CITY OF STARS – 2024 – Thailand

BLISS RATING: ★★★★+

“Life is short. Smile while you still have teeth. Just smile before you run out of teeth.” –  Quote from City of Stars

This series is astonishing difficult to critique. It had such pockets of high-highs and then slipped into tropey, cliché-driven low-lows that I wanted to scream. Sometimes the characters went deep while at other times, they were clones of other BL stories. While the overall story is a rather interesting one, its execution was just plain awful in places. Without getting too much into the weeds, let us go through the story quickly.

Krommatha [Krom] (Porsche Sitha) works for an American social networking company called Zendaya. The platform is to make sure that only positive content posts are displayed, and his job is to make sure that anything posted in Thai is appropriate to their content rules. The one Thai BL actor who is currently using this platform is Fueangnakhon Phakdeetrairat [Fuaen Nakhon] (Job Krisz). Although he plays scandalous roles, in real life is a soft-spoken, generous, thoughtful, hard-working young man but always seems to be embroiled in some sort of controversy. Given the business he is in, it is not surprising that people who really do not know him want to tear him down simply based on hearsay and innuendo.

Krom, although working in the United States, is able to come back to Thailand for an extended vacation. Who happens to be living next to his parents’ home is none other than Fuaen Nakhon. The saga twists and turns a lot with the premise being that Fuaen Nakhon is simply deeply in love with Krom. And honestly, their creative story of love is, at its core, not a bad one, if you can get through all the noise and fluff to get there.

The story creates too many side issues to prove that these two young men are worthy of our attention. Yes, they are, on the whole, good guys, and one does not need to constantly and continuously provide evidence that they are. They are morally decent guys who occasionally have fallen down, pick themselves up, brush themselves off, and move on; more adeptly Fuaen Nakhon, as he has years dodging controversies with a manager who hawkishly watches over him. They are, after all, human.   Sometimes Krom is a bit thick-headed, naïve, bad at communication, and slow at internalizing lessons learned. On the other hand, he is not used to the ruthless world of entertainment. I get it but his level of immaturity throughout is a bit annoying at times and often excused.

The cast of characters that surround these two are pretty standard inconsequential ones. Some are as dense as fog. Others are naïve while others are just there for entertainment or humor. Most of whom we could have done without. Why there is this obsessive need to have such shallow supporting cast members who prance around sort of acting dumb or naïve, takes away from this story and casts a pall over the story, is beyond me. I wish this would stop.

Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series?  However, there are two characters who break that mold and are just wonderful in this series. Kodit (Kimmon Waradom) is Fuaen Nakhon’s acting partner and best friend. They are, however, more like brothers and share a deep love and respect for each other. This series does an exceptionally fine job of displaying a prodigious bromance between the two in such an intensely platonic way. Kimmon does such an exceptional job of showing his emotions while always and forever, being supportive of Fuaen Nakhon. Kodit is obviously trying to run away from something, and it is about halfway through that we find out why he is deeply trying to escape. He is passionately in love with a transsexual woman named Namsom (Rock Kwanlada). She does an outstanding job of capturing the difficulties of navigating the life of a trans woman trying to date and be with a male star in the entertainment business. Brutality and caustic remarks can destroy not only a relationship but an individual’s soul as well. Both handle remarkably well the intricacies of trying to establish and maintain a relationship that even in Western culture is still very much not yet accepted. I applaud the production for tackling such an issue and for these two for portraying their roles with the utmost dignity and fortitude that the roles deserved. Kudos for taking on such sensitive roles and making it work with complete respectability.

This series is a good series. It is just not great and there are many reasons for that. Here are a few of them:

1. It tried to do too much. It was all over the map with the story. Rather than focusing on one or two directions, it tried to show all facets of everyone’s life, failing miserably at all of it. It should have been just enough to show a love story with all of its complexities. I find it so ironic that people love the screen chemistry of shipping two guys together but when it comes to real life, they simply cannot be who they really are. Hence, the constant fear of being labeled and thus destroying your career.
2. As mentioned, too many characters. So unnecessary. It slows down the story and makes it look raffish.
3. The acting of Porsche Sitha as Krom, sweet as his character is, was exasperating. He was just so two-dimensional. And Krom’s inability to learn from his mistakes was beyond comprehension. He is an adult but acted just too many times like a child, learning nothing from mistakes. The inability to be open, honest, and straight-forward is simply something I shall never understand in these series. COMMUNICATE!  Learn the concept. Make the protagonists adults for a change.
4. Job Krisz as Fuaen Nakhon, did a commendable job for the most part. However, like Porsche, neither one was given much of a chance to grow as characters. As they were in the beginning is pretty much how they were at the end. His flat affect, almost stoic expressions, which is charming at times, becomes a liability if it is used in all scenes in all situations. I was disappointed that neither grew in developing or maturing their characters.
5. While they were endlessly kissing, it was boring and for me, simply not believable because they lacked passion. Job was much better in kissing. If I am being honest here, it was hard for me to watch Porsche kiss. He looked like he was going to simply vomit a few times. It did not appear in the least he was enjoying those scenes. To further be honest, there were way too many kissing scenes. It got boring. There seemed to be little sense of intimacy between them. What intimacy there was, was so contrived and looked entirely rehearsed.
6. Some production issues with the cutaways and when scenes were happening made it hard to follow the story, especially at the end. Better editing was needed.
7. There are no real surprises in this series. It was a bit Pollyanna and thus the story became a bit dull, predictable, and mundane. Nothing in life is always that sweet. A bit too unrealistic with everything always working out. A way around this is to shorten this series to simply the essential parts of the story between the main couples. This is one case where less would have been more.

Yet, there were some issues that this series tackled with great sensitivity and dignity. For example:

1. The ugliness of the entertainment industry from fans and social media sites. Living in Los Angeles and having friends in the entertainment industry, all that was portrayed was accurate, if not even toned down a bit.
2. The consequences of being honest and truthful. Fuen Nakhon’s handling of his exposure from the past was a thing of beauty and to admit to it was heroic. However, he paid a heavy price. That was real.
3. The charitable activities that Fuaen Nakhon are truthful. Many “A” list and “B” list performers give their time for free to charities. Again, living in the Los Angeles area, this is quite common and is one of the unsung and often unnoticed activities that many ‘stars’ give of their time to do. Kudos for showing this. This is also real.
4. The openness of their relationship at the end was a thing of beauty. That does not happen very often, even here in the West. In addition, this is the first time that I can recall that a character in a BL as a character comes out and says that his character is ‘gay’. It was refreshing to hear that word. So often in BLs, that word is never mentioned, or only danced around, or romanized as if it is all like a fairytale.
5. Again and again, I applaud the Thai BLs for pushing the concept of gay marriage in Thailand. Of all countries in the East, this is one that should have it. It would become a leader then for other countries to follow. Kudos for your efforts to get this done or in the forefront.
6. Ironically, this is the first time I have ever heard an open, honest, and frank discussion between lovers (Kram and Fuaen Nakhon) about sexual positions and what they like and to let the other know what they like. That was a first and kudos for letting the world know that indeed gay guys really do talk about such things. Thank you.
7. The portrayal of a trans figure with complete honesty was one the series finest points. And an individual willing to love her without reservations or horrible traumas. It is about time that such a warm and sensitive story was told.

This story should have been a real tour de force. Even with its flaws, the positive issues it tackles more than recovered for its flaws. But I could not help but feel empty watching this – like something was missing. Something to touch me. It just never did. Perhaps others might have been grabbed by it, but I simply was not. I just never had an emotional connection to any of the characters. The only real intense connection, honestly is between Fuaen Nakhon and Kodit. That was a thing of beauty to watch. But even that was not enough to make this series for me memorable.

I am afraid by next week, while I might recall that this series was entertaining, I shall not remember much else about it.