Drama review: Channel X

A couple of months ago I got addicted to the Taiwanese drama "It Started With A kiss" and its sequel "They Kiss Again". The drama starred Joe Cheng and Ariel Lin. I watched the drama because I had seen the Korean version first and the acting left me very unsatisfied. Long story short I fell in love with Joe Cheng and stumbled onto this drama. I never got pass episode 13.

I was a little disappointed with this 19 episode drama, not because of the acting but because it just dragged on and on and on and okay the acting wouldn't win any Oscars or any award for that matter. The drama begins with the lead actress (Amber Kuo) who plays Hong Xiao Lu falling out of a window and crashing  in to the car below. Then we see our lead actor An Zai Yong (Joe Cheng) looking into a camera and blaming BIGTV and society  for forcing  him to kill his own girlfriend. Flash back to the present and Zai Yong is a lead anchor at BIGTV news with his beloved fiancee, Luo Shan Shan (Michelle Chen)  and a bright future ahead of him. This all crashes and burns when Shan Shan is murdered in front of her video camera that crashed to the floor when she was struggling with her attacker. Zai Yong comes to her apartment and sees her fanatic environmentalist of an ex boyfriend exiting her apartment  and rushes into the apartment. He apparently does not notice the signs of a struggle and the audience sees that the killer is in the balcony chocking the life out of Shan Shan but Zai Yong is still oblivious. This should have been my cue to stop watching the drama but he's just so handsome with black hair! 

Because this is a drama Zai Yong gets blamed for the murder of his fiancee as he was in the apartment the whole time and the killer left unnoticed. Then a mysterious girl shows up and helps him escape the police...well she practically kidnaps him. The mysterious girl is Hong Xiao Lu who works for an online tabloid called Channel X which is a big critic of BIGTV news and its competitor. While Channel X prides itself on being brutally honest, BIGTV is the typical shady big TV station that reports what they want.  Long story boring it turns out that Chen Jia Lin (Ivan Ai), the CEO of a shady corporation, has bought BIGTV news in order to cover up the environmental damage he is doing with his  company. Shan Shan and her ex boyfriend found out and so Jia Lin sends his ninja to  kill her and later her ex boyfriend as well. As if all of this is not dramatic enough Jia Lin turns out to be the father of Xiao Lu and the reason why she's so against corruption. However, never underestimate a daddy's love because Xiao Lu starts to fall for all of her daddy's tricks as she still hopes he'll really love her one day.  On the other side of the sucker road is Zai Yong who is being tricked by Zuo Yi An( Tracy Zhou) , the one who got away  back in college, into thinking that she's helping him get evidence to prove Jia Lin murdered his fiancee but she's actually getting paid by the bad guy to sabotage him. For the finale of my tiresome adventure Joe Cheng sleeps not only with Shan Shan but with Yi An and Xiao Lu. As anyone can imagine that is one of the top reasons I decided to see this drama but is also the reason I decided to stop watching as I was tired of watching him be with The Witch A.K.A Yi An. 

Asian dramas have a way of portraying any and all kind of love without the almost porn that we see in American TV shows...Ahem I'm looking at you True Blood. However, this one was a bit stilted because while I felt they kept gathering evidence for their case they just kept getting smacked down by the bad guys. In the end Jia Lin only got caught because   they tricked him into thinking his daughter was dead. I like blood and action and guns and the only action in Channel X was all the running Joe Cheng had to do. 

Never again will I be swayed by a pretty face...unless Mike He is in any way involved in which case I'm always willing to hit the mute button and stare until I can't anymore. 

Bottom line: If you think you can stare at Joe all day with the mute button on then by all means go ahead and watch this drama but if you were looking for the great entertainment that was It Started With A Kiss then you will just turn off your computer, go to sleep and try again tomorrow...with another show.