Feardorcha

A painfully unnecessary season. Everyone should've just died & stayed dead in the first season, & let it end there. Season two jettisoned nearly everything that made the first season engaging (setting, costumes, layered characters, complex stakes, sociopolitical upheaval, resistance, failure, triumph, being able to actually see what's on the screen) & doubled-down on its most tedious elements (romance).

Season one wasn't perfect but it had direction & heart & aesthetic appeal. The story was at least definitely headed somewhere, whereas season two felt like a loose collection of plot beats leftover from other, better shows.

The absolute best parts of season two were the flashbacks. It was so frustrating that instead of getting that narratively & visually energetic direct continuation of the story from season one, season two offered up little than a meandering, monotone borefest.

Occasionally fun but often frustrating watch.

The show's very premise certainly required a healthy suspension of disbelief throughout the first season but it was a mostly engaging & enjoyable police procedural. Season two descended into magical ridiculousness.

There is also a grating third tonal shift toward the latter half, with the Peking Opera storyline being embarrassingly silly by the end. I got the concept, understood what they were trying to do, but it simply did not work. Shows like "Tell Me What You Saw", "Strangers From Hell", & "Hannibal" can deliver on the beautifully grotesque, adorning horror & psychoses in Baroquely complex trappings that lend a touch of fractured light to the twisted shadows that are the very soul of those series' stories. But with "Under the Skin", it's like watching a fervent yet unskilled LARPer in action. This show just doesn't have the bones to wear that type of flesh. In season one, it brushed up against darkness but didn't embody it, & its feints at doing so in season two were more awkward than intriguing.

The dynamic they were structuring between Fang & Shen Yi has been done a thousand times & a thousand times better elsewhere. Everything about it was predictable & tiresome. Also, if they were trying to set the stage for a struggle between Fang & Du Cheng over Shen Yi, it wasn't working. The Shen Yi/Du Cheng relationship has mellowed too much (or, at least, the series's depiction of it), I just don't buy that Du Cheng is Shen Yi's anchor. At least, not enough to put up a credible fight against Fang's seduction of Shen Yi.

I suppose they're trying to take the series in a "darker", heavier direction but, honestly, that type of show just doesn't fit this cast, the scripts, or the cinematography. The series is at its best when it's grounded in emotional realism, intertwining the consequences of Human frailty with levity & hope. The best episodes of the season were the ones that focused on that rather than trying to do deep psychological dives into the nature of monsters. & don't even get me started on the genetics nonsense. "Mouse" exists, & though it has its own issues, it's a far better, more arresting exploration of genetic predisposition to psychopathy than whatever "Under the Skin II" is trying to do.

I guess, for me, season two just feels like it's trying to be a bunch of other shows, & has lost the identity that made season one feel fresh & unique.

It is so refreshing to have another BL that more realistically portrays sex between men. I am so very tired of the soft-focus, salmon-flopping-around, heteronormative pantomimes that pass for NC scenes in the majority of BLs. Perhaps "4 Minutes" will be the series that passes the mental barrier I have between BLs and legitimate LGBTQ+ cinemedia.

"Big Dragon" was bad but this series is both tedious and bad. It's like a vapid fanfic of an old school Harlequin Romance paperback, and those were insipid by default. Just awful.

This series began unravelling in the second act and never quite pulled itsef back together, and there needs to be justice for Taem (I detested everything the writers did to her; such a misused character), but, overall, worth at least one watch for Drake's Dr. Plakao and the fun energy of GreatInn.

The Mudmee and Half story is the most engaging thing in this series. Somebody get Pahn her own show; she is acting circles around everyone else, and is actually managing to succeed with her character in spite of how bad virtually everything else is in this series.

Oab is a menace. Walking around looking like he does and flirting like he does, how can anyone in radius of that kitchen concentrate on anything? Even his apron is sexy. Every time a nonsensical element of how this restaurant is operated or the way this contest is run comes up, I start to get exasperated but then Oab's hotness just short-circuits my brain. The man is in desperate need of a business manager, though, that's obvious. I would volunteer as tribute.

I need more JJ and Methas. And more of JJ's boss. She is just gorgeous. I will give this series all the stars if they give me she and Oab together in a frame so I can ogle them simultaneously.

I am trying to find even one redeeming quality about Wan. He's a user, he's selfish, he lacks talent, he's always looking for shortcuts, he never wants to put in the work, he has zero scruples, flexible morals, purchasable ethics, and stupid hair. I want to like him but he makes it so damn difficult.

Unfortunately, no.

Oh Taemrak. It oughta be a crime what this show's done to you.

I hope he doesn't. I hope Ryan's experiences teach him to be more confident in himself, more certain about his ambitions, and more assertive in pursuing them. I hope he actually grows as a character.

Absolutely correct. He isn't a poorly written character because he gets on my nerves; he gets on my nerves because he's a poorly written character.

I have both been an intern and trained interns. I even supervised an intern who changed career fields and came into my industry with zero knowledge. I hired them because they demonstrated high energy, creative thinking, and gumption during the interview process. I knew they were a chance worth taking because it was clear they hungered for the opportunity to prove their mettle. They were wet clay, ready and eager to be molded.

Ryan is a feckless idiot who just let's things happen to him. He's a bad intern who is constantly failing up. He's a reactionary character with the intellectual prowess of a walnut. This is a poorly written character.

The show is bad. It's bad and it's boring and never have I wanted to throttle anyone as much as I do Salin.

How, just how, do you take a fun, sex-on-legs CP like MosBank and manage to suck all the fun and sexy out? I thought JaFirst's final series was baffling in how it managed to destroy the chemistry between a truly electric pairing but then this tosh of a series came round to piss me off. It's just a multitude of poor choices, from the casting to the wardrobe to the absolutely flummoxing decision to have these two behave like highschoolers in their first relationship.

Actually, scratch that. I remember high school; we were a bunch of horney buggers who could barely keep our tongues off each other. These two are mutually-attracted Adult men—what the fuck are they doing? Geez, this show just makes me mad.

Seriously. Ryan can come off as so developmentally delayed that one wonders if he's compos mentis enough to consent.

At first, I thought perhaps he was meant to be neurodivergent but now I'm convinced he's just a poorly written character.

The very fact that Ryan helps run his family business makes him that much more irritating to watch as he stupids his way through an internship he neither understands nor deserves.

That's what annoys me about MAME. She's a writer of trashy erotica but when her books are turned into series, the productions always lean away from the erotica element, which is the only interesting part. Without that, it's just simplistic dialogue, shallow characters, silly situations, and her weird complexes about white skin and deep wallets.

Please, please, just go back to the seaside.

Konishi Eito portrays naïve earnestness so well. A character like Nakano could've been a chore to watch but there are such layers buried in his every look and word and gesture. I am both fascinated and charmed watching him navigate his world. I get weirdly proud of him when he does the smallest things, like texting the group chat, and it broke my heart seeing him so frightened. I can't recall the last time I was so invested in a character and their arc.

He just makes an already enjoyable series that much more engaging. Kudos, Konishi Eito.

Ryan is flat-out annoying. Everything about him irritates me, from his vacuous expressions to his lack of basic sense to the way he stands. Why would someone like Jane ever be romantically drawn to a slow, passive idiot like Ryan? It just beggars belief. I'm already finding it difficult to believe Jane would be putting up with Ryan as an intern, I can't see him looking round one day and deciding that slack-jawed child is the one for him.