BLISS RATING: ★+
“Once you choose your own path, you won’t have to be a substitute for anyone any longer. Let’s start all over again.” – Quote from My Stand-In
This series attraction simply confounds me, honestly. To be sure, the acting is not the issue. But we have seen good acting before in mediocre series without any sort of recognition. Yet, this series seems to be inordinately ‘liked’ which to me makes absolutely no sense. Let me try and explain in reasons that both summarize the story as well as exhibit its massive flaws in the series overall – both in terms of its script and message. Let me emphasize that I have nothing against the acting, per se. It is satisfying but with no one really rising to the top to claim any accolade for outstanding performance. It all seemed rather predictable and pedestrian.
Without question, you have to completely suspend all religious, logical, empirical, rational, and scientific beliefs you have to buy into the underlying premise of the story. I simply could not and would not do that. In essence, the series did such an inadequate job of explaining how old Joe ended up in new Joe. It just whizzes on by. I did not know what was transferred. His soul, spirit, personality, chi, energy, or gestalt? The fact that there was a ‘master’ trying to explain the transition only added to the confusion and did not in any way clarify the logic of the transition. Where the series tried to make it ‘easy’ to relate to and accept was that the new Joe simply was the old Joe and that was wrong. Completely and totally wrong. If you wanted us to see, feel, and understand what the ‘new’ Joe was, then he should not have been the old Joe. He should totally have been played by Winner Tanatat with only an occasional glimpse of Poom Puripham as the old Joe. Just the opposite of what this series was.
The old Joe was in the body of the new Joe. That became a cheap shot and theatrical and took away from the suspense of what life would have really been like. I could write volume on how much the story would have been different if indeed ‘new’ Joe was played by new Joe trying to be the old Joe. It became too easy and became a slight-of-hand trick. There would have been so many, many more issues if indeed and in fact the new Joe was actually the new Joe but only with the mind of old Joe. It would have been a whole different story. One not relying on sentiments but on new realities.
Two, it made it appear as if the new Joe hardly existed or mattered. The old Joe simply and rather easily took over his body. Apparently, nothing of the former Joe was retained and no one who knew that Joe found that odd, including his ‘mother’. It simply could not work like that. There were some small references to him being oddly different, but apparently nothing noteworthy. As usual, it was all blamed-on bouts of amnesia. Even when the ‘new’ Joe had skills that he did not possess before, he used a lame excuse of watching YouTube. That was insulting and scarcely credible. While it made for easy watching and engaging storytelling, if one looked at it from a purely logical/scientific perspective, it made no sense. The nuances of moving and movements in ‘new’ Joe’s body would have been vastly different from the old Joe’s. It did not fit.
Three, Ming (Up Poompat) is an ugly despicable character who did not and should not have gotten everything he exploited to obtain. His behaviors were manipulative, evil, illegal, self-centered, and sociopathic pretending to be loving. His personality traits, as well as the rest of his family are classic narcissistic personality disorder traits. He (and his family overall) only does (do) things for his (their) own benefit and his (their) own self-centered whims and pleasures. That was so obvious throughout this series, and I found none of that having any redeeming value. He can cry ad nauseum and pretend to be sad all the time; it was all self-centered. All his actions were about controlling the narrative for either himself being the center of attention OR being equal to or superior to everyone else around him. Obtaining what he wants is his main goal and frankly only goal. Getting there and who he must step over to get there or how he has to get there is of little consequence to him. I found his character completely despicable and unworthy of being loved by anyone.
Fourth, Joe (Poom Puripham) is a figure unworthy of our sympathy and pity. He is a classic case of an individual who has been used, abused, conned, and bullied and comes back for more and in the end says thank you can I have some more, please. Rather than exacting revenge on Ming and Tong (Mek Jirakit), he forgives them. Tong’s behavior was beyond the pale in despicability while Ming’s psychopathic behavior indirectly led to old Joe’s death. In typical ‘Stockholm syndrome’ fashion, Joe forgives both where, in real life, he should have run off from them as soon as he was given a ‘second chance’. And he was given a second chance; and what does he do? He goes back for more abuse. That is not love; that is merely an unhealthy bond with an abuser and for someone who has worked with individuals who have been abused, it is so classic. They cannot and will not see it.
Fifth, this series had such a Pollyanna and cliché, trite contrite ending that made me sick to my stomach. Seriously. The writers expected us to believe all the awful things that Ming, Tong, and Ming’s family did can so easily be swept away by contrition is another prime example of having a complete lack of understanding of what the gay world is all about. And another prime example of privilege begetting privilege. As if it can all be forgiven so easily. That you can abuse, bully, threaten, control, and use people as you see fit and then when it suits you beg for forgiveness and pretend that you see the light. I found all that simplistic, lacking even a modicum of understanding gay relationships, and making it appear as if gay people can so easily be controlled by money, power, and a naïve child-like belief that love will or should conquer all. I am astonished how little the writers honestly know about the seriousness and passion of gay relationships. That they would treat the whole concept of being together so cavalierly and with such disingenuousness.
Here we have a vulnerable young man, weak personality-wise, succumbing to the whims of a charming manipulative rich gets-what-he-wants guy with the fates giving him a second chance. Rather than making him stronger, they make him weaker and literally becoming a paramour. All under the guise of ‘helping’ him. In the end, he chooses to go back to his abuser. What a misguided and tragic message to send out about relationships. Under the guise, of course, that all the bad guys have reformed and are now good. I am sorry but real life is not like pretending; that I believe is called Fantasy. Fine, if you choose to believe it; I shall not. Frankly, it is immoral to present it like this while the antagonists suffer none of the consequences that should have befallen them.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? The acting in this series is solid, to be sure. Impressive periodically but nothing overwhelmed me. I found Up Poompat as Ming too overly melodramatic. So much so that at times, I could not believe his actions were ‘real’. In other words, it was hard to tell if he, as the character, was faking it or really being genuine. Perhaps that was due to the nature of his persona. However, there are two minor characters in this series that gave this series some sense of an anchor. One was Wut (Paradorn Vesurai) who is one of the few who seems like an honest, genuine, and real person. He tries to guide both the old and new Joe, with both hardly ever heeding his advice. Ironically, if either or both had listened to his sage advice, the story would have gone in a totally different direction and would have had a worthy moral arc to it. An honorable mention should go to the actress (name unknown) who played new Joe’s mother. She was the epitome of the perfect mother image. If she sensed that her ‘new’ Joe was different, she kept it to herself. She was, is, and will always be Joe’s mother. There was just something special about her presence that made it feel like she really understood what was happening.
I am sorry to say, but this story made little sense to me, and I simply cannot figure out its attraction to the audience. To be brutally honest, Joe was not blinded by love; he was weak, naïve, and easily manipulated. Love is not an excuse for stupid behavior, even if it all ‘worked out at the end’. Ming and everyone around him were complete users and exhibited such sociopathic narcissistic behaviors and tendencies that anyone within a mile of them should have steered clear of them. They are toxic to the core. Just because the series, in the last few minutes, tried to paint these people as saintly, they are not and that, for me, was insulting to go in the direction that they did with that. It played to people’s heartstrings rather than having them see their truly ugly behaviors as a part of who they really are. I simply did not buy their sudden transformation. That was dishonest.
I am not trying to burst the romance of any story. But to have romance, there has to be a sense of equity and suitability in both individuals. I wish BLs would stop presenting love stories that are rather pathetic, ugly, or toxic and then suddenly because of a good deed or two expect everyone to believe that ‘love’, more especially in the BL world, will conquer all. That is nonsense and frankly unhealthy thinking. It is fantasy.
This series really does more harm than good.
Leave a Reply