This surely was… something. At this point, I’m used to many KBLs feeling somewhat insta-lovey. The much shorter format in comparison to Thai BLs (for example) kinda has that side effect. And despite me being understanding of that, this one just felt too insta-lovey for me, even for KBL standard. I was not invested in the relationship of the main characters at all, because there was no build up. They met, talked like twice or three times, and suddenly both were apparently madly in love. I say 'apparently’, because the romantic chemistry between the actors was lacking a lot in my opinion, so that didn’t really help with buying the love part. I wasn’t awwing or smiling at any of their cute moments, because I simply didn’t care about their relationship. And that’s pretty bad for a show that is centred around the romance. When they kissed I was confused, because there was nothing really leading up to it. Both main characters are grown men, so I get that a kiss isn’t as heavily built up to as in a high school romance, where it’s the characters’ first kiss. But at least give me something that makes it feel earned.

Here’s three examples for what I mean with "too insta-lovey“ for anyone who hasn’t watched the show, and is considering investing their time (Do yourself a favour and just don’t):
1 - The two main characters meet for the first time at a wedding, where one of them is the singer and the other the pianist. The pianist doesn’t actually work for the company, he just served as a replacement for the usual pianist. A woman that works there (don’t remember her name, there’s too many side-characters for such a short series) asks him to join their company, which the pianist declines, since he’s already the CEO at a café. Suddenly, the other main character shows up. Piano man is so in awe of the singer’s handsome face, that he’s just like "Never mind, actually, I do wanna join the company!“ This grown man just made a decision about a job, based on the handsomeness of his colleague, no consideration of what this would mean for his apparently already tight schedule with a popular café to handle. I sure hope he doesn’t do this every time he meets a handsome person, or he’s switching jobs on a weekly basis.
2 - That same evening, they have dinner with their co-workers. Piano man and handsome singer exchange a few sentences, then handsome singer gets drunk and piano man is helping him get home. The next day, piano man repeatedly texts handsome singer, asking him if he’s okay and saying that he’s worried. Sure, he might just be a naturally empathetic person. But any non-BL-lead would just let it be at that, if the other person doesn’t respond. But when handsome singer doesn’t respond, piano man actually goes to the academy where he works as a vocal coach. They met ONCE and this dude is already borderline stalking him. My mind was yelling 'Run while you still can!‘ Piano man kept having such tendencies throughout the whole show, showing up at handsome singer’s house when he didn’t respond to him. Which seemed to happen frequently. It just felt pretty iffy to me. If someone acts like this after you spent a couple of hours together, I don’t want to know how they’ll act once you’re actually dating…
3 - After having met ONCE, piano man was telling two friends about handsome singer. They said that they hardly recognized him, because he was apparently so head over heels AFTER HAVING KNOWN THIS GUY FOR ONLY ONE NIGHT!!!! Piano man said he also doesn’t recognize himself. On top of that, he was for some reason convinced that handsome singer had his walls up high, and that he was gonna climb over them and win his heart. I don’t mind characters not giving up easily. But the issue is that piano man had no way of even knowing that handsome singer had his walls up. He does, but piano man doesn’t know anything about him at this point. So how does he assume handsome singer has his walls up, and not that maybe he simply has no interest in getting to know him? Your guess is as good as mine.

I could excuse some of these behaviours if this were a show about two high school students. Teens tend to make rash decisions and fall in love much faster, thinking a crush equals true love. But we’re talking about two adult men, who I assume are at least in their late twenties, more likely even in their early thirties. I understand that you can be attracted to someone on first sight, but this wasn’t just attraction, it was love that apparently can develop within seconds if you live in a BL, because who needs shared experiences and a genuine emotional connection, right?

I also took a big issue with the villain of the show, which is (like in many BLs) handsome singer’s ex boyfriend. (At least I think they were dating, but it’s never quite clear. Blame the writing for that, not me.) I did actually like their history. Handsome singer wanting to debut as an idol and having a relationship with the CEO (again, not sure if back then he was the CEO or just an employee, proving how great the writing in this is once again) actually makes for an interesting concept to explore. The problem is that their past was more interesting than the present day relationship of handsome singer, and that’s not great. Besides that, the villain felt like a caricature. He was so overtly evil that it was almost laughable. And also, he was an idiot. He acted like an asshole in front of handsome singer, trying to blackmail him and pretty much stalking and terrorising him. I thought that clearly, this was just about him being evil and having fun toying with handsome singer. Apparently however, all this was an attempt at winning back the love of handsome singer. Wow. Great plan, buddy. I know you’re a disgusting person, but if you try to win someone back, maybe try not to be disgusting in front of them? It made no sense. Also, the villain then just disappeared into thin air, giving no resolution to this storyline.

At this point, I would’ve probably rated the series a 4. It was bad and uninteresting, but not offensively so. But then they did a goddamn time-skip and that dropped my rating to a 2. You see, piano man came to save handsome singer from the hands of his evil ex. Handsome man then was being a douchebag towards piano man, telling him to leave him alone. This isn’t a problem in itself. Clearly, handsome singer had been severely hurt in the past, and was dealing with a lot of issues internally. Actually, this was the only point in the show where I got at least a little invested. I was curious about how handsome singer would overcome his demons, in order to be with piano man. And how piano man would handle the rejection. Of course, we got to see none of that, because they skipped ahead one year in time. I dislike time jumps in general, but this one was just horrible. It felt like such a cheap way of escaping resolving the conflict they had set up. Instead of meaningful character development, they let time heal it all. To me, this jus proves how the writers of this show weren’t capable of handling anything.

So, we skip ahead one year, and time magically fixed every issue. Handsome singer miraculously has overcome his severe panic disorder, because he was so eager to eventually sing in front of piano man without sunglasses on. Because that’s totally how mental illness works, yep. Not only that, but he also finally got to debut as a singer, and of course, his debut song was one huge success that climbed up on the charts like it’s nothing. Because that’s totally how the music industry works, yep. (I mean, it could’ve happened, but it feels extremely unlikely.) Of course, after all this time and being rejected in a really hurtful way, piano man immediately runs to handsome singer when he sees that he’s holding a concert. And of course he takes him back like nothing happened, and like they actually had established a meaningful relationship between the two of them. That one kiss they had must’ve been really good to warrant such behaviour, damn.

Also, how many times are we gonna do the jealous best friend who has a secret crush on the main character trope in KBLs? It’s getting really old at this point. That being said, the best friend character was actually the only character I was rooting for. Not that he had a properly developed personality or anything. He only existed as a shoulder for handsome singer to cry on, and as his emotional trashcan. However, he was caring and put handsome singer’s feelings above his own, which made him the most likeable character in this entire thing. The bar was very low. I actually thought they should’ve ended up together instead, since they at least had some sort of emotional connection. Instead, this storyline too led nowhere and we never got any resolution for the best friend character. So I'll just assume handsome singer will forget all about him in the heat of his new relationship, because he totally feels like the kind of person to do that. I hope the best friend finds someone better who's actually interested in his feelings too, rather than only using him to cry about his own.

The music in the show was pretty good. One of the main characters is a singer after all, so you’d hope so. But I noticed something weird about the background music. While oftentimes it was nice and fitting, sometimes it felt like a very odd and out of place. At least two times, there was a background music playing that sounded kinda like it was supposed to be in a western movie (western as in a cowboy movie, not the western film industry). I was so confused. But maybe that’s just me not getting a reference or something.

As for the positives… There were some moments of decent comedy. Such as when handsome singer blew his nose on a bunch of napkins and then drunkenly handed them to piano man. That got a chuckle out of me. The acting was solid. Not mind-blowing, but solid performances. Their montage of cute moments at the end was nice, it’s just that I didn’t care about their relationship at all, so even that didn’t get a smile out of me. Honestly, the best thing about this show was when it was finally over.

This has got to be one of the worst KBLs I’ve seen, and I’ve seen many. I cannot recommend this to anyone. If it weren’t so short, I would’ve dropped this half-way through, and I’m definitely never rewatching it. If you’re looking for a KBL about the music industry and a singer, I recommend Wish You: Your Melody From My Heart instead. Not that that one’s perfect, but it’s much better executed and a lot cuter, with actual chemistry.