Lovely Runner
This is another time travel drama, except that his time it is a watch and not a car that does the magic. At the start of the show, a woman in a wheelchair is a huge fan of a famous Kpop star, and has all kinds of trouble trying to get to a concert. Then the time travel happens, and she keeps going back in time trying to save his life. They are a cute couple, and this was a really popular show when it aired. ***
Marry My Husband
This also is a time-travel show. A woman who is really mistreated by her husband goes back in time, and tries to get him to marry someone else this time around. Very annoying husband and supposed friend of the main girl. Not that good of chemistry between main couple. The cutest thing in the show was a ginger cat. **
Please Don't Date Him
A woman engineer who develops household appliances accidentally puts an AI chip into a refrigerator. It connects to the internet and starts telling her information about lots of people that she comes in contact with. People start coming to her for dating advice because of her inside information. She has some funny meet-cutes with a fireman who is not on social media, and has a secret in his past having to do with a fire. Some good episodes and some fillers. ***
My Sweet Mobster
A former gangster meets a former Youtube influencer. He tries to help minor criminals go straight, and gives them jobs. He talks like Marlon Brando, which was a mild sensation, and is very sweet. She is less sweet, but tries to overcome a competitor and make videos for children. Mostly a cute show. ****
My Roommate is a Gumiho
A college student accidentally swallows a fox bead belonging to a 999-year old gumiho. They need to get it out of her before a year is up, and he is trying to fill it up with human energy so he can turn into a human. Highjinks ensue. Mostly cute show. ***
Numbers
A rookie accountant knows his stuff and is great with numbers, but does not have a college degree. He gets a job at a large accounting firm in order to get revenge on them for ruining his father's company. He is hired by a director who is fighting internal corruption in the company as it leverages deals for large corporations. Good but becomes oppressive as it goes on. ***
The Auditors
Similar show to that last one, although less heavy and with more humor. A famous, hard-nosed independent auditor is hired to clean up corruption in a construction company. On his team is a rookie who is smart and idealistic. Two brothers are vying for ownership of the company, since the oldest brother is in a coma in the hospital. One seems clean-cut and the other is a rebel. ••••
Like Flowers in Sand
This is probably my favorite Korean drama of the year. It's about people in a small seaside town, and their traditional wrestling team, which is called ssireum. The main character is hapless and cheerful, but covering up his reactions to a big scandal that had happened 20 years before, when he was a kid. We see flashbacks to his group of childhood friends, and see them slowly gathering back together, several of them trying to solve that mystery. Great characters, light vibe. *****
Cinderella at 2 AM
This drama starts off well with a chaebol mother offering money to a poor girl to get her to stop dating her son. Surprisingly, the poor girl accepts the money. Then she spends the rest of the show trying to break up with the guy, who really loves her a lot and follows her around all the time. His older brother is more interesting. He is nice to the younger brother as well as to his own wife, who is from an arranged marriage. They have a better love story than the main couple.***
Jugglers
A pretty good filler drama. A competent secretary is made a scapegoat and fired for something her boss did. After a couple of months she is assigned to Choi Daniel as his new secretary. He doesn't want one, and she tries hard to be of some kind of help. She gets drunk and he hakes her home and discovers that she lives in the house he lived in when he was a boy, and there was a fire. ***
Iron Family
An elderly couple find a suitcase of money hidden in the forest by some gangsters. These are the least competent gangsters you've ever seen, by the way, and the couple is incompetent as well. They try to hide the money at their house and there is never a dull moment. One by one, most of their family finds out. Their grandson is a cop, which complicates things. This is a weekend drama, with 36 episodes. *****
Knight Flower
This is a sageuk about a widow who instead of staying home all the time, puts on a ninja costume and jumps the fence at night to help the oppressed. Honey Lee is the main draw in this show, which was quite entertaining. There is a police officer who at first tries to apprehend her, and then starts to help her. ****
JAPANEE DRAMAS
Trouble All Aboard
The CEO of a (fashion?) company is worried about the number of people who are quitting, so he hires a consultant to help him. The plot focuses on the stories of different individuals and getting to know them, and discovering their problems. At the end, it is a surprise who is causing people to quit, but they solve the problem. ***
Brother Trap
A college student falls in love and then finds out that her boyfriend is the younger brother of the boyfriend she had in high school. She feels funny about it. They don't care. **
My Happy Divorced Life
Not that happy. A woman who just went through a nasty divorce finds a much younger boyfriend. Everyone criticizes her, including her mother. but she tries to freshen up her look and redo her image.**
My Second Aoharu
A 30-year-old woman who had always wanted to be an architect but never made it into college and works at a poorly paid job, meets a young college student who encourages her to try again. She studies and gets into school this time, and runs across the same guy. There is a lot about her classmates and boarding house, and her architecture classes and projects. There is a mild love story. **
Every Precious Moment
A piano teacher who is having a hard time making ends meet comes across a kindhearted young man who runs a food truck. They make friends and spend time together. She finds out he has a kind of amnesia where every few months he forgets everything. There is a counselor treating him, his mom, and a neighbor who keeps track of him. It is slow moving and melancholy, and has a message that you should treasure every moment because it might be the last. ****
99.9 Criminal Lawyer, season 2
We watched it because we liked season one, but this wasn't quite as good. We already know the characters, the younger lawyer isn't a crazy surprise any more, and the older one doesn't bicker with him much anymore. They changed the female lawyer, which I thought was a bad idea. The show was mostly about the cases and they were pretty good. ***
Baby Vampire Blues
This was pretty low key. The story is about two vampires who haven't apparently been vampires very long and get deliveries of bottled blood from some vampire store. They aren't too smart, and haven't graduated to drinking blood from people yet. They are told they need to get busy and start, but cringe at the idea. I think they solved the problem, or at least shelved it. **
Beyond Goodbye
This is the story of a woman whose fiancé is killed in an accident, and then she later meets a man who has had a heart transplant. There are a lot of flashbacks to the woman's story with the man who died, so you get to know him better than the one who had the transplant. But the transplant guy starts getting the memories of the person who died. It's kind of sad. He has to decide how much to tell her, and she has to decide how to act on it. ***
Ghost Book
A children's movie about some kids who find themselves in an alternate timeline that has monsters. They find a magic book, and have to use it to catch the monsters and get home. **
Eye Love You
A woman is in a ferryboat accident and suddenly becomes telepathic. She can hear people's thoughts when she looks them in the eye. She avoids doing that, and has never had a boyfriend. Then she meets a Korean man, and finds that she can't understand his thoughts because they are in Korean. This is a pretty cute show, although the female lead is over the top shy, and there are a lot of plot holes that are never answered. ***
CHINESE DRAMA
This is based on a famous book called The Three Body Problem. It's all about what would we do if we actually contacted aliens and they said they were coming here? In 1979 a young astroscientist named Wenjie intercepts the alien message. In the present day, nanophysicist Dr. Wang has to figure out about the aliens without panicking and scaring his nine-year old daughter. She's my favorite character. Slow-moving but very good. *****
