198. Marriage Contract 결혼계약 (2016) Korean

Lee Seo Jin, Uee, Kim Yong Geon, Park Jung Soo, Lee Whee Hyang, Kim Young Pil, Kim Yoo Ri, Shin Rin Ah, Kim Kwang Kyu, Lee Hyun Geol

Drama Rating: 8/10     Neck Score: A

An oddly perfect mixture of adorable and crying.  This is full of all those stereotypes of melodramas.  Cancer, more cancer, evil chaebols, contract marriages, selfish male leads with mommy and daddy issues, that bitca who is the same character in all her shows, the works.  But then it somehow uses those stereotypes in a completely different way.  Maybe it's just because Lee Seo Jin is amazing (he is my spirit animal), but he really turned that typical rich chaebol with family issues into a complete different type of character.  He was also believable and completely too perfect to be believable at the same time.  He started out as a jerk ladies man who was willing to buy a liver to save his mom and turned into an adorable dad and husband who knew how to play with kids, cats, and comfort the girl so she didn't feel like a patient or pitiful.  It was too adorable.  Those dimples!  I liked most all the characters except the bad peeps of course.  That dad was the worst ever.  But I liked his real mom.  I even related a bit with the idiotic older brother and wife, even though I also disliked them.  At least you could see where everyone was coming from.  Uee had a lot of great ugly crying.  Unfortunately for me it was too long.  So many long crying scenes.  She did a good job being a mom and a cancer patient.  So maybe it was all just melodrama held together by the amazing charisma of Lee Seo Jin, but I liked it despite all the craziness.  The ending was a little abrupt, since there was no real resolution, and I cried plenty of times, but I consistently liked.  Especially after the first couple of episodes.  It was pretty good.

134. Boarding House 24 하숙 24번지 (2014) Korean

Kim Kwang Kyu, Park Se Mi, Ken, Kim Dong Joon, Im Hyun Tae,  Kim Sa Eun, Min Do Hee, Jo Hyun Young

Drama Rating: 5/10     Neck Score: A

So, that was cutely weird.  Also a bit annoying.  It had potential that was wasted, especially where writing is concerned and being an idol sitcom didn't always have the best acting, but was sincerely cute at least.  Once again the last episode left so much to be desired.  They got the couples I wanted together, mostly, but not really enough to actually satisfy anyone.  I don't see the purpose of those time jumps!  I have no idea why they thought it would be a good idea to suddenly have it be a year later, even if they were setting that up in the beginning.  Give me a better reason than that, because it sucked.  Anyways, can I say something about Im Hyun Tae, aka High Top?  I wrote a whole post about him actually.  Basically he was the best, and I really like his group Bigflo too.  Especially him.  He was one of the peeps that saved the show for me.  I liked everyone, but some of the story-lines were just not doing it for me, such as wasting their time with a love triangle when they should have given more time to the love line or square that they dropped to leave that couple only with hints at maybe someday getting together, but maybe not.  Hope is not enough, writers, you had one job and copped out on the last episode... not that your writing was that amazing anyway.  It's not like this was going to get extended or anything, so I don't know why you rushed through the ending in that randomly weird way.  Blah blah blah, same old story again.  Also, stop trying to trick people when the story is that predictable, cause lame.