John Master

This sort of show MUST have stupid gangster people. Otherwise, the "good guys" would be eliminated within three episodes.

The gangsters have no monopoly on Stupid, though. Joke (and his henchman) need to quit signing his name on walls.

I write reviews too. The worst sin you can commit is to point out deficiencies in a work someone else sees as flawless. To offer a grace note to the individual above, the issue described (downvoting) does exist. To assume any one person's contrary opinion fits that profile, however, reasons ahead of facts.

On the off chance you still want a forum to gripe about how this series ended, please see today's video from Thai BL YouTube channel, which ranks the last year's Taiwanese BLs. I was going to keep silent, but the Comments section was so rapturous for TOO that I had to chime in. Cantankerous of me, I know. But I'm old. It's allowed. At the very least, please track down my comment (same username) and leave a like, so that I dont have to be a hating crackpot all on my own.

https://youtu.be/en2rAPivlFA?si=zc_s8_xQjXo_bUzD

Belated replies to Friday's comments:

"But all of a sudden Tian was proclaiming his willingness to 'wait'."

I also thought that dialog was off. I am less rosy about Tian than you. Based on when he manifested signs of having fallen for the New Boy, I think it was a narrative mistake for him to keep his feelings unvoiced. Perhaps the writers were too slavish in following the novel? Tian was observant about Wang, it would have felt more plausible for him to detect Wang's discomfort and perhaps defuse it before Wang self-immolated during the exam. For me, his failure to confess indicates his own struggle with internal homophobia, which makes my take on the character harsher (?) than yours.

"I've come to a much greater recognition of my yearning for the most angsty, painful, dramatic, excruciating, even horrifying developments in the fiction I partake of, from novels to plays to movies; no matter the medium."

I began watching during Lockdown. BL (and K-drama) was pure escapism. My 2020 brain disengaged from intellectual analysis of entertainment. I was just along for the ride and quite content with the genre's penchant for empty-headed fluffiness. Somewhere around the time Lovely Writer and Cutie Pie were airing, my brain reengaged. (The sheer awfulness purveyed by one of those two led my intellect to conclude it would no longer sit out of the BL consumption.) Nevertheless, I retain my preference for the happy, fluffy stories. The LGBT genre is chalk full of heavy queer stories. I welcomed that BL differentiated itself with sappy happy tales, even while accepting that BL seldom engaged queer truths in any substantive way.

(One surmises from your statement that the recent Happy ofmthe End must have been right up your alley?)

"If you ever meander over to my custom lists and are bored...."
"Another reason I left it there was because it's 23 years old...."

I actually surveyed a couple lists Thursday night. My top and bottom look very different. (No pun intended.) (No, really. Not intended.) But I endorse judging older works by the standard of their own time first, while not ignoring the question "does it still stand up today?" So if you forgive an older work for an unhappy ending and do not extend the same grace to one from 2024....I concur in that conclusion.

I shall make no attempt to talk you down from that reaction. Giggle away!

"I want to be alone." The line was spoken at two separate moments.

The first party spoke it, only to flee into his room to avoid confrontation exhibited immaturity. The second party spoke it, and likewise fled into his room to avoid confrontation delivered the perfect rejoinder.

You had that coming, Turtle Boy. In your face!

Following that with "Directed by..." freeze frame? Priceless.

Who would guess that discussion of husbandry in a BL board would be about turtles?

Good post. I have to run errands. Will address your questions later. (Though today's fuller take on Tian is in the OTHER thread, the one about shirtless Tian after the shower.)

By the way, if i had a buck for every time a subtitle scolled past before i processed it, or that my imagination supplied a plausible, but ultimately incorrect, theory, I'd have enough...well, enough for pizza. Not Domino's mind you--a "fancy" pie from one of those trendy places boasting about a wood-fired oven. Beers, too.

Also, most of the time, my plausible-yet-incorrect theory would have been more entertaining than whatever made it onscreen. But, maybe (?), that's a low bar to clear...most of the time.

One other tidbit from my rewatch of the scene:

When the other two guys squirt/spill the lotion (a white creamy fluid), it spatters across the desk. One of them worries the white stuff will stain his pants in a visible way. [The joke here is tawdry, but it fits the scene.]

Watching from his bunk, Wang flinches in embarassment. (Really, Wang? What does that sight remind you of?) He then steals another glance at shirtless Tian, now seated at his desk and still drying himself off.

This moment amps up the sexual tension in two ways. First, the audience spots another example of Wang feeling the feels for Tian, and being flummoxed by his own reaction. Tian, facing away, is oblivious. Second, the filmmakers' thinly veiled allusion to masturbation provides further insight into Wang's thought process: white creamy spatter --> look at Tian. Oh, yes. Wang is having impure thoughts all right.

But again, this analysis is Wang-focused. Tian is just there.

So, I rewatched that bit.

Tian definitely catches Wang staring at him. But i read him as being confused by it (why is he suddenly looking at me like that?) rather than seeing an opportu ity to amp up the flirtation. Let me add this, which I think informs how I interpret this scene from the finale: my take on Tian, virtually from e 1, is that he understands he is attracted to Wang. But he doesn't believe Wang likes him in the same way. So, he has always concealed his true feelings as much as possible. Even though in the later episodes, Tian notices Wang reacting to him in weird new ways (including that post-shower stare), he is so invested in /conceal my feelings/ + /he doesnt like me like that/ that he misses the implications. Fails to read that Wang has caught feelings. Thus, it is natural for him to remain shirtless--not to flirt, but because he thinks Wang would never notice that he is.

And every currently or formerly closeted person nods in recognition. "Oh, yeah. I did that."

In my subtitles, the conversation during lunch at Old Man Ding's went like this:

Tian fetches water. Comes back. Asks:

41:17. When are you moving?
Wang: huh?
Tian: when are you moving to Class B?
41:31. Wang: at noon. I'll go before the lunch break ends.

Moments later the two return to Class A. Tian helps Wang pack up materials from his desk, then escorts him downstairs to Class B.

If moving out from the dorm room was mentioned, it was not in this scene. If memory serves, there were no further dorm room scenes at all.

The novel readers (always eager to assert the [false] primacy of the source material) intimate Wang returns to Shanghai after the failed test. As a ploy to create distance from an uncomfortable situation, that at least could not be described as ineffectual. But I caught no evidence of that subplot nor moving out of the dorm in the finale episode. In fact, given that Tian would likely exit the dorm room, too (both back at home?), such a move makes little sense. Wang may not have noticed, but Tian only committed to the dorm when Wang did.

This episode really did end poorly. Even if all the other stupidity remained the same, I wish Tian had called out Wang more directly. He knows Wang tanked the exam, and he comes close to levelling that accusation. "Did you lie to [the teachers]?" Better if he had just said, "I know you did that on purpose. What are you running from?" If they had made that the cliffhanger, well, it would not supersede every deficiency. But it would have helped.

Hmm. If i ever watch this episode again, i will look more sharply at that moment. But i definitely didnt detect any effort at being more seductive.

The entire second-half of this series relies on the internalized homophobia of the two male couples. Their choices only make sense in view of how internalized homophobia (which often goes unrecognized by the person experiencing it) compels individuals to make choices that hurt them. You state you don't "find the show very homophobic." And it is true that hostile societal homophobia is largely absent and so, too, is the sort of parental homophobia that (while a real thing) is overused within the genre. So the "worse" that ouve seen is likely that other type of homophobia. Unfortunately, actual queer people have to deal with their own issues as well as society's. If the series had addressed this internal struggle--even for just one of the four characters affected--then the series itself could escape the accusation of being homophobic. Portraying homophobia's effects and being homophobic in and of itself are different things. By failing to make the internal worlds of these characters more explicit (as it did do in showing how T and W fall for one another), the makers leave the impression that Sheng Wang's actions are either logical or inevitable. That shortcoming lends credence to the accusation that the series itself IS homophobic.

Any line drawn between LGBTQ series and BL series as genres will be somewhat arbitrary, reflecting biases and preferences of whomever draws those boundaries. Personally, I see the genres as distinct but with areas of overlap. One area they do not overlap: why each genre exists. The raison d'etre of a gay/queer series is the depiction of the sort of self-awareness (or struggle with same) that you ascibe to your fave BLs. Or, of depicting how the real world complicates life for queer people because of their queerness. The raison d'etre of a BL series is to depict a same sex couple falling for another. That can be, and in BL usually is, done without the "realism" of the struggles with identity. Thus, I do not tend to fault a BL that fails the "gay realism" test so long as it delivers a happy, carefree romance. (We seem to differ there, philosophically. ) The rare BL that manages both--depicting the romance and also acknowledging that being gay entails far, far more than liking same sex partners--tends to excite me more than others. (Philosophically, our "faves" may align after all.)

The On1y One somehow failed both these missions at the end, despite having done the legwork in story structure and character development to do both. It failed to explore internalized homophobia in any meaningful way. AND, after 12 hours of showing boys smitten with one another, it failed to put them together.

For me, the worst sin a series can commit, is disappointing its own premise. A potential for greatness was here. For whatever reason, the last episodes of this series spun their wheels, avoided confronting difficult topics, and left the characters more or less where they were as of ep 6. Squandered potential.

The deeper into the weeds our respective comments venture with specific takes, the more divergence I find in our interpretations and analysis of the nuances. Yet, we are both not just in the weeds, we are combing through the same patch of weediness. Broadly speaking, the same shortcomings alarm us both. But after diagnosing a problem, we do not necessarily identify the same source, agree on the severity of the issue, or wish for the same remedy.

It is pretty common for guys to walk around shirtless after a shower. I detected no ulterior motive on the part of Tian because stepping into the room shirtless strikes me as the most ordinary, unremarkable course of action post-shower.

Given his agitated state-of-mind in the episode and newfound hyper-awarenes of how he himself reacts to Tian, it is possible (even probable) that Wang reacted to this shirtlessness in ways that belie the sheer ordinariness of the occassion. But, no, that reaction doesn't arise from anything Tian did out of the ordinary.

Commendations to you for sharing your pain in that second paragraph. I suspect nearly every queer person can relate to aspects of that experience, albeit each of our own journeyes will have differed.

I suspect gay audiences will have less tolerance for this ending because we consume BL for its tendency towards fantasy romance--where internalized homophobia either is overcome or simply never existed innthat world. It may be less realistic, but sometimes one wants escapism. Most BLs eschew realism and lather in happy fantasy.

Worse, this series bungled the chance to tackle internalized homophobia. The series was never ABOUT how homophobia's pernicious effects constrained the choices any ofnthe furncharacters saw for themselves. Rather, it simply USES homophobic outcomes to facilitate the plot.

Based on what made it onscreen, anyone who sees "trauma" in Tian's ancient history backstory is reading their own views into the scene. We know Tian resents his father. And there are unresolved issues. But it is unlikely that 10 year-old Tian correlated his own sexuality to what he witnessed in dad's bedroom. Or even understood sexuality in a way that tracked withnhis 17 year old self.

The child Tian may have been angry about how those events disrupted his childhood. Or even at the betrayal of his mother. Definitely about the carelessly tossed cigarette that burned him. But absent some ONSCREEN ruminations connecting the distant past events to his present day crush on his new, unexpected brother, I must regard "trauma" as an overinterpretation. He has unfinished business with dad, yes. But what, exactly, botuers him? We can only speculate.

(No, i haven't read the novel. No, I dont think it is relevant if a more detailed unpacking of those events exists on those pages. If the scriptwriters omitted those details from their adaptation, then this Tian remains open to alternate explanations.)

The older couple and younger couple each suffered from similar issues. The elder couple ought to have been better eqipped to recognize internal homophobia, and that awareness would have added a layer of nuance and complexity to the main story about the teenagers. Meanwhile, the elder couple could still have confronted societal homophobia as an obstacle. The bones of an incredibly good story are here, but the circumstances of episodes 10-12 leaves all the characters stuck where they were by ep 3.

Your last sentence says everything. In general, I do not think it is the responsibility of an entertainment series to educate its audience on social issues. But sometimes they should. Sometimes a bit of pedantry would make sense. In other words, introduce the concept of "internalized homophobia" somewhere en route, so that the struggle of these kids (realistic) does not come across as a colossal failure of communication. Here, this ending for the teenagers would have landed with great poignancy if the older couple had explicitly confronted the internalized homophobia obstructing their dynamic. The contrast between dealing with it (elders) and not knowing how (kids) could have been powerful. Could. Have. Been. The weird parallel between the two couples not only fails to work, the repetitiveness in situation diminishes the whole.