This review may contain spoilers
This Could’ve Been an Email
Jira (Gun Atthaphan) is a contemporary artist who, while struggling with a mental health relapse and desperate for a job, meets Pheem (Dew Jirawat) at a bar called Burnout—a man who sparks some deep reflections in Jira. Eventually, Jira lands an odd job with Pheem’s coworker, Ko (Off Jumpol), the CEO of a tech company. Suddenly, Jira finds himself in a love triangle and an ethical dilemma, torn between what he believes in and the one he loves.
The series is directed by Nunchy, who—for those who don’t know—is the same director as Not Me, so I’ll admit, I had extremely high expectations.
And they weren’t exactly met.
Come on, I thought the premise was interesting. A love triangle, one of GMM’s longest-running couples who starred in one of the company’s best BLs, and Dew is a great actor. We had every right to have expectations.
I’m not going to take away all the credit from the production. It’s a good series; it’s visually beautiful and the soundtrack is really good. I find the whole aesthetic aspect quite interesting—it was a good production.
The characters are real. Too real, even. So real that they bore me after a while. The critique in the series is super valid—Art vs. Artificial Intelligence and where we’ve ended up with all of this—I think it’s a super interesting topic. But Jira made me SO SLEEPY that the debate didn’t even hold my attention anymore.
The love triangle was interesting and fun to a certain extent, and I think it would have been more interesting if no one ended up together, but following the GMM, obviously Jira and Ko were going to end up together, and honestly I found the dynamic between the two characters a bit forced and codependent; the series had the capacity to bring the two closer without the cliché of Ko not being able to sleep without him.
The series is shot in the same style as Asian indie films, which prioritize overall aesthetics and continuous takes; it’s an interesting aesthetic choice for this series, as it values poetry and the aesthetic appreciation of everyday life. The friendship dynamics are interesting, both between Jira and Ing (Emi Tharsorn) and between Pheem and Mawin (AJ Chayapol). They’re cool and realistic—fights, arguments, help, and advice. I see friendships like this in everyday life (except for the part where Mawin throws urine at Pheem, but I think that’s more of a boss-subordinate thing). I found those parts entertaining. I believe Pheem was a more deeply written character than Jira and Ko. Pheem was created to be a character who makes sense and is profound on his own, while Ko and Jira were made to make sense and be profound in each other’s stories. You know what I mean?
Their relationship wasn’t exactly treated as something that adds to their individual lives as characters, but rather as something that defines them. If you analyze it deeply, you realize that both have their own individual problems that are resolved only by the other; neither learns anything on their own for their own personal growth. Even with the timeskip, which for some reason brought the two back together in the last 45 minutes of the second half, leaving an open ending. I mean, why did I even watch all of this?
In short, the series is visually beautiful, and even inspiring to a certain extent—the part where Jira pours wine on her shirt makes me want to pour wine on my own shirt and appreciate how poetic my daily life can be. But it wore me out quickly; I started getting bored and only kept watching because I kept putting off stopping, and before I knew it, I’d finished it. Ideally, everyone should end up alone, because clearly everyone needs therapy.
The series is directed by Nunchy, who—for those who don’t know—is the same director as Not Me, so I’ll admit, I had extremely high expectations.
And they weren’t exactly met.
Come on, I thought the premise was interesting. A love triangle, one of GMM’s longest-running couples who starred in one of the company’s best BLs, and Dew is a great actor. We had every right to have expectations.
I’m not going to take away all the credit from the production. It’s a good series; it’s visually beautiful and the soundtrack is really good. I find the whole aesthetic aspect quite interesting—it was a good production.
The characters are real. Too real, even. So real that they bore me after a while. The critique in the series is super valid—Art vs. Artificial Intelligence and where we’ve ended up with all of this—I think it’s a super interesting topic. But Jira made me SO SLEEPY that the debate didn’t even hold my attention anymore.
The love triangle was interesting and fun to a certain extent, and I think it would have been more interesting if no one ended up together, but following the GMM, obviously Jira and Ko were going to end up together, and honestly I found the dynamic between the two characters a bit forced and codependent; the series had the capacity to bring the two closer without the cliché of Ko not being able to sleep without him.
The series is shot in the same style as Asian indie films, which prioritize overall aesthetics and continuous takes; it’s an interesting aesthetic choice for this series, as it values poetry and the aesthetic appreciation of everyday life. The friendship dynamics are interesting, both between Jira and Ing (Emi Tharsorn) and between Pheem and Mawin (AJ Chayapol). They’re cool and realistic—fights, arguments, help, and advice. I see friendships like this in everyday life (except for the part where Mawin throws urine at Pheem, but I think that’s more of a boss-subordinate thing). I found those parts entertaining. I believe Pheem was a more deeply written character than Jira and Ko. Pheem was created to be a character who makes sense and is profound on his own, while Ko and Jira were made to make sense and be profound in each other’s stories. You know what I mean?
Their relationship wasn’t exactly treated as something that adds to their individual lives as characters, but rather as something that defines them. If you analyze it deeply, you realize that both have their own individual problems that are resolved only by the other; neither learns anything on their own for their own personal growth. Even with the timeskip, which for some reason brought the two back together in the last 45 minutes of the second half, leaving an open ending. I mean, why did I even watch all of this?
In short, the series is visually beautiful, and even inspiring to a certain extent—the part where Jira pours wine on her shirt makes me want to pour wine on my own shirt and appreciate how poetic my daily life can be. But it wore me out quickly; I started getting bored and only kept watching because I kept putting off stopping, and before I knew it, I’d finished it. Ideally, everyone should end up alone, because clearly everyone needs therapy.
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