jpny01

I can't really answer that in any depth without any examples of what you mean, but it sounds like you might have different opinions, and that's great - if we all saw everthing the same way we'd never learn anything.

I agree with all that. There is certainly nothing wrong with Aek refusing Aue, although he was particularly assholish and about it to the point of cruelty. And Aue's response was even worse. I just didn't but it from either of them - it seemed out of character.

There has been zero boy love in this - there is no couple that has done anything overtly romantic, other than the disastrous dinner (unless you count several hours worth of blank staring). After getting nothing for 2/3 of the series, all we get sexual violence.

To me, this is homophobia. They are deliberately baiting the audience and doing everything they can to avoid having any gay stuff.

Interesting. I always thought Aek was creepy. Now they both are to me. I didn't get what Aek's emotions are, other than that he didn't want Aue to do that. What was your reading? I'm seriously asking - no sarcasm.

I think that's what arifsaggio meant - "they shouldn't have rewritten the story". I may be wrong, but that's my reading.

That blurb about Muslim dress was total bull#$it. This was the imperial harem, and the women in it weren't there for prayer and meditation and they certainly weren't wearing burqas - that's why all the attendants were eunuchs and men weren't allowed in. Whoever wrote that has no idea what they're talking about. If any of them had to go out in public, of course they would dress modestly, but not while in the harem quarters! It's true that the costumes have a Western skew to them, but not in terms of modesty - mostly the colors are a lot more muted because the silks of the period were so technicolored they'd look garish by today's standards esecially with production lighting shining on them.

Anyway, I'm sure a Chinese version will be stunning!

Hm. I agree with a lot of this, but I think maybe your critique of the critiques isn't quite what I'm seeing.

1. In 1,000 stars, the romance was restrained, but it was seriously there, and rather intense. I never for a moment doubted the two were in love with each other. Here, Aue has the same smoldering chemistry with everyone - from Aek, I get nothing. Restrained, good. Non-existent, bad.
2. No disagreement about arts etc. But that's not what we mean by dead space. The dead space is in the endless staring and the huge pauses between phrases when Aek is speaking. There is no 1.25 speed on Viki, but there's an "advance 10 seconds" button. I use it a lot when Aek is speaking.
3. I agree. It's not the only show that does that, though. But the comparison to 1,000 Stars is apt. For example, Wayufilm is based on Chiang Mai and its productions are all fairly authentic to the location, and not just the touristy beautiful areas.
4. That's very appealing to me too, and a lot of what made me look forward to this so much. But there needs to be more than that. I could just watch a documentary about Thai food. The chefs would be less evil, for sure, but they probably also wouldn't be that universally hot.
5. Here I think it's mixed. Nuna has been delivering, as did Mom & Grandma - but Vich & Prem, who are fairly significant characters, are so flat (and in the same way) it actually made me LOL this ep.
6. See #2 above. Also, the pacing isn't slow, it's almost non-moving. Until this ep, when suddenly Aek turned into an asshole and Aue sexually assaulted him, neither transformation being set up in the slightest. And ironically, occuring in Leo's backup giant mansion. Sure, maybe Aek is going through gay panic, but that's a pure guess - it should have been set up prior to it happening. We haven't gotten the slightest clue that Aek feels this way. We really haven't gotten the slightest clue about how he feels about anything, except that he loves his mother.
7. There are no superficial tropes like endless piggy-back rides or the weird hair-drying obsession that's been around lately, but there are a lot of cliched plot tropes - evil jealous ex-gf, gays don't exist, etc.

While I was finding this frustrating, this ep pushed it over the edge for me. We've had almost no development of the romance, but there was still plenty of time to heat it up - but here we've had nothing and then they had the main couple have a dramatic and violent breakup before they ever even got together. It's manufactured drama that required both of them to act out of character. Why? We have the drama of the contest, no less than three separate evil chefs, familial issues, the age and power differences - so plenty of "relaxed pace" drama to explore, but instead they have Aek act like Aue was sexually assaulting him by calling him on the phone to invite him to dinner, until Aue really did sexually assault him. It made no emotional or dramatic sense, and it put an ugliness into the story that it didn't need.

This shouldn't have been a BL. If it had been a drama about rivalry between chefs it would have been a superior show. That seems to be what the writer is interested in, and it feels like BL was thrown in because it's fashionable and had a ready-made audience for the grabbing.

Sorry - I was agreeing with you and elaborating on what I think they should be complaining about - I see that wasn't clear, but that's what I meant, so apologies. Like you said, there are conflicts in every BL, and they always get resolved. Well, except sometimes in Taiwanese or Korean BL if someone gets randomly run over by a van or something.

Aww, shucks, now I'm feeling shy and embarassed.

Here's an edit: "Like they are reading the once sentence they have to from a BROKEN teleprompter."

Ep 6 was better, but I'm not sure what the plot of this is. There were cute scenes in this, but it's all very shallow - why does Jill like Jack, other than his hot body? He's never commented on anything about him but shamelessly oggles him (not that I blame him). Jack has never really expressed why he likes Jill other than that his insecurity and chubbiness are cute?

There's an inherent homophobia to the genre - that's why it's so rare that there are gay main characters. It's gotten a little better gradually, though. I find the evil ex-GF trope to be more offensive for misogyny. Women are never motivated by any negative emotion but jealousy. Never vengeance for their murdered father, or to destroy enemies of their family, or even for a lot of money. Always jealousy. In real life, most women are relieved when ex-BFs turn out to be gay.

I once told an ex that being with her turned me gay, which really upset her, but I did that because she had outed me to people I hadn't told yet, including the boy I was in love with, although that didn't really make any difference - if he didn't know that already, he'd have to have had a lobotomy or something. The ex-gf and I are still friendly acquaintances, so we both got over it.

Hey, get off my turf. You're out-bitchy-commenting me.

That's not the issue - it's that characters are behaving in ways that haven't been set up or make sense. Why was Aek being such a dick? When did we see this level of violence and desperation in Aue? From behaving with placidity bordering on catatonia, it's too violent a transition to go into, well violence. We haven't seen any tension building - it just showed up suddenly. It's much like when Aek said "I think everything you do, you do for yourself." The problem isn't conflict, it's unmotivated conflcit coming out of nowhere. It's also unnecessary - we're obviously going to be getting a bunch from the three evil chefs.

Of course they're going to end up together. This is a Thai BL. Is anyone saying they won't?

So Vi-Phob called Eve, who drove all the way to the hospital to make one bitchy comment and then left? What would be the point of that? I agree that they're in league, but I don't see how that could have had any impact on how Aek feels about Aue, unless there's a whole episode worth of things that happened off-screen. I think it's just sh#$$y writing.

Thai producers seem to confuse organic drama with manufactured drama. You don't need a White Van of Death or sudden sexual assault when you have well-drawn characters and plots.

That's a really good comparison. Or who didn't survive The Shipper. Grrr.

That was a good instinct because it only went downhill from there - to sexual assault and violence. I agree - after all the tortuous slow-burn, to have this desgree of crash-and-burn is audience abuse.

I could understand he would call someone he doesn't know over his friends because he doesn't want any of his friends to know what happened, or he's embarassed to face them. As for spending the night, it's a little dubious - maybe he couldn't afford a room, and he didn't want to see his roommate. All the other characters work for Aue, so that would be weird. Also, Vi-Phob is gorgeous, so there's that. Anyway, that was the least incomprehensible thing that happened this ep. But I agree, this is starting to get insulting.

There's not enough glue in the world.

I think it's beyond redemption. This episode was excruciating to watch - it took me hours as I had to take breaks, and I'm not subjecting myself to any more of it. I don't even want to see a love scene - I'd expect it to be torture to watch at this point.

Can we have a gratuitous shower scene with Chef Vi-Phob? And it's a good thing Leo & Fiat weren't home, or Leo might have had henchmen beat them for intruding. :)

Anyway, I don't think I can do this show anymore. Previous episodes have been shallow and too heavy on style over substance, but that was much preferable to this disaster.

I'm not going to judge Mark's acting because I don't know what's him and what's the directing, but his character is an emotional cypher. I will say that Zung has the same director and he's not. Was Aek out of character this ep? Who knows? What exactly is his character? He was a rude, ungrateful asshole, that's for sure, but his motivations are opaque and incomprehensible. He's more of a plot device than a person.

There is no way Aue would behave like this. Could anyone misread the room that badly? You could say he knew Aek had feelings for him and tried to force the issue, but unfortunately we haven't been shown any feelings from Aek, so it's not a convincing explanation, and in any case, that was sexual assault. I would normally say it was mild and that people are flawed and lose control, but he's Aek's boss, so this is very serious.

And Eve just happened to be at that particular hospital in the middle of the night, in that particular ward at that particular moment? Come on. Although I suppose Vi-Phob is in league with her and called her, but still, why go all the way there just to make one snarky comment and then leave? I still want to see Vi-Phob take a shower, though.

There is no thought to the plot, characterization, or flow of this story, I'll say it: it's terribly written. The cinematography is brilliant, maybe only matched by ITSAY, and in some ways better. The overall quality of the production is first rate, but it's as if the creators had a few "visual paintings" in mind and nothing else - the rest of this is just an attempt to fill the spaces between beautiful images. Of all the characters, only Aue and Nuna are identifiably human. Everyone else are robots or cardboard cutouts that can somehow speak. The conversation between Prem & Vich was LOL funny, it was so wooden and artificial.

And how many more evil chefs are going to show up before this is over? This is ep 8 - did we need yet another villain in addition to the manufactured drama?

I truly got why some people really liked this up until this point, but it's hard for me to see the plusses over the minuses after Ep 8. This is by far the greatest BL disappointment I've ever experienced. There are certainly much worse shows than this, but none that I expected much from, and none that had the incredible potential this had. I'm done, I'm afraid.