jpny01

I think there's no happy ending for Ben & Jim, but they more or less announced from the battlements that Ben & Delivery Boy are the endgame. Which is fine with me!

I agree with all this! Except I'm not sure the actor conveyed who Jim is, or at least the writing didn't. Looking forward to Leo, because the actor is sexy as f#$%.

That didn't excite me. Every scene was just a little too long, the Ben actor was better than average for a BL, but not very charismatic - and it's hard to get a feeling for his character unless we're meant to dislike him, because mission accomplished if that's the case. If he's going to be an entitled brat, then they should commit to it (e.g. Judah in Quaranthings), but he was strangely rude to the delivery guy and talked down to him, but then was otherwise normal.

Being rude to service people is an instant X for me. These are usually underprivileged people working hard to support their families who never had the advantages people like Ben obviously have, plus the nature of their jobs make them unable to stand up for themselves.

In any case I was way more interested in th delivery boy than Ben or Jim. Or finding out what Jim's nanny knows.

Every gay boy in BL has the same female friend - she must be tired running between shows. It's getting old.

I'll watch the second ep, but unless the two leads are exciting together or at least take their shirts off this might have to be a miss.

Ben took 8 years to get through college which should make him 26. The actor is 27. There's ageism, but you're taking it to a whole 'nutha level.

Thanks for the recommendation. I've seen ads for Gay OK but not watched it. 8.1 is very low. By comparison Oxygen is at 8.6. It's a formulaic BL drama.

The trans character is only there for comic relief. Hopefully her role will become more substantial, but so far she just inappropriately touches people. Aiden says "that's the problem with you - you think all straight people are homophobic", and as he's responding to Danny expressing surprise that Aiden is not homophobic, that means Aiden identifies as straight - or is being deliberately deceptive, which makes no sense in the context of that scene.

I am not saying this to insult you, because I think your faith in humanity is truly lovely, but your comment about LGBTQ actors not being willing to act in anything with homo- or transphobia is perhaps a bit naive. LGBTQ actors have been acting in LGBTQ-phobic productions forever. Unfortunately, one's values are often discarded to collect a paycheck. And some of these actors most likely can't afford to be too choosey. Also, in a conservative society with limited depictions of LGBTQ characters, having LGBTQ characters at all may seem better than nothing.

Where I am (California), the T and Q has only recently been viewed as equally legitimate, even within the LGBTQ community - so it may be some gay actors in some cultures aren't living within a context that fully perceives transphobia for what it is - and so it's perhaps our responsibility to point it out.

If a trans character is outrageous, predatory, and serves no purpose other than to be "comical", that's transphobic, like Madam Curacha (so far). She can be a comic character, but must have agency and be important to the plot (like Jennie in The Shipper) in order not to be transphobic.

These are all good points. I think the very short run time of the series is limiting - I wish they could have made it longer so they could explore all this a little slower. The reason I love shows like this is that the characters are flawed and complex - but seeing as it's rated 8.1, which is extremely low, BL audiences seem to prefer their Prince Charming/Damsel in Distress formulaic shows.

I probably wouldn't have watched The Shipper if she weren't in it, and I'm glad I did because it was excellent.

I still think things moved too fast in this ep, but I guess they're a bit limited by having ony 8 short eps.

You make some very good points here, especially about norms of Pinoy shows - there is a degree of melodrama that a viewer should expect that might not be standard for say, an American viewer. What's most important about GB is that it's a BL with an actual LGBTQ sensibility that is socially conscious. And you're right, it's not lazy writing - that's not really fair.

I did see He's Coming to Me, which at the time was one of the first times I saw a Thai BL character identify unambiguously as gay, and even better it was Ohm, one of my favorites. I was also disappointed in the ending - like mouth hanging wide. Nobody paid any consquences for their crimes - including murder - and I don't think you can have anything more positive than a bittersweet ending when the romantic pair is a live person and a ghost. COME ON. But other than the ending it was one of the most underrated BLs ever. People resisted it because Singto isn't allowed to be with anyone other than Krist, even though his chemistry with Ohm was 10 times better, although Ohm would have great chemistry with a cardboard box. And my goodness did he grow up well.

I admire you for your ability to maintain a positive attitude.

I just can't. I'll give a show a chance if it's not great but has something going for it, like a cute couple, at least one good actor, technical competence, well-written dialog - or is bad in an entertaining way. This is just plain bad. The dinner scene in part 2 even had the conversation drowned out by the clacking of dinnerware, and the line "I know your sexual preference and I respect that" was the most cringeworthy line I've heard... maybe ever? They even managed to have a shot where two guys are sitting together in tandem and one is in focus and the other is not. That's active incompetence. Every scene is just a collection of either poorly executed shots of people doing nothing, or a collection of tropes and steretypes. The main character showers a lot is the only positive thing I can think of to say.

I hope it gets no further views. It's so bad that I don't think I could force myself to watch another episode, as much as I want to support all BL. I'm glad that BL is exploding, but we're getting to the point that there's so much of it that the quality has dropped off a cliff and the genre is going to get a reputation for being garbage. There is nothing positive to say about this show. It has the usual transphobic representation, the dialog is terrible, the acting nearly non-existent, the technical aspects of the production are a total disaster, and the show is not even a trainwreck in an entertaining way like My Day, which at least has a pretty convincing couple. Here we're going for the "I'm straight, I just like X" trope. I'm sure he has an evil girlfriend waiting to mess things up.

My problem was that it wasn't a glimmer, it was a nuclear-powered searchlight - he went from immature and bratty to wise and thoughtful 30-year old in 30 seconds.

If you have that degree of internalized self-hatred, you don't just get over it after one 30 second conversation with your father, and it takes longer to accept yourself than a day. Going from "I'M NOT A FAG LIKE YOU" to "I want to be your boyfriend! :)" is too jarring. We needed to see him feeling awful for the way he treated Judah (he did leave him alone and sick without a quarantine pass when he's the only person who could have infected him) and a lot more reflection and agonizing. It really didn't work for me at all. But, no series is perfect and they only have 8 short episodes to tell the story, so I forgive them. Plus, having a fem main character without him being exploited for comic relief or sitting around with no agency waiting for Prince Charming is quietly revolutionary and necessary, so I'm all in.

But to me the actors are not good at all. It's harder to play an introvert, but a skilled actor can make a quiet character compelling. Introverts can still be intense and have emotions - we're not robots like these two. Phu is almost never on screen and he hardly even talks, but he's fascinating and has a real screen presence. Or Ram on My Engineer, although he had the advantage of being supernaturally cute and actual chemistry with his partner. I had a hard time even remembering that Gui was mad at Solo because this show is so boring that anything other than PhuKao quickly slips from my mind.

Got it. Yup, Judah is a Millenial. Almost my entire staff are Millenial, so I have a ton of Judahs running around annoying me all day. Rocky didn't exactly decline the courting - he just said that Judah has no chance, not that he couldn't try. And Judah clearly did have a chance... But I completely get the entitlement point.

The vast majority of Gameboys fans are not like that - but many even tear down rival shows - like calling Hello Stranger a copycat, when it was totally different and fully written and in production before GB started airing. But what you pointed out is my biggest problem. I'm not objectively wrong if I have issues with the show or it didn't do much for me - and I don't even think GB was bad, or that shows I like are better.

Regarding Pearl, she's perfectly fine as a character - my problem isn't Pearl, or the actress, it's the artificial way she was introduced in order to generate a cliffhanger for Ep 2 in a way that was inconsistent with her character. That's a lazy or manipulative writing issue.

You summed up my problems pretty well. The interaction between Cai & Gav was really repetitive, but I think that was probably because they extended the run to 13 episodes and so the plot ended up moving slower than initially intended. I wish more of the drama was internal to the relationship between the characters intead of external obstacles thrown at them. That made it a shallow story to me.

I'm OK with overhyping, but it does annoy me when people treat a show they like as perfect and refuse to even hear any criticism. In the case of Gameboys, I just found the show boring. My reaction to the first episode was extremely positive - I loved it and was super-excited (especially because Gav acted like an actual gay man instead of fetishizing straightness like Thai BLs), but then it just didn't go anywhere for me. There's only so many times I can watch someone day "bayBEEE!" followed by a pout. Gaya sa Pelikula is equally hyped and I love it without reservation.

I've lived through the homophobia too - it did exist in CA and was very strong where I grew up - in fact it was simply not possible to be gay, and there wasn't enough context to even understand that I was gay (although I lived in terror every day because on some level I knew), until I left for college, but societal attitudes have changed far more in CA and other progressive places, so that we've had this type of positive portrayal and validation in the media for a very long time, so it just doesn't have the same impact for me anymore, and in fact is a reminder of less happy times. In fact, sometimes it feels condescending and limiting if gay characters only have storylines about being gay.

COVID is spread by having a large number of people in poorly ventilated spaces, not by people going outside. You can get it outside, but you will generally need to be in an environment like a political rally or sporting event where you're in one space for a long time around a huge number of people (a "super-spreading" event). The chances of Cai's father getting COVID by going outside to look for him are astronomically small, so it felt manipulative and contrived to me. And beside that, it seemed inauthentic for the family to blame and resent Cairo rather than being solely focused on the father's well-being, and I don't believe a loving mother would ever make Cairo feel the way she did in I think it was ep 6. And in fact they really didn't, it was just a manipualtion of the presentation of their characters to generate drama, which to me is lazy writing.

This is one of the best shows airing, but this episode moved way too fast relative to where last episode left off - it feels like there needed to be at least one and probably two intermediate episodes where there was some processing and reflection. Judah is instantly 10 years older and more mature, and Rocky is instantly ready for a gay relationship? It's not a fatal problem, but it didn't completely work, and I thought this was the weakest episode of the series, in terms of writing. The acting was better than ever.