AbsoluteBL
chronic traveller
This review may contain spoilers
opposites attract, grumpy/sunshine, impossible dreams
Stars Kpop’s best known out gay singer, Holland, and Han Gi Chan (Where Your Eyes Linger). Noodle shop! Broken dreams! This is a solid little KBL, with a good premise and cast. Manic pixie dream boy can get old fast but when contrasted with awkward grumpy chef? It’s a tasty combo that elevates both ingredients. Holland is a charming screen presence - baby boy is HYPNotiC. And while I wasn’t entirely sold on the chemistry, these two did give us some very good kisses and sweet domesticity. I grinned through most episodes and I didn’t even mind the standard KBL 1 year separation at the end because it felt so true to the characters.
It was Tommy’s wardrobe that really clued me in as to what was going on with this show. His jumpers are full of rough shaggy textures and stormy-beach colors: sandy browns, blues, and grays. Not necessarily colors you normally associate with an ocean, but the colors that really are there on a cold northern beach in particular. We are left wondering if Tommy is meant to be an actual boy or if he is instead a representation of the ocean. Is this actually about Ba Da learning to love himself? (Since bada means ocean).
Tommy is like a piece of beautiful driftwood that has been tossed upon the shore, soon to be swept away again on the next tide. We aren’t surprised when he leaves, we aren’t surprised that he is both capricious and consistent. He may or may not be the spirit of the sea, but either way he embodies both its relentlessness and its transience.
The sparse coldness permeating this show in contrast to the cozy domesticity it depicts when the boys are together reminded me of something out of Scandinavian film. This whole series is permeated by a sense of winter. The lighting and style is exactly the opposite to the warm atmospheric feel we got from Cherry Blossoms After Winter. These are, in a way, two different ends of the spectrum of BL that Korea produces yet they both embody the precision stiffness of KBL.
We watchers of KBL are often left with this persistent idea that we are missing something all the time, something the characters are doing just off screen, or in between episodes. We missed it but Korea also didn’t WANT to show it to us because they find it too painfully intimate to portray. This absence colors all KBL with a certain wistfulness. There’s so much left unsaid. But also un-filmed. All the scenes that Thai BL would consider key, are left out. But, for me, Oceans Likes Me managed to justify this aspect of itself in a way other recent KBLs have not (I’m looking at you: Love Class). We never see Tommy and Ba Da actually become boyfriends, they just... suddenly... are. It’s as inevitable as the ocean. There is no confession scene, there’s no first time, there’s just THEM.
And then, just as quickly Tommy is swept away and there is no them anymore.
I understand the premise of this ending (unlike most of the arbitrary Kdrama 11th hour separations) which is: sometimes you can’t just support someone else’s dreams, you have to separate in order to pursue your own dream. It’s not a lack of love that ends the relationship it’s conflicting life goals.
I was happy (and a little surprised, frankly) that they brought it back around and ended with the boys together again.
RECOMMENDED
It was Tommy’s wardrobe that really clued me in as to what was going on with this show. His jumpers are full of rough shaggy textures and stormy-beach colors: sandy browns, blues, and grays. Not necessarily colors you normally associate with an ocean, but the colors that really are there on a cold northern beach in particular. We are left wondering if Tommy is meant to be an actual boy or if he is instead a representation of the ocean. Is this actually about Ba Da learning to love himself? (Since bada means ocean).
Tommy is like a piece of beautiful driftwood that has been tossed upon the shore, soon to be swept away again on the next tide. We aren’t surprised when he leaves, we aren’t surprised that he is both capricious and consistent. He may or may not be the spirit of the sea, but either way he embodies both its relentlessness and its transience.
The sparse coldness permeating this show in contrast to the cozy domesticity it depicts when the boys are together reminded me of something out of Scandinavian film. This whole series is permeated by a sense of winter. The lighting and style is exactly the opposite to the warm atmospheric feel we got from Cherry Blossoms After Winter. These are, in a way, two different ends of the spectrum of BL that Korea produces yet they both embody the precision stiffness of KBL.
We watchers of KBL are often left with this persistent idea that we are missing something all the time, something the characters are doing just off screen, or in between episodes. We missed it but Korea also didn’t WANT to show it to us because they find it too painfully intimate to portray. This absence colors all KBL with a certain wistfulness. There’s so much left unsaid. But also un-filmed. All the scenes that Thai BL would consider key, are left out. But, for me, Oceans Likes Me managed to justify this aspect of itself in a way other recent KBLs have not (I’m looking at you: Love Class). We never see Tommy and Ba Da actually become boyfriends, they just... suddenly... are. It’s as inevitable as the ocean. There is no confession scene, there’s no first time, there’s just THEM.
And then, just as quickly Tommy is swept away and there is no them anymore.
I understand the premise of this ending (unlike most of the arbitrary Kdrama 11th hour separations) which is: sometimes you can’t just support someone else’s dreams, you have to separate in order to pursue your own dream. It’s not a lack of love that ends the relationship it’s conflicting life goals.
I was happy (and a little surprised, frankly) that they brought it back around and ended with the boys together again.
RECOMMENDED
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