Saturday, August 16, 2008

An Overdue Review: The Seventh Day




Seventh Day is basically a ‘korean-like’ drama. That was what I thought of it when it started filming. To me most Korean dramas, their goal is to support the companies selling tissue paper. I’ve noticed whenever my mom or someone watches one of those ‘touching’ Korean dramas, they end up finishing my box of tissues. Most of these ‘touching’ dramas end up with one of the lead dying of cancer. Honestly, what really is the possibility of getting cancer? Why is it such a popular thing for these ‘touching’ dramas? So When I heard that Seventh Day would be like that, I automatically assumed that one of the leads would get cancer. How? I didn’t really care.

The Seventh Day was a series that I never once thought that I would look forward to watching. It was one of those series that I thought that I would probably skip just because I didn’t feel like it had that ‘attracting’ power. When it came out, I thought I’d give it a try, since I really had nothing else to watch. The first few episodes were ‘meh.’ They weren’t draggy, but neither were they interesting. I thought that I would give up on the series...but since I still had nothing better to watch, I continued to watch it. The more I watched, the more I noticed myself being entertained by it. I have to admit that Bosco and Natalie really helped pull the series through. Yes, Kevin and Niki are the ‘main’ pair, but their storyline was nothing close to entertaining. Watching Kevin and Niki was entertaining in the sense that they had so much chemistry together, but...their storyline was just so ‘bleh.’




Some scenes I enjoyed watching in first half of the series would have to be the ones with Bosco and Natalie, when they were trying to get the other to ‘fall’ in love with them. These storylines are often used, but no matter how many times they are used, they are still very entertaining to watch. I just loved it how both Don and Sasa had their own motives. Usually one of the two would be ‘innocent’ and the ‘innocent’ person would be the one who would get hurt when the truth comes out. But in this case, while proceeding with their plans, they actually fell in love. At one point Don even thought about dating Sasa if she wasn’t a rich girl. But of course that couldn’t happen; TVB had to add their own drama into it. Don finds out that Sasa is in fact not a rich girl at all, so he decides to avoid her, thinking that she would actually leave him. But at the moment, Sasa actually ‘loved’ him. Thinking that he was ill, she tried to do things to accommodate his needs. When she found out that the only reason why he wanted to go out with her was because he thought she was rich, the tables turned.

Watching Natalie and Bosco trick each other was highly amusing. Watching Natalie torture Bosco during their ‘relationship’ and when she found out the truth was also amusing. Watching Bosco realize that he actually loved Natalie was cute. But this only occurred during the first half of the drama...

The second half of the series no longer had the highly entertaining Natalie and Bosco bits, but were filled with the more emotional scenes brought to us by Kevin and Niki. It was starting from episode 11 that moved along Kevin and Niki’s storyline. From the beginning of the series we all knew that Niki had some hereditary illness, and knew that her mother had died from it. From episode 10 we found out that Kevin was somehow linked to someone’s death. But we knew nothing more than that.

Kevin’s Ah Wing ended up quitting his job at the coffee shop. Niki’s Ah Yan finds a postcard from some anonymous person at Ah Wing’s apartment. (dum...dum...dum...) At this moment I already thought that something will happen between them. Niki’s character, who is quite naive didn’t trust Ah Wing. Apparently from the writing she could tell that it was from a woman. Taking her cousin’s advice, she decides to give him ‘the silent treatment.’ When she finally received his messages he was in Japan. Japan? Wasn’t that where that old man accused Ah Wing of killing his daughter? (Gasps) This must mean that it’s linked to that ‘other’ woman.

Ah Yan ends up going to Japan to find Ah Wing...this is where it was supposed to get really exciting, which it was...sort of. Now we have a storyline with one person having AIDS and the other having cancer...wow...so ‘Korean-like.’

Since I’m not too fond of going into details, I’ll skip ahead to the ending. I have to admit that the ending was much better than I had expected. I expected that Niki would die...like just die because the surgery didn’t go too well. But I was wrong...she lived. I really liked how Ah Yan’s daughter was born on the same day as Sasa’s. And watching Ah Wing and Don congratulate each other was quite amusing as well. The best part about the ending has to be how Kevin was narrating and he’s standing in a field of snow when someone throws a snowball at him...and then a couple of seconds later you see that scene again, he looks a bit older. That was the moment when he mentioned Niki died, and the person throwing the snowball at him was his little daughter. I think TVB did a smart thing with that, maybe because I’m still young and haven’t watched enough series, but I think that this was actually an original thing. I liked it. As for Don and Sasa, after all of the misunderstandings, they got back together. Don’s comic idea thing was cute.

All in all, this series was actually enjoyable, and a lot better than I had expected it to be. I guess I just have low expectations for TVB now a days since, all their ‘master-pieces’ and ‘grand-productions’ are not always great. So I’d rather have low expectations and not get disappointed than have high expectations and get a feeling of great disappointment.

As for the star of the show...it has to be (drum roll)

JACK!

He is the cutest and smartest dog I have ever seen on a TVB series. The interactions between Ah Yan and Jack were amazing. I loved it how he always knew when she was lying, when she wasn’t feeling well and was always there for her. I’m pretty sure if Jack was human, Ah Yan would’ve easily fallen for him.

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