BLISS RATING: ★★★★+
“True blindness is the inability to see any hope. We live to pursue hope in life” – Quote from Last Twilight
I had almost given up watching Thai BLs are they had become so formulaic and standard. Then this gem comes along with its stunning, nearly perfect love story that crashed and burned at the end. It just had to make it have a ‘feel-good’ happy ending. Unfortunately in that process, it transformed into a trite overblown conclusion. I cried as hard at the demise of this fantastic series as I did during the whole of this series. The ending completely ruined it for me.
The series starts out so exceptional and I felt the curse of Thai BLs would finally be broken where it would not be so epigonic. It is a beautiful story of privilege meeting non-privilege with the union becoming one precariously in the middle. Both must understand the other. Each having to accept the other. Each embodying learning to love the other. This is a story of tenacity. Of growth. And finally, of acceptance. It is a story of love.
A romance between Mhok (Jimmy Jitaraphol), the non-privileged, and Day (Sea Tawinan), the privileged. The union that quietly grows before us with both shedding what blocks their barriers to love. As Day goes completely blind, he sees life and love perhaps more clearly than if he would have if he had sight. And Mhok sees love as being a defender. Not a protector. His flaw was he wanted to be the eyes for the blind whereas he only needed to be the cane.
What was remarkable about this series is that there was nothing artificial about it until its end. It is just a story of the two of them. All their tribulations were incidents that were fielded with sensitivity and a complete awareness to the logical outcome of someone going blind. Sometimes with pity, often out of compassion, but most of the time not knowing what the right course of action was. Yet, all of it contributed to the growth of Day becoming a self-sufficient human being relying more on himself than on others.
I also had great admiration for how Day learns to ‘forgive’ his brother for his blindness, which in truth was not his brother’s fault. Night (Mark Pakin) carries the weight of guilt by association for the cause of Day’s blindness. He wears it stoically and holds onto the guilt even when forgiven. The story gives Night a rather contrived ‘happy ending’ that is just a bit too Pollyanna for believability. But that was only a small contributor to the story’s contrivance; that could have been forgiven if the entire ending was different.
This series also creates a phenomenal amelioration in restoring and reestablishing lost relationships. On the forefront of the construct that forgiveness and treating the unfaithful father from the past with some sense of compassion after many years of isolation, provides a nexus that he belongs to and is part of a family. That was handled with great care and judiciously and should be commended for painting a picture of letting go of the past and seeing new beginnings and re-establishing relationships once thought lost.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? It is exceptionally rare for me to name a major actor as worthy of this distinction as we expect them to be good. But Sea Tawinan as Day is simply remarkable. And I do not say that as hyperbole. Having spent my professional career in human services, Sea’s performance as a visually impaired individual was flawless and impressive. And completely real. I look for flaws for nondisabled individuals who play disabled individuals; it is my nature to do so. And he showed none. He knew how to be visually impaired and knew how to feel, act and be that. I have seen great performances before but none better as a person with a disability. If this had been an American series, there would be no doubt in my mind that Sea would have received an Emmy nomination for Best Actor in a series for this performance. He is that good. My only criticism of his performance is his reservedness in being a lover. He always seemed to somehow ‘hold-back’ from fully committing himself to Mhok. It had nothing to do with blindness. It had everything to do with the passion of being in love. I just did not sense that. Perhaps others did; I just did not. The thing that is self-evident in Day is his lack of warmth. He is a complex character who is layered and honestly difficult to like. That has nothing to do with his visual imparity but his personality. Frankly, he is lucky to have found Mhok.
I wept more than once in this series. Many of these scenes were astonishingly moving and so romantic. Jimmy as Mhok made them so. He is captivatingly handsome and so hypnotic with his eyes and mannerisms that I felt his love for Day leap out from the screen. He is alluring and enchanting in such a serene manner. When on that mountain top, in the twilight, with Day’s last visualization being Mhok’s angelic face, I lost it. I completely lost it. Eyes red from weeping. It was one of the most beautiful scenes in any BL I have seen. Kudos for its cinematic magic. I was in love heaven! It is memorable.
This is one of the few Thai BLs that handled a story about a disability with a sense of maturity, commitment, and a level-headedness, and a realistic albeit not always positive outcome or solution. One overriding theme that they presented and telegraphed throughout was the abhorrence of pity in dealing with people with disabilities. Again, having spent my entire professional career in that field, that is a compete truism. Yet, somehow, I knew that theme would also be its downfall and it was.
This was an exceptional series until the last 2 episodes and then it completely fell apart. Suddenly, Day decides inexplicably to ‘break-up’ with a guy who gave up everything for him, sacrificed for him, and changed for him. While I understand in that moment, the reasoning and passion, cooler heads and logic should have prevailed and his mother and brother should have reigned him in to give him a reality check and caution against acting like a petulant child. That is what families do or should do, even if Day did not like their advice. Mhok made a mistake. To cut him off completely made no sense and forced the story to drift into a tropey contrived cliché-filled ending that even Pollyanna would have thrown-up from too much sweetness. Why could you not have been more honest, real, and forthright?
The story only dealt with the emotions of Day and not with Mhok. We see Mhok weeping and then 3 years later ‘thanking’ Day for breaking up with him so he could grow. What?! That was utter nonsense and ridiculous. Day is beyond self-centered, and he used his disability as a crutch to reinforce his own arrogance. This story is a story of two. The pain Mhok experienced must have been almost unbearable as he too seasoned along with Day while Day was blind. To not recognize that is an injustice. The whole ending to me was just too contrived and took away from its magic spell over me. The production could not think out of the box and therefore made its ending spurious and artificial. It cheapened the whole series unfortunately by doing that and made it insufferably theatrical.
Something else gnawed at me, that is a technical issue that I did not understand. If all Day needed was a corneal transplant, then the time frame to get one, even in Thailand, was artificially high in the story. There is a no waiting list in the United Stated and not much of a one in Thailand especially for families with money, which they had. They only had to come to the United States, and they would have easily been able to have corneal transplants. If you are going to do a medical drama story, do some research and complicate a condition so as to make the condition appear out of the realm of the usual.
Otherwise, the story becomes even more flawed because with just a little bit of research one can find out that corneal transplants are not that exotic or uncommon.
I am not trying to deliberately knock this series. It is exceptional. I am just personally disappointed. It could have been a masterpiece but yet again the fear of taking it out of the realm of familiarity is just too much for some production companies. So, they stick to the tried-and-true and give ‘happy endings’ that would make Pollyanna blush. Just make the happy ending not so cliché and utterly ridiculous as this one turned out to be. It detracted from its greatness and frankly its grandeur.
So much could have happened in 3 years of no deliberate contact.
Perhaps regret on the part of Day, who decided on his own that this was the best course of action, might now have been a valuable lesson learned as he actually sees Mhok fly back to Hawaii to be with his husband.
Leave a Reply