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In Between (Sa Pagitan ng Kamusta at Paalam)
1 people found this review helpful
Never Reaches Its Full Potential
This is a very romantic story with solid performances and a very nice flow to it. However, it does have its issues. The biggest one is the not quite believable love between the two main characters. While there was some chemistry, there was no spark, no passion, and no real connection between the two. They ‘played’ the parts well and made a beautiful couple, but there just was something about the sincerity of the attachment I found missing and lacking. But that did not totally negate the overall positivity of this series. Everyone here is certainly likeable and all did a good job of acting. However, some I liked more than others. If you want to read my full review of this series, please go to ppbongi.medium.com. I have more to say there and also about the 'Pangs'.Was this review helpful to you?
Tender and Beautiful
This series is superb! I loved it. One of the finest acting BL series I have seen. It is just joyous, funny, poignant, and intensely real. It is a simple story of a student who is paired with a ‘jock’ for a school project to benefit both. The screenplay is simply brilliant. There are no gimmicks or artificial dramas here. You see the characters flawed but each of them grows not episodically but by slow moving connections. It is the little things that they do for each other that lead to profound changes. They did a much better job of showing the raw emotions of the characters and the beautiful split screen shots that made them look like they were actually together than other series which used the same techniques. If you want to read my full review of this wonderful series, go to ppbongi.medium.com.Was this review helpful to you?
Emotional pain is the focal point to this series
It is a story about two guys essentially stuck in a condo because of the Covid pandemic. They do not know each other which makes for interesting dynamics. The dialogue between these two is nothing short of brilliant. This story grows on you because of two things. The acting becomes sincere and believable and the dialogue is superb and top notch. There are such deep meaningful dialogues almost too many to catch in one setting. The screenplay centering around the conversations they had between each other is one of the finest of any BL series. If you want to read my full review of this short but very interesting series, please go to ppbongi.medium.com.Was this review helpful to you?
Profoundly Realistic
This series is hard to describe. It starts out with a comedic flair to it and it is funny to a point. The screenplay for this series is one of the best. It captures in a very profound esoteric way the pain of coming out and how individualized it all is. Some are never able to make that transition while others make it almost instantly while others suffer through it perhaps in a torturous state , sometimes for years. The ending may put you into a deep funk but yet it is so realistic for many, many individuals who are trying to grapple with being gay. My full review of this very likeable and realistic story is at ppbongi.medium.com.Was this review helpful to you?
Storytelling at its Finest
What a story! This is SO good! It is a short (4 episode) series. It is like watching a movie that was simply broken into 4 parts. This is storytelling at its finest. It involves basically two characters with several supporting roles. To say that they are handsome would not do them justice. There is such chemistry between these two that is instantaneous. There is not a lot of back story and frankly none is needed. You only CARE about them. This is one of the finest acted BL series I have watched so far. It is intense with the last scenes so powerful that I honestly had to stop watching so I could compose myself. The story is imaginative, creative, quirky, sad, beautiful, and fulfilling. My full review is at ppbongi.medium.com.Was this review helpful to you?
A Secret Pleasure!
Formulaic, superficial, and unfocused (well, sort of). But sshh, I liked it - a lot! This BL series is an obvious low-budget, cookie-cutter story with stereotypical characters, and so-so acting. But what was great about this story is that it is NOT in a university, or filled with rich people or fancy cars, and everybody seemed to be cut from the same human cloth. It is in a rural area with a dialect I am not familiar with (or did not sound like your typical series from Thailand). Look, this is not a deep series. The acting is not first rate, but it is not bad. They seem wooden and stilted at times, but they are playing their parts with purpose and comfort. They are all so incredibly good looking, handsome, and beautiful. There is no lack of good looks here. This was quite a relatable story to everyday people who live down here rather than in sheltered environments like universities or surrounded by wealth. Kudos. If you want to review my full review of this rather interesting and likeable BL series, please read it at ppbongi.medium.com and leave me any comment. I would appreciate hearing from you.Was this review helpful to you?
Disappointing and Meandering
This BL series had such good potential and started out well. But then it meandered and veered off into silly and unnecessary directions, which was too bad because the overall story is actually entertaining. This was one of the few series that I almost gave up watching. The production, editing, and translations into English made it very difficult to watch. The story dragged on and on especially for the' main' couple and I found that relationship insufferable. I thought the 'secondary relationships' (if you want to call it that) were way more interesting and had more potential for development. This could have been a good solid story but it did not believe in itself and then got lost. These actors, for the most part, are very young and inexperienced yet they carried what they could on their own without any real direction or solid production. If you want to read my full review of this series, please go to ppbongi.medium.com. Leave a comment if you like.Was this review helpful to you?
Almost a Masterpiece
This series came the closet of any series I have watched (since “Until We Meet Again” to becoming a masterpiece. It is a brilliant and superb work of beautiful art that will be remembered. It is a profoundly moving and deeply spiritual series that is one of the best if not the best acted BL series. The ending just let me down in so many, many ways. So, it never quite reaches the mountain top. They just did not believe that they had an amazing story and instead went to tug at heartstrings and missed it completely. This is a story of love. Actually, two love stories where nothing else really matters. Both are deep, intense, and forever. You know that; you sense that; you feel that. One love is destined for tragedy and the other is destined to transcend time itself in its simple beauty and intensity. No matter how you look at this series, it will be one that no doubt will deeply and profoundly affect you. It is impossible not to feel. The acting in this series is nothing short of superlative. All four have shown great depth to their characters and took us on a journey through their characters’ developments. The major flaw in this series is that it did not bring the audience on the journey even if that journey is painful. If you want to read my full review of this amazing series, go to ppbongi.medium.com. Thanks.Was this review helpful to you?
Entertaining BL Based On False Premises
This is another in a long-line of time travel BLs that is honestly, as a plotline, getting a bit overused and frankly dishonest. That does not take away from the theatrics of this production, however. It is a beautifully produced series with spectacular sets, scenery, and settings. Yet, it could not quite figure out how to simplify the complexities of its time jumps. What also diminished the impact of this story for me was the obvious false presumption of the time frame that the main protagonist jumped into. How much more entertaining it would have been HAD the time travel been based on actual facts. Homosexuality was not thought of as taboo or morally wrong or frowned upon 400 years ago in Thailand. So, the whole and entire premise of this story is fallacious.Is the story entertaining? Of course, it is. The entertainment portion of this series is not in question (well, at least most of it – some of it was down-right silly). I love period pieces and the cinematography, costumes, scenes, and times of this period are my romantic fantasyland. I also love time travel if it logically comes to a sensible and believable conclusion that is formed by some sort of rational inference. This unfortunately just did not pragmatically make sense. It twisted itself into a pretzel trying to explain reincarnation through time travel.
It would be not just entertaining but informative if a time-jump story actually went back and presented a factual picture of what life was like 400 years ago and not based upon modern-day, Westernized sensitivities. Or a time-jump story in reverse – a gay couple from the past jumps to the present and them trying to deal with our prejudices, bigotries, and discriminations.
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Cinematically Wonderful But .....
Pretty quickly, however, we realize that this story is stilted and becomes astonishingly boring. I mean REALLY boring. Frankly, it is bland and exceedingly predicable; one could easily write the next dialogue long before it was going to happen. That is how predictable and trite this narrative unfolded. Nothing and I mean nothing surprised me. I almost fell asleep watching this series. With few exceptions, almost everyone is wooden, ostensibly and unfortunately, also cliché. This is a cinematic triumph. The cinematography transports you back to the early 20th century indeed. The costumes were some of the finest I have ever seen and are presented in exceptional detail. The sets were wonderfully detailed, and we were transported to a different era. It is so unfortunate that the action in the story did not match everything else. I kept waiting for something to happen and nothing ever did. Even the kissing scenes and love scenes were muted and sanitized and almost presented like two schoolboys on a camping trip. Certain aspects were not serious in nature. It was indeed so soft that if forgot to do something to my heart. Watching paint dry would have been more emotionally satisfying. Even the secondary couple, while better in terms of emotional fulfilment, was only slightly more engaging in relatability and depth. Neither couple honestly made my heart pitter-patter in any way, shape, or form. This series was flatly dull from an emotional fulfillment.Was this review helpful to you?
I Was Not Enamored
I honestly was not enamored with this series. I have a difficult time with movies and series trying to make gay life ‘perfect’. This even went beyond that. It gave an individual an opportunity for a second chance to relive his life. A do-over. What the series called a reset. But frankly, I was unsure why he deserved a do-over nor did I think he deserved one. It was simply baffling. He reached a pinnacle in this life for which most of us will never accomplish or attain or even dare to dream about. My issue with this series has nothing to do with the acting, per se. Yet it is the supposition itself I have a problem with. One must begin to question what were we watching then? Did it feel real? I had to decide that it obviously was not and therefore this was all a dream, an illusion. It was too perfect; too quixotic. Overall, I simply found this series rather predictable and at times trite. While I certainly get its hypnotic attraction, I just could not get into it with any sense of realism. I for one am getting tired of seeing gay love being portrayed as something that is not attainable in this life.Was this review helpful to you?
A Winnie The Pooh Story
Watching this series will no doubt put you into a diabetic coma from sugar shock. It is so overly sweet that it becomes a travesty. Enough with the prepubescent silliness of what an ideal image of young gay relationships are. These are NOT them. I am not trying to convince anyone that my assessment is correct, but it is time now for some serious reflections on how and what is presented as young gay men in love that is actually authentic. And this ain’t it! And you are doing a gross injustice to young gay, lesbian, trans, and questioning individuals by constantly portraying this nonsense where relationships between adolescent gay boys are so easy to develop, maintain, and be accepted and worst of all so nauseatingly sweet and sanitized. They are not. And every one of their problems and issues has easy solutions; they do not.Summarily, this series is passe, outdated, disparaging, and most of all does not have a modicum of connection to reality or candor. This is a Pollyanna world; not Earth 1.
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The Performers Deserved Better
I hate to be so brutally honest, but this is one of the worst BLs of 2024. Literally, everything about this series, except perhaps the acting, was uninspiring. Although the young performers did a ‘yeoman’s job’ in trying to keep this shipwreck afloat, they alone could not salvage this complete mess from sinking. Honestly, to say otherwise, is living in a fantasyland and not dealing with any sense of reality. It is a tepid story with a fragmental screenplay, ineptly directed, disjointly executed, and undoubtedly should never have been (re)made. The only plus about this series literally is that they had the appropriate aged actors and actresses for the roles. They were young, attractive, innocent in real life, and tried their best to make sense of a story that was essentially senseless. Full disclosure, I did not watch the first ‘Love Sick’, so this was all ‘new’ to me. Thus, I cannot compare it to the original. Besides, this is a stand-alone production and ought to be judged on its own merits or faults.Was this review helpful to you?
A Wonderful Story of Loneliness
What I am astonished is how others see series. As of late, South Korean BLs can be a ‘hit or miss’. Some are profoundly impactful while others are full of trite and mundane storylines. I found this to be simply brilliant while others found its ending cliché. For me, that was the most endearing part of this series. I have lived a long time and as trite as that behavior was portrayed, I have seen and witnessed this behavior in my life more times than I can count to many of my gay friends. It is called ‘jealousy’ and it is indeed a very ugly emotions that makes both males and females do awful, damaging and destructive things to others. And unfortunately, I do not think that emotion will ever diminish. This is a wonderful story, really. It is a story of loneliness but told with such compassion and tenderness.Was this review helpful to you?
Standard Thai BL
Admittedly, this series is perfectly named. It did seem to continue to go on and on endlessly. It was like being adrift in a rudderless boat floating in an ocean of tropes, clichés, banalities, stereotypes, and platitudes. Sooner or later, you would bump into one of them on your way to wherever it was you were supposed to be going. Unfortunately, this series went nowhere because it had nowhere to go to. Honestly, you have seen this story hundreds of times if you are an avid BL watcher. If not, you will no doubt run across its plot again because it is standard. It is another high school love story between two best friends. I know that many will no doubt like this series, but I found this series wantoned for its shallowness, use of endlessly tropey and cliché storylines, supporting characters that were superfluously infantile and not funny, the main characters never got to be a couple until the last episode and by that point it was too late, and a supposed secondary couple that was never fully developed into anything meaningful. I also found it quite sad that these two guys, who are otherwise solid and successful, could not bring themselves to communicate with each other. That for me is simply not a subject matter I can find funny.Was this review helpful to you?
