Refresh Man: Falling In Love With Aaron Again

I have to say that I had my reservations about starting Refresh Man, because FILWM Syndrome.  But then I really like Joanne Tseng.  But I guess that even with the whole FILWM thing and the Instagram thing, deep down I still love Aaron, so I thought I would give it a try and see if it would make me fall in love with Aaron again.

And it has.  It is just different and fun enough to make it awesome.  It defies some of the typical stereotypes and is about more than just the romance, although that is obviously a large part of it.  It is about self-improvement and getting out of stagnation, etc.  It's also about revenge or rather making her fall in love with him.  You know, good stuff.

So, here are some things that make this show pretty great so far:

Female Leads Who I Just Can't Get Behind or Relate To

I couldn't write a post on Frustrating Male Leads without including a post about equally as frustrating female leads.  We want girls we can relate to, so we can put ourselves in their shoes and get all the feels when they get the man.  But sometimes all we get is a severe desire to shake some sense into the stupid things because they are just plain stupid, frustrating, annoying, and sometimes just bad actresses.

I understand that not everyone can be a good actor, but if they aren't, then why are they getting cast in lead roles?  Seriously, are they related to someone?  Are they a chaebol or an idol?  Sadly, sometimes they are not, and bad acting can make an already weak character unbearable.  So here are some unbearably not relatable female leads.

Fall In Love With Me Syndrome, or why I don't trust Taiwanese Dramas

Fall in Love with Me was the drama that started so good that it hooked everyone and then turned into the craziest train wreck of crappy lame melodrama.  It was so bad that it became the new standard of badness.  However, it was worse than I knew.

It scarred me so horribly, that I find myself still having adverse reactions to it.  It's like I've got drama PTSD when it comes to Taiwanese dramas.  At the first sign of drama crap, I panic and wonder if I can even continue to watch, because I immediately panic.

Second Female Leads Who Are The Rage Scream Causing Queens

I recently wrote a post about second male leads that make me want to punch them in the face, but there is a corner on the market for causing rage screams usually reserved for the second female leads of dramas, fondly known as the bitca of the shows.   Honestly, they make the bitcas over-the-top evil more often than not, while the second male leads are more often so nice that they are pushovers.  This list could go on for forever, because 99% of all dramas have a bitca. Still, why not make a list of the worst of all?  The ones so bad that they make us scream in rage at the very sight of their faces.

There were so many of them that I had to break this list down and organize it.  It's not that surprising that I could fit all these bitcas into four categories.  You've seen one, you've probably seen most, because they make mean, crazy, bitcas all pretty much the same.  The four categories are: "Don't Touch my Thing," Evil Ex/First Loves, Vindictive Bitcas, and Cray Cray Obsessive Bitcas.

Murphy's Law of Love: Sexy Stares and Skinship From Episode One

Taiwanese dramas are great.  But they are also even more tropey and formulaic than Korean dramas.  They tend to lean towards the fatey things way more.  They are super fluffy too, mostly.  But that is exactly their charm.  They are quick to the chemistry stuffs, giving us feels and awkward humor from episode one.

When discussing this, Lizabreff and I summarized that while Kdramas withhold to build the tension for the moment they get together (only to be broken up only moments later), Tdramas give you lots of moments with chemistry, sexual tension, and romantic humor, they drag the drama out with lots of ups and down.  They also have the one trick I absolutely hate.  The mid-series bitca.  I hate having the bitca show up right as things are going great.  Either have her there the whole time, or never there.

Best and Worst Couples of 2014

Let's have a little throwback in remembrance of 2014 dramas, specifically the couples of 2014.  Why not celebrate our favorite OTPs, I'm going to miss them.

But we can't leave out the worst couples as well, those ones that were just so lame or squirrely that we could barely watch (or couldn't watch) the shows they were in.  So here are my votes for the best and worse, and what I love (or hate) about them.

Taiwanese Dramas with some of the Best OSTs

Not to leave out the Taiwanese dramas from the previous list (Korean Dramas with some of the Best OSTs), but there were too many and that list was too long anyways, so I made a list of just Taiwanese dramas with some of the best OSTs.  Now obviously this list is shorter because I haven't watched nearly as many Tdramas as Kdramas, but they still have some spectacular OSTs.  Also some just not memorable ones.  So here are the best, get stuck in your head, drama OSTs of Taiwan.

A Perfect Couple of Episodes, Until it Suddenly Undergoes a Genre Change

So we start watching a Romantic Comedy Korean Drama, and we all know now that after episode 12ish that all the sudden the crap will hit the fan and no matter how funny the drama started out, it will suddenly be a melodrama (just think how Emergency Couple was supposed to be a RomCom, but the whole second half was complete melodrama... which was actually so much better than the comedy was).  I don't know if this is a case of the dramas being "Anthony'd" (King of Dramas reference) or if the basic plot has to do that to complete itself, but seriously.  When I start a RomCom, I'm looking for comedy and romance, not melodrama.  Not sad stuff.  Funny.  With kissing and couple cuteness.  Fluffiness.

I don't know what it is about Chinese/Taiwanese Dramas, but they seem to take the genre changing even more extreme than is typical for Korean Dramas. It's not even funny how all romantic comedies start out cute and funny and by the second half of the show they are suddenly melodramatic.  I've come to just accept that fact, but recently, there has been too many over the top genre changes for my taste.

In 3.5 Min, More Chemistry Than the 23 Hours of Fall in Love With Me

So, Aaron just came out with a new dance version MV for his song No Cut, this time featuring Puff Guo.  No Cut is not my favorite song of his, mostly because of the rapping part in the middle which is just no.

Fall in Love and Then Get Forced Onto the Crazy Train for an Epic Crash You Can't Look Away From

I take it back.  Just You should never be compared to Fall In Love With Me, because that one was actually consistently good, while Fall In Love With Me turned into one of the worst most badly written dramas I have ever seen.  It couldn't even decide what the plot was, it changed so many times.  It was like... so bad.

What started out so good has become something so incomprehensibly bad that it became unrecognizable.  Seriously, the only way for us to get through it was to tweet to each other while watching it, sitting next to each other, mind you.

The Power of the Baseball Tee

I don't know about you, but one of the sexiest, most flattering shirt for a man to wear is the raglan sleeved baseball tee.  It just flatters all around, and most especially the neck.  If the guy is skinny, it makes their neck and shoulders look bigger, if the guy is muscular it makes those arms, chest, back and shoulders (and neck) look so good.  It just makes a man look so sexy.

Just You vs. Fall In Love With Me- two chances to see the same hot neck

It seems like everyone in my drama circle is watching Fall In Love With Me, which they probably should, because Aaron Yan.  Yep, that's the number one reason.  Jack Li is probably reason number 2, if that wasn't already the Aaron Yan OST.  I guess you could shove that into reason number 1, but I'd prefer to make it number 2 and Jack Li number 3.

Aaron Yan and Jack Li both have amazing necks.  In fact, Jack's neck bumps him up from a cute guy to a hot guy.

89. Fall in Love with Me 愛上兩個我 (2014) Taiwanese

Aaron Yan, Tia Li, Jack Li, Beatrice Fang, Kao Ying Hsuan

Drama Rating: 2.5/10     Neck Score: A++

It makes you fall in love with it and then turns into a train wreck.  The horrible, terrible train wreck that you can't look away from.  It's  completely awful writing.  It might be one of the worst written dramas that I have ever seen.  What makes it worse is that I loved it at first.  So much that I made all my friends start watching it.  Then it suddenly turned into a completely different drama.  It basically stole the horrible second half of Miss Rose manipulation plot for a while.  It changed plots so much in the second half that you completely forgot the first half, what was going on, and who the actual main characters were supposed to be.  Then, to make it worse, it tries to wrap everything up in a moralistic bow at the end, fixing things that cannot be realistically fixed, and redeeming people who can't be so easily redeemed, all in the space of one episode... impossible.  It was the lamest, preachiest, most horrible ending I have ever witnessed.  Seriously, what were the writers thinking?  Like a beautiful train wreck where you can't look away we finished it, making fun of how awful it was the whole time.  If it hadn't had been Aaron Yan, I might have just given up on it.  But it was seriously so bad that I stopped caring what happened so it all became funny, then it was ok.  I wrote a post about the first half, also talking about Aaron's previous drama Just You.  I also have another post here about how bad the second half was.  Spoilers included, but since I would never recommend this drama, I don't feel bad about it.  It is a seriously bi-polar drama.  So good, so bad.