99. Sweet Sweet Bodyguard 剩女保鏢 (2012) Taiwanese

Alien Huang, Summer Meng, Li Li Ren, Yuan Ai Fei

Drama Rating: 6/10     Neck Score: A

The problem with these super long dramas (besides the fact that you have to wait for forever for them to get subbed) is that there is so much time for so much crap to happen.  And seriously in this one just about all the crap did happen, but it was strangely not as horrible as it could have been.  I actually started this one on accident.  It was autoplayed after I had finished an episode of something, and I was too lazy to be social that night, or even stop the autoplay, so I just let it go, and it hooked me right away.  It was delightfully cheesy and different enough to be interesting.  I think the biggest thing I liked about it, besides my deep obsession with Alien Huang, was how realistic it tried to stay while also being over-the-top and crazy.  There was a lot of very natural character developments, and especially a lot of natural relationship developments.  The main couple went from being enemies, to friends, to one-sided love, to the realization they liked each other, to lovers.  That was a good development, the sort that only comes when they make you wait 82 episodes for the happy ending (making the last two episodes the draggiest of them all).  However there was also a bunch of ridiculous situations that all seemed to get solved magically, from the bitca mother suddenly letting her ex-boyfriend (who didn't happen to be the actual father) continue to raise her kid to the thought dead dad magically being alive, rich, and eventually magically coming to the wedding and giving in to the daughter.  Yep, it was cheesy and magically solved a lot of the time.  I don't see why they had to make him blind so we could go through a couple more draggy depressing episodes right there at the end, but whatever.  At least his eyesight wasn't magically healed in the same way as some other temporarily blind story plots.  He did have to go to magical America to get surgery and wait a year (not the year wait!!!!) which is a bit more realistic.  Also, they had to trick us with the blindness until the very very end, and then only give us hints and innuendo to make up for those long drawn out episodes.  Oh well.  I was too invested in all the characters to stop watching because of some severely melodramatic plot twists.  It had it all, but I had to keep watching anyways.  Blindness, check.  Girl who refuses to get an abortion even though she might die, check.  Evil bitca moms being annoying for forever, check and check (since there were two of them).  That one grandma who just wants to match make and have great grandchildren, check.  But the characters all made it worth it to me, so I still liked it.  I just wish it would have been 75 or less instead of 82.  But that is more episodes of Alien Huang... until he was gone to America... those episodes I didn't like so much.