Maggi64

At first I assumed the General Mgr's parents were setting him up on hetero blind dates cuz they don't know he's gay. But the General Mgr and his secretary pretend to be gay lovers to sabotage the blind dates. Meaning, it would get back to the parents that their son is gay . If it's not the parents, then who is setting up these blind dates?

A slip-and-catch in the first 2 minutes of the show? Yep.
A clumsy excuse to get a hot guy's shirt off in the first 10 minutes of the show? Yep.
Am I enjoying it despite the BL cliches? Yep.

5 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE FINALE:

1)Thank god the girl who played Maru's and Minwoo's cupid caught the eye of the hetero coffee shop mgr. Whenever she complained about her love life to Joo Hyuk in prior eps, I was waiting for him to say, "Umm, see a pattern? You keep falling for gay guys!"

2) Joo Hyuk and the TA actually remove their clothes to have sex (ie, in both ep 9 and 5). The other couples, however, live in that peculiar K-BL universe where people have sex and then awake fully clothed. lol.

3) Once again, I was all about a BL's side couples. I especially liked Joo Hyuk and Maru from each of the side couples. They were not pretty like the other 4 boys, but their adorable round faces and winning personalities made them the most appealing to me.

4) I've heard of easy Mickey Mouse courses, but nothing like this Love Class where students who date get an automatic A! I wish this class had been offered at my Alma Mater, lol.

5) This may have started off confusing with 6 characters to differentiate, but it soon settled in nicely. In fact, I much prefer it to the original show, wherein a lead was crushing on a girl for 2/3 of the show.

This terrific movie is available on Internet Archives with Eng Subs.

I hung onto until ep 4 cuz I liked the chemistry between the boys that I observed in ep 1 which was set in the present. But when it looped back to the past it progressively lost me. And your idea that the gangsters should sell baked goods is so funny, lol.

As to your point about "good gangsters," I think HIStory Trapped did a nice job of portraying gangsters in a sympathetic way. As I'm sure you recall, the lead gangster was transforming his enterprise into a 100% legal business along with his sister and her man. So we could root for him cuz he was striving to get away from sleazy organized crime.

LOL, I just went back to re-read the MDL synopsis. I had forgotten that there's an upcoming bit about the boyfriend taking the blame for his gangster lover's crime, and even going to prison in his place. Talk about an over-the-top plot point!

You know what? You just worked harder coming up with creative story solutions for this show than its very own writers did. Seriously, your scenarios are better. I especially like this one: "We have photos of a teacher with a 14 year old girl that will guarantee that he won't go to the police after we take this hammer to his knees." lol. Blackmailing the Principal w/pix of him snorting coke ain't bad either! But the writers of this show have been lazy. It's too bad, cuz I like some of the actors. I think the one playing Mr. Math Teacher has a very charming, charismatic smile.

Thank you! Because I scrolled thru comments and nobody else seemed to recognize how crazy this whole scenario is. I just couldn't understand how nobody would notice such a glaring implausibility. I have taught college level creative writing and I'd demand a rewrite from a student who turned in a story with a setup like this. Yet this story somehow got a production budget. Go figure.

I can overlook that the "gangsters" resemble middleclass teenagers who bought their trendy bad-boy clothes at the local mall. I'll even overlook the silliness of a guy who'd just had drinks with his pal sleeping in an alleyway instead of at his pal's (and the coincidence of it being an alley behind his crush's bakery).

But, damn, I cannot overlook a plot point wherein a high school principal hires an uncertified, inexperienced gangster to teach math in order to, umm, "contain stories of drug dealing at the school." And, thus, he allows the gangster to "investigate" the school. Investigate what? He already knows his rivals sold drugs there. The gangster has nothing to gain from this. It's just a silly contrivance to get the lead in a classroom w/the student he likes. And let's add that the principal just broke about 10 laws, such as violating the safety of minors, colluding with organized crime, failing to report crime to the authorities, etc.

I know BL' plots are often just excuses to get cute boys into situations wherein they'll kiss once or twice. But dang, can't these writers work just a teensy bit on verisimilitude and genuine character motivation? This show has insulted my intelligence one too many times in a mere 4 eps. Dropped.

Wait a minute, Zong Yi is a teenage boy and yet he's never masturbated before? This is how we know BL's are written by girls, lol. No guy would even bother trying to pass that off as true.

Man, this one had me from the intro when the 6 guys did their Reservoir Dogs walk in slow-mo while wearing black suits and shades.

Does anyone know if Season 2 has been subbed in English? If so, where?

Yea, I hear you. But did you get my point about the "Keyser Söze" kind of big-bang reveal coming in one shot? Other examples of a big-bang reveal coming in one shot are The Sixth Sense and The Others. I just find it more powerful for the big reveal to hit an audience all at once, rather than being parsed out in 3 separate spoon fulls as it was in this film.

But the way the big reveal was handled was my only qualm. Otherwise, I loved the movie as much as you. In fact, I had given it a 9. If the big reveal had been handled as I described, then I'd have given it a 10 just like you did.

He made "Happy Together" in 1997, ie, 3 years after "Chunking Express," when he was a more polished director. It was lauded for its honest depiction of the relationship travails of a gay couple. There's an explicit sex scene which was common for hetero movies of that time, but certainly not for gay movies -- let alone in Asia! It stars Tony Leung, from "Chunking Express" and a very young (and hot) Chang Chen is in a support role. If you dig this director, then you should love this one. I recommend it.

BTW, I do not hate this director, just this movie. I actually loved "Happy Together."

Precisely, you just restated my point. The movie is, as you say, a "Series of images and a Beach Boy's song not meant to represent anything." And that a viewer shall be disappointed if they expect, as you also correctly say, "Meanings in things that simply aren't there."

Yep. The images and song mightily succeed in meaning absolutely nothing. I am so glad we agree that this movie is meaningless.

This film is about love, loss, grief, guilt and, finally, redemption. It evokes all these things splendidly with roundly drawn characters played by ace actors. I also applaud the writer for handling some tricky and unusual sexual subject matter in one scene. It was a daring move, but worked since the scene upheld the film's theme of a woman doing anything she could to help a boy she had wronged to feel better. In all, I highly recommend this film.

My primary observation was not that it "had no plot." Rather, I said that it was fooling the audience to interpret a series of images and a Beach Boy's song (repeated ad nauseum), to be a legit replacement for theme, logical character motivation and plot.

For example, I noted that there was no logical character motivation for 2 unrelated women to wear the same silly blonde bouffant wig and that the wig was, instead, tossed in simply to serve as gratuitous imagery. Theme, character motivation and plot are the primary essence of story, without which a film is just imagery. Now, if you enjoyed the imagery, bravo. I must concede that it did provide some cool imagery of Hong Kong.

I referred to the director just as I'd refer to auteur directors such as Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen if describing their films. Referring to a director in a review does not indicate "having a boner" for the director. To the contrary, it's standard procedure.

I only mentioned that War Kong Wai was an auteur director, and then proceeded to critique the film with specific examples. You, however, have had nothing specific to say about the film. Rather, you are critiquing my critique.

Hey, that's a cool theory. My only theory before reading yours was that the actors in side couples work harder to make their characters shine and get attention in the limited space they have. But your theory is much better because it accounts for how the side couples are not only better acted, but better written. Thanks!