Rediscovering a Neck Crush: My Unexpected Obsession With Alien Huang

After getting sick of lame dramatic crap where romantic comedy was supposed to be, I returned to watching the Taiwanese drama Sweet Sweet Bodyguard, which I absolutely love (despite the horribly lame title), but have to wait painfully long periods for each episode to get subbed.  I think I discovered it because of the instant play on the Viki app, which will play a random show after you finished the last episode uploaded in a series.  It was probably played after I had watched the most current episode of Prince William or something.  I was feeling lazy and really didn't want to go be social at whatever function was going on, so I just let it play.  It was so cheesy, but strangely funny and different.

A female bodyguard wants to get out of the business so she makes a deal with her boss/father that the next job will be her last, if she can complete it, as the person she would have to protect is the guy that she hates the most because of a misunderstanding when she thought she was saving him from being kidnapped.

156. Drunken to Love You (aka Love You) 醉後決定愛上你 (2011) Taiwanese

Joseph Chang, Rainie Yang, Kingone Wang, Tiffany Hsu, Alien Huang, Tom Price

Drama Rating: 6.5/10     Neck Score: A

Probably the world's cutest OTP.  That's the only thing that makes this drama work.  You just fall in love with the main couple.  As for everyone else in the drama, they're actually not that bad, for 2nd male leads, 2nd 2nd male leads and crazy bitcas.  Kingone was a nice guy who messed up, Alien was a turd (and I love him unreasonably as an actor), but also an ok nice guy, and the bitca just didn't know how to give up because of her obsessive personality, but was still a nice person consistently, even though she made a lot of stupid decisions.  The biggest problem I had with it, is that I have Fall In Love With Me Syndrome, meaning that I don't trust Taiwanese dramas any more so at the first sign of crappy drama in the previews, and I panic and imagine the worst, making it hard to watch the next episode, but in this show's case, it was never that bad, and they were actually just tricking you into thinking it would be.  This is sort of a second in the series to Fated to Love You, and like it's predecessor, it is a roller coaster of draggy tiny drama.  The main couple can't be happy for more than two seconds because some random tiny drama happens.  It's frustrating as crap, but at least it never ACTUALLY gets Fall in Love With Me bad.  What makes it different from Fated is that Jie Xiu was a whole lot more mature than Cun Xi, who was a total butt.  In fact he was more like Lee Gun.  He was dedicated to making her happy from pretty much day one, and didn't take forever trying to figure out what he wanted and being hung up on "Anna."  I loved how quickly he got rid of that poster of Ai Wei.  Of course his being awesome and falling in love with Xiao Ru that quickly (but how could he not when she was that cool?) just made it harder to wait 18/30 episodes for them to get together because of all the stupid crap that went down.  But at least there was some cute in every episode to make up for the little bit of crap in nearly every episode.  Also, they have to make the ending cheesy and inappropriate. I'll take it, if it means that it is finally ending and I can get my happy ending for my dream OTP.

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.