355. What's With Money? 얘네들 머니? (2016) Korean

Jung Da Bin, Cha Hak Yun, Hong Bin, Chan Mi

Drama Rating: 2/10     Neck Score: A+

I was bored, I found it on Kocowa, and it had Vixx members in it, so I watched it. It was terrible. Basically a glorified educational video on how to be smart with money, with some ridiculous makjang in it. I guess it was designed to help high school students be financially savvy, but it is so boring and horribly written. What acting skills N and Hongbin have were not enough to make up for dialog that was basically reading a financial textbook out loud rather than something people would actually say. It's weird because Hongbin is the rich boy gone crazy so he's rebelling and sulky, and N is the poor good kid who is super financially savvy, and that dynamic was weird. Really, the best actor was probably the mean girl, but she might just have had the best written part, and it was the classic mean rich girl. Basically the show was nonsense, and at the end there was a weird Liar Game style contest where they were summoned to a team quiz off to deem their worthiness to join the financial club (cult?), but it made no sense. Then, to add insult to injury, there were supposed to be epilogues about all of the characters, which you had to vote to see, but since it was way later, they were not on Kocowa, so I didn't get to see any of them. I suppose I could maybe find them on YouTube, but I didn't care enough. But that ending had a very Click Your Heart webdrama feel to it. Best part of the show: it's super short. Ten 15 min episodes with N and Hongbin's cute faces trying desperately to act with some of the worst writing. Everyone was a trooper, but they all could only do so much.

273. Nightmare Teacher 악몽선생 (2016) Korean

Uhm Ki Joon, Kim So Hyun, Lee Min Hyuk, Seo Shin Ae

Drama Rating: 7/10     Neck Score: A

After the lameness of Golden Cross, I needed to see my Grumpy Cat (Uhm Ki Joon) in something more worthy of his greatness.  What better than a webdrama where he is a teacher who is making his students live their nightmares so he can steal their souls and teach them life lessons?  Answer, lots of things, but this was also a good option.  It was actually not too bad for a webdrama.  It wasn't that creepy, sadly, and it was very moralistic and stuff, but I still liked it.  It was done in serial format, with a new kid with a new problem every two episodes.  Some of the mini story arcs were more relatable than others, which really helped with the quality or enjoyability of the story arc.  Lizabreff couldn't get into the story about the overachiever student who studied until he lost his memory of anything else, while I cared less about the girl who wanted to look perfect and be the prettiest so she went all Dorian Gray on us.  Although I liked the Dorian Gray part of it.  We also both struggled with the lonely, dreamer girl who dreamed herself a boy friend and a stalker.  Why would you want the stalker?  He turned out only slightly less scary than the boyfriend actually.  While her stupidity was the worst, I loved that one the best because it was probably the creepiest one.  The end was almost the creepiest, which I was excited for, but it stayed pretty tame and not horrific like I wanted.  Oh well.  It was very moralizing and we all learned a lesson.  The end.  The important part was that Uhm Ki Joon was amazing and I loved him, as he just stood there, being awesome and leading the kids to their doom... haha.  It was a good drama to appreciate him in, and that's what I needed, so it was perfect.

263. Wednesday at 3:30 수요일 오후 3시 30분 (2017) Korean

Hong Bin, Jin Ki Joo, Ahn Bo Hyun, Cha Jung Won

Drama Rating: 5/10     Neck Score: A+

Hong Bin!  I've missed you so!  You're so delightfully cute and bad at acting.  Delightfully so.  He just makes me giggle whenever he's on screen.  Especially if he is supposed to be serious or whatever.  This show was pretty awful and ridiculous.  But we still 100% binge watched it and loved it because of our Beanie.  His character was supposed to be sassy, which was hilarious, because he couldn't really be sassy to that girl.  He's too much of a muffin, really.  It was so awkward the way the show was written, but it was also to unbearably cute that we just went along with it.  All the adorable dates right at 3:30.  Man, I wish I had a Beanie to take me out every Wednesday at 3:30, and a job that would let me just take off every week for like an hour, NBD.  Man, that thunderstorm holding hands over the puppy scene though, hahaha.  It just made us laugh out loud the whole way through.  It was very enjoyable, but not because it was good, just because it was cute and fluffy and we all love our Hong Bin.  I'm sure the rest of Vixx didn't let him live this down, except they were also probably jealous that he got to kiss that noona.  I do have to say that the second leads were pretty lame.  We called them Discount Zhoumi and Discount Kim So Eun.  They were both pretty lame and manipulative.  I did like the second second female lead, who was dating the second male lead.  She was actually pretty cool for a change.  Anyway, if you want a short fluffy thing, this is it.  If you want actual good acting/writing/drama this is definitely not it.  But for 10 short episodes, you might as well.  Its less than the length of a movie, and barely any commitment at all.

210. Bong Soon - a Cyborg in Love 사랑하면 죽는 여자 봉순이 (2016) Korean

Jo Kyu Hyun, Yoon So Hee, Ji Il Joo, Kim Yoo Mi

Drama Rating: 5/10     Neck Score: A+

I saw this web drama in passing and I said, that looks like Kyuhyun, I have to check.  It was Kyuhyun, and so I had to watch it.  Partially because I wanted to see how bad/good at acting he could be, especially since he has trouble emoting in MVs.  Also, I like Yoon So Hee, so I thought I might as well.  It was cute, I guess.  It was a completely ridiculous plot and a lot about it was not accurately explained.  It was just weird.  But Kyuhyun wasn't as bad as I thought he was going to be.  He wasn't Yunho bad.  He was the worst actor in the cast, however.  The problem was that the topics the show was about, AI and Alzheimer, were way too big to deal with in a web drama.  This made the antagonist weird in his motivations, which was like money and fame, I guess, which made no sense because curing Alzheimer would bring way more money and fame than a cyborg that can fall in love.  Although that would bring it too, but not if it was malfunctioning like it was, because falling in love breaks it eventually. So, huge gaping holes, a male lead who I loved to make fun of, even though he wasn't that bad, and other random side characters that we didn't care about.  Yeah, that basically sums it up.  But Ji Il Joo is still super cute.  I've thought so since the Healer days.

183. Nine Seconds - Eternal Time 9초-영원의 시간 (2015) Korean

Lee Joo Seung, Na Hae Ryeong, Lee Jae Hyeong, Mina Fujii, Park Lydia

Drama Rating: 4/10     Neck Score: A

I wanted this to be special, because I love Lee Joo Seung.  I literally only watched it to see what he would do with a lead role.  But this drama was blase at best.  So we've got a angry transplanted girl from Seoul who is now in the country, where her mom ignores her because of her new job.  Then you have a quirky boy next door photographer.  All good until you make that quirky photographer boy have an eye disease that is slowly making him go blind.  Boo.  Then you throw in every other trope, like the evil mom who is ignoring her one minute, and then telling her to never see that boy again, because you know, blind boys are bad boys.  Then you have car accidents, comas, and dreams.  And a magic camera which makes everything better... maybe?  All this in seven 15 minute episodes.  You can see why I'm not impressed.  I think I was playing games on my phone the whole time I watched it.  Things I actually liked: Lee Joo Seung's acting.  His easy-going, matter-of-fact, quirky character was likable.  I liked Na Hae Ryeong's character too.  She wasn't the typical Seoul brat.  She just had typical change issues.  I liked how their friendship and romance blossomed, even though it was pretty typical too, it was still nice and less forced.  It had it's cute moments.  The ending was weird though.  A little too opened ended, especially for a seven episoder.  Did they even try?  Did they try too hard?  Shrug.