BadPenny

Werd! It was worth it.

I have just popped over here for the first time, having loved the show. Let me get this straight people object to the romance? I am confused.

And yeah, this one was def on my tragedy watch list.

You always do this. It pisses me off, Suibian. I need to steal your mojo. You pop in with just a single phrase and... Boom.

Be my spirit animal, pretty please????

Pfft. I left long form positive reviews on 3 dramas just since Saturday.

Bad Buddy wasn't my favorite show and I haven't been over in those waters for ages, but last time I was there the comments were predominantly positive. I think most people liked the KinnPorsche premier too. I think it depends entirely on the drama.

You are consistently a class act, hon. I know you pop on and try to find the good in every ep. There's nothing wrong with trying to give it a break. But man, they don't make it easy, do they?

Several of us have already said why we're still watching it. I think at this point it should be clear though, that it doesn't matter why we're still watching it. That's not something that can be employed as a tool to discourage us.

We're allowed to be here posting our dislike of the show. This board isn't your personal "mood" station. If you enjoy the show do so. No one has said you should not. But we're also allowed to dislike the show. and post about that and there is absolutely ZERO requirement for it to be constructive in any way. Tons of the positive responses to the show are "OMG IT's so cute!" That's not constructive. There is a double standard at play that the negative reviews must be constructive but not the compliments of the show.

Bullshit.

This idea that any opinion on the show--good or bad-- has to be constructive to be allowed is a really big misnomer. I've read the MDL parameters for posting in the comments section and no where does it state the comments HAVE to be constructive. I am free to write "Lian catches my hair on fire every week" if I want. And you'll just have to deal.

Every week we do this. Every week ya'll post on how "OMG! The people who hate the show should just stop watching and stop complaining" and every week people have to come on and remind you that we have as much right to post our dislike as you do to post your like of the show. We're not going anywhere.

I never said she singled me out personally. But yes, her OP was an attack or sorts. It was very clearly a passive aggressive attack on people who post in ways she and others don't like.

I know someone who is an actual licensed PHD in psychology on this very board. They're a practicing doctor. You've never seen them post, probably.

And recently I asked her opinion on several things involving this show and the community as a whole and then I asked her to come and post her views, as a psychologist. You know what she told me? She said it would be utterly unprofessional to invoke her wheelhouse in any official capacity as a voice in a public forum on recreational content because the people and situations at hand are too complex and it was counterintuitive to her professional approach to generalize.

And yet here you are with a lot of pop-psych criticism without actually knowing anything about me. Provided you're an actual mental health specialist of any kind, I know which of the two of you have opinions on the matter that I respect. Here's a clue, it's not yours.

How do you know what I surround myself with? I pop onto MDL for less than a couple of hours a week? You are doing the thing actual psychologists don't do, you are making assumptions without data to back it up. And the lack of constructive approach in "be hateful and have fun" tells me that if you are an actual psychologist, you aren't equipped with nearly the tools you think you are. Frankly, it's calling out users for their opinions on the show that is spreading most of the negativity here. Not the people giving their unfavorable take on Cutie Pie. The fact that you haven't picked up on that dynamic also tells me you're shit at analyzing since it was one of the first observations my psychologist friend made.

How about you try your own advice. You should perhaps try surrounding yourself with things you actually like, sometime. Rather than wallowing in posts you don't like to the point where you aren't spending your time here posting about the show, you're complaining about other people's opinions. Physicican heal thyself?

Just a thought tho.

Dude, it's one hour a week. On the weekend at that. So it's hardly a huge investment of time. And since, due to COVID, many of use now work from home (I do anyway, as I'm self employed) then we have all the latitude of schedule needed to watch one crap show and take a little time out to dish on it every week.

It's really got nothing to do with mental health. LOL But your concern is duly noted, not that I think you're an expert on what's good for anyone's mental health.

the BounPrem moment was glorious. But utterly not enough to save this series.

This looks like crack. But I'm down for it. I love Kim and Copter in stuff almost as much as I love seeing Dun and Bas.

Yep. Kissing is NOT a replacement for the levels of communication needed to unknot this mess and we were fed the face sucking as a replacement. Psych, ya'll. We need actual plot.

I did not watch the previews. I never do for this show anymore. But this is probably the part where we find out the reason Kuea's parents were like "Sure, force Kuea into your house, we're good." is because they owe him lots of money.

I did not know it was coming and flailed so hard for the controller when it started that I ended up knocking it under the 300lb coffee table. By the time I dug the controller free I'd witnessed the whole horrid display. I was on Discord at the time and the peeps watching it with me on their end thought I was having a damn seizure. It was awful. 🤮🤮🤮

They all make me uncomfortable. But yeah, Lian and Yi have such a dysfunctional relationship the idea of them together just makes my skin crawl. Which is saying something, as gross as the power dynamics are in the canon pairings.

Exactly. I wasn't expecting a redemption arc that would enable me to like the other couples, but I was willing to engage one. But instead we got crap swept under a rug and weird drinking games instead of proper communication.

This episode though, Nuea was actually kind of approachable. Syn still feels too pious, stiff and inflexible. But If they would just give them more time on screen this might change.

Alright. I am saying it. Right here. Right now. I admit it. This show impressed me today.

They really went all out. I mean, I have never seen a show actually get worse as time went on, in new and weird ways each week. But somehow they managed it with Cutie Pie. I mean, that is a FEAT. That level of dedication deserves a solute. And a moment of silence in respect for the kind of focus it took to drum up new ways to be absolutely soul-suckingly awful, every single episode.

Parts of this ep didn't feel like they belonged in this universe. The show still jumps between problematic behaviors and boring, stretched out scenes. And the addition of whacky moments where I questioned if hallucinogens were part of the plot did not help matters. I asked for Lian to have a functional personality, finally. I did NOT ask for him to have 2!!!!

They did exactly what many of us said they would do. They swept all the bullshit Lian and Yi have been pulling, under the rug, like it never happened. And then shoved some kissing scenes over the mess to distract us--which is its own elephant in the middle of the room. No apology for past toxic behaviors, no freeing of Kuea from basically being forced to live with Lian, no healthy conversations about consent or their past or the crap that went down in episode 1--just more manipulation tactics with some tongue thrown in.

That isn't development, it's just sloppy "Oh see, Lian is suddenly not an overtly abusive shithead this episode. And he's kissing Kuea. Don't you love him now?". That's some hand wavey shit right there. Lian hasn't changed. He actually at one point says "Have I ever lied to you?". I was hollering and pitching popcorn. I did a lot of that. I had to vacuum after watching this ep. On top of that, Lian was still, by his own admission "trying to force Kuea to open up". You don't force openness. Forcing someone to share secrets is literally the opposite of openness.

And I mean, Lian would not let Kuea go to where he needed to, just the day before. And then OMFG in Ep 7 Lian suddenly tells Kuea that his ability to go places was based on "Whether he behaves." WTF! Run, Kuea. Your parents have sold you into a nightmare and you're starting to fall for it.

The mess of tongues, alcohol and manipulative head games at the end was like they took what they THOUGHT was healthy communication and threw it into a martini shaker with some shark infested buddy moments and mixed for half an hour. Then they poured out the bruised mess, pointed at it and said "see, progress! Aren't you impressed? Oh, and BounPrem!".

Someone beg Keanu Reeves to jump on the Struggle Bus and rescue Kuea's agency? It almost escaped on its own, but it just couldn't break free.

This episode was made weirder by the Yi and Diao moments where they went from ineffectual non-talks to Diao monologuing, and all the way to "hey, where did I lose my hand? Oh, that's right, in your crotch!" Just Nooooooo. Yi had been doing better at recognizing and trying to wrap his head around his reactionary moments. He was having a crisis, yes, but had been showing little breakthrough moments. And then this episode happened and suddenly a hormone rock-slide knocked the Clue Bus right off the road and into a ditch.

Nuea and Syn were a breath of fresh air at a moment when I thought my head was going to pop off my shoulders. But Syn is still unlikably arrogant. It's not a bombastic arrogance, it's the quiet kind some pious people have where they just "know" what's best for everyone and feel they have a right to meddle.

Also, Pentagon looks like a damn titty bar. It's tacky. It was ALL up in the "bordello chic". And no, Boun and Prem did not save that scene. (But man they improved the scenery) The whole moment where Lian is like "I didn't want Kuea to meet bad people...". Uh, Sir, too late, he's been associating with you for years. Lian and Yi prove yet again they aren't really friends by going right for each others weak spots. And man, the level of passive aggressiveness this whole scene was littered with... I just do not even have enough words. I ran all out.

I wanted to like the pro marriage equality conversation but that felt so rehearsed and contrived it ruined the benefit of actually including it.

In the end, the relationships are all still a clusterfuck and the show's plot is still a disaster too. Lian isn't less manipulative, he's just less aggressively controlling. It's more subtle. I've never seen a less likable BL main romance character.

The rest was so contrived or so dull I wanted to turn the show off and tune into paint drying. So I am done caring how it turns out. This week kind of killed that. I was waiting to see if they'd unearth Kuea's agency (no) and if the plot would sweep all of Lian's shit under a rug (yes). And it turns out that since that whole nasty drinking scene, I've just apparently thrown my mental hands in the air. This episode could have been titled "Kissing Totally Means Progress in Place of Actual Character Growth! Really!" Because sure, they've played tonsil hockey and that absolutely means things are good now, right?

Cutie Pie defies explanation of how bad it is. If it weren't for the two peeps I watch it with, I would not make it through an ep. We were all just... Wow. No. Thankfully I have plenty of BL's coming out that seem to have potential. The hype on this one has no relationship to its actual merits.

I disliked this ep as much as all the others. Just, like no.

I do consider Ram's nature to be overcautious. And purposefully unplugged from things.. He's not unaware of how the effects of gossip and bullying affect Luck, he's just very cautious about drawing attention to it or acting on it. The same way he was overly cautious about posting on social media with more of Luck's initial foods, after the first post, further back in the beginning. With that he demonstrated awareness. He is just prone to NOT making public waves. Which can be a very good tactic, but it can also lead to people misunderstanding his intent.

And Luck does think for himself. But he's a people pleaser and someone who tries to avoid strife. It was very clear in his scene where Phai pulls him away that he didn't return because he was coming to an understanding of Phai's actual motivation, recognizing that it was protective, and choosing to allow that to be his priority at the moment. Which was very sensitive of him and pretty much on brand for his character. So his challenge won't be in thinking for himself, it will be in acting against a wave to put his own desires first.

It will come for both of them. They share in common a "minimal commotion" approach to things. So their personalities are very compatible.

I'm on episode 3 and Maze is wildly cynical and money focused. They've called him a "sinner" often enough in the humorous context. And we can tell he's working from the standpoint of a soured relationship too.

So I am guessing this love story is meant to soften and revitalize his sense of humanity and he'll grow to be less materialistic?

I can roll with that journey. It's not the first time a BL or even a het romance has used that trope. And Tae is worth the ride. He's SO funny in this.