I am not rating this an 8 to balance poor reviews. I really liked it.

There are a few qualities to this show that I think are special, and I'll put it in list form to respect your time.

1. There are no toxic female characters. In fact the female character is very strong. She handles getting dumped like a boss.
2. The lead is openly and unselfconsciously gay from the start.
3. There are no manufactured crises thrown in for drama. The drama is all in the interaction between the characters. Although a real life crisis in the form of COVID torpedoes the ship and they needed to patch it up as best they could.
4. While there are screeching predatory trans characters, They're only in the first two episodes then disappear forever. I assume the producer sent back the script with a note to add more screeching predatory trans characters "because that's how it's done", and the writer hoped he wouldn't read the revised version past the opening eps.
5. No fem shaming. When there are screeching trans characters, the attractive boys are polite to them, and there doesn't appear to be any opprobrium attached to femininity.
6. People actually communicate when they have problems and conflicts, and they talk things through and find a way to forgive and remain friends. There's a character that likes another, then finds out the guy was in a secret relationship with someone else. The character's reaction was "If I had known, I wouldn't have burdened anyone with unwanted attention." I almost choked to death on a cookie when he said that. Nobody ever acts like an adult in these situations. Or, two guys are dating, a third boy that one of the couple knows walks by and there's a brief and awkward conversation. The other boy in the couple can tell there's something between them so he asks, and the first one tells him the full truth that he's a guy he used to have a crush on. I almost choked to death on another cookie. The usual formula would mandate a lie which is soon discovered followed by insane jealousy, sulking, and a montage of good times spent together with a sappy ballade blaring. The new bf is happy the explanation is so harmless and that's it. The exception to the authenticity of conversations is that people don't seem terribly curious about the god that lives in their house - I might have some questions about god life, and god friends & stuff.
7. Absolutely zero seme/uke dynamic - just two guys. It's so refreshing that they don't pigeonhole the characters.
8. No tropes. (a couple of them, but limited) No accidental kisses, no "I'm not gay, I only love one single guy (forever)", no agonizing over liking a man, no parents agonizing over their son liking a man, no falling so their faces end up too close together and they stare at each until they turn gay (it does happen once, but it's subversive), no evil girlfriend, no insane jealousy over their gay bf talking to a woman. Actually, there's almost no jealousy at all.
8. There are NO ENGINEERS.
9. Plenty of cuteness.
10. The main character has a certain something. Sort of an effortless manliness while still being boyish. He's a good actor - not a huge range, but he does what he does well, and he's never cringey. He also looks unusually good with his shirt off. He's a reserved character, but when he needs affection, he's adorable. And he has a moment of romantic aggression that's very wow.
11. It's not completely predictable. There is no possible way you could predict how it ends unless you read spoilers or have superpowers. Even the beginning parts - you think it's going to go a certain way, then you realize it's not, but it makes sense how it went.
12. When he's feeling heartbroken, Tae does something that a normal person might do, and has a normal-person reaction afterwards.
13. There's some funny use of classical music, especially Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King.

The bad qualities:

1. The production is average. Better than most low-budget series, but not to the standards of the mainline shows.
2. The acting is uneven. One of the main characters is good, a few of the other characters are good, but overall pretty meh. Cupid is such a naive doofus that he's charming and cute, but not a lot going on in the acting. He's not the same actor that was in the initial promos, so something went wrong somewhere.
3. The directing is not too good. It's fine for scenery, and it's clear the Chiang Mai chamber of commerce is a sponsor of the show, and maybe the tourism board, because there is a LOT of time spent walking around and going into random stores. But they also visit temples, which are interesting. You learn how to ff through things that bore you.
4. The subtitles are OK, but maybe take more effort to read than they should. It's not a dealbreaker, and it's 10 times better than So Much In Love, where I never did come to understand why the principal wanted to destroy a volleyball team.
5. Editing is not great. There are scenes that are too long.
6. The first episode is bad. They're lucky that many people stayed with the series. Confessing my shallowness, there's a good fifteen minutes of the main character showering and walking around in a towel, or I might have dropped it.

Not exactly a bad quality, but if you watch it, it's better to be prepared, You can skip this section if you want to just be surprised:

This was filmed some time ago, and was interrupted by COVID in a major way. It was originally supposed to be 10 eps, not 12, and sure enough, the main crisis happens in Ep 8, and then "poof!" They resumed production months later, and apparently a lot of actors were unavailable, so they had to make some big adjustments. They way they resolved the problem will not be to everyone's taste. As it was airing, some people were upset, but other people thought it was much better than before.

The acting and the production are better in the last four eps. The main character's hair is a lot different, but I liked it. He also wears more flattering clothes and it's a bit of a shirtless goldmine. A new character joins the cast who is super-cute and a good actor, with a lot of charm - he won most people over. The ending is not what you were expecting when you started watching, but it does actually fit perfectly into the story. This series is about the main character finding his soulmate, and there are suspects that aren't really viable and what the production chose to do gave it a lovely human quality.

Recommendation

So do I recommend it? Definitely, with some caveats. If you don't like it by the third or fourth ep, you probably won't enjoy it, but if that's the case, you can abandon it and move on to Ep 9, because the last 4 eps will make sense as a stand-alone romance that is sweet and special. But Ep 1 is pretty bad, so you have to look past that if you want to give it a chance. The people who liked this REALLY liked it - I've bonded with some fans over it. To me, Tae is gorgeous - not just his body, his face, those beauty marks, lips, personality, everything. In the last 4 eps you'll probably see it, due to the changes in his appearance. And I'll be 100% honest - I know that 1,000 Stars is roughly 100 times better than this show, but I looked forward to this more, because it just has a unique pleasant quality and 1,000 Stars stresses me out.

There are really wonderful and unique elements in this show, and if the next production by this company can fit them together in a more expert way, they could have a top-tier series.

Explanation of Ratings

Story: The plot doesn't deserve a 7, but the avoidance of tropes and the skillful post-COVID shift were impressive.
Acting: It's heavily focused on Tae, who is good & there's a good actor in the last 4 eps. Otherwise I would have rated it lower.
Music: Generally standard, a couple of good moments here and there that stood out.
Rewatch Value: I've rewatched a lot of scenes, so I gave it a high score.
Overall: The ratings suggest a 7.5, but I gave it an 8 because I liked it so much - that it drew me in and made me happy is a good thing.

Leia Mais

Wow.

I thought Meow Ears Up had a weak plot, but at least in that nothing happening made sense. In this nothing happened nor made sense. I think it was supposed to be a parody or something, but I don't really know what it's parodying. I think it might have been making fun of the audience for watching it.

There is nothing positive to say about this, except Lee Long Shi who plays Dr. Pak has a hot body, but it's not worth watching the series as he shows it a lot more on his intagram. Here, I can save you 6 eps. https://www.instagram.com/_longlee7/ Pak Papungkorn does too but we already knew that.

Anyway, this is terrible. If you like Kim & Copter, you probably won't anymore after watching this.

Leia Mais

Had the potential to be the best BL of all time, but ended up a mess.

This series got off to a good start, but took a wrong turn around ep 10 and largely fell apart. The plot centers around Dr. Tin, who gets trapped in a time loop that he can only escape by saving Tol, an accident victim. He repeatedly fails, falls asleep, then begins the same day again, etc. Along the way he gradually uncovers more and more of the mystery of what happened, and draws closer and closer to Tol, the man he has to save.

It's quite well written - until it's not. Close to the end the perspective shifts to Tol, which deflates all the dramatic tension built up to this point, and then suddenly people's personalities change, to the point it doesn't feel like we're dealing with the same characters anymore. The story also starts to take a lot of "cheats", where the "rules" of the setup are changed in fairly silly ways - like all of a sudden kisses restore memories of past time loops - even if non-consensual, even unwanted, so it's not Love or something, it's just lips touching that works. There's also a magical notebook which makes no sense, i.e. if you go back in time, what you wrote before shouldn't be there anymore, and the way it's given to someone else makes no sense.

The finale is so random that I stopped caring what happened, and the ending is flat and anticlimactic. It's happy-ish although it doesn't make sense so it's not really satisfying.

The acting is superb all-around. This is Tee's best performance - he was adorable in Miracle of Teddy Bear, but here he plays are darker and more complex character, and everything he does is so authentic. Tae is also wonderful in this - he has that impish smirk, but he can also play cute and vulnerable and then shift to on-fire sexy - but it's his subtle moments that are the most impressive. At the end of Ep 9 he's so powerful - both of them are. Their chemistry is so on point, and so natural, and their characters are so fully realized. But then that's all thrown out and they essentially become different people.

The music is way better than typical - there are no old-fashioned power-ballads, and the soundtrack effectively supports the story.

One warning - there is a huge amount of secondhand embarassment in this - Tin is a terrible liar and he screws everything up constantly, and it's painful to watch. It's very well done, but I had to take breaks sometimes.

I loved this series up to about Ep 10 - after that I more or less stopped caring. It was still overall a good experience, but the lazy writing in the last few episodes prevented this from being one of my favorites of all time, and I was sure it would be.

Leia Mais

Disastrous

There's only so much you can stuff into a 6-ep series. Unfortunately, everything stuffed into this is awful.

The first question is, what genre is this? It was marketed as a BL, and most of the couples in this involve two boys, although only one is just two boys. The other two are everyone's favorite thing, love triangles.

Or is is a murder mystery? Maybe, except the dead body at the beginning is not the same body as turns out to be the case, nor at the same level of deceasedness. Which makes me wonder if Thai emergency services frequently transport live people in body bags. If so, I hope they remember to poke air holes in them.

Or is it about a rivalry between two bitchy girls? On the surface, no, that's not what it is, but that leads us to wonder why almost the entire runtime of this series is consumed by two almost supernaturally unpleasant people who I'm sure almost the entire audience wishes were not in the series at all.

The all-male love triangle involves a boy who's into BDSM, which is handled with the usual BL sensitivity, i.e. none at all, portraying it as deviant and possibly evil - certainly PTSD-inducing, and instead of his partner finding a way to accommodate his tastes, BDSM-boy is forced to give it up in the name of True Love, which can never include "deviant" behavior in BL. There's actually a scene where non-BDSM boy wants to break up because he realized that BDSM-boy has a slight preference for being a dom over a sub, and so he feels that he is horrendously depriving him of pleasure. Seriously, that's the conversation. Then he goes on to describe how flicking him with a toy whip makes him feel like he's inflicting violence on someone he loves. Sigh.

The love triangle with the girl involves a self-indentifed slut (who had sex with a grand total of one person, so what is the message here? ) and two step-brothers. Another favorite theme of BL audiences. Let's combine cheating, an evil female, and incest into one storyline - yay? I don't actually mind step-brother stories, but I know that a large part of the audience does mind, a larger part of the audience doesn't like cheating, and almost the entire audience doesn't like stories to be chewed up by evil girlfriends.

The only reasonably uncomplicated storyline is between Burger & King (get it?), and it is cute largely because the two boys are adorable. It's certainly not because of their acting ability or the amount of time spent on their story.

Which brings us to the topic of acting. I don't want to be too critical, because these are all beginners and they were clearly doing their best, but each of them only has one facial expression and it's not really enough. Maybe if they had two each it would have worked better. Non-BDSM-boy has kicked-puppy face, King has "did I live the iron on?" face, Evil Girl #2 has "what is that smell?", etc. There are one or two experienced actors in this (like Art, as beautiful as ever, but he has at most 60 seconds of screentime).

Worse, there is, again, an awful trans character who is loud, ridiculous, and an awful person, because Thail BL is unable to conceive of anything but "straight" people as being "good" and "normal". That's improved a decent amount in BL in general, but that progress hasn't reached this catastrophe of a series.

Perhaps worst of all, it doesn't end. None of the relationships get anywhere, and even though we know whodunnit, that story isn't resolved either. Couldn't they at least have left it as a mystery if they were going to end on a cliffhanger? What possible motivation do I have to continue watching this into the next season?

This series is a ripoff of the Spanish show Elite, which is far better. A central problem with Hit Bite Love is that it's set in high school (because that's a BL law or something) and it's themes are adult. Because of this, and because most of the actors are underage, the series is crippled by conservative Thai morality and so the story can never dig its teeth into any of its themes. This is so serious an issue that even when boys are at the swimming pool, if there's any romantic connection between them, their torsos are wrapped in big towels, as if having two boys who like each other shirtless is Crossing the Line.

Other than the cuteness factor of BurgerKing and Art being on my screen, the only positive quality is the background music, which is better than usual, and actually supports the story, such as it is. Although the theme song has so much autotune I assumed it was on purpose - although it does sound like a malfunctining robot and I'm not sure why you would want that.

I would skip this. If you had to decide between this and watching, say, Gen Y 2, then I would probably just kill myself. But Hit Bite Love is a lot shorter, so more of your brain might survive if you were to choose it.

Leia Mais

A disappointing barely-BL.

The series is framed by a class about love, wherein the students in the class are paired off in heterosexual couples to do a bunch of love experiments. Two girls pair up, because one is in love with the professor, and the other has a stalker, so she's terrified of all men (except Jiwoo, who's too tiny to be scary).

That means that two boys have to pair off, and off we go.

This is a BL, and yet the class doesn't even attempt to address same-sex relationships, or anything not heteronormative. The most we get is that the professor allows the same sex pairings. To be frank, nobody should need his permission.

Because the stalked girl (Yuna) isn't afraid of Jiwoo, she allows him to escort her home, which draws him into the stalker mess.

This is a series that could have worked if it were twice as long. It simply had too much going on, a lot of it totally unnecessary, to cover in six brief episodes. Almost the entire story is about Jiwoo pursuing Yuna and dealing with her stalker. There almost no BL whatsoever.

Then, we skip all the processing it might take to go from identifying as straight and being in love with a girl to going gay. Jiwoo changes like a light switch being flipped, and Roa, who loves him, rejects him based on truly incomprehensible reasoning, then abandons his life and runs off to the sea. But we do have time for a silly girl's antics and pursuit of her professor and Roa's intrusive asshole roommate.

This story is so disjointed and lacking in any organic character or relationship development that I felt absolutlely nothing at the end.

The series doesn't fail because it's short, it fails because it's a long story that was crammed into a short space. For contrast, watch the 8-minute BL short Please Tell Me So on YouTube, also starring Han Hyun Jun - this does a much better storytelling job despite its brevity.

I'm often told that I should unconditionally support Korean BL because it's new there (It isn't. Long Time No See was made in 2017, less than a year after SOTUS) and operating in a homophobic environment (welcome to the continent of Asia). Why? I support good Korean BL like Semantic Error - I have no responsibility to support borderline gay-baiting like this, which is a cynical attempt to exploit a fashionable genre without having to commit to it. This is not a m/m romance, it's a story about stalking, with a shallow and cliched15-minunte BL stapled to the end of it.

Story: Since this is marketed as a BL, I have to rate the writing as a BL, so 3. I liked that Jiwoo's first hints of attraction to Roa was from seeing him shirtless rather than trip/catch/stare or accidetal kiss.

Acting: 7.5. Han Hyun Jun is more like a 9, most of the rest are fine, and Kim Tae Hwan is OK but a bit stiff.

Music: It's there.

Rewatch: 2 - I wouldn't watch it again, but I might revisit a couple of scenes that I liked.

Overall: 5. My overall opinion was that it was bad, but didn't look like it was bad. It's competently produced, but the story is just not interesting as a BL and skips too much that is important. I really hope someone puts Han Hyu Jun in something much better than this because he is talented and just adorable.

Leia Mais

This series is awful and pointless

Boy, the other reviewers are very kind.

The only positives to this are that both leads are very attractive and they are both very comfortable with kissing scenes.

The acting is not good, which is surprising, because Green is a fantastic actor - one of the best in BL - and Chap is... well, he looks extraordinarily good with his shirt off. The side actors are generally unmemorable - not terrible, but noticably acting.

The story is so stupid it's not really worth spending time on. It's not so much a plot as it is a string of cliched tropes. There's nothing so stupid that they can't do it twice. There are two accidental kisses, and two times someone falls into a body of water. In fact, in what seems to be an attempt for the Stupidest Series of All Time award, they even combine these - an accidental kiss caused by both characters falling into a bathtub. Accidentally. Somehow. The second immersion has a character fall into a pool - there are about 50 people there, and nobody does anything about it whatsoever except stand around and wait for the main character to notice, except this takes him more than 15 seconds and this is a BL, so the guy drowns. But is revived and is fine. I don't think he even really coughs - just spits out a mouthful of water and then carries on with his day.

It's a typical enemies-to-lovers scenario, except they go so overboard with how awful Satee is that you hope he dies alone, and then the transition to love is so abrupt it feels like someone flipped a light switch.

One of the leads is an angry agoraphobe who needs to get to the tailor's shop. Besides his fear of leaving the house, he also hates the tailor, so the author has written herself into a corner. But she comes up with the ingenious solution of having the assistant lightly tap him on the back with a small hollow glass scupture, which knocks him out and they somehow drag his body to the Tailor. Problem solved.

I normally wouldn't nitpick the wardrobe choices, but the theme of this series is about a picky guy finding the best tailor for the best suit, so I would expect the clothing to reflect that. Everyone spends the entire series wearing dark, wool three-piece suits, which is more or less insane in Thailand. Nobody expires due to heat exhaustion - only being tapped on the back with a hollow glass scupture or being immersed in water for 15 seconds can do someone in.

But the clothing is all really poorly tailored! The trousers are too long, the jackets don't fit well, and the styling is terrible and unflattring. Also, the suit in question is not even a tuxedo, it's a boring ill-fitting blue business suit. The tailor does wear a tux to the main event - it is so horrible that it looks like something a guy might wear to a prom who waited till the last minute to rent his tux and so ended up with... whatever that was. The waistcoat was so over-sized that I wasn't sure if he was going to a party or volunteering for the defense of Mariupol.

The theme song is by Jeff Satur, and even that doesn't help. I'm surprised they paid an actual artist for something (or kidnapped his family and forced him to do this), but he only had to write two bars, which they play over an over again. It's a particularly blaring love ballad which becomes unintentionally funny because thy fire it up at a moment's notice whever something happens that is supposed to be romantic.

I'm shallow and I like attractive well-built men with their shirts off, but I have to say that Chap's body is so beautiful that it will catch you by surprise - and he knows how to use it - the way he stands and moves... That's why I gave the series a relatively high rewatch value. I have already watched his first shirtless scene several times and will be returning to it.

Leia Mais

Who needs a plot?

There seems to be a spate of plotless Thai BL dramas. There's really not much to say about this series - the author apparently couldn't think of anything to write so she just used whatever she did that day. Everything that happens in this is mundane day-to-day activity - largely eating snacks and bubble tea.

There is zero romantic chemistry between the leads - it's not clear what their age difference is, because they're both children at the same time, but later Park is a doctor, so that would put him in his late 20s, while Tin is either in high school or maybe college - it's hard to tell because he never seems to go to class. I was surprised to hear he goes to school when it was mentioned in the finale. Tin behaves like a small child almost all the time, so there is something kind of creepy about their relationship, only saved by the fact that the actors are similar in age.

Since there's no plot, there's no dramatic tension - and it looks like the writer realized she'd reached the conclusion without any drama, so she threw in a long series of fights over absolutely nothing between Park and Tin - which likely cemented the feeling the audience had that they really shoudn't be together. Except as parent and child, maybe.

There are lots of side characters, but they're all pointless and their stories never go anywhere.

I didn't think it was possible to have less of the story than Physical Therapy, but apparently it is. I rated this a 3 because while it's a total waste of time, it's not aggressively awful.

I'd skip it.

Leia Mais

OK, so hear me out...

... but I kind of liked it. It's certainly not going on my Top Ten BL list, but it was a pleasant watch, and it probably didn't hurt that it was the only BL on Mondays.

The "plot" is rather thin. Ai has a big crush on his straight friend, who is less straight than he thought, but is also a high-maintenance nightmare.

They "get busy" at a party, and in the aftermath, Nhai doesn't believe it's possible for anyone to put up with him in a relationship (which appears to be an excellent assumption), so he agrees to a one-month trial relationship so that Ai can prove he can tolerate him as he is (useless and whiny). It's a good thing he's cute.

Anyway, they have a few scrapes with jealousy, because Nhai is insecure about his suitability as a partner, and because Ai is very possessive, and have many other minor conflicts and arguments.

This is a spin-off of Tonhon Chonlatee, and it's much better, although that's saying almost nothing, and it retcons a lot of the offensive elements of that series.

I'll start with the negatives:

- There's no plot outside of the above. They just spend the whole series doing normal things - shopping, camping, eating at home, talking, going to school, getting sick, etc. It would have been nice to see a theme or something to overcome - maybe Ai is NOT sure he can put up with Nhai, and maybe Nhai is acting up because he's pre-supposing Ai will leave him, and gradually they develop the confidence in each other to make it work. As it is, they seem compatible almost immediately, which is a bit dull.
- The dialog is dull and delivered with too many pauses, although that's a pan-Thai-drama problem.
- The acting is a bit wooden in the main pair. If Nhai is supposed to be difficult, it would have been nice to see some energy put into it. He's basically just lazy. But it's not bad acting.

Positives:

- They are respectful to each other and it's pleasant to watch them interact.
- It's cool that Ai has two gay dads.
- Meen (Ai) is hot. To be honest, that's a big factor in why I stuck with this. In their first love scene, I'm fairly sure you won't be ready for what's under Ai's loose university shirt. All his normal clothes are form-fitting and very flattering to all his assets.
- Speaking of their first love scene, it's early, and aggressively initiated by the uke (Nhai), who is the "straight" one, which is unusual. Afterwards, he feels overwhelmed and cries, but tells Ai he's not made at him but wants to be alone to process everything, which was also unusual and quite nice. And even better, it isn't drawn out. He finds really bad advice on the internet, wonders if he's trans, then sensibly goes to talk to a gay friend about it.
- It's unusual for a pair to enter a relationship in the second episode, and it's nice to see them interact as a couple.

I can recommend this if you like fluff. If you don't like fluff, it probably won't work for you. I found it pleasant to watch, sometimes dull, but sometimes you want some brainless eye candy.

Leia Mais

Plot set-piece driven rather than character-driven

Any story needs to be about characters, and the plot driven by the characters. What I mean by that is that a characters' nature or past trauma, etc. needs to drive how they behave and and react to things. For example, if a character was bitten by a dog as a child, he may have an irrational fear of dogs - and maybe falls in love with a vet. That's organic drama rather than artificial external crises or relying on very implausible misunderstandings, which is one of the laziest sins in writing.

The way characters behave in this series make no emotional sense, because the author wants to get from point A to point B, and so that determines how the characters behave. Points A & B were almost always just tired cliches that were not integrated into the plot and did nothing to advance it but were rather just there to be there. A couple of examples:

- The Past Connection. This appears to be irresistable to BL writers (actually a lot of Asian drama genres) - a past connection between Souta and Mahiro serves no plot purpose - it's just there to be there, and as a result it leads to Souta implausibly not remembering Mahiro, because if he did remember him, that would complicate the plot. And so he doesn't.

- The Restraining Hug Fom Behind. Mahiro thinks Souta is leaving, but it turns out that instead he's staying forever. Does that make him happy? No, he gets upset and tries to leave. Why? Why would that upset him? It wouldn't. But then Souta wouldn't need to grab him from behind to prevent him from leaving.

- The Implausible Misunderstanding. Souta drives four hours from Tokyo and arrives at just the precise moment - it couldn't be one second earlier or one second later or the misunderstanding wouldn't have happened - to see Souta hug his boss, who Souta assumes is Mahiro's boyfriend, despite the fact that he knows them both, the boss has actively encouraged Souta to be with Mahiro, there is zero evidence that they're dating, and it was clear Mahiro was upset, so it is clearly a comforting hug, not a romantic one. But the writer needed to insert the next cliche, and so Souta has to misunderstand, and for no apparent reason decides to become the boyfriend of...

- The Interfering Woman. Ugh. I don't even want to dwell on this, but it chews up an enormous amount of runtime.

The end result is two unrelatable and unpleasant characters who behave inconsistently and are annoying.

The acting is OK. The Souta actor is pretty good, Yutaro is one-note and has no presence or charisma. There is almost no chemistry whatsoever. Mahiro behaves like the wife of an alcoholic in an abusive relationship - he actually recoils from Souta every time they're near each other, and he just looks afraid all the time. Souta manages to express some repressed longing, but it's still not convincing. There is no romantic chemistry between them, and certainly no romance. They barely even touch each other, at least not on purpose.

A positive is it's well-filmed and the setting in the countryside is lovely. Well, Souta gets naked sometimes, and he has a nice body, so there's that, I guess.

Another positive is the Taiwanese store owner, who is an appealing character and causes a plausible (!) misunderstanding when he reads a note that contains kanji characters that mean "former coworker" in Japanese, but mean "ex-lover" in Mandarin, which leads to the series' best comic moment.

Overall this was a total waste of time, and a disappointing squandering of an interesting premise and a strong start. But it goes nowhere, is frustrating to watch, and is way too long for the amount of "plot" in it. I would skip it.

Leia Mais

It is definitely a BL.

There's a scene where they're sitting on a swing. Watch it and tell me if bros sit that close, look at each other that way, the body language, and Oat even does the stretch-the-arm-behind-the-movie-theater-seat thing (adapted for swings).

Also, remember, mother had put up a sign banning romance between staff and guests - what happened to the sign was significant, and even more important is the question Nabdao asks Keptawan when Kep gives him what he gives him at the end. That question is open acknowledgement by Nabdao himself that this is not a bromance situation.

Anyway, this is a 10/10 for me. I have to rate it for what it is, a short film, not a full series, and I've never seen a short BL as good as this. I was actually in tears all the way through the second part (in a good way, don't worry, the White Truck of Death doesn't show up and run anyone over in the last scene.)

The acting is wonderful - it's so natural, even Oak's OTT character is totally believable and sincere. Mon is just plain gorgeous, and this shows what can be accomplished when you get someone who is beautiful AND can act. What a difference a year can make at that age. The supporting characters were all well-acted too.

The story is tight and economical, and manages to really address rural problems and symbolically indicate what the solutions are - by showing us, not telling us.

I have nothing negative to say about this - I can't think of any criticisms - except maybe in a few spots the sound quality was a little off. The editing was tight, the writing respected the audience, and the romance was subtle and realistic given who they were and where they were. The technical quality of this is way above Wayu's previous works, which to me means they're learning and getting better, and I'm really looking foward to their next project.

I think they've mastered the short story - maybe it's time for a second attempt at a longer series.

Leia Mais

Beautiful, yet something is missing.

This is a beautifully shot series, with a color palette of contrasting but complimentary colors, which I took as a metaphor for the main characters - burnt orange and silver blue. Other people took these to represent chicken and midnight, but when you say it out loud if comes off a bit prosaic.

The story is also well-written, with complex characters who actually have arcs (with one exception), which is a welcome change.

But there is something missing, and it's the main couple, who are miscast in this role. This is the problem with eternal ships. The magic is usually in their initial outing for which they were specifically cast and well-suited. When you just drop them in another story, the fit is usually not as good, and that's the case here. I don't buy into the "Earth is stiff" narrative - he's excellent and his acting is subtle and masculine - stoic and repressed with emotions displayed with subtlety. I think that's much harder than shouting and crying, but I recognize that's what BL audiences want and like.

But the problem is that Earth and Mix do not contrast in this at all. they are of similar age and disposition - laid back and reserved. Jim is supposed to be entering middle age - on what planet I don't know. I'm entering middle age (reality check: I'm there. F@#$.) and I'm blessed with my mother's good skin, but even at 40 I didn't have Earth's porcelain skin and zero body fat. It's ridiculous and takes you out of the story. He was 27 when this was filmed. Come on. An excellent fit for the role would have been Nike from 180 Degrees. Earth and Mix just don't have any chemistry in this. Their interaction was appropriate in the first couple of episodes - it's clear Jim was badly burned in a past relationship, and the final revelation of what happened is brilliant writing - unexpected and yet explained everything perfectly. But this wasn't a corrective to the stagnation and dullness of their relationship - and surprising lack of chemisty. Mix isn't bad at adoring stares, yet the fire is missing from his glances - it feels like acting. Contrast that with Fourth (covered below).

Average lifespan in Thailand: 77. Average lifespan of BL mothers: 35. It used to be 34, but this one made it all the way to 49 so she pulled up the average. Enough already. It wasn't necessary to the plot and it's getting to be a beyond tiresome cliche. There are two sources of drama in BL - jealousy, and dead parents. Let's move on, shall we? Also, what is it about Thai crowds that prevents them from doing anything helpful in a crisis? Are you trying to tell me nobody thought to call an ambulence? Come on.

Again we live in a homophobia-free universe - normally this isn't an issue for me in BL, which is escapist fantasy. But this strives toward realism, and there's no chance Heart's parents would have been OK with it, which is the one mar in the otherwise perfect side storyline.

So far this sounds like I hate the series, but there is an extremely powerful countervailing positive - the secondary couple, played by Fourth and Gemini (from My School President, although this was filmed first). These two are the exception to the shipping rule I posited above - I could watch them together for the rest of my life and die happy.

Fourth is so good that there is never once a false note from him. He is in every repsects a teenager, moody and alienated, rebelling against authority (in the form og his uncle Jim), and experiencing first love with the deaf and lonely boy Heart. This story is so beautiful and perfect that I don't think I spent any of of their entire story not at least on the verge of tears. Everything about their performances conveys their attraction to each other and their growing emotional tie - the way they lean into each other, the way they find ways to touch each other, the innocent yet heated glances - it's so f@#$ing perfect that it hurts. It's been so long for me, yet I was right back to that age, feeling it all again. Just absolute magic.

Khaotung puts in his best performance ever in this as chicken salesman Gaipa, whose relationship with his mother is lovely and wholly authentic. Mark Pakin puts in a wonderful performance as the rakish and sexy Saleng (the legs on this boy...) and Jack Kittisak is memorable as the unspeakably sexy Gong, Wen's friend.

So do I recommend this? Without hesitation. Jim & Wen are a 6, but Li Ming and Heart are a 15. If this had been their story, I would have rated this a hard 10 - but unfortunately, it's not their story.

Leia Mais

Glorious Disaster

You might notice that I have the story a 3 and the acting a 4, yet an overall score of 7. I have a true story to relate to help explain. In high school, my chemistry teacher was a PE teacher who I'm guessing was filling in for someone who died or something. One day the subject was potassium. He was trying to get a small piece of it to react with water, but dropped a big chunk of it, caught it with his bare hand, realized what he had done, and thew it into the sink, where it exploded, blew a hole in the ceiling, and set off all the fire spinklers, which of course caused a huge amount of damage and forced the evacuation of the entire school.

So that's a "1" in "story", a "1" in "acting", but a 10 in ultimate result. This is similar. It's a total catastrophe, but I haven't cackled with laughter like that in a while.

If you're worried about a lot of graphic BDSM, you can stop worrying about that right now. The BDSM is what you would expect a junior high school girl to imagine - a very, very sheltered junior high school girl.

The story is about Kim, a young man who ends up having a one-nighter with a gangster who immediately falls in love with him. The casting is disastrous, with the young and baby-faced Yoon playing the most unconvincing crime lord since... well, ever. In the finale he says he's 36 years old, which made me spit up the food I was eating. He has the most ridiculous tatoo I've ever seen. I think it might have been CGI, or maybe somone spray-painted his back over a stencil of a tiger or something.

Kamol is domineering and horrendously overprotective, locking Kim up in his house and not allowing him to do anything unsupervised. Except play with his pet tiger. You are not misreading that. He's not allowed to pee unaccompanied, but frolic with a tiger, no problem. Not that the tiger is in any state to frolic. The thing is stoned out of its mind - in its head it may be flying through pink clouds with castles atop them inhabited by penguins in Ayutthaya attire, but its body on earth won't be doing much of anything. It does't even react to, or appear to have any awareness of, its head being stroked.

If you are sensitive about water being wasted, you might want to avoid this series, or take a beta blocker first. People take baths wrong. Most people, I think, would fill the tub and then turn the water off - but here, the water is left running throughout the entire bath. I'm not sure where all the water is going - I guess the drain is open. People also turn on the sink for no apparent reason and then have long conversations while the water is running. I'm from California, and I can't sleep if I can hear water intermittently dripping somewhere, so my entire attention was focused on the water and controlling an incipient panic attack during scenes like that. Also, and this seems particularly odd in an Asian drama, people are fine with climbing across beds with shoes on. Not slipper shoes, sandals, even Birkenstocks, but dress shoes they've been walking around in all day.

Managing a criminal empire apparently entails sitting at an implausibly and unncessarily large desk and holding out your hand (without looking) to accept folders from subordinates coming in and out and then glancing at things before signing them. I have a job that entails a lot of paperwork, and I haven't seen an actual physical document in a decade. I don't even have my computer hooked up to a printer. I guess crimelords have never heard of Adobe or Docusign.

The plot is so ridiculous and random that it's better to just go on the ride and stop trying to understand why anyone does anything, because trying to make sense of it will only make you feel sad inside.

People have bodyguards. They should really save their money, because the bodyguard labor pool seems not to have attracted the best and brightest. I don't think there's even one single incidence of successful bodyguarding in the entire series. Besides letting your charge enter a tiger cage alone, guards who have been ordered to defend people with their lives are very easy for villains to convince to go get something out the car, allowing kidnappings right out of your walled mansion.

Speaking of bodyguards, there is a scene I really, really appreciated that gave us some insight at what bodyguards do while off-duty. If you see a scene where guards are discussing who should go shower first, prepare yourself.

The music is awful in the best way. Whenever someone grabs someone's wrist, there's an instrumental flourish more appropriate to someone impaling an opponent with a lightsaber than a gentle wrist grab, and any very slighly elevated moment of drama or activity inevitably leads to the ridiculously overwrought piano theme being fired up.

The leads have no chemistry, and Kim is so withholding that a crimelord Dom is reduced to meekly asking permission to administer a peck on the cheek and is usually admonished for being some sort of demented pervert for even asking. Kamol is the worst dom ever. Strangely, the chief bodyguard, who you will probably not notice at first but by the end will be panting over (especially after his sleeveless striped shirt at the resort) has really intense chemistry with the maid's underage son. Pretty much everyone in the audience was only suffering through this travesty of a series for them, even though we all knew nothing would happen between a 30-something and a high school kid.

I'm not sure I can recommend this - if you're looking for something serious, or are excited at the prospect of actual BDSM in a BL, this will not make you happy. If you appreciate it when something is so bad that it's unintenionally hillarious, this is worth your time.

Leia Mais

Hands-down the worst-written BL of all time

This might seem like hyperbole. But let me explain. Physical Therapy isn't the worst-written BL of all time because it would have to have been written, and if it was, it was only by accident. Someone wrote Fahlanruk on purpose.

It's perfectly OK to have a character start out as "bad" and then go through a redemption arc. It's also OK for a character to be victimized in a bad relationship with a psychopath, in which case his character arc is developing the strength and confidence to recognize his worth to free himself and find love and healing.

But here we have a psychopath who's character arc is to ensnare a man through repeated histrionics and abuse until they live happily ever after. The End. Either this was written by someone without enough life experience to have a clue what adulthood and love are, or they are an adult who is an alcoholic abuse-victim with PTSD who is trying to self-medicate by writing the same scene over and over and over again until the audience shares their PTSD.

Everyone in this story is an alcoholic binge-drinker. Every motivation is jealousy. EVERY motivation. Sher and Fahlan are not boyfriends, they are friends with benefits. While it's clear they have deeper feelings for each other, they aren't committed, but still, whenever the other so much as talks to another human (probaby a pet or inanimate object too, but it never came up) a histrionic public explosion involving physical and emotional violence results, with vow to never speak again, followed by another round of binge-drinking, drunken sex, jealousy, explosion, ad inifinitum.

I'm not exaggerating - sometimes two cycles could occur in a single episode. It gets to the point that you don't care and stop paying attention to the main couple when they're onscreen until Fahlan has his shirt off, because he looks really good with his shirt off. Their endless jealousy fight is so dull and repetitIve that it would have been more entertaining to watch them argue over whether the toilet paper should hang over or under the roll (over the roll unless you're a bad person). I can't believe the author actually thought she was writing a protagonist with Sher - he's a pissy, horrible narcissistic villain. Really, if someone had run up to him in the finale and bludgeoned him to death with a bat, you would have gasped with the realization that there really is a God and that he loves us.

There are two side couples, who talk about absolutely nothing other than Fah and Sher's relationship, except for their own detours into pointless jealousy, public histrionics, and binge-drunkenness, but at least none of the minor characters punch each other in the face all the time.

A lot of people stuck with it for Ping & Tap, who were initially cute and had potential, but they too went around in circles forever until it was hard to care and then their relationship was so anticlimactically resolved that the reaction is, "hunh?" Ping has been pining for Tap for years, and then once they're together Ping behaves like Tap is a poisonous reptile instead of a loving boyfriend, because I presume the writer saw other ukes behave that way and thinks that's how gay couples work. One of them DESPISES SEX WITH A BURNING PASSION but, and only under the greatest duress, gives into the UNNATURAL MONSTROUS LUSTS of another man in order to have someone to protect and take care of him. Yup, that's how real life works.

That leaves us with Gear & Prince, who manage to get through this with merely one histrionic jealousy scene, and when they finally hook up, they're robbed by horrendous cinematography which almost totally obscures what's happening with lens flaring that would make JJ Abrams jealous. They're still better than anything else in this travesty, however.

There's also Pink, the fujoshi, who is eventually exhausted as a cause for jealousy, then spends the rest of the series obsessing over Sher & Fahlan's relationship, dragging around poor Tar and behaving as if he's ugly even if he's the hottest guy on the show (I realize that's debatable, but catch him onstage in the finale).

Sher is a horrible human being who deserves to die alone, not be redeemed through true love. Does anyone really think anyone this awful is going to change overnight? How long to you give him and Fahlan? Two weeks at best.

This show isn't just bad, it's infuriating. It's a complete waste of time with no countervailing redeeming qualities to balance the endlessly repetetive plot. There are attractive guys, but it would be much more economical to cruise the side-characters' social media, and in the case of the main couple, if you're interested in Sher, SEEK COUNSELLING. IMMEDIATELY. If Fah, well, I have to admit you get a lot of shirtless Fah, but I'm sure you can find that somewhere where you don't have to endure this type of torture.

I don't normally say something like this, but please don't watch this. It's because I care about you and your well-being.

Leia Mais

That was better than I expected.

I loathed this series after the first episode. I gave is a 2 and dropped it and only reluctantly came back after friends insisted it got better. It did.

My objection was the totally absurd treatment of drunkenness, and the fuzzy morality, with the writers trying to have it both ways. You can't get so drunk that you think a person is someone else. Maybe for a few moments, but certainly not after sleeping if off for several hours, and Vee having three beers in 2 hours is not sufficient to lower his inhibitions enough to do something awful, so that shot of his garbage can with empty beers in it didn't fly. So you have two choices: Either Mark knows it's Vee and wants to get laid to help him get over his pain, or Vee is a repugnant rapist and the whole series is appalling. Neither option works, so I gave up in disgust with the terrible writing.

So why do I give it a 9.5, you ask?

The thing is, because this is a remake, the production was stuck with the outline of the poor writing of the original. And I can't give it a 10, because the plot is so unoriginal and we've seen it so, so many times. But the execution of this story is so good in every way, and so much depth an nuance given to the story and characters, it's like having a piece of chocolate cake. You've had many, I'm sure. Some are dry, some are factory produced, some pretty good - but then you have a slice that is so perfectly made that you can never enjoy any other chocolate cake again.

That's sort of how this series is. It really, really needs to be the last story with this tired plot - it will never be done better than this, it's so overused that I, and probably many or most of you, groan when a preview shows anyone wearing a blue engineering shirt.

While this follows an established formula, it isn't just the usual shallow boy-meets-boy, boy-hates-boy, boy-gets with-boy, boy leaves boy for girlfriend, boy-hates-boy, boy-and-boy-live-happily-ever-after story.

First, Mark and Vee aren't 2D uke and seme characters. Mark (the uke) knows who he is, is totally comfortable with it, he's a jock with a ripped body, and he doesn't let himself be pushed around. Vee (the seme) is confused and indecisive, can't bear to be the bad guy to the point that his desire not to hurt anyone hurts everyone, and he's never in control of the situation, and seems to fail at everything.

Other than the first episode, the writing is complex and sensitive, never stuffs characters into the narrow boxes of stock archetypes. Mark isn't a useless uke, Vee isn't a brooding prince who will swoop in to take care of him, Vee's girfiend isn't evil or scheming, she's just weak, damaged, and needs the validation of a man desiring her, Nuea isn't a terrible person nor is he an alternate prince, he's just a smitten horny guy who crosses the line a little, and even Mark's father's true motivation is Mark's happiness despite his dickishness. His emoji in the last scene is hillarious.

The story contains one of the classic misunderstandings wherein one boy shows up somewhere just at the right time to see something he can misinterpret and, implausibly, no communication occurs to clear it up. But in this case the plot gives a sequence of events that leads to that moment that is logically constructed, and the timing is not at all coincidental, and while Mark misunderstands, Vee is not innocent - he let himself be put in a situation that he shouldn't have, and given their past, Mark's reaction and subsequent behavior is totally reasonable and relatable.

The dialog and writing are excellent, creative despite the unoriginal story, quirky, and provides us with suprises and unexpected resolutions, like the final family confrontation, where Vee's father is a true boss. The finale is lovely and romantic, and gives us a typical fairy-tale BL ending - and then there's the post-credit scene, for which you may need medication, possibly counseling. The typical uke-finding-a-public-sniff-kiss-to-the-cheek appalling routine starts, then heads in a direction so, so, SO far from where you'd expect that it manages to be hot, funny, and a little frightening all at once (War could [and should] play a truly terrifying villain).

The cinematography, all the editing, the music, is all thoughtful, beautifully excecuted, and all serve the story.

But what really seals the award for Best Execution of a Stale, Tired BL Plot is the acting. War (Mark) has always been good, but here he's SO good that he can make you feel eight different things with one look. Yin (Vee) was frankly a bit weak in the original series, at least compared to War, but here he's improved so much that he's able to hold his own. Vee's impulsive idiocy is funny, relatable, and believable.

If this had a better first episode, perhaps with a devastated Mark just callously grabbing Vee as the nearest male body to fill his... needs, this could have been a 10. But it's still one of the best BLs of all time and I don't hesitate to recommend it.

Leia Mais

I liked it.

This is a cute series - if you like fluff, this is for you. I'll likely forget about it fairly quickly, as it really has very little to say - it's just a well-done production of a very standard BL story.

I'll start with the negative to end on all positives. The reason I didn't enjoy this more is that I think the main character was poorly cast - I didn't find him likeable and I don't think he was well-acted. Before anyone knifes me, Shinwoo is an even more awkward character with even greater problems expressing himself, but I'm totally in love with him. Kang Yoo Seok managed to imbue his character with layers, subtly expressing a large range of emotion. But if you scratched Lee Sae On and found out he was actually a mannequin that can talk, I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised. This made me not really care who he ended up with - I was just resigned to him getting one of the love rivals when I was kind of hoping they'd form a thrupple with Shi Woon.

The show was also a bit too sanitized, with everything too perfect - it was a bit distancing. For example, TK was visibly plastered with white makeup - they all were, but it was worst with him.

There are a lot of positives, too - other than the main character, all the acting was great. Choe Chan Yi's DaOn was a masterpiece of placing a happy face over a struggle with inner demons - the subtle suffering under the smile was really affecting.

And while the show was a virtual checklist of BL tropes, it did avoid tropey cinematography and attempts to translate manga frames into live action. For example, there was no weird wide-eyed stare when anyone kissed, people just reacted naturally. And there wasn't that stupid triple-take whenever anyone hugged, kissed, held hands, or at any other time - that always drains the moment of emotional energy, and I was happy that was dispensed with and I was allowed to just enjoy the moment.

The story is well-laid out and coherent - we needed more context for Shinwoo's behavior, but it wasn't a big issue. I really, really needed there to be an explanation for why anyone was interested in Mr. Robot with so many superior options available, and we really could have done without the sole female character being a villainess, yet again - but I never once thought to myself "that makes no sense", and there were very few cheap and lazy excuses for drama, and the dialog was good.

I gave the story an 8 - unorignal, but well-laid-out and paced (slow, but it moved in a direction instead of meandering all over the place).

I gave the acting a 7. I thought it was a 9 for everyone else, but Lee Sae On dragged down the average, and he was the main character.

I rated the music a 7. I don't remember any of it, which is good. It did it's purpose and wasn't intrusive.

Rewatch is a 3. I can't imagine why I would ever watch this again - maybe if someone did a Shi Woon cut I would want to see that.

The "suggested overall" was 6.5, but 7 seemed more appropriate - I don't think a series should be too heavily dinged just because I don't want to watch it again.

Leia Mais