#I love they're dynamic of Man who loves his badass Wife who's also going to give him a heart attack being so badass
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2023 Dramas I Watched in 2023
Cdramas:
A League of Nobleman--Slashy historical mystery drama. I loved all the slashiness and all the intrigue and then in the last few episodes I fell even more in love with the villain. Worth a watch but not my favorite slashy historical mystery of the year.
Mysterious Lotus Casebook--My favorite slashy historical mystery drama of the year! Tho more wuxia than historical I suppose. Bromance and archnemeses and identity porn abound. The identity porn in particular was a special treat for me; a character wandering around all these ppl who care deeply about him or idolize him but all think he's dead is my catnip. (I technically have a few episodes left to go on this one but I'm still counting it bc I am very close.)
Parallel World--YE LIUXI. I did a review of this one here! The short version: urban fantasy and parallel worlds in a desert setting, with a badass amnesiac female protagonist.
The Lady and the Lies--Miniseries, one of those short-episode things that China's doing a lot of now. Involved a cheating husband and a wife out to get revenge. I'm sorry but I shipped the wife with almost every person doing her wrong. She should destroy their lives and also dom them. They're all kind of obsessed with her anyway, in their own way.
Under the Microscope--You ever sit down and say, "Okay, but what I REALLY want from all these historical dramas is to just dig into the tax fraud going on in the background"? Me too, my friend. This show and Long River, which I also watched this year, are all about logistics, bureaucracy, and corruption, and the small man's struggle against ppl in power. That makes them both kind of difficult watches in a way, but also fascinating. I have yet to finish Long River, but this one is an easy 14 episodes and not as emotionally draining, so it was much easier for me to binge through.
Ye Cheng--I must admit I watched this for the pretty people. It's set in a matriarchal fantasy wuxia setting, but the gender role reversal feels a little shallow when the strongest good guy and the strongest bad guy are both men, even tho in theory women are supposed to be the warriors in this setting. However, the role reversal can be quite interesting in some ways--watching the male MC run a brothel as the city's top entertainer, try to use his ~masculine wiles~ to charm the FMC in a way that would be more typically feminine, and deal with the power dynamics of joining the FMC's household. Also, the two leads are just a lot of fun and have a lot of chemistry. The plot is sometimes stupid, but it's still a lot of fun to watch. Also, this was one of just two dramas I managed to finish this year that were mostly romance focused. When you reach the "dropped" section you will see that this is an impressive feat.
Kdramas:
Bloodhounds--I love Woo Do-hwan and I love Park Sung-woong but you know I was here for the ACTION SCENES. PEOPLE PUNCHING EACH OTHER AND SLICING EACH OTHER WITH KNIVES. THATS WHAT ITS ABOUT. I've also written a lot of fanfic about the protagonist and villain at this point but honestly they should have interacted more, we were robbed.
Queen of Masks--The only rich woman thriller kdrama I completed this year. But honestly, when it comes to rich woman thriller kdramas, I've seen better and femslashier. Mine did a better job with the whole "your husband told you the mother of his child was dead, but guess what it's actually me and I'm still alive and here to cause problems" plotline, tho I still enjoyed it here. And the sexual assault aspect... eh. I don't love seeing that kind of plotline in a revenge story; it's such a serious issue (and so much more realistic than, say, "this businessman murdered my whole family to acquire our company" a la Eve) that it kind of makes it hard for me to enjoy the fun of the mystery. But I suppose the way they handled it at least had gravity. My favorite plotline was Hae-mi and her husband and the drama they got into, which is serious in its own way (addiction and lies) but extremely well acted and with so much romantic chemistry.
Revenant--Spooky spooky ghosts and Kim Tae-ri, what's not to like? The possession aspects were creepy without being gory or too terrifying for a wimp like me to handle. The acting was great. And I actually shipped the sort-of-romantic subplot, though apparently a lot of ppl shipped the two MCs instead, which is understandable.
Song of the Bandits--A whole ton of gunfighting and other action scenes. One very badass assassin woman, a dude who is equally capable of taking out a whole squad of soldiers or bandits on his own, a villain with a complicated relationship with the dude above, and a woman spying on the Japanese government who's in a sort of spy love triangle with the MC and the villain. the plot was okay but again I was mostly here for the action!!
Thai dramas:
My Dear Gangster Oppa--This year I tried to watch a bunch of different BL dramas bc I was in that kind of mood but the truth is, it's not the het that gets me in m/f romcoms, it's unfortunately the romcom. Despite that! I persisted and did manage to finish this one. The lead couple was cute, and there was gangster intrigue and action etc to keep the fluff and comedy from driving me insane. still mostly a romance.
To Sir With Love--Also has a BL romance in it but not really a romance drama but a Family Drama with lots of familial plotting, the classic first wife vs. second wife scheming-for-their-children plotline along with what could have been a love triangle between brothers... except Tian is gay, which means the love triangle is null (except he's still engaged to his brother's love interest. which is awkward for all involved.). Also Tian being gay is a Deep Dark Secret. There's a lot of homophobia which might turn some viewers off but I loved seeing Tian's struggle between wanting to come out and having been forced to stay in the closet for so long that he freezes even at the thought of telling people he trusts. Also his mother commits a bunch of murders with terrible poison mushrooms so if THAT'S what you want out of a Thai drama, there is also that. Also he and his brother are. so sweet. and I love them. but also the central m/m romance is very good and involves assassination attempts and identity porn and pining and everything good. Also also this is actually a 2022 drama BUT IM STILL COUNTING IT bc it came out in October 2022 and am I really supposed to get around to watching dramas that fast??
Started and dropped:
Kiseki: Dear to Me--Even gangsters and intrigue could not save me from dropping this romcom.
Our Blooming Youth--This is also a romcom. You may see a pattern here. But to give it credit it is quite a plotty historical drama too. I just didn't really care about the two leads and dropped it halfway through.
Pandora: Beneath the Paradise--A thriller that was going places a bit too wild and frustrating for me.
Killing Vote--Can you believe I dropped this with only four episodes to go? I'm sorry Park Sung-woong, I love you but the plot is just so boring. And it plays at moral complexity while being just. not very complex. Like I swear the morality in this thing is "catching bad guys and punishing them is good, not catching them and not punishing them is bad." We could be talking about police corruption, our MC's terrible ethics, innocence until proven guilty, and so on and so forth, but we were just not going there. Also the twists were doing very little for me and the cops are just not very interesting characters. Again, Park Sung-woong, I'm sorry, you were a decent character but you could not save this show. Let's be real I needed either more Devil Judge here or more Death Note.
Legend of Anle--The romcom element was not helping this show's case but I still tried for 1) wuxia with identity porn and 2) Dilraba Dilmurat costarring with Gong Jun. Unfortunately those two had no chemistry and the plot was just very unsatisfying for me in the political intrigue area. One example: Gong Jun can't find the supplies needed to pacify a near-rioting mob. But that's okay bc Anle's subordinates found it. How did they find the super secret hidden storehouse?? we don't know and will never find out bc it was offscreen and never explained. They just did. this would be fine if it weren't, like, the climax of the episode and presented as a victory of the two MC's brilliance. I can't deal with this.
Naughty Babe--It's. A romcom. I'm so sorry I probably should just stop trying.
Other romcoms I quit too fast to give a fair opinion: You Are Mine, Extremely Perilous Love, My Lethal Man, Taikan Yoho.
Well, there you have it, 2023 dramas I watched in 2023.
Fun as it was, I think in 2024 I'm going to try to catch up more with older dramas lols.
Did y'all watch any of these dramas this year?
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Reacher Season 2
Minor spoilers ahead.
Liked it better than season one, mostly because I love backstory and characterization. A 'lets get the team together one last time' story presses all the right buttons. Loved getting more of Neagley, loved getting to know the team, loved Finley's cameo. Liked the cop guy, and he broke my heart. (Loved how awkward Reacher got when Neagley brought up Roscoe.)
I like that Neagley and Reacher seem to be on the same wavelength all the time. She always understands what he's doing and he knows her boundaries and not quite enforces them, but enables her to enforce them as she chooses? She's the only one whose ever figured out how to get ahold of him. He is apparently the one who taught her to be an investigator. I love Neagley in general.
The dead team members seem to get more backstory and characterization than the living ones. Understandable, given the show needs to make us understand who the 110th were to each other and why the loss of their team members has them ready to unleash hell. But it means we don't know much about the original team dynamics.
From what we do get: Dixon is The Best with numbers. Probably why she was recruited and is her defining investigative trait. She and Reacher are a 'could have been' that he wouldn't act on when she was under his authority. I appreciate that, Reacher is now someone I would trust to watch my drink. Dixon is also a badass who can literally take out a man with a high-heeled shoe. Another thing this show does well is improvised weapons and using the environment in fight scenes. But not much more to her than extremely competent, goodhearted, beautiful, and happy to let Reacher go after finally getting to sample what he was too morally good to offer while he was her boss (sex. I'm talking about sex.).
O'Donnell might be my favorite. He spends a lot of time being the audience surrogate: asking the questions and playing the devils advocate for the perspectives Reacher wants to take on faith. (He's also kinda the comedic relief? They tease him for things, but they're all pretty chill with each other, so it's not one sided and it doesn't feel like bullying.) It's an important role. Reacher can have faith in Swan against all odds, because the others are willing to investigate the possibility he is corrupt. O'Donnell is also a living counter to Reacher's point.
Reacher's argument is that he knows people, especially his people. He's been wrong before, sort of, in that he didn't expect Neagley to start staying in nicer hotels, because he hadn't been around for her promotions to see that she has money now. But on a more drastic note, he'd never expected O'Donnell to become an entirely domestic husband and father. So if O'Donnell could change so much in the time they've all been separated, couldn't Swan have gone the other way?
For O'Donnell they did a lot more tell than show for his womanizing days, mostly because the flashbacks were about the team and their work. But the continual emphasis on how unexpected his new life is gets the point across. I do appreciate they didn't make him flirt with any of his coworkers, and no one spoke poorly about him or the women he used to sleep with. I also love that O'Donnell is never shamed for either part of his life. They tease him about it a little, but not what I'd call judgmentally. They also never tease him about 'going soft'. He also never gets defensive about it. And never actually looks at a woman who isn't his wife, as far as I recall. Mostly they give him shit for his aim.
He's allowed to be a loving husband and father, and a badass. He's got a switchblade and brass knuckles, but also "paw patrol band aides and playground sand." I love the dichotomy. In the flashbacks, he's the one willing to ask the questions everyone is thinking but maybe not willing to say to their new boss' face. He's also the one who pushes people's buttons and starts conversations. You need that when your boss is Reacher. Present-day O'Donnell just strikes me as a guy who has figured out who he is and where he stands. He even gets to give Reacher a 'you'd be a good dad if you ever settled down' pep talk. Maybe he's been to therapy, maybe he did some soul searching when he met his eventual-wife. I don't know, but it feels like he did the work.
(Also, since they never really show him flirting in the flashbacks, only him insisting he's never going to get married. And while he implied it with the 'maybe I didn't need every woman in the world, just the right one' line, I'm choosing to interpret his vibes as bisexual but not out at work. Because I am starved for LGBT+ rep and will make my own at this point.
Also Neagley gives me major aro-ace vibes and that adds to why I love her. Though her aversion to any physical contact - even platonic contact with people she cares about - gives trauma vibes, and I'm praying for a day when a character can be aro-ace and not have touch-related tragic backstory.
I used the word 'vibes' too much.)
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Stream of consciousness for 11x7
Yeah I mean I agree with Maggie... get food or die trying you know? Also Negan sorry but gleefully murdering a man in front of his entire family including his sick and pregnant wife is like... not really something you can come back from. There's no "being even" there's just not open hostility. Idk I'm always and forever gonna be team Maggie even if the conflict is tiring
What happened to Elijah's mask? Did I forget something?
Wait what? Walkers at Commonwealth? Since when? What? Whatever. Fake Stephanie is cute but like who cares. Oh mkay I see killing walkers is basically prison for them got it. Only zeke could be dying from cancer and still be stabbing walkers with ease what a badass. Princess looks so different without her fuzzy pink jacket
Pumpkin suit!! "Nasties" bro you know what's nasty is your fuckin dumb cardigan and shitty attitude. You're gonna be the first one to die when team family eats the rich.
Oh good Daryl has dog back I was wondering if they'd ever be reunited.
I wonder if Elijah is claiming Carver or pope? Probably Carver. I think Daryl or Carol has to kill pope. Negan makes me snicker tbh "not with that attitude"
These Halloween masks are killing me so fucking weird lol. Hmm interesting. Can't tell if Leah is getting punished or if pope relented in yelling at them bc she asked him to stop
Alright!! More dynamics!! Damn Daryl is laying it on THICK lol.
Uh OK there's no way they dried out the mask quickly enough for Maggie, that's gotta be bloody as fuck lol.
Hmm they still have cars... wonder if they've got biofuel or just pretending like gasoline is still good after a decade
Wait hang on I'm just piecing it together unless I already said this and don't remember. Do we think pope is his last name or he renamed himself pope bc of his religious fanaticism?
Ugh wish Gabe killed the guy
I'm sorry I just like. I reeeeeally don't care about Commonwealth and especially yumiko and brother. Like ok her brother is all in and she's not convinced. Got it. Oh wait OK maybe he isn't all in hmm. Wonder why he doesn't want to be a doctor.
I think negan does actually admire Maggie he's not just trying to win her favor.
Truly Leah and Daryl is my favorite storyline and I can't wait for Carol to join bc she has to she just has to. Bet Leah's gonna kill the rando and that's gonna be the first indicator that she can't be saved. Aha there you go popes orders! Wonder if daryls gonna try to convince her otherwise or if it's too early for him to begin driving wedges
I guess I'm just not sure what the plan is? Like the patrol would kill walkers, no? Idk. I'm glad that they're finally having a heart to heart. Well okay then negan good talk.
That's so many walkers wtf. Hm zeke is back on his king persona... wonder if that's part of a racism thing?
Also gabe... why the fuck you lyin
Ha nasties are protecting your yuppie ass!! Well okay what a fuckin shock that he's a little shit. Uh Stephanie use your words or kill the walker?! OK fuckin finally. OK well Eugene that's really not doing you and your friends any favors. Ohhhhh wait is that the prince milton of Commonwealth?
"Settling in ok" uh sure most of them are in prison but yeah other than that everyone's doing great. Aha I was right! Hmm I wonder if fake Stephanie is gonna actually fall in love with Eugene. And he's gonna find out she's fake Stephanie and be like can't believe you lied to me ill never love you. And then rosita will remind him love is eternal and he'll be like OK you're right fake Steffi let's go
"All the chances you've gotten" Uh OK they've been sent to a detention facility without due process, threatened with reprogramming, interrogated for hours on end, cut off from their community, refused resources and legal representation, sent to prison for manual labor under threat of possible death... what exactly have you done for them?
How did they know the building was full of walkers? Hmm... alright well I guess they're gonna wander up and hope for a hospital esque attack from last season. Altho it feels like Maggie is forgetting that they have grenades so
Oo... mother and child... Leah is gonna kill them? Oh no or will Daryl kill the son to "prove" he's still supposedly in love with leah? Oh no wait nvm. Hm OK maybe pope is gonna find out that she saved the guy and the kid and that's gonna be a problem. Maybe Daryl will kill the woman for Leah to "prove" it. Aha I was right! But I do think he also felt a little sympathetic for her. Like not just strictly for strategic reasons. Nice of Leah to give him credit too.
Oo... what's he gonna tell her?! Is it real? It's definitely not about Maggie but I wonder if it's something true or a lie that seems serious or something idk. Hm.
Oh no... oh no is that Elijah's sister oh no aw that's awful oh no ugh oh God poor baby. I miss the music that always played when beta was leading walkers tho that was always so intense
Ugh it's over?! Gdi. Ok this one was pretty good. I'm glad it was light on Commonwealth. Annoyed still at the lack of Carol tho. Rly hoping things move right along. Overall pretty solid imo
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Ok so tbh I don't ship Laura and Shadow at ALL. Like I know they're married but their relationship seems too broken to fix by now... and I'm not convinced they'd be good for each other, or that they ever were. (even though the fact that Laura seems him like a beacon of sunlight is incredibly romantic). But anyway... I reaally ship her with Sweeney? Is that weird??? I mean tbh they've got great chemistry, and it seems like they kind of... get each other.
ugh, this show has done such a beautiful, wonderful, badass thing in giving me laura moon for the first time. i mean, this adaptation has been… i just… can’t? with how good it is? i think it helps that there is just so much universe to dig into that simply couldn’t be gotten to otherwise or we’d have ended up with a 2,000 page book. anyway, laura. the book gives shadow moon’s perspective on laura moon, which is fair, the book is shadow’s story with a few random and godly snippets thrown in for spice. but that didn’t leave a lot of empathy for laura because shadow is so your guy and she does not treat your guy right, not even close. and fuck that noise, amirite?
audrey and laura’s conversation definitely gave it a context it never had before (AND, OMG, WAS THAT NOT LIKE ONE OF THE GREATEST SCENES OF ALL TIME??? I COULD WATCH A TWENTY-TWO EPISODE SEASON OF THOSE TWO WOMEN TRYING TO FIGURE EACH OTHER AND THEMSELVES OUT AND STILL COME BACK FOR MORE), the same as the laura-centric episode we got did. the book-version of laura definitely did not come off well to me. i more saw her marrying shadow because of the power imbalance that comes with being with someone who loves you more than you will ever love them. which is a, whoa, shitty thing to do??? especially to my guy, shadow, who is my fucking guy and you will not treat him that way, thanks.
but seeing laura in ‘git gone’ and audrey calling her out on how she treated shadow while she was alive gives it her perspective. and you really need her perspective if she’s ever going to be your girl like shadow is 100% your guy. it wasn’t that she chose shadow to keep the upper hand. it was strategic but not coldly strategic, i don’t think. laura - suicidal, can’t connect to her own life, numb to everything laura - recognizes what shadow is, if not whom. he’s a genuinely good man. he’s going to be there for her, he’s going to love her and if she can’t find some thrill in the world through him then there’s clearly just none to be found for her because there is no doing better than shadow moon. and i get that, ‘cause yeah. he’s not perfect, of course, but he is going to be there and that’s definitely not true for everyone. and i really understand her relationship with shadow so much better because, in the book, she just seemed so disconnected from him, but as it turns out she was disconnected from everything but still knew what she had in him. and i respect the hell out of that part of it.
not that i’m endorsing that relationship, because i for sure don’t. but i understand it for the first time. i do think some part of shadow recognized a strong woman drowning and wanted to be a buoy. meaning that he didn’t necessarily want to rescue her as much as he wanted to be a prop so she could rescue herself. and i think laura hoped shadow’s light, shadow’s heart, would touch hers in a way it never did when she was alive, when she was too weighted down with her own gloom for any of that to get through.
so i get them. and i get them because i finally get laura (AND FUCKING HELL I LOVE LAURA AND I NEVER WOULD’VE KNOWN THAT WITHOUT THE SHOW, ACK). but their unhealthy dynamic from their life pre-prison still hasn’t really changed. the only difference is that now laura feels for shadow. but it’s still a selfish person feeding off an unselfish one. laura’s motivation still has to do with the effect shadow has on her. he makes her heart beat, he brings the sun into the room with him, he does all of that for her. that’s what she wants, that’s what she’s chasing. she wants to work on her relationship with shadow to the exclusion of all else because that’s what’s important to her, the question of what might be important to him never enters her head. and i love all of that about laura, by the way. but, yeah, i get why you don’t see much of a connection between her and shadow, because there really isn’t one in my opinion.
as for her and sweeney? OH. MY. GOD. i don’t romantically ship them (it’s hard for me to get past the whole… laura’s actively decaying thing, haha) but basically they are the brotp to end all brotps for me. or maybe, more accurately, frenemies to end all frenemies? i mean, i love them on screen together. and i don’t think that’s an accident. i think the creators know what they have in these two characters. they are the absolute worst, petty and violent and mean and careless and a fucking thrill to watch. i enjoy THE HELL out of every single scene they have together.
sweeney, whom i love dearly, is an utter scumbag. crass, rude, with an unhealthy respect for violence and alcohol, who is primarily interested in him getting his. and then you have laura, who is the exact same. women don’t often get to be so unrelentlessly unlikable, we need to be redeemed in some way, with a complex, tragic backstory or a great personal trauma. and instead we just get a depressed woman kicking ass because it’s so fucking easy, so why the fuck not? and that’s goddamn beautiful. [sheds a tear]
i completely understand seeing their potential though because they are both just so wonderfully out for themselves. i mean, laura pretending to be dead while sweeney is arrested for killing her, shouting, “you’re an asshole, dead wife,” might be my favorite thing of 2017 tbh (it’s hard to say, no man’s land is also WAY UP THERE).
the really glorious thing about their ‘team-up’ though is that they are going to get shit done. nothing is going to stop them because they don’t give one single solitary fuck about anything that is not their respective goals. i cannot even BEGIN to tell you how brilliant, ENTERTAINING AF and TERRIFYING that is and i would 100% be behind watching them rampage their way across the entire country tbh.
#american gods#laura moon#shadow moon#mad sweeney#OMG DO NOT GIVE ME A PLATFORM TO TALK ABOUT HOW FUCKING MUCH I AM LOVING LAURA MOON'S ON SCREEN ADAPTATION#BECAUSE IT IS A LOOOOOOOT#I SO GET YOUR FEELS THO NONSTER I SOOOOO DO#!ask#Anonymous
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