Category: TV Recaps/Reviews

Romance Is A Bonus Book: Roughly Retrospective

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a tvN poster for Romance is a Bonus Book that shows Kang Dan-i and Cha Eun-ho cuddled up close and looking at the viewer. Dan-I has a book in her hand and a visible smile on her face. Eun-ho has a slight smile on his face
This is the tvN cover for the series, found here.

I can’t think of any drama that makes me happier than 2019’s Romance Is A Bonus Book does.

Written by Jung Hyun-jung and directed by Lee Jeong-hyo, this scripted romantic drama has so much going for it… and had my heart from the first few minutes of the very first episode. Like from the literal moment that Lee Jong-suk’s Cha Eun-ho sees Lee Na-young’s Kang Dan-i in her wedding dress and whispers a stunned compliment about how beautiful she looks, I was in.

Every time I rewatch Romance is a Bonus Book, I’m overwhelmed by how much fierce fondness I feel for the leads. This is my first drama experience with Lee Na-young, but my second with Lee Jong-Suk (my niece had me start W a few years back) and so I didn’t know what to expect from her Dan-i or their chemistry as a couple.

From the start though, I fell for Dan-i. I’m not being dramatic here. I fell hard for her.

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Stitch Watches Watchmen

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Note: This isn’t a full review(in fact, I primarily focus on the first episode) because I don’t have the time for it right now! If you want to talk about specific parts of the show, drop me a comment and we’ll chat about some serious spoilers!

HBO’s Watchmen series leaves me just as unsettled as the end of Jordan Peele’s Us did.

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Bad Rap – Better A Second Time?

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The quest for authenticity in hip-hop features quite heavily across Bad Rap, a 2016 documentary following the career of popular Korean American rapper Dumbfounded as well as three other Korean American rappers popular in the scene – Awkwafina, Rekstizzy, and Lyricks.

(Other Asian American rappers like Jay Park, Traphik, and Decipher show up across the film in brief segments, but they’re not the focus.)

Directed by Salima Korona, the film opens with some necessary hip-hop history. One of the things I appreciated the first time I watched this documentary was the way it nodded to the impact that Filipino rappers had on the game and gave viewers an introduction to a side of hip hop history that many of us don’t know.

These are rappers that probably WON’T be showing up on Netflix’s big hip hop history documentary series – which sucks because it’s a history we don’t talk about and don’t focus on – despite needing to.

So off the bat, I appreciated the look at these pioneers of Asian American hip-hop and I want to learn more about them. What are they doing now? What do they think of current rappers? Are their flows still fantastic?

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Sacrifice, Heroics, and Dead Characters of Color

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This post contains spoilers for Orange is the New Black season 4, Wynonna Earp season 3, Elementary season 6, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 5, and a bunch of other stuff that’s been off the air or out of theaters for years.

sacrifice-and-heroics

I knew I was never going to watch Sleepy Hollow again when Nicole Beharie’s Abbie Mills sacrificed herself in a heroic death for Tom Mison’s Ichabod Crane at the end of the series’ third season.

When I saw spoilers that Orange is the New Black’s Poussey was killed off in a tasteless and traumatizing scene that called back to Eric Garner’s murder by a police officer four years ago – and the folks in fandom defending it as something that “had” to happen – I immediately took the show out of my Netflix queue.

And, every time a person of color dies so the Winchester brothers can live, I wonder why I even kept the show around as an afternoon marathon session.

Heck, not only did I think I’d have to say some pretty sharp words to Rian Johnson during the climax of The Last Jedi where he had Finn set up to kill himself in order to (possibly) save the dregs of the resistance, but to this day I block everyone I see on social media that wishes for Finn’s death by redemption arc – or suggest that his death would have somehow “saved” his character from being boring.

And now, Wynonna Earp has followed in the footsteps of these shows by killing off the main Black character Xavier Dolls (played by Shamier Anderson) in the third season’s second episode (“When You Call My Name”) and the fandom and crew alike don’t seem to get why that’s such a big problem.Read More »

Finally — It’s Supergirl

Stitch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm46-envrHo

By now, everyone who’s anyone has probably seen CBS’s first look at their Supergirl series. I just watched it today and promptly fell in love.

CBS’s Supergirl was kind of a given in terms of things that I’d like. I grew up with Smallville as the one show that I watched and kept watching through ups and downs and really weird storylines. Smallville was my go-to  for superhero shows because I loved the show and Clark and the powerful ladies that shaped him.

So of course I’m excited for a Supergirl series!Read More »

[TV Show] Daredevil

Stitch

AKA: How I spent an entire weekend in front of Netflix.

Daredevil PosterIn the interest of full-disclosure, I have a confession to make: I don’t know that much about Daredevil.

I saw the Ben Affleck films and I’ve seen him in Spider-Man comics and event tie-ins, but I know the bare bones about the character.

I know that he’s blind and that he’s a lawyer. Oh and that he’s Catholic. That’s about it.

That’s actually a good thing.

I didn’t come to Netflix’s Daredevil with any preconceptions of how the characters should be or how they should look. I wasn’t attached to him the way I was with Captain America so there’s no chance of me getting super pissed about characterization the way I was with the Avengers.

I’ve been watching Daredevil all weekend and I don’t regret a minute of it.

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[TV Recap] iZombie – Pilot

Stitch

[This recap/review contains images of mid blood/gore, and brains.

In the interest of full disclosure, there’s something that you all should know about me: I’m not a zombie fan. I cringe through my older sister’s recaps of The Walking Dead and have actually walked out of rooms if there are zombies on the tv screen. I can watch nearly every other type of horror subgenre with little to no issue, but zombies are where it stops for me.

normal_izombie_stills_101_002Usually.

The thing with iZombie is that I really and wholeheartedly love DC’s tv series. Aside from Gotham (which I got into late so I gave up on it), I have yet to find a DC series I didn’t like. I even own all of the Smallville DVD box sets. Yeah, DC has me hooked on their TV series.

So despite how terrified I am of zombies, I kind of had to watch iZombie and you know what? It’s really good.

So good that despite the fact that I’m probably going to have to rewatch that Neil DeGrasse Tyson clip about how zombies couldn’t actually exist in real life just to make it through the night, I’m going to be watching episode two next week.

Now, onward to the recap!Read More »