What Dramas Am I Watching This Week?

So here's what I'm watching this week! It's going to be very light cause if you don't know, I'm American and this week fell on Thanksgiving so I wasn't really able to do a lot of leisurely tv watching. Of course the list is still split by country and the amount of episodes I've seen so far are written below! There will be spoilers from now on so if you aren't caught to the episode number on list, you might want to go watch that episode and then come back! If you're interested in previous lists, click here and if you want to see a list of my favorite asian OTPs and ships, click here!

KDRAMA

Leverage (12/16): "Leverage" will tell the story of Lee Tae Joon, an elite insurance investigator turned scam strategist who recruits the best "players" in order to catch the real criminals who think they’re above the law.

It's honestly so sad that we only have two more weeks of this beautiful show to go cause I'm enjoying it so much and it definitely makes up for Player and how I didn't enjoy that one as much as I should have! We're officially on what is probs going to be our last case but in this case there will be multiple smaller cases or so I believe since Tae Joon is gunning for Joon Hyung after finding out what an ass he is. It's also a very good thing that Tae Joon isn't much more than the leader in terms of the team cause now that he's being surveilled almost 24/7, he can't be on site anymore but it's leading to a bunch of truly wonderful moments where he's outsmarting his tails by looking innocent in public while also being totally in the know. I also really want to applaud both Tae Joon and the writers of this show for doing the one thing that I'm always screaming at shows to do and that's not let the villain know when the hero figures out he's the villain! Like instead of going to Joon Hyung and attacking him, Tae Joon played innocent and pretended like he didn't know a thing and that's what's going to give Tae Joon the edge! I'm also super into this new case with the gold bars cause I do love every time the crew acts as different characters but I also want to give a shoutout to my little shipper heart that loved the moment when Roy was so worried about Na Byeol being okay after she fought those three thugs.

FINISHED Vagabond (16/16): Cha Dal Gun becomes an awakened tiger in the face of his nephew’s death in a mysterious plane crash. As an orphan himself, he had raised his nephew singlehandedly in place of his brother who had passed on. Triggered by the large-scale cover-up of the incident, he sets off on a journey to discover the truth. Go Hae Ri is the eldest daughter of a marine who had died during an operation. She has always wanted to be a normal civil servant to support her family, but life had other plans and she ends up as a National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent. Their lives intertwine as they discover a tangled web of corruption behind the plane crash.

I have a special place in my heart that's full of hatred and spite for these Netflix kdramas that don't finish telling their story in one season and Vagabond just joined that list with Arthdal Chronicles. Like it would be one thing if we knew going in that the show wasn't going to finish it's story in one season like American shows but the fact that most kdramas end their seasons in one makes me so mad when shows don't do that. I mean I've seriously sat through 16 episodes of this just for the story to end at what feels like the halfway point?? As I guessed Edward turned out to be Samael and the one behind literally everything from the start. Everyone who we followed and hunted this season were all just victims who took advantage of the fallout from Edward's first move. Having complained enough I do have to admit that I love the idea of what the possible second season could be. Lily, the North Korean mercenary and Dal Gun all working together to infiltrate and take down Edward through Black Sun while Hae Ri joined Jessica and they're on a separate hunt is everything to me. I love how even when Hae Ri and Dal Gun hit rock bottom, they're still moving along the same path. Neither will judge the other for the choices they made to take down Edward when they meet again cause the other did the same. Both started as these soft humans and ended stone cold. It's always a favorite trope of mine when the hero joins hands with villains in order to catch a bigger villain and that's exactly what the future of this story holds. Overall I'd give this show a 8 / 10.

CDRAMA

FINISHED Dive (30/30): A story that revolves around a diving team in the brink of disbandment. Coach Yu Feng grooms four athletes to represent the school and turn the tide for the diving team. He finds Jiang Bai Long, a former star of tomorrow in the diving world, Wei Te, an exchange student from Thailand, the newly-enrolled star athlete Lu Hao Ran and his partner Tian Lin.

Oddly enough I didn't realize that this week was going to air the last chunk of episodes for this show and after experiencing all 30 episodes I have to say that this show was as meh as I expected it to be. I wish I knew why I can't connect to cdramas like the way I connect to kdramas but I feel like it's definitely a writing problem cause cdramas especially modern cdramas tend to have no consequences to their stories. If in one episode a character betrays another, in the next all will be forgiven and forgotten and it drives me mad cause I want to connect to my characters and feel like oh no how will this problem be fixed only for it to be brushed under the rug and ignored the next minute leading me to detach from the show. I do wish that there had been more diving in the final few episodes but instead we spent time on Bailong and Mi Nan's relationship and the suddenly Bailong's eye injury which like is a perfect example of things that happen but don't actually matter. I mean did literally anyone think that Bailong would loose his eyesight forever or not be able to dive in the finals? It does suck that we pulled away from the competition without really knowing who won or lost but I'm assuming it was our team cause Haoran got injured which if you compare to Bailong and Weite's perfect scored dive, I'm sure we came in first. I did end up enjoying the Weite and Caiyi stuff as per usual but I didn't understand why Weite rejected Caiyi when it was clear that he liked her though in the end it worked out. I'd give this drama a 5.5 / 10 tbh cause looking back overall this isn't a drama that I'll go back and watch.

xoxo Allie