3
5
Complete waste of time
This isn't a BL, or at least I hope not, or it's about a zoophilic pedophile and his victim.I know this is supposed to be sweet and cute, but it's cloying and dull, with no plot, And even with no plot it manages to be full of plot holes. The first episode was the worst. It went downhill from there.
This is the entire series: A guy finds a cat that turns into a human-like thing. They move in together. The end.
The acting is universally weak, except maybe Bright as Faiyen. To be fair, Bodo's job as Evan is to not act, so in that light he did an excellent job. Meow is so child-like that he doesn't understand what happened when Dermdem gets a haircut (and takes off the most ridiculous wig since Ja's in Until We Meet Again. Actually, I think it might be the same wig.)
The plotline between Faiyen and Evan had potential - Evan is incapable of facial expressions, which was good for one or two moments, but was never explored or used for either dramatic or comedic effect, so it was just a shallow affectation assigned to the character - which in live action doesn't work, it's just distancing and boring.
The music is trying to be cutesy and Japanese-ish, but they've somehow skewed it so that it made me feel enraged and violent. If you need the Hulk, just play the theme song in front of Bruce Banner.
Rewatch value - I would rather vacation in Mariupol than watch this again.
This is the shortest review I've ever written - there's almost nothing to say. It's that vapid and dull. If you like this sort of thing, watch the first ep - if you don't like it, run. It never gets better.
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There's really not much sex in this.
I liked this. There was an unrealistic aspect to it, though, which is that I think whenever anyone met Kao they would scream "Oh my God, your eye! What happened to your EYE!" But other than that, it was cute and fluffy.From the comments and reviews where everyone was calling it "gay porn", I expected penises everywhere, but the love scenes were actually very restrained and realistic, and sweet and loving. I think maybe people are starting to get used to the Victorian-era level of sexuality in BLs. Anyway, they don't show anything - it's about equivalent to TharnType if you've seen that.
This isn't deep by any means, but the guy playing Kao is very good in his role - he makes the character kind of dim but sweet, and other than one of his eyes, he's easy to look at - so is Pete. Hey, I just realized it's another Pete & Kao!
Anyway, I would recommend this is you want a thin plot with boys being cute together and in love.
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Well, that happened.
I'm not sure I've watched as series that's had such a reversal in my opinion of it. I was excited after the first episode - I like Meen & Ping, and I had hoped for a better vehicle for them than Ai Long Nhai, and here it was! But it was just a trick.The first couple of episodes were good and engaging, with an odd and silly intersection of gaming and gangsters - I thought it would be campy fun, but instead, we got an endless stream of people making inexplicably bad decisions - solely to get the plot to progress from step to step. In order for there to be final drama, Tew has to spare the life of someone totally psychotic and evil when doing so put himself, Guy, the Boss, and everyone else associated with them in mortal danger - in fact it was double suicide, because he disobeyed the Boss to do this. It was so completely stupid and out of character that it pulled me completely out of the story. Maybe if the villain had been compelling instead of the offspring of a non-binary clown and John Lennon it could have worked, but Kenji is such an awful actor that his scenes gave me secondhand embarassment. (Tommy has a day job as a model, so he'll be fine - and he is fine, underneath the clown suit they make him wear.)
The rest of the series is a meandering mess, with an intriguing secondary couple that doesn't go anywhere, and a ton of side characters that could have been integrated into the story - like what if instead of being a sneering Beetle the villain had been sophisticated and smart, and it took the whole crew to take him down using their individual skills? But nope, all we got was Elton John on a bad hair day chewing up the scenery and also making insanely stupid decisions.
In the final episode there were lots of time jumps, over the types of things that it would have been interesting to watch, like the secondary couple getting together, but it was apparently necessary to cut all that out to include lots of scenes of Tew cooking boring dishes and having the same conversation with Ping on an endless loop.
OK, the positives - Meen is hot. I'm not even sure that's subjective. In fact the whole cast is attractive to the point that it made me watch the whole series (with judicious fast-fowarding).
Winner Tanatat is wasted on a side role, but he absolutely nails it and makes Wal a fully-realized character rather than just a villain-esque dick. He managed to play Wal as a loyal and loving friend while still giving him an unpleasantly domineering edge, but never so much as to send him over the line into villainy.
The fight scenes were not exactly cinematic in quality, but there were impressive for a small production like this.
I can't recommend this. Meen takes off his shirt a couple of times, which is worth seeing, but he probably does that on social media somewhere and you can stare at the glory that is his body all you want.
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I'm giving it an '8', but I didn't like it.
I'm torn on this one. It's well-written, exquisitely filmed, well-directed and pretty much excellent in every technical way.I usually defend shorter works, but in this case, it's too short for the material it covered. Not plot-wise - all the story arcs conclude and while I wouldn't say it's a blissfully happy ending, it is realistic and convincing. It's in the emotions. It's bleak for too long with an awful person dominating the story, and there's only 3 minutes of relief.
I may be missing something, but I didn't see how the two stories were connected or how they complimented each other - it felt like two entirely different stories stapled together, and while the color grading and other skillful 'tricks' made it very clear what were flashbacks, the jumping around made the story feel even more disjointed.
And because there is rarely any context to what's going on, it's hard to figure out. Why were Archie and Kelvin at a high school at the end of the series? My guess was that Archie now teaches there and Kelvin found out and went there to find him, but then he was surprised that Archie had been there, which was just confusing. I may have all that totally wrong, but that would only amplify my point.
Anyway, I understand this is being made into a long series, which would be welcome if it's the same production crew, but I hope they find a better way to handle Archie & Kelvin's story than have a horrible, evil female character that sucks the desire to watch this out of me. It could be more nuanced with societal and family pressures driving Kelvin's decisions - making him get trapped and have no choice just makes him pathetic, and if I were Archie I wouldn't touch him with a 100' pole - he brutally dumped me once for her, why should I believe he won't do it again?
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This review may contain spoilers
Ugh. Close, but not quite - by about 6 years.
This had some things going for it. The leads are both very attractive. They don't behave like your standard seme and uke (with one extremely large exception) - they're just two guys in love. The plot is conventional and unoriginal, but it has a charming quality to it - maybe a naive sincerity.But then the ending happened. Because BL seems to require by some unwritten but unbreakable law to have ridiculous manufactured drama thrown in, this was spoiled by an overdramatic crisis with an unfortunate resolution.
So if you want to watch this, I would recommend stopping after the kiss.
On to spoilers. There are also spoilers for Addicted in here as there are obvious comparisons to be made.
-----------------------------------
First of all, a lot of people are going to use the R word. That's not what this was, but hear me out. Rape is horrible. If he had been raped he would most likely be bloody and bruised, physically and psychologically, need medical and psychiatric attention, hospitalization, and depending on where it happens, criminal charges would be automatically filed because doctors are required to report it and neither of their families have the power to cover it up. Also, the "victim" was clearly fine with it afterwards, and after they start he appears to immediately join in willingly, although you only have feet to judge by.
So what was it? That's the problem. It's not supposed to be rape, but it's not exactly not-rape. Let's compare it for a moment to the infamous scene in Addicted. There, the two are already in a relationship, they're already phyiscal (albeit not anal yet), and one doesn't want to do anything solely because he's afraid he has a communicable disease, and in the uncensored version, it's clear the sex was just a hand job, which can be sexual assault, but it's really, really hard to do that to an unwilling person for... reasons anatomical. I get why people didn't like this, but at least it didn't have a morally repugnant motivation on the part of the writer.
This wasn't a hand-job, and they hadn't done anything physical yet whatsoever other than a lips-barely-touching kiss. So we've returned to the incredibly homophobic idea that it's morally unacceptable for a man to desire and pursue being penetrated, and therefore he has to be forced, because somehow rape or sexual assault are less morally objectionable than being gay. This is also common in straight romances, for the same reason - a woman shouldn't want or pursue sexual pleasure, so she has to be forced. So it's repugnant as a message. That was not a factor in Addicted. When they finally had anal sex, Luo Yin is afraid it will hurt, and Gu Hai offers to bottom instead, but Luo Yin wants to be f@#$ed. So there's no judgment of top vs bottom in the writing.
As drama, a BL setup can be as ridiculous as you want - one of them can be a ghost or a vampire, or they can be in magical universe where all boys pursue other boys - but within that context, people on an emotional level need to act like people. If Zi Ming wanted to have sex, then it doesn't make sense for him to try to fight him off - and there were punches to the face involved, so he felt serious violence was necessary to defend his virginity. So if he didn't want it, then he was raped, in which case it makes no sense that he was fine with it afterwards, unless he has some sort of severe trauma in his past that makes him feel like he deserved it, which there is no sign of in this story. So it's bad writing. It would have been OK for him to resist a bit because he was upset Cheng Yi was leaving without talking to him, but this was not that. This was "guys don't let other guys do THAT to them."
Further, in Addicted we also had some love scenes, and interaction as a couple. Here we didn't - just the force part, and none of what it is implied that followed, i.e. love-making. And then one of them leaves for contrived reasons and the ending is ambiguous, although it's implied they're staying together and planning to reunite (all that stuff about gravity).
Cheng Yi's motivation seemed to be trying to get Zi Ming to to admit his feelings. So, here are the options:
Option 1: Tell him that you love him, and ask if he feels the same way about you.
Option 2: Have a fist fight and rape him until he admits he likes you.
So in the end, we get a regressive message about gay being worse that sexual assault, we got an unoriginal story with writing that doesn't make emotional sense, and we got an unsatisfying ending. What's not to like?
As for the contrived reason for leaving, I get that his grandmother feels she's getting too old to take care of him - but he's 18. He's now at an age where he can take care of her, or at least be equal in that regard - so what kind of nonsense is this? If she felt it was for his own good, then she should have sent him away years ago, and if she's selfish, then she should hold onto him. But it's not selfish keeping someone you love and who loves you with you instead of sending him to a parent he doesn't love and who doesn't really seem to love him. So again, a fail on the emotional level for the writing. She seems to be aware of how important Zi Ming is to Cheng Yi, so she comes off as a homophobe who doesn't care about her grandson's happiness or thinks it's some passing phase.
Addicted was really funny and the transgressive things that happened made sense in the context of the story and characters. Here we had a cheap and unimaginative knockoff that replicated the transgression for no apparent reason and without it really fitting the story or characters. Also, have you ever tried to have a fist fight and force someone to have sex in a small apartment with someone's parent in the next room? That's not likely to end well. Even if she wasn't home, the neighbors would hear every bit of it.
I was enjoying this up until the kiss at the end of Ep 6, and then it accelerated downhill to a terrible ending. I want to support Mainland Chinese BL, but if bad knockoffs of Addicted is all we can expect, maybe forget it. Wait till Xi dies and then shift the high-production value bromances back to BL.
Story: 4.5 - unimaginative but relatively coherent plot-wise, less so from a character perspective.
Acting: 7 - average. Not great, clunky at the beginning, but improved throughout.
Music: 6.5 - not bad, not intrusive, not special.
Rewatch Value: 1. There's not even a shower scene to replay over and over. You get only a cruel glimpse at Zi Ming's beautiful body and then it's over.
Overall: 5 - I went with the suggested average. 5 sounds about right.
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First of all, for people who had trouble with the darker aspects of this series, well, the title should have given you a clue. This isn't a sweet tween drama - Gu Hai's feelings for Bai Luo Yin are over-the-top, obsessive, and unhealthy - like heroin is. This isn't meant to be an ideal relationship - relationships can be complicated, even toxic.
Many reviewers have said Luo Yin doesn't reciprocate Gu Hai's feelings, but he really does - it's just that his expressions of love are subtle. When Gu Hai asks him if he likes him, he says "you already know the answer, so why ask?" Plus, Luo Yin invited him to live with him and sleep in the same bed, so that's another hint.
- Loved the cast. Timmy Xu who plays Bai Luo Yin is so beautiful it's painful to look at him. The acting is very solid.
- The writing is unusual, as it skips the saccharine quality of a lot of BL and actually gets a tad dark - you'll know what I mean when you see it. It's played for humor, and the Chinese title of the series is "addictive", so it does make sense, but some people will not find any of it funny. The power imbalance was kind of hot, to me at least.
- Although both boys have (semi- and ex-) girlfriends, this isn't the major and consuming obstacle to the main pairing like it is in many of the earlier BLs. Here, the girlfriends here mostly serve to help the mains figure our their sexuality, and they both fit into the addiction theme.
- While you have to wait for it, there are a couple of hot consensual love scenes, at least in the uncensored version. One of the characters is way more aggressive than the other, and in a couple of cases semi-forces the other, although never for anything more than a hand-job . In one scene the more passive one was clearly parading himself in an effort to drive the other crazy, but "he was asking for it" is a bit cringe-inducing even if it's two guys.
- If there's a flaw, there is some repetition, (although common to most serial dramas), especially rejection of physical intimacy. It later turns out there is some fear of pain involved, but hand and blow jobs don't hurt. Also, the main actors are clearly way too old for high school, although I'm not complaining about that.
Ironically, the censored version is more transgressive than the full version - there are physical scenes where cutting out just as it's starting makes it look like one raped the other whereas in the full version you can see that they didn't even have sex.
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Kind of a guilty pleasure
This is not good. It's not terrible, but the writing is unimaginative and derivative. It's almost saved by its cast, but there is a glaring problem that prevented this from being the best execution of this plot type.The problem is the main couple, which is a pointless and cliched story that is poorly written throughout, which is unfortunate, because none of the side couples (and there are three of them) have this issue. Even then, it might have been saved if the actors were fanastic with electric chemistry. And Fluke as Mek has a certain charm. But Earth... his acting is wholy lacking in authenticity - everything he does looks fake, even blinking (how can blinking look fake you ask? I don't know. But Earth manages it). He's not assisted by the writing, which makes Kim a prissy, grumpy and unpleasant person, who has no character developmen at all. As opposed to Mek, who turns 180 degrees from who he was like a light switch being flipped - he goes from a charming carefree prankster into a featureless dullness which paired with Kim makes you resent the amount of time spend on them in the finale.
The side couples are some of the best you'll ever see. Lee and Park are rather unusual in the way they meet and get togther, which is refreshing and interesting, and allows the story to examine a much different set of issues. Acted by two beautiful and talented actors, Daniel Cheng (Marco from Call It What You Want) and Bew Sitthikarn, a newcomer who I hope we see a lot more of, this is a compelling couple.
Bear and Bomb are a high-contrast couple, played by the lovable Por Patsakon and the pouty-sexy Yut Kritsadayut, with great chemistry and complimentary personalities. Tim and Mai don't get much screentime, but they also become interesting later on as the brooding popular boy and the perfect man for him in his taken-for-granted best friend who's always at his side encouraging him.
This series is too full of tropes and cliches to give it a high score, but if it had dispensed with the main couple and focused on the other three pairs, perhaps with Lee & Park as the main, this could have been an 8.5 or 9. I'm not sure why this keeps happening - I think maybe it's because the main couple has a "gimmick" and ends up having its story constrained by it, while secondary couples have more freedom. Also, for reasons that I'm not sure I understand, rookie actors are cast as mains, relegating the experienced and talented actors to side roles.
Anyway, despite the above, I do recommend this series - it was a guilty pleasure for me, but for the side characters. The cast is unusually attractive and charming, and I did get a lot of pleasure from it even if I had to put Kim & Mek on 2x to get through their tiresome scenes.
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Beautiful Story
Some people think this series is too short, but I don't understand that. I think everyone has grown used to a formula which includes a set number of side couples & plots and certain milestones that always occur. A story isn't necessarily better if there are twelve 45-minute episodes (of which .5 minutes opening disclaimer, 2.5 min opening credits, 3-5 minutes of "previous episode" scenes, 15 minutes of product placement, and 5 minutes of end credits) - in fact if we really look at "standard" BL series, they are a bit of a narrative mess with some huge artificial crisis inserted in Ep 10 which then chews up all the rest of the time so that there doesn't have to be any actual affection shown onscreen except a final kiss.Anyway, on to this show. The story is succinct, sharply-written, well-paced, thematically disciplined, and backstory remains backstory, e.g. it doesn't matter what exactly happened to anyone's mother - her absence is what's important and the impact it has on the character. The only thing perhaps lacking was some resolution with the film's villain (not the CEO, who really isn't a villain - I mean the other dancer), but this is not really important. It might have been fun to see more development of Hong Seok's modeling "career", but again, not important.
The acting is very good, the chemistry is excellent, and this is something you can binge, as the run time is roughly 105 minutes, which is a long-ish film. Highly recommended. There is also progress here in that this doesn't shy away from physical aspects of love - it's not graphic by any means, but the kisses are kisses, and very natural, as opposed to the creepy rubber-lip connect with eyes open you see so often. I'm really impressed that this is Chu Young Woo's first role - he has a real charm and presence. Not hard to look at, either.
A few minor criticisms:
The music was at times too overpowering - especially when there are lyrics and conversation happening at the same time. I think maybe the Hong Seok role was played a little too dry - it worked most of the time, but I would have liked some subtle expression to show his inner feelings - this was mostly conveyed through actions, and while that's fine for the beginning, it might have connected me more to the story to see directly into his mind (through his acting). Also, the shaky-cam needs to go. In that confrontation in the last episode, I was getting sick - if you have to use that effect - not quite so violent, please. I think the same thing can be accomplished through irregular camera angles, but whatever. Also, they should get some space heaters. You'll know what I mean when you watch it.
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Not good, but had its moments
This series was a mess - but there was a passion behind it that sort of (but not quite) saved it. I'll start with negatives:There are some offensive things in here - Jelai is that disturbing stereotype, a very effeminate person who is made ridiculous and played for laughs. He's predatory and his treatment of Jam is fairly serious sexual harassment. He also tells off a female employee for her skirt being to high, which is misogyny. The actor playing Jelai (Gio Emprese) is constantly misused in roles like this when he's actually a powerful dramatic actor as you can see in Meet My Angel).
There are people that do horrible things, but suffer no consequences - that is a terrible message to send. The main villain of the story doesn't even apologize, but is forgiven. The story is all over the place, and there's no real plot - it's just a bunch of things that happen. Even the obligatory breakup made no sense - it was just a dramatic device with no motivation or logic. A lot of the dialog and "humor" will make you cringe, so be prepared.
The sound is poor, the cinematography is competent but uninspired, and the acting is uneven, generally not good.
On the plus side, the two leads seriously committed - they are one of the most believable couples I've ever seen in a BL, and their love scenes were smoking hot - even straying more than a bit into BDSM. (however, the big love scene was very poorly set up and lacked the emotional impact it should have had - I'm all for sex, but it still needs to work and not feel gratuitous) I'm used to being given nothing more than a chaste kiss - that does not happen here. Sky's family is wonderful, except his brother Ken, who is another offensive predatory effeminate stereotype, which was a waste of an obviously talented actor. The love and validation are the right message and series ended on a positive an affirming note.
I think the problem with this series is that it needed to cut loose and just be campy as f#$%. It wanted to, but always held back, and as a result, the outrageous elements fell flat. For example, Ace's clothing is almost ridiculous, but not quite, and because Aki Torres is so gorgeous he can get away with a lot. I'm not sure what the point of Miss Becky was - if you're going to have a female role played by a man, make it a proper drag queen! There were times where she flirted with being a Disney character - fine, but commit! A middle-aged woman could have filled the role just as well. Moira was cartoonishly evil, but her schemes needed to be more over-the-top (and less time-chewing). She could have been given a hilarious death or comeuppance, which would have been entertaining and satisfying.
Anyway, for all its faults, I watched it and was entertained - and didn't fast forward through too much, so there's that. But it's not the type of show that will have you counting the minutes for. It probably doesn't deserve 5 stars, but there's a lot of effort put into this and the leads did not hold back at all - which I hope all other BLs take notice of.
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The only way to watch this is to fast-forward through everything involving everything uninteresting, which on the bright side means it will only take you an hour or two to get through.
Edit: Having now watched 1,000 Stars it's hard to believe that Earth is the same Earth as one in this. What a complete waste of perhaps the most talented actor in BL.
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Beautiful setup spoiled by poor and lazy ending
It's starting to become a truism of BL that authors come up with good ideas and have no idea how to bring them to a conclusion, so they just skip over everything and just tack on a shallow happy ending.This series can't help but bring up a comparison to the Filipino BL Happenstance, with a similar premise but 100 times the depth, although the overall production quality for that series was lower. It had something to say about different times and worlds, and had a bittersweet and authentic ending that carried a lot of power and stuck with me.
This, however... it's quite engaging, cute, and romantic, with a touch of mystery and darkness, up until when Songjam tries to enter Aksorn's world, when it all falls apart.
First of all, while it's possible to do a time jump well, it rarely is done well - usually it's just a lazy jump over any sort of authentic and organic resolution of the plot.
Because of the one here, there was an opportunity to explore the nature of love - does it transcend age? What does it mean when two people are at different places in their lives? But no, they just cast a 32-year old actor to play a 45-year old and called it a day.
Even what should have been an interesting confrontation between Songjam and Aksorn's father happened offscreen, and given the intensity and centrality of Aksorn's conflict with his father, this lazy solution is baffling. "Not only have you defied me by pursuing a useless career, you're also f@#%ing my best friend?!? (or rather being f@#%ed by his best friend since Aksorn suddenly transmutes into an uber-uke, with the usual homophobic loathing of sex that they always seem to have, resulting in uncomfortable coersion scenes.) But, Dad has absolutely no problem with any of this, and all is forgotten. Hugs, expressions of pride, and end scene!
It doesn't help that (slightly) older Songjam has at most a tenth of young Songjam's charm and cuteness, without 25 additional years of maturity & wisdom. Also, if you think about it, this is about a man in his 40s who wants to be with someone he watched grow up since he was born, which is, well, eww. And that's not to mention the logistics of being the best friend of someone's father without them ever even suspecting it - I suppose it's possible, but COME ON.
Plus, are we to believe that seeing someone born, experiencing his mother's death, and a lifetime of friendship with his father, plust the passing of 25 years, won't have any effect on your love for someone? It might still be there, but it would age and change. I can believe Songjam would do everything in his power to promote Aksorn's happiness, but to retain romantic love for him? That's more than borderline creepy - it's more like grooming.
Anyway, while I loved the first four episodes, the ending is so clumsy, lazy, and ridiculous that I'm not sure I would recommend this.
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Diabetes-inducing.
Here's representative dialogue:Kluen: Can you not be any more lovable?
Daonuea: I'm a lovable person. I can't quit being lovable, can I?
Kluen: Continue being lovable. And I'll keep loving you. Love you with all my heart.
Vomit. That was corrected for a mistranslation - it's clear they were saying "lovable" and not "lovely", but it's terrible either way. That of course was followed by Kluen trying to kiss him and getting repeatedly pushed away, because gay sex, ick. The last thing I want a brand-new boyfriend to do is touch me.
That, incidentally, was followed by a scene featuring the late-20s couple, wherein a kiss on the cheek is treated like it's a huge deal. At least in this case Fah announced he planned to escalate their chaste slumber:
Fah: "I've changed my mind. I don't just want your company in bed. I want my boyfriend in bed." To me that means "crack out the lube and fire up the DoorDash - we're not leaving bed until Monday." To them it means cuddling while they sleep while fully dressed.
At least that didn't make me vomit. Just roll my eyes and sigh wearily. However, the extremely long product-placement scene where everyone force-fed each other fast-food fried chicken made me plenty queasy.
Every line is so predictable that you actually groan before it's even spoken. Here's a quiz:
Fah asks Prince: "Which do you like bettter - the mountains or the beach?"
Is the answer:
a) The mountains.
b) The beach.
c) Who cares? Take off your shirt so I can hump your abs.
d)
I don't need to fill in d), because you know exactly what it will be. And it's delivered with unsmiling gravitas as if it's the most meaningful and important thing anyone has ever said.
Physical Therapy is frequently held up as the worst BL of the year, but at least there was no possible way to predict what would happen (since it was randomly generated). Star & Sky is so formulaic and predictable that it's just insulting.
Do yourself a favor and skip it.
Story: 1. There is no story - just people being sickening. You can have cuteness without it sounding like it was written by a nine year old girl. Actually, that's really unfair to nine year old girls. There would at least be a cute bunny or a unicorn to distract me from the awful dialogue.
Acting: 3. Mek Jirakit is by far the best actor in this. Much like Mussolini was the least awful dictator in WW2.
Music: 3. The same two bars of synthesizer music played over and over.
Rewatch value: 1. Only if you promise to lobotomize me afterwards. Actually, scratch that. Make that only if you lobotomize me before.
Overall: 2. Sometimes a series is so bad that it's good. Not this one.
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The first episode is the worst. It goes downhill from there.
It's not at all necessary to watch Star In My Mind to understand this series - anything that matters is shown in flashback in the first episode.Mark is certainly cute, and Mek has no lack of sex appeal, but the overall chemistry here is missing, except insofar as Mek generates it by standing around and looking sexy, which in the end has a 2D quality that wears thin.
The central problem for me in this series is the character of Prince, who is humorless, judgmental, constantly disappointed in everyone , and generally a tiresome priggish elderly woman trapped in a young man's body. And yet as interesting as damp cardboard.
Example: At the beginning, the kids hide in Fah's room. It's cute and harmless, but Prince acts like they're all bad people instead of taking it like, well, a normal adult, amused at the situation. Then he's very rude to Fah for no reason and doesn't even thank him for getting a huge spider off his head. I get the formula. They don't like each other at first, I get it. But Prince never changes and just shits on Fah the whole series, constantly making him feel like he needs to apologize even though he never does anything wrong, but rather is very generous and kind to him.
Then he says he's tired of waiting for Fah to make a move - then immediately leaves in a huff so that Fah can't make a move. He's so standoffish and unpleasant that it's not clear why Fah has any interest in him, but if Prince is interested, why can't he make the first move, or at least give Fah some indication that he'd be receptive? So now he's disappointed Fah doesn't have telepathic powers?
This whole series is formulaic and pointless. There's no redemption arc for Fah, because he's always been a good and caring person who had one bad moment because his girlfriend of 7 years dumped him for another man and he got drunk and drove. There's even an arranged marriage plotline that chews up a lot of time and has nothing to say about it, and like all conflicts in this series, is handwaved away anticlimactically. In this case, everything works out because the husband-to-be is hot, so the resolution isn't just lazy, it's shallow and misogynist - "Sure, I'll give up all my agency and have my future assigned to me by men without my input just so long as I get my tall handsome man."
The highlight of the series is easily Fah's sidekicks, played by Mike Chinnerat (clean-cut and bespectacled, which is really fetching on him) and Arm Weerayut, both of them funny and charming and a breath of fresh air. Everything else is a dreary mishmash of standard BL tropes like falling on each other and staring endlessly, the uke tripping about 47 times. etc.
Mek's acting has improved - not great, but a little more natural - but in the end the writing is so bad, and he's stuck acting against someone that could have been replaced by a clay figurine, that whatever appeal he has wears out its welcome.
Mark's acting is not exactly bad so much as non-existent. Aggressively bad acting is worse than the non-acting we often get in Thai BL, but in this case, it's so non that it collapses into a black hole that sucks all life out of the drama. He's really that bad.
The final dramatic crisis is so stupid and poorly written that it's only worth a weary sigh. Somehow, Prince gets malaria which is somehow untreatable, because the medications necessary for this were only developed 180 years ago. His evil ex-bf won't tell Fah which hospital Prince is at, so Fah decides their relationship is over and gives up. Which is what one does when one is in love. Unfortunately, Prince decides moping is more useful than contacting Fah, and when Fah finally decides to try to find him, he can't, until it turns out his brother is a good friend of Prince's, which somehow never came up in conversation before,. And so Fah is able to find Prince, who is a drum major in Bangkok for no apparent reason, and they live happily ever after.
The whole final episode is full of stupid and inplausible coincidences and miscommunication - sure, coincidence is a staple of romantic drama, but they still have to make sense.
Anyway, this series is an incredibly dull and charmless waste of time.
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Surprisingly bad.
I thought with Earth in this it couldn't be terrible, but it was. And the sad thing is that this was close to being good - if only the actors weren't directed to behave like they were in a bad lakorn and the plot were stripped of its attempts to be serious.I'll start with the positives: Earth was in it. End of positives.
Seriously, there were some good elements in this, like a lot of the dialog was funny, and so were a lot of the arguments. But the problem was that this was a comedy that they tried to make into a drama, and it ruined it.
After WIn's explosion of murderous hatred for no apparent reason - I can see him being surprised and even upset, but not so furious that he would commit murder-suicide with his sister and destroy his family business out of spite! Anyway, after that the comedy all fell flat. How did he go from hulk-level rage to petty irritation and banter? And they were stuck driving for seven entire days and not once did the subject of the inheritance come up?
The entire plot depends on an unbelievably stupid misunderstanding and failure of communication so ridiculous that I just didn't care about their relationship, except insofar as it might lead to a love scene, which these two actors are apparently never going to do. You're trying to tell me these two have been in love for 20 years and around each other all day every day and during that time it wasn't blindingly clear what their feelings for each other are? And how is someone not able to tell that his own sistr and his One True Love had no feelings for each other at all? Isn't that something that might come up in conversation?
On top of that, the road trip is dull and repetitive, with a few transparent crises thrown in. It was drive, eat, eat, drive, argue, eat, hotel, eat, eat some more, stop for holy water and listen to monks spout aphorisms you'd find in a fortune cookie, drive, argue, eat. Argh! How did Mix not die during filming? There must have been several takes of each of the 7,000 eating scenes where had to inhale a whole feast.
Th mother's evil plan was so stupid I could hardly believe what I was hearing. What if Korn married someone else? She would have thrown away a quarter of her family's wealth for nothng. And if she knew Win would hate Korn, why would she think WIn would ever allow Korn to marry Lin? And what kind of horrible person does something that hateful to begin with to her own child? Again, someone is a total monster and is totally forgiven for saying "sorry, my bad."
And again we have an uke who has no sexual interest in his On True Love - how long do we have to put up with this sh#$? Bad Buddy was family-oriented too, but they had sex constantly. It doesn't need to be onscreen, but there needs to be some heat. Earth is good at putting longing into his glances,, but there's no sizzle between these two other than what you get naturally from having someone as hot as Earth onscreen.
Earth was such a stereotypical seme from 2015 that it made me LOL. And I'm sorry, but Mix and Earth are not equal in acting ability - it's not the best match. In drama, that is. They're both good at comedy and this could have worked if they'd left it in its natural state. This is as body-swap show. Why on earth would you even try to make it a drama?
I dropped this, then binged the second half because it's Sunday and nothing else is on and I needed to decompress after the finale of the almost infinitely better Miracle of Teddy Bear which is inexplicably lower rated than this mess.
If you're a die-hard EarthMix fan, then maybe you'll like this, but otherwise, skip it. Or just don't watch the first episode - that might work. I love Earth - he's one of my top favorite actors, but I could barely stomach this.
Story: 3. The plot is terrible, but the dialog is good, so a 3 seemed fair.
Acting: 6.5. It's passable, and Earth is really good. Mix overacts too much, which I know is a directorial choice and not his fault, but it is what it is.
Music: It was fine, nothing special, but did what it needed to do.
Rewatch value: No.
Overall: The "suggested" was 4.5, but I gave it 5.5 because it does have a few qualities that I appreciated. Earth's abs, etc.
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A dreary mess
The source material for this is an OTT whacky comedy-fantasy, but for some reason this was produced as a drama. The Anda analog in the original is so cute it drives everyone crazy, and half the joke is that he's totally useless. For example, his drawing is so awful that people aren't sure if it's the work of a small child or something abstract that they don't understand. Ryo is so blinded by love that he that he thinks it's really good - again, humor. Lala isn't a person, she's a manga character that Anda fantasizes about all the time (not sexually - she has superpowers and fights evil).Jet is basically Darth Vader and everyone is scared of him (he's still a good person underneath), and it's Ryo that hates Tee, not the other way around (they're both narcissists and Tee always steals his spotlight - it's major to the plot).
Anyway, nobody ever really sticks to the source material in BL, which is usually a good thing, because they're different media. But the problem is that the original Anda isn't a realistic character - he's not really a character at all, he's more of a plot device, like Ryo's marble. It doesn't work in live action to have a character that is terrible at everything, so they just made him mildly bad at some things, and he never really gets to do anything except look petulant. I also wonder if a story with undertones of pedophilia and incest is the best basis for adaptation.
In this series, which suffers from a terminal case of Penultimate Episode Syndrome, the dramatic tension builds up to intense homophobia (a real bummer) and everyone huddling in tears to a montage of happy times together and a sappy ballad. In doesn't fit the tone of the story. not that anything could, because the tone is so schizophrenic. There are outrageous things thrown in, like Bank's cartoonishly evil and gluttonous manager (so both trans and weight shaming), but these don't fit into the dreary seriousness of everything else.
The writing is poor and wanders all over the place, because they deviated so far from the original story that almost all the plot threads were abandoned just so that we could have people crying in Ep 9.
Most of the characters are bland, and the acting is flat, which is directing and writing, not a lack of ability. There are a couple of moments where you can see how talented Kaonah is, but mostly he just looks mildly confused. This is another case where the soft-focus filter is so cranked up that everyone looks wholly photoshopped. There might have been oscar-worthy performances in this, but we'd never know because it's all a blur.
There really isn't much chemistry, largely because Anda both looks and acts like he's 12 - you can only have one of those, not both. But it' also the writing. I will say that both couples seriously committed to the love scenes, and high scores for that - they were really good. Bonus points for giving us lots of scenes with Film in a muscle shirt or no shirt - he's so hot you almost have to look away.
I can't recommend this series - I was excited to see Turbo & Kaonah as a proper couple, but this was a disappointment. I would love to see this cast in a better production.
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