!). Btw Unpredictable Family is also quite good for practicing Korean, with simple sentences and vocabulary 🙂).

Watermelon
This show is full of energy and I'm enjoying the ride, more than I expected. Especially watching Choi Hyun Wook and his acting is a joy.
The kiss was a bit sudden, but I was immediately again completely immersed with the following talk between the brothers about loosening up, enjoying the life and thinking about their own needs and future. ❤️💔

Kill Me, Heal Me recaps, finished
Excellent. Even with only reading the recaps (and not watching), the emotional beats were still there. Though... I'm tempted to find the Yuna parts and watch. 🙂🙂
(Just what has happened with the Discussion Section recently? This reverse option is a nightmare and I wasn't able to even get to the beginning of the KMHM discussion threat and read it chronologically, my browser constantly crashing.)

Planning to finish Kidnapping Day and looking forward to Diva!

Catching up after a couple of weeks away!

Finished:
--Mad Dog This was a shared Beanie fanwall watch, which made it more fun! It wasn't as good as I thought it would be, but Woo Do-hwan was awesome, and I really liked Cheetah and Pentium. KANG!😎
--W: Two Worlds Fascinating plot, and excellent twists and turns! It was a cracky, fun ride. The violence got to be a lot, and the show's stance on freewill and autonomy was kind of depressing. But it had a nice ending!

Watching:
--While You Were Sleeping (through ep. 6). Ooh, a timey-wimey thriller! I really like the mechanics of how the dreams work and are interconnected. The first episode could be viewed as a standalone drama special, or very short movie. Jung Hae-in is a ray of sunshine - why isn't he the ML?? **Cue Cheetah's voice: 왜 왜 왜???**

C-dramas:
--I've Fallen For You Finished. It's not your average fluffy costume drama! It's not dubbed, and is absolutely hilarious with bawdy, slapstick humor (especially in the first 4 eps). It has more first loves than you can shake a stick at, but the ML falls in love with the FL **despite not being each other's first loves!** Also, props to the female love rival for taking psycho to exciting new heights.👏
--Still slowly watching, and thoroughly enjoying, Joy of Life. Looking forward to season 2! Lots of complex politics, and the ML is so dynamic and interesting. Uncle Wu Zhu is super cool!
-- Finished the two mini-dramas Provoke (Republic-era; watched on Prime) and A Familiar Stranger (costume drama; watched on Viki). Both are by the same production team, and their unique visual style shows. Slick, stylish, a little spicy, very dramatic, with gasp-worthy plot twists and positive endings, I'd highly recommend both.

Up Next: I'm starting Castaway Diva! Park Eun-bin picks good dramas, so I think I'm safe in feeling excited for this? And Beanies have given the all clear, so I've got Kidnapping Day on deck to try as my next thriller (though it may be too dark for me). Likely going to try Twinkling Watermelon, which seems like the warm time-travel family drama of My Perfect Stranger, minus the torture and serial killer?

The Kidnapping Day - Seems like the writer forgot to show us the essence of revealing that Hye-eun stole Myeong-jun's IQ result.
This one wrapped well for me. I didn't expect that I'd enjoy it to the extent that I did.

My Dearest - Finally, Gil-chae is free. Jong Jong too.
I do hope at the end of Yeon-jun's lessons with the scholar, he'll know how to be strong willed and not hiding behind nobility.
That episode 15 ending sequence...wow! That scene was charged. And it really hurt to learn that it took learning about Jang-hyun's stint on Gang-hwa Island for Gil-chae to put the pieces together that Jang-hyun has been a knight all along. Gil-chae scored low points for that. I thought Eun-ae already knocked some sense into her in part 1 ep 5. I can't believe she still kept her initial thoughts to mind. I understand if she believed him denying Gang-hwa. I don't understand why she would equate Ganghwa to the other times he came to their rescue.
I was looking forward to the events that'll make Gil-chae return to Joseon. And my prediction was spot on on who the culprits will be : the princess or Ryang-eum.

Cold Blooded Intern - @reply1988 I take back what I said last week about CBI being an okay watch. It's not an okay watch for me. It was 👍🏽👌🏽.

Ji-won got herself out of the toxic work system she found herself in, while Hae-ra was left to continue the fight, with the monster she emboldened before her career break. On that note I'd say I think Ji-won got the better end of the deal. It was so sad that it was her health crisis that made her make the drastic call. And, i was super glad they left the romance with the Tae cousin open.
If I'm to write an ending in addition to what the writers had in mind, Ji-won and Tae Seo-jun will cross paths again and fall in love and they make a life together, opening another chapter for each other.
Cold Blooded Intern was not billed as a romance so that's the excuse I'm gonna give them for now making this two characters a couple. They are a couple in my own off screen prologue.

And, Hae-ra's daughter...I hated the fact that she pinned her episode in school on Hae-ra. That was unfair and very lame writing. She freaking asked her twice on different occasions as to why she wants to be a tattooist and she shunned Hae-ra in both instances. She now bombing Hae-ra with the information after she got into issues with the school authority + Hae-ra lashing at her for getting into that situation...that's emotional blackmail and not taking accountability.
And I partly blame the husband too. I get that he's trying to protect his wife from learning about the consequences of her actions when she was a working mom pre-career break cause he knows the knowledge will break Hae-ra. If his daughter doesn't want to tell her mom why she's acting this way but you happen to know why, what stops him from telling his wife this and that. When everything finally came out in the open, they shoved all the major feelings of regrets and what-have-you on Hae-ra to carry whilst the Gongs went to tend to their own hurt.
Wow! That's was long😅.

Twinkling Watermelon: AWWWWWWWWW, I love this drama. It makes me Monday happy considering it is the only drama on Monday-Tuesday, lol.

The Worst of evil: It ended. It was fine, however I will say JCW was really great in this even if the script was MEH.

The Killing Vote: The guy is surprisingly hard to kill for someone with a heart disease., but I guess the drama must go on. Poor Ji Hoon, I hope only good things for him at the end of this drama.

Literally everything else is on the Weekend lol.

DOONA! - dropped

(RANT)

Got to the middle of episode six and had to drop it because I hate the ML. It took me a while to figure out this drama’s genre was a harem, now I don’t mind the genre, EX-GIRLFRIEND CLUB still remains one of my favourite rom coms, but this show was nothing but a male fantasy.

MY WIFE IS HAVING AN AFFAIR THIS WEEK pointed out something interesting, that (and this is heteronormative and of course ‘not all men’) men are only interested in friendships with women who they are attracted to.

DOONA! Well actually our ML Woo-jun encapsulates this concept perfectly. He starts friendships with women he is attracted to and revokes the friendship when he is no longer attracted to them. Look Woo-jun rejecting Jin-ju or realising his ‘feelings’ for her were more a memory than how he actually felt in the present is all fine with me. But the dude hears about Jin-ju’s horrible home life and knows she’s now been cut off from her family and what does he do?? He basically cuts off friendship with her?? WHAAAT?!

So now as he’s no longer attracted to her, it means he can’t (or won’t) be friends with Jin-ju?? Because he has a ‘girlfriend’ he can’t offer support to Jin-ju?? I guess there is nothing more to gain in their relationship??

And don’t get me started on how Woo-jun treats and views Doona. Constantly saying how she’s mysterious is a big red flag for me. If his attraction is predicated on Doona being mysterious, when she’s no longer a mystery will he still be interested?? I have no doubt these thoughts plague Doona as she feels she’s unlovable. Also depression isn’t a sexy personality trait, as much as the drama tries to portray otherwise

LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE: Mainly lurking between episodes since the title has yet to match the FL’s depressing quicksand burden of her family. How else can I describe the state of this show? On my SNS feed this morning there was a post from an 18 year-old Korean tennis player. She posted a sign that said WE ARE A SAD GENERATION WITH HAPPY PICTURES.

Strong Disappointing Girl Nam-soon: 4.0 Never trust dietary advice from anyone who tries to egg you on. This week was shockingly weak compared to the first two weeks. Merely saying the show fell off a Cliff this week isn't enough -- Kdramaland must be flat like Discworld so the show could fall clear off the edge.

My Dearest, pt 2: 6.5 It's a pretty grim slog; the princess livens things up a bit but it seems too contrived. If there were emojis for "treadmill" or "hamster wheel" I'd have used them to summarize the progress of the story thru ep 14. In 15 things seem to be picking up (?) and if this were a normal 16-ep show I'd think things were on course.

Doona!: 7.0 (ep 4 / 8) There's good eye candy -- and not just Suzy, although her character is still smokin', so to speak. But otherwise, 🥱🥱💤💤💤

High Cookie: __ 404 Not Found.

The Kidnapping Day: 9.0 The finale was darn good by recent kdrama standards, but a slight let-down compared to day 11.

Good Day to Be a Dog: __ But a bad week to be a viewer. 😠👎⚾

Killing Vote: 6.5

---

Sigh. Kdramaland has so many people saying they committed a crime so they must be punished. I suppose it's an effort to indoctrinate their actual criminals to believe they should confess and turn themselves in, but I somehow doubt that the kind of people who commit serious crimes will fall for it.

But I still think Ro-hee should have found a way to let Myeong-Jun beat the rap.

I love our OTP in My Dearest—the actors, the characters and the new phase in their relationship. It is so much better than the dysfunctional Gone With the Wind one. However, now that we’re deviating from the GWY script, I fear this newbie(?) writer is floundering. Let’s hope they find their footing before the plot gets messier.

A busy week meant I couldn’t participate on DB, but I managed to squeeze in Twinkling Watermelon and one episode of Live Your Own Life. TW remains full of heart and laughter—but getting better! I hope I haven’t jinxed it. Ha Joon as the ML in LYOL is as cute as a button, but so far he pales in comparison to the depth and complexity of Go Joo-won as the 2ML, who seems to have stepped out of (or into?) a Greek tragedy. Unexpected.

I didn’t get a chance to watch Strong Girl last weekend, and I don’t think I’ll pick it back up. Dropped. Two new shows this weekend. Whee!

Live watches:
Twinkling Watermelon
Every week this show has something funny it is my ray of sunshine. I am loving it as a story. The man with the cryptic clues is annoying me as much as he is annoying Eungyeol. Both young people are already struggling in a strange place when teenage years are confusing enough so why add to their misery and allow them to make unnecessary mistakes that impact on everyone else’s future?

A good day to be a dog
I am eagerly anticipating this weeks episode and hopefully it won’t disappoint after the long wait.

Completed

Past Lives
So glad I finally got to see this film. It was beautiful and had a lovely theme running through it of connections and timing.

Binge watch corner

Meloholic
From the era when romance needed a stalker element to sell. The college campus love story had fantasy and mental health/psychology interwoven into it but by the end the serial killer plot line became the main story. It was hard to suspend disbelief at times regarding the police involvement.

Recently the romance J dramas have been about contract marriages where the man has the upper hand because he is aware of the woman long before she knows of him or he has harboured a deep love but kept it a secret. It makes it a more difficult watch as the women are often portrayed as not very confident in themselves, struggling to be recognised in their work place usually on temporary contracts.

Usokon - Japanese
Contract marriage between two childhood friends who reconnect after ten years.

Can’t run away from love - Japanese
I did not enjoy this one. The woman fell for the man despite his constant teasing and her witnessing his apparent disrespectful treatment of women.

My cuteness is about to expire - Japanese
Time travel, identity and skill set explored through a man’s transition from his twenties into his 30’s and the woman who helped him learn about himself.

Webtoon corner
Second Lead Syndrome.
Secret Playlist in prep for drama drop in November.

Book corner
The poppy war - R. F. Kuang
Historical elements hidden amongst fantasy not my usual style at all. Lots of horrific details of war atrocities which are very much based on real events. Shamanism and mystical creatures alongside class and colourism. Part of a three part series but I will need to walk away at the end of this book.
The author studied at a number of top universities including Yale, Oxford and Cambridge and still had time to write so many well researched books.

Mambo in China town by Jean Kwok
A modern tale of a Chinese widower and his two American born Chinese daughters living and working in Chinatown New York.

Watching The Inextricable Destiny (C-drama)
Blossoming (C-drama, backburner), silly satire, but most of the jokes are in Mandarin?
A Good Day to be a Dog (K-drama), one needs a fair amount of Korean to get a lot of the jokes.
Hard drop on Blooming Days (the Male Main Character is an AH and totally unforgivable in this one, C-drama)

On The Inextricable Destiny, there was a off-handed running joke about the Prince wanting his favorite person to have children so he could marry one of them. But then it turned into a dead end. Ah, I thought it would make for an interesting plotline if the original writer would do it.

I also noticed that people (across fan websites) are really harsh on women in dramas? Either the actresses for not being pretty enough, for not wearing make up that makes them prettier, for not having the personality traits they want, for being much shorter than the male lead, etc. Much more than the Main Male characters who, I'm not kidding, can have the exact same traits and no one flinches for a second. And some of the people commenting are women. They make these comments on episode 1, but then have no foundation to say such a thing.

For me, this is up there with, he's so hot, he can't be evil and he's so hot, she's a stupid idiot for not wanting him. O.o; What? I get it's sexism, but shouldn't we talk about it? Also that gender types and gender archetypes across countries aren't the same, so maybe give some leeway pause before judging? Iunno... seeing women tear down other women I find odd.

Folks, I just got these to load chronologically (ascending; a.k.a. like they used to).

I used the drop-down above this compose window…and selected “All Comments.” That reloaded a blank comment stream.

Then I reloaded the entire page in my browser (ensuring the command “?comments=all” was appended that end of the URL).

BOOM.

Normally loading comments for WWW.

You can also manually type "?comments=all" after the last slash of the URL and this should also work haere. When you submit a reply, it might reloa this page as "?comments=most" and it's back to this reverse chron. Just change "most" to "all," reload, and that should work.

I'll do more testing and make a fan wall post. This is almost certainly a workaround as I suspect the powers-that-be are on this.

Twinkling Watermelon May I have a spin-off about only Chung-Ah instead?

A Good Day to Be a Dog I didn't really miss it this week. But I'm still curious about how she will change her curse.

Strong Girl Nam-soon The plot is really weak, no actor can save it neither.

My Dearest I didn't watch the episode 15 yet, but now, even if the actors look tired by their role and don't convince me anymore.

Castaway Diva I'm so ready for it! But I'm really angry against the stylist of potato boy, even if on their promotion pictures, his haircut sucks.

The Worst of Evil It was entertaining thanks to Ji Chang-Wook. But the writing was lacking, they went directly in the action and violence without presentation the characters, their relationship, etc. Squid Game really made the violence as the first selling point in kdrama now.

@missvictrix You should watch the last 2 episodes, there were so many cute, lovely and sexy moments! You will regret otherwise! After all, they finally gave us THE kiss scene :p

Strong Woman Nam Soon: What happened in the past two episodes? The cute Nam-soon and Hee-shik interactions vanished almost completely, and instead we had some dubious decision-making by mom and grandma. The drama might be trying to say something about the way these strong women treat the men in their lives, but it's all a bit unclear at the moment. Wouldn't grandma hauling her paramour away over his protestations count as an abuse of strength?

Live Your Own Life: I thought maybe Hyo-shim would have taken her first step on the path to liberation by now, but nope. I actually felt a lot of sympathy for Taemin coming off the most recent episodes. Taeho is shielded by his ignorance of the company intrigues, so he can simply feel outraged and upset over his parents' death and his grandmother's disappearance. However, Taemin is saddled with too much knowledge of both his family's and the company's weaknesses and can’t act as he pleases.

My Dearest: I know it’s excellent, but I’m behind. Just need to be emotionally prepared and in the right head space. And the episode lengths don’t help either.

Inextricable Destiny: Now this is how you do character growth. I've gone from barely being able to tolerate the immature FL in the first few episodes to admiring her almost as much as the ML does, now that she has channeled her stubbornness into being stubbornly loyal and devoted. She also managed to detoxify his poison, so it'd be great if they could now turn their combined powers toward remaking the corrupt court and avenging her family.

Ripe Town: Twelve tightly written episodes of moody, atmospheric mystery. It’s the rare historical drama that maintains its small-town setting instead of being full of palace intrigue. As a result, the yamen, brothel, homes and streets feel real, as do the characters' lives and struggles. Kudos to the production team for an immersive experience. This show leaves you with a lot to ponder about injustice, revenge and morality.

What I am watching:

_ Twinkling Watermelon (10/16). One of the nicest shows this year. It's not perfect, but I love it.

_ My Dearest (14/20). In this second part there are some script and editing issues, but it's still a very good drama: great acting, OST, production, cinematography...

_ C-drama Go Ahead (32/40). I liked it more from episodes 1 to 12, it almost made me cry (the script is beautiful). Then it takes the romantic path and there are some things that I strongly dislike about the characters. This show has made me meet Zhang Xincheng and wow... he is such a great actor!! I'm impressed.

Western shows:

_ Only murders in the building Season 1. It's so funny!

Let me happily report that this week I watched a whole lot of NOTHING. Absolutely. Zero k-, c- and any other kinds of dramas. It almost felt liberating in a sense))) But it's not to say that I wasn't productive at all - aside of boring adult stuff no one wants to hear about, I got myself a pet crow in a game and named it after TTEOTM's ML. It's so morbidly cute and I'm hella proud of both this idea and achieving it^^

Anyway, next week I need to catch up with MY DEAREST (can you feel my intense enthusiasm to do so? lmao), AGDTBAD hopefully returns with some very needed dose of diabetic fluff and if stars align nicely I'll also get the masochistic pleasure to watch my second LYX ongoing show that is LOVE IS PANACEA. Because nothing can be a better gift for my upcoming birthday than not one but TWO doomed tearjerker romance dramas simultaneously, yay! *head-desks*

P.S. Is it just me or DB is drunk again? Like the numeration of comments is upside down and I've just got a scare of having 3 (!) doubles of my post that thankfully disappeared into oblivion once I've refreshed the page...

This week’s theme for me surely was THE RED SLEEVE. First time watch, and it was *so good*!!!! Instant classic. So happy I finally got to see this! Of course you’d know that this show can be devastating to watch, but I was also really content how the story was told, how much love and detail went into every character, and how it finally wrapped up. After all, there was no other way to do it… it was beautiful, *beautiful* until the very end.

So, sad to say that everything else looks a little bland now 😂

I dropped STRONG WOMAN along the way. Nothing much to say about it other than *shrugs*

Started with A PIECE OF YOUR MIND, which looks promising so far. (Admitting I’m watching for Jung Hae-in!)

And CASTAWAY DIVA! Definitely watching tonight, and looking forward to discuss with you beanies 👏🏝️💃

Watching K dramas

My Dearest Jong Jong is back, kind of, “oh by the way, Jong Jong’s back” …

The Royal Frustrated Princess lurks, like a jealous ex, er, stalker, she is seen eyeing the OTP from afar. She returns to her boudoir to plan her next evil deed, ‘cause that is what evil princesses do and also, because she loves the ML . 🙄😫😵‍💫

Ryang Eum, meanwhile is entering the “must die” camp along with Won-Moo, perhaps they can kill one another ?

Good Day To Be A Dog Dog is missing this week. 😢
Live Your Own Life Hyo-shim , poor Hyo-shim . She needs a regular guy, chaebols and all their issues, traumas and crazy families, who needs them ?!!🤦🏻‍♀️

Finished K drama Pegasus Market 🙂
Also finished C drama Ripe Town 👍

Another mystery would be ok. Difficult to find good ones. Tired of the cops with “super powers” .

I have started the C drama , When a Snail Falls in Live