Is the risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience

This section is dedicated to those BLs and gay series and movies that did not live up to some magical standard of what is ‘good’. I know that is subjective but now that this overall site has been operational for a while, there is a certain minimal standard to being entertained or feeling satisfied with what I think its objective, message, or theme was. In addition, the need to review its production worth must also now be taken into consideration as well. I am of the opinion that you can do a lot with a little as we have also seen that having a lot does not mean necessarily doing a lot. Expectations are few will agree with my list of Bl series or movies for the Bathos List..

Upon recent reflection, as BLs become increasingly more prevalent, a trend seems to be recurring that is troublesome. And this is the overuse of bullying, abuse of all different types (sexual, physical emotional, psychological), and intimidation to either further enhance a ‘love’ story or an increase the theme of acceptance. Sometimes, it is subtle or even done humorously but it is there. Other times, it is quite overt. It is all bad and gives the impression that this is somehow ‘normalizing’ in gay relationships or acceptable mating rituals for fictionalize characters in BLs. To normalize, abuse, be it gay or straight, is simply morally reprehensible and should be called out as wrong, no matter how ‘well-acted’ the series might seem. It is flatly and unequivocally a wrong message, even in the illusionary world of BL. Because, sometimes, critical thinking might be suspended, or stories could seem a bit too real and the blurring of the two worlds – fantasy and reality – can blur. Not that these themes cannot be used or even shown. They can, if it has a redemptive quality to it and that theme is made clear. I find it fascinating that abuse, bullying, and intimidation are acceptable, even celebrated as artistic yet too much physicality (which ironically is its main premise) and a society becomes offended. Intriguing. I shall ‘call out’ all excessive use of especially abusive and bullying situations for what it is. Maybe we can all learn.

Duds for 2025

Teenager Judge | Vietnam – While well-acted, this series droned on mercilessly about bullying and abuse. We got it. Now give us a theme. Why? And what is your point? This was not even a love story.
Ossan’s Love | Thailand – This ended up being a mockery of a masterpiece saga. It is filled with caricatures with contrived and silly chains of events. Even the protagonists were clownish, immature, lacked any growth, and had no understanding of the characters.
The Boy Next World | Thailand – Painful as it is for me to say this, this story should never have been made. This relationship is based upon two individuals who live in an illusion. One created it while the other wants it. There is nothing normal or in fact real about this series.
Exclusive Love | Taiwan – This whole series is one giant contradiction. But it presents well. The premise is based upon kidnapping and coercion which leads to a love interest. A classic case of the Stockholm Syndrome, a suspect foundation for falling in love with someone.
Business As Usual | South Korea – There is no projection of joy or happiness and just a slight sense of comfort as a couple in this series. It tended to indulge in profound self-pity and unhappiness, primarily due to the usual cause of insufficient communication. Enough already.
Sashes And Hearts | Philippines – An aimless and silly story about male pageantry that should have knocked our socks off. Instead, it went for salaciousness and a whole lot of trope and cliché set-ups and tried-and-try formulaic storylines. It missed out on telling a unique story.
Boys In Love | Thailand – This series is passé, outdated, disparaging, and most of all does not have a modicum of connection to reality or candor. This is a Pollyanna world; not Earth 1. It presents an idealized version of gay adolescent boys only in pre-pubescent images, incapable of any growth. Grow up and stop this!
I Became The Main Role Of A BL Drama Season 2 | Japan – Childish, immature premise with a prepubescent plot made worse by perfunctory acting. It is the ridiculous plot of a madly in love couple who cannot talk with one another with each having beyond the pale insecurity fears. Enough with the triteness.
ABO Desire | China – A vile indecent story sugar-coated to look good. The story is empty as well as full of pervasive bullying, all kinds of abuse, rape, and over-the-top toxic masculinity. The acting is full of one-dimensional characterizations that simply become caricatures.
Rearrange | Thailand – Unfortunately, just another going into the past BL to change the love equation that just did not work. Logically, it made little to no sense with the characters being wooden and cliché.
The Wicked Game| Thailand – What can one say about a series that has so little going for it? The plot is dizzyingly twisted. It has no socially redeeming values about it at all and there is no point pretending it does. The principal characters are all sycophantic, disreputable, and unprincipled.
Revenged Love| China – Watching this series is an experience. An inviting one. Unfortunately, there is also an ugliness to this series as well. There are obvious rape and forced nonconsensual sex scenes throughout in this series that is appalling and no amount of ‘cuteness’ can cover that up. The way gayness is portrayed is demeaning and derogatory in so many other ways as well.
Heesu In Class 2 | South Korea – The lack of communication between both was beyond the pale here. More abysmal than this was the way gayness was regarded. Just like a disease. It had to be hidden and pushed into the dark corner of the room. You can only talk about it in the dead of night or in whispers.

All of these are of equal mediocrity. However, there are three I would place in the Hall of Shame and all three are “The Worst”. They are REVENGED LOVE, ABO DESIRE, and TEENAGE JUDGE because they each relied on ugly heavy doses of abuse, intimation, and bullying to ‘get to a point”. Sometimes that was guised as ‘love’ while sometimes for acceptance. But in either case, it is plainly and flatly wrong. Frankly, I was sickened by their messages, even though two of these three have virtually received universal acclaim. That deeply saddens me when abuse is more valued as art than what it truly represents – submission and intimation, the exact opposite of love. It saddens me how little this seems to be recognized and/or sugar-coated by good-looking guys or cinematic tricks – all in the name of art.

There are several ‘Dishonorable Mentions’ that deserve distinction as well. These are series where the acting was good to outstanding, but the story let them completely down. It became juvenile, full of cliché set-ups or tropey scenarios. Worse yet, they presented ‘love’ between two men with an infantile glaze or a Pollyanna frosting that had no anchor to any mooring of reality whatsoever. Here are representatives of those that were so disappointing:

Lover Merman – Thailand
The Killer Next Door – South Korea
The Bangkok Boy – Thailand
Your Sky – Thailand
When It Rains It Pours – Japan

Nadirs for 2024

My Universe. A hodge-podge of 12 meaningless stories that were pointless and mostly poorly acted and amateurish in nature and scope. None of the stories held my attention at all.
Pit Babe. A combination of bad acting, poor screenplay and a completely inept story that tried too hard to be everywhere all at once. One of the characters created in me a visceral loathing that I rarely feel for a character, but the acting was so one-dimensional.
Cooking Crush. This story is your standard Thai rom-com droll series, treating gay relationships like infantile, immature, puppy-love versions of Pollyanna tales. It is tedious, boring, and unchallenging with not a shred of originality to the story or plot, although the food looked awesome.
To Be Continued. It was like being adrift in a rudderless boat floating in an ocean of tropes, cliches, banalities, stereotypes, and platitudes. Unfortunately, this series went nowhere because it had nowhere to go to. This series is perfectly named. It did seem to go on and on endlessly.
For Him. Quite literally everyone in this series does what he can to avoid telling the truth, or face reality, or abstain from communicating effectively, openly, or honestly. This series is poorly named. It should be renamed ‘Nail Him’ after the characters’ names. Then it might have been a smashing success.
OMG! Vampire. This is an astonishing cliché-filled nonsensical series that literally made no sense. It is an insult to anyone in a gay relationship as they treated relationships between men with either adolescent cavalierness or complete contempt to any sense of reality. One of the worst for this year.
My Stand-In. While liked a lot and admittedly well-acted, this series presented nothing but a picture of abuse and bullying and people with money and power getting away with what they want and getting what they want with no consequences, yet feeling like they are the victims. A detestable series overall.
My Love Mix-Up! An infantile and trope-filled story of contrived teenage love both gay and straight. Nothing in this series did they get right. It is full of cliches and immature behaviors and child-like personality traits. A silly and stupid story that went nowhere.
*This Love Doesn’t Have Long Beans*. Filled with handsome men who do despicable things to get ahead. It is one of the most immoral and ill-conceived stories ever told. Not one protagonist is worthy of sympathy or forgiveness or understanding. Acting is not the issue; the message is. It is a morally reprehensible story that should not be glorified. The glorification of infamy in the name of love as a theme is reprehensible.
Young Royals, Season 3. This series landed like a thud. It is lifeless. They are adolescent boys continuing to still act like adolescent boys in heat. Neither one understands what living is all about but pretending and acting like they do with both sets of parents overindulging them. It is all so unrealistic and just plain silly. There is nothing memorable about this series.
Love Sick 2024. Indeed, this series was a complete disaster except for the fact that they used teenagers for the roles of teenagers. Unfortunately, because of an endlessly tepid script, poor directing, lame story and too many characters, this series stopped dead in its track. It continued to see teenage boys as sophomoric and incapable of being sexual creatures.

All of these are of equal mediocrity. Some are bad because of production or acting foibles. You can read which ones those are. Still others are just bad because they have outlived their usefulness. Every one of these should be placed in the Hall of Shame. If I had to forcibly choose “The Worst”, *9* would be the one because of its ignominious message. After watching this, you might have an aversion to eating any type of bean as it might remind you of this awful series. It has a very gaseous ending to it. It is so full of itself.

There are several ‘Dishonorable Mentions’ that deserve distinction as well. While the acting was good to outstanding, it was the script that completely down the series down. It became juvenile, full of cliché set-ups or tropey scenarios. Worse yet, they presented ‘love’ between two men with an infantile glaze or a Pollyanna frosting that had no anchor to any mooring of reality whatsoever. These included “The Rebound”; “Two Worlds”; “Jazz For Two”; and “Anti-Reset”. The acting saved these particular series from being complete disasters.

Rock-Bottoms for 2023

My Personal Weatherman*. A baneful series full of emotional/psychological and finally physical abuse made out to be romantic and cute. It is neither and so many fell for its veneer. I have never seen anything so toxic guised as art and it physically sickened me to watch this series. It was that painful to me as an older gay man. This series simply reinforces repressed societies beliefs that there is something sick, demented, and perverted about gayness. The fact that you can have a toxic story is not the issue but how it is presented does become fair game. This is mean-spirited, tone-deaf, and completely filled with one dimensional characters who cannot think for themselves. It would also be different if there was some sense of a willing participation of both men, but all it is is exploitation. I hated and loathed this series and what it represented and is the worst series by far in 2023. It is awful and one of THE ugliest representations of gayness I have ever seen.
Minato Shouji Coin Laundry Season 2. This is one of the worst BL series I have ever seen. It is toxic, emotionally abusive, with the supposed mature characters having less understanding of living and love than their young counterparts.
My Dear Gangster Oppa. This is such an underwhelming series that I am astonished at how bad it really is. The screenplay is so second-rate. The acting is at best mediocre. The story itself is so lame that it looked like it picked ideas from other BLs and stuck them in and hoped it all worked.
Tin Tem Jai. Honestly, I do not think this series was deliberately trying to look bad but because of a bad script, infantile acting, and poor editing, this whole story became pointless, drab, and dull.
Step By Step. This series was disappointingly bad, incoherent, insulting to its audience, loveless, and one of the least romantic BLs in a long time.
The Promise. What can you say about this complete letdown? Its prequel started out so engaging and then it slipped into a trope-filled, endlessly looping miscommunicating belaboring and pointless soppiness.
Past Senger. I found its underlying message subtly abusive and disconcerting, not funny, and mostly sad. And very little understanding of what it is like to be gay. Its negative message overpowers its cuteness and slight humor.
Future. A rather incoherent story that falls flat from the beginning because it has no direction. It vacillated from silliness to pointlessness with crying tearless tears. That is when you know you have a bad series.
Bed Friend. This is another self-absorbed, self-indulgent romp of snobbery cloaked in the reality of abuse and bullying. Unfortunately, that is not a front and center issue, and it only manages to enhance obnoxious behavior. And that obnoxious behavior only gets rewarded. Wrong message.
Individual Circumstances. A most unromantic romantic drama. If you want to define a ‘kissing a dead-fish’, then watch this bore.
Cutie Pie 2. Simply an awful follow-up to Cutie Pie 1. Drab, boring, and self-indulgent. Everyone looks depressed in this series and the romance is painful to watch. It just is not there.
Boyscation. A supposed reality show where 10 gay guys are to find ‘dates’. The problem is it never allowed for natural connections and seemed so controlled and directed by the production. I never got a sense these were real romances except for one couple

What made them awful is mainly the story telling or lack thereof. Usually revolving around the tropes, clichés, and noncommunication issues that run the gamut in these series. Some also had mediocre acting that must now be called out. The number 1 choice*, however, is in a whole new category. That is the scariest to me. Anyone watching this has their head in the clouds and they live in a fog.

Failures for 2022

Physical Therapy*. An incoherent mess from beginning to end with no one even attempting to act. One of the worst. This series itself needed a lot of therapy.
Love Area 2. A terrible screenplay with toxic relationships.
Quarenthings 2. An abject failure with no sense of love and a story filled with self-indulgent and self-absorbed individuals. The pandemic hits home here.
Cutie Pie. An abusive relationship classically meant to ‘help’ mature and grow the abused. Bad message completely and nothing cute about these relationships.
The Young Royals 2. A romp through privilege and ego with the ‘bad guy’ the only one showing any signs of being alive in this snooze fest. Royals, stay in your palace.
Love Victor 3. A dull, vapid story that should never have been made. Please love anybody but Victor.
Senpai, This Can’t Be Love. And they are right. It is not.
War of Y. This series had no purpose other than to shock us into seeing the uglier side of the BL industry. It also showed the uglier side of the individuals featured in these series.

*The story made no sense and the acting was equally as bad. Disjointed and dysfunctional. After watching this, you will need therapy.

Low Points for 2021

The Cupid Coach. An incoherent mess orchestrated from the gods with astonishingly bad acting. Sometimes gods should simply stay on Mount Olympus.
Paint With Love. It would be more interesting to watch paint dry than to watch this dribble.
My Toxic Lover. One of the worst series I have ever seen. It was toxic from beginning to end.
Love With Benefits. There were no benefits to watching this drab series with very poor secondary characters as well.
Cherry Magic. A love story with no physicality. There is no magic in that and only insults the audience.
Alter*. It is one of the worst BLs ever made. Trying to play your twin sister in a cheap wig will not help alter the fact this series was a complete disaster.
TharnType 2. A contrived mess with way too much unnecessary conflict. Even a wedding could not make this series come to love.
Baker Boys. It was a complete waste of talent with an incoherent story that has no central focus to it. The story was half-baked.
Bite Me. A tediously slow-moving story of two-dimensional individuals. The only thing worth biting in this schizophrenic-like tale was the food.
Evening Café. Filled with one trope after another. No place you really want to hang out and have coffee at.