jpny01

I haven't read the book, and the only thing I've heard is that none of this Torfun stuff is in it, which would have been much better IMO - but GMMTV is not happy unless they can have a woman interfere with a m/m relationship, apparently even if she's dead.

I think the disconnect I feel is because characters actions are not driven by their characters, but rather by the needs of the plot. Obviously there needs to be both a plot and characters, but good writing still drives the plot through the characters and not the other way around. So it seems a given to me that Doctor Nam is he were behaving in character would have discussed the situation with Tian himself, rather than grossly violating professional ethics and irresponsibly given Pha incomplete info. But because the plot needed Pha to reject Tian, that what the Doctor did. But that also required Pha to jump to a negative conclusion and become a different person than he's been, who would want to know the full truth, not just assume the worst and refuse to hear what Tian had to say - not to mention there's no way he would do that in front of the whole village.

The plot needed Tian isolated, so nobody in the entire village asked "what do you mean by 'I have her heart'?" or "What do you mean by 'I'm responsible for her death'?" If you knew nothing about what had happened and someone said that, would your assumption be "Oh, so you murdered her and stole her actual heart and it's now beating in your chest." or would your reaction be, "wait, she was in love with you? Or were you in love with her? Did you reject her and she killed herself? I don't understand, please explain."

That they all jumped to the conclusion that Tian murdered her and took her beating heart makes zero sense. There was way too much of that this episode. In the rest of the series, almost all the drama has been generated by organic interaction between consistent characters. Here it was all driven by external factors and character reactions were shoehorned into those factors rather than reacting naturally.

I'm actually not all that bothered by the time dislocation - it's just that it was part of an excessive pattern this episode, including Pha teleporting to Bangkok, Langtae easily finding Tian in the dark, and the rangers getting there that fast.

OK, let me try to distill my problem. Remember that nobody present except Phupha knows Tian has a heart transplant, and only the rangers know Torfun is dead.

So Tian says "Torfun has passed away, I have her heart, and I'm responsible for her death."

Do you think it's remotely possible that nobody had a question? Like "What do you mean by 'I have her heart?'" The first assumption you'd make is that it has something to do with love, not that her actual heart is beating in your chest. Or "What do you mean by 'I'm responsible for her death'?" Or forget that - how about "How did she die?" or "When did this happen?"

100 people are not all going to jump to "Oh, I see, you murdered her and stole her actual beating heart." It's implausible to the point of ridiculousness. People want to understand people they care about and give them the benefit of the doubt - or at the least don't want to believe the worst. Over 70 million people voted for Trump a second time, so that's clearly a thing.

I don't hate the show or anything, I'm just deeply disappointed that they took such an overly dramatic and ham-handed route and didn't take advantage of the opportunity to have really powerful interaction between Earth and Mix - and now the rest of the series will be taken up climbing out of this hole rather than spending it on the relationship we're all here for. What is spectacular about this series is the subtlety and nuance of Earth's performance - they abandoned that here and we only got to see the quiet power he has in that last scene.

But they're also near the equator, so even in the winter, the day isn't very short like it is in N America or Europe. In any case, that would barely have registered with me if it weren't part of a long series of implausible elements, like why was Phupha at Torfun's grave just then? Does he take a weekly shuttle to Bangkok to lay flowers there? How did Longtae find Tian in the dark? How did the rangers get there that fast? Just a few too many hard to explain issues like that in too small a period of time. It took me out of the story. It's always a bit cheap to have someone cocking the gun unnecessarily slowly to be shot by the hero with not a second to spare, and they did it more than once in this ep. Also, It makes sense that Tian is upset about a certain shot, but don't you deal with the guy with the gun first before turning your back on him and dooming you both?

GSD understood that Shu Yi would never be happy without his father's approval, so he made a misguided sacrifice. I know it's a little implausible, but it's not as ridiculous as the whole things seemed to me last ep.

The plot hole is that GSD could have told Shu Yi everything and they could have come up with a plan to deal with dad. You could argue GSD is a man of honor and kept his word, but I think there's plenty of legitimate reason not to in this case.

But the saving grace may be that Shu Yi say GSD with the woman, and GSD didn't know that, so there was an added impetus for communication failure. I'm not defending the plot - it's still fairly silly, but it at least has a veneer of plausibility now.

OK, I'll admit it, that sort of worked for me. I've been really unhappy with this show, and that was still a bit weak as far as explanations go, but it did at least make sense - the line that was essential was "Without your approval Shu Yi will never be happy". That gave the whole exercise a degree of needed credibility. I think unless you can watch this as happening within the context of Asian culture, it won't work for you, because the plot is too implausible by Western standards. Its implausible by Asian standards too, but by not quite as much.

And I was so happy the humor was back - and I really like the dad's character. Misguided but not evil, and a bit of a doof. That his father made him play basketball to try to make him taller cracked me up. Also, the "OK, I'M LEAVING NOW" scene.

The author has a fetish for man-handling, and I can't say I don't like it, When GSD holds Shu Yi down, it's makes me feel things. At least this time he wasn't forcing him to have sex.

That might be a little worse -actually, it's not a little worse, it's a lot worse. Ouch.

But they aren't mistaking PSY & GSD's relationship - Zhen Xuan is correct - PSY has always been in love with GSD.

My father's ears stuck out as a child, so my grandmother used to tape them to his head to "train" them and make him go through the day like that.

That might be more appropriate.

It's funny, I think Earth is gorgeous - stunning, perfect, porcelain skin, beautiful face, radiant smile, everything. But he's not really my type . I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers, however.

I think he's by far the best actor in BL, though. Well, maybe Billkin from ITSAY is close.

Given your concept, I would like to volunteer my services as the wardrobe manager. Tee's wardrobe will be sunscreen which will have to be carefully and completely applied.

I have the same reaction as you about WBL2. I actually would have really liked it if they had just started a whole new show with new characters instead of making it a continuation. It's a great story in itself, it just requires the characters to abandon who they were to be totally different people, and that ruins it.

Brothers is not on the caliber of 1,000 Stars, but it is very enjoyable and very cute, so if you want to watch something pleasant and sweet, it is worth it. Cupid Coach has a terrible opening episode (except the main character shirtless for the last section, which is not a disappointment), but it does have some redeeming features, like a main character that is explicitly and unself-consciously gay, a strong female character, no toxic females, and no stereotpyical seme/uke dynamic, which to me shoehorns characters into archetypes rather than allowing them to be real people, and the plot is totally unpredictable - usually you know everything that will happen in the first five minutes. I'm on ep 10 of 12 and I still have no idea how it will end. I can't go so far as to recommend it because it won't be for everyone.

1,000 Stars maintains the seme/uke thing, but blurs it quite a bit and allows the characters to breathe, so it can be done right, it just often isn't.

Thanks. You could just replay that shower scene with Phupha. Or any shower scene that Earth has done.

The issue is that Phupha didn't know that Tian did or did not hit Torfun and didn't bother to ask. He just assumed. Dr Nam didn't know what happened and he wanted Tian to be asked (another plot issue being I don't understand why he didn't just come over and ask Tian himself, but to spare himslef five minutes of effort, jettisoned his professional and personal ethics so completely), so Pha jumped to a very uncharitable conclusion about the man he loves. As did 100 or so villagers, none of whom seemed to have the slightest curiosity about what happened. The plot wanted Tian isolated, so the plot gave us implausible failure of communication.

I'm in. We should set up a crowdfunding page. Actually, skip it. Who do I write the check out to? How much do you think Tee will require in order to go along with it?

Well, I'm sure he did - if it took Longtae 12 hours to find the flashlight, he must have spent some of that time where his father could see him. :)

There have been time jumps, but never ones that were plot problems. Tian went to the waterfall in the morning, and then it was night. Previous jumps skip over irrelevant details - I don't need to see Tian shave and eat breakfast and lunch every day, it isn't important. Here it was illogical and jarrring.

I would and have applauded them showing faults in characters - but I would like the faults to be consistent with who people are, and not manufactured to serve a plot point. Do think it's possible that out of 100 or so villagers, not a single one would be interested in an explanation about what happened? Not even the village chief? How about the rangers, who concealed the truth of Torfun's death? Would they want to know what happened? And not Phupha? He can be hurt and angry and still need to know the full truth.

Writing is poor when it squeezes characters into predetermined plot points rather than writing the drama to be driven by the characters. Instead of what we got, what if Phupha acted in character and privately confronted Tian? That would have been amazing. But they wanted to end with what happened and that meant nothing was character-driven - people had to take actions that would lead to that point. Tian had to take a photo with his flash on. Tian had to be causally willing to put Longtae in danger. It had to be dark, so it suddenly became night. The rangers had to be able to teleport to the right place at exactly the right moment. It was all plot, no character.

I hadn't thought of that, but this is yet another writing flaw.

I think you answered your own question - because it was done to elicit emotions from the audience, regardless of character. This episode was driven by plot rather than character. The characters just did what the plot required, rather than behaving consistently with their characters, if that makes sense. In other words, they wanted Tian to be totally isolated, so nobody had any interest in clarification - they just shunned Tian. Phupha would certainly be hurt by being lied to, but he wouldn't confront Tian in front of the whole village and he would want an explanation. But the plot required implausible miscommunication, so everybody implausibly miscommunicated.

There needed to be dramatic gunplay, and that required Tian to be discovered, and so his IQ had 100 points sawed off it so he could use his flash. The whole episode was like this.

Imagine now an episode that concentrated on Phupha's reaction and an emotional confrontation with Tian - how amazing an epsisode could that have been?

I agree that Phupha would have been deeply hurt, but that doesn't make his reaction consistent with his character. I don't think he would confront Tian in front of the whole village, especially without all the facts, and I think he would want an explanation. We would also see his pain more than the anger - I'm not sure Earth even knew how to play these scenes they were so alien to the character. That scene when he's in his office, he's literally just huffing.

This ep could have been a powerful and intimate dramatic conflict between the two mains as they processed these revelations - instead we were sledgehammered with manufactured drama when they already had everything they needed to be compelling.

I'm normally half in tears all the way through each episode of this series, but for this ep I felt nothing at all except frustration except for the very last scene, which was pure gold with Earth able to show us a huge range of emotion with incredible economy of force.

I'd almost hate to see Earth wasted on action when he's got such subtle power - anyone with a nice body and a handsome face can be an action star, but Earth can be world-class dramatic actor. But I would watch every action movie he's in 20 times, of course. His ability to harmonize strength and vulnerability is a killer and would make him a spectacular action character.

I'm harsher on this series because I'm holding it to a higher standard, and because I care about it so much. Something that makes no sense in Brothers or The Cupid Coach I let go with a shrug - here, everything out of place is intensely jarring and disappointing given the level of quality this series has proven it's capable of.

OMG, I laughed about the swim team too - that one guy's dive was so bad !

I'm not expecting a kiss either, and I'm OK with it. It bothers me when there's no kiss and it's college students or post-college age people, but here it's just fine. They can save it for S2. :)