BLISS RATING: ★★★★+
“Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.” – Robert Browning
Surprisingly, this is a smartly written, well defined adult-themed BL that unfolds from an infatuation to quite literally life partners. I was impressed with how well this series evolved and told a full and complete story. Sure, it had a lot of bumps along the way, and tended to be too much of a Soap Opera in places, but it had heart and grit and frankly never lost its way. It is one of the most solid BLs from Thailand to come along in quite a while.
The main couple is certainly an odd pairing. Zo (Dunk Natachai) starts out as a high-strung nerdy individual fixated on trying to get close to Nita (Jamie Juthapich). Zo is a serious, studious student, who has a self-esteem issues. That plays a part in his development throughout the rest of the series as he desperately tries to overcome his own feelings of inadequacies. He is informed by his friends that Joke (Joong Archen) was a former ‘boyfriend’ of hers and perhaps he can give him some advice. However, Joke is a rather unapproachable and standoffish individual who for the most part seems unlikeable and generally unfriendly and uses his wit to hurl sarcasm and caustic remarks to get at people. But hidden behind that façade, is someone just like Zo. Talents that have yet to be discovered and traits yet to be realized. And secretly, he manifests a crush on Zo.
After a rocky start, he agrees to help Zo ‘win’ over Nita, knowing full well that what he is doing is drawing Zo closer to him like a moth to a flame. He senses that Zo is confused as to his own feelings once the learning lessons to win over Nita begins. Although Joke knows who he is, Zo is confused and unsure. Yet as they are drawn closer and closer to each other, he begins to see Joke in a different light and certainly feels differently towards him. Joke is always there – supporting him, encouraging him, and continuously helping him – to see his assets rather than only concentrating on his liabilities. Slowly, but inexorably the two begin to fall deeper in love with each other, perhaps not wanting to admit to its magnitude yet.
The love story waxes and wanes and seems to go on endlessly. The writers simply belabored the love development way too much. I understand hesitancy, as both have had issues with acceptance, constant reminders of their inadequacies, and never feeling loved or embraced by their families, but honestly, a reference or two of that is enough to get the point. Oversaturation of that is wearisome. Especially with Zo. Dear God, how many different ways did Joke have to prove his love for him? Until Zo realized that if he did not change, he would lose the foundation and the support that he had come to rely on that he took for granted. When that finally sunk into Zo’s brain that Joke is the real deal and is not going anywhere, the story settled down into a rather nice comfortable tale – much like a glove fitting a hand. It seemed to be proportion just right.
Admittedly, this series did a good job of dealing frankly with Zo explaining to Nita how he honestly felt about her. While he enjoyed her company when he was with her, his heart skipped a beat for someone else. They can and always will be friends. I thought the level of maturity in that discourse was well thought out and showed signs of maturity and acceptance of who he was and candidly came as no big surprise to Nita.
There is a secondary couple that has about as much chemistry together as oil and water, which is sad, as their actual story is a very interesting one. Jeng (Aou Thanaboon) who is the cousin to Joke has a secret, or rather hidden, relationship with Pok (Boom Tharatorn) who is a close friend of Zo. Zo, when he finally finds out that Pok is in a relationship, is dejected as he feels close to Pok. But Pok was still not yet comfortable enough to ‘come out’ even to his close friends. Although he superficially seems to be accepting Jeng’s conditions of wanting to keep their relationship from family and friends a secret, Pok, however, finally reached a breaking point. The accumulation of Jeng acting and appearing as if he is ‘single’ and treating Pok as an afterthought simply reached its limit and it began to appear as if Jeng did not want Pok in his life.
Honestly, this series had one of the best ‘break-up’ scenes’ I have seen and was so well scripted and acted, that it brought a sense of authenticity to the relationship. It also gave this series heart and real human drama on such a relatable scale. This is such a common scene in gay relationships where one is trying to hide the connection to make it copasetic while the other one is not willing or wanting to go along with the charade any longer. This was handled exceptionally well but not to the conclusion. In this case, I found the conclusion disappointing. Yes, Jeng makes the effort and appears to be successful in ‘outing’ the two of them as a couple and is making a concerted effort to make sure, as difficult as it is, that everyone knows, that Pok is his life partner, and he is now fully committed to him. However, while the effort was there, the two never fully seemed to be a couple – either as characters or as actors.
I am sorry to say there was no chemistry between these two as characters and even less as actors. I never once got the impression that they were anywhere ever in ‘love’ with each other. They never played the part with any conviction at all.
Sometimes as painful as breakups are, they are the right thing to do. I firmly believe this couple needed ‘time away’ from each other to sense and feel the reality of separation, more so on the part of Jeng as Pok has already felt it. You cannot force anyone into a relationship and all of that seemed so forced to me. Not a healthy way to begin a relationship.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? The acting in this series is so-so for me. Honestly, no one stands out here. Each had their moments. Dunk Natachai as Zo was better at high emotional moments like when he is trying to deal with his tone-deaf mother. Joong Archen as Joke was rather consistent in his acting with pretty much the same low-energy approach with bits of aloofness and saintly patience. Too patient at times, which at times weakened his performance. He did portray a person so deeply in love that he pretty much ignored a lot of the faults that Zo continually displayed. Who really stole my heart was Grandma (performer unknown) who seemed to sense the relationship between her grandson Joke and Zo. The wisdom of her years gave her the fortitude to ‘test’ Zo’s capacity to face a bit of adversity. She seemed to sense that Zo’s feelings for Joke were stronger than perhaps he even realized and once she knew of his commitment to her grandson, she would accept and bless this relationship. With her grandma-type behavior and her frizzy hair, she was so apt at being grandma, how can you not see her as such? She was certainly one of the more believable characters in this series.
What this series did well was show how the toxicity of family dynamics affects children and perhaps more so gay children, as they must try to prove themselves even more in the eyes of their families. Look no further than Zo. Zo’s mother, under the guise of trying to scholastically get her son ahead, was telling him he was worthless and not seeing what her behavior was doing to him. She was completely tone-deaf.
Meanwhile, Joke’s family, specifically his father, only saw his son as a ‘loser’ and could not see his positive assets. Both these issues are magnified, either real or imagined, by the fact, that they are gay. It was a thoughtful introduction to family dynamics that indeed does play a major role in the development of personalities of individuals as well as affecting the relationships between people. We all seek the approval of family.
The declination of this series was it tried to do too much and tackle too much and kept repeating the same overt theme and got caught up in superfluousness. Yes, we get that it is scary to enter a relationship, especially a gay romance more so, if you are unsure of your attraction to the same sex person. It also droned on and on about individual insecurities that we already knew and therefore there was no need to continuously repeat the same theme. We further do not always need to find ways to break up or diminish a relationship; those we have experienced. But what we need are ways to solidify the relationship. This series spent too long on the excessiveness of the debate scenes. It was all so predictable in the end and knew we what the results would be, which made it all rather tropey.
In the end, however, the story did something rarely seen in BLs and almost never in Thai ones. It had a graceful ending eluding to the notion that they were and remain a couple still deeply in love and still happy to be so. They are life partners, if not soulmates in every sense of that term. That is a worthy legacy.
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