Beatrice

Sibling Mind Games

The show has interesting twist and turns and secrets. The core sisters are of course all flawed and has their own secrets. It would have been good if certain characters had more savvy though on paper it makes sense for the individual characters, but the execution is not as exciting to watch. All four sisters just so happening to be wearing white pajama dresses is striking, uneasy imagery of cults, and the loss of innocence when the clothes are drenched in blood. While I get the artistic vision, it's weird for their characters who other wise dress differently to suddenly have matching sleepwear.

Chom wanted to become a news anchor and she was doing decently well in school, but all her alcohol consumption must have depleted all her brain cells because she repeatedly makes the worst decisions and it also exacerbates her poor impulse control. She's an easy target for Chat who effectively ruins Chom's reputation and gets Chom bullied by texting the whole school with an fake account pretending to be Chom all to supplant Chom as the popular girl and taking Chom's school and job opportunities. It's chillingly evil, made even more so with their mom praising Chat once it's revealed revealed to the mom. Chom really lucked out with Thana, who while is creepily obsessed with her, she does find as a helpful ally, and while he does keep the hammer as blackmail to keep her around, is generally less harmful to her than her family to her or her to herself. Nathat happened to date Chat before dating Chom. It's pretty rude of him and on brand that he never told Chom. He gets blackmailed to cruelly break Chom's heart by getting engaged to Chat and without explaining goes to sleep with Chom thereby threatening his deal to protect her. I'm glad Chom chooses to leave him at the end. I hope she chooses to leave alcohol as well as Pi given she learns from Bua that Pi is the co-murderer of Chat and lies and lies.

It's so nonsensical that the sisters and Chom in particular continue to have a relationship at all with Chat after this immense betrayal, which continues to give Chat opportunities to make their lives more hell than their parents are already making it. Chat is absolutely her mother's daughter, the bald faced favorite raised to be secretive, selfish, and to sabotage her sisters. Chom sneaking her underaged, sister who has already shown very willing to harm her into the club was so dumb. Chat is shown having some humanity in that she actually does care and wants the love of her siblings of sisters, but all she knows how to do is hurt them as trained by her parents to. She just can't stop, won't stop. She steals Pi's designs and leaks them to other jewelry designers to ruin Pi's hard work to premier her collection, so Chat can become the ambassador to those brands. Chat is obviously very intelligent, but instead of just doing her own thing, she just wants to systematically destroy each of her sister's career's, hopes, and dreams. Her life's purpose is to make her sister's lives hell while also craving their love.

It's another good twist that Pi is also an affair child like Chat, but ironically the most beloved by her dad while physically abused by her mom from hampering her freedom because she's ill and the housekeeper pressures the mom to take care of Pi who was a sickly child, often getting seizures. There's no explanation why she no longer gets them as an adult. She holds key trauma hidden memories that reveal the truth about the family business and where the most normal and moral person of the family disappeared to, her aunt who is the skeleton in the hidden well. I'm not sure it was explained who was the person digging up the dirt of the well area that led to the police finding the skeleton and well. She gives very damsel in distress vibes, but she comes the girl who cries wolf instead by deciding to fake her brake lines getting hit, fake threatening note, and hiring people to fake hit her with a car in an attempt to throw suspicion off of herself. In the end, she did effectively get away with murder with Parn being the person who stabbed Chat who already became a skeleton by the time her remains were found in the river area, so there's no evidence of strangulation. Her deeds only known by Bua who also tells Chom.

Bua gets the most CW romantic entanglement, with the guy Arch ending up to be her sister's brother. All she wants to do is to run her family's Orchid business well. She's ambitious and hardworking, but she doesn't have much cunning, always perpetually a few steps behind her scheming uncle. She says that she wants to be a politician if she can't run her family business, but she doesn't really show that she has the aptitude to outsmart her opponents at any point of the show. She does have connections at the hospital where she got the pregnancy results of Chat and the paternity results for Pi. There wasn't really an explanation why she got paternity result for Pi, but that's how she figures out Pi probably murdered Chat. Bua for some reason decides to hand rip and toss away the pieces in the family mansion's trashcan, which is the worst way to despose of sensitive material. It got taken by Arch, but it could have been seen by the housekeeper, regardless of whether the housekeeper had murderous intent or not. She discovers the family business is actually drugs with the help of Arch who wanted to discover the truth of the death of his father.

Arch's background is very nonsensical. He seems close with his dad, but at the same time he ran around with gangs. That was pretty racist that his gang buddy that betrays him is a black guy. He also said he did stuff for his dad. What was it, was it also gang stuff? The writing to make him a bad boy that is also connected to the family is so lazy. Even though Bua didn't know he's Chat and Pi's brother, he knew that she's Chat's sister and he didn't have any second thoughts about sleeping with her. Good thing he was stalking Bua and not Pi who also turned out to be his sister. He's not open minded to have a relationship with Bua no matter how strong their attraction is after finding out her dad killed his dad though he stuck around after saying good bye to her to save her from Parn. It's also ridiculous that he just pushes Parn away rather than disarming and restrain her, which he most definitely can do with his fight skills and being physically stronger though she has supernaturally murderous strength.

Cousin Parn has very legitimate beef with the sisters. Chat set the fire and the other three left her there to die. Chat at least had some sense to go back to save her in time though the fire leaves Parn scared and needing a long recovery process to be be able to walk again, but effectively her actor dreams are ruined. It can be implied that Parn has the immense arm and hand strength to strangle her cohort house maid who self volunteered to help her after witnessing her stabbing Chat, to death, killing Thana, and also killing her own father to frame Bua by stabbing him into a tree with his own garden shears. Bua and Chom chasing after her with no weapons while Parn was still wielding a knife was really stupid. Her offing herself seems pretty anticlimactic and too convenient after all her revenge plotting. She has such strong will, it seems more like she would survive out of spite and continue to plot her revenge.

Pi is the ultimate winner successfully getting away with murder and even getting her guy Khem back. Khem's partner Chain who had a thing for Parn has a sense that Pi is more guilty than she seems but has no proof, like Detective Doakes in Dexter. She along with the remaining sisters have a split of the remaining inheritance that isn't effected by the reveal of the drug family business. The sisters, still seemingly keeping her secret, the way that was instilled into them by their parents. Overall flawed, but diverting enough family drama thriller that tries to do something different.

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Sworn sisters

The drama goes through any and all the romance drama contract marriage tropes that doesn't require falling and bumping mouths with each other or lips touching in any manner between Jin Yu and Yun Xi. I do like Jin Yu's personality and creative business venture ideas. She's a jack of all trades despite being forced to train as a military leader all her life. The deserts she creates looks delicious.

Making Yun Xi's friend bro fall in love with Jin Yu was really unnecessary. The between this character and the main one was more interesting before the unfunny scenes of him being obsessing over her being just plain annoying.

The drama makes sure to tie things up platonically with Jin Yu and Yun Xi being solidly sisters forever once Jin Yu is able to return to being a woman with her father no longer forcing her to take over the family military business. Jin Yu gets to live and work together with Yun Xi with her second leader status remaining intact. Their interactions totally change once Jin Yu gets to live as a woman and as a sister to Yun Xi and vice versa. Friends forever. There's nothing inventive or interesting going on plot wise or any clever ambiguity at the end as to how the women feel for each other. Yun Xi's father's 180 turn was really rushed.

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Has both fun and substance.

I appreciate the range both the writing and acting has from lighthearted humor, sweet love, to nuanced, raw, tragic devastating emotional gut punches. Aside from the very cool stylized use of solid colors to code characters and their inner minds, that the color grading of the other scenes are not afraid of color even while illustrating this world where the characters live in the grey area of morality. The costuming is also very well done. Modern drama costuming looks so deceptively simple, but it's really not. They designed looks that fit naturally without being distracting, as well as reflecting the emotional state of the characters in the scene. All the artistic and technical aspects are done and oversaw with care from the directors/producers, the labor of love from from every cast and crew is felt from the overall quality of the work.

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Never finds it's grip

I just feel bad for Peach who is a grounded and caring guy, but has to be stuck with a man child instead of someone who can just get along with him and could take care of him in return like a normal person. Thee clearly had absentee parental figures in his life and craves the parental like attention that Peach gives him in teaching him how to behave like not like an out of touch delusional weirdo. Peach is doing so much emotional labor to keep his creepy manchild boss acting more like a human being, it's truly laborious watching it. Peach doesn't notice Thee is chasing him because he's too used to taking care of others at the expense of himself. He seems to get with Thee more from his trauma of violence and Thee just happens to be someone who is of any help to him in stopping it. Thee continues to do things without asking Peach first or having any kind of adult conversation no matter how many times Peach explains he shouldn't do that. There's never a moment of true romantic connection or chemistry between Peach and Thee. The character of Thee very miscast. Thee is so cartoonish that it needed to be played by an actor who is able to ground the ridiculous elements of the character in order to feel like a three dimensional person.

It's such a breeze of fresh air when Peach has scenes with Mok who is also in the same line of work, but still connected to being a human being. Peach and Mok has good chemistry, I want to see Est and Phuwin play a romantic pairing which is unlikely to ever happen so long as the Thai bl system stays the way it does unless they leave the company. I love that Peach includes Mok in his co-worker souvenir giving. Mok and Rome's relationship has a lot more tangible angst and longing with the extremely limited screen time that shows their relationship at all. Mok is unable to act as friends with Thee but definitely had more loosely defined boundaries with Rome. Mok making a bracelet for Rome is so cute and it's fun to see Mok go full force flirt mode around Rome. Mok takes his duty seriously, that's been traumatically drilled into him since a child, that his life is to give for Thee, that he would never give up even to be with the man he loves. Firing him is the one thing that Thee does right as Mok wouldn't be free to live his own life otherwise. The show needed to give one more scene of post bodyguard life Mok.

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Nearly untangled

The film follows the hollywood concept of casting someway way older to play up the 1 year age difference between teenage characters, but the male lead's acting and styling is good enough to not be distracting, especially as the rest of the teens are played by early to mid 20 something year olds. It's nice to see a high school narrative with no bullying involved and the teen characters are all charming, especially with their friendships, including between the two leads. The way the two realize and express their romance is lovely.

The male lead and his mom suddenly has to deal with a whole domestic violence plot line that is suddenly resolved at the end with nary a verbal exposition to explain how he's free to return to Busan to be with the female lead. It feels like missing a whole episode of a kdrama. I feel like had the movie had even half an hour more instead of being cut off at 2 hours, they could have completed the storyline, it's so weird it's like a whole chunk got deleted. Either the movie needed to be longer or it should have been a mini series or even full drama series instead. It would have been nice to see a bit more of the second male love interest as well as he actually seemed like he had more dimensions to him, not being shallow, top hundred in scholastics, actually appreciating the female lead's actions, but that's not as consequential as the male lead's plot being entirely missing.

The film is still a cute watch, it just feels incomplete.

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Dignity of self determination vs the Law

A very competently made thriller with an interesting topic and romance that builds as the mystery unravels with great experienced acting, chemistry, and production all around. It was fascinating how at the beginning of the series Dr. Kan was a bit ambiguous as to what his intentions are, very well played by the actor, then through Kan the audience learns about euthanasia and what that means as a consenting act that enables people to end their pain in a dignified way as the very last resort. The show makes sure to show how exactly it differs from murder. His love interest Captain Thiu has a very black and white view of the law, which is very ironic being a gay man without a more nuanced view that just because something is against the law, doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong, and it could be something that law needs to be changed for.

Kan's ultimate weakness was that he goes above and beyond for his patients, leaving evidence that could be traced back to him around despite his mentor's advice to be careful. The featured queer relationships all end in tragedy with lesbian couple that the doctor met with the terminally ill partner making a do not resuscitate order, but her fiancé keeps destroying them, refusing to let her dying partner make that decision for herself. The partner ultimately getting murdered by pharmacist Boss who also killed his his sugar daddy lover Dr. Som who wanted to expose Kan with Boss delusionally thinks he's helping Kan.

After finally kissing and implied consummating their relationship, Kan was tracked and followed by Thiu to the conversation he has with the coroner that turns out to be his mentor's estranged daughter leaves his fate up to Thiu who chooses to hug and arrest Kan while also professing his love to him for the first time. Kan can only cry in silence. Merry Christmas to the viewers who watched the finally on 12/25/24. This is a very competently done thought provoking drama. The ending leaves room for a continuation, but can also be left finalized as a doomed romance and starter for the conversation for euthanasia, the right to determine with dignity and standardized painless procedures on how to end one's journey on earth.

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Light Coming of Age

I love Kieta Hatsukoi, it's one of my top favorite shows ever, but it ends really soon into the story of the main couple. My Love Mix Up gets to explore the relationship in full and with differences that makes it stand out on it's own as an adaptation. This is in reference just to the two shows, not to do with the manga at all. Both Atom and Kongthap learn to grow as people through their relationship with each other. Their mile stones of physical intimacy like holding hands and kissing are so sweet. The parts that I dreaded the most, but turned out to be a very memorable subversions was the classmates doing the play and especially the teacher. In the Japanese version it was a homophobic teacher, but in the Thai version, the teacher turned out to be also gay and both he and his boyfriend become mentor figures. It's so moving to see an elder queer mentors help Atom and Kongthap how to navigate being queer in a world that's definitely not always friendly. The mothers being so supportive and loving to their sons is so heartening as well.

I didn't like Mudmee's storyline. It's the same in both the Japanese and Thai versions. I don't think violence is funny or warranted in the context of any of the situations shown. Her strength is a funny gag, but not when it's to physically assault someone who did not do anything to deserve it.

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Boring Cubed

Normally I would be all for all three characters just dating each other, but both Misaki and Yuki are the blandest people and Shuhei is annoying. There's no romantic spark or tension between the three of them. Misaki shows more spark and happiness with her friends and even her frenemy, until that guy she also has no chemistry with hits on her anyways. The show has a short runtime, but the 10 episodes feels like it drags on forever until they FINALLY divorce and cut to black with Yuki still having zero attraction to Misaki even though she's interested in joining what Yuki wants to do with Shuhei.

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Slow burn that abruptly fizzles out

The pacing of the story is that it's a lot of set up that ends right where it's finally going to pay off. Soo Hyuk and Yoon Dae uniquely understand the family baggage and trauma they each have. Soo Hyuk bears so much pain and hurt with his hard earned money just feeding endlessly into his father's vices. Yoon Dae keeps looking for someone to offer him stability and care. Even though the pair are mutually attracted to each other, it's hard to root for them without some meaningful change from Yoon Dae other than a confession. I want to see him step up for Soo Hyuk. There is a little set up that Soo Hyuk's co-worker might potentially be interested in him too, but everything just suddenly ends.

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A bit discordant

The production looks nice, the cast is okay. The blue hair character Do Yoon is the funniest, I had to rewatch when he pushed Tae Yi off to the side to hug Se Heon, the comic timing was great. The edit pace overall is really slow. Since this is from the same screenwriter/director from a previous drama that totally failed in the romance department, the main couple's romance here is an improvement, but there is still room for more. The characters kissing people without consent is not good, but at least they apologized I guess. I've seen complaints, but the light kissing during the high school times are both age appropriate for these characters and kudos to the actors didn't look jpeg. They also showed their grown up kissing three years later after high school, it's fine ya'll lol.

There is a concerning amount of bullying consisting both of beatings and of a sexual assault nature that are forgiven way too easily. Especially concerning when Tae Yi falls into this category. He deserved to be kicked between the legs for what he did to Se Heon. I get what they were going for in the second couple, but that reconciliation, even just as friendship was way rushed. Joo Ha needed to do way more to make amends for being the violent terror that he was toward everyone. Do Yoon deserves so much better. The reveal about Se Heon and Tae Yi's brother was sad and the conclusion to that felt a bit abrupt as well. The storylines weren't spaced out very well. They should have given a bunch of the time dedicated to bullying to develop the interpersonal storylines instead.

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Progressive potential muddled by Orientalism and lack of follow through

The show is definitely making use of the Netflix platform to showcase a kdrama romcom that contain a lot edgier topics and portrayals than it usually can on it's mainstream broadcast and streaming platforms, but it's adherence to the false equivocation of being childish to being cute makes the moments eye rolling rather than it's intended effect. Both the actresses who played young and elder Mi Ju were fantastic. Both were standouts in their own way. Some of the dark physical humor is quite funny, like when Ejlael breaks through the windows to fly away and Irem horrifically cutting her tongue and her other senses in order to not give away information to Iblis since she cannot lie. The drama has a lot going on with portraying psychopathy, utilizing Islamic Arabian mythology, and also featuring a lesbian character.

From what I understand of psychopathy wise, there's actually a lot of people that have it, especially in high level leader positions. The condition can be managed in a positive familial environment like shown with Ka Yeong. The show also shows the typical kdrama murder psychopath with another character that also grew up in the same village. He seemed to be undiagnosed, so never received treatment or care from the village that Ka Yeong got. It feels icky that the show made her unable to mask emotions when the other person was able to do so, just for comedic effect and so that she's "healed" with magic at the end when she is turned into a Jinniya. It seemed like they were were also veering into neurodivergence outside of psycopathy that they never address and she's completely changed. She might as well have been reincarnated as a fifth time rather than turning into a Jinniya out of nowhere.

The better way for the drama to have involved the Islamic Arabian mythology was to have actually featured a Arab actor to play Iblis for the entire story and have Arab consultants. Korea may be an ethnostate, but it's been intentionally exporting it's soft culture and interacting with other cultures for so many decades now, but it seems to fall into the same pitfalls again and again. There needs to be some sense of respect or otherwise it's just cultural appropriation and using another culture to be exotic. It's also frustrating that the show has Ka Yeong's past life say that Joseon also has genies. If that's true, that's what this show should have been about in the first place. There are graphic violent scenes where Arab people who are portrayed as enslaving two Korean children are beheaded and some visceral violence towards Korean characters as well, but they are at the hands of an Arab character that forcibly took over the body of a Korean child. The hero Iblis is only ever shown in Korean form. There's a weird undercurrent of Islamaphobia.

I don't agree with the MDL spoiler tag of the show having an LGBT character. The show doesn't hide it, Min Ji is not closeted. The show is cowardly though for not following through on the meet cute scenes that she has with both Irem and Mi Ju. Her scenes with the women are full kdrama romance tropes and she's seen dramatically locking eyes with her Korean TSA girlfriend. It's all one sided, Mi Ju never shows or expresses any attraction to her and Mi Ju doesn't even get a partner into old age, she's at the sand dune tour alone, watching her best friend being wind with her lover. It would not have cost them more for Mi Ju to have had a woman standing romantically next to her. They show that the reason her girlfriend broke up with her is because she point blank chose Ka Yeong over her. In the end lesbian Mi Ju was just devoted to her straight friend her whole life and even after the friend's death.

The dark humor storyline that worked the most was the little dog that wished for a human form and then wished for money and a human assistant, before tracking down his previous owners who he thinks of as family. He coughs out blood and it's implied that the owners had intentionally abandoned him because he was ill. His last wish was to turn back into a dog so he can reunite with his family as himself. Tragically the last we see is of the little doggy waiting next to the bus stop with the implication that he probably passed away without meeting them again. He had willed all his wish money to his assistant who has no memory of how it happened, but retains a sense of needing to devote himself to caring for stray dogs. It's so sweet and Daniel Henny absolutely went all out to play a dog in a human body and Kim Ji Hoon who I think may have been filming the american show Butterfly at the same time since he had the exact same styling was really funny as well as the stoic ex-military helper trying his best to help his boss.

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