eualexy

My Golden Blood: Almost Rusty Gold

My Golden Blood isn't bad. But it's not a masterpiece either.

When the series was announced in 2023, I didn't know what to expect, but when another BL by Joss and Gawin was announced in 2024 without even an official trailer, I knew that everything in this series would be a test, and that regardless of the outcome, GMMTV was betting on them.

The series tells the story of Tong (Fluke Gawin Caskey), an orphan sent to an orphanage for having extremely powerful blood for vampires, golden blood. Mark, a vampire close to the “leader,” has the job of protecting him until he turns 21, the age when golden blood becomes “pure.”

Well, the series has its strengths and weaknesses in a good balance, if I may say so. And in the middle ground is how I can define the series as a whole. I enjoyed seeing Joss and Gawin together, I found the premise of the series interesting, but I got angry, I got bored at times, and at other times I was slightly static, wondering about the budget for three hot sandwiches and a sugarcane juice in this series.

1. PowerPoint dialogues
Everything in this series, EVERYTHING, is explained in detail. They always have dialogues that talk about everything that is happening, feeling, and MAINLY about the story. At no point could I draw conclusions or ask questions without first having a flashback thrown in my face, explaining almost everything that happened in bullet points. And this usually happened after a scene that made me pause the scene and wonder what I was watching. Everything happens as if it were an essay, in topics, one thing after another, nothing simultaneous or even spontaneous.

Which brings us to the second topic.

2. Non-special effects.
With a budget of two Big Macs, they only delivered one Big Mac; they ate the other one. I can't put into words how I felt at certain moments, pausing the series and watching the scene statically. Scenes like the one where they throw glitter around at the end, and the one in the first episode where they left through the window, partially paper, I can't explain. The green screen also annoyed me at times, in the dreams for example. I wondered a lot about what things would be like in the future if we're talking about special effects at this company.

3. The golden chemistry of JossGawin
I can't say what I expected from the two. I had seen Gawin's work before, so I knew what to expect from him, but I had never seen anything from Joss. Gawin delivered humanity, I could feel from his expressions that he gave himself over, not only the actor to the character but the character to the situation as well. Joss conveyed his feeling of being a soulless, robotic vampire, but I saw that as the goal, he wanted to be robotic and apathetic, because there were moments when it was obvious that someone was trying to suppress their feelings. And that's how Mark felt, that's how the character should be.
The two had chemistry, they made me interested in seeing them together and learning about them, seeing them together was interesting, they made me ship them (I don't like that word, but there's no other) and look forward to seeing more scenes with them. And I really believe they had an investment and faith in this couple, especially how they were treated in terms of marketing, but I'm not here to talk about that.
In My Golden Blood, I felt their chemistry, the characters' chemistry, and especially the actors' chemistry. Together they made a good couple. And I really think they're going to wreak havoc in the second season of Only Friends.

4. Middle ground
Everything in this series is almost there. The plot itself was extremely promising, everything could have gone very well, but nothing was really explored in depth. Everything was superficial. The story with Nakan (Mond Tanutchai) was interesting, but there are several things that don't make sense in the series, moments of anger when Nakan was alone with Tong and did nothing. the character seemed to want what made sense in the series, I need someone good here, so Nakan will be good, and the same happened in other situations, he wasn't even an anti-hero. Thara's (Um Apasiri) story is not predictable, but the way she was shielded throughout the series to reach the end and be defeated in a much simpler way than the series led me to believe. The college plot and Tonka (Neo Trai) dying. Several twists happened, and the point is not to say that the plots were unnecessary, but that the execution was terrible.


The series does not disappoint in more technical aspects (besides the special effects), the sets, the direction as a whole, the costumes, the colors, and the soundtrack. But the main points were left out, the series kept me hooked, I wanted to know what happened next week, but not for long.

My Golden Blood, a series that could have been almost something. It was a test in many areas, in special effects, in the couple itself, and even in the area of vampire series, since the day I write this review is the day after the release of the BounPrem series on the same theme. The series was superficial, almost as if they preferred to receive criticism for being superficial rather than criticism for going deeper and getting it wrong. Is the series bad? No. But it's not a masterpiece either.
The promise of a good story remained just that: a promise. In terms of “vampire BLs,” My Golden Blood stood out, but you can't be satisfied with just being OK, not when it comes to this universe.

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SmartBoom delivered more than I imagined.

It exceeded my expectations.

Now that I've finished the series, I can understand why it's the highest-rated series on IMDB this year. The series is genuinely interesting, at least until halfway through the narrative.
The actors are good, they have chemistry, and certainly for a first series with the couple, they did very well. But there are points to highlight.

Disconnected episodes
The episodes seem like fillers thrown in after the middle of the series, and then they make sense again at the end, but after stories that have a beginning, middle, and end in the same episode, it feels a little strange. The narrative starts well, with the couple's approach and development, then there are a few episodes that look like fillers, and then the arc of Akin's death.
If they had skipped the development arc to Akin's grandmother's death, the secondary moments are slightly uninteresting, if not unnecessary. The saeseng episode made no difference to the narrative, Akin before and Akin after are the same, he hasn't evolved AT ALL, so I ask, what's the point?

Problems totally ignored
Look, Akin was literally abused by Johnny, and they did NOTHING. He wasn't held accountable, they didn't even show Akin knowing about it, and the guy even got a “partner” in the end.

The couple's development was very good, but everything else was silly. They tried to convey feelings for his grandmother and stuff, but I didn't feel much.

I watched the series because I had already followed both the manga and the anime, so seeing the live-action series was rewarding. I liked the work more because of my affection for daketarai, I stuck with it because of the good chemistry between the actors, but after a while the narrative seemed lazy to me. But I hope to see something from the two of them again soon.

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Was 4 NPC's

The story has a beautiful intention, but I didn't get attached to anyone.
I didn't feel any connection, and Tae Yi is emotionally unstable, using his brother's death as the source of all his problems. Dude, go to therapy or something. Being neurotic about the piano doesn't help at all. Poor Se Heon still has to accept being this crazy guy's punching bag. He also doesn't love himself enough to realize that he deserves better, besides being very demanding.
Ju Ha is another one who needs to go to therapy because he doesn't accept his own feelings, and then at some point he thinks it's sensible to punch the guy he likes in the face. And Do Yun accepts being an experiment for Ju Ha's sexuality, who also doesn't know what he wants.
The cool plot was that Tae Yi and Se Heon's brother met and became friends, but it also had almost no narrative relevance, Tae Yi continued to be crazy.

And then suddenly, everyone is happy, loves each other, and has no problems. It's slightly absurd.

Not to mention the fact that Ho Geum (Tae Yi's actor) only agrees to do this to promote himself, which is perhaps why he seems like an android acting with Jin Kwon (Se Heon's actor), who was much more emotional than him, even though his character's emotional load is smaller.

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Pit Babe 2 and The Lost Race

They really revved up the engine in this second season.

This series managed to fall short of my expectations. And they weren't very high.
Honestly, I already knew it was going to be a bomb from the trailer, when it showed the character coming back from the dead (literally). But it managed to be worse than that
I decided to separate it into topics to make the review easier to understand, so yes, the texts about the eternal pit stop that was this series are going to be long! (I'm laughing so I don't cry)

1. The couples didn't click;

Honestly, what was that? A series that sets out to have five main couples, with ten characters as protagonists (according to MDL himself), had to at least know how to balance that right. Let's start from the beginning. The couples who had been together since last season, CharlieBabe (Poon and Pavel) and AlanJeff (Sailub and Pon), had NEGATIVE development. They undid everything they had built in the first season (with a lot of struggle on Alan and Charlie's part), and the attention to the problems they created lasted for episodes and episodes, and it felt like I was going around in circles. Unnecessarily.
The other three couples, KimKenta (Benz and Garfield), NorthSonic (Michael and TopTen), and PeteChris (Ping and Nut)... WHAT FOR?! Of the three couples, one spent the series in a never-ending limbo, and when they got together it was so... What for, you know? They seemed like a teenage couple, I understand that they were built up in the first season (Sonic more or less, but I'll get to that) and that now it was just a matter of evolving... BUT THEY DIDN'T EVOLVE PROPERLY, I don't know, everything seemed too fast and forced, as if they had a greater urgency than their screen time...
And the other two couples don't even talk to each other. Damn, all the crying throughout the series for them to give an open ending to the two. Nothing, and when I say nothing, I mean absolutely nothing, was well developed in this shit. Pete's overcoming his issues, Chris being a bastard son, Kim's feelings, Kenta's traumas. It seems like they wiped out 100% of all the characters and put them together just to make couples. AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN DO THAT RIGHT.

I mean, was it necessary? So many wrong decisions were made. And that brings us to the second topic.

2. Between a thousand decisions and emptiness

The number of unnecessary decisions that were made gives me a headache. It was plot after plot, twist after twist, I could barely breathe. Willy is a new competitor, Kim leaves X-Hunter, Chris returns, skill serum test, Sonic returns from France, Dean Winner and Kenta are kidnapped, and that's just in the first episode. Not to mention all the other plots involving car accidents, hospitalizations, memory loss, marriage, relationships. Literally every character had more than one huge problem, and almost all of them were resolved in totally lazy ways. Alan's surgery, Tony's return, and blah blah blah.
And then comes the question: Is it necessary or is it an absence of dialogue without a problem? Did the writers (who were four people, it's worth noting) know what they were doing when they put all that suffering into Charlie's supposed death, when everyone had been warned less than an episode earlier that Tony's powers were to revive if he drank his own blood? COME ON, WE KNEW HE HAD CLEARLY SWALLOWED HIS OWN BLOOD, and yet there was a whole unnecessary scene followed by more crying. Guys, it wasn't difficult, they just had to hide that they knew or not tell the viewer. They just had to change the order of things.
Worse, either the series was full of 436098 problems per second or everything was lukewarm and stagnant, and that just makes everything more boring. Things that didn't need attention got all the spotlight, while the real problems, which should truly be taken into account, were simply forgiven.

Which brings us to our third point

3. Apologies accepted, next scene

For the love of God, where is these people's sense of awareness and forgiveness? This is a problem that has been going on since the first season. The character screws up, hides the screw-up, the screw-up is discovered, the others say he shouldn't have done that, the screw-up is forgiven. The narrative continues.
This happened to Way in the first season, and as far as I can remember, only to him. But here? Alan, Willy, Chris, Pete, everyone screws up and eventually, everything is fine again.
Did Willy practically abuse Babe? The problem lies in the alleged betrayal. Did Alan literally betray Charlie for power? It's okay, we're a family. Pete stays in this eternal limbo and shoves emotional responsibility where the sun doesn't shine? It's okay, Chris is too apathetic to feel it.
It seems like these writers are playing with me. We're some kind of joke, it's not possible.

I'm not going into more detail because that brings us to our fourth topic.


4. Betrayed by their own story

The narrative infidelity of this group left me DISTURBED. There were moments when I would stop and think, “Who the hell is this person and what did they do to this character?”
The biggest and most visible example is Alan. Come on, in what universe would Alan do what he did in the first season? Even with that incoherent excuse of “It's to save so-and-so.” He wasn't blackmailed into having powers, and the way he hid everything from Jeff even after nagging him for five episodes about sincerity and conversations in a relationship doesn't make any sense.
Then there's Pete, who didn't know if he had gotten over Way or not, and everyone is caught up in this huge game of ping-pong. Charlie, who is one of the most trusting, distrusts Babe and just LEAVES. Sonic, with his great skills and interest in studying fashion in France, which basically came out of nowhere, since he spent the entire first season recording videos (and I didn't even know North wanted to be a pilot, but I'm not sure when that was explored).
Not to mention the total exclusion at the end of the first season. I mean, Babe's biological father, all those kids, the fucking house. BABE'S BIOLOGICAL FATHER
Wasn't the guy the one who had advanced the most in the realm of serum abilities? The guy didn't have a single flash of those abilities this season. They didn't even give a lame excuse, he was just forgotten by the plot. They were going to move, they talked about marriage all the time, it seems like we've taken a huge step backwards in this business, the serum already worked on Charlie in the first season, so now there's no glimpse of things working out? For God's sake, guys.

Speaking of powers...

5. The fantasy of absurdity

Holy shit. Okay, the narrative revolves around powers and a POSSIBLE omegaverse (I'll come back to this topic later).
WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE POWERS FOR? It seems like everyone is playing Winx and saying, “but my power is to steal powers, but his power is to see the future,” meaning that not only is this thing out of nowhere, but it's also totally ?????
This specific point is the least annoying to me, but I need my point for the next topic.

So, what is the reason for the powers, really?

6. Omegaverse. Without omega. And without the verse.

If you're going to sell the fucking product/series as an omegaverse, YOU MAKE THE FUCKING OMEGAVERSE.
Guys, if you know what omegaverse is and you know what it means, ESPECIALLY in the minds of people who follow the Asian LGBT universe, and you deliver THAT, you're asking to take more criticism in a week than you've drunk water in your entire life.
People expected Betas, Omegas, and Alphas, and pregnancy and heat and all the fucking stuff that goes with it. And they got little powers and quotes about Enigmas and special Alphas. That's not what the series promised.
Since the first season, the series has been based on this whole story of being an omegaverse, and that's what everyone expected. And even with this POOR offering of goals in the first season, hopes for the second were higher than ever. And they were dashed with buckets of water.
Apart from the clear absence of female characters, there is literally ONE SINGLE NAMED WOMAN in all 13 episodes, and if you add it all up, the poor thing has about 5 minutes of screen time, rounding up.
They considered literally removing the omegaverse from the second season. I ask you now, if this universe was so relevant to the first part of the narrative or even to the second, would it really be removed so easily? I don't think so.

And after the slaps and insults, let's be kind and raise the only point that I found good

6. The Villains in pole position

Among the forgettable heroes, we had memorable villains, we had Tony, but we didn't have more of the same.
We all knew that Tony was despicable from the beginning, but he was literally the only character who didn't fall into the curse of “I forgive you, it's okay.”
Come on, personally speaking, I have a huge passion for villains who fulfill their role of being bad people.
Tony is trash, he is everything that is worst in high society, the total embodiment of someone who thinks that money can buy anything, and everything he does, consumes, and acts shows that.
He is hateful, not only to those in the series but also to us mere viewers, and that is why I think it is incredible.
The script wasn't afraid to turn him into someone terrible and horrible; he's really bad.
Willy, on the other hand, is a kind of antihero antagonist. He's bad, he irritates you, he does terrible things, except for forgiving Tony almost immediately after all that nonsense, he follows through on what he does. He only helped people because it benefited him, he only went after everyone because he wanted to kill Tony. He was selfish, he was ironic and provocative, he fulfilled his role of being aggressive and skeptical to the point that it was fun to watch him annoy everyone. The sometimes disproportionate reactions were funny.

I really think PitBabe was saved by the villains

In the end, Pitbabe was just a huge misleading advertisement for the megaverse. Using the success of the first season and the love people have for the main actors to sell the product. Looking closely, I can think of more than one moment when the series was abandonable, but they all end with a “Well, let's see where this goes.” Guess what? It went nowhere. Despite the harsh criticism of the actors in this series, I don't think they faltered as much as many people say here. Honestly, I think they were the most cohesive, or least worst, as you prefer. In This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans, we see that they are good, Benz and Garfield have chemistry, Sailun and Pon know what they are doing, and now with I'm The Most Beautiful Count, we also see that Pete and Supanut are not messing around either. Technical terms aside, they are good, but everything was extremely poorly executed, with more plot holes than a sieve.


Not to mention the way Peter Nopachai (director) handled it all. They had the budget, the investment was high, but the weak and poorly written script ruined everything.

All we can do is sit back and hope that the next ones will be better.

PitBabe 2 participated in a race with no opponents, and even so, it lost. Twists and turns, the narrative decisions got worse with each episode, in a stream of disasters and bad decisions. The villains, unlike in the series, saved themselves, but they were just a flash of what the series could have been. Not every team deserves to be cheered on, and PitBabe showed that maybe in the end you're like a Ferrari fan. No prospect of improvement, but still there.

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It could be better executed.

The idea behind the story is very good and promising, but it's quite linear, doesn't have many plots, and most of the problems are just peaks that are quickly resolved. The narrative takes a while to get started, and the chemistry between the protagonists isn't very fast; it takes a while for them to have a promising relationship, so that could be a reason to abandon the series.
The secondary couple was very promising, but underutilized, and with a dynamic that was even a little absurd, if I may say so. Jonathan lied throughout the entire series about having had his first time with the other guy there, only to reveal that he literally didn't hook up with a drunk guy in the credits of the last episode... statistically speaking, who the hell stays until the end of the credits of the last episode? He could have at least revealed it to the viewers.
All the ideas could have been better exploited: the bride, the friend, the fact that his cousin/brother wanted to kill him. They were all thrown in and resolved in a better way, because until all these problems appeared, everything was at a standstill. No one has much personal development, except for Yang, who spends the entire series complaining and saying he's going to confront his father, and in the end, it's not even him who resolves it.
The arc of the two resolving their issues in the hospital was very good. If all the other problems had been represented like this, the series would have been perfect.
The characters have chemistry, that's obvious, but it could have been better executed.

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GOD, WHY I WATCHED THIS

I'll start with the delay in introducing the main conflict of the plot. Why is it necessary to spend three entire episodes before even BEGINNING Lin's conflict, and then four more to introduce Sun's fiancée? It makes no sense. There is no plot or anything else that keeps me engaged in the narrative long enough to watch a month of the series and then BEGIN the conflicts. I mean, there are 12 episodes, if a third of them were spent introducing NOTHING interesting, maybe that explains the drop in ratings. People lost interest.
Secondly, the overload of conflicts that have a quick resolution. Let me clarify that quick is not necessarily bad, but for the standards that the series seeks to achieve, and the resources that were certainly delivered, they could be MUCH better. The first episode revolves around the fact that Sun and Lin don't know each other personally, and this is simply not exploited in any way. There is barely time to feel anxiety or happiness about them meeting each other. We barely digest the fact that they met through an app and are already getting to know each other. They could have made more of it. Another situation, Yotha and his mother have problems to solve, we barely have the opportunity to understand how and why these problems exist before Sam shows up to solve them and we no longer know what happened. Or their trip to Hong Kong, which in particular adds NOTHING. The only problem solved on the trip could have been solved at literally ANY other time and in any other situation, not to mention that poor guy who was thrown into the story to get in the couple's way. No one knows where he came from or where he went; he didn't even stay long enough for an opinion to be formed. He was thrown in there and we have to deal with it.
Another thing is that the dialogues are extremely weak and expository, like, they always say what they think of each other, nothing between their relationship is implied, and the dialogues between the protagonists show no personality whatsoever. They speak the same, use the same vocabulary, and think the same. And the script could have developed this aspect better, because it is possible to do so. The dialogues between Yotha and Pin or between Chan and Juladis show their personalities and make things seem subtle and natural. Except for the moments when Bank seems like a nervous actor and, at times, things get too theatrical, he is a promising actor, and I believe he can improve this.
The secondary characters are interesting, the art works well in the department, the camera work and shots are very dynamic and interesting, the secondary characters have an interesting dynamic between them, Yotha and Sam have a story that has an interesting development, you can see their interest growing, the team dynamic is cool.
But you can't sustain the story with just that if the main plot is superficial, simple, and extremely uninteresting.

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I thought it was kind of meh.

I swear, the TutorYim deserve SO much more than they are currently getting, it makes me angry. They are good actors, but it's basically their third job that they are the SAME THING.
Then because Yim is a helpless and silly being and Tutor is there to show that he deserves to be loved and accepted. Tell me another one.
The series has no problems, and everything is poorly explained. They have no problems, no arguments, and everything they do is easily resolved, there's not even time to stop and absorb the “problem” because PLIM it no longer exists.
How did they meet, why did they decide to write together, what led them to become friends?
Intouch declared his love for Shen for no reason, they spread rumors about his supposed relationship with the other guy for no reason.
The side stories were a thousand times more interesting than the main one. Because despite everything, they had problems and motivations. They were clichés, but they had SOMETHING.
The main story had nothing.

If someone told me they were the same couple as Middlesman and Cutie Pie, I would believe it.
It's very easy and convenient to put the two in the same character prompts, it's simple to make Tutor a worried person and Yim a slow person, because that's what everyone is “used” to seeing. But when it comes to putting them together for 7 minutes of sex on screen, “oh, why can't you stick to these stereotypes?”

The series is good, it had an investment, it had good quality art, and the cinematography leaves nothing to be desired. But what's the point if the script is terrible?

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