BLISS RATING: ★+
“Just because someone desires you, does not mean he values you.” – OurMindfulFile.com
This series is full of lust and desire, but truth and honesty, not so much. I have seen my fair share of bad BLs, but this one stands out for having no scruples. None overall and none with any of the characters. In addition to one of the most idiotic and obtuse plots I have ever come across. In a nutshell, a completely unrealistic storyline with sinister characters and a lot of spurious acting as well.
Its central figures are Babe (Pavel Naret) who is the Golden Boy of racing and has a lust and taste for young men. But tires of them easily after they begin to ‘smell’ to him. A part of this ridiculous plot is the notion that Babe has ‘special powers’. He was also raised by a demented, sociopathic ‘Daddy’ named Tony (S Vorarit Vaijairanai) who goes around Thailand securing children with these ‘special powers’ and cultivates them like chattel and then sells these special children off to the highest bidder. Babe has managed to break away from Tony, although Tony is constantly trying to get him back into the family, presumably to sell him to the highest bidder.
Along comes the second key figure named Charlie (Pooh Kritten) who initially seems like a groupie and follower but has an enticing, seductive, almost hypnotic influence over Babe, and the two of them become a couple. Charlie becomes the main focus in Babe’s life. All of this is at the consternation of Babe’s good friend, Way (Nut Supanut), who is obsessed with and has an unrequited love for Babe. But Babe is too clueless to see any of that. One thing that Way does right is try to warn Babe that Charlie is hiding something and is not to be trusted. That he did get right. Of course, there are a multitude of other characters pushing this story to and fro until its silly end.
While there is ‘racing’ in this series, it certainly is not about that. It is primarily about the buying and selling of these children with ‘special powers’ and the absolute fidelity and loyalty that Daddy Tony demands of his ‘children’. Many characters in this series are or have been ‘children’ of Tony, including Charlie, which the only one apparently shocked by that was Babe. That was obvious from the very beginning except of course to the unwitting and rather dense, Babe, even with his so-called ‘special powers’. This series is so full of holes in logic that watching them emerge is droll.
To go further with this story would be a moot point. I could barely get through it and the end was simply as comical as it was bad. The astonishingly soap-opera-ish melodramatic finish was cringy and inept. I laughed more than I cried.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? What can I say about the acting in this series? It was pretty feigned with a lot of hot and heavy sensuous kissing and love scenes to prove that it was a BL. While they were interesting, I honestly fast forwarded through them because they were ‘acting’ the scenes out. Little seemed real or genuine and there is nothing more detestable to me that play-acting sex scenes. The overall acting is, in my opinion, strained to the limits of acceptability and hardly ever believable. If you were trying to go for ‘bad-ass’ imagery, it was a complete failure. Now to my point. I hardly ever have a visceral, gut reaction to a character in a series, but Charlie was the most insufferable characters I have ever seen in any BL. His persona was astonishingly fake. He lied, cheated, stole powers without telling anyone or asking permission to steal, played victim when he is the perpetrator and was completely untrustworthy. He lied directly to Babe’s face and hurt him in ways that were immeasurably awful, and yet manages to persuade Babe with a sweet innocence and manipulation that he is the victim here. He is one of the biggest con-artists I have ever seen in any series. I never once believed those two were ever in love and therefore all their love scenes seemed ridiculously phony and contrived because I never could believe if Charlie was ever really sincere. There was nothing amorous or erotic or interesting about them as a couple. When Babe finds out that Charlie is not really dead (sorry if I gave a spoiler away), it was so anticlimactic and so bad, I roared with laughter. Pooh Kritten as Charlie is so one-dimensional, his acting simply set me up to just want to scream. How anyone could possibly believe that he was in love with Babe delivering lines like he was reading them from a cue card is beyond me. He displayed no personality, no change in expression other than his silly naïve child-like expression, and no sense of depth to his character at all. That performance was at best lazy and lame. However, there is one person who does seem to grab my attention and that was Pon Thanapon) as Jeff. He had character, personality, a sense of personality and integrity about him. His acting is spot-on, and he completely outshined everyone else with his dead-pan expressions and laconic approach to his character. He played it seriously but with a sense that we could see him growing, changing, and feeling different emotions whereas the others were merely acting the parts, not feeling, or sensing the roles. He along with Allen (Sailub Hemmawich) form an attachment and then a relationship that is way more interesting and develops more realistically than the toxic one between Babe and Charlie.
The screenplay is simply awful in this series. Most of these characters are caricatures and they come across that way. Tony acts like a buffoon. Some of the mechanics are more clownish, I am guessing, to be funny, but with an insufferable sexual tension between them, teasing of a relationship but not ever making that clear. Way is obsessed but takes one for the Team, as the saying goes. His end scene, I am sorry to say, had me in tears from laughing as it was so badly written and acted. Babe could not give a dying man his last wish. Even then. My level of frustration and tolerance for actors who simply cannot cry when the scenes are emotional is reaching its limit. That IS acting and if you cannot do that, then you cannot act. That is so basic to acting and time after time in this series, especially at the end, where tears should obviously be flowing, there were none. Bad acting and bad directing and bad production.
If you have not watched this series, I would recommend you skip this one completely. It is overblown with self-indulgent personalities, a poor script, mediocre acting, and an absolute exasperating main character who for me solicited an encompassing loathing with a passion for his entire characterization and approach to Charlie, a storyline that is sick and demented, topped off with phony but well rehearsed love-making scenes. Absolutely none of this worked of me.
I would rename this series “Pit Fall”. One of the worst for this year.
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