i watch too much gay television and have thoughts

Some people have been very mean to this show, and while it does absolutely deserve it, i think some of its positive qualities may have been overlooked. So this is some Love With Benefits apologia for those of you turning up your noses.

First of all, my favorite trope is back. That's right! We have ourselves (say it with me) A PLAY WITHIN A PLAY! (Show within a show. Semantics.) And it's a pure romantic comedy, so nothing horrible happens unless you count the editing. First and Play are the romantic leads in a new BL series, and they are flopping hard. They have zero chemistry and nothing in common, and they bicker all the time. So naturally, the production team decides to lock them in a house together for ten days, with occasional check-ins. Great. I love it. Their dynamic gets good quickly.

In terms of characterization, First is a tease who can't cook and Play is an easy mark who gets all the weird personality tics (talks to his stuffed rabbit, fights in his sleep, diet is 90% various ice cream treats). There's a brilliantly dumb scene where Play, trying to practice a fakeout kiss, forgets how left and right work and accidentally smashes his lips against First's face. There's also a cute setup/payoff(?) where First asks for all Play's leftover popsicle sticks, and it turns out he's building a shitty little diorama topper for a music box. Unclear what the point is, but it's quirky! In general, these actors have excellent chemistry when they're given dialogue or action cues that make sense, and it's nice that the narrative wastes no time trying to get them into one bed, for tropes' sake.

I love Usagi, Play's stuffed rabbit, and i love that both Play and First treat him like a real person with feelings. I think that First catching Play talking to Usagi for the first time is the moment he realizes he might legitimately be down bad. (We're glossing right over the fact that he's naked and hiding in the closet when this happens.) Usagi also shows how observant First is when it comes to Play's behavior, as he makes the connection between Play's sleep-thrashing and whether or not Usagi is available to cuddle. The scene where First gives Usagi a little shirt is legitimately heartwarming (and sets up some contrivance in the finale that doesn't really matter). This has been to say: Usagi supremacy. Breakout star of the series in my humble opinion.

Love With Benefits gets points for two gender diverse femme characters who aren't just punchlines, which i am a big fan of, and one of them even gets her own brief subplot, a love triangle that is legitimately the most interesting dynamic i've seen in any series thus far. You have Penelope, the flamboyant femme assistant (whose hair i love, for what it's worth), crushing on the acting coach Chai, who rebuffs her. You have the director, Pok, a self-important artsy chaser type, crushing ineffectually on Penelope, who rebuffs him. And you have Chai(!), a DL bottom(!!) with bad taste, crushing on Pok(!!!), who seems mostly oblivious. The scene after their delightfully circular interaction, Chai lets the mask slip with Penelope, essentially saying that they won't work out because they're sisters (when it comes to their sexual interests). If Love With Benefits had better…everything, this would be an S-tier gag. Even as it is, I am still quite gagged. I cackled.

Fine. I guess this gets its own paragraph. There's no escaping it. That sex scene…listen. Woof. I try not to make shallow judgments based on pure physical chemistry, but it's difficult, especially when it's the most convincing and artfully shot scene in the series. It gave me homoerotic frissons. It is achingly good. Standing in my truth.

I had a good time, but:

I'm out of nice things to say. This show deserves to be bullied a little bit.

The points i just gave it for its two gender diverse femme-presenting side characters who aren't just stereotypes? Consider those points roughly half-revoked. One of them is a bit of a cutthroat industry girlboss who otherwise does nothing, and Penelope is giving Stereotypes+™: The new character writing service that goes slightly beyond the bare minimum and imbues a character with up to two (2) sympathetic traits! (Don't get me wrong, she still has funny moments, but some scenes just provoke unamused eyerolls.)

Speaking of Penelope, i'm taking away exactly half the points i gave her love triangle situation as well. It had potential, and it had its moments, but the execution, as with…a lot of this series, was half-baked. I'm standing by my initial take, but with less enthusiasm, particularly because Chai backtracks slightly on his initial revelation that he's gay, and it's left ambiguous which admission, if either, is him being honest.

And speaking of love triangles, the one they made for First and Play overstays its welcome after about twelve seconds. It's dumb that they threaten to replace one of the leads of the show with Pluto for longer than one episode, it's dumb that Pluto is so melodramatic about Play not remembering him from a random audition (let alone not liking him back), and it's dumb that Play sits there saying absolutely nothing while Pluto talks at him, although it is kind of a power move? Useless though. Next.

The edit is absolutely wilin'. It cuts to at least one scene where Chai's lips are moving for two full seconds without audio. That was probably the most egregious, but in general, about twice an episode, there is a choice that simply sends me. Was someone asleep while takes were getting spliced together? Or perhaps in a k-hole?

More unanswered questions, rapid-fire:

Why do some locations in the house look like the set design budget was roughly thirty baht?

What exactly is Penelope supposed to be doing to facilitate First and Play's chemistry? And does she, at any point, do that?

Why is the second bathroom off-limits?

Why is the whole show cancelled when First and Play fall in love? Like, logistically speaking, isn't that a more expensive headache than just riding out their relationship? And how does Penelope suddenly have a second project lined up for them after one phone ca—oh, right, the director is a chaser. That one tracks.

Wait—why is she the one finding them a second project? I thought she was a producer's assistant?

How do First and Play know to meet each other back at the house at the end of the finale? Why don't they just text each other?

How is Play not vitamin deficient?

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: Not because of the narrative, but the characters of Penelope and Chai, who could have been consistently and genuinely funny. I wanted to like them, and the concept is there! The execution was just lacking.

This series has some narrative misses for me, but it gets a lot of small things right, and it's aesthetically understated in a pretty way.

If there's one thing i immediately noticed about this series, it's that it is very laid back—which makes sense, given the prominence of surfing. But all the younger characters are addressed, for the most part, by first name, and it's treated as mostly normal for the core four to be informal with each other. Chika's parents are also preternaturally chill with the revolving door of random teenagers entering their home to have dinner and spend the night. It's a pretty cool vibe.

I love Shun. He's a good egg. I like his instant, easygoing friendship with Chika (after she attacks him thinking he stole Nagisa's board). I think it's nice to have a fish-out-of-water protagonist that all the other characters suddenly and implicitly trust. He's also very kind to Ako and makes a surprisingly mature and astute observation about her desire to be more engaged with the world. And his quiet, slow-build, intricate-rituals relationship with Nagisa is ever so slightly sweet. Nagisa, for his part, is kind of an asshole, most of which i'm willing to attribute to him being a teenage boy. He scarcely acknowledges Chika exists for years, which, even if he doesn't reciprocate her crush, is weirdly standoffish behavior for someone who eats with her family. Still, there are some little things to like about him. He tries to admit his feelings for Shun by reciting the story of a monk who committed suicide to follow his lover into the afterlife, which i assume is always a winning line. There are a couple shots of him trying to memorize or recall the smell of Shun's hair that are a masterclass in scent-based homoeroticism. And, after briefly ruining a few lives with chaos demon behavior, he does eventually chase after Shun so they can have their happily ever after or whatever.

It shouldn't be refreshing for girls to have personalities, but it is. Chika is particularly fleshed out, and she seems like she'd be a lifelong friend if she and Shun weren't narratively pitted in direct competition for the love of the boy who has virtually ignored her for years. As it stands regardless, they get along well, and it's nice to see kids just being silly and making friends. Chika gets to be kind and thoughful, but also emotionally vibrant, prone to fantasy and resentment and teenage embarrassment. I think her actor gives the best performance of the main four. Ako is definitely the most marginalized of the group, but we get to see how she sees herself, and she's still fleshed out enough that her character's emotional arc is easy to follow. I think she's a good egg, too.

Chika's parents are suspiciously warm and inviting people, what withe the free 24/7 bed and breakfast for teens they seem to run. I appreciate how the elder Kumakiris get to have fun and be in love with each other, i like that they respect their daughter's boundaries while still trying to look out for her. I like that they promote the importance of condoms! Normalize condoms! And Ms. Kumakiri's advice on coping with heartbreak is delicious. The scene where Chika takes her words to heart and tries to bury a beef bone in a public park is probably the funniest in the series.

I like that the setting of the series varies often, from apartments to stores to beaches to rooftops. The monotonous lingering middle-distance vibe of the camera is definitely balanced out a bit by frequent changes in location. And while we're talking about the camera, it does a lot of work implying Nagisa and Shun's chemistry, more than the two of them ever really get to express.

Finally, the actors who are supposed to be high school aged do be looking pretty young. Ben Platt test passed.

I had a good time, but:

I'm very over girls who have done nothing wrong getting emotionally undone by boys who are bad at communication. Please give me a break, i am begging you. Nagisa's particular flavor of chaos demon antics isn't entertaining enough to justify this. He's kind of just an asshole to Chika.

And speaking of Nagisa…is no one else peeping how his first girlfriend in the series (a) is dating a teenager at least two years younger than her and then (b) is upset that he's acting immature? No one? Ma'am. He's seventeen and you are a university student. Punch up.

Chika's creepy, leering coworker? No thank you. I hate it.

This series is short, but it somehow still drags for the last three episodes. I'm gonna need the science girls to explain that one.

Unfortunately, you have been chopped: His (2020, sequel).

A movie that has two timeskips in 5 minutes spanning altogether ten to fifteen years, replacing both lead actors with actors who look nothing like them and putting them in an entirely new setting and storyline without any of the side characters from the original series. I just want to put this out there: If you have an entirely new story to tell…just tell a new story. You don't need to recycle names from a prequel if nothing else about them is going to follow. It looks pretty, and i've heard people have enjoyed it, but i do not need it.

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: Chika and Ako, for being narratively useful and sympathetic but ultimately expendable girls in a BL series. Surely, at some point, writers will get tired of doing this. Eventually. Maybe.

Conclusion: Of all the series i've enjoyed overall, this one is maybe the one with the slightest imbalance between things i liked and things i didn't. It just edges out indifference by being short enough to binge quickly and throwing me a bone in its better moments. It's not groundbreaking, but it's fine!

Guess what? That's right! It's time for another PLAY WITHIN A PLAY, the trope to which i owe my life. But Stage of Love does more than that. It's a funny, tightly written little series. Check it out.

The series opens with Nguyen having a nightmare about the time he accidentally stabbed fellow actor Duc in a production of Romeo and Juliet. This incident, which happens a year or two before the events of the series, haunts him, and he's sworn off the theatre ever since. Meanwhile, friends Bao and Huan join the theatre club, who need recruits to cast a new production of Romeo and Juliet, but Khanh, the president of the theatre club, thinks they'll need an experienced mentor to make the play go smoothly. Nguyen initially resists but, well, we all see where this is going!

Of course, the show has additional layers to its plot. Khanh is also secretly dating Nguyen's best friend Hy, and they are the only three who know. Khanh and Hy believe they have to keep their relationship a secret from the world because their families are from different backgrounds. (It's a play…within a play. Do you get it?) She hasn't even told her friends Truc and Duc. This secret becomes important later. We'll put a pin in it.

There's a girlboss trio! At first, it seems like this is a horrible tropey mistake that will make the series worse, but it turns out that the girls actually get narrative utility and personalities! Hy's sister Linh, initally portrayed as the hotheaded boy-crazy ringleader, is cast as Juliet in the play. She is the reason Nguyen and Bao initially meet, after she accidentally mixes up her and Bao's belongings. She also comes in to help Hy and Khanh's relationship when Khanh suspects him of being unfaithful, and we get to see that she's actually just a normal boy-crazy little sister who loves her big brother. (And the fact that they've kept their relationship a secret from her causes zero problems. Open-minded queen.) Tien is the ditzy sidekick of the trio, but it turns out she's also talented with a camera. She asks Huan why he joined theatre club instead of photography, when that's clearly his interest, and even though his reason is ultimately kinda dumb, she is at least perceptive. We'll get back to him in a sec. And then there's the shy, nerdy Van Anh, whose contribution to the plot is iconic and pivotal to the finale. Put a pin in that too.

Of the remaining side characters i enjoy, Truc is the one who is most purely comedic relief, with some expository dialogue for good measure. I like her anyway. She isn't wasted on a useless love triangle or made evil or rendered completely unnecessary to the plot. I hate that that's the bar, but she clears it, and she's a good friend to Khanh, to boot.

Back to our leads: After Bao is cast as Romeo opposite Linh's Juliet, i expected that to be a dumb love triangle—and while we do get one, it's not here. Instead, he and Nguyen, who is an incurable flirt despite his theatre-related trauma, grow closer with alarming rapidity. Their budding relationship is cute, and i think their actors have decent chemistry. This all goes well until one night, after the play, someone records Nguyen confessing his feelings to Bao, putting all their business on social media. I love a hard pivot to a mystery, and there's one very clear suspect…

Huan, who has had a massive crush on Bao for years—and we'll get to the aspects of this that annoy me soon enough. He follows Bao into theatre club instead of following his own passions, he rushes to Bao's side when he's hurt or in trouble, and he's clearly resentful of Nguyen's quick intimacy. Could this be his motive, driving him to weaponize homophobia against them and ruin their relationship? Well, no. Huan is genuinely very upset at everyone bullying and teasing Bao, and he even punches Nguyen in the face for not standing up for Bao in his time of need. (Bao still got shooters out here! This is the best part of Huan's character, truly.)

Which brings us to the massive plot twist, and the best thing about the series: The villainous mastermind is Duc! In fact, he's also the one who replaced the prop sword with a real sword(!!) in that first fateful production of Romeo and Juliet, so that Nguyen would intentionally stab him(!!!) and if that isn't the wildest shit…Duc did all this to get their mutual friend Khanh to resent Nguyen and fall for him instead, mistakenly thinking that Nguyen and Khanh have been secretly dating. Sistren. This revelation took me OUT. I love him. He's so unhinged. Duc's actor plays such a theatrical and monomaniacal antagonist, and it works perfectly with the play-within-a-play vibe of the series.

Naturally, when outing Nguyen (and Bao, oh well) doesn't achieve his master plan, Duc realizes he was wrong, and after some snooping on her phone he finds out it's actually Hy that Khanh's been secretly dating. And naturally, his plan to get revenge on Hy is to…weaken the balcony set piece so that it injures Juliet, aka Linh, aka HIS LITTLE SISTER, and this theatrical catastrophe will hurt his relationship with Khanh, giving Duc a chance to finally swoop in and claim her. He gets surprisingly far in this plan, too, and is only foiled thanks to [takes pins down] Van Anh(!!!!), who has been trying to score a date with Duc for several episodes before she overhears his unhinged monologue and sees him tampering with the set. Van Anh warns Linh, who ends up being late to the performance because of her intervention, so Khanh decides to take over the role of Juliet—only for Duc to try to stop her in a panicked frenzy and end up injuring himself on the balcony he sabotaged. Hoisted by his own petard (shoutout to Shakespeare). What an incredible climax.

All in all, Nguyen ends up apologizing to Bao and they get to confess their love to each other, Linh and Van Anh rat on Duc so he gets in trouble for his (admittedly very entertaining) crimes, and (for those of us who watch their bonus episode) the play being cancelled means that Khanh gets to watch Hy's championship basketball game, and we get their whole backstory, which is very cute. All's well that ends well.

It's very funny that this university-level production of Romeo and Juliet seems to have two scenes and three characters, total. Like. Nothing ever gets rehearsed except the balcony scene and the scene where Romeo kills Tybalt. This gives every scene where the play is taking place a bizarre dreamlike quality, which dovetails nicely with the Tybalt scene itself being Nguyen's recurring nightmare. It's probably due to time or budget constraints, but i love this vibe.

And speaking of those constraints, the aesthetic of the series is surprisingly good. I'm used to a certain level of visual austerity in a lot of Vietnamese BL projects (see: Hey Rival, I Love You (2021) or Beef, Cupcakes and Him (2021)), but despite a slight sparsity to some of the scenes, each location feels lived in and used, and the color palette of the stage scenes in particular is rich and vibrant.

And it's a large, gender-balanced cast where the girls get to have interesting things to do! That is a fuckin' gem in BL, unfortunately, and i appreciate Stage of Love for giving us at least this bare minimum.

I had a good time, but:

I have but one complaint, although it is a pretty big one. We did not need two love triangles, and if we have to keep one, it should be the narratively important one with the hilarious and theatrical villain. Leave Huan out of it. I'm a bit tired of series that hurt a random sympathetic side character for drama without putting in the work to show why the writers think it's important. Huan doesn't work as a particularly good foil or parallel to Duc, despite them sharing the role of spurned best friend. And Nguyen calling Huan a coward is absolutely out of pocket. They ought to have given Huan the Light On Me (2021) treatment where he learns about self-love to cap off his plot arc, but i guess not every show can pull that off.

Unfortunately, you have been chopped: Bonus Episode “Huan."

It's 80% scenes from the series with occasional sad incel Huan voiceover and the remaining 20% is a new scene showing how Bao tried to gently reject his romantic advances earlier in their friendship. It's a bummer and it doesn't really need to exist.

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: Huan would be an obvious and predictable answer at this point, but let's switch it up right quick. Do y'all see how hard my girl Khanh has been working on this play? Give her a break! She literally makes herself sick, and for what? I know being the president of theatre club don't pay nary a bill. Take a load off, sis. Drink some water. Go lay down.

Conclusion: I think Stage of Love is a very weird series, but its weirdness works for me. Yes, it makes some choices that i don't need, but the antagonist reveal is great, and the irritating girl-character tropes are all subverted by making them real characters who impact the plot in unexpected ways. The show has a dreamlike, (dare i say) theatrical quality without being totally surreal, and its writing is incredibly tight, managing to knit all the characters together in a compelling story. And it's cute! Good job, everybody.

Second Chance is not a great series, but it does enough good that i appreciate it for what it is. And it has one of my favorite narrative structures in BL, with two parallel A-plots and a very marginal C-plot running in the background.

The opening scene is (presumably) in medias res, and we get an underwater pool moment (oh hi, Dark Blue Kiss (2019)!) between Paper and Tong Fah, before hopping back into the main timeline of things. Paper, Tong Fah, and Chris are three high school friends who are thankfully not in a love triangle, and Jeno and Near are students they occasionally run into, who are also terrorized by Arthur, who is Jeno's abusive ex. There is a girl trio as well.

Paper and Tong Fah have a friends-to-lovers arc with some electrifying moments. There are a lot of glances and lines of dialogue that nod at the direction their friendship is about to go. The scene where they're dancing in Tong Fah's bedroom and then slowly give in to their mutual attraction? Brilliant stuff. I love a narratively important kiss. They unfortunately do not work out initially, as Paper is scared of being gay that they'll lose their friendship and turns cold, leaving Tong Fah to struggle through his 'unrequited' crush alone. This leads, improbably, to Tong Fah in a coma(!), with a penitent and thoroughly chastened Paper reading the letter Tong Fah wrote to him about his Big Feelings. Whatever will Paper do?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Jeno is regularly getting the shit beat out of him at school by Arthur, whose behavior the school administration seems rather slow to confront. Chris, a minor internet celebrity(!), keeps showing up and defending him, making Chris a target of their bullying as well, but Jeno seems more embarrassed and angry than appreciative. Jeno decides to take self-defense classes, and surprise! Chris is the top muay thai student at the gym, and they spend more time together. Chris flirts at a reluctant Jeno. Arthur gets suspended and vanishes from the plot for a hot minute. Despite some progress, Jeno still seems distant from Chris, and Jeno's sister Geneva tells him to ease up a bit, because his very forward behavior is lowkey how Arthur was with Jeno while they were dating. Not a great look. Whatever will Chris do?

The C-plot…we'll get to it. Suffice it to say they fuck up their relationship as well.

Before getting back to our boys, let's discuss the breakout #girl moment. Geneva and Rose and Daisy have a standout scene where they stand up to Arthur and his weird gang by blackmailing him into leaving Jeno alone. Feminism! The best part of this scene happens after Arthur leaves, defeated, when they all admit that they were scared the whole time—it was a brief moment where they all felt real.

Also while we're here, there are a few set design easter eggs in the posters on the walls of Tong Fah's bedroom. That's fun. In fact, the set design communicates a good deal of information in this series: The school is absolutely plastered in 'Stop Bullying' posters, which is either intentional needling of weak anti-bullying campaigns or unintentionally, hilariously on-the-nose worldbuilding. I got a chuckle.

Oh, right. Back to Paper and Chris, and the reason for the title of the show (surprise!): Both of them get a second chance to do the relationship better. Tong Fah exits his coma and, despite medically improbable odds, makes it to the school dance, where Paper finally returns his love confession, and they kiss. Mazel. Meanwhile, back at the school library, Chris and Jeno unpack a memory they shared there when they were younger. After talking through it with each other, they both realize that they're ready to take the next step, and they kiss. (Is it fair to say i like their relationship more than Paper and Tong Fah's? I'm standing in my truth.)

At the dance, Arthur manifests in the plot again to ask Jeno to give him a second chance, too, and Jeno offers him forgiveness but nothing more. This is probably the most interesting thematic element in Second Chance, a show where second chances are ostensibly the whole vibe. But here the writers leap from the screen to let us all know that not every relationship deserves a second chance. A bit much, but i'll take it. We also learn that abuse is cyclical and intergenerational, as it turns out that Arthur himself is being abused by his father, which is dark, but also the second most interesting thematic element. Weird to save it for the very end, but maybe things got cut for time.

I had a good time, but:

The edit is, at times, incomprehensible. At one point there is a scene where Paper is in the hospital to comfort Tong Fah after his father dies, and i have no idea where it is intended to fall in the timeline. It was given no context as far as i could tell, and then it was abruptly over, leaving me feeling less like something important had been communicated, and more like someone deleted a scene at some point and then someone else put it back in a completely different place. And try as i might, i cannot place the pool scene anywhere in the timeline, either. Which is weird, as it is the opening shot, and presumably narratively important!

The physical abuse of Jeno is a lot, and the series does shockingly little to make it mesh tonally with the relative lightness of the rest of the narrative. Wanting a piece of media to contribute something insightful about a subject like bullying or intimate partner violence does not necessarily mean that it actually…does that. I don't think Second Chance does a bad job with the subject matter, but i think it does a mediocre job thematically making it work and therefore a gratuitous job showing (narratively unnecessary) violence without payoff. (And the writers seem to realize this, because it basically stops halfway through the series.) The formula here acknowledges the problem of abuse and the various structural failures that allow it to continue, but it doesn't show any recourse other than the power of friendship, self-esteem, and muay thai class. Those things can be useful, but that's not really adding constructively to the conversation, especially once the series has already acknowledged the structural component (the school administration) that allows Arthur and his gang to keep committing violence.

The trouble with putting one of your lead characters in a coma is that part of your story will come to a screeching halt if you don't know what to fill their absence with, and, well, Second Chance has Tong Fah get knocked into next month by a rogue vehicle offscreen. It eventually works to get the story where it needs to go, but surely there was a more elegant way to go about this.

The girls almost have personalities but they still feel like afterthoughts about 80% of the time, so much so that the one scene where they do anything major is a genuine shock! I don't want to be shocked when girls do things! Give girls more to do!

Finally, the C-plot with Near and M. I have questions. It's giving weird boss-employee vibes (and i hate that age gap), but also they game online together, but also Near doesn't know that the gamer he has a crush on is M, but M does know it's Near? How does he know but Near doesn't? And why does he not just tell him? Why does Near apologize after it all shakes out? This plot doesn't have nearly enough prominence in the narrative to have strong feelings about it, but every scene between them left me wanting a SparkNotes-style explainer, thinking that surely i missed something. The edit does not help. (And Near has far more chemistry with a customer who is on screen for thirty seconds than he does with M.)

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: Jeno, who ought to sue Arthur and his friends for the emotional and physical damages associated with assault and battery. Near can join, too. Make it a class-action suit.

Conclusion: Second Chance is not perfect, but it's not the most egregious thing you could watch, and there are shining moments where a better show somehow filters through its cracks. The two lead couples play nicely together, and the most annoying things about the series—well, these too shall pass. It's initially heavy on the conflict, for those of you who like angst, but it has a happy ending. I gave it a chance. I might give it a second.

Hey Rival, I Love You is probably the most interesting application of a love triangle with girl antagonist that i've seen in a BL, which surprisingly helps make up for a myriad technical sins the show commits.

The plot: Chau dates Duong. Chau dates Phuc. Duong and Phuc find out she's playing both of them, and then while plotting to expose her cheating, they fall in love and end up cheating on her. It's a true chaotic bisexual love triangle, and it gets splashed all over social media when they all start exposing each other. They both dump her (obviously) and start dating without her baggage killing the vibe. The end!

This story has solidly decent acting with a hit-or-miss script, shows off good character interactions with a surprising amount of suspense, and actually makes me enjoy the antagonist girlboss Chau simply because she's evil in a new and interesting way (and also is very funny whenever she feels cornered). Duong and Phuc have solid chemistry.

That's really all i have to say about the overall content, in terms of what i liked about this short film. It's fairly basic, but i enjoyed it! Now, that being said,

I had a good time, but:

Not gonna lie, she's looking kinda rough. Similar to the problems of other low-budget pandemic-era Vietnamese projects, Hey Rival, I Love You suffers from dodgy audio, spartan set design, and a dearth of extras. (Unless everyone here goes to the world's most exclusive school, there should probably be more than like eight students.)

The writing and editing also fail to impress, which is a little bit disappointing for a short film that already has tighter margins for wasted moments or nonsense explanations. It's kind of egregious that Duong and Phuc spend any time arguing about whether or not to expose Chau in the second act, because it's the reason they get together in the first place and there's really no reason not to, which the film confirms when she catches, records, and outs them. Then they expose her anyway, because duh. (It would have been funnier if, at the end of act two, the three of them exposed each other at the exact same time, and then in the third act they'd have to figure out a way to navigate the fallout together. But we hate to see a girlboss winning, i guess.)

Conceptually, there's still a lot to love here, and i do enjoy it! Unfortunately, the follow-through (for understandable reasons) leaves something to be desired.

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: Everybody at this school getting whiplash from the drama between these three. Imagine getting this absolutely scalding tea watching their Instagram stories in homeroom. I'd be inconsolable.

Conclusion: This is one of the worse shows, technically speaking, that i've seen, and yet it has a charm about it that i'm willing to buy into despite its flaws. The writing has its moments, the actors do more or less enough with relatively little, and the leads get a happy ending. There are worse ways to kill thirty minutes, and i don't regret this one.

I hate boss-employee tropes in romance stories. They give me hives. But, despite giving me hives, Be Loved in House: I Do is a surprisingly good time, if you can get past Jin Yu Zhen being The Way He Is for the first few episodes.

I like that the series is set in a metalworking shop. That's new, and i think it's cool that the characters' jobs actually play a role in the story, and we get to see what they all specialize in. The part where Shi Lei, Bai Xiao Qian, and Wang Jing are all trying to secure a contract before Jin Yu Zhen does shows their workplace camaraderie despite/because of the new boss being kind of a dick, and i like that the random influencers at Yan Zhao Gang's café try to help them. It's nice that all the characters are fundamentally kind people trying to do the right thing (eventually; Jin Yu Zhen does start out basically evil), and all of them get to be with people they love in the end. I like Wu Si Qi and Yan Zhao Gang's B-plot relationship, mostly. It's at least something to watch while our lead couple is still struggling. And i really, really like Shi Lei's character. I don't even know exactly what it is about the way he's written that makes him so compelling, but he's doing great—and this actor consistently nails the tone and mannerisms i want to see out of him.

I think i like the references to Le Petit Prince? Something about how love tames and softens and makes us vulnerable to pain; something about Jin Yu Zhen choosing between the fox here at his side and the memory of the faraway rose that first tamed him. This frames the ending of the series as a kind of reversal of the ending of the book it references, suggesting that the act of cutting himself off from love was akin to Jin Yu Zhen committing a spiritual suicide, whose effects can only be reversed when he lets go of past hurt? Maybe i'm doing too much exegesis here; i don't recall a ton of thematic emphasis on this point, but i could be wrong!

I don't know how popular this opinion is, but i like Yi Zi Tong, and i really like the special episode that explores his backstory with Jin Yu Zhen. They were cute together, and the special episode had a surprisingly mature tonal shift for a storyline that improbably includes Jin Yu Zhen going into a six-month coma. And it even helps sharpen a nice thematic message: Sometimes things don't work out the way you expect, but life goes on after your coma, and you may even be able to heal. I like that Yi Zi Tong decides it's his fault that Jin Yu Zhen refuses to get over their breakup, and he therefore chooses the most dramatic and convoluted way to get him to move forward. I love a messy queen. The false love triangle is initially irritating, but the fact that it's false (and that he plays both sides) helps. And it does get Jin Yu Zhen to finally stop being so annoying, so maybe Yi Zi Tong really did know exactly what buttons to push.

Jin Yu Zhen and Shi Lei have very funny chemistry, and i love the reverse only-one-bed trope where both parties sleep together on the ground instead of the available bed. I've actually used it before in my own writing, so i'm biased, but i think it's a great way to subvert a trope to comedic effect. (And these two look good together! They're clearly having a good time.)

I had a good time, but:

I really loathe the boss-employee trope it's based on, and although there's not much that can be done about that problem, they could have at least made Jen Yu Zhen's workplace rule consistent. There's no reason for him to be mad at Wu Si Qi for dating someone outside of the workplace. It doesn't even begin to make sense. Also, his kicking Si Qi out of the house in the first place is…evil, even if it ends well.

In general i was slightly annoyed at how Si Qi was mostly written as a dumb child for laughs, but then occasionally the narrative asks us to believe he's responsible, smart, and mature. Maybe tone down the gags about how clueless he is about everything just 20% or so.

Not Si Qi and Zhao Gang talking marriage after like two weeks. Tap the brakes, girls.

All the characters act like it's common knowledge that Shi Lei has a crush on Cheng Luo at the café, but he looks at her like twice and says maybe three sentences at her over the course of twelve episodes. That could have been fully dropped, and with all the time it saved, she could have been given a personality. Not everything has to be a poorly executed ghost of a love triangle.

The straight couple had very little flavor. They're not bad, but there's time enough for a little pizzazz. I think their actors could have shined in these roles with a little extra character boost. Instead, they mostly repeat the same joke of Bai Xiao Qian being mad at Wang Jing and Wang Jing cowering from her gaze. As individuals though, they're cool.

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: The proletariat. Isn't work oppressive enough without anti-love policies?

Conclusion: This series does a bunch of things that i don't love with just enough heart and verve to make me root for the lead couple anyway. I surprisingly think the plotline with the ex works, and the special episode makes the whole preceding plot feel a bit more mature than it actually is. It's funny, it's competently produced, and while the story doesn't always make sense, it at least has the decency to be cute. Would watch again.

We Best Love: No. 1 for You starts out with a dash of angst but rapidly devolves into sheer delight. The acting, writing, and production value all add up to a solid romantic comedy with a healthy amount of trope-y charm. The series has a special edition that adds a little bit more of some of the side characters' antics, and that's the version i'm working from, with one fairly large caveat to be discussed later.

The series begins with Shu Yi having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time. His rival Shi De embarrasses him at a swim competition, his intricate plans for revenge are constantly falling through, and to top it all off, Yu Xin and Zheng Wen, his two best friends since childhood, have started dating, completely crushing his chances with her and making him feel increasingly alone. So naturally, he throws himself dramatically into the swimming pool to drown, only for his sworn enemy Shi De to swoop in and deliver some iconic life-saving mouth-to-mouth (Dark Blue Kiss (2019) vibes). Additional antics ensue (Shu Yi is blackmailed into becoming Shi De's personal assistant, they spend a night locked inside a haunted house together, he goes on a shitty blind date) until Shu Yi completely forgets how broken up he was about Yu Xin and realizes he is now down bad for Shi De.

So, a couple quick things: I love Shu Yi's melodramatic brooding. He'll brood by a pool. He'll brood in a classroom. He'll brood over a piano in a dark room, playing music that speaks to the anguish in his soul. His feelings are so big! He's great. And when he's not brooding, plotting, or scheming? The world simply isn't ready for his energy.

The extent to which Shi De has orchestrated all of the narrative is slightly creepy but mostly just very funny. He's been purposefully beating Shu Yi at every competition since they were little so that Shu Yi would always have his eyes on him, in the hopes that one day he would realize what he's been looking for has been here the whole time. (No. 1 for You!) He baits Shu Yi into giving him blackmail material so he can have an excuse to keep him occupied and not dwelling on his unrequited crush. He also is the one in the spooky episode who makes sure they get locked in the haunted house without phones and then lets their friends know not to look for them. (Ensuring Shu Yi has ramen to eat while they're 'trapped' is a nice domestic touch.) Shi De only makes one mistake, and that's not making 100% sure Shu Yi is asleep before confessing that he loves him.

Shu Yi and Shi De have great chemistry, and their actors absolutely ace the tone this show needs to thread the needle of just sincere enough to be genuinely heartwarming…without calling too much attention to the ethical implications of Shi De's aggressive flirtation campaign. When Shi De starts avoiding him, thinking that his confession has ruined their fragile newborn friendship, Shu Yi screams that he loves him to the traffic passing below in a scene that is both romantic and charmingly goofy. They have a great dynamic once they ease into the rhythm of a romantic relationship. It's an eternal honeymoon phase.

Yu Xin and Zheng Wen are also adorable together, particularly during the spooky episode where we get to see their personalities shine as they team up to frighten unsuspecting passersby. Yu Xin makes a great vengeful spirit, and Zheng Wen is a perfect technical accomplice, and they both take so much uninhibited joy from scaring other people that it should really be their full-time gig. They also tell Shu Yi and Shi De over lunch that the reason they grew so close was because they constantly had to conspire to protect Shu Yi's delicate feelings. They're good friends who want to make sure Shi De can handle him, and they also get some good-natured teasing in. Their vibe is unimpeachable.

I am unashamed to admit i largely watched the special version of these episodes for just a couple extra minutes of the C-pairing, Bing Wei and Zhe Yu. They share one brain cell and i love them. As their friends Shu Yi and Shi De, respectively, inexplicably start spending more time together, these two rival sidekicks find themselves increasingly paired off. I think it's hilarious that they initially also both have crushes on their respective friends before falling for each other instead. The series straight up repeats the "unrequited affection for best friend leads to relationship with rival" formula three times and creates a very complex love graph far surpassing any mere love triangle. After their antics in the spooky episode and a brief argument in the locker room, Bing Wei and Zhe Yu become the most in-sync, inseperable, unbearably cutesy couple of the show for the brief scenes they have left. Just two himbos chilling, zero feet apart because they're absolutely gay.

Shi De's mom is a great minor character. I love the informal rapport she has with her son, and i love that she loves Shu Yi, and i love that Shu Yi is so flustered by the affection she showers him with. I love that they can gang up on Shi De together and there's nothing he can do to stop the two people he loves most from roasting him over dinner. She is just a delight.

We Best Love: No. 1 for You ends with Shi De headed to America with his mom for an indeterminate period of time, which initially hurts Shu Yi's very sensitive feelings before they talk it out. Although the situation isn't ideal, it's clear that these two can still make it work with minimal angst. They resolve to keep in touch in the final episode, and they clearly love each other so much that i don't even feel a little sad when Shu Yi has to tell Shi De goodbye. They fully have a handle on this, and it's only gonna make their eventual reuinion sweeter. Don't watch the sequel.

I had a good time, but:

Pei Shou Yi? The doctor? Inscrutable. Frightening. Still have no idea what his deal is. Wish he were written differently.

The 'No. 1 For You' schtick could have been played up a bit more. I like the concept of Shi De purposefully starting this rivalry to keep Shu Yi's eyes on him, but it feels like the writers spend very little time with the idea before the plot starts accelerating. Maybe it got cut for time?

More Yu Xin and Zheng Wen, please. The few scenes we get of them in the spooky episode are great. I would have loved additional time with these heterosexuals.

The special version of Episode 6 is a travesty and a felony crime, because it sets up the inane and insulting and intolerable conflict of

Unfortunately, you have been chopped: We Best Love: Fighting Mr. 2nd (2021, sequel).

I know i'm in the minority on this one, but allow me this indulgence. This is the only show where i was so viscerally repulsed by the first episode that i immediately declared it F-tier and never looked back. The setup to this plot is bad, and the writing of their reintroduction actually makes it make less sense. It makes me violently ill to think about the sheer audacity of a FIVE YEAR TIMESKIP of radio silence between our leads, and the fact that it's based on such a contrived and easily circumvented misunderstanding (part of which literally never gets explained, outside of a deleted scene) fills me with incandescent rage. And doing this all just so we can see embittered girlboss [gender neutral] Shu Yi show up, throw hands, and threaten Shi De's employees? No ma'am. It's not giving what they think it's giving. And while i'm being a hater, i also dislike that Pei Shou Yi returns but Yu Xin and Zheng Wen don't.

The worst part is, their angst and resolution looks riveting if you can get past the nonsense, but i simply can't. I felt so personally insulted by the sloppy explanation as to why they stopped communicating that i immediately outlined a fanfic that will probably never be finished just to prove to myself i could come up something that captures a similar vibe but actually makes sense. Whatever Fighting Mr. 2nd is, it's not canon. Can't be. Argue with your mother.

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: N/A. I deserve financial compensation for knowing this sequel exists.

Conclusion: We Best Love: No. 1 For You is a cute, easily bingeable rom-com series with a touch of angst that pretty quickly melts away. The sequel is cursed. I really love these characters, and it's a shame they never got another series where they could really shine. Instead we got…that. Between the actors, the writing, and the technical quality, this is one of the better Taiwanese BLs i've seen so far. I like it when stories make sense within the universe they've created, and the sequel does not make sense. I will be a bitter hater until my dying breath. I can only hope and pray that future projects will match this one's charm and competence.

Actually, let's break this down.

ITSAY: If there is one thing to say about ITSAY, it is that this series is relentless. It does not let up. From the camera to the writing to the acting to the edit, it is technically flawless and ceaselessly devastating. It is an audiovisual machine made of gold and steel and emotional violence. The camera lingers on scenes for perfectly unsettling or soul-crushing lengths of time. Everyone is acting their asses off, and the tears flow at least once an episode. The setting and set design are both visually impressive, taking advantage of gorgeous natural landscapes. The music is intense and unforgettable (and unfortunately the lyrics about separation and struggle are narratively resonant for the lead couple). And the story itself is maddeningly well-written.

The key to understanding the events of ITSAY (and IPYTM) is that Teh is a chaos demon, and he's a chaos demon in a very specific way. He has an MO. Teh will act like an uncomfortable situation with Oh-aew is fine, then he will get caught up in it and make everything worse, and then he will try to fix it by doing the thing that would have helped earlier too late. You would think this would get old, but although the pattern remains the same, Teh finds new ways to fuck it up every single time, and the time it takes to fix it ranges from years after the fact to a just few hours (but also too late).

ITSAY starts with my favorite trope, the play-within-a-play Sword Over the Moon, as Teh reflects on a falling out he had with his childhood friend Oh-aew, a tale that marks the first time i nearly sobbed during the first episode. I sometimes say i don't need a lot of angst and trauma, but maybe i be lying, because this flashback works on every level for me. It shows how they were once so close that Teh could tell when Oh-aew needed his back scratched, and it also shows how Teh's chaos demon behavior caused the first and longest-lasting rupture in their relationship. Teh, who wants to be an actor more than anything, giving the lead spot in the school play to Oh-aew should be heartwarming and selfless, but the thing about Teh is that he loves to pretend something is fine while secretly resenting every moment of it, and it blows up in both of their faces when Teh insults Oh-aew and they stop speaking to each other for most of the next decade. Now attending Mandarin classes to prepare for college, Teh, who is an incredibly proud (read: stubborn) person, sees Oh-aew again for the first time in years, and his first instinct is to fortify their grudge by just being The Worst, gloating over Oh-aew's low grades and struggle to learn while their mutual friends try very hard to keep the peace. This culminates in Oh-aew's first of many breakdowns when he flunks a test, and Teh finally snaps out of their stupid, largely one-sided beef to offer to be Oh-aew's tutor. (And to his credit, he is a very good and thoughtful tutor, exactingly tailoring flashcards and scrapbooks to fit his pupil's learning style.)

Two of Teh's other chaos demon arcs run on roughly parallel tracks from this point through the finale of the series. First, he offers to play wingman to help Oh-aew find out whether their friend Bass has a crush on him (spoiler: he does), and second, he tries to keep a promise to his friend Tarn that they will start dating once she's gotten accepted to university. Shockingly, Teh pretends that both of these situations are totally fine and tenable, but he comes to secretly resent them until they blow up in his face! He grows increasingly jealous of Bass and eager to have moments with Oh-aew all to himself, to the point where he starts blowing off his alleged future girlfriend to tutor him. He even wakes up at 4 am for Oh-aew, when he never sacrifices a minute of sleep for Tarn! (And oh, she notices.) I will say that Teh and Oh-aew's scenes together are lovely, and there is a brilliant homoerotic moment where their childhood back-scratching ritual turns literally orgasmic, in a very subtle metaphor for the changing dynamic of their friendship. And at some point, Teh and Oh-aew make a pact that, when they've both been accepted to their dream school, they will run all the way from Teh's place to the tip of Promthep Cape to watch the sunset. Put a pin in that. After a practice run, Teh helpfully explains the lyrics of the ominous and thematically resonant song about separated lovers, which i'm sure will in no way foreshadow the rest of the series.

Except it does. ITSAY delivers catastrophe after catastrophe before it finally crashes headlong into a happy ending. After a hot minute of not enough emotional disasters happening to our lead couple, we get what i affectionately refer to as the Dark Blue Kiss (2019) scene, because in the middle of their romantic beach rendezvous we get a stunningly cinematic underwater kiss (surprise!), and then everything goes to shit. Oh-aew more or less asks if this means Teh is ready to be more than friends, and Teh more or less says…nah, things are fine! To no one's surprise but Teh's, this is the Wrong Response! Oh-aew gets to have another spiraling, sobbing breakdown, culminating in him trying on a little red bra and impulsively posting it to Instagram before deleting it thirty seconds later. Teh turns to Tarn to make her an Oh-aew substitute, which, again to no one's surprise, Does Not Work! Teh gets an early admission offer from his dream school, and at the last minute he withdraws from the application process so Oh-aew, the first alternate, can get in without having to take the Mandarin test. Teh thinks this is an apology! Oh-aew thinks it's an underhanded dig at his intelligence! They snipe at each other using passive-aggressive Instagram stories (and the incorporation of social media into the narrative of ITSAY is brilliantly done in general, for the record), and then Teh has a massive breakdown when he realizes (a) oh shit, he loves Oh-aew and has fucked up their relationship yet again, and (b) oh shit, he has fucked up his own future by sacrificing his place at his dream school, and now he has to catch up on all the classes he's been skipping. The fucking around has occurred; the finding out is nigh.

Before i talk about how it ends, i want to run through some of the other characters i like in ITSAY.

The other members of Teh and Oh-aew's friend group, MoRaoYuLok, are difficult for me to talk about as individuals (except for Bass), but collectively i enjoy their presence onscreen and the ways they step in to do damage control whenever Teh and Oh-aew are imploding. They are surprisingly mature for a bunch of high school boys, particularly in comparison to the emotional antics that Teh and Oh-aew (mostly Teh) rope them into.

I love Hoon! He's a great older brother to Teh, even as Teh resents him for being a standard he cannot live up to. Hoon truly loves his little brother, and his immediate acceptance of Teh when he confesses he loves Oh-aew is beautiful. I bet Hoon gives great hugs. I want Hoon to hug me.

My feelings about Sui, Hoon and Teh's mom, are complex in ITSAY (i feel slightly attacked by Teh's desire to please her with academic and heterosexual performance, and her reaction when she learns he gave up his early admission to college is brutal), but i come to like her as well. (Her actor absolutely kills it.)

I like that Tarn gets to be a whole human being and that she responds to Teh's chaos demon behavior in relatable and complex ways. She buries her feelings of suspicion and jealousy, she gets angry and blows up, she sympathizes and swallows her sadness when Teh needs her to be just a friend. The portait she gifts him with the purple hibiscus in his breast pocket? Devastating. We'll get to it.

Finally, Bass. Just an absolute sweetheart. It's unfortunate that he gets bulldozed by Teh, but he's a good egg, and a good friend. Sometimes, all you can do is be quietly there for someone who is having an absolute time of it, and Bass has perfected the art of being there.

In the finale, Teh and Oh-aew run into each other before taking the normal admissions exam. Oh-aew is doing alright, all things considered. He and Bass are an item now, and thanks to Bass's continued tutoring (since Teh was definitely fired from that position), he scores high enough to get into their dream school. Teh, on the other hand, is thoroughly shook. He's literally shaking, crying, about to throw up, and he spends so much time trying to pull it together in the bathroom that he can't finish the exam, and he ends up only getting into his second-choice school. In the fallout, Oh-aew realizes that he can't stop thinking about Teh and breaks it off with Bass. The day comes when they promised they would run together, and while Oh-aew starts it alone, he soon runs into Teh, and they at last get their love confession moment and the tiniest bit of cathartic triumph. ITSAY, at long last, is over. Thank god.

There are several visual/symbolic motifs that come through in ITSAY, including (of course) the titular sunsets, which symbolize desire: The characters literally yell their dreams at the sun. But two of my favorites include hibiscus and coconuts. Let's start with the latter: Teh starts out absolutely hating coconuts, even though his mom and brother claim they bring good luck and the water gives you energy. Teh, however, likes the way Oh-aew smells. Oh-aew uses coconut scented shampoo. He's always used it. Teh suddenly likes coconuts again. In the finale, he literally brings a sidecar full of coconuts to keep them hydrated during the long, hot journey down to the cape. Coconuts as character growth. It's fun! The seond symbol is more interesting, though, and more charged. There is a color-coded hibiscus motif in ITSAY, where Tarn is represented by the purple hibiscus Teh notices while staring at her underwear, and Oh-aew is represented by the red hibiscus that he tucks in his hair during the MoRaoYuLok studycation. It's a subliminal battle that only Tarn seems fully aware of, which means she's the only person who sees when she's lost. When Tarn asks Teh to pick a color for the hibiscus she's sketching, thinking he'll pick purple, he picks red. When Oh-aew puts on the red bra, it's because he thinks that if he were a girl Teh would accept his love, but narratively the audience has the dramatic irony of knowing it's actually a battle between red and purple, and that Teh will choose him regardless, in the end. And when Tarn shows up with the portrait of Teh in full Sword Over the Moon regalia, she's drawn a little purple hibiscus into it, half-aware at the time she did so that she has no such place so close to his heart, and that he is prepared to break hers. It hurts deliciously. I love it.

Thematically, i would say that the primary message of ITSAY is that you cannot unfuck the past; you can only do the right thing now and grow into the future. Teh is constantly fucking up, and when he tries to fix his problems, it goes awry because he is acting as if he can repair the situation retrospectively. It's only in his final act of atonement, when he realizes he can still keep his promise and be there for Oh-aew in that moment, that we finally see them reach a point of resolution. There is also a cyclic element to the theme here: There is always another sunset. There is always another chance to get it right, though it may not be the same one as yesterday. This emphasis on cycles becomes much more impotant in IPTYM, as do the consequences of Teh's actions.

And because it bears mentioning somewhere: Every actor in this series can cry like a motherfucker. Which is good, because they all have to.

LTIP: With this short film existing mainly to bridge the gap between ITSAY and IPTYM and bid farewell to the locations in Phuket, you might expect LTIP to be a sentimental but ultimately fairly benign fifteen minutes. Instead, it haunts and vexes me. The show is about saying goodbye to the boys' hometown, but even as they're visiting their favorite locations, they notice the ways it's already changing around them and wondering what changes the future will bring. This ominous melancholy increases when Oh-aew gets a fortune telling him that happy times will come to an end. Well goddamn! They literally just started being happy in the last ten minutes of the ITSAY finale and it's already over. LTIP is rude. The camera here continues to push the narrative forward, and LTIP does not skimp on the visual appeal, either. The final lingering image we have is of Teh and Oh-aew riding toward the horizon, as sunset transitions into twilight over Phuket, soon to be the vast moonlit expanse of night. This short film really does make me appreciate how pretty the setting of ITSAY was, and it visually and thematically sets the stage for the arrival of IPYTM, for although their story is headed to Bangkok, everything that happened in Phuket will follow them and shape the rest of their lives.

IPYTM: I'm not gonna lie, IPYTM worried me. I had heard about the cheating plotline, and i had just watched ITSAY and LTIP care very little about my feelings, and i was unsure if i was prepared to endure another five-odd hours of whatever i had just experienced. But as it turns out, IPYTM shifted the vibe significantly. My immediate thought after finishing it was that if ITSAY is all gold and steel, then IPYTM is all silver and glass shards. It feels less weighty, but it still cuts. The camera's gaze is not quite as aggressive, but it still presses in and lingers on scenes just long enough to build tension or let it snap. The actors are still giving it 110% in every shot. The sets and setting are still beautiful, but there's much more concrete and glass. The music shifts to something more subdued. And the script and the edit make the passage of time an important character in its own right, via timeskips that i respect because of their narrative utility (IPYTM is an anthology of stories from Teh and Oh-aew's college years bound into one overarching narrative) and thematic resonance (the timeskips highlight the importance of cycles).

First episode is the lightest and the funniest of the entire saga, and it is a joyous relief. It starts a couple weeks before LTIP, which threw me for a hot second, but i love a scene that normalizes condom usage, and the two of them are absolute dorks about it. Fastforward to Bangkok and university, and I love Sui being supportive of Teh with the couple's red envelopes. I love their date where they go to the aquarium and are just insufferably lovey toward one another. I love that the conflict in this episode stems directly from the consequences of Teh's actions in ITSAY: While Oh-aew lives only a few minutes from his campus, Teh's school is across town from Oh-aew's apartment, so if he stays with Oh-aew, he won't make it to any of his classes on time. It's smart writing (as if i expected any less). The fact that they have to be apart most days of the week continues to spiral into the rest of the conflicts of this series. We already see that Oh-aew would have had a full-on meltdown being on his own in Bangkok if he wasn't immediately adopted by my FAVORITE side characters, the friend group of Q, Auu, Plug, and Maengpong, who are all simply delightful people. These fellow first-year students see Oh-aew homesick and on the verge of bawling, and immediately they decide he's their new best friend. They never stop being delightful in every conceivable way. (Teh, meanwhile, has a bunch of new acting friends, and we will get to one of them right about…now.)

So the first episode wasn't so bad. In the second one, we get a little timeskip as Teh and Oh-aew are settling into their college era, and we get a new challenge: employment. Teh and Oh-aew both want to be actors, so they head to a casting call with Teh's friend Khim (whomst we stan) to see about getting one of them commercial roles. Teh does a great job, but Khim looks too mature for her part, and Oh-aew is too femme, and the commentary they get during their auditions cuts. Khim has a good long cry about it, but then steels her resolve and basically says she's willing to do however many auditions it takes to get a role. Oh-aew, on the other hand, immediately sees the writing on the wall, and he knows deep down this is not the path for him. When he tells Teh, who is still fantasizing about them one day doing a show together, it blows up into a whole thing. Teh accuses Oh-aew of being indecisive and quitting after only one try, unlike Khim, who never quits (put a pin in it!). Oh-aew stands his ground. (Good for him!) They fight a bit, but they eventually communicate like two adults in a healthy relationship ought to, and everything is fine (…put a pin in that too). I like that we get incisive commentary on how women and gender non-conforming men are treated by the entertainment industry, and while that thematic aspect is mostly contained to this episode, its consequences certainly are not. Also, remember that time i said Teh loved that Khim never gives up on her dreams? Surprise! He blows up at her for becoming a flight attendant, because (shocker) he still harbors lingering resentment for Oh-aew changing his career plans, which surely won't bubble to the surface again. (Khim, by the way, handles this all with a surprising amount of compassion and grace. Couldn't be me.) We also get more of Oh-aew and his new friends here, hanging out and having a good time. Love them.

What could possibly go wrong?

Midway through IPYTM, we get a new play-within-a-play, and it's getting meta: Jai is directing a play he wrote called (wait for it) I Promised You the Moon, a story about the slow collapse of a relationship. (Here we fuckin' go.) Teh and Oh-aew are now a couple years into their relationship, and Oh-aew has bright red hair and a new vibe, leaving Teh feeling a bit cold, which means it's nearly time for him to be a chaos demon again. This time, though, Oh-aew also gets up to some chaos demon antics of his own, a character development that i love for him. This is also, unfortunately, the arc where Teh where fucks up the hardest.

Let's start with some fun news: Plug and Maengpong are dating now! They are a Z-couple to the overall plot at best, but still. Good for them, and also good for Oh-aew lucking into a queer friend group. And Teh does recruit Oh-aew, now a marketing student, into helping promote Jai's new play! So they're connecting both of their strengths and interests in a mature way without bulldozing or sniping at each other! They even have unsettling, Jai-orchestrated sex!

Unfortunately, things start to snowball. Oh-aew has a huge project with the Q-crew, who are all also in marketing, and Teh, feeling distant and jealous, suddenly has extra time to spend hanging around Jai (derogatory), who is stringing Teh along to try to coax a believable romantic performance out of him in his play. Teh's resentment bubbles to the surface again (who could've seen this coming?) and he mocks Oh-aew for changing majors again at dinner, where Khim catches a few strays. Oh-aew gets suspicious of Teh and reads his private acting log (a little chaotic and girlboss of him, i think), and then catches him and Jai making out in an…acting workshop. Teh and Jai convince him, somehow, that there's no deeper meaning to it. Oh-aew believes it, mostly, and Jai means it, mostly, but you know who doesn't? Teh, who continues chasing Jai like a lost dog. All of this culminates in a final longing glance from Teh to Jai, which Oh-aew obviously sees, because Teh does it right in front of him, and their relationship finally crumbles under the weight of the everything. Big oof. All of this happens so frenetically over the course of two episodes that it's hard to catch a breath, particularly when the suspense builds to Teh getting caught. Oh-aew and Teh have a sobbing, bawling, messy final breakup conversation at the Q-crew hangout, where Oh-aew finally puts his foot down, and Teh is forced to walk out of his life for good. (You don't even need to put a pin in this one, we're already there.)

And thus we arrive at the finale of the saga, the last episode of IPYTM. We have a respectable final timeskip of a year or so from the chaos, and Oh-aew is thriving. Even though he's still got some residual feelings for Teh, they have mostly mellowed into bittersweet but distant fondness. Love that for him; it doesn't last. Teh, on the other hand, runs into Oh-aew at work one (1) time and finds his chaos demon heart completely undone (on brand), so much so that he writes the THIRD play-within-a-play (i have been blessed) of their relationship, which he calls (wait for it) I Told Sunset About You. He (of course) invites Oh-aew to the premiere without telling him what the play is about, and suddenly Oh-aew's distant, residual feelings of fondness are much less distant, residual, and fond. Classic return to form! Great work, everybody.

I actually love the messy and dramatic way this last episode leads to their happy(?—we'll get to it) ending. It feels organic to the vibe of their whole story. Oh-aew asks Bass for his advice, and Bass basically tells him there's no way to know whether his happiness with Teh is guaranteed if they get back together, but clearly even being apart they aren't able to leave each other alone. Cut to Hoon and Nazumi's wedding, and Oh-aew, continuing to embrace his own inner chaos demon, shows up late, just in time to catch the bouquet. Oh-aew and Teh talk on the beach, where Oh-aew delivers a whole speech about how they are not the same people they were, and they'll keep changing forever, and Teh better be serious about loving him. At the end of the episode, Teh manages to cram in one last chaos demon moment by posting a picture of them on Instagram, a thing he is not supposed to do, and we get a montage of the reactions from all of their exasperated but supportive friends, which is a nice touch. (Tarn is doing fine! Khim and Top are dating! Jai is bathed in shadow and looks vaguely unsatisfied! Good for them.) A neat and tidy conclusion, except it isn't completely, for reasons we'll get to in a hot sec.

But before that, let's unpack some visual motifs. In much the same way as ITSAY loves a sunset, IPYTM emphasizes the full moon in several conversations between Teh and Oh-aew, indicating the cyclical nature of their relationship and their promises to each other (the moon always returns / the moon always—i / always am—the moon / returns—faithful—). We also have a callback motif to ITSAY, but tweaked slightly to keep it fresh. IPYTM gives us red vs. purple redux, but instead of red and purple hibiscus representing Teh's choice between Oh-aew and Tarn, it becomes a bit more nebulous. Red this time obviously and directly indicates Oh-aew, as his hair literally signals its narrative importance. (And, if we go all the way back to the first episode of IPYTM, we recall that Sui gives Teh and Oh-aew the red envelopes, which both directly symbolize good fortune and indirectly symbolize, through narrative context, the bond between Teh and Oh-aew in this new chapter of their lives.) Purple in IPYTM now represents Jai, and it also takes on a number of secondary associations through the play-within-a-play trope. The primary symbol Jai uses in I Promised You the Moon is aged plum wine, which is how he comes to be associated with this color, and the fact that it is fermented and left to age also suggests stagnation and decay, which is why it works symbolically within the context of the play. But outside of the play, we also learn that plum wine symbolizes the actual end of Jai's relationship. So when Teh first drinks the plum wine, all of this other information has already been bound up in his decision via the color motifs, including the context of his first struggle in ITSAY to choose between red and purple hibiscus. His infatuation with Jai and the subsequent downfall of his relationship become a narrative inevitability. Finally, there is the visual motif of the sunflowers that Oh-aew brings Teh after each play, versus the final, all-white bouquet he presents him with after the wedding. (I really wanted these to be moonflowers, but it looks to be mostly white roses. Probably budget cuts.) This represents the transition from the primacy of idealized desire (sun = sunset = desire; context of acting being Teh's dream) to the primacy of faithfulness (white = moon = cycles = return; context of the wedding) in their relationship.

IPYTM contains the same theme about the inability to unfuck the past as ITSAY, but here there is a much clearer tension between cyclical behavior and the passage of linear time. This series asks two related questions, and while one does get answered, the other remains frustratingly open. First, can we recreate the past? Yes, but only to an extent. It's what Teh spends the finale doing, and he kinda succeeds with his play in literally remaking his relationship with Oh-aew! But it cannot be the same past, because we know that past is unfuckable. It's not a reset, but a redo. The memories remain. The second question: Are we doomed to relive the past? That's the question that clearly haunts Oh-aew, and it's the question that does not have an answer, even as Teh and Oh-aew do get their (alleged) happy ending. In one sense, you cannot know whether the future will be different; in another sense, you can only know that it will not be the same. The moon always returns, and relationships will always have both good times and bad. But how the people change? Only time will tell.

And if i may briefly engage in Teh apologia (not really, it's more about theme), he's not the only heartbreaker in their story. When Teh hurts others' feelings, everybody notices, because he is usually acting brash and chaotic about it. But Oh-aew makes choices that hurt people as well, including Bass in ITSAY, Q in IPYTM, and, yes, even Teh himself. His acts are usually more deliberate, and he treats these decisions with admirable kindness and grace, but i appreciate that the narrative still allows these moments to impact others emotionally. There may be a wrong reason or a right reason to hurt someone else, or a better or worse way to do it, but all of us, at some point or another, will both give and receive that pain. We will hurt others—even ourselves—no matter how careful the choices we make.

Also, i like Teh. Yes he's a chaos demon, yes he ruins lives with his pride and his inability to let shit go, yes he's sometimes cruel. But despite the fact that he is at least one of these things at least 60% of the time that he's on screen, it never feels gratuitous. Teh is fiercely sentimental, emotionally transparent, generous and creative with his love, and his heart is a fitful, rabid thing that he doesn't fully understand. And i love Oh-aew too. He's not actually a perfect angel. He's legitimately a codependent mess who absolutely needs a real licensed therapist to talk things through with before he gives himself an aneurysm, and i'm glad he seems to be capable of growth, because lord knows he's gonna need to. And he's also incredibly kind, intuitive, and self-aware. These two are demonstrably not good for each other. They are each other's perfect match. Get ye to couple's counselling. (And quiet as it's kept, i see myself in both of them.)

TL;DR: ITSAY is a well-executed (and OVERWHELMING) television bildungsroman on its own, and LTIP packs a lot of hometown melancholy into a very small package, but for me the more balanced elements of IPYTM retroactively elevate the entire saga of Teh and Oh-aew from A-tier coming-of-age romantic drama to dynamic S-tier experience. And that's pretty fucking neat.

I had a good time, but:

My GOD is this the emotional roller coaster of a hundred lifetimes. I nearly cried twice in the FIRST episode of ITSAY and then three more times over the next four episodes. That camera does not give a SHIT about your feelings. and neither do the writers. I cannot overemphasize this point. It's a very good story overall, but my enjoyment was complicated by the fact that the narrative was as indifferent to my suffering as it was interested in its characters'.

I wish we had gotten just one scene with Teh and Tarn again in IPYTM. I have no idea what purpose it would serve except for narrative closure, but i think it would have been nice.

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: All of them? All of them. Every character. There are a lot of devastating emotions happening here. But if i had to pick one, it's Oh-aew, without a doubt. All the other characters who get hurt by the actions of chaos demon Teh (Bass, Tarn, Khim, his mom, himself, etc.) are given enough time and space to heal by the end of IPYTM that they're more or less coping. But i genuinely have no idea if Teh and Oh-aew are going to survive the next 24 hours after the camera cuts off, let alone any fraction of a lifetime. Prayers up for Oh-aew, and may he be delivered from chaos for ever and ever. Amen.

Conclusion: This saga is a cinematic behemoth, and it deserves all the hype and acclaim it has received. By turns relentless, brooding, thoughtful, cathartic, invigorating, joyful—the story took me a thousand different places over the course of its twelve-hour run, and i will never regret having watched it. I do not know if i could handle watching it again unless i really, really needed to cry. 10/10, would recommend to the emotionally repressed.

Utsukushii Kare plays at the ethical boundaries of unhealthy relationship dynamics, but reports of its gritty realism and dark tone have been greatly exaggerated. Let's take a look at how the story breaks down tropes to communicate its themes.

The story happens in two parts, the first of which takes place when Hira is in high school, and a new student, Kiyoi, joins his class. Hira is a wallflower with a stutter exacerbated by his social anxiety, and when Kiyoi's presence distracts the class from his embarrassing introduction, Hira imprints on him like a duckling. (There's a rubber duck in the show, it's on my mind.) Hira then begins to follow Kiyoi around, taking pictures of him (because taking pictures of beautiful things is the primary way he interacts with the world). Kiyoi's good looks and cool demeanor make him super popular at school, but after he loses an idol competition, everybody but Hira turns on him. Their dynamic here is one marked by adolescent immaturity taken to its extreme. Hira is willing to do literally anything if it pleases Kiyoi, and Kiyoi is more than willing to take advantage of his loyalty. It's an uneasy relationship brimming with homoerotic potential, and it boils over when Kiyoi works up the courage to kiss him on the last day of school, before abruptly shoving him away, with hardly so much as a "See you later."

There's a three year timeskip (and it works here for reasons we'll get into), during which time Hira goes to college, joins a photography club, and meets Koyama, who is one of the first peers in Hira's life to treat him like a full human being. They have a much more relaxed and easygoing dynamic, and they really seem to enjoy each other's company. This flips on a dime when Koyama takes him out to dinner and a show, and the lead actor of the performance is none other than Kiyoi himself. Presented with such an unexpected shock to the system, Hira's stutter returns full force as the full weight of his past catches up to him all at once.

Eventually, we piece together the following: Kiyoi, a dumb teenager, genuinely wanted to keep in touch with Hira after graduation, but he was devastated when Hira never returned his calls. Kiyoi actually broke Hira's phone during the kiss incident, and Hira assumed he didn't need to keep his number because nobody liked him anyway. Hira assumed the kiss was just Kiyoi taking pity on him before leaving his life forever, and he took it in stride, all things considered, but he never forgot about him. These missed communications lead to an incredible tsunami of angst over the last couple episodes, during which time there is a very charged scene wherein Hira sucks bood from Kiyoi's injured finger, and the plot culminates in a raucous rendezvous at their old high school, where they finally manage to see each other as equals for the first time and realize how…amorous they've been for each other, without the pretense of treating one another as masters or slaves, and they try to make up for the years they wasted not being in love.

Before talking at length about the themes, i want to defend the timeskip here. All else being equal, i'm wary of the ways timeskips are used to completely reset a story, or to shock the audience with a sudden change without regard to theme, or to elide details of the narrative that writers simply haven't found a better way to address, but there are times when they are useful. I think the writers of Utsukushii Kare ended the first half of the show in a place that maximized the uncertainty of the lead couple's relationship, to the point where neither the audience nor Hira knew whether Kiyoi wanted it to continue, and the timeskip therefore covers a period of radio silence that is pretty uneventful for both of them in terms of where the story is headed. Just enough is implied about the ways that their characters have grown (or not) in the interim that it feels natural, and it works narratively to support the themes the series is trying to get across. Speaking of…

One theme emphasized by Utsukushii Kare is that cruelty is not romance. Cruelty precludes the possibility of love. This is present in the difference we see between Hira and Kiyoi's initial relationship and how that affects them, versus the relationship that develops between Hira and Koyama. Hira as a teenager feels that, because of his particular disability, all he can expect is scorn and derision. Kiyoi 'saves' him from the unwanted attention of his peers, but their dynamic initially recreates many of the cruelties they have subjected him to, including insults and threats of violence, which only further exacerbates the distance in Hira's mind between himself and Kiyoi. Even when they are at their most relaxed, there is no possibility of healthy romantic love between them with this as the foundation. But when he meets Koyama in college, Hira is meeting someone who understands his speech impediment as a disability in a completely neutral way, and certainly not as an invitation to cruelty. By establishing this simple fact when they first meet, Koyama levels the playing field. This attacks the root of one of those unfortunate romance tropes that has made it to real life, that bullying should be understood as an attempt at romantic connection. Utsukushii Kare here says that even if that is true, it fundamentally cannot work. We can only accept the love we think we deserve. You cannot love someone who makes you lesser.

A second theme is a corollary to the first, and it really only starts to get unpacked as we hear more of Kiyoi's perspective on their relationship: Love is not worship. Treating a human being like a god is still a kind of dehumanization. Damaged and insecure as he is, Kiyoi is willing to accept Hira's unconditional adulation as a substitute for real connection when both of them are teenagers. But as an adult, and i think seeing the way Hira and Koyama treat each other as equals in particular, Kiyoi understands a base unfairness is plaguing his dynamic with Hira, and all these years later Hira still hasn't been able let it go. Only once Kiyoi is able to articulate the depth of the anguish it has caused him—and is currently causing him!—to be unable to connect with Hira as a fellow human being, with flaws and fears and all—only then is Hira shaken out of his idolatry. In a way, i think this shift in their relationship is metaphorically removing Hira's camera from between himself and Kiyoi. There is no room in love for the distance that a camera puts between subject and object. To remove Kiyoi from a pedestal is fundamentally to remove that distance Hira has built in his mind between them. This notion again attacks another very common romance trope, that of utter devotion and abnegation being the height of love. Utsukushii Kare instead asks us to consider this trope from the perspective of the beloved, whose lover is so in awe of them that they fail to see how they might actually be causing them pain.

As for the technical side of things, it's a well-produced show, and there are a few truly sumptuous moments of cinematography. The very small core cast works well with the short number of episodes, and no one's acting is lacking.

Finally, there are a couple of bonus scenes that add a little zhuzh to the viewing experience. Mellow Kiyoi is a whole vibe, and it's nice to see Hira doting on Koyama, even though they flop in the end.

I had a good time, but:

The daydream of Hira committing a mass shooting is a bit much. Like, i get what it's doing, his dedication to Kiyoi is strong, irrational, violently adolescent, but also…goddamn. Is he okay?

I could have done with just a taste more of Hira and Kiyoi being happy and intimate, but that's just me being a gay sap.

As for the alleged love triangle: I don't need it. I understand why it's here, and it works, but i don't need it. That's all.

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: Koyama, who is completely unaware of the approaching love triangle until it's far too late. RIP Koyama's chances, gone too soon.

Conclusion: Utsukushii Kare is a show that is more prickly than gritty, and more hyperreal than real. When its characters behave in edgy ways, they are doing more than contributing to an aesthetic for aesthetic's sake. The series is trying to tell us something about how we engage with fiction—and with each other on this side of the fourth wall, too. The tropes are fun to watch, but they are not above critique. There is no room for pedestals and sacrificial altars in love, and until we understand this, we won't recognize the possibility of true, egalitarian love even as it kisses us in the face.

This is the best BL of 2020 and possibly my favorite lead couple of all time. It's that good, and i don't even know that i can explain exactly why it spoke to me. It's an easy one-day binge. (Ask me how i know.) Please watch it.

The FIRST thing about Gaya Sa Pelikula that i love is the premise. Actually, that's a lie. The first thing i love about the show is its opening scene, which takes place a bit later in the timeline of Karl and Vlad's relationship. They're dancing together as Karl does voiceover about how life and movies and how they can parallel each other. It's very sweet, and it has narrative resonance later.

The SECOND thing i love is the premise. Karl is an architecture student staying at his Uncle Santi's apartment, essentially as a practice run for the real world, but he's having trouble getting work that pays enough for rent. Vlad is his very wealthy neighbor trying to avoid his family, who has to suddenly abandon the apartment when his sister Judit leases it to her friend Anna. He ends up running into Karl's house to hide from them, which leads, of course, to Karl and Vlad becoming fake-dating roommates who accidentally fall in love along the way. That doesn't even begin to capture the comedy and pathos of the first handful of episodes of Gaya Sa Pelikula, but it's a good foundation.

Karl is the source of most of the central conflict of Gaya Sa Pelikula, because (for reasons to be revealed in a bit) he is burdened by a life he would rather be living differently. The two biggest things: He would rather be a film major, but he sees it as a but frivolous and a lot less lucrative than architecture. And he is deep, deep, deep in the closet, initially even to himself. Vlad, on the other hand, openly loves both film studies and men, and the former of these is what they initially genuinely bond over, as Vlad helps Karl prepare to change his major. Karl sees the latter interest as a potential threat, even as he fantasizes about Vlad more than a heterosexual man might be expected to. Vlad, for his part, is very self-assured and has an astute understanding of his political subjectivity as a gay man, but oh boy, he has some trauma to unpack. The dance he shares with Karl is bittersweet because it serves as a replacement for a dance he never got to have with his boyfriend as a high school student, because homophobia is a bitch. Wish i could relate less!

Quick break to appreciate some aesthetics: The visuals are crisp and the editing is snappy. Shoutout to the cinematographers and set design and camera techs out there. (And given that basically every scene happens in the apartment or in the courtyard, it's impressive that it never gets stale, and there are small changes to the living space with the development of Karl and Vlad's relationship. Nice touches.) I'm not a big OST-focused person but the music is good . The cast is small but the actors contained therein are mighty. Serious chemistry, and not just the gay kind between the two leads.

Something that stood out to me was how much this series understands setup and payoff, contributing to its more comedic moments (i think every joke and gag landed) as well as unexpected but satisfying narrative reveals (some of the jokes and gags come back as plot points). It's definitely worth keeping an eye on the boys' respective personality tics in this regard. Vlad not liking his hair touched or celebrating his birthday is eventually connected to childhood trauma around his father. Karl's jumpiness during the spooky episode foreshadows the way he's already haunted by the memory of his brother, a picture of whom he keeps…in the closet. (God. This show is so visually smart.) A lot of Karl's behavior in fact is tied up in living up to the imaginary paragon of virtue he's built out the brother he never knew. A lot of Vlad's behavior is rooted in avoiding painful memories of his past by any means necessary. Add these up, and although they do their best to make it work, these two are doomed lovers. (At least for now.)

Judit is initially a character i found slightly tedious. I love her bougie cosmopolitan energy, but at the beginning she's giving just a little bit too much heterosexual tryhard ally at best and possible fetishist at worst, and that's kind of an exhausting trope for female side characters (especially when it's directed toward her brother). But as the series progresses, and Judit becomes increasingly complicated, i found myself more interested in her quirks and the way her relationships with Vlad and Karl evolve. And then we get the reveal that Vlad still holds a grudge against her because she has not taken accountability for the cruel and homophobic way she treated him as a child when their dad left, and Judit has been overcompensating for this cruelty ever since with her hyper-supportive persona. Everything about her character and their relationship clicks in that moment, and i was blown away by the way the reveal is handled. That's a slow-building setup/payoff right there. Judit is a great sympathetic character in retrospect, and her initial falsity rings true after learning why she is the way she is. And her overprotective overcorrection to her homophobia ironically accelerates the collapse of Karl and Vlad's relationship.

Anna on the other hand is already pretty fun to have around before we really learn anything about her (she's, like, an ~*empath*~, so she knows Karl likes Vlad before even he does), and after we get some insight into her character, i enjoy her even more. The scene i love is the scene everybody loves, of course. She throws a hell of an intimate get-together with the boys then says some raw shit about motherhood and trying to keep her identity outside of her daughter alive: "I don’t want to blame her one day for all the time that I have lost for myself." It's good stuff. Anna also is the one character in the spiraling crisis of the finale who i feel is trying to hold space for Karl's comfort when everyone else is intent on meddling and stressing him the fuck out. She understands what it's like to have her identity turned inside out, and she's trying her best (dammit, Judit!) to keep Karl and Vlad from losing everything they've worked for. She's also narratively their platonic Luisa analogue, but we'll get to Y Tu Mamá También later.

So i guess we gotta discuss the totality of that ending, a dreadful inevitability that led to me watching the last episode with my heart in my throat because the time remaining kept getting smaller while my boys were still boats passing in the night.

First of all, it's a perfect catastrophe, literally. Given the characters the series is working with, nearly everything that could go wrong goes wrong. Karl and Vlad are already anticipating the end of their cohabitation experiment. Uncle Santi shows up. (He's gay, and he suspects Karl may be as well, but Karl is still very much not out.) Karl retreats into the closet. Judit is in attack dog mode. Vlad and Anna are on edge. Second of all, it's heartbreaking, because it could have gone right. Vlad and Anna are planning a cute surprise for Karl after their group dinner (oh hey, you should watch "Dear Karl") and instead of getting to enjoy it with Vlad on his own terms, Karl has Judit's aggressively worded concerns about him treating Vlad like a secret rattling around his head. And Vlad is similarly stuck ruminating on Santi telling him not to push Karl into a relationship he's not ready for, so instead of challenging him, Vlad is already preparing to pull back. Then, just when it looks like "Dear Karl" might hold them together, only if for a night, Karl notices the other dinner guests blatantly staring at them kiss, immediately sending him into a violent spiral of gay disavowal (oof), which in turn cuts Vlad to his core (OOF). The final episode then explores the final threads of their life together coming undone, like i'm not already sobbing.

And the worst part, the part that leaves the audience (me, specifically) without relief? Neither Karl nor Vlad are wrong for behaving the way that they do. Anna (who is perfect) is certainly not wrong, and Judit and Santi, while wrong, are caring for their younger relatives in the ways they know how. Karl doesn't know how to be himself, because he's imagined himself as a placeholder for a second, better Self his entire life. Vlad doesn't want to be a second thought, a dirty secret, a thing shut away or left behind, because people have been doing that to him since he was a child.

A brief selection of quotes that still rend my tender gay heart in twain:

"I don’t know if I’m like you. I don’t even know who I am." (Karl)

"Just say it. It needs no euphemism, it's not an insult." (Vlad)

"I know I am not doing anything wrong, so why am I still afraid?" (Karl. Also: it's the homophobia.)

"I will not be the plot device to trigger someone else’s identity crisis!" (Vlad. I know he meant this a bit differently in context, but like. Bit late for that one innit bud.)

"We will welcome you when you are ready." (GSP. I'm ready for season two, babes. Please.)

The major thematic question that haunts the series finale is hinted at by Karl and Vlad's viewing of Y Tu Mamá También: Do Julio and Tenoch ever meet again after the movie ends? These characters are Karl and Vlad, two boys from different backgrounds who get swept up in a brief and ecstatic fantasy world of self-discovery before reality comes crashing back in. If there is hope for the former couple, there may still be a chance for the latter. But if the narrator of Y Tu Mamá También is right, if Julio and Tenoch never see each other again, where does that leave Karl and Vlad? And there's the question of Luisa/Anna. Did the boys only work together because this third character saw them as they truly were, without judgment? Is that why Karl and Vlad's dynamic collapses as Anna prepares to leave? The people have questions, Gaya Sa Pelikula. Please answer them i'm begging you

Stay for the credits after every episode to see a different bonus scene of Karl and Vlad hanging out until they don't anymore. Also stay for the final quote. It hits different after you watch everything go down.

Finally, Gaya Sa Pelikula translates to "Like in the Movies," which obviously tracks for the subject matter of the series, but i can't help but think that the end of the story as it stands is an eerie parallel to the final refrain of Regina Spektor's song "Just Like the Movies," which…

and if he loves me, then why does he leave? (x2) / don't say goodbye like you're burying him, 'cause the world is round, and he might return. (x2)

…yeah. That's gonna haunt me unless we get this sequel.

I had a good time, but:

When i say this show is ALL killer NO filler? There is nothing i would change about this story in its current state to improve my enjoyment, and there is nothing that irritated me. Yes, even the ending felt exactly right for where the story landed. Anything else i wanted from Gaya Sa Pelikula would have to be in the sequel, and unfortunately, well,

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: We have to discuss something extraordinarily shitty, and i apologize in advance. While Karl and Vlad deserve a sequel, more than any series i think i’ve seen, unfortunately Juan Miguel Severo, the lead writer of Gaya Sa Pelikula, (allegedly) sexually harassed someone in the course of making the show. I've seen very few details, but he was immediately terminated and removed from any association with the sequel, which has been in production limbo ever since. So if we ever do get a second season, it will be despite his (alleged) actions toward one of the lead actors. Kudos to the rest of the cast and crew, who deserve better than this unfortunate association with him. The director said that the show is bigger than one man, and i truly hope he's right. If the sequel never happens, i want to be on record saying this story deserved better, as well.

Conclusion: This show is so ridiculously fucking good, despite one of the people who worked on it. And the show is so much more than that one person, so i unreservedly appreciate the work the actors, directors, and all the underappreciated crew did, and i desperately hope it returns from purgatory for season two. It is the most consistently entertaining and earnest BL i've watched, and that makes the sad/open ending a thousand times more emotionally intense. Its characters have beautiful flaws. Its scenes are artfully arranged and presented. It's written and directed and acted in a deeply humane way. But there's so much more than this, and it genuinely hurts that the way Gaya Sa Pelikula impacted me is so utterly ineffable. I can't arrange words effusively enough, in this or any other language, to express how much i love it. The fact that this show ranks so highly for me in terms of my enjoyment, despite the downer ending and despite its shitty real-life backstory, speaks volumes. Gaya Sa Pelikula deserves every one of its flowers. I hope it gets a chance to earn more.

"What if turning thirty years old without having sex gave you the power to read minds?" I'm hooked. Please tell me more.

Cherry Magic is a chaste (ha!) little series with solid production value and a fun story that doesn't take itself too seriously but does try its best to be earnest and consistent, and if nothing else, i respect a show that does a good job being exactly what it is. The mind-reading virgin premise adds a unique supernatural element to the narrative without wasting screentime trying to explain itself. Sometimes weird things are just weird! The series also gets points for being an office rom-com without a boss-employee tryst or anyone getting fired because of a relationship, two of my LEAST favorite office romance tropes. Instead, Cherry Magic takes the popular kid/wallflower nerd high school dynamic, ages it up a decade and a half, and captures something magical about the banalities of adulthood and the timeless feeling of falling in love.

From the moment Kurosawa's hand first brushes Adachi's cheek, revealing his crush, i was riveted, and my enjoyment of their relationship only escalated from there. Wallflower nerd virgin Adachi and popular kid adult taxpayer Kurosawa are an excellent lead pairing, and the conceit of Adachi having to touch people to read their minds introduces an incredible amount of homoerotic tension between them despite the low levels of conventional heat. The fact that Adachi and (especially) Kurosawa both want badly to touch and be touched is played against Adachi's attempts not to take advantage of his new power, to great effect. I like the way both of them try to respect each other's boundaries but struggle deeply with their own repressed desires, which is far more effective and thematically resonant in this story than an external conflict.

Kurosawa's outer confidence and popular appeal belie his deep-seated self-doubt, and his actor gives an excellent performance full of half-hesitations and dazzling smiles whenever Adachi validates him. Adachi is a ball of self-deprecating neurosis who clings to routine for comfort. He doesn't realize his greatest strengths lie outside of his new powers, and it's nice to watch how his kindness to Kurosawa and his other coworkers ultimately forces his character to grow. They take care of each other, they listen to each other, they encourage each other, they remember each other's food preferences, they have wacky but temporary misunderstandings. Their domestic scenes are especially good, and i would pay real money to watch two hours of Kurosawa doing nothing but cooking for Adachi throughout the day.

The side characters of Fujisaki and Rokkaku are fun to have around. Fujisaki gets a whole subplot about how she wishes she didn't face so much familial pressure for being single, and the way Adachi handles discovering this information really rounds out both of their characters. It's nice when less prominent characters get thoughtful treatment in service of interesting themes. Rokkaku, who is hard-working and productive, but not always very perceptive, is a nice little comic relief character and helps advance or connect plot threads between our lead couples. Speaking of whom: Tsuge and Minato also exist. We'll get there soon. Both Fujisaki and Rokkaku come in clutch in the finale to make Kurosawa's Christmas fireworks date come true after some last-minute angst, and i love an ally moment.

Overall the writing for the show is fairly tight, and none of the characters end up feeling totally extraneous to its plot or themes. And there are a few interesting messages to look at. First, communication is key. (Adachi can read minds so it would be hard to avoid this takeaway, but it also gets a little spin when Adachi realizes he has to confess his power to Kurosawa.) Second, having a gift is not the same as knowing what to do with it. There are monents when Adachi thinks his power is an unfair advantage, but ultimately it's his strengths as a ~*natural empath*~ that inform his character, compared to Tsuge who is much less graceful with the same ability. Adachi chooses to use his power for compassion in a hundred tiny ways for several other characters, which ties into a third major theme: Never underestimate the impact your actions will have on others. Kurosawa loved Adachi because of a few moments of thoughtless kindness long before the events of the main timeline, and throughout the series small gestures of love or carelessness create opportunities for relationships to grow and strain.

Finally, Cherry Magic cares a lot about the idea that a person's thoughts and desires should only ever be their own. Fujisaki unpacks her desire to be partnered and rejects the notion that she has to find a relationship to please her family. Kurosawa has a massive crush on Adachi but never pressures him into going further, keeping his thoughts to himself (he thinks). Minato really likes to dance. And Adachi is terrified beyond reason that somehow he has abused his power to manipulate Kurosawa into a relationship in a massive breach of trust. (Which it kind of is, but he's fine with it.) So communication is important, but so are self-reflection, and boundaries, and trust, and kindness.

I had a good time, but:

The B-couple, but specifically Tsuge? Hands down the least pleasant part of my viewing experience. I understand how Japanese comedic acting can be very over-the-top, but this guy is doing way too much for the show he's in, and it's very grating. He never looks like anything other than a middle-aged man yelling in his 'funny' scenes, and his character is fairly demure otherwise so it tonally doesn't mesh with the rest of the series. Minato, who is inexplicably attracted to this behavior, has a bulletpoint of a personality that never really comes through, and an arc about following his dreams as a freestyle dancer that falls flat. His actor, and i'm trying to be charitable, never demonstrates any of this character's talent for dance, and the wig(? i hope) they put him in is a trip.

Unfortunately, you have been chopped: Bonus Episode "Tsuge & Minato."

Hope this wasn't too much of a shock! This episode is short and benign enough that i'm actually on the fence about axing it entirely, but it's just a whole episode of B-plot. I watched it specifically as filler between episodes 11 and 12 to build anticipation for the resolution between the characters i, uh, cared about. If you like Tsuge and Minato, this is probably fun and don't let the haters get you down. If you're in a time crunch because there are 50 other shows you're trying to watch and you need to cut corners somewhere, this corner is very cuttable.

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: N/A. I think everyone here does just fine.

Conclusion: Cherry Magic is a sweet little series that is, with the exception of its second couple, difficult not to enjoy. The central conceit is unique and its impact on the world of the story is written well without being overthought. It's fun to get inside the lead characters' heads and watch them develop, and the minor characters nudge the plot in interesting ways every now and then. This is a show that finds magic in a sea of adult drudgery, wearing its heart firmly on its sleeve. I love it very much. (Also there's a sequel coming. Might be fun?)