Wandee Goodday (2024)

Another one for the 'adults behaving like teenagers' list...

Going into this show, I was expecting a mature story about romance and the hardships of adult life. What I got instead is yet another show about adults behaving the way high-schoolers who are in love for the first time would. Let's talk about it, shall we?

I'll start with the good things first. Both the acting and the chemistry are fantastic. I love Great and Inn together. They've got really solid chemistry in any scene they're in, which is really refreshing when we get so many ships whose kiss scenes are almost painful to watch. They're both great actors as well, always delivering the necessary emotion or humour in any given moment. They're so good in fact, I think their potential is wasted in this series. I believe a more emotional show, something darker and grittier would suit their talent a lot better than a romcom — maybe something like Only Friends, or Moonlight Chicken. Since I'm a very chemistry-driven BL watcher, I managed to get quite a bit of enjoyment from this series because of these two. They definitely carried the whole thing on their shoulders, and I hope to see them in better projects in the future.

The side-couple was cute, and the characters seemed interesting, especially Yak's brother. However, I'm just not really interested in already established couples, so despite their solid chemistry, I didn't find myself loving them all that much.

Now for the rest of the show... Well, sadly it's yet another very mid GMMTV production, suffering from all the same flaws most of their other shows do. Shallowness in the exploration of themes and characters, bloated conflict, unsatisfying conclusions — it's all there. At least this one didn't feel as cliche as most other of their shows do, so I'll give them that. But still, it suffers from GMMitis.

First of all, the characters feel superficial and their arcs aren't explored in a valuable or even satisfying way.

Dee is a heartbroken doctor with mommy and daddy issues. That's pretty much all there is to his personality. There are interesting ideas there, like him remembering everyone's birthday and wanting to make the day special for them because he never felt special. However, that gets brought up once or twice but doesn't affect the story in any other way than a throw-away line. I couldn't really tell you what the guy likes to do in his free time or anything like that. I couldn't really tell you what he does at work either. We get to see him at the hospital a lot, but he never does any work other than being nice to children and examining Yak's shoulder. Don't get me wrong, I love how sweet he is with the kids, but I expect more from a story centred around a surgeon. It would've been such a great chance to explore the immense pressure healthcare employees are under, the responsibility that comes with his work, how sometimes you cannot save people, and how exhausting it is to work long hours. We didn't get to see any of that, sadly, and it felt like a very beautified reality of a taxing job. Other than being a doctor, his character is defined by believing that his parents never loved him. However, it never truly feels like that influences his character in a meaningful way — at least not unless it's relevant for the plot to be plotting along. Dee seeing one video of his parents being super happy after he was born was apparently enough for him to be healed of his issues. He didn't need to work through it, he just needed to be shown this video. A video he probably should've already seen a long time ago. He has such a close bond to his grandmother (which I loved), so why in the world would she never have shown him this? Either way, one would really think Dee feeling unloved by his parents would affect him heavily in how he forms relationships now as an adult. Maybe he'd feel undeserving of Yak because he struggles with self-worth issues. Or maybe he'd cling to Yak desperately because he's afraid of losing the love he finally receives. But the whole thing didn't seem to influence his approach in relationships much at all. At least it wasn't depicted well that way, or maybe I just didn't see it. But then it's honestly on the show for not making it clear enough.

The exploration of Yak also felt lacklustre. He feels a bit better fleshed out as a character. At least the trauma of losing his mother seemed to affect him more. I really loved the inclusion of him having hallucinations, but those also only ever appeared when the plot wanted them to. Otherwise, it was forgotten about which is usually not how mental health issues like this work. His nightmares also never felt like they were a careful representation of sleep issues, but like a cheap way of getting scenes of him and Dee cuddling. Of course higher stress levels (like before a fight) can cause such symptoms to worsen, but it felt more like a situation of plot-convenience than an accurate depiction. I wish we would've seen more of his therapy sessions or how he usually copes with these things, but the show clearly wasn't interested in any of that. It feels a lot like they just threw the mental health issues and the "you should go to therapy" in there for some woke-points. I genuinely did like his relationship with his brother tough. And I did like certain seeds of what could've blossomed into a beautiful exploration such as Yak refusing to fake-date Dee because he was afraid of what it would mean for him to be outed as queer in the very heteronormative and toxic-masculine environment of boxing. That could've made food for thought and meaningful character development. Sadly though, this was just dropped after 0.2 seconds. In the end, Yak even kisses Dee at the boxing ring, in front of everyone. This could've been a heartwarming and satisfying conclusion to the arc that should've existed but didn't.

Then we have the relationship between these two shallow characters which in turn doesn't end up being much deeper. Firstly, it progresses way too quickly. I don't mind them having a one-night stand immediately, or even becoming regular hook-up partners. Physical attraction like that is a thing. But they didn't just feel like two guys having sex from the get-go, they felt like they've known each other for years. Basically, they acted way too comfortable around each other and way too intense, like Yak giving a guy he basically knew for a week his necklace. Because it all felt so intense from the start, there wasn't any progression of their relationship. Their bond feels the same way in episode 3 as it does in episode 10. It was super obvious that they've developed feelings for each other from the start, so the shoehorned in conflict of Yak liking his friend from college just felt silly considering how every one of his actions pointed at how head over heels he was for Dee. Dee refusing to be Yak's boyfriend when he already acted like he was the entire show also felt annoying. Maybe this was their attempt at showing that the struggles with his parents have affected him, but that was never made clear. Dee was ready to be in a relationship with Dr. Ter, so what is the holdback now? Sure, being turned down by Dr. Ter might have scarred him, but it's not like he had anything to fear with Yak who was very clearly head over heels for him. In the end, their actions just didn't make much sense.

That aside, their relationship was incredibly frustrating to watch. Don't get me wrong, they were cute together. I loved how Yak always keeps it together around other people but lets his guard down in front of Dee. However, the two of them were too adorable for my liking. I do love myself a good dose of fluff in my BLs. But these are two grown men, two adults. Their relationship did not depict that at all, instead making them feel like two high school students who have never dated anyone before. I'm not saying adults can't kiss each other on the cheek and do cheesy stuff like that, but it was way too much. Just think of this: What if you put Tinn and Gun from My School President in the roles of Yak and Dee. It would not feel like these two are too young to play the parts, instead, it would be very fitting (minus the sex). There isn't any difference in how Yak and Dee act to shows depicting love stories between high schoolers or young college students. In fact, even some shows of younger couples have more actual kiss scenes (like We Are or even Only Boo). It's especially odd since their relationship started with sex. You would expect two guys who have the hots for each other to actually kiss on the mouth instead of asking for sniff kisses all the time. The whole 'saving my first kiss for the one I love' trope is getting tiring, especially with a character who's fine with having sex with a stranger. It only added to the immaturity factor, but I was okay with it. It's just that once that initial first kiss does happen, Dee immediately falls into the category of BL boys who treat kissing as some sort of sin that can be done only VERY sparingly. It's supposed to be teasing, I think, but it doesn't come across that way. Just feels like he doesn't want to kiss. Which would be fine if he was the asexual character, but he's not. It's just strange.

Speaking of the sex scenes... They felt incredibly cringe and didn't fit the premise of the show. One would think that a show centred around a friends-with-benefits story puts a big emphasis on the sex scenes. That they'd make them intimate and passionate. Instead, this show fades to black after a few seconds of cringe neck sucking. I don't need sex scenes in BLs at all, but if you do make a show with sex at its forefront, it's just a bit strange to handle the scenes in the way they were handled here. Feels like someone wanted to do a spicy show but was forced to make it PG13 instead, so it's a weird vibe. The relationship of the side couple felt a lot steamier than that of the main couple. Oh, and the worst crime this show has committed: having The Eclipse play in the background of their first make-out scene. I was literally yelling "Don't involve my AyeAkk in this!"

The show's humour didn't land with me at all. It felt overly cringe and borderlined on secondhand embarrassment many times. It also clashed too harshly with the more emotional emotional themes it wanted to explore but ended up sidelining. Which is once again the most frustrating part. Another show with great potential has gone wasted. I loved THAT they included mental health struggles, but I don't love HOW they included them. It felt superficial, but it's a start I suppose. Again, exploring bisexuality in the boxing world would've been a deep ass pool for them to dive into, but they chose to remain in the shallow end with it. The same thing goes with the way they handled the Dr. Ter situation. Exploring what it means to fall in love with someone who doesn't love you back and how that influences you could've been great. But instead of doing that, they just made Dr. Ter despicable which made it easy for Dee to move on. It would've been interesting to see how he gets over a truly great guy, and how that affects his ability to open up to Yak. But nope, Dr. Ter is just a douchebag now.

I do want to give an honourable mention to them including an asexual character. As an ace person myself, this felt HUGE. When I watched the first episode which talked about Dee's friend finding it hard to find a boyfriend since he's ace left me super excited. I thought we'd explore that, even if he's a side-character, but we didn't. Which really shouldn't be a surprise at this point, but I still have hope. Despite it not being explored, the representation still is important and I'll take all the crumbs I can get.

I didn't have a bad time watching this show, even if my review sounds very negative. The chemistry between the main couple was enough to get me through it, but that alone just isn't satisfying to me anymore. I used to be over the moon as long as I got cute scenes of a couple with chemistry and enough fluff, but these days I'm just desperate for BLs to do more than that (she says after having enjoyed We Are, but I've already talked about that in my last review). I don't need the most exciting storylines. I'm totally fine with a friends-with-benefits and/or fake-dating storyline. I actually really like fake-dating. But if you do such a simple premise, at least put in the effort to explore themes beyond scratching the surface. This is another GMM show that would’ve had the potential to set itself apart, but ended up feeling just like any other GMMTV show, just a lot more cringe. I’m all here for adult relationships being depicted instead of all these campus BLs, and I was looking forward to them doing this here, but again, these guys didn’t feel like adults. Inn and Great are great (pun fully inntended (see what I did there?)), but I wish their talent would’ve been put to better use.

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