Handsome Stewardess (2019)

maybe not the rep you're looking for

I was very excited for another GL but in the end was left disappointed.

I'll start by saying, the acting was good, and I especially loved Huang Pei Jia - I've watched her before and I love seeing her play strong characters. However a few being particularly good at acting doesn't change the writing.

Here's the first big thing I didn't like, and I don't think it's spoilery to warn people about it: I didn't like the drag queen/trans jokes in ep 1 and 3. Even if we think that there are cultural differences, those types of jokes were transphobic and I didn't like seeing other gay people use them. And also the fact that they made the chairwoman of the KK Fashion Group out to be bisexual, and on the heels of that had her saying that love is free and she doesn't have to be loyal to her 2 other boyfriends and doesn't care if she's cheating or if Holly cheats on Meng Lian with her....... that type of writing just encourages biphobic tropes. Despite being an LGBT+ series it seems the writer still has some prejudices that came through too often in the drama the way they talked about members of the community.

SPOILERS BEGIN HERE:

The plot was fine, but nothing special. Meng Lian and Holly get together after knowing each other for only an evening, and Holly impulsively quits her job and follows Meng Lian to Singapore. Early on we get a couple talks about the differences in LGBT+ rights in Taiwan vs Singapore, the denial of cross border marriages or foreigners participating in pride parades (where even if you're from Hong Kong you can't go to the Singapore pride parade), etc, which I thought was good to include since it shone a light on the LGBT+ community in these areas. Holly becomes a stewardess which also opens up a discussion of workplace harassment of the staff, primarily women (but we see it also happening to the men once). However when Holly switches to a man's uniform she's suddenly alright flirting with all the women on the flight who were previously harassing the men - despite having a girlfriend I might add.

The topic of harassment and objectification continues, but Holly's behaviour towards the women fliers, who she is mutually flirting with, obviously bothers Meng Lian and Holly doesn't notice or care. She actually flaunts it in front of Meng Lian, saying she enjoys being a part of women's fantasies. She also begins to lie and deflect about who she's spending time with and doesn't even seem to notice she's leaving Meng Lian out of her life, or that lack of honesty isn't good for a relationship. Her explanation when she was caught was literally just "look at your reaction I knew you'd react like this so I lied". She doesn't even pay attention to Meng Lian, and doesn't take the hint about her birthday, and isn't present for Meng Lian to talk about her concerns regarding the MMA competition. (The fact that Chuan remembered Meng Lian's birthday while Holly THE GF not only didn't remember but went on a flight to Europe the same day and didn't even realize why there was cake in the house). The only time they do talk, Holly dismisses Meng Lian's desire for stability and shouts at her calling her weak. Meng Lian gets upset at Holly yelling put downs at her and lashes out, accidentally hitting Holly. Not to excuse Meng Lian, but that time really did read like a reflexive thing from her training and not purposeful abuse, but I still do really hate that they added in this element where a partner gets hit (and it seems to try and make Meng Lian out to be the bad guy despite like... everything else). Basically after this the plot keeps rolling showing us they're on entirely different paths and Meng Lian doesn't want to be with Holly anymore.

Meng Lian's own plot didn't shift dramatically with or without Holly: she's an athlete fighting the stay in the game despite a sexist society telling her not to go for it, and an injury that prompts her to change sports. Her side of things doesn't feel as well developed, and I wish we got to see more of her conflict since she's a lesbian in Singapore, not feeling comfortable coming out to her parents and feels like she's risking stability being openly out in society in general. A lot of her decisions are motivated by growing up in such an environment, but the plot doesn't get into it properly. It seems more like they use Holly to be dunk on Singapore like "you're so stiff here you're so behind us i'm going to rail against all of this" because she grew up in Taiwan - it isn't helpful to Meng Lian's plot to just criticize her and not empathize with the environment she lives in. I also wish we got to see more of Chuan and the other gym members around Meng Lian, I liked them a lot but they weren't given a lot of time at all compared to Holly's coworkers.

Straight up, I didn't like the relationship between Holly and Meng Lian. They seemed like different people who want different things who got together without knowing the other. To me, the plot didn't give us any reason to care about their relationship - we barely even got time where they were together! They were always apart. The drama seemed to keep driving home that they had different wants and needs. Neither are entirely wrong in their pursuits, but they do seem incompatible - mostly because they don't talk about these things as a couple at all and find a way to understand the other or compromise. Holly is carefree and loves to challenge society, which distresses Meng Lian, and Meng Lian likes stability and people who are down to earth, which frustrated Holly who thinks she's being weak for not taking more risks.

Even by the end, Holly should just let Meng Lian go, but continues to chase her despite, honestly, being the one who messed it all up. What they both need in a relationship seems to be very different, and Meng Lian concludes this and goes forward alone by the end, but Holly won't let go and we see her repeat what she did at the beginning and go after Meng Lian.

I do appreciate the ending that didn't try to fix everything and let them separate - even though it's shown Holly keeps going after her. Not all relationships work out, and for this one I saw nothing that convinced me they were good for each other. I actually was rooting for Chuan, who seemed more compatible with Meng Lian, despite the limited screentime/development the drama offered all the side characters.

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Let me start by saying that the female lead Holly was really a handsome stewardess, she rocked that hairstyle and the butch vibes, and I had such a big crush on her. 😍 Out of the other characters I liked Mei Ling, the fact that she did martial arts was very cool and I liked how both the women in the couple were sorta tomboyish and that the relationship wasn't heteronormative – nothing wrong with it, I just feel like straight directors and screenwriters tend to push the heteronormativity too much into BLs and GLs. But that wasn't this case since the creator of this series is a lesbian herself and I was very happy to find that out.

It was interesting to see the differences between Taiwan and Singapore, with one country being open minded towards LGBTQ+ persons and the other one not and how the contrast was shown in the drama and it was also nice to see an international couple. Another thing which I really liked was how they showed how the oversexualization of flight attendants' uniforms is making it hard to work for them and kudos to the creators for showing that women aren't the only one being abused and that it's a problem too.

The one thing I REALLY didn't like was how there were some really awful transphobic jokes about transgender people and drag queens as these two are completely different and nothing alike. Due to this I dropped the rating a bit but otherwise it was a really enjoyable series. Although the ending was open, I don't think we will be getting a second season though. 😔

My final rating for Handsome Stewardess is 8/10.

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