Ninja Chatter #1 (Updated 1/9)

Date: 1/4 – 1/10/19

So I have been playing with the idea of doing Ninja Chatter to replace my Friday Drama Roundup post. Ninja Chatter would be an ongoing post that will record my thoughts not only on new shows but shows I am following as well. Since I am still on the road right now therefore not able to do the Friday Drama Roundup, I thought this is as good of a time as any to try my idea out.

1/4
The Story Of Minglan (Chinese Drama)
I really wasn’t sure what to expect from this one before I checked it out. Naturally, I was super curious about the drama that brought together it’s two leads (Zanilia Zhao and William Feng) in real life who actually got married a short while ago. However, the show’s trailer was vague enough that it really didn’t inspire much confidence in the show.
As the title of the show suggests, the drama centers on our heroine’s life. The story begins while our heroine is still a young child when she will learn the bitter lesson to hide her intelligence to her unlikely love story with our hero who will eventually need her help to forge a path to their own happy-ever-after.

I am three episodes in and I am surprisingly enjoying the childhood part of the story…even if I did cry my eyes out in episode three. However, the issue with any great childhood backstory is that I now worry if the adult actors can match it…

1/6
Hello Again (Taiwanese Drama)
Haven’t had the chance to watch the first episode yet, but I did check out the long trailer (sorry, no Eng subs for now) for the first episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPCkx_5-ueU

The trailer opens with our hero, as the vice president of an elite department store, finding out that he is apparently losing all his customers to a small store located in a cheap shopping market close by. Charging right over to the market to confront our heroine, our hero is amazed when the store owner turns out to be his high school nemesis- the girl who disappeared after she was supposed to settle their bet in their new college. Determined to settle their bet even if it was 10 years late, our hero promptly begins to pester our heroine to come work for him at the department store. Unable to understand at first why our heroine seems unmoved by the great opportunity he is offering her, our hero finally sees with his own eyes the reason our heroine keeps on rejecting him. Jumping in to protect our heroine from a dangerous blow from the debt collector thug with his own body, our hero’s heart melts as our heroine breaks down in tears and confess that she has been living under the overwhelming burden of paying back the astronomical debt her family has incurred. To make her life seem even more hopeless, the debt collector thugs could at will use various means to wipe away any headway she has made the last ten years. Pierced to the core by our heroine’s pain, our hero grabs the loan agreement from the debt collector’s hand as he loudly declares “I will pay her debt!”

1/9

Behind The Scenes (Chinese Drama, New)
Synopsis: Overjoyed to have the opportunity to be an intern at her idol’s production company, our heroine turns down a much coveted position at a TV station without a second thought. Stubbornly believing that our hero’s nickname as the “devil” producer with a Midas touch is nothing that will ever damper her admiration for his talent, our heroine belatedly finds out the hard way that our heroine’s personality is…um…difficult. Not willing to simply take the easy way out by quitting when she realizes her idol might be quite different in real life, our heroine chooses to stay and eventually earns her place right alongside of our hero.

I was intrigued by the pairing of Luo Jin and Zhou Dongyu so I went into this one pretty hopeful. After three episodes, we are slowly getting past the background set up and while the pacing was slower than I expected, I liked it enough to give it a few more episodes. My only issue: the show is trying so hard to emphasize how exhusting it is to produce a variety show that both of our leads walk around like pale sickly hospital patients.