164. Last 라스트 (2015) Korean

Yoon Kye Sang, Lee Beom Soo, Park Won Sang, Seo Ye Ji, Park Ye Jin 

Drama Rating: 9/10     Neck Score: A

Slow clap for this one, because I liked it.  All the characters were so complicated that you couldn't 100% like or hate anyone.  I would want to smack Tae Ho upside the head frequently, because he'd be an idiot.  I would also frequently feel sad or sorry or even want to side with Heung Sam, when he is 100% crazy.  That's the power of Lee Beom Soo.  Wow.  Even though I felt like the last two episodes were a bit rushed, it was a satisfying ending, as the fast pace seemed to work.  It was a good statement of greed, revenge, and obsession that the ending rush seemed to help more than hurt.  I also was impressed with Park Ye Jin.  I've seen her in less likable roles before which made me not care for her, but that is now a testament to her acting chops.  She took a character that could have easily been ruined and made it awesome.  So this drama gripped me from episode one, and kept me gripped to the end.  I laughed, cried (lots of times), felt super conflicted, angry, disgusted, bitter, and happy.  All of it.  It like put me through all the emotions.  And it had super awesome, incredibly violent fight scenes.  Like a ton of them.  Basically, it was about as good as this genre of drama can get.  I liked the dark, greedy, revenge, noir type drama.  Claps from me, I'm sad to see this one end.

163. Scholar Who Walks The Night 밤을 걷는 선비 (2015) Korean

Lee Joon Ki, Lee Yoo Bi, Shim Chang Min, Lee Soo Hyuk, Kim So Eun

Drama Rating: 6/10     Neck Score: A+++

So many beautiful vampires.  That's about all there was to this show.  It's plot was okay, but kind of draggy, as in they could have solved it sooner but they didn't.  They literally just ended up doing what they could have done so many episodes ago.  Sigh.  It was clearly about how hot Lee Joon Ki and Kim Soo Hyuk were.  It totally emphasized the sexuality of vampires.  They made scenes needlessly sexy, which was funny...well I rolled my eyes at the fan servicey sexiness of the scenes anyways.  It wasn't as bad as The Night Watchmen, but I did accidentally call it Night Watchmen all the time.  It has some similarities in the cheesiness department.  The biggest difference is that everyone in this one was a good actor, even Changmin, who I had my doubts about.  Sadly Changmin's character was a little sissy poo who caused a lot of the dragginess.  There was also everyone trying to sacrifice themselves for everyone else, blah blah blah.  I think by the end what saved it for me was how sympathetic they managed to make the villain while still making him an evil vampire.  Calling the Chief Minister out on his crap, "Are you even human after all of this?" and going on a rampage out of guilt when he killed someone he didn't mean to.  His conflict about emotions he didn't understand and dealing with hypocritical humans was nice.  The parts with him were about the only thing I liked about the ending, which was just weird.  I didn't get the need for a year gap or whatever it was they did to try and make the ending happy or whatever.  Also, props to Joon Ki for playing a human, a vampire, and a mix of the two so well, and looking so darn pretty as he did it too.  So it was okay, but super draggy/silly too.  But as a historical drama portraying vampires, it was decent.  It was one of the better vampire dramas I've seen (but is that really saying anything?)

160. My Beautiful Bride 아름다운 나의 신부 (2015) Korean

Kim Moo Yul, Lee Si Young, Go Sung Hee, Ryu Seung Soo, Park Hae Joon

Drama Rating: 8/10     Neck Score: A+++

I honestly can't call this show anything but My beautiful Banker, because that was what it was about.  That man is beautiful and bad-a.  Swoon.  The only bad part about this show was the fact that Go Sung Hee still can't act.  Dumb Do Ha ruined the ending scene with her bad acting, but whatever.  She wasn't in it that much.  I was also a bit upset with all the nothing that Lee Si Young's character did.  Detective Cha had the ability to be so bad-a cool, but after the awesome fight in the first fifteen minutes, she just sits there and does nothing, or just tries to convince the bank guy to not become a revenge vigilante but to work with the police.  So much wasted potential.  Also, I wanted somehow for the bride to die and bank guy to end up with police girl.  They could have consoled each other for their dead dumb significant others and been bad-a together, but of course that would never happen because stubborn loyalty and awesome faithfulness was at the very center of the back guy's being.  Really good action scenes, lots of interesting plot twists, nice snarky evil bad guys, realistic blood, a little rushed at the end (but after you kill off the only bad guy who really mattered, the rest was going to be lack luster) and some of the death scenes were just weird.  Slow mo car crash?  No, please.  Slow mo knife/metal pipe battles?  Acceptable, but does it have to be slow mo all the time?  So many hot necks in this.  Bank Guy = A+++  Scumbag Detective Boyfriend = A+++  That loan shark guy was an A even.  Rawr.  Lot of awesome fights, chase scenes, and gratuitous work out scenes.  My beautiful banker must be one of the most bestest men ever... except that his bride can't act, but no one is perfect.

159. High Society 상류사회 (2015) Korean

Uee, Sung Joon, Park Hyung Sik, Lim Ji Yeon

Drama Rating: 5/10     Neck Score: A 

This drama had potential to be a little different and edgy and stuff, but it unfortunately it ended super lamely.  Typical fall flat on its face.  I liked the evil male lead gold digger plot, even though it made for some awkward kiss scenes early on because they actually didn't have a real relationship.  They didn't even know each other and they were kissing and dating, haha, awkward.  I was therefor way more invested in the other couple, even though they are a more typical chaebol and candy type girl.  She at least had a backbone and wasn't really a candy girl since she wasn't opposed to the money thing either, even though she tried to be.  The non-romantic plot was super predictable, and the worst part was that it also ended lamely.  They kept building expectations and then they all feel flat at the end.  There really was not big struggle or contest between her sister and her, the dead brother plot ended super lamely too, and it was all wrapped up so quickly.  Not even amazingly.  I wonder if they were hoping for an extension and never got one, or what. But it just never reached its potential and was super cheesy at the end.  Oh well.  At least there is a lot of beautiful people in it and it is still a different sort of  chaebol drama.

158. When I See You Again 他看她的第2眼 (2015) Taiwanese

Jasper Liu, Mandy Wei, Jet Chao, Ivy Wei

Drama Rating: 6/10     Neck Score: A

Generally good for a drama about misunderstandings.  I liked how in the relationships at least, it was pretty realistic. The main couple were pretty polar opposite, and naturally that was going to cause problems.  He was one of those nerdy geniuses who don't like people so much, and she was a super friendly take action girl.  Then you have the couple who are both sick in their own way, physically and emotionally who relate to each other and find healing, but not before a bunch of ridiculous revenge drama.  The worst part of this show is that everyone had to be redeemed, which is an old Taiwanese favorite.  The problem is that when everyone is redeemed, the show gets preachy, moralistic, and makes you want to gag at the end.  I didn't mind that the mom and antagonist were redeemed and learned their lesson.  That was a given from the start.  They were setting up that from the beginning when they bothered giving them things like tragic backstories and cancer.  But when they are also redeeming the random bully kid from their past?  No, that is just gag worthy.  Why!?!  But honestly, as a drama it was very watchable, even though it was a bit draggy in how long misunderstandings dragged on, and way too much screen time for the 2nd leads (you know, the people they insisted on redeeming).  I think I angry tweeted the most about how stupid the mom was.  She was supposed to be this powerful, accomplished CEO, instead she was a a petty, emotional, and manipulable mess.  So dumb.  But hey, she was redeemed in the end, so she's going to get better (cue the gagging).  Still, I liked it.

157. Mask 가면 (2015) Korean

Joo Ji Hoon, Soo Ae, Yeon Jung Hoon, Yoo In Young

Drama Rating: 5/10     Neck Score: A

They took an already stupid show and turned it into complete and utter nonsense.  No surprising at all.  This show was seriously a addicting as crack, so overly dramatic and ridiculous that I couldn't help but want more.  It was already nonsense, but it ended way lamely.  It was like a crazy barrel roll of madness that suddenly took an abrupt nose dive down to boring nonsense town.  Boo.  Ok, so Suk Hoon (Yeon Jung Hoon) was the best and the worst villain ever.  But mostly just the worst.  He seriously needs to be added to the hated villains list, because, he is loathsome.  Smirking all the time.  But he did make me laugh all the time.  Every time he dramatically opened a door.  I'm laughing just thinking about it.  Min Woo (Joo Ji Hoon) might have been one of the best heroes ever though, in the honesty department anyways.  He always saw through people's crap and was super up front.  He was always just asking "what the shiz do you mean by that?" or calling out the crap with a "stop lying about this," etc.  Cute couple, lots of cute moments, but really too many moments of stupidity all around... except Min Woo was a pretty constant smart guy that no one listened to.  Anyways, it was both painful and addicting and then absurdly boring.  By the end no one cared what was going on at all and there were huge plot holes and they tried to redeem everyone and it was so bad.  All I wanted was an overly dramatic ending, maybe with a murder/suicide of the bad couple.  That would have been perfect.  Sigh of disappointment.  I just wanted it to stay the same kind of bad the whole time.  Was that asking too much?  Apparently.  Boo.

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.