matt c
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I've watched all the History parts, and this one really sticks out as terrible. While the very first entry dealt with a girl in a boy's body trope, this one wanted to do some time travel. The plot twists weren't surprising. What was surprising was the 180 degree change in one of the protagonists' behavior. I know a lot of BL series (even some of our favorites like Addicted) feature rape, sexual assault and non-con. But this episode glorifies it, embraces it as its title of "Obsession" and doesn't feature any character growth or realization of bad behavior. As an example, I watched this on Viki. Most of the comments were along the lines of "it's not rape if there's no penetration." If that's what you choose to focus on--how to get the accused off on a technicality rather than the harm done to the victim--then I'm afraid this episode is imparting the wrong message.The acting was good, but not enough to make me want to rewatch this regrettable entry. I think one of the things I like about History 1/2/3 is how they take different approaches to each story and format. It's just that in this case, the risk did not pay off, at all.
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Together with Me: The Next Chapter
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After the high of watching Together With Me, this feels a bit like the crash, or at least right afterwards. With all three main couples preoccupied with cheating, there's not much room for other issues. There are indeed other problems facing soon-to-graduate college students, like Fai's choice to move abroad for work and her struggles against sexism in the workplace. The people trying to defend the overwhelming cheating plots as just being "realistic" are kinda ignoring the fact that it's not realistic to have everyone cheating left and right (except poor Fai, left out in the cold again). The side characters in this series were pretty forgettable, except for the fangirl club. Rit had the personality of a wet dish towel. Pete got thrust in our faces over and over (pun intended) but he really did not have the same impact as, say, Pernpleng from TWM. On one hand I felt glad that for once there was less of an emphasis on villains getting screen time (unlike Bad Romance's Mydear and James), but I also felt that the writers decided to add a whole bunch of flaws to Korn and Knock to compensate. Like suddenly Knock is addicted to games to the point it affects his work? Or that Korn would get a little drunk and cheat (I know he was under pressure, but damn they could have built up to that cheating scene much more). Or that Knock has a shopping problem and is crazy irresponsible with money while Korn just enables his spending habits by giving Knock his credit card? I don't know, but I felt like TWM made Korn and Knock believable while TWM:TNC wanted to make them "bigger" and "better" without actually giving them real character growth.
I guess I can't write this without talking about the product placement, either. Own Days, couldn't you have at least picked better-looking glasses for Knock for most of the episodes? They were seriously killing the mood every time he popped up. Instead of making me want to go out and buy them, I wanted to rip them off his face. Only in the last episode did I finally not mind Knock's new glasses (and I usually go for guys in glasses anyway, so that says a lot).
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The plot doesn't break much new ground in terms of what BL series can and have done, but the acting is so well done that I don't mind too much. Right now I've moved onto Bad Romance, but the difference in quality (and probably budget) is pretty vast. I wish I had started with Bad Romance and then watched Together With Me followed by Together With Me: The Next Chapter. All I can think about while watching Bad Romance is how much I miss the characters from Together With Me, and how much better the acting was in the prequel.
I think of this show as a happy balance between the serious SOTUS and the hilarious Diary of a Tootsie. The BTS and vlogs from the two main leads are also worth watching. Their chemistry on and off air is better than any other BL pairing I've come across.
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Read all the bad reviews and watched it anyway
It's pretty clear that YMMV with this series. I thought I was gonna hate watch it, but it became more nuanced than that.Chon's mom and his friend Na are basically BL unicorns. There's also several other supporting characters who add a lot of comedy.
TW: attempted rape--One big problem that I didn't see get resolved was any consequence for Nueng. It's disappointing, but pretty much what happens in real life for the vast percentage of rapes. Even if criminal charges had never been pressed, I would have liked to see them confront Nueng for his actions beyond that punch Ton threw.
The homophobia is present throughout. I don't see it as much of a negative because the series does portray Ton's father as the one with a problem, and he does get a vicious comeuppance from Auntie Nam. The writing did feel a bit rushed at the end, but meh. I also was not as put out about Miriam acting as a surrogate. Hell yeah she chose an option that got her millions and a nice house. That's her agency at work, y'all.
Probably the most annoying thing about this series was the evil ex-girlfriend. Can we get more evil ex-boyfriends? Or just, you know, move away from evil ex plots in general?
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Cute and cliched
I read the plot summary, and was pretty excited off the bat. It's not often that gay series feature kids. I was a bit disappointed, then, to find that most of the plot revolves around Jerry not being out to his parents or the other parents at daycare. You could have replaced the setting with a high school kid struggling to come out and much of the dramatic tensions would have been the same, minus Kai being a cute background prop that actually doesn't do much. It's almost like a bait-and-switch. They lured us in with the adorable child, then gave us a very standard coming-out-to-parents checklist of tropes.Honestly, a lot of my goodwill is hinging on the cliffhanger they left us on for season 2. I really hope they lean into the drama and add in more humor or snark. They can't keep depending on the kid to save everything. They'd also do well to develop the side characters, who we really know nothing about. A bit ironic that the series focuses so much on Jerry's biological parents rather than the found family that Jerry and Damian have already surrounded themselves with.
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R*pe romanticization in 2021? Say it ain't so!
I decided to drop this show after episode 6, with the r*pe. I did check reviews and comments afterwards to see how the show handles it, and it's exactly the way I would not want to watch. I'm quite surprised because the previous History series have been pretty good. This, though--what the hell were they thinking? I think if there had ever been the possibility of a History series without a happy ending, this should have been it.Having watched a ton of LGBT+ media (especially the older ones lol) and BL shows, I'm no stranger to darker themes. But the stories we tell and consume are evolving along with our society. This feels like a wasted opportunity, and a pity since I actually thought the main actors were well-cast with the exception of Yong Jie.
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