We Are (2024)

Strip away plot, character development, drama. Leave only the sweet moments. That is We Are.

If someone asked this avid BL watcher to identify a series that he deemed “peak BL,” I would have to give serious consideration to We Are. This 16-episode series from BL-factory GMMTV follows two distinct friend groups of college students as the groups come together. (Make your own pun there.) Despite a real kicker of a testy first encounter, Peem and Phum are clearly destined to fall for one another. As Peem and Phum grow closer, their previously discrete friend groups blend into one joyously happy group of pals. Yes, folks, that simple premise may well qualify as the exemplar of a BL series. It strips away any semblance of storytelling to deliver a series of vignettes: slice-of-life vignettes, really, that double as a testament to the easy-going college life many older folk recall as a golden era of fun, happy days. The series boils these scenes down to the most basic tropes, tricks, and tics that distinguish BL from other genres. Boys fall for other boys. Side character boys pair up with other side character boys. No one ever finds it surprising when boys fall for other boys. The net result is a series that delivers a progression of scenes that serve no narrative purpose beyond inviting viewers to watch these boys merrily pair off. Most such scenes yield maximum impact in the area of warm and fuzzy response. Since the series is a product of the GMMTV assembly line, it also features an OST replete with fizzy music performed by the cast members. To watch any episode of We Are guarantees coming away feeling happy and bouncy—what is more BL than an endorphin rush?

We Are is peak BL because about all it offers is the characteristics outlined above. The writers sheared away extraneous concerns. Such as, for instance, a proper plot. Or complex character development. Or contrived drama arising from such reliable genre staples as jealous women, prolonged disharmony arising from (comedic) miscommunication, or parental resistance to the heroes’ dating choices. (Honestly, does anyone miss these elements?) Even the rich boy x poor boy motif is mostly absent here, aside from a contrived “be my slave” storyline that sets in motion the whole shebang. (Peem isn’t truly poor, however, just unable to pay that particular bill.) In the absence of these customary genre artifacts, We Are serves a steady diet of treacly moments between boys smitten with one another: scene after scene, episode after episode.

Frankly, it works. The series delivers the endorphins BL viewers expect, and it does so consistently. Only the most demanding viewers—the ones who want food for thought to accompany their sweet confections—will lament the gaping hole where dramatic or thematic complexity would normally appear. We Are aspires to none of those trappings, so to fault it for those absent elements would be churlish. Likewise, I could observe that a low-budget Vietnamese series like Under the Oak Tree (whose 10 episode-run aired concurrently with the final ten weeks of We Are’s sixteen-episode broadcast period) features a quartet of male characters who individually exude more queer authenticity in any one episode than We Are’s eight leads can muster across sixteen episodes and four same-sex couples. But what would be the point of such complaint? GMMTV mass produces BL series because straight girls lap up watching cute young men fall for another, not because the studio cares to make a statement about being young and queer in present-day Thailand. Making an entertaining BL series does not require any of the four couples anchoring We Are to represent some grand point about what it means to be gay. The winsome actors need only to mug at one another at the appropriate moment to send viewers into a swoon. (Just to be clear: old, jaded gay men enjoy swooning when young men fall for one another just as much as the target audience of young straight women.) We Are delivers exactly what it promises: sweet moments between young men falling in love. This reviewer will cite no fault for succeeding in that endeavor.

If We Are has any particular claim to genius, it would be the depiction of a friend group. Arguably, Peem’s and Phum’s respective friendship networks attain more significance throughout the 16-episode arc of the series than any one of the four relationships it portrays. In that sense, We Are departs decidedly from “peak BL.” In this genre, the lead couple’s friends are seldom more than ornaments to the main couple’s story. Here, the various couplings function ornamentally to the larger circle of friends. More specifically, We Are’s secret sauce stems from inviting the viewer right into the friend group. They have slumber parties. They have drinking parties. They stage surprise parties. They have victory parties to celebrate myriad triumphs. They go together to a theme park. They travel to a volunteer service camp. They travel from Bangkok to Chiang Mai for more excursions. In the finale, they travel to a beach resort (which, in true BL fashion, is owned by the parents of a group member). After all that togetherness, any viewer would have to work hard not feel as if Peem’s friends are also their own friends.

Much of the credit for the effectiveness of a BL series where friendship outshines romance must rest with the director, New Siwaj Sawatmaneekul. In the absence of a proper plot with a through-storyline, New succeeds in getting the viewer to invest in following the friend group’s passage through their college experience and, for most of them, the onset of first love. As best friends do, these buddies routinely adjust their interactions to suit a moment. On a moment’s notice, they can alternate from razzing one another, to supporting each other in moments of insecurity. They are as apt to call one another out as to root for one another. In many episodes, the friends verbally express how important the friendships are, how happy they are to know each other. Their conviviality seems believable because the actors are totally at ease with each other. GMMTV famously recycles its performers. Sometimes repetition can work against a series, but here the performers’ familiarity with one another from earlier projects pays off with a friend group whose bonhomie feels genuine, almost palpable. “Every day is a memory, precious and true,” proclaims the first line of the theme song. And, frankly, that sentiment explains both what We Are aspires to be—a depiction of precious memories about a precious time in life (college)—and why it succeeds—because the friendships feel true.. Precious? Absolutely.

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