I was on a flight Sunday that was massively delayed, which worked out to allow me to chill at the airport lounge and watch all three of the new TW-dramas premiering that night. SETTV had Love Around with Annie Chen and George Hu, going up against CTV‘s Love SOS starring Daniel Chan, Jian Man Shu, and Patrick Li, and both of those joining the already airing GTV drama Fabulous Boys with Jiro Wang. CTS wisely decided to leave the Sunday night at 10 timeslot and premiered its new drama at 8 pm called Lucky Touch with Calvin Chen and Do Hua Mei. Everyone expected Love Around to be the nightly leader since the leads were just coming off another popular daily drama together, and indeed the ratings came in with LA almost hitting 2, following by Love SOS breaking 1, and Fabulous Boys bringing up the rear still not able to break 1 even with this new line up. I watched all three new dramas and was so horrified I lost my appetite and later on ended up hungry on the plane. There is suck and there is even more suck, but in general if a drama merely sucks its already bad enough. Of the three new dramas that premiered, Love Around sucked the least and Love SOS was baaaaaad, but it was Love Touch that was so horrendous as to defy description of how bad it was. I have no expectations of CTS or CTV dramas in general, but for SETTV to premiere a Sunday night drama that I thought sucked donkey balls on the first episode was truly shocking to me. Normally SETTV dramas start off winning and interesting, and its only later that it becomes a runaway train to crazytown. LA is everything mediocre and dull, with Annie over-acting like she would get paid more for mugging, George so stiff I thought he was auditioning for Lurch and he enunciates every word he speaks (Like. This. Is. That. Not. Annoying?), the directing was absurdly jarring with weird shot angles, poor scene construction, painfully contrived reaction shots, and the music was pretty much playing Bii‘s song over and over again. I couldn’t even find any chemistry between the two leads because both their characters are pathetic and annoying I wanted them to fall into a ditch. All of this was bound together by not having a story AT ALL. None, zip, nada, episode 1 shows us two people dealing with breakups and hangups over very horrible exes and then hanging out by happenstance. Good lord does that pass for a narrative these days? Oh Taiwan, why so much epic fail in one night. Can I have my King Flower back, at least it tried even if the powers that be kept jerking it around. Continue reading →