Across the Sky (2023)

soap opera musical with cute BL side couple

Overall: this a series with some cutesy music numbers interspersed with soap opera stuff. 14 episodes about an hour long each. Aired https://youtu.be/la9YzvKhaAI?si=DcAq0zPNhbgvWM8E (episodes 11-14 were never subbed)

Content Warnings: past death, grief, intimate partner abuse, child abuse, fights/punches, held against will, homophobia

BL Couple Scenes
- episode 2, 17:10-30:10 and 55:50-56
- episode 4, 14:50-17:50
- episode 6, 16-19:20
- episode 8, 38:30-40:05
- episode 9, 50-53
- episode 10, 28:40-29:40 and 45:35-48
- episode 13, 30-33
- episode 14, 54-54:30

What I Liked
- the BL couple was sweet, needed more scenes
- character growth

Room For Improvement
- BL side couple needed more screentime
- not a fan of love triangles but it ended fine
- never subbed episodes 11-14
- cutesy music numbers interspersed with some serious topics was a bit jarring

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Dumpster Fire

I'm actually afraid to make this review because, it might just be my ignorance towards Thai Dramas. This is my 1st Thai Series, but 4th in terms of media, so it might just be the nuance or the cultural difference that I'm not getting, but I'll do it anyway. I'll be the black sheep for this drama.

The story is like a dumpster fire. It's so wacky and garbage. It has bad writing, full of cliche plot points, shameless product placements, and is also fast-paced. I say bad writing, but there are some parts where the writer managed to hit all the points that it needs to hit story wise. It has a lot of side plots as well, like A LOT that doesn't even contribute to the main story. I appreciate the topics some of the side plots tackled, like the LGBT and family Issues regarding chasing your dreams, but for me, it was like forcing something that was not the main thing of the show. I guess it's because some of them didn't have any effect on the Main Couple as well, that's why it felt like a distraction to me. You could've either cut it down or made the runtime longer. I didn't know that you could have a Music drama, that has politics in it, it's only a little bit, but you get the point I'm trying to make. I also couldn't understand some of the character's actions or decisions like I get this is a drama, but come on... at least make it convincing. It is so bad. I say fast-paced, it's because this drama has a lot to unpack, but they had to fit it all into 10 Episodes only.

The Characters, I only came here because of the Main Actress, she's a great actress, but that alone wasn't enough. I almost dropped this show, but what kept me going was the wacky dynamic between these characters after episode 4. I'm not even watching this because of the romance aspect, but purely for shits and giggles. I couldn't really feel any of the characters, but Chalarm though... he was annoying, but because of his dynamic with ML and how it evolved later on, that I appreciate, though it kinda gave off BL vibes, which is fine because that means they got good chemistry going on. And I love how the writer stood firm and went above 100 with these characters, great job on that. Like Chalarm as an example, again he was annoying and they explored all the avenues that he could do to make him a hateable character and in the end, he realized, then he changed. So I guess you could say, he was the one that stood out to me.

The music in this drama amazed me, not because it's good, but because you can tell they got the budget or I don't know, maybe music production in Thailand is not cheap because they had a lot of singing segments here and that's also one of the annoying things. I know it's a music drama, but they got a lot of random ass singing scenes that don't even connect. I already get how the character felt, you don't have to double it down, by having him dance and sing, it's sooo random. The bgm and sfx are soo exaggerated as well, I laugh every time a character makes an expression and you have this super exaggerated sound in the background, I think the only thing left is the on-the-top editing and you have those Indian edits that you see online.

Overall, I like how it ended and how it was resolved. I think despite being a dumpster fire it somehow managed to land its own two feet at the end. How I ended up in this show is that I saw a reel of FL and I was like "Ohh... She's Pretty!" Then I found out she's an actress.

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