Ianto

well, here's a shout out to all the people who wrote about this and commended it on various forums, particularly on Tumblr. It's not on the MDL Thai BL page and so I might have missed it otherwise. I have just watched in quick succession the first three episodes and I really think this is a little gem. OK, we are back at school, but it comes across as being authentic and the issues, such as bullying, but also the difficulty of acknowledging your emerging feelings when you are young, are dealt with seriously and often very sensitively. And, ok, there some crazy schoolgirl shippers, etc., but I feel the acting of the main characters is really sincere and deeply felt. So far, so very good. I am not sure what drama is in store now, but I have seen many positive reviews for a BL that did not seem to receive the strong promotion that many other series do....

No, you are not the only at all!!!! In fact, it wasn't until the 3rd episode that I realised that they were two different characters..... I thought it was the same character, even though there seemed to be a few contradictions. And then, of course, I looked at the page on MDL and realised they are brothers in real life...

Oh, and another silly incident and silly misunderstanding right at the end, just to disrupt the seeming calm and happiness and create a bit of drama for a few minutes, before everything resolves itself....
I suppose the approach for the three couples so far has been slightly varied, but the overall structure is almost identical and the formulaic elements are always there....

When I think of the mad character he played in YYY already, I was quite impressed by Korn's portrayal of Mon. Even if he is a bit of a big fluffy baby, the hurt and the sadness he conveyed.....

I might be wrong, but I am pretty sure I was told by a friend who had been living in Thailand for many years that "ka" was the form used when addressing a woman..... as opposed to krab. But I didn't notice this in episode 6....

hmm, I hold out a lot of hope for Friday (Tay, Perth & Yoon.....)

Totally agree, none of it made any sense at all. Seems it was just some very feeble plot device to introduce some drama / suspense in an episode that basically had no story line at all....., and fill up about 15-20 minutes of screen time.... (which could have been better spent showing us Max and Nat kissing passionately and being extra lovey-dovey..... I mean, surely that was what this episode was exclusively about....).

Hmm, lots of fluff, cuteness overload, and indeed lots of real affection and tenderness...... and that was lovely, but that really was all there was!!
- no real story line to speak of in episode 4 (there was clearly something more substantial in episode 3, - and that strange misunderstanding scene with the "other" guy, who turns out to be a senior for whom Nuea has written a dialogue (?)... well, that didn't make any sense at all.
And as cute and adorable as they both are (and I really think Max is turning in a good performance in terms of fine light romantic comedy), it would seem that realistic and convincing kissing is not going to be one of the main joys to write home about in this series.

But, sure, this was (is!) a lovely sweet couple, and I would love to see them in something more serious and developed.,,,, and even more tender.

Yes, I think it's clear now that it's just best to go with the flow, however weird, cringey or trashy it might be in places.... That's the point: there was very little flow in the first two episodes....
Here, there is oodles of flow, flowing all over us..... in cute abundance, haha.

They definitely brought me out in a warm sweat........ phew!!

Ahem, well....... A young university student finds himself teaching / tutoring / training / coaching (please delete as appropriate....) a younger boy whom he has had a fight with shortly before........ They soon start falling for each other, of course!

Hmm, now I wonder where I have come across this basic plot framework recently ??? Is this to become a standard structure with variations?

Well, at least there was less bickering and squabbling than with the first couple, a smoother and less chaotic development /pace, possibly more sexual innuendo than with the first couple (if at all possible)....... and talk about cuteness overload !!!!

I am actually quite impressed with Max, who gives quite a fine comic performance, very different from the macho footballer in WhyRU, and Nat, no longer the innocent, also nicely plays the wicked seductiveness to the hilt.

And I laughed a hell of a lot....... which is always a very good thing
(but apparently, there is trouble on the horizon...... well, there had to be, didn't there...)

Hmm, I hadn't thought of it in that way, i.e. that it could be pure satire. In some ways, you might be right....
Having said that, satire is usually a lot more vicious or, at least, effective in its attack on certain traditional and immovable tropes, and also at least a decent laugh. I don't think these first two episodes were either....

Hmm, well, for what it's worth, my thoughts after seeing the first two episodes (first couple) in quick succession are: I shall try to keep on watching (I mean, you cannot judge entirely on just 1/7 of the main cast / one story out of 7...), but I shall not be heartbroken if I don't manage to see it all.

The first, and main, thing is that the scripting and the directing are fairly erratic, jump from one thing to the other and hardly evolve consistently or smoothly at all: a bit of a mess as others said below. I mean, first of all, we receive about 25 minutes of unexplained proud obstinate squabbling and cock-fighting, and then, suddently, the two main characters veer into limp silliness and lovey-doveyness: embarassed shyness, staring at each other, blowing kisses between the beds..... And why we had to have that suddent instance of teasing or misunderstanding at the end, when neither would confirm who they really had feelings for (as if they - and we - didn't know....), and they both thought that they were going to break up....pretty inconsistent and artificial..... just to engineer a kind of cliff-edge climax ???

I don't think we are going to get much that is very creative or original out of this series. After all, we are seeing all the usual time-worn scripting and visual tropes: enemies to lovers, the accidental lip-touching and staring when close up, holding the other guys tight around the waist on the bicycle, and the traditional wiping down in bed with a towel and a bowl of cool water...... been there, done all that before. On a more positive note, the two actors were quite good, certainly charming and cute, and even had some nice chemistry between them..... pity the kissing was totally artificial and lifeless (I would have thought that after ZeeSaint, MaxTul, and MewGulf, and many others, the impassive touching of lips while freezing was a thing of the past.... especially given how passionate Chap was in Lovely Writer).

I think this will be nowhere near as intense and sensuous as WhyRU, or as wonderfully crazy and imaginative as YYY (which, you will note, were directed by exactly the same person !!!). But hey, there's nothing wrong with some light entertaining lovey-dovey nonsense now and then, even if it does come across as more of the "same old, same old...". For me, however, and after the incredible summits we have had over the last 4/5 months (Manner of Death, We Best Love, 1000 Stars, and even Lovely Writer - which admittedly went off the rails a little at the end of episode 6...), I fear this may end up being just a little lacklustre.

OK, so I have spent a few days watching this and am now up to episode 7, and frankly, I don't know what to make of it all. Like most people, I came to watch this in order to see what happens to Bank and Golf, and because I love the main actors, especially Fluke Natouch. And after what seems to me to be the most horrendous lie and an egregious dereliction of parental duty ever known to mankind, you would have expected series 2 to go into this whole situation and the aftermath in some depth: establishing what Bank's life is now (we only learn afterwards that he has a boyfriend, but then weird surprises are the name of the game....), building up to the revelation of Golf still living, covering Bank's inner feelings and turmoil, also Golf's attitude and behaviour, and what kind of a relationship is even thinkable after that..... but no, we get immediate revelation, immediate rejection by Bank, to be followed by pretty rapid reconciliation, before the boyfriend problem comes to centre stage - I get the impression that that will be dealt with pretty expeditiously..... Oh, and talking of surprises, we find out Golf has a sister and she is working in their old school.... (how come they lived together and that never surfaced ???). Mind you, it would seem her only raison-d'être is simply to use manipulative arguments to bring Bank back to Golf.

And all this is interspersed with long sections, where we can see Bank and Gold interacting but cannot hear the dialogues, (only beautiful music), and which slow the whole thing down... The whole rhythm of series 2 is completely haywire. And needless to say Bank and Golf's story is hardly done justice.

I get it that series 2 is attempting to deal with various themes: different perspectives on love and affection between "brothers" (of varying configurations apparently.... I still haven't understood what the actual relation between Meka and Hungray is...), the feelings of loneliness, abandonment by family, and parental disinterest, the danger (as a consequence of this) of falling into bad company and into the hands of disturbing abusers, etc. And this is played out through a number of pairs of young men. But the series seems to jump from one couple to another, without a bye or a leave, and the different pairs seem to live in parallel worlds, with hardly any coherent or significant interaction. What a directing and editing mess!!

The most captivating couple, finally, and the most heartrending one, is Tar and Nuea. But what a story!! Young school kid, suffering from a lack of family love, is saved from dubious night-time interactions by receiving support lessons from a kind university graduate. They fall in love, but the graduate finally gets a job far away. Although he promises to stay in touch, his mother develops cancer, he takes on a more important job to earn more money and pay for chemotherapy, ends up working all hours of the day and is too busy even to answer phone calls from his young love, who then falls back into his old bad ways, gets abused by an older lascivious man, and then chucks up copious volumes of vomit when he finally gets home. Wow, how bleak and miserabilist can you get!!! It's worse than late 19th-century naturalist drama (has the director been reading too much Zola and Hauptmann??).

Oh, and then, of course, the usual toxic female, who starts flirting with Tar, turns up..... ph how we were missing that one!!!

As for the other couples:
- So far, Meka and Hungray seem to have the happiest situation at the moment, in spite of separation. But what's with the focus on the erotic aspects of this pairing?? The holes in the back of Hungray's swimming trunks, emphatic underwater filming of Hungray's crotch area, and then the love /sex scene (where the consent issue is highly debatable...). Well, I suppose Hungray seems happier and more at one with himself, but even so.....
- As for the Arkung / Nuttan scenario, quite apart from the fact that I don't see where they fit in at all, we are apparently heading for a second abuse / attempted rape situation...

So, perhaps some interesting themes per se, perhaps some delicate and emotional moments, and a few glimpses of moving portrayals (2 Flukes and Mon), but an utterly unsatisfactory development of the main couple and their dilemma, a direction and progression that is totally uncoordinated and incoherent, and some extraordinarily extreme and sensationalist depictions of situations that leave us wondering where that came from and where we are going next.... Oh well, two more episodes to go, so let's see just how far this weird production can go....

Well, I must admit that, after having watched the 8 episodes over a period of 3 evenings, I have become totally fascinated by this Korean series. And yet, the initial setting and the start of the story appeared to be utterly strange, even weird.
We start with a young man who has a neurological malfunction, which means that he cannot see colours, only various shades of grey. While I suppose that this is not something particularly unusual per se in real life, here it is presented as a kind of ominous pathology. The so-called "monos" are often considered as suspicious, even dangerous people, who are to be shunned, and whose condition will often lead to kidnapping, murder or suicide (or disappearance as in the case of the mother). Apart from the news stories on the TV which unequivocally establish this, we also learn that YeonWoo is very sensitive to the perception of others, has suffered from teasing and isolation, and that he is having to change schools (again ?) after having beaten up a boy who bullied him.
At the new school, he meets (befriends ?) two boys, one of whom seems a pretty nice and "normal" class leader, the other of whom is inhabited by his dead grandfather's spirit, who talks to him and can see into the near future. So far, really weird, what ????
He also meets another guy, who appears as a kind of beautiful outsider, almost an angel, with whom he begins to sense a mysterious connection. We learn that this guy, YooHan, is a "probe", who, by looking directly into YeonWoo's eyes, can enable him to see bright colours, if only for a short time. The emotional impact of this is so forceful that it brings on a "colour rush", usually causing YeonWoo to faint before coming to some time after.
Once we get into the development of this relationship, the weirdness seems to fall away and the desires, the indecisions, and the fears of each character come to the fore, together with some stunning emotions, both soft and violent in turn. The weird "Tim-Burton"-like situation becomes a deep and intense emotional journey that will have its ups and downs and its extremes.
It then struck me first of all that the whole phenomenon of discovering colours and the emotions that go with this discovery was very much a metaphor for discovering love and desire (romantic love, your first love, ...) but also a metaphor for sexual awakening. The more YeonWoo discovers this new experience (seeing the different colours) and the emotions it inspires, the more he wants to see them and go further, but at the same time, the more he becomes frightened and wants to hold back. He oscillates between this growing fascination for the colours and the fear of what he is getting into. And the way that YooHan recites the lists of different colours and different shades is clearly so entrancing, seductive, and even intoxicating, that it is only natural that YeonWoo is drawn in while feeling anxious about where he is treading. I am sure this may make some people think back to when they first fell in love, even to their own "first time": desire and fear.
And I think, at this point, there is no need to go into what the "colour rush", the psychedelic visions, and the subsequent swooning could all signify and represent in such a situation.
But then slowly it dawned on me that this story was going much further, and that it was also a metaphor for the discovery of gay desire and same-sex attraction, and its perception in society. YeonWoo, in particular is drawn to this new desire (for colour, and also for........), but, being particularly aware of the social context and the discrimination, fears going down this road and often holds back, even rejecting YooHan quite violently at times in order to convince him (and himself) that he does not have this desire ("that dare not speak its name").
Both of the main characters are outsiders in one way or another, YeonWoo because of his condition, but also YooHan with his unconventional manner and actions, his wearing of a mask, and also, as we learn at the end of the series, his facial blindness, his inability to recognise faces (although, of course, the only - beautiful - face that he can see is YeonWoo's). They do seem to have a few friends, who accept them in spite of their conditon or their general behaviour, but they are both basically loners until they meet each other. Of course, YooHan appears to have more confidence in himself, in his own personality and nature, and this willingness to stand firm and fight for what he believes in is what will help bring YeonWoo out of himself in the end.
Is it not to be expected therefore that YeonWoo's aunt, however much she loves him, does end up putting him in an institution (a mild form of conversion therapy ??) and preparing to move away again? Is it no wonder that the two boys run away to a beach in order to find a place where they can be alone, be themselves, and enjoy the discovery of colours (or whatever else....) together. And this is where we get the most entrancing recitation of all the shades of blue (the colour of lust, as we are reminded!!!). And are we surprised when we learn that the two boys risk having the whole weight of the social Establishment (the political, legal and entrepreneurial Establishment) bearing down upon them in the form of YooHan's family preparing to reel them back into normality? His mother is threatening to have a restraining order put out against the dangerous "mono" (read "homo" ?) who has clearly kidnapped and negatively influenced her supposedly innocent son.
One interesting point is that YooHan says that you cannot put out a restraining order against someone who is dead. And it got me wondering if this wasn't a very indirect reference to the Liebestod (love-death) motif of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, where, at the end, the two lovers, unable to pursue their love in life, can only continue to love each other in death (but then again, this is a fairly common trope in such tragic love-stories - Romeo and Juliet, for example - , that there is perhaps no need to make a specific case here. Haha).
At the end, it might seem that the whole situation is sorted out and wrapped up rather succinctly (A simple phone call to YooHan's mother and a promise to give up K-pop and study in the library....), whereas the whole situation of these two boys' mutual love could have dragged on for a long time. After the boys' recognition of their love for each other, and especially YeonWoo's "surrender" and desire to engage with YooHan, we get a bit of a "And-they-all-lived-happily-ever-after" conclusion. But the touching thing is that, both of them, with their individual perceived "conditions", can live together and provide the help and support the other one needs. And suddenly, colour blindness and facial blindness are no longer so serious, or even so tragic, because they have found each other and will help each other to live a full and "colourful" life.
This is not something that I have thought through and constructed for hours on end. Obviously, yes, this is a BL series, but I am often reading that BL and gay drama are two different things, and based on what I read, I do get it. Nut then, it seems to me here that this isn't just BL, but that the underlying text and metaphors are so more sensuous and rich with meaning, while saying something quite strong about discovering love and desire, and discovery gay love in a difficult social context. So this is how I began to see this while actually watching through the different episodes. I suppose some people may think I am going too far, but I find this is all in the verbal and visual text. Happy to discuss in any case.

Not to forget Tar's rape story , both in LBC1 and in TT1.

ah, well sorry, but that was not clear here.....
In the episode, Type was clearly trying to give Fiat a lesson, certainly by threatening him, but from his gestures and his words, it is clear that he is focusing on Fiat's knee, which I assume he could easily bust up for good..... That would obviously be the ultimate vengence for just having your life and your couple destroyed like that....
Given that Mame's obsession with rape (and that woman certainly seems to have something of a sick mind....), we can only be grateful that this did not carry over into the series...

Excuse me, but when exactly did Type threaten Fiat with rape?
That is what I understand from what you write here......
And so I am wondering if we are talking about episode 10 in the same series..... or something else.....

So still no news about the subs for episode 2 ???? Well, if they don't want people to watch the end of the second series, fine..... Next to all the other good stuff that's on at the moment, this was hardly the sensation of the end of the year, was it now. As it was not that interesting, I think we shall probably all just forget about it in a few more weeks and let it fade away into oblivion..... not sure it's going to bother people that much.....

I would be interested if there were a labour law in Thailand substantial enough to deal with problems of harassment and bullying by a senior member of staff. Here in France, I suspect such a boss would never get away with such a thing, but given the importance of hierarchical structures and authority in Asian countries, and apparently in Thailand according to what I have seen, I doubt that there is a sufficient legal framework to deal with such things. I am happy for anyone to contradict me on this and give any relevant details.