drphibes1990

Good one. lol

Why does this say made in Korea when it was clearly made in Thailand? If it were any fluffier it'd be a pussycat's pu**y.
Seriously, what is up with the super-heavy clown-white makeup on these dudes? That was bad enough, but then that female photographer showed up and I almost screamed out loud. They didn't even bother to blend her white face into her tan neck. lol What a disaster the makeup crew on this show is.
The newbie would have been fired on the first day, forget about what's gone down since. And there is a not-so-fine line between confidence and arrogance.
They have to pose like a newlywed couple? Really?
There have been at least three trip-fall-catch incidents. We get the point.
We're trapped in Trope City and there don't appear to be any exits.
Why would the "boss" believe anything the newbie said after he saw him have dessert waiting for that other guy, which means he's working the dating apps while also acting as if he's "in love with" the boss?

Seriously, I'm sad this kind of thing is now coming out of Korea fairly regularly. Apparently, as soon as a country's BL industry gets a pretty good handle on the format, it then automatically begins to self-destruct.

No, I dropped it after a couple episodes.

Another episode of nice actors playing nice people but nothing really happening.
The little guy is just remarkable. I love him to pieces.
Minoru and Yutaka are fine but there's no spark, no heat. They seem like they're becoming good friends, not potential lovers.
Mysterious college girl shows up, urging Minoru to return to campus.
SOMETHING BAD happened at university!!!
Little guy spills things...twice. A reason to get Yutaka into Minoru's pants, metaphorically and for real at the same time. His sweatshirt too.
Have to say Inukai Atsuhiro must be a fine actor. As Yutaka he is 180 degrees from his wild and zany character in TMWDTWOBL, so the range is there. Maybe this script is weak.
I still find it fascinating how Asians eat rice at almost every meal.

I'll keep watching, but if something were to happent to prevent that, I wouldn't be crushed.
As per usual, the MDL rating is vastly inflated. Why do people rate shows that are still airing?

I had to laugh, reading your comment. I find every show you mentioned to be sub-par. lol CM and ML started out strong, then fizzed for me, and ND seems to have nowhere to go. Just goes to show how we all perceive art from our individual perspectives and thus our opinions vary widely.

Oh...that was so blatant and bogus I didn't even consider it gaslighting, which to me is much more subtle. The ex said to his face "it has nothing to do with you." If he was gaslighting him, what was the "it" he was referring to? I took his "what?" to mean "what's the big deal," sort of minimizing the seriousness of it.
What does "hit at dancing" mean? I get that he was unnecessarily criticizing the guy's dancing to make him feel insecure and drive him out of the group, I guess, but that's not gaslighting, that's just being an asshole.

The release strategy of two 20-,minute eps. per week, one day apart, is baffling to me. What is accomplished by doing that, other than annoying your audience? Why not one 40-minute ep per week? Why not release them all at once so we can binge it. You're not going to build viewer interest when most seem to be frustrated by these short eps that make it difficult to sustain the story in one's head. Which isn't helped by the fact the story isn't being told well. Too chopped up, too many people after the same guy who has a bland personality and terrible hair. I like the evil ex: At least he adds some dramatic tension and angst to the goings-on.

Also, knowing anxiety and depression very well for many years as I have, I can say the ML's portrayal of same is unconvincing. Since his character's illness is at the heart of the story, the story is lame. And then you chop the lame story into 20-minute pieces and you have what I mentioned above: a mess.

Don't know why but I will keep watching despite my whining. So apparently something about the show has caught a little of my attention. I think I'm in the minority here, but I actually liked Jae Hyun in 3&4, whereas I thought he was inappropriately interfering in 1&2.

Who's gaslighting who? I guess I missed that.

Terrible. Barely made it through the first episode, but I did so I would feel fully qualified to drop this mess. Thai BL makers aren't even trying anymore. So many stock, annoying characters; bad-acting and exaggerated, over-acting in what Thai BL makers seem to think is a hilarious, comedic, rom-com style but which makes everyone who employs it, ie. nearly ALL of the office staff, seem obnoxious and ridiculous.

Also, pretty much every male is gay and the women are fag-hag stereotypes. I kept thinking "why am I watching this? It's lame." So I won't be doing so anymore.

If this is your thing, enjoy!
4/10

One of my fave, low-budget, pretty-bad-but-big-heart BLs.
Tall, skinny one has a strange but adorable face.
The other friend's hair looks like someone went at it with a dull grade-school scissors.
But I still like the film.

My only complaints about WHC regard extreme implausibles, all involving teachers who are never in the classroom to notice that students are beating the living shit out of each other.
Teachers and administrators who walk in on brutal bullying and take the obviously intimidated victim's word for it that nothing was actually going on. Never mind the strangle marks on the kid's neck or his labored breathing and general vibe of violence in the air.

While I was totally into the revenge by this point, the worst example is near the very end when SE assaulted and stabbed one student for five minutes, naturally with no teacher in attendance, then wandered the halls at his leisure to hunt down BS and the other bullies who almost killed SH, with no teacher, student, or administrator screaming bloody murder about what was going down.

Also, as much as I was happy to see that SH was NOT dead, it annoyed me how blatantly the director manipulated me into believing he WAS dead and then doing a cheap switcheroo. If SH was still alive when placed in the ambulance, why weren't the paramedics working CPR and all the rest on him? If they wanted him to die because they'd been paid off by that extremely hot but evil minion of BS's horrible "father," why was he allowed to live, having survived even after no medical attention on the way to the hospital? We even had Young Yi sobbing and saying things to SE specifically to make us think SH was dead.

So when he was shown in the hospital bed breathing, I was relieved but it also felt like a cheap cop-out. It would have been heart-breaking, but having SH die would have been brutally realistic like the rest of the show, and would have rendered the entire show twice as powerful as it already was.

End of my whining. This show is exceptional. 9.5/10

Eps. 6-8: I am exhausted in the best drama-watching way possible. A damn-near perfect series.

Definitely in the running for best school violence drama ever. Acting from all three MLs is stellar. Fight scenes are unrelentingly, breathtakingly realistic (I didn't used to have an appreciation for this type of thing, but the Koreans have made me a fan because of how much detailed, perfectly timed choreography, and endless hours of rehearsal go into making these things look real.). Direction is spot-on. Acting from all supporting cast is excellent. Everyone is totally committed, which points again to awesome directing. OST is perfection. The opening credits theme so perfectly and beautifully captures the hopelessness inherent to this plot that I took to skipping it because it increasingly upset me as the drama progressed, and god knows I was already upset enough.

This is one of a VERY few shows or movies I would ever consider giving a perfect 10, but I went as high as I could justify, to a 9.5/10. My reasons are few and under the reply spoiler below this comment.

Tip: Violence and attempted murder happen every day, once in a while, as in this show, justifiably so. In what way do you feel these elements were "romanticized" (lol) in this series? Is there any character who was better off as a result of the very unglamorous violence than they were at the beginning of the show? Every single person was left ravaged, their lives forever damaged, by the brutality which transpired. Is this your idea of "romanticization?" Do you think viewers will want to run out and beat the shit out of each other so they can end up like the people in this drama?

Finally, did you watch the entire show?

Ep. 5: Beom Suek breaks my heart. So damaged, and understandably so, that he's not capable of trust in any form and so sabotages every possible human connection.

Possible spoilers below:

But the thing is, no one is perfect and BS is not the only one at fault here.
Soo Ho DOES get annoying with that constantly putting his arm around people thing. Perhaps it does come from a place of an urge to protect but it is also infantilizing and annoying past a certain point. Plus, to some degree he DOES expect those he helps to subordinate themselves, even if it's usually under a mask of humor. His reaction to BS NOT subordinating himself was quite telling: it was met with an immediate physical threat. How DARE someone he helped not put him on a pedestal? I get why SH stopped BS from hammering the dude with the microphone, BUT SH has hammered people far worse than that for far less than what was done to BS by that little shit. So being physically restrained from justifiable violence by someone who uses violence justifiably himself all the time would be more than a bit enraging, especially when you're already in the middle of a rage-fest. Of course, SH is damaged too, and understandably so.

And that horrible little former gang girl...I liked her right up until this episode, I now remember. Why WAS she answering SB's phone? She had no right, and god knows she would throw a hissy fit if someone answered HER phone. But because she's sort of cute, in a balloon-face way, she expects boys to flirt, not draw lines. So she acts the wounded party, and then SH goes after her after she does so, just as she wanted. Of course, SHE is damaged too, and understandably so.

Shi Eun is the only one pretty blameless here. He sees most of what's going on and intercedes on SB's behalf but that can only go on so long. And he too is damaged.

But poor BS has it the worst: God knows how he became an orphan but he was one. Then he was adopted as a prop by a monster who beats him with golf clubs, physically/psychologically tortured by bullies, transferred schools because of that and shamed for same by the monster, and on and on it goes. Worst is the way he uses money to buy potential friends things out of a good place, but then his bad place immediately tells him to feel slighted and used for his money. Self-sabotage. Heartbreaking.

Actor playing BS is excellent. They all are. I miss the big, good-hearted thug with the ponytail.

3 & 4:
Almost perfection. Shi Eun finally breaking a smile at Soo Ho in the hospital room is worth this entire series. 😁😁😁
And Beom Seuk's circumstances are as heartbreaking as they are horrific. 😪😪😪
This show is better yet than I remembered it being.

My second watch of this excellent series!
I'm kind of shocked to see a show on MDL rated about the same as where I rated it myself. Usually, shows I love are disliked and shows I drop are 9.5s. lol
After 2 eps:
The overall vibe of WCH1 is heads and shoulders above your basic drama or BL.
I disagree that this is clearly a Bromance only. To me it falls in a gray area between BL and Bromance. There are definitely feels developing around this triangle that go further than simple Bromantic friendship. And guys don't have to be tangling tongues or packing mud to be having same-sex sexual and emotional feelings.
Knowing where this is all headed adds a whole other, melancholy layer of angst.
Acting's great, fight scenes are top-notch, even for a feature film, were it one.
Other than Shi Eun and Soo Ho, my fave character is the philosopher/thug who reluctantly does his cousin's dirty work for $$$.

The only thing I can whine about here are the usual complaints regarding high school bullying show tropes:
Mysteriously absent teachers and administrators who leave classrooms unattended for 20 minutes at a time so huge, bloody gang fights can play themselves out.
Teachers who walk in on physical assaults, see the victim sporting physical signs of abuse, watch them being intimidated into agreeing nothing is going on, and then brush the incident off.
Entire classrooms full of noisy boys parade down a hallway, through the building and outside, following three dudes about to throw down, and no teacher or admin is in sight or hears a thing.
Parents who act clueless when what is going on is right in front of their eyes.

On the plus side, watching Shi Eun use that textbook and window drape in such a creative and effective manner, then continuing to pound away even after drape turned red, was ecstatically cathartic for me in regard to every bully I've run into in my life, real or fictionalized.

I did have trouble believing the two guys in the bathroom showdown would back off just because SE clicked his Bic pen a couple of times. It's one thing to be surprised by a tactic like that, but once you know about it and it's two-on-one, nah. Plausibility problems and lazy tropes like the ones above, which could be fixed with more creative and attentive writing, is they pull me out of what is otherwise a top-notch show and I have to roll my eyes for a few seconds before diving back in.

Anyway, on to 3.

What don't you like about love triangles?

After reading up on the development and usage of "Taglish," the use of Tagalog and English together within conversation and even within sentences, it turns out it really is EXTREMELY random, with each speaker using it as they feel moved to do so, for a wide variety of reasons. There are no "rules" for the use of Tagalog. Whatever a speaker is moved to say, for whatever their reasons, which are highly subjective, is fair game. Which, to a single-language speaker, seems bizarre.

I end up dropping almost every Pinoy BL I try, not because of Tagalog, but because I find the acting, direction, plot holes, annoying characters, and in-your-face preachiness to be a deadly combination. However, I will also confess that the use of Taglish is very off-putting to me. Not because I don't understand it--subtitles and my knowledge of English take care of that--but because the randomness, mixture of accents, variety of speaking styles, etc. is annoying in itself to an ear used to one language at a time.

I have long thought that when speaking English phrases, users of Taglish adopt a sort of snobby, slow, overly-enunciated tone. After reading up on Taglish it turns out this was not my imagination: English is often used by Taghlish-speakers when they want to demonstrate what they perceive as a superior knowledge of the language and/or the topic. Taglish is, as are so many quirks of human communication, another way to establish us/them tribalism and hierarchies.

It's worth noting that Taglish has become extremely common only in the last 20-30 years. Fifty years ago it was relatively unknown and for quite a while after that looked upon as a bastardization of both languages. So on another level, it's also a linguistic fad, which you see within all languages. It's just that this one is extreme and very noticeable.

This show looks like the least bad BL out of PH in a very long time. I"m going to keep watching long enought to see if I can force myself to get used to the Taglish, which would allow me to judge it based on everything else.

It's very interesting to say the least. Now I'm wondering: are scripts written in Taglish with specific lines given to each language, or are the actors switching randomly? Either way, to an ear that spent a lifetime hearing one language, the switching back and forth is a discombobulating thing to hear. This would be true whether it's Taglish or Germlish or any other randomly combined two languages.

Yeah, I totally get what you're saying here. It threw me the first few Pinoy series I watched in which they randomly throw in entire sentences of English. How do they decide which sentence or two should be English? And what if the other speaker doesn't speak fluent English? Still doesn't make sense to me but it's a thing so I roll with it.