What Dramas Did I Finish This Week?

Hello and welcome back! We had a few dramas come to an end this week and I thought I should talk about them! If you're interested in previous reviews, click here and if you want to see a list of my Favorite Asian OTPs and Ships, click here!

KDRAMA

FINISHED Monthly Magazine Home (16/16): Na Young Won is a successful senior editor at the hit monthly magazine Monthly House. Although her glittering journalistic career spans a decade, her home situation is not quite as idyllic as those she spends her time reporting on. In fact, she lives alone in a rented house and happily makes adjustments as she sees fit. But when the magazine’s CEO Yoo Ja Sung buys the house and becomes her fussy new landlord, she is in for a shock. Yoo Ja Sung proves to be a very difficult landlord to keep happy. He grew up in poverty, initially working in the construction industry, but determined to make his fortune through real estate investment. For him, buying the house Na Young Won lives in is little more than another financial transaction. But as the duo starts to get to know one another, their attitudes toward the real estate market – and one another – start to change. Suddenly, Na Young Won starts to ask herself if she would be better off buying her own house...or beginning on an unlikely romance with her firm’s CEO!

With this show coming to a close this week I guess I'm finally able to talk about how utterly disappointed I was with this show. When I first heard that Jung So Min and Kim Ji Suk were going to be starring in a show together I was so epically excited cause I adore both actors but the show did not live up to the hype. First and foremost I have to say that there was an old school vibe to this show. We had a poor as dirt female lead and a rich male lead who was a complete asshole and the two fell in love cause the female lead brought light to his dark life and the male lead fed the female lead crumbs of kindness which made her fall head over heels. As you can tell I really am not a fan of asshole male leads 99% of the time so I was posed to dislike this show from the start. We then continue on with Young Won literally having no purpose or character or plot development other than the romance. Like what happened to her wanting a house? Who cares now that she's dating! It also doesn't help that both of their breakups came from the stupidest things I've seen. The ensemble cast was fun enough and I enjoyed the secondary couple though I think their relationship developed too late and went from 0 to 100 in two weeks. On the whole I think this show is a 6 / 10 with nothing really of substance to it.

CDRAMA

FINISHED Crossroad Bistro (30/30): About five women who opened up a restaurant named Bei Zhe Nan Yuan in Beijing; and in the process they mature and attain love. As the biggest shareholder of their restaurant, You Shan Shan single-handedly brought her best girlfriends together. Bao Xue, an optimistic little-known actress, and Dai Xiao Yu who returned from overseas are cousins. Upon their reunion, they settle into a daily life filled with endless banter. The remaining two shareholders are not to be underestimated. Si Meng is a housewife while Feng Xi went to Beijing for the sake of love.

So the finale for this show aired this week and I do have to say the sudden pandemic insertion was very strange but other than that the show was beautifully written, acted, and directed. I absolutely adore stories where they're about a group of women who are best friends and then we follow their friendship and romances and though this one didn't beat Age Of Youth or Ode To Joy in terms of my love for it, I have fun with this one. As per usual I really only cared about one romance in the show and that was Bao Xue and Song Yang though there were points in which I enjoyed Feng Xi and He Nan too. Bao Xue was my favorite character of the bunch too though I was surprised with how much I ended up liking Xiao Yu who I expected to hate cause of her materialistic side. The show made me laugh and cry at different points and though I wished that we had been able to see Bao Xue and Song Yang get married (on screen please!) I liked where everyone ended up. I was surprised that the show stuck with keeping Xiao Yu and Liangzhou as friends to the end cause most shows would have had Xiao Yu realize the error in her ways in order to take him out of the friendzone but this show was like no sometimes there is no spark no matter how sweet a guy is. All in all I'd give this show a 8 / 10 and say it's worth a watch if you like slice of life shows centered around a girl group.

xoxo Allie