A beautiful thematic story interwoven with Art!
I love how korea brings out unique storylines and beautiful setups! Nothing was overdone and everything felt very calm and motivating to me! Actors gave enough justice to their characters and had excellent chemistry and their acting felt natural and smooth!Loved the concept of the 'Destiny woven by Red thread'. Visuals were appealing. There were a few cheesy moments but I could totally get through it because of the pacing! Expected more dancing as it was a dance based theme!
Yet a short, simple, sweet and enjoyable ride!
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An Incessant Surge of Emotional Upheavel!
This show has left me in anguish, despair, hope, loneliness and a relentless magnitude of emotional turmoil, that is going to take ages for me to heal. Every line, every scene, every emotion cuts skin deep and makes you relive the life of the protagonist, as you sincerely long for his life to get better. It may open up unhealed wounds for some, and if God forbid, you may have lived the life of an LGBT individual, be ready for sleepless nights that the situations flashed in the show might punch your guts with!This show, in its innate sincerity have served one of the RAWEST and REALISTIC forms of representation of queer life. Every episode made me relive the adolescent joy of new found relationship, and at the end of the next episode left me in absolute emptiness as though it's narrating my own life ordeals. It's as RAW as it can get. The fear of losing hope, the feeling of uncertainties in every step of your adult life, losing friends, dealing with the harsh denial of parents, dating a strongly religious and closeted partner, and also the most taboo topics such as HIV, the show absolutely doesn't shy from any of it!
In a world of heteronormative feminine centric BL dramas, that encash majorly on the looks and fetishes of its audience completely neglecting the negative repercussions it can have on an adolescent LGBT individual, where they are steered far from reality and make them set extremely unrealistic expectations from both relationship and family, only to pave the way for depression and disappointment in future, this show is a an extremely good and genuine steep that draws the necessary line between fiction and reality. Though I do certainly enjoy the optimism and ray of hope that some traditional BLs give, it sets extremely unattainable expectations which I feel does more harmful than good. The characters are GREY, and may not be reminiscent of your idealistic fictional protagonists.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT:
Even though this show has been a major milestone in how it deals with queer media, I did have some reservations regarding it. The choice of choosing four different directors to direct the four phases of the protagonists life seems a good idea to display the drastic arrays of life, but unfortunately makes it suffer from an incoherent narrative. The hurdles and losses the protagonists encounters through the passage of every two episodes is devastating enough, but it fails to show what impact it has on his mind clearly. People and issues just bluntly come and go, even though that is the way of life, but the initial fervours have little implications on his life moving ahead. Plus even though with the progression of HIV treatment, little has been shown on the implications of it on his health, though that may not have been the motive of the author. Packing a decade of the protagonists story in 8 episodes was a bit too fast paced for the audience to actually feel the depth and sensitivity of the most of the issues presented, albeit some viewers like me who have been through the protagonists shoes to understand the gravity of the situations.
THING THAT IRKED ME THE MOST:
I genuinely applaud and commend the leads for their bold and courageous attempt at displaying genuine intimacy and affection and sex drive on mainstream media, but one has to be really careful on what you show and ask for! Even though with the advent of PreP and HIV medications and use of condoms, having shared a decent amount of time in the gay dating pool, I am still of the stern opinion that YOUR PARTNER HAS TO ABSOLUTELY KNOW OF YOUR HEALTH CONDITION BEFORE YOU ENGAGE IN ANY SEXUAL ACTIVITY WITH HIM OR HER!! This is downright criminal and the poor soul is going to be traumatised for the rest of his life! And no form of contraceptive and medication have been proven to be 100% effective in prevention!
Thank you for my listening to my rant!
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More of a Scenario Building Exercise than an actual plot
CHEMISTRY:Okay so hear me out! This has got to be by far the best level of intimacy and bareness I've ever seen in BL so far! Like i have no clue how they've got Fuaiz to shoot those bare sex scenes when he was barely 18 is still goes all over my head, but his level of maturity and acting makes me confident enough that he knows what he's doing and is of legal age.
PLOT:
Now coming to the plot, there were many reminiscence of DFF in the plot and by the end of ep 4 I knew it's going to take the Messier route just as DFF took but not as mad. But the entire 4minutes thing was really messy to be honest. Like what were the writers really trying to convey, like how the scenario building as we do in urban design 😂, showed how things would've been different if characters behaved in a certain way in those 4 minutes, or these were mental patients who were living in their own trance struggling to grapple with reality, or actually did time travel? It's seriously a convoluted mess!
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT:
I loved how every character was shown to be a grey character and shown them in their exact realness with no useless fluffy like we see in typical BL dramas, and had managed their own flaws and struggles. Though there was little character development in most of the characters except Korn, for that matter yeah just his realisation what he did wrong was enough for me ðŸ˜. DFF had really good development and plot build-up, even though this did try really hard with those mind boggling plot twists, but it has lesser of an impact.
ACTING:
Fuaiz and Bas really stole the show, to be real honest. Those two were literally the main characters of the entire show than Jess Bible themselves. Like i really didn't care by the ending of the show as to what shit they were upto, I was most concerned where the rat of Fuaiz is upto 😂. Jess is a veteran actor so need not talk much about it, and Bible really didn't have much to offer.
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Ridiculously clichéd drama with so many wrong messages!
First of I don't understand the tendency of SK writers to just pick up a random individual and make him a monster, just like the one portrayed in MOUSE, a person isn't just born criminal, every person, every criminal has a reason for his actions, be it desperation, greed, list and just his situations. Even the so-called serial killers like Jeffery Dahmer have a peculiar environment and upbringing which sort of culminates in certain behaviors of an individual. There is no random monster gene present in an individual, shows like Bates Motel and Assassination of Gianni Versace show pretty well as to how a certain crimanal ends up being where he is, the psychology, of the individual, but we'll yeah, it's beyond the scope of this cliched rom-com.The script in itself is beyond confusing and childish, there have been so many instances where it was pretty obvious that Hong Hee Joo's mask was uncovered, yet the script kept annoying stretching that stupid cringey conversations which added no kind of build up or depth to the plot. The behavior of the ML being so repulsive and uptight and treated the FL so shittily, and just randomly being super possessive and empathetic of her in the end is super dumb, with no justifications of his actions? Wasn't three years enough for you to break down your walls?
Second, i absolutely don't digest the reason as to why Hong Hee Joo had to pretend to be mute and what her mother had to gain or lose out of it. The insensitivity of the show to use some disability of the show to gain traction from the audience to reveal it was just a suspence is quite nerving, instead of showing the struggles they go through, the show just used it as a plot armour. The FL lead loves to jump herself to death all the time and just resuscitate alive all the time, like what were the writers even thinking?
At last the worst moments of the show, the pro-zionist agenda? And what on earth was he even doing there and made his wife jump into a near death situation which in reality would've turned extremely horrendous? Were the writers smoking pot? The writers really belittled the maturity of the audience watching this show.
This show is an absolutely wasted potential, with such beautiful cinematography, catchy music, good budget, the script just ruined everything. What could've been an absolute thrilling cat and mouse chase between the ML and FL, they just ruined it by making it an absolutely cringey rom-com! Totally skippable!
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