jpny01

It's very good, but that ending...

The acting in this is superb - all the actors did an excellent job, even all the minor parts. Some of that is good directing - there are actors in this that have been mediocre elsewhere that were fantastic in this. Standouts for me were Off, who had way more star power than he has in the past (and he's gotten mighty fine, I must say). There's a scene with Gawin that's an 11/10 - you won't be able to breathe (although some of that is beauty). Gunn has always been good, so no surprises there.

The Music is pretty good. It didn't really stand out to me very much, but it avoided tired cliches, never got in the way, and supported the story.

The story... this is a tough one. With the number of plot threads introduced, I kind of expected some of them to be dropped, but not ALL of them. The ending of this wasn't an ending - it just stopped, and it was way, way too happy for the story. It even ends with the tired cliche that this series had avoided up to that point, the triple-take kiss, which made me LOL it was so silly. I don't like sad endings, but come on. The only thing it was missing was a rainbow and unicorn. What was the point of Todd's character? He never did anything that was important to the plot, except for one thing before the series starts, and we never find out why he did it. He never does anything of consequence again (except look sexy).

The 2 BL romances were good, the straight ones just chewed up time and had nothing to do with the story. There's a lot of violence in this - a lot of it is necessary, but there's a lot that's just eye-rolling machismo and wasn't needed at all. For example there's a scene where someone hurts someone emotionally - it would have been a lot stronger if it was all words and not lots of punching. In another, a decision is made by an actual physical fight between the two viewpoints. This is never done again despte there being a huge number of times there was no consensus, so why that one time? There's another case where a character deliberately beats someone into a coma. How on earth do you calculate how much beating to administer that leads to worse than unconsciousness, but not quite death? Dumb and unnecessary.

All-in-all, this was a refreshingly different series - I just wish it could have been more nuanced than rich=bad and poor=good. Evil powerful people tend to be wealthy because evil poor people don't have the means to gain power (except in revolutions), not because rich people are inherently evil. Although to be fair the ending was so abrupt that it's not entirely clear even the main villain was a villain. In any case, you don't get points for including social issues if you having nothing to say.

I guess the secret to enjoying this is to not take it very seriously. Let's face it - this is a story about a law student who replaces his evil twin in a marxist motorcycle gang. (I know Black isn't evil, but he's definitely not the good twin). In the end, it contains some really good romance with great chemistry in both couples, and that's what saves it from it's total lack of plot. (Before anyone says it - consider a rope ladder. If you use excellent materials and fashion it with skill and artistry, but you never hang it up, is it a ladder, or an expensive pile of rope?)

I don't think I would rewatch this, but there are scenes I might go back to - there were several that were in the top handful in all of BL.

Overall: 8. It would have been a 9 or 9.5 if it had an ending.

Read More

Beautiful and powerful

This story is so authentic that it hurled me back to that age in a way that I haven't felt in a long time. This is what you can get when you put together good writing, directing, and acting.

In an hour a more complete story was told than you get in most 12-episode series - testament to the power of the image, and how a facial expression can convey more than 20 minutes of voiceover or exposition.

Oak is better in this than anything he's done before, conveying an innocent loneliness, insecurity, and longing in a way that you usually don't see as he's tended to be in more comical roles. Mon is shattering, and I was amazed at his first-rate performance in the last scene. That was very difficult material to pull off, and would have been dull with an off-the-shelf actor, but it's clear he put a lot of work and thought into the scene and received able guidance from the director, for whom this is clearly a very personal story.

Highly recommended.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

Wasted Time

I'll start with a positive - the actors are really cute, and the guy playing Ohara is talented, with good subtlety of expression, and his eyes are beyond stunning. The guy playing Yamato is less impressive, although I doubt that's his fault as he was clearly directed to act like a manga character, which didn't work in live action. It rarely does.

The writing is abyssmal, stuffed with every possible cliche, and lazy beyond belief, with EVERY SINGLE important conversation or almost-kiss interrupted, often by the very people trying to get them together. This happened several times per episode, to the point I stopped caring and wondered where Godzilla is when you need him.

When everything is driven (or rather tha brakes applied) by ridiculous, contrived external events, some unbelievably coincidental - as if Tokyo is so small that you can't go anywhere without running into someone that wil ruin your relationship - there is no character development or organic development of the relationship, which was already there because of the childhood friends cliche. The only thing about this that I liked is that Yamato knew Ohara liked him, but consciously tried to deny to himself that he knew because he was afraid it would mess up their friendship.

I get that this is a chaste high-school drama, but there's a point where something is so devoid of heat that it's hard to understand why they should change their status as best friends. There are a couple of kisses, which were awful and destroyed by the obession with cliches, so that Yamato always had to have his eyes wide with shock, even when he was expecting to be kissed, which made it come off as vaguely non-consensual - not so much so that it was disturbing, but it left them totally without any quality that made it something I wanted to watch.

This is frustrating and ultimately boring and is the last JBL I will ever attempt to watch. I would pass, altough most otherpeople seemed to like it.

Read More

This is wonderful.

This is a beautiful series, very well written, thoughtful and moving.

Be warned that the ending is not likely the one you wanted, but when you see it you'll know that it's perfect - and beautiful and moving. This series is heavily layered, with a lots of symbolism and it moves into the long shadow the Marcos era casts over the Philippines. It contains not one single tired BL trope, so if you're looking for something different, and with a supernatural element, this might be for you.

It's not perfect. The production quality is just OK, although it's very well shot. The ambiguity of the mirror scenes was well-done and you're left questioning what is really happening and what isn't. Most of the problems are sound-related.

The acting is... not spectacular. The main character, Wade, is played by Kiko Ipapo, who does not display a huge range - he's a bit stiff and flat. While he won't blow you away, he's good enough for you to know how Wade feels about Jose Manuel, and the conflicts he faces, so the series works. And good God is he beautiful - I know it's shallow, but I could stare at him all day (this is not a series you're likely to rewatch, but you might want to review the shirtless scenes several times). The other main is a little more skilled.

I understand this series won't be for everyone, but for me it's one of the higher-tier BLs, and well worth a watch.

Read More

A near miss.

This short story has a lot going for it - the two leads are really cute, and they have really strong chemistry - the actors not afraid of affection and do a lot of the sort of touching that people who love with each other do. They're very sweet togther, and really pleasant to watch. It's funny, Edison Song's facial expressions are really charming, and the mild outrage with which he faces the minor tribulations of his fate are cute and not OTT as they could have been.

But there are two serious problems. One is that the cloying music is too loud and just oppressive - really unpleasant and irritating.

But more seriously. the fujoshi in this is the most horrible character ever conceived. She is supernaturally annoying, she's a horrible human being, and although I abhor violence, I want to punch her in the face so badly. If you were to line up Meng Meng, Ted Cruz, and Hitler, and tell me I could only punch one of them in the face, I'd choose Mehg Meng without a thought. She's not merely fetishizing, she takes it to the point of malignant self-indulgence and what she does is so awful, so thoughtless ,and selfish, and could have destroyed a family. She's instantly forgiven by the boys, when they should have never spoken to or associated with her again. I mean you want to just grab her by the hair and slam her head into a hard surface over and over again. And that's understating how I feel.

This was hard to rate. I want to give it an 8.5 - other than the abovementioned flaws, it does what it does quite well - but I also want to give it a 1 for Meng Meng. You might enjoy this if you FF through her scenes - she does nothing that's important to the story except for one awful thing, which is revealed offscreen, so you can skip her without missing anything.

Read More

I don't think there are any spoilers here, but there are plot themes & events referred to vaguely.

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

Best fluff you'll find.

I don't normally like something this fluffy this much, but this had a lot of qualities that made for very enjoyable viewing. I really loved this series, and I actually cried through most of the finale, which is a rarity for me.

I'll start with some negatives:

- The Yok/Boss storyline was apparently added and is not in the source material, and it shows. It's not integrated into the main story and feels like it's a completely different show that got stapled to My Ride. It served no purpose as it didn't really contrast with the main story or shine any new light on it. The resolution of it was very satisfying and flipped things around in a refreshing way, but sometimes the Enemies to Lovers trope can be pushed way too far at first, and in this Yok is much too awful. The Blackmail thing was fine because he would never have done it and was just messing with him - it was a little OTT because Boss believed he would and was very upset. And the library thing was a deal-killer for me. Don't mess with people's books - that was just terrible. Especially for an anal-retentive person like Boss - you just know he had all those alphabetized or grouped by subject.

- The Nadia/Mayom storyline was apparently m/m in the novel, and I'm at a loss as to why they would change it - I understand the Nadia character was a very effeminate gay man and Thai series will never make someone like that a main characer in a pairing - they're sole purpose is comedy relief. This is a real disappointment as that would have been something different and special. Ironically, the theme of the Yok/Boss story, which the producers added to the series, was the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone.

- The Por story was dragged out a bit too long, and since the audience has the full picture but Tawan doesn't, it starts to get frustrating. It would have been better to have put more time into Mork's struggle with his sexuality, which was sensitively handled and not the usual eye-rolling drama, so I could have dealt with quite a bit more processing for him. Or we could have had a bit more of the motorcycle guy and the trans teacher - that was interesting.

OK, on to the positives:

- There is a lot of eye candy in this, but none of the actors were just a pretty face or rocking body (more on that later) - everyone did a great job with the acting, even Dr. Por - he's a really cute guy (like he is in Doctor I'm Coming for Soul), but he made him somehow creepy from the start, even though he was apparently a perfect boyfriend. You think there's something wrong, even fairly certain, yet you're not entirely sure.

- Fluke's dimple killed me, and that smile is the sun. His portrayal of Mork was consistent, sweet, quirky sensible, and gave the pair a class difference that was interesting and realistic - not at all a bag of stereotypes, and it just led to some reasonable mistaken assumptions that weren't dragged out or unrealistic. He doesn't suffer from that over-reserved performance style that plagues too many series. And I never felt like he was some actor they dragged in off the street because he's hot.

- Fluke is hot - both cute and manly without being obnoxiously alpha. Boss is adorable, Yok is sexy once he stops being an asshole, and the Barista (Mayom) is so hot it hurt to look at him. He has what I like to call "it." His gentlemanly demeanor, face, voice, and a completely killer body.

- The class difference theme was well-handled. Too often in Thai dramas there is the simple formula rich=evil, poor=virtuous. Here lower-class characters can have some sophisticated qualities as is the case with real people. The contrast between the main and secondary couple was interesting - while it got in the way for Mork and Tawan, it was mostly due to mistaken assumptions, whereas Nadia's assumptions were arrogant and completely wrong - she was no better than Mayom, and in fact her treatment of him is what lacked class, and it never occurred to her that he wasn't just a simple barista. One thing I didn't like so much was that he changed himself to please her, although I think the main point is that our assumptions about Nadia were off as well - she didn't need him to be a nobleman or rich, she just wanted a man with drive and amibition, which is reasonable. Tawan could care less and seemed to humor Mork's desire to be a provider, even though he's a doctor and most likely to be by orders of magnitude the main breadwinner for the couple. But Mork wasn't sensitive about this issue, it's just who he is.

- While this was very fluffy and clearly aimed at young audiences (if you're hoping for steamy shirtless scenes, you can forget it. They could at least have had Mayom take a shower. Sigh.), it didn't shy away from some darkness, and in fact had much less of that fantasy quality in BL where everyone is rich and everything is shiny. One of the uncles was an alcoholic, Dr Por's weaknesses were cowardly and painful to a lot of people, including himself, etc.

- This had a realistic and positive portrayal of an essentially married older gay couple, which I don't think we've seen before. They were the principal source of comic relief without being ridiculous - in fact they are crucial to Mork's character arc. They felt realistic and weren't archetypes or fairy godmothers. They had normal insights based on age & experience without having magic solutions to everything, and they had their own problems - it's one of the best elements of this series.

A nine is a very high rating, but this was such a pleasure to watch that I enjoyed it more than I have enjoyed objectively superior series. I had low expectations of this given all the production problems and recasting, but it's obvious that a lot of love went into this project. The quality of the cast was much higher than BL standard, and the story, while not terribly original, was well-written with fully realized characters with realistic failings and reasonable use of misunderstandings and mistaken assumption. Sometimes in other series these are so implausible that it's just frustrating, like when the evil ex-GF kisses the seme, but the uke just happens to wander to where they are at that very second for no plausible reason, and even though he sees the seme push her away in disgust, he still assumes they're over and there are three episodes of crying in the rain to sappy ballads ias we watch a montage of happy times together which we've alread seen several times. That doesn't happen here.

In fact, in the finale Mork is operating under several faulty assumptions that both drive the plot and are quite funny, and some of them were other characters being deliberately misleading, but out of positive motives.

So I highly recommend this - the pacing is a bit slow, but if you stick with it you'll be rewarded. If you find that the secondary couples aren't working for you, FFing through them will in no way diminish the main storyline.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More