Review: Until We Meet Again

Hello, friends! We meet again, and Bashful Bi is going to tell you some of my thoughts on Until We Meet Again while we're at it, because it's almost Halloween and this drama had some pretty scary moments. So get a blanket, a box of tissues--oh yeah, you'll need them--and hear me out.

Summary (official):

Thirty years ago, Korn and Intouch were university students in Bangkok. Intouch entered Korn's life despite knowing that he was the son of one of the most influential people in Bangkok, the mafia. At first, Korn kept pushing Intouch away, but in the end, he couldn't resist the boy who was so full of life where he was the exact opposite and decided to let him into his heart. However, in a time where homosexuality was unacceptable and having parents that were against their relationship and each other, Korn and In's love was bound to be doomed. Midst the chaos, while Intouch kept on fighting for their future, Korn could not deal with all the suffering his lover was facing and decided to give up. That day, two sounds of a gunshot rang through the air. Their story ended with tragedy, but something had already tied itself between them, bounding them together even after they were dead. 

Years later, a freshly returned to Thailand, Pharm (19) who is a freshman in T- University has grown up always feeling like he is waiting for someone. Being riddled with sad dreams that always left him waking up with a wet face, fear of loud noises, and a birthmark on his temple, the boy has always felt like there is someone he is missing. Dean (21), the third year swimming club's president at T- University has also spent his life searching for someone whose faces he can not remember. 

The red thread of fate that had tied them together in their past life once again pulls the two boys back to each other, tieing them to each other and a past that might not be worth remembering, but a love that is unforgettable. Because the red thread that binds the two hearts together will always lead one back to the other. Even though it might tangle or stretch, but it will never break.

My thoughts:

This BL was a lot to process.

We had fate... and then we questioned it. We had oscillations between the wants and hesitations of a first serious relationship. We had rosy sweetness and agonizing pain. We even had heartwarming friendships amidst the densely romantic plot.

You know what we didn't have? Enough of Win and Team. I liked them more than Dean and Pharm (as one frequently does with side couples), and I'm quite sad that most of their scenes were the weird product advertisements at the end of episodes (honestly, Lays, did I ask? I'm gonna eat your godforsaken chips anyway, you don't need to butt into this TV show). Their relationship didn't make a lot of sense because of how little information we were given, and I feel like it had a lot more potential than it was given credit for.

Also, I was really into the theme of food that Pharm kept making. I love making a wide variety of desserts, and even though I'm nowhere near as good of a confectioner as Pharm, it was still nice to see someone else display such an interest in this. Plus, I got inspired to actually make one of his Thai desserts, Leum Kleun! (I actually made an American knock-off version because I didn't have any of the ingredients to make it correctly and didn't feel like going shopping the day I made it, but it still turned out pretty good. I'll probably write another post about that later). It was probably most interesting to hear Pharm's explanations about all the meanings of the desserts--I never knew Thai cusine was so conscientious about their sweets.

There was definitely A LOT of sadness, which I was honestly not thrilled about, because I'm not super into sadness, and I find suicide to be seriously upsetting for personal reasons. If you read one of my previous posts on color palattes, you'll know that I also found Until We Meet Again to also be very dark literally: the darkness of the show was underscored by the darkess of colors in many, many scenes. I must admit that I stopped watching the series after the second-to-last episode for a month because it got so, so, so abysmal and I just could not take it anymore. But, when I finally did watch the last episode, I realized I had been missing out on, like, the best ending ever.

All in all, this BL was not an easy watch, but I felt enriched after watching it.

SPOILERS

Dean freaked me out because he freaked Pharm out. That guy needed to fucking curb himself and stop being oblivious to the fact that his boyfriend was uncomfortable with about 70% of everything he did to him. This seriously ruined my experience with the show. If you read some of my previous posts, you know I preach consent, and that just was not it. Did Pharm end up okay after everything? Yeah. Would a real person end up okay in those situation? Very possibly not. If it's bad enough that a neighbor could hear Pharm yelling "Stop, Dean, Stop!" then Dean most definitely needed to stop. At least the show kind of acknowledged that when Pharm's neighbor told Pharm to let him know if he needed help, because their whole relationship was kind of messed up.

Do university athletics have any other sports besides soccer and swimming? I like soccer, but in BLs it feels like swimming is just an excuse to shoot scenes where acters have minimal clothing, which is kind of annoying.

Also, that scene with Win, Team, and the mistletoe--is mistletoe not native to Thailand, because whoever made the props for this show clearly did not know what mistletoe looked like. It's not a ball of nasty, yellow-green moss. It is a green vine with white berries. As someone native to and currently living in the northeastern US (where we have an abundance of mistletoe), this bothered me.

The one thing about this show I really, really liked was the ending, when Pharm questions the reality of his attachment to Dean. Did Dean and Pharm's love really exist without In and Korn? It was a valid question, since so much of the past plot, including the development of their relationship, was based on them being reincarnated. (Also a valid question because Pharm seemed really uncomfortable really often, and yet he still hung on to Dean.) The answer to this question was delivered with such a golden sweetness that it almost made up for the tragedy in all the episodes before the last. The ending of Until We Meet Again was definitely my favorite part: it was happy, it was satisfying, and it made sense.

Besides Dean, something that honestly scared me was Dean's intensity with reconnecting with his past life. He had started off as a pretty sensitive and reactive character personality-wise, but as we dove deeper into his past life, those darkly scenes when he beheld various relics of his past life, such as the box of trinkets and photos (and the gun), and his old apartment were... well... scary. The intensity was so much that I had to turn the lights on in my room to watch those. It wasn't that I was waiting to be jump-scared like a horror movie (which I hate--not a fan of scary movies), it was that I was terrified about what he could and would do in such a tightly wound state. If there was anything Until We Meet Again nailed, it was the ability to create a tangibly intense atmosphere.

Overall:

Rating? 6/10 (the plot and acting were great, but Dead and Pharm's relationship was scary)

Flavor? Chocolate (the really bitter kind that isn't sweet at all)

Watch again? Maybe if I skip through the really sad parts

Recommend? Yes (TW: suicide)

Review: Love by Chance

Hello, friends! Bashful Bi's heart recently got bashed by the seeming discovery that the second season of Love by Chance has gotten cancelled because of some bizarre disagreements between someones' managers or something like that, so to say I was disappointed is an understatement. Actually, this ended up being untrue, as I discovered one week into the run of A Chance to Love, the strongly second season of Love by Chance. But instead of focusing on that snafu, I wanted to share my thoughts on the first season of Love by Chance, the TV show that paved the way for Saint, one of the leading actors, into my heart.

Summary (official):

Pete is a handsome and rich university student that is incredibly timid. His shyness is caused by the fact that he tries to hide that he is secretly gay. By chance, Pete gets hit by a kind hearted boy on a bike. The boy, named Ae apologises and helps him up. Whenever Pete trusts someone they use him for his wealth. While he was getting abused for money, Ae saves him. Over time, Ae protects Pete from the world; he takes care of him. But somewhere between the intense closeness and soft touches, Ae begins to feel more than how a friend would. Yet, Pete doesn't want Ae to know the pain of being ridiculed for dating a man. Thus he ignores his feelings for Ae. But Pete falls deeper and deeper in love with the kind hearted boy on the bike who once hit him, by chance.

My thoughts:

My thoughts on various aspects of this series range from delirious happiness to disgust and disturbance, however I generally liked this series for the really good parts and just skipped through the awful parts upon rewartching (as I've already done... more than once...). The way Ae and Pete's relationship starts off and develops is one of the most down-to-earth and believable in the BL genre--from my (albeit extremely limited) perspective, I've seen that friendship is the way most stable and happy romantic relationships start.

As for the other three relationships in the show, two of them are just straight up fucking awful, and the idea for those plotlines should have been an embarassment to the person who thought of them and should never have seen the light of day, much less the screen. The third, while kind of odd, I guess sort of makes sense if you understand how the repression of emotions works from either personal experience or a psychology class. More on these in SPOILERS.

In this series, the actor Suppapong Udomkaewkanjana, nicknamed "Saint," stars as Pete. I swear, I feel like his nickname originated because of his unearthly beauty, because oh my god... it's like he stepped off of an oil painting. He looks flawless. I always feel kind of creepy and intrusive gushing about celebrities' attractiveness, but I mean, in full respect towards Saint, he was seriously blessed with breathtakingly good looks. He also portrays the character of Pete very well--his emotions came across as genuine, and I felt like I really understood Pete. While it's easy to assume that this kind of performance could be typecast into Saint's actual personality, rendering his job quite simple, I watched another show Saint starred in, Why R U?, after I saw Love by Chance, in which Saint portrayed a wildly different, much more mature/sexy/put-together character. Let me tell you, he was completely different and seemed very much all three of those adjectives, and I believed and soaked up every second of it. This is definitely a testament to Saint's actual acting skill, beyond his luck on the genetic front. And, guess what? He also sings and raps under the name of Saintsup, and his songs and music videos are really good. What an icon.

SPOILERS:

The seriously awkward transition of Ae and Pete's relationship into... advanced territory... definitely caused me to cringe while watching, but I almost kind of liked that, because that's the way it often is in reality. People in real life often don't just wordlessly jump on top of each other, at least not in most healthy, consentual relationships--you have to actually communicate your wants, and that can feel weird if you've never done that before. With millions of idealized versions of such scenarios where communication is seemingly telepathetic, I think it's incredibly important to show that it might not always be like that, and that's okay. You just have to be open to the emotions communication brings with it, which should hopefully be inspired by incredible care for each other, which is something Ae and Pete had in spades and that made me very happy. 

You know what else made me happy? They had a happy ending without "stirring the drama pot" of excessive irrational reactions to suspicions of cheating and crazy, whiny ex-girlfriends or weird, intrusive ex-boyfriends. Imaging two guys communicating their feelings honestly to each other?! In short: talanted, brilliant, incredible, amazing, showstopper, spectacular... Unfortunately, that kind of happened in season 2, and that broke my heart even more than it angered me. I totally realize that Saint is doing stuff for another show right now, but A Chance to Love isn't quite the same without his squishy, bashful smile.

The one area where Ae and Pete's relationship falls short is consent after each "first." The most salient example of this is the iconic locker scene, where Ae essentially spews his jealousy, throws Pete against a locker (ouch?!), and kisses him as Pete keeps telling Ae that he needs a moment to process it all. Sure, it's hot and stuff, and both parties end up happy afterwards, but that's technically not consent and that's not cool. Maybe I'm a "psychopath" who "doesn't understand passion," but romantic relationships involve caring about the feelings of your partner as well as your own. All I can say is that I wouldn't appreciate being shoved against a locker like that without the ability to figure out how I felt about my shirt being ripped off. Just saying.

To my knowledge, I have never met anyone as obsessed with porn as Pond. Frankly, that was kinda gross and I didn't appreciate it. If that aspect of his personality was dialed way down by the scriptwriter I would have been a lot happier. He's way better in the second season where he seems a little less weird in that regard.

Trump? I don't know if this was an allegory on the abusive behaviors of our current US president (vote for Biden--shameless plug), but either way, that character was absurd. The acting of this guy really sucked, right down to the forced laughter. Anyway, Trump was used as a plot device above all things, and I was also pretty pissed that he wasn't even mentioned after he became irrelevant to Ae and Pete's love story. I doubt he will show up later in season 2, and even though for character development's sake he should, I think he is an evil that is better left buried in the first part of season 1.

Chompoo? She just sucks. She's so friggin lame.

Also, Tin and Can's relationship was kind of bizarre to me. How could someone like Tin, who touts his class at every opportunity, really fall for a simpleton like Can? Was the Vineyard-Vines-vibe vomit all a show for Tin as a method to repress his polar opposite feeling, caused by an unsuportive, and possibly socially conservative, household? (Spoiler for the second season: yes, it actually was. When the plot went into more detail about that, everything made sense and I like TinCan much more in season 2.) I honestly get Can being weirded out by it all and ultimately asking Tin to back off in season 1, and I'm so, so glad season 2 happened, because they clearly needed more time than the last third of one season to develop.

(trigger warning for the content below!)

Now, the tea you've been waiting for: Techno and Kengkla, and Tum and Tar. 

Let's start with the latter. Why the hell is it a thing in BLs to make guys fall for their step brother? While that's not physically incest, it's still morally incest, in my opinion, and that's a hard no. Additionally, you cannot just use rape as a plot device--yes, that's what it was, since there was no actual development of that beyond making Tar appear distant to his step brother--because that is disrespectful to survivors and minimizes its gravity in the real world. Also, one should never, ever force themselves the way Tum did on Tar, and one should never forgive someone who did that, like Tar forgave Tum. I'm not going to say more than THIS IS NOT AND WILL NEVER BE OKAY, because just thinking about it makes me want to scream in agony and anger.

Techno and Kengkla--a shitshow of property destruction, stalking, raping a drunk person with no sign of remorse, and then manipulating them into being your boyfriend. Need I say more than THIS IS NOT AND WILL NEVER BE OKAY before I enter a state of feral rage over this being portrayed as normal? This should have died in season 1, but some moron thought it was a good idea to give Techno feelings in season 2 and I am NOT HERE FOR IT. Ahhhhhhhhh fuck fuck fuck I hate this so much.

Anyway, if you skip through the unforgivable parts, it's a great show, and I really love Ae and Pete (and Saint)!

Overall:

Rating? I'm going to rate the storylines separately, as well as do my best to do it overall.

    Ae and Pete? 9/10

    Tin and Can? 7/10

    Tum and Tar? -infinity/10

    Techno and Kengkla? -infinity/10

    Overall? 7/10. The standard deviation is huge though.

Flavor? Starts out vanilla... but that is a deception! Chocolate with cherries.

Watch again? Yes, making sure to skip the worst of the storylines.

Recommend? Yes, but make sure to skip anytime the Tum and Tar or Techno and Kengkla storylines show up, or you will want to throw whoever let that happen against a wall. If you do, I bet you one (imaginary) dollar you'll rewatch it at least once!