Friday Night Happy Hour

Like last time there's going to be spoilers.

Secret Garden 

This week's drama was 'Secret Garden' which along with last week's 'Miss Korea' I worry that I'm going to use up all the really good dramas by the end of the month.

'Secret Garden' is about a stunt-woman played by Ha Ji Won who ends up falling in love with this rich snobby CEO of a department store played by Hyun Bin. Well, really I guess it's the other way around, he falls in love with her. Anyway as you can probably guess their relationship starts out really rocky but through magic and persistence they are able to end up happily ever after. "Happily ever after" if you consider having three whiny kids a happy ending. Oh and since they're Korean the kids also speak whiny Korean. I guess being a whiny kid doesn't sound good in any language.

The gimmick of the show is that every time it rains they switch bodies. This is all comes about because through some fuckery they both happen to be at Jeju together. During a bike race between Gi Ra Im(Ha Ji Won), Joo Won(Hyun Bin), and Oska(Yoon Sang-Hyeon) Gi Ra Im gets lost in the woods and Joo Won goes out to find her. He finds her and Gi Ra Im says she's hungry so for some reason they decide to at eat this weird restaurant out in the middle of nowhere that was alluded to in a previous scene. That scene reminded me a little of Blair Witch Project I mean why would you go into a creepy ass house in the middle of nowhere even if you are that hungry? So while they're at this restaurant they notice all these bottles of wine and the waitress gives them each one. Through separate scenes we see they each end up drinking it and then it rains and that's when the jokes happen.

The first scene where they switch is probably the funniest in the whole show. In total they only switch three times but I wish they would've done it more. Going in to the show that's really the only thing I knew about it so I was a little disappointed I had to wait until like the 5th or 6th episode for it to happen and then after that it only happened twice more and the third time doesn't really count for reasons I'll get into later.

As the series goes on we learn that Joo Won has a thing where he has really bad claustrophobia caused by a traumatic experience he can't remember. This causes a big thing when during the second time they switch Ra Im, as Joo Won, is on an elevator when it suddenly rains and they switch back to their normal bodies. (Throughout the series, when it's really important what they're saying the series would show them talking as themselves so you're not confused who is saying what to who. Even talking about it now I'm getting confused. I assume if you're reading this though you've already seen the show and know what I'm talking about.) Joo Won flips out and starts having a panic attack and so Ra Im races back to help him. Side note: Ra Im's lifelong dream is to get a major role in an action film and that's what she's doing when Joo Won has his panic attack. In essence she's giving up her life long dream to help him.

Throughout the series Joo Won's mom shows she's the worst fucking person ever. I've never wanted a fictional character to die more than this woman. I thought Se Na from Rooftop Prince was bad but I hate this person even more.

Eventually we find out that Joo Won's traumatic experience was a building fire where he was stuck in an elevator and a fireman came and saved him, killing himself in the process. Oh, did I mention Ra Im's dad died in a mysterious accident a long time ago? You can put together what that means.

In the end Joo Won's mom basically disowns him because he won't give up Ra Im. They get a courthouse marriage thing done and then it flashes forward five years where they all live happily together with big ass portraits of their three annoying kids. I'm not sure why I have this irrational hatred of their kids since they're only screen for maybe 2 minutes but I do. During the epilogue it shows Ra Im and Joo Won taking their kids to see grandmother and while she seemingly likes her grandkids she still won't see Mr. and Mrs. Joo Won. Bitch ass to the end. It was strange because the last time I saw her she played the grandmother's minion in 'Rooftop' where she was unlikable but it was an enjoyable unlikableness. Here I just plain despised her. In 'Rooftop' the grandmother gets pushed down the stairs and dies and I was sincerely hoping something like that would happen to Joo Woo's mom in this show. Or maybe hit by a bus, or eaten by a bear. No such luck.

Unlike in 'Ms. Korea' I didn't really have a clear cut favorite character. I've been a fan of Ha Ji Won since before I really got into kpop and I thought she was pretty good in this. She can play the really cute girlfriend type just as well as the kick-your-ass type of action star. Both give me boners. The movie broke the 4th wall a couple times like when she was given a new script to try out for that was called 'Sector 7'... I guess that's amusing I mean "free" advertising is free advertising. Also this was the first thing I saw Hyun Bin and he's honestly a pretty good actor. That he could go from really stern prick CEO guy to basically gay guy when they switched was pretty cool, same for Ji Won. Oh that reminds me the show also had an openly gay character in it which was really interesting given Korean society.

Well. This is a shit load of words so I'll wrap it up. I liked the show a lot.

Fucking Diablo 3

I had really high hopes Reaper of Souls would fix everything that made Diablo 3 shit. First, Loot 2.0 fixed it so that when a legendary dropped it should actually be useful for you. You wouldn't think "Is this legendary good, but how good is it going to be?" The new act was pretty cool, and the Mystic allowed further customization of gear which even more helped for legendaries to not be shit. Then there was the bounties and rifts which made the game a lot more replayable and gave you something to do other than endlessly running the campaign over and over.

For the first 2 weeks or so all was good, however now that I've sunk 200+ hours into the expansion I realized is the same old shit. The expansion was merely a diversion from the core problems that have been there from the beginning. Perhaps I'm just not cut out for ARPGs.

The main problem in my opinion is that once you get to a certain level of gear, which I have been at for over two weeks now, the game gets cripplingly boring. The legendary problem still remains as well, 95% of everything you get is still shit. There are only a handful of legendaries in the game that are worth anything. That's another thing, Blizzard removed the auction house entirely so now there is no way to trade anything with anyone. So like I said once you get to a certain level in gear you start to specfically look for a specfic legendary or two however those legendaries have such a small chance of dropping you could go months without ever seeing them.

And that's where I am. I've completely lost the will to go on since I've accepted that I will never see the items I want. I realize that is the nature of ARPGs but if there was just someway to know that I could be working for a specific item I would probably play again, and don't know me bloodshards are the answer because those are garbage. So anyway, that extremely flawed game is still flawed.

Crusader Kings 2 - The Book

I just finished this book called 'The Plantagenets' by Dan Jones. If you have any sort of interest in medieval times or British history I would highly recommend it. It covers, obviously, the Plantagenets who reigned from roughly the 12 to 15th centuries. Within that family are some of Britain's greatest monarchs including Richard the Lion Heart, Henry II, and Edward I and III. It also includes some of the most disastrous like Edward II and Richard II. It's so good I'm seriously considering pre-ordering Jones' second book which covers the War of the Roses. Pre-ordering a book? Yes. Crusader Kings 2 is my favorite medieval incest simulator video games ever possibly and this book is basically like the novel of it.

This is possibly the greatest sporting time of the year

There were just three game 7s in hockey and now on Saturday we get three game 7s in the NBA! That's pretty amazing. Too bad I almost don't care about either sport, especially hockey. This is already the best first round ever in the NBA, that's not even debatable. Personally I'm hoping Indiana loses, that'd be funny I guess. Well, if you have any interest I hope you have fun.