Attention Please and Pride

Some of the first Japanese dramas I have seen are Kekkon Dekinai Otoko and Kimi Wa Petto. I found both enjoyable, and I skipped at most five minutes. Deciding to give Japanese dramas a bigger chance, I quickly pursued others. Unfortunately, I have yet to find another good one.I got halfway through watching a drama called Attention Please, and immediately stopped upon hearing that the two characters that I was rooting for would never be. The storyline was about a woman who wanted to become an airline steward in order to pursue her love (he was a pilot). Throughout she is silly, clumsy, and a bit of an airhead. However, at the end of the day she would pull through. Every episode she would learn a lesson and soon after make another mistake, it began to be repetitive.

I have seen a couple more dramas in between. None really noteworthy when thinking about the mess of a drama called Pride. Many people claimed that this drama was amazing, and I still don't understand why. The premise of the drama is about hockey. A girl meets the captain of a hockey team and the two of them decide to have a no strings attached romance (What could possibly go wrong?). Unfortunately for their budding romance, the girl has a “boyfriend” that she has been waiting for and the boy has decided to never get serious because hockey is more important. It wouldn’t have been that bad, had she not been waiting for her “boyfriend” for two years without even a phone call (ugh!). Throughout the story the guy keeps on calling her the woman of the last century, and throughout I kept rolling my eyes thinking about how woman’s status has changed since then. The women in the drama are either ridiculously naïve or understanding. It sickened me.  Back to the plot. As the two lovebirds are finally getting closer, the girl receives a call from her “boyfriend”. He tells her that he is back and ready to continue their romance that “never ended”, kill me now. For unknown reasons she decides to go back, right as the guy she was having fun with decides to take it to the next step. Gah! The remaining three or so episodes are dedicated to side stories and people talking about the two’s love (can anyone say the last seasons of Bones…grrr.) It isn’t until the finale that the girl decides to go back, but only after receiving approval from her “boyfriend”. She races to the hockey match and sees that the captain has fallen. As he is laying on the ice, he envisions the ice goddess that he and the coaches had put all their effort in seeing, sigh. I wasn’t able to tell if the goddess was the girl or another woman, but for the sake of keeping my cool I would like to believe it was the main girl. Kudos, he was looking for her all along. After the game, the two meet up.  Neither of them say anything worthwhile and they both part ways. Skip to three years later, the guy is now in the NHL, living it up as a big time hockey star. The girl of course still likes him, as seen through her long gaze at the TV show with him on it. She decides to go skating to relieve stress, and wouldn’t you know it, the guy is there, jeez. He asks her to come back with him, stating she is the only one for him. And of course she agrees. The Fudging end! I can’t believe I watched the first five episodes without realizing how freaking sexist and stupid the drama was. The other 70% of the story was dedicated to the hockey team members having problems and pulling it together in the end. Thus I saved myself from watching about half of the freaking show. Yay...

This was written some time ago. It is the first entry that I have made of this sort in my journal, thus I felt that it should be my second blog entry.