Frustrating, but some redeeming qualities

This review is an opinion. It is not intended to sway you or discourage you from watching a drama. It is a personal opinion and critique of what I found worked and didn't work for the drama. Please make your own informed opinions and decisions.

Until We Meet Again is a Boy's love drama directed by Siwaj Sawatmaneekul (also known as P'New) who has directed such works as; Love By Chance; Make it Right; and War of High School to name a few of his popular projects.

Until We Meet Again is a love story about four young men whose lives are interconnected by the “red string of fate” and the tragedies that befalls them due to homophobia and family interference. Without going into spoiler details, one couple lives in the past and the other in the present. The special thing in the plot is that the director takes dramatic liberties such as, not telling the story linearly in time but using slices; the present mixed with the past. This allows for both stories to co-exist without overshadowing each other. It also helps drive the point home that all four of these people are interconnected by their fate and they cannot escape it.

This story brings back one of my favorite actors, Fluke! You may remember him from My Bromance and Red Wine in the Dark Night. He took a break from acting for a few years, but his lovable portrayal of his characters made him a household name not easy to forget. In this drama, Fluke shows why he is considered a great BL actor.

Directing: P’New is good at what he does, which is, telling the story in a way that connects with the viewers. However, editing was an issue in regards to the way the story was told. There instances where characters seemed out of place or rather, the scene could have been more effective with the right editing or right characterization.

Acting: Everyone played their role to their best. Fluke as always takes on his character’s specifics traits and brings them to life. He was the soul of this drama. Ohm, likewise, gave the ever cold and moody Dean the right touch. I found myself rooting for Earth and Kao because their story seemed more interesting and would have been a great one to tell first. Obviously the drama suffered from the ever present too many characters, so proper development of stories and characters suffered quite a bit here.

CONS

However, though the acting is good, I think that we as ther viewers are often asked to use our imagination where a character has long pauses .... This is a critique not just for this BL, but for most Thai Bls in general. Whenever there is an inner monologue by a character, we are not given that information. Rather, you have awkward pauses where you can tell that the character is “thinking” or “talking to themselves” It is such an easy fix, by having the actor’s voiceover during those scenes. This also helps with those pauses because we the viewers are to deduce if they are thinking or talking to themselves. I wish we have more inner monologues to get an idea of what the character is thinking.

Side characters: The drama suffered from the too many characters/couples syndrome (TMC) that Thai BLs always want to insert. Though there were two main couples, the series kept inserting one more “couple” and hinted at a potential couple with Manaow that went nowhere. Now, this is done intentionally by directors who are looking to expand the dramas into another season, but with director New, no one ever knows if his dramas will have a second season. If they do have a second season, obviously that drama will focus on the couples that did not get proper development.

SLOW BURN/PACE: Though the couple kind of gets together within a few episodes, the drama drags

Another issue for me was leaving the climax for the end and not in the middle of the story. It wasted a lot of the story.

Music: As always P’New relies on Boy for the music. He is a great singer and his songs are always perfect for BL dramas, but I wish that his music wasn’t as repeated as much in nearly all of the poignant scenes. Those scenes would have benefited from a melody instead of a lyrical song. Also, often the music was louder than expected and for me that was distracting.

Plot Holes galore: So many plot holes, so little time spent on clearing them up.

In the end, it's an okay drama to watch when things are slow or no BLs are airing. The cast did the best they could with what they got.

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Not bad for a GMM BL

My usual disclaimer would go here, but I am not putting it because I have an MDL friend who just loves to tease me about them (you know who you are)

If you are asking yourself...Should I watch this? The short answer from me would be yes. Between this and Tonhon Cholatee--another series from GMM, I will say that Fish Upon the Sky is 1000xs better and that's saying a lot. So if you watched that other drama, I don't see why you won't like this one. But we all have different tastes and likes.

What can I say...I have a love and hate relationship with GMM because they are notorious for having some excellent dramas but dropping the ball somewhere along the journey.

Fortunately, they have been doing relatively okay with the past release of A tale of 1000 stars and the follow-up with this drama. (Tonhon Cholatee do not exist in my mind)

Fish upon the sky is a very formulaic Romantic Comedy that is geared towards a younger crowd, so if you aren't into that sort of thing, this isn't going to be for you. I personally found that though the drama was lacking in many places, it was cute and fun to watch when I had nothing to do.

The characters are memorable, some in a good way others ...eh not so much. While many liked Mork, I personally found him to be way too pushy and kind of the opposite of what he was selling to Pi. His whole "caring for a plant" speech truly made me see him as being the one who was obsessive and not Pi with his crush on Nam. I still got to admit though that Mork had some really good moments, but he fu&&& up so many times too.

What I really liked about this drama was Pi and the social commentary on how social media, bullying, and invasion of privacy really affect the mental wellbeing of an individual. Pi struggled so much with low self-esteem, social anxiety, and distrust of others. Phuwin played him so well and though his crying face was too comical to be taken seriously, I still rooted for him from the get-go. He has so many character flaws that made him super relatable.

One of my gripes was with the fujoshi gang... especially in the last episode. Mork sort of forcing Pi to accept their relationship public to satisfy the Fujoshis was kind of voyeuristic in a sense. I couldn't help but feel kind of frustrated because a relationship between him and Pi has two people not the rest of their school body. There was no need to confirm anything with them. That was just so...I wanted to just scream at them "mind your FU*** business"

And again we villainized the female character for the sake of drama. Though her character in the novel does something similar, there was really no need to create such a conflict. The conflict of Pi's mistrust and unsureness of his relationships with Mork was more than enough and they could have expanded on that and worked on them getting over that hurtle.

Overall, it was a good fluffy drama. I am in the minority, but I actually liked Duen and Meen...and their friends were hilarious too.

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Cliches are treated realistically for the most part.

Have you ever asked yourself, “if I wanted to introduced someone into the world of Boys Love drama series, what would be the first recommendation I would make?” As someone who has been reading and watching Boy Love content for nearly fifteen years of my life, I made my first trip into the BL drama series by watching a few Chinese dramas that were circulating on the web. I began to explore more of the genre, which led me to gems such as Sotus (the first one), Love sick, HIStory the complete anthology and so on. However, now that I am a bit more knowledgeable and have watched a fair number of series from different countries, if I were to make a recommendation to a new fan, I would simply say that Love By Chance (LBC) is definitely where they want to start. There is so much I can write about this drama. I don’t usually recommend dramas to people because we all have different tastes. However, I feel that this drama was well done even with some missed opportunities here and there.

Edited to include comments regarding the last episode.

Why you ask? (spoilers ahead) LONG REVIEW AHEAD

The drama is cliche as any other drama---Rich kid falls for poor kid and vice versa (or poor girl marries into rich family if we are speaking in the heterosexual genre) The two come from two completely different world and were raised differently. Rich kid is shy, introverted, polite, has a low expectation of himself, low self esteem. Poor kid on the other hand is, honest, to the point, explosive in nature (his feelings), knows has faults but doesn’t let those flaws define him, sweet and a protector of sorts. So the two are complete opposites and they as the cliche saying goes “opposites attract”. However, these two also help each other become better for themselves and for others.

Consent: This drama is all about being “woke”...without getting too political I just want to say that in the midst of this “#metoo” movement, it’s refreshing to watch a drama where characters are always asking for consent--to kiss, to touch, to have sex. Often, as I mentioned in the beginning, many of the BLs I have watched have normalized drunken sex (where one party is drunk and has sex with another person who isn’t drunk...someone is drunk they cannot consent, no matter how HOT that character is.) Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not out to lynch anyone for liking those types of scenes, but when the default sex between a couple who is of the same sex is that one is drunk, then we have a problem. Sending the signal that it’s okay to have sex with someone drunk is wrong. (How to know when it’s wrong? Ask yourself, would you be okay if the drunk person had been a woman?) I bet most will say NO it would not be okay, so why would it be okay for it to be the default for two boys in a drama? That's why I was conflicted with the Kengkla/Techno pairing because their story does rely on this trope. However, the director wisely left this until the very last episode and while they still romanticized it and made "drunken sex/rape" something "acceptable" by the offended person, I can easily say you can chose to ignore that scene and the drama would still be a good one to watch.

Communication: It was surprising how easy most problems were resolved by communicating! Who knew that talking it out instead of prolonging the problem work? [sarcasm on] This is one thing that seems to evade other dramas, where a character is having a problem or a couple is having a communication issue and instead of dealing with it head on, they let it fester until a bigger problem arises. However, in LBC Ae/Pete talk their problems out making this a very healthy relationship. Even if they don't speak for a few hours, they come back and address the issue head on.

Chemistry: ON POINT! With every character. Ae/Pete, Pond/ChaAim, even Tin-Can though I didn’t get into them until much later. I really loved that we had actors willing to go the extra mile and not seem robotic in their intimate acting. Kisses seemed natural, hugging and touching seemed like they wanted to do it and not like they were “gay for pay” acting. Perth and Saint really sold their pairing well and I’m a sucker for small intimacy such as fingers touching, gentle tapping etc, so there was a lot of that. Only thing I would have loved is for more pecks here and there, but I’ll take what they gave us.

Friendship goals: This drama had it right the minute they introduced the friendships among all of the characters. It was great to see so many people root and support their friends, because let’s be honest, in real life same sex couples have many supportive friends, but in BLs sometimes that isn’t highlighted as much as it should and often it seems as if the leads are ALONE in their journey-with families being opposed to the relationship or with someone trying to break them apart-so to see a group of college friends support, tease and encourage each other just made me extremely happy. POND will forever be known as the best CUPID in all of the BL world. He was undoubtedly the MVP of this drama. If we were to rank favorite characters, my list will always include him in the top 3.

Sexual orientation: I was so happy to have a series where the lead knew he was gay, accepted it and never lied about it. I also appreciated that Ae was not sure of his sexual orientation and even when he was not sure, he was completely taken in by Pete and all he knew was that “oh this is the one, the person/soul that I was waiting for but didn’t know.” I know some people complained about his “I like you because you are you” but Ae had no experience in the love department. Pete was his first literally in everything.

Parents: How refreshing to have a mother who is so supportive of her gay son and so much so that she even gets close to his boyfriend. The actress did such a great job of showing what a mother who supports her child will be like. Yes she was upset learning about his sexual orientation the way she did, but she also allowed her son to come to her and confess, not once mentioning what happened prior. And the way she held him and told him “you are my son” just proved that a mother’s love for her child sees beyond what the sexual orientation of that child is. Ae’s parents were also supportive, though they seem to be oblivious to the boys dating. But part me of wonders if they have an inkling to the relationship...there is something in the way Ae’s mother and brother hinted at it, but were totally okay with them.

Villains: Trump was a good villain. His character was believable and the good thing is that he didn’t last long. Tin, yes he was a villain sort of...but the right kind of villain that shows us that people are not just GOOD or BAD, but there are many layers to them. He redeemed himself and that shows that people CAN change (see what I did there LoL) Chompoo--Also not a villain, though for a few episodes she was hated...Dali...lets not mention this one.

Rape and Depression: This topic is such a heavy one to try and digest in a drama series, but in LBC it has so far been handled okay. However, this is only because we have only scratched the surface of the problem. If a second season is green-lighted, I hope it will focus on this and that it gets treated with the utmost care.

Music, Scenery, filming: the use of music was an exceptional tool in this drama. The right music played at the right time and it completely changed once scene to another. The filming and scenery was also nicely done. Cinematography was on point.

The CONs…
Introduction of women as a way to bring romance drama is not only cliche but sometimes not realistic. Sometimes I wonder with all of these dramas depicting women who break relationships as something that happens in real life all the time?? I mean I know there are women out there who when scorned will do whatever they can to break someone apart, but is that really true for every gay couple? Seems to cheapen the experience and like normalization of drunken sex, sends a message that women interested in gay men will do whatever they can to sabotage the relationship, when in the real world, I don’t think it happens as much as it is depicted. If anything, there are more females who support their gay friends...

Too many couples, too little time: This drama suffered from having too many couples, when the focus should have been on the main pairing and one side pairing. The reason I say this, is not because I don’t like the other couples, but because realistically speaking, 14 episodes is not enough for 4 couples. Which is the reason why the Kla/No and Tum/Tar pairing suffered a great deal of missed opportunities. I understand that perhaps because the director was under the impression that they would have a second season, but then the company dropped them in the middle of finishing the first season, they had not hope of a second season being picked up and just tried to introduce all of the stories in one go so we could all at least see where their stories would have gone. I was really looking forward to more development of the other couples. I do hope a second season is picked up. What they should have done was given these couples the minutes/episodes the director spent on Chompoo and Dali..since those girls disappeared anyways...what a missed opportunity that was.

Drunken sex/Rape: While in the real world this does happen more often than people realize, I still think that BLs have an unhealthy relationship with using this trope as a way to get couples together. In a real world most people would not get together with their rapist, so I always side-eye dramas that use this. However, as I mentioned earlier, because they had left that scene for the end, people were not distracted or put off by it through the entire series and can chose to ignore the last episode if they wish.

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