434. A Little Thing Called First Love 初恋那件小事 (2019) Chinese

Lai Kuanlin, Zhao Jinmai, Wang Runze, Chai Wei

Drama Rating: 8/10     Neck Score: A+

While I really like the high school to college dramas, they are all pretty formulaic. The male lead is always smart and popular, the female lead is awkward and has bad grades. Maybe she is openly chasing him, maybe it's a secret crush. Sometimes the male lead is a nice smart guy, sometimes he's a jerk. There will usually be a goofy friend or two who will make up the secondary couple. I swear there is usually a chubby best friend too. A third of the drama will be in high school and then it will reset in college, where suddenly the evil second leads will appear. I said reset because there was enough angst in high school to assume that they would just immediately get together in college, but because of second leads, misunderstandings, etc., it will instead drag out for forever and I usually get impatient. The male lead will always be the troop leader in the military training episodes, and will secretly help the female lead. A Little Thing Called First Love is no exception to this formula. But that doesn't mean it's not good in it's own right. It was very charming, and had just enough differences from this formula to make it more than worth it. And besides, I really do like this genre, so bring on those high school crushes.

429. Princess Weiyoung 锦绣未央 (2016) Chinese

Tiffany Tang, Luo Jin, Vanness Wu, Mao Xiaotong, Li Xinai 

Drama Rating: 6/10     Neck Score: A

Princess Weiyoung is just a hot mess of drama. It was a delightful hot mess, but also happened when I had my drama anxiety explosion that made me literally pause everything I was watching in favor of binge watching We Bare Bears. Sometimes the ridiculous drama where everyone is evil except the leads is fun and sometimes people's mothers are dying and I can't deal with that in the middle of a pandemic. However, after taking some time, I still came back and finished it, because it was ridiculous and I had to see the train wreck at the ending. It actually had a better ending that I expected. More... realistic, if you can believe that when everything was so over dramatic that it wasn't ridiculous. I just like that they didn't force a completely happy ending and were able to give us some tragedy that also wasn't forced. I had a whole thread on Twitter about this, because it was so 😲😲😅😅😂😂 that I had to shout out my feelings to the Twitterverse. You can probably get more details and spoilers from that thread then here. But at least you can know that it was crazy, dramatic, and I generally loved it, even then rolling my eyes and laughing every two seconds.

430. Flower of Evil 악의 꽃 (2020) Korean

Lee Joon Ki, Moon Chae Won, Jang Hee Jin, Seo Hyun Woo, Kim Ji Hoon

Drama Rating: 8/10     Neck Score: A+

The premise was too good to pass, the cast was too good to pass, I was super excited to start this show. But still I waited to start it. Then I binged it until I caught up with it. It was so good and intense, I had a hard time not being able to just start the next episode. But sadly, it was my one drama I loved while I was being stressed out from everything, but having to stop and wait in the middle of a  hugely dramatic climax made the stress of anticipation overwhelm me, and with everything else I suddenly was too stressed to watch it. Which is so interesting because if I had the ability at the time, I would have just binged watched it to the end. However, though it took several weeks of getting to a place where I could watch anything besides We Bare Bears, I finished it and it remained good until the end. Even though the last episode was an extreme change of pace. It was still good. And then I still too even longer to write this review because that is what last year did to me. Apologies.