June, appropriately, is overflowing with BL shows, and if I’m honest, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed because there’s a lot I’d like to check out!
What I’ve been thinking about recently is how shows balance having multiple couples, because four of the shows I’m watching have at least three couples, and it’s striking how some shows do it well and some don’t. I was laying awake in bed last night trying to pin down what makes it work for me, and I think a large part of it has to do with how the characters interact with whatever the main storyline is and with each other.
There’s a definite trend in BL to have a show where there are multiple ships who only superficially interact—I think this used to be more common in older shows (I’m thinking, for example, of Why R U?, where the many, many couples rarely interact with each other and the storylines are essentially completely separate from each other), but it still shows up from time to time, and I suspect often part of it is because they’re adapting web novels, where the side couples are often given a set of side stories that are happening concurrent to the main storyline. The difficulty in adaptation is making it not feel like a diversion from the story of the show.
This happens more frequently with couples with 3 or more couples, too—Syn and Nuer in Cutie Pie, for example, are really very tangential while Yi and Kondiao are both paralleling the main relationship as well as being confidantes of the main characters—but it appears elsewhere too, like in Dark Blue Kiss where Mork and Sun are just living an entirely different genre from Pete and Kao.
There are a few ways I’ve seen people adapt around this—Love in the Air could have had its storylines overlap more, as they do in the Japanese version, but they correctly chose to keep it as two halves of a universe. Director New has been doing similar things with Perfect 10 Liners and the Fourever You shows. I’ve cited We Are before, but that one does it in an interesting way, where Tan and Fang’s relationship becomes established very early on, and a big chunk of the middle being devoted to Q and Toey. What works is that Q and Toey are very important to the main couple, and the biggest incident to push them together is one where the entire cast is present, so it feels like everyone is involved rather than them being silo-ed off.
All of this brings me to one of the biggest problems I have with My Stubborn, a show that I am enjoying despite myself on the merits of the main couple. I mentioned last week that the show is very bad at giving context for the secondary couples and why they’re attracted to each other, but they’re also very bad at showing us what happens with those couples after they get together. I have no idea where Tai and Champ’s relationship is at. I don’t know how June and Penny got to the “taking care of Penny while sick” scene. And all of that is happening away from the main couple, with the characters largely not appearing in scenes of any importance together. The two women especially have almost no relationship to the other characters, aside from Penny being Sorn’s former hook up. It ends up feeling like a distraction, and I don’t like being annoyed by the GL storyline! I want to care!!!
I think at the end of the day what writers are not always good at is thinking about how the relationships interact with each other and with the larger story they’re trying to tell. The Next Prince has been setting up the parallels of royal + civilian with Ramil/Paytai, and Charan/Karan, and because the royals in question have to interact, it necessarily brings those relationships into comparison. It remains to be seen how they’ll bring Calvin and Jay in, since Calvin isn’t involved in the royal competition, but they’re involved with Charan through the university and there will probably be something to them having a relationship around him. Pit Babe is not, I don’t think, particularly interested in themes, but at the very least the different relationships have effects on each other to some degree.
Currently Watching
My Stubborn: As mentioned above, I am enjoying this despite myself. I think in many ways it is not particularly well made—it’s shot nicely, and the acting and chemistry of Sorn and Jun is compelling, but the overarching structure and pacing is wonk as hell and they’re really bad at giving backstory. Some of the scenes feel completely out of place and random—like, what was the scene of Tai and Win at the mall supposed to accomplish? Plus there are some very weird directorial/editing decisions—scenes sometimes go on for way too long, and for a show with a lot of phone conversations, it’s very weird to have all of them shown as a static shot of one half of the conversation instead of doing the more conventional cutting between the two characters. It’s dull!
On the subject of the actual story, though, this week was a good episode for Sorn, who has been pretty impenetrable so far (by design, I think). Thanu is an MVP in getting Sorn to actually verbalize what’s going on with Jun (to some degree) and pushing him to do something about it, even if it doesn’t seem like it’s going to work.
I didn’t really love the backstory with Mali—any storyline involving a woman crying wolf is going to feel icky—and I think they could have rewritten it better to be less of a betrayal from her and more just an overreaction from the father. I’m not clear how old they were in the flashback, but I know the age of consent laws in Thailand are a little complicated when it comes to people who are close in age but still underage (or just one underage and one just past age of consent), so the father freaking out and the thing about Sorn almost getting in real trouble makes sense.
That being his reason for not dating younger people seems like mostly an excuse—from his past behavior as well as some of what was in the episode preview, the vibe I get is that he’s been extremely troubled by and conflicted about his attraction to Jun, and he feels an immense amount of guilt and shame for giving into it, especially because of Tai. Next week is going to be Bad News Bears but I am actually really looking forward to the secret getting out and Sorn having to deal with that.
I do have to mention the nc scene, because it made me go JESUS CHRIST out loud—I did have a theory that the nc scenes might get more explicit as we went on in (the opposite of how a lot of shows go tbh) if only to portray how the sex they’re having is getting more emotionally involved, but I expected them to keep up the music overlaying it. But no, they wanted us to hear those sounds, and they also wanted us to know how hard Sorn fucks. Jun you’re an absolute trooper.
TRIGGER WARNING: I am about to discuss the attempted sa in Pit Babe, please skip this next section if you need to
Pit Babe 2: I shouldn’t say I was surprised that this show went the route of having Babe be assaulted again, because I really wasn’t, they love doing bad things to Pavel, but what did surprise me was that I don’t think the show understood that it was assault. In season 1, when Way drags Babe back to his apartment, it is rightly treated by all parties as attempted rape, even if afterward it seemed like Babe forgave him way too quickly and it’s never really discussed whenever they bring him up. It’s somewhat understandable that Charlie would walk in and think Babe was trying to seduce Willy, because that is how Willy wants him to see the situation. Even Babe blaming himself makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is how every other character that is involved also blames Babe to some degree based on what they say to him, and no one even asks for clarification even when they’re defending his loyalty to Charlie. It’s possible this is intentional, since Babe never really clarifies the situation, and maybe it will come up later, but it comes off as the show not knowing that the scene was performed and filmed as though Willy was about to sexually assault Babe. It felt so weird and bad to see! Charlie is clearly coming around toward the end of the episode regarding Babe going after Willy on his own, but he hasn’t said a single word about how cruel he was to Babe about that. So I don’t know if the show knows, and it genuinely put me off most of this episode.
END OF SECTION
Boys in Love: Speaking of shows that have been doing the multiple couples well, here comes this show. A large part of it is that all the characters have very clear and obvious connections to each other, and the ones who are tangential to the initial friend group are brought into it (although now I’m wondering if Kit has a friend group of his own or if he just isn’t close to anyone).
This episode was really charming—they gave some unexpected depth to Kim, with some great watery-eyes-on-the-verge-of-tears acting from Chokun, and the awkward teen reaction to a potential first sexual encounter felt so on point and real, especially for a character as anxious as Shane. Kit backing off and knowing that Shane isn’t great at verbalizing things was lovely. He’s a good egg.
I was surprised by how much I was got by Per and Tar this episode. I was a little worried they would fall into the feeling tangential camp, but because their first kiss came as fallout from a party where everyone else was attendance, it felt more natural. I also realized the show has been giving us hints to how this scene would play out—Tar being consistently frustrated about being single and Per always being there like, well, you have me. I don’t know, it was just really good for me. I’m stoked to see where they go from here.
The Ex-Morning: Phi backstory!!! I was watching that first scene like okay maybe he’s right to be a bitch actually, none of these people are doing their jobs. I have a feeling that we’re going to get some kind of reason like “this is to protect Phi’s career” for why Tam left him so abruptly, because it sure doesn’t seem like it was Tam’s choice.
Aou is having so much fun being rancid in this, and he’s very good at it. Him and Podd as the worst duo ever is thrilling. Earn and Jamie finally being introduced is also wonderful—Earn’s character is so cute and sweet, and the set up of her disliking Gie because Gie broke her brother’s heart is a fascinating setup for what will presumably be the b couple. Also, Jamie is so fucking hot in this. I’m going to die.
The Next Prince: What an episode. In some ways, it was lowkey filler, but emotional and necessary filler because a) it gave us some potential plot information (plot relevant pearls???) and b) you gotta get in that Charan backstory. Charan slowly cracking over the course of this episode was thrilling, and god, that little tidbit we get of his mother leaving him is so !! She clearly knew she was going to die, or that it was likely, so what was going on!
Ramil and Paytai continue to be such a wild parallel to Charan and Khanin. They’re even more strangled by the ties of propriety and status than Charan, and I’m fascinated by how much they clearly are into each other while also not being able to break free of that. Ramil’s obvious chafing at the role he’s been forced into but without Ava’s self-awareness of the limits of his place is miserable to watch; he’s clearly so, so unhappy and doesn’t even truly understand why. At least they have found their freak4freak relationship fulfilling (Paytai’s smirk after Ramil eats his face in the club hallway made me bark laugh).
Reset: Now that was television!! I kept saying wow this is so lakorn, because it really is. It’s maximalist in all ways, and my only real complaint is that they could stand to scale back the music and let the scenes just breathe on their own. I do tend to get distracted by soundtracks more than other people, though, so maybe it’s less noticeable to others.
Pond is, predictably, killing it—as I said partway through, they had to get someone who was genuinely good at acting for this role, or the whole premise would fall apart—and it’s fun to see him really flex after Fourever You. Mostly I’m just thrilled that this is essentially one of my face-slapping rebirth entertainment circle danmeis given life. I’m THRIVING.
Finished
My Golden Blood: Guys, this show simply was not good. I think maybe if I liked JossGawin more as a ship I might have been able to disengage my brain and have fun, but mostly I found it incredibly boring and nonsensical. I spent so much time asking why is this happening??
The conclusion I came to at the end was that one of the biggest problems for the show is the lack of vampire lore. We know a few things, but not nearly enough to be given anything resembling stakes. We don’t even meet that many vampires in this show about vampires. We spend half of it at Tong’s university. The information that we were given towards the end that implies vampires can only be killed by another vampire who has drunk the Golden Blood is critical information actually. Not to mention we’re given the barest sliver of backstory for Nakan, easily the most interesting character in the show, and we could have been given hints of that way, way earlier.
Things I still don’t know: why vampires have magical powers or any lore about why (I think we’re supposed to assume Twilight logic), why Golden Blood can both negate vampire powers and also make you more human but also make you stronger and able to kill vampires, how Golden Blood works familially, why the 21st birthday is important, why Thara wanted it so bad. We didn’t even get like, cheesy historical flashbacks to the first vampires or whatever stories they tell about them. The first episode with the party full of vampires was the closest we got to like, actual information about them.
And then there’s how flat the characters were. Mark has almost no personality, which is maybe the point, but I think that could have been emphasized as intentional to hint at him being controlled by Thara. Tonkla was literally only a plot device, as were Chelsea and AJ’s characters. Tong has no aspirations (and I think they should have made him more masc and less pathetic, it would have been more gap moe for when he had to be damsel in distress). Nakan, once again, is the only bitch who matters because Mond took the 2D character he was given and decided to eat the scenery. Mond deserves a lead!!!
Anyway, that’s over. I hope Revamp is better, but at least that show seems to understand that it’s a Beauty and the Beast story based on the trailers, so it already had a firmer idea of what it wants its framework to be than this ever did. Sigh.
Sweet Tooth Good Dentist: I heard somewhere that there was an episode cut at some point during production of this show, and if that’s the case, it definitely happened in episode 10 where there’s suddenly a shift where it seems like several scenes have been skipped, because it goes from Sant and Jway’s first (drunk) time to, apparently, several weeks later? It was weird, and just foreshadowed how strange the pacing was for the remainder of the show, not that it was ever good.
I don’t know, the reveal about Jway’s brother was like, so Jittirain, as was him getting into a car accident in the same way, that it made me laugh out loud. Khaotung and Mark really managed to save that with their scene together towards the end of Jway’s coma dream, though, and I actually got kind of choked up. It just felt weirdly out of place in the context of the entire show.
In general, what this show struggled with the entire time was having some kind of narrative frame to create structure out of what is, essentially, a slice of life romantic dramedy. I think that could have been solved with maybe giving Sant and Gugg some kind of school project they’re doing, or a specific thing Sant is saving money for, or even dragging out the timeline of Sant being used for Jway’s dental exam. It just felt meandering and unfocused in the second half. I also think they really lost the thread on Sant being an influencer, and that maybe should have been a bigger part of the show in general.
I don’t know, I wanted to like this. There’s a lot of things I do like in it. And Mark and Ohm are good together, even if they’re absolutely way too horny for a show that is largely very innocent (although I liked that they’re both clearly enthusiastic about sex once they get there instead of being weird and repressed about it like is pretty common). But ultimately it just didn’t hang together thematically, which is a big shame.
urs,
hk