[TWDRAMA] 愛就宅一起 "ToGetHer"
Okay, since I'm trapped in my dorm room until I finish these translations for night school tonight, and also because I just finished an entire television show without English subtitles-go me! go me! I AM AWESOME.-I have decided to recap said drama. If I say anything about the show that is wrong, keep in mind how it was in Chinese, and I don't speak Chinese.
Okay, so this is a show from last year called 愛就宅一起, in English it's sometimes ToGetHer and sometimes Superstar Express. Neither of which is anything like the Chinese title at all, which is something like Love Together With ... A Housebound Nerd...? So I suck at translating okay.
OUR HEROINE IS Chen Momo, though the hero basically never calls her anything but Ah Zhai, which means "house person", it has the connotations of dorky nerditude, like the sort of person who never leaves their mother's basement. He means it kindly though, so we'll translate it as "dork." He calls her that forever, even after they are like, romantically involved, but then he gets pissed when people forget her name...? Whatever, dude. Her real name sort of creeps me out, to be honest, 默默 is a pretty name but it means silence. Who names their kid that?! ANYHOW, Momo is played by a very attractive woman named Rainie Yang but you'd honestly never suspect that due to her horrible hair in this show.
She's cute, though. Anyhow, I find Momo slightly hard to watch sometimes, because she is painfully, painfully shy. She rarely speaks, and she's obsessed with this manga called Prince Kashaba, which she reads constantly and carries everywhere. She's easily forgotten to the point where nobody she goes to school with has noticed her or knows her name. She'd rather read comic books than talk to human beings, and in fact the prospect of talking to human beings gives her panic attacks on a few occasions.
To be honest this could have been agonizing to watch but she is actually a super endearing character, because just because she's shy doesn't mean she lets everybody walk all over her ... much. The hero in particular gets no slack from her whatsoever, she beats the crap out of him twice. FOR GOOD REASON. I mean not that he's a psycho who deserves to have the shit kicked out of him, mostly she did it for LEGIT MISUNDERSTANDINGS THOUGH.
SPEAKING OF OUR HERO, he's Mars. Mars is actually Zhuang Junan, an egocentric washed up celebrity who appears to enjoy laughing theatrically, dressing in bizarre outfits, making bizarre faces, and making bizarre attempts at charming people. And talking to his own reflection. Like half the people he meets hate him. Naturally Momo is one of these people. He's played by Jiro Wang. Not at his most ridiculous, believe it or not-as far I know, that'd be Xiu Yi from Hana Kimi-nor is this my favorite character that he's played-that's either a toss up between Da Dong, hilarious badass, or Shi Lang, who's so fucking sweet and shy it actually physically pains me. BUT HE IS STILL RATHER ENDEARING IN THIS ROLE. And he's still fucking ridiculous. He's so ridiculous, oh my god.
Mars' career is going downhill. His movies suck, nobody is giving him any work, his company has sent him on this stupid publicity stunt where he has to go to school with regular college students, he's so broke he has to rent a room in somebody's house for so less NTD than I make in a month. He's taking this turn of luck very well.
NATURALLY, THIS IS A ROMANTIC COMEDY DRAMA, so of course he ends up renting a room from Momo, the girl from school who fucking can't stand his obnoxious ass. When they discover this totally unexpected completely unpredictable turn of events! Well, things go rather well.
However, perhaps burdened by the fact that they look way too good together to not end up with each other, they gradually GROW FOND OF EACH OTHER.
Really gradually. The entire story takes place over more than two years, which is actually one of the things that really impressed me about this show. Jiro especially acts this out with like, shocking competence. When he's doing something behind twisting his gorgeous face into the most grotesque expressions imaginable-
-he's actually extremely convincing as a guy who goes through a freaking lot. During this show, he almost loses his career and all of his friends, his mother beats him and later dies, he's punched in the face on several occasions, he's sexually harassed in a really creepy and unsettling way, he nearly dies twice, and when he falls in love with Momo and tells her so, she throws him out of her house and tells him to never speak to her again. (It's for his own good! Really!) HE MATURES A LOT through all of this horribleness, and by the end he's basically a completely different person.
RAINIE IS ALSO PRETTY AMAZING, she has so little dialogue she has to do like everything with her expressions.
Momo doesn't change as much as Mars throughout the course of the show but there is some definite character progression. Mars is attracted to her pretty much immediately and is hopelessly devoted to her before the series is half over, and she hurts his feelings tons of times (sometimes fairly hilariously) because she just can't deal with that. There's also a slightly uncomfortable subplot where she's being pressured to be caretaker for her developmentally disabled best friend-I don't mean uncomfortable as in, like, it was handled badly or anything. In fact I thought they handled it really well, Jiasen is a sympathetic character who is never played for laughs and he gets a decent amount of background and screentime and development. It's just hard to watch her deal with basically an unfair amount of responsibility, especially since she is all ~silent~ in dealing with it. But eventually she stands up for herself while still being there for Jiasen and stuff, it's pretty sweet.
There are also other endearing characters, like Momo's older sister Chuchu and Mars' manager Yizhi. But mostly the draw here is Momo and Mars and how adorable they are together. In short.
I LIKED THIS SHOW A LOT, it was a good replacement for 桃花小妹, which I still can't fucking find on Youtube, oh my god. Also this show taught me how to say, "I'm very happy for you." in Chinese: "我很替你開心." And lots of other words.
Okay back to translations, ugh.
Okay, so this is a show from last year called 愛就宅一起, in English it's sometimes ToGetHer and sometimes Superstar Express. Neither of which is anything like the Chinese title at all, which is something like Love Together With ... A Housebound Nerd...? So I suck at translating okay.
OUR HEROINE IS Chen Momo, though the hero basically never calls her anything but Ah Zhai, which means "house person", it has the connotations of dorky nerditude, like the sort of person who never leaves their mother's basement. He means it kindly though, so we'll translate it as "dork." He calls her that forever, even after they are like, romantically involved, but then he gets pissed when people forget her name...? Whatever, dude. Her real name sort of creeps me out, to be honest, 默默 is a pretty name but it means silence. Who names their kid that?! ANYHOW, Momo is played by a very attractive woman named Rainie Yang but you'd honestly never suspect that due to her horrible hair in this show.
She's cute, though. Anyhow, I find Momo slightly hard to watch sometimes, because she is painfully, painfully shy. She rarely speaks, and she's obsessed with this manga called Prince Kashaba, which she reads constantly and carries everywhere. She's easily forgotten to the point where nobody she goes to school with has noticed her or knows her name. She'd rather read comic books than talk to human beings, and in fact the prospect of talking to human beings gives her panic attacks on a few occasions.
To be honest this could have been agonizing to watch but she is actually a super endearing character, because just because she's shy doesn't mean she lets everybody walk all over her ... much. The hero in particular gets no slack from her whatsoever, she beats the crap out of him twice. FOR GOOD REASON. I mean not that he's a psycho who deserves to have the shit kicked out of him, mostly she did it for LEGIT MISUNDERSTANDINGS THOUGH.
SPEAKING OF OUR HERO, he's Mars. Mars is actually Zhuang Junan, an egocentric washed up celebrity who appears to enjoy laughing theatrically, dressing in bizarre outfits, making bizarre faces, and making bizarre attempts at charming people. And talking to his own reflection. Like half the people he meets hate him. Naturally Momo is one of these people. He's played by Jiro Wang. Not at his most ridiculous, believe it or not-as far I know, that'd be Xiu Yi from Hana Kimi-nor is this my favorite character that he's played-that's either a toss up between Da Dong, hilarious badass, or Shi Lang, who's so fucking sweet and shy it actually physically pains me. BUT HE IS STILL RATHER ENDEARING IN THIS ROLE. And he's still fucking ridiculous. He's so ridiculous, oh my god.
Mars' career is going downhill. His movies suck, nobody is giving him any work, his company has sent him on this stupid publicity stunt where he has to go to school with regular college students, he's so broke he has to rent a room in somebody's house for so less NTD than I make in a month. He's taking this turn of luck very well.
NATURALLY, THIS IS A ROMANTIC COMEDY DRAMA, so of course he ends up renting a room from Momo, the girl from school who fucking can't stand his obnoxious ass. When they discover this totally unexpected completely unpredictable turn of events! Well, things go rather well.
However, perhaps burdened by the fact that they look way too good together to not end up with each other, they gradually GROW FOND OF EACH OTHER.
Really gradually. The entire story takes place over more than two years, which is actually one of the things that really impressed me about this show. Jiro especially acts this out with like, shocking competence. When he's doing something behind twisting his gorgeous face into the most grotesque expressions imaginable-
-he's actually extremely convincing as a guy who goes through a freaking lot. During this show, he almost loses his career and all of his friends, his mother beats him and later dies, he's punched in the face on several occasions, he's sexually harassed in a really creepy and unsettling way, he nearly dies twice, and when he falls in love with Momo and tells her so, she throws him out of her house and tells him to never speak to her again. (It's for his own good! Really!) HE MATURES A LOT through all of this horribleness, and by the end he's basically a completely different person.
RAINIE IS ALSO PRETTY AMAZING, she has so little dialogue she has to do like everything with her expressions.
Momo doesn't change as much as Mars throughout the course of the show but there is some definite character progression. Mars is attracted to her pretty much immediately and is hopelessly devoted to her before the series is half over, and she hurts his feelings tons of times (sometimes fairly hilariously) because she just can't deal with that. There's also a slightly uncomfortable subplot where she's being pressured to be caretaker for her developmentally disabled best friend-I don't mean uncomfortable as in, like, it was handled badly or anything. In fact I thought they handled it really well, Jiasen is a sympathetic character who is never played for laughs and he gets a decent amount of background and screentime and development. It's just hard to watch her deal with basically an unfair amount of responsibility, especially since she is all ~silent~ in dealing with it. But eventually she stands up for herself while still being there for Jiasen and stuff, it's pretty sweet.
There are also other endearing characters, like Momo's older sister Chuchu and Mars' manager Yizhi. But mostly the draw here is Momo and Mars and how adorable they are together. In short.
I LIKED THIS SHOW A LOT, it was a good replacement for 桃花小妹, which I still can't fucking find on Youtube, oh my god. Also this show taught me how to say, "I'm very happy for you." in Chinese: "我很替你開心." And lots of other words.
Okay back to translations, ugh.