etoks21

I just watched this for the third time since it was released, but I stopped at about the three-quarter mark, where we segue to the class reunion. I recall that as much as I like and was moved by the rest of the film, that last quarter falls apart for me. Plus, the actors cast to play the older versions of both characters look NOTHING whatsoever like their young selves to the point of absurdity. Are we to assume that Jia Han did away with that gorgeous and prominent nose of his?

Actually, the falling apart begins when Birdy goes to the home of JH's parents, where he says what he says and JH shows up. From then on, the motivations for actions are jumbled to the point of being nonsensical. Birdy showing up and telling that lie, along with what he says to JH, is in complete opposition to what transpired not too long before.

THEN...having set that bomb off, knowing full well what the explosion would look like, when JH takes off on his bike, Birdy does ANOTHER 180 and goes after him, on bike, train, boat, and foot path, to the edge of the world. That is so many 180s that I have zero idea WHAT direction Birdy is facing. And I'm not even counting the 180s Birdy made in school, earlier on. Birdy was presented as someone with a healthy self-awareness and little regard for what others thought of him. He was clearly compassionate toward other gay people and ready to defend them even in public, but all it takes to spin him around the first time is that skinny little girl batting her eyelashes at him.

We weren't shown anything to help us understand Birdy's cruel fickleness in making all those half-spins, so he comes off as shallow and mean. Of course, we see EVERYTHING from JH's perspective I suppose, so perhaps this is intentional. If so, I think it was a mistake.

THEN...we have the gorgeous scenes at the beach (the image of them laying in the sand is beyond beautiful), at the end of which we get a voice-over from JH, letting us know that Birdy spun-around AGAIN. So, for me, either Birdy is bipolar to the point of madness, or his behaviors, taken as a whole, are written so poorly as to be incomprehensible. In part, he comes off as an emotional sadist. Maybe he is.

THEN...there's the last quarter with the class reunion and the scenes that follow, during which Birdy spins in circles a few more times and then the movie ends. I don't require a "happy" ending, but one that makes a little bit of sense and doesn't feel deliberately obscure, would be nice.

YNEH has long been on my 30 Fave Gay Movies list, but I think I need to drop my rating and demote it to a lower spot. That last 1/4 of plot...nah.

Edward Chen is fantastic in this role, as is Tseng Jing Hua. Bravo. I wish Taiwan had a larger and more active film industry to give them more work.

Dropping this from 9/10 to 8/10 because of last quarter's messiness. A solid "B."

Incoherent ending...

How do "we know for sure that they'll make it work?" Because that's the standard BL happy ending?

lol "Masterpiece," the MDLer catch-all term of praise.

So...Balgeum has self-diagnosed himself as depressed, insecure, possessed of a poor self-image, and otherwise neurotic, correct? As a cure for these ailments, he has prescribed himself an open-ended period of time during which he will pursue and obtain a fabulous career. The attainment of this career will make Balgeum worthy of Inho's affections and he will call Inho to let him know he's fixed himself and can he please have that "third date"...yes?

The problem with this plan is that Balgeum will have a great career and things will look rosy from the outside, but on the inside, he will remain afflicted with depression, anxiety, and a poor self-image. He will feel like a fraud and, like so many other successful, wealthy people in Korea, be a ticking time bomb: a suicide waiting to happen.

That a Korean man, in that culture of "saving face," would feel inferior to his peers because of lower financial status, is believable. That he would enact the above plan of action and come out the other end "fixed," is silly.

That someone as handsome, talented, and eligible as Inho will be single and available after the three or four years Balgeum's plan will take to play out, is the stuff of fantasy. Balgeum will call him and Inho will say..."who?"

I'm going to take the hint from comments and just not go there. I hold Strongberry in the highest regard and seeing a crappy show from them might break my heart.

Damn.

I think you're right. Thanks for the clarification. I deleted my comment.

He works hard. He's a kind, sensitive, caring person. It's Korea. I doubt he has plans to go into talk therapy and get on antidepressants. Any kind of mental illness is taboo in Korea; they don't talk about it for the most part.

I thought "better person" was a strange choice of words too, which is why I'm frustrated Inho did not jump in immediately to say "I love you just as you are, and you can only get better..." Isn't that what a loving partner would say? Instead, it seemed like he agreed..."yeah, you do kind of suck right now...please DO work on yourself."

I enjoyed this series immensely. Good acting/chemistry/direction, and the overall vibe has a funky edge combining humor and pathos. The contrast between the two couples, one comedic, the other melancholic, worked for me until the finale, when the writers seemed to forget about couple #2 for most of the episode, then gave them a limp wrap-up.

That finale was far more fluffy/syrupy than the seven episodes that led up to it, which I found disappointing and which will lower my rating of the series.

Nam Shi An as Jung Ki Sub is now one of my top-ten fave BL characters. I googled "adorable, sincere goofball"; his picture was part of the definition.

Ugh, all the brand-new, puffy, pastel, wrinkle-free sweaters, mufflers, big slacks, and coats worn by the MC laid on the fluff much too heavy-handedly. The production company must have made a promotional deal with some fluffy sweater company.

Inho and Balgeum got screwed with that non-ending ending. "I'll call you when I'm a better person...?" Inho should have said, "you are absolutely perfect the way you are right now." But this is a Korean show, and I suppose Balgeum has to own and run a Chaebol conglomarate before he'll consider himself worthy of Inho's affections. The problem with this kind of thinking is that once a man is financially established and doing well, there is always the chance of something going wrong and disaster striking. So then what? He becomes desperately depressed, angry, and suicidal, once again unworthy of his lover, that's what. So, at that point, would he leave again until he is "a better person" once more? It's fucked up.

As long as a partner pays their half of the rent and utilities on time, who cares how much $$$ they have in the bank? And to make your primary relationship entirely dependent on the balance you're carrying in that account, is just sad. Partners lean on each other, support, and assist each other. If one becomes unemployed, the other steps up while the jobless one seeks a new source of income. If he lays on the couch and drinks beer all day instead of looking for work, well, then we have a problem. But if the relationship is healthy and the unemployed partner is fully invested, that's not going to happen.

Balgeum works hard and pays his bills. I really don't see the problem in them being together, just as things are right now. I kind of hope Inho meets someone else while Balgeum seeks his "better self." Seriously, how long is Inho supposed to wait, alone, for that "third date?"

Yeah, yeah, this obsession with men having lots of money at least equal to that of his gay lover, is a Korean thing. "Saving face" and all that. Well, the concept of losing or saving face is part of the reason Korea's suicide rate is so high. It needs to go away, and I hope someday it will.

So...I loved the show until about halfway through episode 7 and all of 8. Before that, I was considering a 9.5/10 rating but now I'm thinking it lost some points in that last one-and-a-half-episode period.

8/10 but highly recommended.

"Now you can really get into high gear and spam this thread with messages about what a piece of sh*t I am in your head..."

Why would I do that? Do you WANT me to do that?

Yeah, Kai, looking at a member profile for 30 seconds to get a sense of them is the same thing as "spending a lot of time" there. You got me.

hahahahahahaha...omg, thanks for this. A raving lunatic, lashing out randomly with insults and bile, even as it accuses another person of being and doing the very things it is acting out.

Paragraph one: Insults, insults, and insults.
Paragraph two: More insults, moving on into word-salad territory.
Paragraph three: Near-slobbering, hysterical, and verbose tantrum-throwing, with projection firing off in all directions.

Too bad. You could be a good writer. You know lots of big, fancy-sounding words. But you lack the ability to self-edit. Your arrogance and insecurity, a deadly combination, prevent you from putting words together calmly and thoughtfully. You write from a place of imagined omniscience and defensiveness. The result is a mess.

I like this: "It takes a special kind of blindness to mistake a mirror for a brick wall..." but then you follow it up with an insult, the very kind of which you accuse me. When you start out strong but end stupid, the whole sentence is fucked.

Oh...back to something you said earlier, wherein you claimed to know the intentions of the "author." There is no way for a viewer to know precisely what an author "intended." The best we can do is receive what is put before us, consider how our perspectives filter what we see, look at other possibilities, then come to a firm conclusion or be comfortable with multiple possibilities.

Regarding this series, you never got past the "receiving" part.

yeah, yeah...more of the same BS. Too bad your arrogance and "bluntness" aren't backed up by wisdom and self-awareness. It's kind of...pathetic when confused people speak "bluntly." Doing so makes you seem even more lame than you already are.

You know exactly what I mean by "cowering, Japanese housewife." Don't play stupid with me. "Racist!" is the lamest, laziest, bottom-of-the-barrel accusation there is. Culturally-infused, stereotypical behaviors have everything to do with cultural conditioning, and nothing to do with race.

Japanese, Korean, and Han Chinese people share approximately 99% identical DNA. So, you forgot to label me "racist" against Koreans and Chinese folks too. Yes, I hate all Asian people, everywhere, it's true.

Look in a mirror. You will see a brick wall. A sanctimonious, arrogant brick wall.

Projection really is a thing. Your ranting, raving, and insults reveal a great deal about you. The show, not so much.

Good god. Most of this is wasted repetition of what I already know. The difference between you and me is that I see all the behaviors above as symptomatic of his trauma, ptsd, amnesia, anxiety and depression. He was having panic attacks almost from episode one because of his repressed memories.

His attempts to justify the unjustifiable, excuse the unexcusable, hide, avoid, panic, run, lie, distort, all are symptomatic of severe personality disorder, which is what the show is all about. Or do you think having hallucinations of a dude with a pig's head over his own are a normal thing to experience?

Again, none of this excuses anything; but it EXPLAINS the behaviors in a factual manner without your melodramatic, fire and brimstone BS, which says much more about your need to feel morally superior to others, even when they are clearly deranged and unwell, than it does about what you think it does.

"So he signed his ticket to hell. " This betrays your basic, self-righteous, eager-to-condemn, judgmental, black/white view of the world. You choose to miss that KM spoke gently and kindly to JS while hanging by his wrist from that rooftop ledge. He smiled softly and quietly said "let's go see Cholie." Had you written the script, he would have screamed bible verses, curses, and visions of damnation at KM while thrashing and jerking to pull KM over the edge. Instead, he ever-so-gently, urged his friend to make the best choice and to end the suffering for all their sakes.

And is it beyond clear, in those final seconds when KM looked down into JS's eyes, weeping, that he came to his senses and CHOSE to let go and fall. I get that you HATE that anyone could be forgiven and redeemed after doing horrible things, but THAT is the very essence of that last scene.

For you, it's this black/white, "eating concrete," condemnatory fantasy of Satan meeting his end, just as he deserved. How boring.

By the way, I gently suggest you look up the definitions of "empathy," "compassion," "forgiveness," and "redemption." Think about applying them in your own life.

Look up "sanctimonious" too. That's what you are.

" Let me clarify that, so you can understand better: "

omg, lol You are a caricature of a stereotype of a cliche of arrogance and again, superciliousness. I actually laughed when I read the sentence above.

Let me clarify something, so YOU can understand better: Tone down the know-it-all attitude. Stop writing sentences like the one above, which is condescending and insulting, and more people will actually listen to what you have to say. I express myself aggressively at times, and definitely hold strong opinions, but your style makes me look like a cowering, Japanese housewife.

Is this how you express yourself IRL, face-to-face or in cyber interactions? I'd guess so, since you do so here. Lord, what a mess.

Again, have you ever lived in Korea?

You "relax." I'm quite calm, myself. Suggesting I need to relax is a standard tactic used to imply the other half of a convo you're having is being overly emotional and thus irrational. Cuts no ice with me. There is nothing of either in my replies to you.

"My own opinion had nothing to do with it."
Everything you write here is nothing but your "own opinion."

Have you lived in Korea? Or are you American, of Korean descent? Either way, your supercilioius style of writing is off-putting. Consider dropping the attitude. You confuse the terms "facts" and "opinions."

I get that you're trying to "explain" the behavior we're discussing, but you're missing that the script fails to do the same. Boy meets bitch, gets threatened, dumps boyfriend without mentioning bitch. It would have helped greatly, and been much more interesting, if the subtext you're providing was included in the story.

It's pretty clear from earlier behaviors, including assuming "Honey" on the BF's phone meant his lover was two-timing him, being paranoid about PDAs, wanting to stay in the closet indefinitely, even pushing the BF to leave his space sooner than he otherwise would have, that the character was not comfortable and was itching to dump his BF anyway. What the bitch did merely provided the pretext he was waiting and eager to have.

OK, believe what you want. As I've said, you are comfortable in your black/white fantasy world, and the idea of something being gray seems to frighten you, thus Jong Suk has to be the Devil incarnate.

It's ignorant of you to claim that someone who has complete amnesia of traumatic events over many years, is not mentally ill. He was not "in denial" and "shirking responsibilities" (there's that self-righteous judgmental, black-white perspective showing itself again), he did NOT REMEMBER ANY OF IT.

Furthermore, he struggled with strange flashbacks and moments of delusions and hallucinations, which was his sick mind attempting to reconnect him to reality, throughout the series. Yes, he fought back against that reality right up until the end, which is all a part of his mental illness.

And yes, KM hand-cuffed him, but did you honestly not notice the whole, very important bit right before the fall, when KM quietly convinced JS to relax and come with him to go "see Cholie?" Up until that moment, KM had been fighting him and trying to pull JS back up. In a quiet moment of reflection at that point, JS considered things, came to his senses, "let go," stopped fighting, and went over the edge with KM BY CHOICE.

Sure, perhaps he wouldn't have succeeded in pulling JS back up anyway, but what matters here is that he stopped trying to do so. He accepted reality and performed a deadly act of contrition, and in that moment, was forgiven by KM and it is implied, Cholie.

If JS can do that, why can't you? Hello, black/white thinking.

Nothing I've said "excuses" KM's behavior, it "explains" it. But you seem to think that by recognizing the depth of his mental illness, delusional thinking, and amnesia, he is somehow "getting away" with something. You believe he is the evil Satan himself, and thus must be completely worthless, vile, and loathsome.

He didn't get away with anything. It's just that the story revealed, in a fascinating and exciting way, WHY he was the way he was throughout the story, during which he always acted strangely at times.

But OK, whatever...yeah, KM is the Devil with bat wings, totally inhuman, since that's what you need to believe.

As a side-bar, I don't think that fall was from a great enough height to insure the death of either/both characters, unless they landed on their heads and broke their necks, which given the way they were laying at the end, is not the case. They conveniently landed side-by-side, wrists locked together, in the most effecting manner for the camera, to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. In reality, they would have landed in a tangle of limbs, one upon the other. It would have been a mess.

I just rewatched the very end scene. No one "ate" anything, as they landed on their backs, and it was an asphalt, not concrete sidewalk. It could make an awesome sequel to have them both survive, but in two different physical states, perhaps one paralyzed and the other almost completely recovered. Good writers could take that scenario in a lot of different directions.

Watching that last scene, I was reminded of how annoying and stupid that female cop was.

Wow. I'm American, and write/read all the time, all my life. I have NEVER heard or read the word "inutile" before. I just looked it up. It means "useless" or "unusable." It is related to the word "utility," which can mean "use" or "useful." I'm sure it's related to the word "futility."

I never knew any of this, and I'm not young, so thanks for a new English word and meaning. I assumed it was a misspelling of some other word when I saw it in your comment. lol :)

Is English your first language?

The ghosting thing, and break up by text thing, are common around the world among the young who have grown up on cell phones and computers. It's not a Korean thing alone.

You keep skipping over the fact that Jaemin broke it off only after being threatened by the bitch. And again, WHAT did Nami lie to him about?

Agree! Thanks for saying all that better than I did. :)