jpny01

Someone needs to choke that bitch. That's not a friend, that's a vicious piece of shit. Also Nuea is moving into the "creep" catgory - that's bordering on sexual harassment - Mark has made it clear he's not interested.

Anyway, that was fantastic, with some of the strongest acting we've seen in a long time (well, other than Triage).

Despite hte extreme physical fragility of Mark, which is a tiresome lingering uke thing that I wish would just DIE, I really like how Mark and Vee interact as guys. It's really refreshing and feels more natural and authentic than we usually get. And I like that people behave normally, wiht human jealousies and complexity - I liked that one minute Bar was telling Vee he was being immature and then the next was even worse.

Because let's face it, even Jesus would have reacted like that if he walked in on his boyfriend shirtless on top of some half-naked guy.

My comment about the printer was sarcasm - it's like they thought this series isn't boring and tiresom enough, so they added printer issues.

But I think you're hitting on a point, which is that I don't like any of the characters (except Ice). I guess Tee is OK, but it's hard to invest in him since whe know he's going to be the loser of the story, and they'll probably make him evil torwards the end so that we can cheer on the main couple, even though I really wouldn't care if they fell into a wood-chipper at this point. Actually, that might feel really satisfying to watch.

This continues to be awful, but I can't turn away. It's like a bad accident on the highway where all the victims and first responders are hot as f@#$. I mean, there's a point where there's so much cute and sexy on screen that it doesn't matter how stupid it is. I thought Boat (Tim) was really good today. Especially in Part 4. But seriously, I thought his acting was good - up till now (part 4), he was my least favorite character other than Kim.

The Tim/Mek competition was actually funny, like I laughed at it, which is unusual - hillarious. Daniel Cheng's voice does almost as much for me as Boat's pecs. The cast of this is really wonderful. If they had cast anyone but Earth for the lead role I'd probably give this a 9 just for sheer enjoyment factor, but he's so fake that it brings things down.

Mek is really adorable. If he'd stop with the ridiculous ponytail, you can see how handsome he is.

But just to remind us how terrible this series is, they're bringing in the beyond-tired girl to arouse jealousy next ep. Sigh.

I'm starting to regard the persistent translation of the already-in-English "Lodestar Production" sign with tired resignation. Like I receive everything about this series.

The highlight of this episode was the 10-minute scene where they were trying to get the printer working.

It's not just me, right? Tee is way more appealing than Daonuea and I want him to get a better boyfriend. Like me, maybe.

The f@#$ing seatbelt maneuver MUST BE RETIRED. Just stop.

This feels like whoever made it desperately wants to be making straight romances but is stuck with these characters. This ep was 9% straight and 1% stupid seatbest fastening. And 90% fixing printers.

I liked how Daonuea was accusing Nine of being childish when he himself was acting like a 5 year old. Nine had just said "they just called to cancel" and Nuea yelled at him for not telling him sooner. THEY JUST CALLED. It's a good think Nuea has a hot body because he has nothing else going for him, the whiney little shit that he is.

I don't see how that's putting you down - it was an observation. If I were putting you down I would have said something like "Seriously? All body swap stories are like that!" but I didn't because I thought you might not have watched a body swap story before - it's not like everyone would have.

My reaction to that was mixed. The directing is good, and Sea is refreshingly good at acting for a newbie, and wow, did he look good in the corpse scene - what a body!

I wasn't really drawn into the story, though - it was OK, but I hope BL doesn't start getting drawn in to gimmicks at the expense of character relationships - that was an issue with Triage. I appreciate getting away from the tired formulas and tropes of BL, but I also want romance. And even in this, we had the stumble into being too close and staring" thing to launch the attraction, which made me groan it was such a cliche.

It's funny, I forgot how gorgeous Ohm is - Sea is already attractive, but it was a bit of a shock when he'd suddenly shift to Ohm - those huge eyes, dark skin, and cheekbones - ugh.

Anyway, I think it has potential - I hope it gets there and doesn't start getting into too many magic plot devices that jump over drama instead of resolving it. We've set up the rules, and I hope they stick to them and don't start thowing in arbitrary new ones. We have strong acting - that's 75% of the battle, but that other 25%....

Also, Jimmy is just... I don't know - he has such enormous presence. Serious leading man material. I remember how scary he could be in Bad Buddy.

I take it you've never seen a body-switching story before.

Which would be OK if Sarawat had ever kissed him until he dropped, but it was an empty threat.

I agree with that for exactly the same example (Nut). I didn't think Ohm was bad in Make it Right (not good, either) - not as good as he is now, but he had charisma, and he was only 16 (!) Mark is 25. With Ohm, although the acting was not good, he could at least do chemistry with a partner.

When you look back at Nut in retrospect, he was probably never bad - he was just really poorly directed. "Your character lost his smile, so keep a blank face." His smile is so cute and warm it's like sending in a soldier without a gun. The director of this series is CLEARLY not one of the stars of the genre - not even the beautiful setting is taken advanrage of - so it's possible that Mark could develop and do well in the future, but with him I get nothing. But then again, maybe it's partly the writing, which is so, so bad. What is Mark's character? If you sum it up, it's "blandly cute judmental guy with no sense of humor." Mek is "Guy with variable traits depending on the needs of the "plot" with great (really great) abs" - even Mike's character isn't consistently written, although he's putting up the best fight he can.

That's a long-winded way of saying "maybe".

I didn't actually get your meaning. Are you saying that you think it was perfect and I'm nitpicking? I'm saying that the switch was a major fault, not a minor one - maybe not the idea of it, but the excution. First, it drained away the romantic and dramatic tension of the story, it complteley changed Tin's character just to move the plot (i.e. the show became plot-driven rather than character-driven, He went from the compassionate person we'd known to borderline evil), and the plot itself went off the rails, not really making sense and using too many "magic" solutions, like suddenly kisses, even when non-consensual and even without lips touching, could restore memories and dead people can hand off magic notebooks. Because the first 9-10 episodes were so strong and the acting so good throughout I still gave it an 8 - but the mess of the last few eps and the WTF disappointing ending lowered it from the 9.5-10 it had been.

I agree with your critiques, but Star in Mind didn't really even have a plot. They're both awful. I find Dunk cuter than Mark, and Mek hotter than Joong, but this series also has Mike and Arm, so it wins for me. In that there are slightly more things to pause for as I'm ff'ing through it.

I had noticed his lack of... stellarness in the acting category, but it didn't really strike me until this episode - I think he's good at being the fratboyish character he was earlier on - as a serious romantic in love, no. I thought in Ep 1 that Mark was just being mysterious, but then it turned out he was a cardboard cutout. Or maybe a puppet with a very bad puppeteer.

Ho Lee Sheet. That's the first BL that's grabbed on anything but a very (very) superficial level since, well, ever. I need to go sacrifice a chicken to the god of Don't Ruin the Ending.

Lance Chu is stupendously cute even by Taiwanese standards. That wasn't very original, but the couple was cute and it had Aaron Lai. No shirtless Aaron Lai, but you can't have everything, and Akihiro Kawai was no slouch in that department.

Physical Therapy was sort of a Zen exercise. It was terrible - don't get me wrong - but it wasn't quite as aggressively terrible as some of the others. Tuxedo was truly awful, but did have the advantage of two gorgeous men. I've still never seen anything as perfect as Chap in that towel.

OK, you're right. I've blocked out Tossara, so I can't comment, but The Tuxedo and That's My Candy were worse. Although Chap may be Mek's only challenger for the Looks Best Shirtless trophy.

But as bad as Tuxedo and Candy were, they were much more original than this. "Much" in the sense that pancreatic cancer is much worse than colon cancer.

Watching that first scene was like torture. The only reason I'm going back is because they got rained on, there's a chance one of them will die or Mek will take his shirt off to dry.

And... nope. I couldn't make it through this. Every second of it is predictable. Is there anyone watching this that didn't know ahead of time that Fah's reward would be a flick on the forehead? And seriously, malaria? They weren't happy enough with the romance being out of 1870 that they needed a medical problem from the same period? Fah is a doctor with a clinic. Are you telling me he doesn't have the most basic medication to deal with this?

It's hard to tell if Mek can act or not. I want to say not, but in fairness could anyone pull off this non-stop stream of awful cloying dialogue? Especially while delivering it to a marionette? Actually, that's generous. Marionettes are more life-life than Prince.

This is possibly the worst BL I've seen. It's rare that I drop something in the penultimate episode, but I just can't handle any more of this doo doo.

Also, the umbrella routine is getting really old. So Prince is on a mountain trail, it starts raining, and Fah is right there with a ridiculous tourist-souvenier umbrella? I would find that creepy, not romantic. What was he doing? Following Prince everywhere in case it rained?

That's one of the problems with a lack of creativity - when you just throw in tropes just to throw them in, they're stupid as f@#$. Love Mechancis just did it, but it made sense and it was a great scene, so it's not like you can't give new life to old things if you have even a small amount of writing ability.

The whole point of m/m romance is for the "bromantic" quality - it's nice to see people interact as friends as well as lovers. If I want to watch a straight romance between a grown man and a 1Victorian 14-year old, I'd rather watch a straight priod drama than a piece of tired poo lik this. Except that I like how Mek, Mike, & Arm look with their shirts off so I keep coming back.

I'm glad you enjoyed it!