BLISS RATING: ★★★
“Love unreturned is like a question without an answer.” – Unknown
To be honest, I know absolutely nothing about soccer (football) and the content and meaning of this story went right over my head. Being an American, I have never learned to appreciate this sport, nor its components, and am bewildered with its fascination. The zealousness of the phenomenon completely escapes me. Fortunately, the story is really about the interactions of its players rather than the sport itself.
Looking back on this series, none of it should have worked. It is filled with so many unlikely individuals thrown in together that on the surface, should have made for a disaster. Yet, I found myself being mildly entertained by what was happening underneath the surface. So many gay men harbor unrequited loves that they simply cannot, or perhaps will not, bring to the surface. In this story, we manage to see that happen, gingerly. Sometimes, comically but steadily, nonetheless. If viewed in terms of developmental stages of love growth, it becomes slightly more engaging.
Since I am not a fan of soccer, the story was irrelevant to me. But not its characters. So, I only concentrated on who they were. Do Ji Woo (Park Jong Hun) is one of those focused individuals whose whole life is wrapped around his passion. And his passion is soccer and playing the sport. Even if it is for a team that is less than successful. Since it is a loosing team, it is sold to an entertainment company to improve its marketability to attract new fans and obviously to become profitable. To create new fans, some unproductive players are let go and more visible ones are added. These new ‘players’ have entertainment value. One of whom is Yoo Gang Jae (Ko Deok Won). He is a successful actor but with a peppered history. He went to school with Do Ju Woo and is an admirer of his, yet Do Ju Woo seems to be ‘unaware’ of who he was. However, there had been some animus and friction between them when they were in college.
Secretly, each harbored an unrequited love for the other. This story manages to flesh that out sometimes with humor while at other times with a level of poignancy and occasionally with deeper internal emotional connections. Neither wanting to admit that they liked each other then or like each other now but easily succumb to the sexual tension between them to the point that everyone around them understands what is happening.
These two are not the only individuals that play a cat-and-mouse game with yearnings. The captain of the soccer team, Jun Tae Yeong (Hwang Yun Je), takes another entertainer-who-wants-to-be-a-soccer-player under his wing, Lee Sun-bin (Hong Dong-geon), and watches over him. Their story is softer, gentler but no less filled with sexual tension but in ways that are more subtle. Their relationship is underlyingly amorous and just a lot of fun to watch.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? Honestly, no one really stands out in this series. The acting is not deep nor truthfully is the story. Everything is just sort of ‘there’. Ironically, for a short series, it really is a slow-burn to get to a point. I liked the secondary couple more than I liked the focus on the primary one. In the primary one, there is just too much time wasted on unnecessary past bantering and blustering, which frankly I honestly did not understand. It all seemed so superficial in nature, so I just did not get it.
It is an entertaining series and fortunately it did not get too much into the nuances of soccer, which I am grateful for. I am not sure I understood the point to the series except that it was, I am guessing, to make the team more profitable by selling merchandise. That part seemed mainly in the background and personality driven and I was not sure why the two main protagonists sold more merchandise than the others. It was all a bit confusing to me as to how that all happened.
The love scenes are certainly not going to move mountains as the expression goes. What few intimate kissing scenes there were, where quite stilted and juvenile in presentation. As adult men, none of them seemed to know how to kiss. Honestly, some of these production companies need to hire a ‘kissing coach’ (I am being facetious, of course) to make it at least LOOK like they are enjoying kissing and know how to kiss. It was as uncomfortable to watch as it seemed for them to film. If you do not want to kiss, then make that a part of your contract not to, although then I am not sure why you want to star in a BL. Please stop using shocked looks , or bug-eyed expressions, or barely touching lips to kiss when we know a kiss is coming and think we are going to be swooned off our feet by their amorousness. That, as the expression goes, is ‘all window dressing’.
It should be clear now that I had a hard time connecting the dots in this series. The whole story looked and felt disjointed to me. Perhaps it was because I do not understand South Korean culture or maybe I do not understand the nuts-and-bolts of soccer itself.
A cute tale to be sure but kind of pointless and certainly not memorable as nothing in this made it so. Not the story, nor the acting, or even the ending. It is amusing in some parts but sorry to say it is more forgettable than dynamic.
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