BLISS RATING: ★★★★+
“Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.” – Quote from Spock in STAR TREK
I am a complete and total Star Trek fanatic. I am to coin an adage, a Trekkie (or Trekker, if you prefer). I even go to the Star Trek Conventions. I am partial to the original series which of course had a character in the series called Mr. Spock. Mr. Spock was a Vulcan, which is a species devoid of human emotions and their lives are based upon the concept of logic. Mr. Spock was unique in the sense that he was half human (his mother was human). So, he always had internal struggles with keeping his emotions in check and never really having the ability to ‘love’. Mr. Spock was raised on the planet Vulcan, so his upbringing was obviously ‘logical’. But what if Mr. Spock was raised on Earth instead? And that is what this story is all about. It is the gay love story of Mr. Spock had he been raised on Earth, notably in Korea.
This series is the most detached from emotions I have ever seen. Even Mr. Spock struggled with his inner emotions, but this series tended to portray its characters with little emotions or simply never understanding what their emotions are. Yes, there are a few scenes in this series that do get emotional, but in true Vulcan form, it is dismissed as an aberration or deduced as a momentary weakness. While this series is beautifully filmed and incredibly well-acted, it is very sad. It is a skilled story of unrequited love, unemotional emotional attachments, and an almost total inability to relate to anyone on any level. Frankly, I did not understand this series, nor its message, except from a purely intellectual point of view. Was that the point?
There are five main characters. Woo Tae-kyung (Lee Sae On), is an introverted, unemotional, detached loner with a dense inability to react emotionally to what is right in front of him. He is brilliantly intuitive, logical, and honest with almost no filters. He does so with an affect that is almost robotic and very analytical with incredible shades of pure logic (that is to say, a true Vulcan). To rephrase it, he is Mr. Spock if Spock was raised on Earth. (What is weird is that he actually looks like a young Mr. Spock especially with that hair style). He is an incoming student to the school and one of the teachers encourages him to get involved with Student Council so we can make friends and not be so alone.
Almost immediately, the President of the Student Council, Shin Da On (Chan Yi Choe) is enamored with him. This guy is the Mother Theresa of the school. Helpful beyond the scope of understanding to everyone and a rescuer of and for anyone in need. For reasons only known to him, although attracted to Woo Tae, Shin Da On lets his image, his reputation, and his pride get the better of him.
When Woo Tae professes liking him, which obviously was a very difficult hurdle for Woo Tae to jump, Da On simply retreats into his own safety net of his perceived self-importance. That world is known and secure for him. Additionally, he is ego-enhanced by Lee So Hee (Yang Seo Hyun), who is consistently by his side and playing the part of the girlfriend without ever really being one. She is a manipulator and is trying desperately to control all of Da On’s attention onto her, thinking he will someday fall in love with her.
However, she is intuitive enough to know that is never going to happen but still keeps trying and eventually destroys the fragile, budding relationship between him and Woo Tae. She knows or must sense that Da On is gay as she has stated on more than one occasion, she knows him better than he knows himself. I shall not label her as evil. Sure, her jealousy gets the better of her; but the real culprit here is Da On, who is superficial and lies. He knows how she feels about him. He knows how Woo Tae feels about him. Yet, he lies about how he feels, how he is, and who he is. He is the one who is ‘bad’ as Woo Tae aptly puts it because he is incapable of being himself or allowing others to see his true self.
Faded in the background, is Noh Shin Woo (Kang Yoo Seok)Their introduction is one of most humorous scenes in any BL I have ever seen, and it sets up a contrived dislike between them. At first. Shin Woo is opposed to Woo Tae becoming a member of the Student Council. But it is all feigned. This then begins their slow burn to developing a relationship. Shin Woo is a beautiful character and is portrayed that way. Always present. Always there. Always loyal.
Finally, you have Nam Goon Shi Woon (Woo Jin Go). Honestly, I could not figure him out at all. He is obviously THE individual everyone in the group turns to for advice and comfort and is the de facto leader. He is brilliant at manipulating them all into seeing themselves for who they truly are. Yet paradoxically, we NEVER get to know him. I thought at one point he liked So Hee. At other times, I thought he liked Da On. He is a figure that is playful, cunning, calculating, and is the puppeteer pulling all their strings. He sees things both as they are and how they should be. Yet, we never get to know him. What hides behind that convivial exterior? He is to some degree the soul of the group as he provides the beacon for each of their journeys to finding their own individual path. He truly is the unsung hero in this series.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. the series? My inclination was to name no one in this series for this distinction as I felt they all stayed consistently to whom they were supposed to be. But the more I thought about it, the more I gravitated towards Woo Jin Go as Goon Shi Woon. Why? Because he was the only one who was human in this series. Woo Tae and Shin Woo were robots, devoid of emotional connections. And Lee So Hee and Shin De On were both wrapped up into themselves that they saw no one else until it was too late. So, it was up to Goon Shi Woon to help them connect to their humanity and do it in such a way that he never forced anyone to do anything against their will. He showed them. He was that guiding light for integrity and honesty. Woo Jin Go showed us the character just enough to make him likeable but never enough to show who he was, what he wanted, or who he really was. It was brilliant acting in a subtle fashion. He had to do all of this in a way that did not make him clownish but enough to make him real and fun to be with. Honestly, I still do not know what his character got out of being with these people. Perhaps, just a sense of camaraderie. In this series, he is the individual least thought about but is the character who is the real author of this story.
This series is brilliantly acted, incredible well-written and executed with pretty good precision. The screenplay was near perfect, especially when it came to the dialogue between Shin Da On and Woo Tae. When Woo Tae expresses to Shin De On about how he now feels about him, it was stunning. He dispassionately and unemotionally explains that he feels sad for him. He tried to unbridle his burdens by giving him his love but Shin Da On never saw him. He realized that the only person who thought of him and only him and him first is Noh Shin Woo and he is the only one for who he will return his love (purely logical, I might add). It was brilliant dialogue said with such quiet fortitude and almost whispered tones that I wept at its impact. And for him to tell Shin De On to just say “Thank you for liking me” was breathtakingly beautiful and powerful words to live by. It is a stunning way to definitively end a connection without regrets or pain. That was one of the highlights of this series and the one scene I shall remember for a long time.
There is NOTHING wrong with this series. It is well acted, well scripted, and well produced. But it simply did not work for me. The unrequited love between the four characters on a strictly unemotional level just got to be too much. It simply lacked depth. For me, it became another ‘Thai’ BL series of unrequited love with a whole bunch of hesitancy and timidity with a kiss finally happening at the very end. Come on! The characters are astute, smart, and quite capable of growing. Sure, their emotional maturities were stunted if not down-right stuck in early adolescent mode.
But they remain the same until the end. I wanted more of a connection between Woo Tae and Noh Shin Woo. At the end, when they finally make a connection and kiss, it was endearing, sweet, and so adorable. I wanted more of that. But all we got was robotic, Spock-like characterizations with the end finally showing us some glacial-speed advances in understanding of who they were as individuals.
But it just did not feel complete to me or very satisfying. It took too long to get to the point that should have been made earlier so we could see them grow. Why is there this obsessive need to drag on character development to the point that when it is reached to some degree, we have lost interest? All of them are great actors. Give them something to act upon. If you want to see what Vulcans growing up on this planet would look like and how they would react to falling in love, then this is the series for you. Unfortunately, I found this to be a disappointment and a waste of great talent on only robotic characters.
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