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i decided to try a romcom i somehow missed i the 2000s 'head over heels' and i got 3 and a half minutes in and we're introduced to the lonely MC with bad taste in men as evidenced by her extremely short list of ex boyfriends, including her first boyfriend when she was 11 or something because i guess that's still relevant in her adult life.

so she's resigned herself to never finding love and prefers to ignore men to focus all her energy into her career.

this job is immediately presented as though it's for spinsters with no hope of ever finding a man.

the mc's lesbian bestie (whose first line involves her being scolded for being too sexual in the workplace, but moving on) points out their colleagues as evidence that they're doomed to a romance-less, sexless life if they don't switch up their shared career path. the colleagues are three old women, so-dubbed "the menopause triplets":

these women are presented as if they have no idea what's going on at any given moment. this is 2001, and presumably this is an entry level job requiring low effort and no experience.

then their boss bursts into the room, unceremoniously bumping a large painting into the door jam and walls, announcing that it's a new project for our MC.

our MC is thrilled to see the painting. apparently it's a light in the daily slog at her dreary job for loser women with nothing going on in their lives.

And that job is? Conservator of paintings (specializing in Renaissance) at the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The painting being handled like an old couch on its way to the curb?

The Bacchanal of the Andrians by Titian.

Her lesbian colleague who is presumably also a a highly trained & skilled curator finds it depressing that the MC is so excited about the painting.

Wow, yet another completely unearned big emotional moment. No build up via prior scenes where they actually bond. Constantly undercut by intrusive, bombastic score.

Okay, there are a couple of good parts.

Okay, these two are kind of cute.

If this incredibly tired plotline is going where I think it is, it should really have been resolved in like 2 episodes, not 40.

How are they all this stupid?

I normally hate character death, but this series didn't bother to make me care about any of these people. Ugh.

Blah blah blah, fate, mankind is fundamentally good, mankind is fundamentally evil

Well, at least my ship happened.

Hilariously, the one most obvious thing that I was sure would happen is just about the only stupid and overly obvious thing that never did.

Our Hero reverses time to before the beginning of the plot, so everyone is alive, hasn't been character assassinated, etc. They all end up in their obvious canon het relationships (which, to be fair, I ship most of). Our Hero is reborn as a fox or some shit? Maybe he's the pet the jackasses are fighting over in this new timeline? IDK. The villain is presumably reborn as some mortal rando so they can meet again some day because feelings.

Except there are no feelings.

Those require scenes where your perfectly good cast is allowed to actually act, preferably without EXTREMELY LOUD SCORE all over everything.

I didn't think this series would be good, but it's amazing how much worse it kept getting. And then worse again.

At least the women were violent and dangerous with none of this "She's strong in her own waaaaay" bullshit. (No, chucklefucks who are hung up on The Untamed, being good at mom-ing the rest of the cast means fuckall in this genre no matter what values you're trying to project onto Chinese culture. In the Stabbing With Swords media, the characters who matter stab with swords.)

So, in terrible news, Trump's trying to pull some strings to pass this massive internet censorship bill, featuring all the kinds of internet censorship we're terrified of, including mandatory ID for accessing basically any website, specifically to crush state regulation of AI, because apparently this man will always see the moral bottom of the barrel and start digging.

6/14/2026