#Drama My Golden Life dramafever

[hopelessly-ever-after]

*DRAMA REVIEW* Click Your Heart

Title: Click Your Heart Year: 2016 Episodes: 7 Length of Episodes: 10-15 minutes Characters: Kwon Min-ah, Lee Da Won, Kim Ro Woon, Kang Chan Hi, and Baek Ju Ho Genre: Comedy, Romance, Youth, School

*NOTE: I highly recommend you to watch this on Dramafever, rather than Netflix. DramaFever will tell you which episode to watch next for your chosen story line, Netflix doesn’t! Basically, the drama has a prologue. At the end of the prologue, it will ask you a question, which will help lead into Story A or Story B. Next you will either watch Story A or Story B, depending on whatever you choose. If you chose Story A, you will get to choose between two endings, A1 or A2. And the same goes with Story B. A1, A2, B1, B2 all have different endings, and they do not go with one another at all. SO WATCH THIS CLOSELY AND FOLLOW DIRECTIONS CLOSELY! If you don’t you will get confused (or thinks she’s two timing these boys). Haha.

Initial thoughts: When the ads and commercials first came out on DramaFever, I was pretty excited because it was the first “interactive” drama series where you can pick the story line of the lead actress. Too many times, we have dealt with Second Lead Syndrome, too many times. So I was determined to watch this.

Two years later, I have finally gotten around to it. Not because I wasn’t interested, but more because there are so many dramas being released and only so many hours in a day to watch them all. With school being finished, I have so much more free time now so my drama watching days have been increasing.

Story Plot: Min-ah, a student notorious for her clumsiness and bad luck, transfers to a new school in hope for a fresh start. Unfortunately, the rumors of her knowingly bad luck had already reached her new school, causing her to be ostracized, distanced, and even feared from her teachers and classmates. Min-ah’s hope for a fresh start is at a lost, or so she thought. Little did she know, her life will soon be entangled with attention from four different male classmates.

First, we have Kim Ro Woon, or who I like to call, “Mr. Athlete”. The school’s most popular student and very talented in Baseball (Pitcher).

Second, we have Lee Da Won, Min-ah’s childhood friend. Da Won is part of the broadcasting group at school.

Third, is the Best Fighter in school, Baek Ju Ho, or as I like to call him, The Bad Boy with a Golden Heart.

And last, but certainly not least, is Kang Chan Hi, the passionate dancer with a bubbly and cute attitude.

After the drama: With the shortness of the series, I was able to finish it within one sitting (roughly 2 hours or so). If you’re a drama watcher like me, who gets super invested into the story and the characters, this drama might have some fault because it is SO short. You will want more and in my case, crave for more between certain leads.

Regardless of the length of the drama, the writers did a great job with providing enough background information, so you know just enough of the relationship between Min-ah and the male leads. This drama does a great job at the radiating the youth, puppy love theme as well. Plus, they give you 4 different story lines within one drama, which to me, is pretty awesome. If you’re in need of a feel-good drama, I would highly recommend this one. It’s a drama that makes you smile and cringe from all the sappiness that comes from it. Not only that, but there is an ending for everyone.

As a psychology major, I feel like the ending you choose really speaks a lot for yourself and your preference. It really shows what kind of story lines you prefer and what type of male leads gets your attention (and possibly what males get your attention in reality). Haha.

So with all of this…..who did I choose?

Baek Ju Ho – The Bad Boy with the Golden Heart. I couldn’t help myself, as soon as his story line started I was hooked. What can I say, I like me some bad boys. 

Thanks for reading. <3 defineParis

*Credit pictures from DramaFever*  *I do not own any of the images posted on this*

[shenmeizhuang-blog]

q series: life plan a and b -- final thoughts

SYNOPSIS: When Zheng Ruwei (Rainie Yang)’s boyfriend’s father suffers a severe injury from a car accident, she goes down two vastly different paths -- remaining in Taiwan and marrying her boyfriend to take care of her father-in-law, “forgotten” as a busy housewife, and accepting her job promotion in Shanghai, where she becomes an extremely wealthy and successful, yet lonely businesswoman. 

Life Plan A And B was a show that I left on the back-burner for the longest time, but rather unexpectedly, I managed to find time to sit down and complete this. It’s a considerably solid show, with a fairly strong, albeit occasionally over-dramatic, script, yet frankly I’m largely relieved that I’ve finally completed this.

It’s quite rare for me to watch Taiwanese dramas (and it was initially difficult for me to find an HD version of the show; I ended up viewing this on DramaFever), but as a fan of Rainie Yang, who praised the script immensely, I decided to give it a shot. Though “only 6 episodes”, each episode is a whopping 1.5 hours long -- so technically the equivalent of either 12 or 18 c-drama episodes. While having watched the first three episodes sometime in January, and the latter three this week (latter part of May, indicating how much I might’ve procrastinated on writing this), it was considerably easy to immerse myself back into protagonist Zheng Ruwei’s two alternate lifetimes. However, riddled with tragedy, melodrama, and even dragging lethargy, I found it difficult to truly enjoy the ride.

As the title suggests, Life Plan A And B contrasts two vastly differing lifestyles, exploring themes such as wealth, aspirations, superficiality, loneliness, marriage, and misogyny through not just protagonist Zheng Ruwei’s increasingly contrasting image and personas, yet also the many reactions and life choices of other re-occurring characters, including her boyfriend Tang You Yan (Yan Yulin), You Yan’s father, Gao Mei Yu, as well as supportive static characters such as Ruwei’s good friend Zhang Jie. Parallels drawn throughout both lifetimes -- an abruptly “solved” abortion juxtaposed with a sudden pregnancy resulting in Ruwei’s marriage and ultimate loss of her own source of income, or Gao Mei Yu’s affections for You Yan consistently presented in both lifetimes -- further emphasized the contrast between the two different paths that Ruwei walked down. 

Plan A, though riddled with more dramatic elements such as birth secrets, embezzlement, and even death (and yet this is a slice-of-life), was by far the easier arc to watch. On a shallow note, Ruwei the rich and successful businesswoman, wore gorgeous, fashionable outfits (that shade of lipstick was A++) that I could literally spend hours ogling over (and no, the above poster does not do it justice). 

However, perhaps representative of the overall theme, the arc itself felt largely empty. For one, even though I never particularly liked You Yan, I could never come to terms with the “hot” “General Manager” as a viable love interest -- Rong Yichao (Johnny Lu)’s racism went unaddressed, and his overall “mysterious” personality, including inviting women over to his apartment (wtf), was at best off-putting. Oh, and not to mention how he wasn’t drunk at all during him and Ruwei’s one-night stand, which is something I tried (?) to ignore. When tragedy fell upon him I didn’t mind all that much. (As for the ending, I like the idea behind it, but the way it was executed felt very abrupt, and I was all, “Okay then.”) 

In stark contrast, I absolutely adored Zhao Hui’s earnestness, yet as consistent with the entire arc of Plan A, everything felt empty and lacking. Though the show indicated that the tragedy was a result of Ruwei’s selfish nature, it seemed that the moment anything meaningful would finally form, and Ruwei would completely move on, tragedy would suddenly strike -- as if Life simply disallowed Ruwei to live happily while rich and successful, or a punishment of sorts for being “selfish” and “willful”. 

Plan B was what left me constantly feeling lethargic and frustrated, and the 1.5 hour episode length certainly did not help. In contrast to Ruwei’s (arguable) selfishness (read: ambition), resulting in decisions that built up equal financial success and loneliness, Ruwei constantly had to sacrifice and compromise. Initially, as Plan B was all about, it was just her salary raise and promotion to Shanghai, but eventually she was “forced” to marry You Yan, forced to lose her job due to pregnancy complications, and remained dependent on the family’s salary. Therefore, even buying a cheap gift for her mother-in-law resulted in severe reprimands. 

As the family’s demands and lack of gratitude (from her perspective) wore her down bit by bit, she felt that she became less and less desirable, even automatically making certain assumptions. (I still cringe whenever I think of how the family dealt with Ruwei going into labor.) Meanwhile, Plan B managed to flesh out You Yan as a character far more, unveiling his own struggles, and, as a parallel to the entire show, him ultimately sacrificing his passions for a stable, high-earning job. Overall, the way the sequence of events weren’t in chronological order allowed for maximum effect in terms of ultimate reveals, displaying how life decisions are made in that split second when misunderstandings and assumptions occur. 

Unfortunately, despite my understanding that all these elements were purposefully incorporated, it was still difficult for me to watch, and many times throughout the show I was actually largely grateful for DramaFever’s ad breaks -- these episodes are simply not things I can watch in a single sitting. 

Ultimately, both lifetimes led to a somewhat peaceful and fulfilling “resolution”. Rather than going down two extreme roads, both versions of herself learned to gain some middle ground, balancing out both priorities, before finding true fulfillment. “Both plans won.” 

But audiences are still left with the question -- which choice is worth it? Is it better not to question what happened before? Because the pain and suffering that Ruwei felt -- perhaps more muted in Plan A, as well as exaggerated in Plan B -- actually translated to lethargy for the audience. While I think I learned a lot through watching this -- be it about the concept of sacrifice and decision-making, or the melodramatic and misogynistic view of housewives in traditional Taiwanese culture -- it’s ultimately something that I can’t say I completely enjoy.

Miscellaneous: 

The titular track of Rainie Yang’s most recent studio album, 年轮说, or Traces of Time in Love, is also this drama’s opening theme song. (I also happen to really like this song -- listen to it!)

“Traces of Time in Love” was nominated for “Song of the Year” in the 2017 Golden Melody Awards (that being said, GMA’s presence in Mandopop has significantly lowered). 

相爱的方法 “The Lessons of Love” and �� “Being Single”, both tracks from 年轮说, also make up the OSTs for this show. 

The show is mostly in standard Mandarin, but occasionally characters, especially older-generation parents, tended to suddenly break into the traditional (Taiwanese) Hakka dialect, so I ultimately did rely on DramaFever’s subs.

I may or may not have forgotten to comment on the acting in this show. Everyone delivered. Rainie was rather impressive. Johnny Lu managed to make his (IMO) unlikable and off-putting character somehow charismatic. 

Overall rating: 7.7/10