Selbee

This show is awful! How did you manage to finish it?
I am halfway through the first episode and nothing works for me here: bad acting, ridiculous storyline, a scooter accident save?!? Well that is the first but the whole set up is beyond ridiculous.

And is there are reason why everyone talks as if they are sleepwalking?

There is definitely something wrong with me when I cannot stand this kind of cutesy BLs..I saw someone wrote a whole essay on DaOn's character and how extraordinary he is,a psychological analysis about him overcoming every challenge and so on and so forth.....

Does it get any better?

As for the 11 year celibate, I think they did worse in Let The Curse of Teak WanDo...it was 13 or 15 years....I dropped that one as well!

Thank god for your amusing review otherwise this would be torture....;-)) The worse the show, the better the review? Yes! Keep them coming, if you can bear it! There is enough material for many more of these great articles!

I think that they have more money than they make us believe since they managed to take every pirated copy down extremely quickly(even from telegram and bilibili which I did not think was possible!) : you need to pay people to find those and that is expensive!

I am actually going through a drama slump at the moment which means I have no patience for long dramas and Thai BLs have been getting longer and longer and thus going from bad to worse. Sometimes I had the impression that the flimsy plot is just an excuse to have hot actors strip and make out, which got old pretty quickly. There is a finite amount of shower scenes I can watch before getting bored (apparently there are plenty of those in A Perfect Match?) ! And I have reached my Thai limit a few months ago. I still manage to watch short thai dramas (The Renovation was cute!) as well as japanese and Korean but the GMMTV&co dross has become unwatchable. The thing that bothers me the most with GMMTV shows are their fixed couples and the whole fandom connected to it: they are basically making dramas to show off couples to their fandoms and sell the merchandise. Plot and good writing have no place in this scheme. How many times can you watch the same pair of actors fall in love? Once, twice tops is more than enough in my book.
Yes, I know it is business but they are actively losing their original audience from 4/5 years ago. Thailand has been insisting on quantity over quality for the past two years and I think that business model cannot last....

Teenager Judge...I agree 100% with you! A worthy topic (abuse and bullying) badly treated, the repetitive draggy plot that goes in circles, the popular stepbrothers in love theme, student/teacher relationship wrong on so many levels, issues touched upon and never treated, evil rewarded (i.e. going abroad to study and generally being forgiven) instead of being punished and the victims just have to grin and bear it...the series is so hopeless, so pessimistic so wrong! Yes I know, life is not fair and the rich do get away with a lot of things but that is not why these series are made: we want the fiction, we want to see the bad guys punished, right? And it is so slow: for the first time in the five years of watching Asian dramas, I fast forwarded through the last two episodes. They were unwatchable....

What is happening with O2? I know they have some money problems but i feel sorry for Ba Vinh and his fellow actors constantly making videos and begging for money. If the resulting product was worth it, I would not say anything but it is not! Their previous drama, Be My Star, was a tiny bit better though the ending was just as messy....

OMG, thank you for this! I am watching it now trying my best to appreciate it but I just cannot!
There are so many rave reviews around praising the director's filming and storytelling skills. And while I found the film rather pretty (cinematography and actors), the logic behind it escaped me. Two policemen going to the same street restaurant and dealing with a bad break up. Yes, the film is about loneliness in a huge city teeming with people but I found both stories too weird for my taste. The first one was mercifully short and the cinematography gave me a headache. The second one, I am unsure of: I like the actors a lot but California Dreaming (is the girl dreaming of a better life through that song?) is too much (made me think of Something In The Rain and its three songs on repeat constantly: I do not want to hear Stand By Your Man ever again!) and the girl breaking in with her pink gloves and playing dirty pranks on him (drugging his bottled water!) is too strange to be likeable. But if that rocks the policeman's boat, who am I to complain but I am allowed to find it limit criminal even though it eventually became a game between them.

Sorry for this long comment! I just wanted to thank you for writing what's been going on through my head while watching this. I feel that we are sometimes under pressure to appreciate arthouse cinema or be treated as stupid. This is one of such films!

These reels dramas' quality does not justify the price they demand (watching endless ads or very expensive subscription!)! Not in my opinion!

I was talking about pirated full versions of these reels dramas!

I posted this as I was surprised by the speed with which the producers manage to take down pirated copies of these vertical dramas. I have never seen this before! Yes, viki and gaga managed to close kissasian and dramacool down but it took them very long time to do it. Shortime &co do it in 24h! Amazing! Respect!

But now we either watch these reels free over a week while watching loads of ads (for two min episodes?!? That's nuts!!) or pay 10euros to buy the complete reels drama or 30-40euros per month to subscribe to their app service!
They are making loads of money from our addiction! Good for them!

What an amazing article! They don't make them like this any more here....

Murakami is so well know and so popular in France that I found it offputting and never finished the only book I ever tried of his, 1Q84! I did not know so much of his work got to be adapted in cinema but I am not surprised. Funny coincidence: yesterday I was in a bookshop looking for something to read and ended up buying Kafka On The Beach and now I stumble upon your article! The Universe is telling me I made the right decision!

I've been avoiding Thai BLs like a plague for the past few months (I did try Gelboys but I am hopless when it is a weekly show since I tend to forget them...I might binge watch it when it finishes airing! BTW, what happened to your review?). Any BL with episodes longer than 20min goes straight into not interested category! Most of Thai BLs have become just hopelessly unwatchable anyway. For me, at least!

Short and to the point is what I am looking for and that's why started this one. Big mistake! Huge!

I've almost completely disconnected from Asian dramas since February, and I moved back to Western/World cinema (golden oldies, musicals, Shakespeare, Star Trek, Hitchcock and a lot of silent films! I discovered, for example, that the first gay themed film was released in 1916 in Sweden!). I come back here to check on your reviews and find bite size BLs to see. Arthouse films? Yes please but no gore and horror...

Maybe we should ask FreshKicks to do an "abs cut" of this disaster? I think that will make it slightly more watchable? And shorter.

I learned my lesson the hard way: before watching anything I'll look through your reviews first! I don't trust anyone else any more! LOL

Sometimes I find your reviews too generous towards a drama: I just tried watching A Perfect Match after reading your review and I barely managed to finish the first episode. I don't mind a no budget dramas but this was awful in every possible way: cringy story and bad acting. Maybe it gets better later but I could not manage to continue!

I agree wholeheartedly about Vietnamese BLs : I love most of them especially older ones from O2 (NOT the recent ones: have you seen Teenager Judge? What do you think about it? I am looking forward to your review!). On the other hand, Khat was magnificent in spite of the annoying format!

I just tried watching this a half an hour ago: I read a glowing review on TheBLxpress blog by someone I sometimes agree with so I thought I may be surprised. I was, but not in the way I expected! Unfortunately, your review had slipped my mind. It was too late by the time I realized it!

I agree 100% with etoks below! I managed to watch the entire 10min of the first episode before I gave up, and only THEN I remembered your review!

This is absolutely unwatchable! It looks like something a couple of 14 yr old fujoshis wrote and filmed during the lunch break with their iPhone 11s! The abs in the shower during the first minute are the highlight of the show. I almost dropped it at 1:35 but decided to finish at least the first episode since it is 10min long!

I don't seem to be able to watch this kind of dross any more!😭

Sorry, no! I don't seem to be able to watch animes! I just cannot watch them (or read mangas for that matter!)! I don't know why! But is the anime better than this drama? Does it have a different ending?
I often wonder if they make these dramas ONLY for people who have read the manga and seen the anime because every time I say something because I don't understand a plot point, there is a 100% chance the users here will ask me if I am familiar with anime and manga!And I never am:🤣🤣🤣

How is it possible that a 2h30 film seems 10min long? It went by in a flash....

I am sorry to say but there has not been a good vertical BL since the first ones which came out: Buddy Boy and Match Play. This one is a particularly boring and an unconvincing trope fest with a couple of half decent kisses.....
I hope this reels fad passes quickly!

Finally a thai drama editorial. I don't remember the last time an article was excusively dedicated to thai dramas. Finally an editorial by a user and not an MDL employee. (Right? You are not paid by MDL to write this, are you?)

Is MDL ever going to go back to those good old days when we had new user written editorials practically on a daily basis? No, certainly not ! They (MDL) made it painfully obvious in the last two years!

I've been interested in this series of dramas but I did not know by which drama to start or whether it matters. Thank you for this lovely and detailed article....

The producers (or is it tiktok?) have been actively taking down the full versions of these vertical BLs from every streaming service; youtube, dailymotion, bilibili and even the russian OK. They must be really well off if they have so much time and money (must be tiktok, then!) to chase after the pirates so hard! I saw this a 10 days ago on youtube! Gone now....Boyslovefactory which had these on their site don't have them, not one of these vertical BLs, any more!
Anyway, most of these BLs are really bad and their ONLY saving grace is some convincing kissing which is unusual in a Korean BL. Other than that...bof!

The last a little bit interesting series O2 made was Vian in 2023. Everything else went from bad to worse: Love Bill was just awful, Mr Cinderella 2 completely unnecessary and bad and Be Your Star too long, badly acted and written.
In the meantime, the number of their begging-for-money videos has skyrocketed....and frankly that is highly unappealing. They make you feel bad for watching for free but then they produce dross and then you feel disgusted for ever falling for their scheme. If they continue producing ever longer and ever more annoying and sparkless dramas,they are going to lose their original audience (i.e. us!).

I was brave and I actually finished it. The many serious topics (bullying & abuse, stepbrothers, teacher/student etc.) were badly treated, it was too draggy and with a botched ending. For the first time EVER in my drama watching career, I ffw-ed through the last two episodes. On the other hand, Ba Vinh was excellent in it!

You are most welcome. BTW, The Lust had finished airing ages ago: they released all episodes at once and then a month later they released an edited full movie version.

This review of yours suddenly inspired me to watch Heart Stain. After one and a half episodes the commandments obeyed are1 (a peck on the lips with a 2m gap between them!), 2 ("I like a man!"),4 (about 10cm height difference),5 (school),6(best friends to lovers),7 (thin, haven't been seen in the undress yet!),9(1/3 so far: a gentle pat) &10 (friends/teacher universally supportive). This is very promising! I think it may achieve perfect 10/10 very quickly!