BLISS RATING: ★★★★
“Synchronicity reveals the meaningful connections between the subjective world and the objective world.” – C.G. Jung
The concept behind this story is actually quite original and very cherubic. It begins in a very creative and smart fashion that becomes amusing and lighthearted. Easy to watch and simply fun. Unfortunately, it is not sustainable throughout, however. The story catches your attention in the beginning and then begins to bend and twist and finally by the end starts to become untenable. While it may have lost its creativity, the narrative certainly maintained its entertainment value.
Chia Kai (Bruce Chiu) has been able to ‘see’ connections among individuals all his life. Specifically, he sees connections by the different colors of threads between them. Each color has a different meaning/representation and intensity of bond. The color ‘red’, for example, means love. The stronger the color, the greater the connection. He is able to tell if two people are compatible with each other by the intensity of the color between them.
He and his friend Chao Nan (Lin Da Her) created a side mongering that ‘reads’ the connections of others. With Chia Kai’s ability to ‘see’ the kinds of connections to others, he is in a good position to advise those about the solidity of a relationship in any form. So, they offer their advice for a paid fee.
However, through all the years of being able to see connections between and with others, Chia Kai has never, not even once, seen a connecting ribbon to him. Of any color.
One day, Chia Kai notices a disconcerting connection and tries to stop an individual from committing suicide. In the process of attempting to talk her down, a policeman, Ta Wei (Liu Yu Ren), mistakes Chia Kai’s actions of doing something perverted. And arrests him. When it is all finally straightened out, Ta Wei coins the nickname of Mr. Pervert for Chia Kia. Yet something wonderous happens. A definite connection begins to flourish between Chia Kai and Ta Wei. For the first time in his life, Chia Kai has a link that he can see. It is a grayish-silver one that is unique and strange, and its meaning is unknown to him. Somehow, he is compelled to want to be near Ta Wei.
Since he has been so helpful to the police with his sensing abilities of ‘seeing’ connections between individuals and crimes, he is hired as a consultant and gets to work daily with Ta Wei. And as luck or fate would have it, Chia Kai needs a place to stay. Having now formed a close bond, Ta Wi offers his place to him on a temporary basis.
As their relationship intensifies, their link goes from the grayish-silver color to yellow, eventually blending into a solid red thread. Their bond is turning into true love. Of course, getting to that point, the two of them must go through several metamorphoses of change. Both amusing and charming.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? Lin Da Her as Chao Nan is simply one of the most entertaining side characters in a BL I have seen in a long time. He is everywhere. Always trying to find out if every girl that he just meets is the right one for him. While hapless most of the time, he becomes his own worst enemy until the girl that was literally right in front of him all this time that he had been teasing and bantering with is his true love. The creation of their love story is so much fun to watch but also has such an honest flair about it that it surprised me a bit that it took so long for it to be developed. Lin Da Her plays victim and lover with equal gravitas. One can easily see his personality come out. He is just so fiendishly loveable and engaging that it is hard not to fall in love with him. Honest. Real. Genuine. While a bit self-depreciating, he is never, ever phony. He is who he is. Charming, witty, and fun to be with. Kudos for being such a loveable character.
The other unique aspect of this series is that it showed the complex and multilevel relationships people can have with others. So, individuals can and do have all kinds of threads of different colors with others including those who they partner with. I do wish that had been emphasized a bit more with our protagonists.
This story had a lot going for it but it fizzled out, just a bit for me. I wanted a stronger connection between Ta Wei and Chia Kai. I actually wanted to see even more threads between the two of them than there actually were. These two actors have very good screen chemistry together and I loved the bantering between the two. So, their relationship was complex and multileveled. Frankly, it is hard for anyone to believe in Chia Kia’s ability, and we can see that Ta Wei wants to and eventually does believe in him; all in the process of falling in love with him. So, we should have seen multiple threads of different colors of threads swirling around them.
The last special episode makes these two so relatable in a completely ordinary way. They begin to see themselves together as a ‘couple’, having to face challenges that partners who are together needed to face with the one constant being that they must talk about it with each other. It was just a breath of fresh air in a BL series that made a relationship feel ordinary.
I thought the cinematography was surprisingly good for this series but needed to be more consistently intense. There were times when we did not see the connections that we needed to. I also did not enjoy the swarth where he lost his ability to ‘see’ connections. I thought that was a cheap shot and completely unnecessary. The threads added surprisingly greater dimension to the story and WAS the story; to take that away, diminished the story. When it was used to find Ta Wei for example, it became a powerful and dynamic tool. Its capacity became way more personal and impactful.
Overall, the series is a very entertaining and fun ride. And Bruce Chiu as Chia Kai and Liu Yu Ren as Ta Wei are a couple to watch out for. They are certainly believable and adorable cute, and charming and sexy together. They have a naturalness about them as if they belong together and nothing seemed forced or contrived. A rare commodity in a BL as of late. I liked them as a couple. I do hope they do get more projects together. There is also a lot of humor in this series that is soft and they honestly pulled that humor off with ease.
So, I think this series has a little bit of everything for everyone.
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