Aaand we're back

After an unannounced 4 year hiatus, I have finally returned to my blog. I've binged on a decent amount of shows during my time away and can't wait to share my thoughts with you again. To anyone reading this - thank you and hopefully you find these helpful :)

- PG

Substitute Princess

Substitute Princess/Princess Stand In/King Flower is a Taiwanese romance comedy. Da Hua just wants brother Guan Jun to fall in love with her...maybe if she was pretty. She's soon given the opportunity after young CEO, Terry's, fiance (and business partner) is severely injured. Da Hua undergoes plastic surgery to look like her and take her place in the company.

The not so typical ugly duckling story plays out in this show. Da Hua's a hardworking and bubbly girl who runs a small market with her mother. She's pretty much roasted in the beginning of the episode by their customers. They go on about how she's the known as the most beautiful woman in the city (sarcastically of course), but it doesn't seem to phase her so much. She doesn't care as long as brother Guan Jun still likes her. Yes. She wants nothing more in the world than to marry her big brother. Adopted brother, yes, but it's still pretty weird. And even weirder is that her mother is 100% in support for them to hook up!

Guan Jun is a troublemaker and he can't hold down a job for more than a month. He apparently spends most of his time gambling and cheating at casinos and making a bad impression on his younger brother, Da Li. He doesn't show any romantic feelings towards Da Hua at all.

Terry is the GM of a large, successful company called Sheng Da Group. In the pilot, he and his fiance, Liang Yan, have just gotten engaged and are finally living in the same house. Liang Yan is a beautiful, talented and holds a powerful position in the company as well. Despite her status, she is still very kind and fair to everyone.

The pilot doesn't show Liang Yan's accident or Da Hua's transformation, but we do get a good background on each character. At the end of the episode, Terry, Liang Yan, and Da Hua meet in the market for the first time.

I think this show is super cute and all that, but I'm a bit concerned about the message it's sending out. So basically, the show is saying that in order to get someone to love you, you have to become beautiful? I already know that once Da Hua goes through with the operation to look like Liang Yan, Guan Jun is definitely going to start liking her. He's not once shown any affection towards her for the 20+ years that they've been living together - hell, he didn't even remember her birthday!
Judging from the opening, it seems like both Terry and Guan Jun pursue Da Hua. So that would mean that Terry ends up falling for her too. I guess that's pretty complicated because he's looking at his fiance but interacting with Da Hua's personality and everything. This show is complicated.
Anyway, I'm not mad at the show, just worried at its message. That's all.

Also, for anyone who cares to watch the show -------------------- I'm team Terry.

RATING

Originality: 4/5
Attention Lock-Ability: 3.5/5
Soundtrack: 5/5
Ep. 2 Worthy? Although the pilot is a bit slow, the next episode is worth watching.

Erased

Satoru Fujinuma has an uncontrollable power that allows him to go back in time, typically just a few minutes before a life-threatening event. This time, however, his power sends him back 18 years and he begins to unravel the mystery around his childhood friend's murders and change their future. 

At the start of the pilot, Satoru is a 29-year-old "aspiring" manga artist who can't seem to put himself into his work. Much, if not all, is due to the trauma from his childhood. Two of his classmates were abducted and killed, and his older friend is charged with the crime and sentenced to death. Satoru was able to repress and move on from this - until he finds out that the case was never solved and that the killer is still out there...targeting him.

This is such an easy show to binge on. Japan knows how to properly cliff hang -- Spanish dramas please take note. Seriously almost every episode will leave you at the edge of your seat and your finger ready to press "next episode". Although one of my only issues was that somewhere towards the end, it gets a little predictable, but it doesn't matter because it still manages to leave you in suspense. It's very successful with creating an air of danger throughout the entire show.

Another thing that I like about this show is that it tackles mature themes and uses that to get you more involved, I guess. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but this show does cover abuse, pornography, and predation. It's kinda like SVU meets the Girl Who Leapt Through Time (another anime, if you weren't already familiar) with maybe 2x the suspense in my opinion. 

Despite being only 12 episodes long (22 min each), Erased is able to create fleshy characters who are easy to get attached to. I think that may be a really important key to telling mysteries like this. You have to actually care about the characters...duh. So, if you do take the chance and watch this, believe me, you'll end up believing you grew up with them too.

RATING

Originality: 4/5
Attention Lock-ability: 5/5
Soundtrack: 5/5
Ep. 2 Worthy?: YOU'D BE CRAZY NOT TO WATCH THE NEXT EPISODE

Master of None

This comedy-drama follows Dev Shah who tries to figure out his life through a series of anecdotes.

First time I watched this show, I hated it. But I really really wanted to like it. Everyone was saying it was good so I just HAD to give it a second chance....I guess I'm glad I did?

I liked Aziz Ansari a lot in Parks and Recreation, so I thought I'd love this too, ya know? But turns out, Aziz by himself just isn't as funny. A lot of the comedy in the pilot was too slow paced and it was really easy for me to get distracted with something else.

This episode is rightly titled "Plan B" as it covers Dev's apprehension to have children or not. In a way, I felt like I was making my own decision about kids too while I watched it. It decently covered the good, the bad, the ugly. And in the end, his and my decision were pretty much the same. I'd rather not. Not now at least. And they did a great job making those kids epitomize the definition of annoying. 

I don't really have much else to say about the show. I'm just a little sad that I didn't like it as much as I wanted to. Also, if I hadn't given it a second watch, my rating would've been outrageously low.

RATING

Originality: 4/5
Attention Lock-ability: 1/5
Soundtrack: 5/5
Ep. 2 Worthy?: I don't think so...sorry

Cuckoo

In this British comedy, The Thompsons' (Ken and Lorna) are surprised by their medical school bound daughter's unexpected marriage to Cuckoo, a jobless hippie.

So the main conflict with this show is obviously Ken's disapproval of his new grandson. Cuckoo best describes himself as "part teacher, part visionary, part firebrand, [and] part friend" and he doesn't believe in making money. His over-spiritual nature has basically brainwashed Rachel, who is now willing to quit medical school and aims to start a leper colony in a broken country with her husband. And despite him saying he's a real earthly guy, he's oddly unfamiliar, but incredibly impressed by baked potatoes. So much so that he agrees to make a career out of selling potatoes from a van by the end of the episode.

It's not hard to side with Ken on this, though. Cuckoo is literally cuckoo and I personally don't buy into the visionary or letting some random person financially leech off of me. Ken goes as far as to try and trick Cuckoo into leaving the country.

As the pilot goes on, you learn that it's not only Cuckoo who is cuckoo. The whole family has their little quirks. I think the most annoy is their son, Dylan, an annoying bloke who has "never wanked".

This show has some really silly characters and Andy Samberg playing the part, but this show was too British and weird for me to get invested in.

RATING

Originality: 5/5
Attention Lock-ability: 2/5
Soundtrack: 4/5
Ep. 2 Worthy?: Eh, not really. I might revisit after a month or so?

Chuck

Chuck Bartowski is just a regular, degular, shmegular guy. He also happens to have a supercomputer in his head.

I'd seen a bunch of good reviews about this show all over the internet. First of all, it is nothing like I expected it to be, It's SO SO SO good. So good, in fact, that I've already finished all five seasons.

The pilot starts off by introducing Chuck, a super nerdy, introverted, but charming nerd. He's not moving forward in life - he was kicked out of Stanford, and his college girlfriend ditched him for his ex-best friend. This all changes when we find out that the ex-friend, Bryce, is now a spy and has just stolen top secret government database called the Intersect. That Intersect is emailed to Chuck right before Bryce is shot down. Of course, Chuck opens it up and downloads all that data into his brain.
This is where it starts to get interesting. Downloading the intersect allows Chuck to "flash" and access confidential files and information. Having all that actually makes him a huge national threat. So, the government sends over their top two agents from the NSA and CIA, Sarah and Casey.

I think what really drives this show, for me at least, is the slow love story that surrounds Chuck and Sarah. It's also super neat that she's the stronger, smarter, badass hero who's job is to protect/handle the asset (Chuck). It's just cool to see the roles are switched up ya know.

Chuck is a smart and fun show and it's easily in my top 3 favorite series. It's also got a amazing music selection. Definitely check it out.

RATING

Originality: 5/5
Attention Lock-ability: 5/5
Soundtrack: 5/5
Ep. 2 Worthy?: YOU'D BE CRAZY NOT TO WATCH MORE. YES.

Documentary Now!

Fred Armisen (Portlandia) and Bill Hader (SNL) team up in this documentary parody series.

The first episode, titled "Sandy Passage", is supposed to be mocking an actual documentary called Grey Gardens? I haven't seen the original, but I don't think that really matters. As I watched it, some of the elements were definitely reminiscent of other documentaries that I've seen before. But, even if you haven't really dabbled into the documentary pool, the pilot is still funny on it's own.

So for this episode, two cameramen film Big Vivvy and Little Vivvy, mother and daughter who live in their mysterious and neglected home. It's incredibly funny and uncomfortable to watch the characters just because they're just so ... weird? Little Vivvy is 50~ years old and believes that every man wants to have sex with her. She's constantly parading her innovative outfits like her infamous sweatpants scarf and suggesting for the director to film her dancing or eating.

Her mother, on the other hand, is less eccentric but still just as odd. But, the story soon takes an interesting turn as the cops show up to ask about missing people, and then their own grocery delivery boy goes M.I.A. At this point, the episode becomes something like Paranormal Activity or something, and it's just really great. Just watch it.

RATING

Originality: 5/5
Attention Lock-ability: 4/5
Soundtrack: 4/5
Ep. 2 Worthy?: Yes.