John Master

[Regular readers of my reviews will know that I usually minimize spoilers when summarizing a series. This one probably spoils more of the story than my customary wont, though I endeavor to keep all revelations as obscure as possible. Also this review will pretend the badly edited final 5 minutes of the finale that generated so much justifiable confusion simply never happened.]

This Korean BL camouflages an obsessive, jealousy-prone seme behind a mostly sweet story that otherwise follows the standard playbook for friends-to-lovers (secret crush variation). Summertime is both difficult to recommend without reservation and too good to reject outright. Most of my reservation owes to the toxic behavior of one lead character, while most of my enthusiasm stems from the competent execution of a hoary old trope whose viability within the BL genre has been demonstrated time and time again. Following a comprehensive summation of the story, I shall first address potential negatives, then circle back to the series’ strengths. Then you, Dear Reader, can make your own well-informed determination about watching.

High schoolers Do Hyeon and Eun Ho have been lifelong friends, bonded since birth by the friendship of their parents. Do Hyeon is a star student while Eun Ho, indifferent to his studies, quests for “his crowd” among peers who drink, smoke, and cut class. Eun Ho’s new cohort excludes Do Hyeon, who performs adolescence (outwardly) in the guise of the model student. Somewhere along the line, Do Hyeon, now an orphan functioning as an adjunct son within Eun Ho’s family, developed romantic feelings toward his lifelong chum—a development Eun Ho remains oblivious to. Through the first quartet of episodes, Do Hyeon’s secret crush catalyzes the story. Those episodes worked well to sow the seeds of a BL relationship.

When Eun Ho, mid-series, eventually recognizes a budding attraction to Do Hyeon, the series loses some oomph. I would issue a mild demerit for how the series played this evolution because Eun Ho’s awakening felt like it responded to storyboard necessity—“we are at the point in the series where it is time write in a reciprocal attraction”—rather than springing from character interactions portrayed on screen. If Eun Ho’s burgeoning feelings do not come across as entirely earned by the writing, they are not entirely unearned either. (I did mention the series is a tricky one to recommend for or against! This angle represents another reason for my split thinking beyond the toxic boyfriend problem. I hate when BL characters just start liking each other for no apparent reason, but this series only goes halfway down that road.) One of the series’ strengths is the way the force of Do Hyeon’s personality constantly leaves Eun Ho feeling overshadowed or forgotten. That theme (more later) defines the dynamic between the leads, both while in high school and when they reach college. The latter’s cultivation of an alternate friend group (the smokers and drinkers) signals his growing realization that he and his lifelong best friend are growing in different directions. (Another theme we shall return to.) The new friend group threatens Do Hyeon’s primacy in Eun Ho’s world and prompts him to reevaluate how to handle his secret crush. Originally content to wait for Eun Ho to see in him what he sees in Eun Ho, the arrival of a transfer student who makes no secret of his own romantic interest in Eun Ho spurs Do Hyeon to bring his feelings into the open. The competition both unleashes Do Hyeon’s worst instincts, and supplies this reviewer’s chief reservation about the entire series: Do Hyeon is kind of toxic.

Toxic boyfriends are quite popular among some of BL fandom, while other BL fans have no appreciation for it. So, I’d expect this attribute of the series to yield mixed results in its popularity. If you find any of the following behaviors disturbing, maybe give Summertime a miss:

• Obsessive pursuit of a crush
• Jealousy (the angry type) over time not spent with him
• Seeking to control what friends Eun Ho can spend time with
• Ordering others to stop being friends with Eun Ho
• Yanking Eun Ho around by the arm without permission (repeatedly)
• Kissing without consent
• Ridiculing Eun Ho’s jealousy (the insecure “I’m not good enough” type)
• Acting as if he is entitled to get his way no matter what

This list does not even include the instance where Do Hyeon rats on Eun Ho to his parents that their precious son has been smoking. Why? Because getting Eun Ho in trouble in that moment suited the aims of Do Hyeon’s clandestine courtship. In other words, he put his own needs ahead of those of the person he has feelings for. In my personal subjectivity—both in real life and in choosing BL couples to follow—such me-first behavior ought to disqualify the perpetrator as potential boyfriend material. For his part, Eun Ho, rightly, perceives hypocrisy and betrayal. Yet because Do Hyeon’s romantic agenda is unknown to him in that moment, Eun Ho has no reason to reject Do Hyeon a suitor. He doesn’t even perceive that Do Hyeon desires something else. He simply sees a close friend being a jerk. In fact, the betrayal can even come across as Do Hyeon looking out for Eun Ho’s best interests: one best friend seeking to protect another from undesirable influences. Unlike Eun Ho, however, the audience is free to perceive either side of Do Hyeon: he’s either a dedicated romantic or a self-serving jack-ass.

In other words, viewers who do not enjoy red flag romances will find plenty to dislike in how Summertime unfurls its tale. Yet, so crafty is the writing that Do Hyeon can still be redeemed as a BL leading man for those who either choose to overlook the obsessive tendencies or who find such single-minded pursuit of a crush endearing. An example from later in the series highlights this paradox. The penultimate episode features a moment when Do Hyeon, now in college, shows up with his new college buddies at Eun Ho’s family’s restaurant, where a begrimed Eun Ho waits tables. The scene showcases the character’s selfish nature. “I came here because I wanted to see you no matter what,” explains Do Hyeon after the belated realization that Eun Ho feels nothing but embarrassment to meet Do Hyeon’s new crowd in that unflattering, servile circumstance. If a viewer adores Do Hyeon for the way he wants to see Eun Ho all the time, then the scene works as proof of Do Hyeon’s undying affection. (Or, as Do Hyeon himself sees things.) By contrast, the viewer who already regards Do Hyeon as a selfish, inconsiderate prick will see bringing strangers to his boyfriend’s workplace as a total dick move. No matter which interpretation you lean to, the scene is no isolated lapse in Do Hyeon’s judgment. Nor is it simply a foible of youth. That inability to consider Eun Ho’s needs before his own typifies the person Do Hyeon is and has always been.

Complicated and flawed lead character aside, Summertime delivers solid BL storytelling. Most aspects of the friends-to-lovers trope work well. Do Hyeon conceals his secret crush in convincing fashion until the appearance of a rival forces his hand. Caught off-guard by the confession, Eun Ho is at first appalled before warming to the idea of “no longer friends, but boyfriends.” Their confused attempts to redefine their dynamic, simultaneously portraying inner conflict with excitement, feel like a realistic response to an awkward situation. The pacing of that evolution was well-handled across the first six of eight episodes. That pacing even left time for the audience to experience the characters as boyfriends in the final two episodes, whereas many BL series simply conclude when the courtship phase ends. The angle where Eun Ho’s parents consider orphaned Do Hyeon a surrogate son lends substance to Eun Ho’s backstory and injects an element that feels original into the familiar friends-to-lovers storyframe. The writers also deployed the high school friend group to effective, if minimal, purpose—albeit, the transfer student (who arrived as an out gay character) had more potential to his build-up than was realized later. All things considered, Summertime executes its premise very well.

Two strong sub-themes added depth to the characters and story. I’ve already touched on one, Eun Ho’s feelings of inadequacy when comparing his own achievements to Do Hyeon’s. For example, Eun Ho’s mother and father, while praising their bonus son Do Hyeon’s academic prowess, occasionally managed to make their own son feel like an afterthought. Eun Ho’s inferiority complex recurs throughout the series, so that when his insecurity comes to dominate the emotional tenor of the final two episodes, that shift feels like a natural outgrowth of careful worldbuilding. The second recurring theme likewise informs how the endgame played out: that the friends of our youth may no longer be suited to us as we grow up into adults. In fact, people grow apart. Too many BL series just posit that high school friendships are eternal and that first-love will endure forever, but Summertime’s writers linked personal growth to our choice of friends. I particularly appreciated how early the writers seeded this theme. At one point a teacher flat out states that his charges should not expect the friends they have now to remain close when they become adults. That interaction caused Eun Ho, then struggling with the fact that Do Hyeon was on track for an elite university while he had no particular aspirations for his own life, to question whether their newly established romantic relationship had a future. In fact, the teacher’s comment pays off several episodes later in the scene described above when Do Hyeon brings his college friends to Eun Ho’s family’s restaurant. The emotional power of the moment derives from the growing estrangement (and jealousy) that Eun Ho felt because Do Hyeon’s life moved forward while his had not. That scene therefore tied both recurring thematic subtexts into a single elegant bow just in time for the finale.

The primary reason Summertime succeeds more than it fails, however, is because the viewer can sense the bond between Do Hyeon and Eun Ho. While the writing is solid, much of the credit owes to the actors. Their chemistry during the early “friends” portion of the series comes across as two people who do, indeed, know each other through and through. I keenly appreciated how Eun Ho could see Do Hyeon’s flaws (not the toxic romantic ones but the ordinary teen-aged ones). “That’s just how my friend is” reads his exasperated expression, but it’s also obvious Eun Ho never doubts their friendship. When the “boyfriend” dynamic kicks in later, the performers commit fully to selling the audience on the intensity of the physical relationship. I particularly appreciated that their first screen kisses were kind of typical BL lip presses, but the later ones showed two actors committed to their characters heatedly making out. That progression kind of mirrors how their characters evolved from lacking any kiss skills to being quite adept at the art during a time in their relationship when they ought to have had plenty of practice. In another late-going scene, the lads shower together, and the actors do not shy away from pressing wet skin against wet skin—a level of commitment to simulated sexual contact too few BL series manage to attain.

This review’s opening sentence asserted the series “camouflages” bad behavior behind a sweet story that relies on a popular trope. I think that camouflage will succeed in getting many people to overlook, forgive, or miss outright objectionable issues they might otherwise dislike. The most glaring example of this paradox arises in episode 8 (of 10) when Eun Ho and Do Hyeon celebrate their arrival into adulthood by having sex up against the window-wall of a high-rise building at night. By Korean BL standards, the scene is blocked and performed to create a first-rate NC scene. At one level, the moment feels both cathartic (the characters earned this moment!) and erotic (well-constructed titillation is a rarity in BL!). I have to credit the actors and the writers and the director for crafting an NC scene that feels unique and fresh. Yet I cannot feel as if the moment is just another example of Do Hyeon’s repeated attempts to convert his obsession with Eun Ho into possessiveness. True, Eun Ho never asserts a protest or offers resistance, but Do Hyeon never seeks consent either. He pushes his boyfriend into the glass. He strips down his pants. He starts screwing him from behind. That the whole world, if they happened to glance upward, could see this act seems like another way for Do Hyeon to proclaim his ownership: “This one is mine!” As an expression of lustful desire, the scene succeeds. As an example of a long courtship ending with a loving, tender denouement, it does not. Whether this scene strikes you as “so hot that nothing else matters” versus “it’s hot but it’s also kind of icky” may well indicate how you end up feeling about the entire courtship between Do Hyeon and Eun Ho. How you rate Summertime hangs in that same balance.