"Just go to the police," it's easier when you're just saying it

"The Leaked" is not a drama and as such, I will not be criticizing it the same way as I would a drama since the acting, plot, and cinematography are not what should be the main concern. It's a three-episode PSA produced by Thailand Internet Crime Against Children (TICAC), an initiative by the Thai government and police specialized in dealing with child abuse, prostitution, and trafficking.

The core message of this PSA is, of course, commendable. It's targeted at young girls and women who are or were victims of sexual abuse and encourages them to reach out for help. The PSA follows two girls from the same high school to illustrate different ways teenagers might end up in abusive situations. The first girl got catfished by someone posing as her crush online and said person collected compromising clips of her to later blackmail her with them to receive more sexually explicit content. The second girl at first voluntarily took up a shady hostess job to afford her lavish lifestyle and keep up with the latest trends as to not get left behind by her friends but later gets forced into prostitution by her employer. The story also addresses how victims of sexual abuse often get typecast as "whores" or "sluts," which is particularly relevant in the cultural context this PSA is set in as the stigma surrounding SA victims in Thailand is still more pronounced than in some other countries.

I can understand why the producers decided to overly simplify and exaggerate certain aspects of the story. However, I feel like it was still lacking in certain areas, especially considering that this was released in 2020. The amount of depth it goes into and the cautionary, yet very lightweight and easy-to-digest narrative this PSA follows is more something I would've expected to see in the 2010s when conversations about sexual abuse were just slowly starting to enter the public's consciousness more and more. As such, this PSA brings very little new to the table and just very shallowly discusses the topic.

I would've appreciated this more if it went more into depth with the process victims have to go through to file a police report to hold their predators accountable, which questions they should expect to be asked, which evidence or information they might need to provide, and what they should mentally prepare for during and after the legal proceedings. They also could've shown where and how to find local police stations and child protective services and how to approach staff there and what options victims have, such as whether they can request a female police officer to talk to if desired.

Furthermore, it is shown that the second girl, Daw, relies on her friend Tor for emotional support so she has an easier time opening up to the police about her abuse. I would have liked it if they focused more on her thoughts when choosing Tor as a confidant over, let's say, her female friends who were shown earlier in the episode as well or her family. I believe it's also important to show young girls that might be watching that boys are not the enemy and an equally viable option to seek support from as long as you trust them and feel comfortable around them. It would have been nice for them to contrast Daw's story, where she confides in Tor, with the first girl, Linlin, maybe choosing a woman to confide in, might that be a friend, teacher, or family member, to show just how many choices there are for emotional support in your social circle.

I was also personally not quite convinced with the ending, where everything suddenly turns out well and people all around the country suddenly change their stance on SA victims after hearing Daw speak. The overall framing of the situation was too simplified for me and neglected important parts of aftercare for victims, such as maybe citing resources for trauma counseling, therapy, or support groups, especially if you have to deal with the after-effects of your abuse story being publicly shared. It is important to show victims take back their voice and regain control of their life but the work they have to put into it to heal should not be glossed over.

That being said, I did like how it showed how vile people can be towards victims of sexual assault and appealed to the common sense of the viewers to think before they share their opinion on such a sensitive topic on social media and that they should always take the victim's emotions into account. I also liked how they showed that sometimes predators might even be people close to you with Linlin's abuser being, for example, her fellow classmate. The fact that they showed that even if you're completely confident in yourself at first like Daw was, predators will still find ways to harm you if they so choose to, was also important and I am happy they included that.

All in all, this was a very basic PSA but still one with a message that should always be repeated over and over again to always stay in people's minds. To be honest, I think they only cast Nanon so they could put him on the thumbnail and bait his fans into watching it because they are primarily exactly the target audience this PSA is directed at (young and female), which is a very smart move to be fair and as long as it did its job and got people watching it, I support that. It's also always refreshing to see male celebrities lend their faces to such projects to spread awareness. Still, if you have ever been exposed to any sexual assault and cyber crime PSAs in your lifetime, this will be nothing new to you but it's definitely something that you can show your friends and family if they aren't well-versed in the topic at all and need a good starting point. It's also not too explicit, so it would also be appropriate to show to older kids and young teens for a first exposure to the topic.

Citeste mai mult

As they say, power makes careless

While I thought that the first season had its flaws, I overall still found them negligible and they did not impact my viewing experience to the point where I could not appreciate the concept and ideas presented in the show. This season, however, did not improve upon the problems from season one at all but instead amplified them by a hundred.

Now, I had already had my doubts about this season from the very first episode. I had expected season two to continue where season one had left off but instead, I was faced with an unexpected two-year time skip and a new set of main characters. Still, I really wanted to give this a fair chance, so I kept on watching, which was really my own fault since I could already tell that this was not for me from the very beginning.

Firstly, the new characters range from absolutely unbearable to utterly forgettable. The season starts off with our new protagonist, Time, wanting to reinstate the Gifted Program as he believes it will somehow benefit him in the future despite people repeatedly telling him that it's not a good idea and that the program was abolished for a reason. Despite already having received his potential prior to taking the placement exam and having interacted with Gifted Class XV, he doesn't even try to understand their reasoning at all and just stubbornly sticks with his idea. Without any care or regard for the words of others, this supposedly smart character just keeps on pushing forward with his agenda and excuses his own actions by saying that it will not only benefit him but also every other kid in school. Yet, he is also somehow not confident enough that people will actually want to join his cause, so he decides to fake the results of his petition with the help of Grace, who sides with him because she wants to... keep her perm? Needless to say, their motivations are shallow and I could not understand them whatsoever.

Third's character, while not nearly as atrocious as Time or Grace's, still suffers from being incredibly underdeveloped. He starts out as someone who seeks out validation from the adults by acting as a student inspector and who is tempted by the idea of gaining further recognition through getting accepted into the Gifted Program, while outwardly being against its reinstation. He was by far my favorite out of the three new characters because I thought if developed correctly, he could make for an interesting character and maybe even tread the line between good and evil to become an even more compelling sub-villain than Wave was in season one. But what they really ended up doing with him was... nothing. They simply used him to incite some small conflict by temporarily siding with Miss Darin for maybe 5 minutes in total for an honestly pretty understandable reason and in the end, his "evil actions" didn't even have any ill effect on anyone really since the reason Time collapsed after Third used his potential on him was not because of him but because of the NYX-88 virus. If you cut Third out of the story completely, it would literally make no difference at all to the plot of the show, which just goes to show how little effort was put into him from the start.

Furthermore, instead of at least further developing the pre-existing characters from season one, they somehow managed to make them progress backward. Sure, it was shown that some of them had improved their potentials but that was about it. The characters did not grow at all and while they acted like they had become such good friends who had united to fight for the same cause and had set aside their individual problems for the greater good in the first few episodes, that illusion was shattered so quick, which was really disappointing because the reason for their failure in season one had been that their opinions had been too divided to agree upon one definitive way to defeat the director and now they basically started their next fight in an even worse state of division than before while expecting a different outcome.

The entire group solely places their trust in Pang for some reason, which to me makes no sense because he is not only the least academically gifted, he is also the one who uses his potential the least and is, therefore, the only one who has barely progressed with it at all. Instead of making decisions together, they just all look at Pang for the answers, who is understandably overwhelmed by it. When Korn betrays the group and spreads the NYX-88 virus, he tells Pang it's his fault for not looking out for him and asking him if he was contend with the solution they had collectively come up with. However, this makes no sense as they had, well, supposedly collectively decided that this was the best option and he had the chance to oppose it but just chose not to. Pang even asks in the drama why Korn didn't step forward at the end of season one to agree with him that the erasure of all potentials was the only true way to equality if he thought that the Gifted Program was the root of all evil, to which Korn simply responds with some nonsensical argument that "Well, erasing the potentials wouldn't actually change anything," which doesn't even make sense because he literally said he thought it was the only way out a second prior. His character is supposed to be motivated by the fact that his potential brings him more harm than good and that he feels unseen and unheard but really, none of his actions would even solve his issues. What good would it do him to only try to kill Gifted Class XVI while Gifted Class XV stays healthy? One group of students dying wouldn't really change a thing if the ministry or the director was really hell-bent on continuing the Gifted Program as we have already seen that they don't shy away from covering up any deaths or even killing people themselves if needed.

Chanon's storyline also has much of the same problem wherein he is supposed to be tormented by the years he lost to his memory wipeout but instead of blaming the person who is actually responsible for it, which is Director Supot, he lets out his frustrations on his former best friend Pom, who was a literal child when all of this happened, actively helps the director, and then just stays as miserable as he started. I think the writers also noticed that neither Korn's nor Chanon's motivations and actions were really consistent with their characters, so they just casually threw in the fact that they were secretly manipulated by the director all along and are actually still nice people to make everything make sense and redeem their characters. But at least to me, their redemption arc did not work at all because they were still saying and doing horrible things outside of what the director had initially ordered them to do and I also don't believe that some of the characters like Pom, who had been injected with a possibly life-long, incurable illness by Chanon, or Punn, who had been slashed in the gut by Korn and almost driven to insanity, would really forgive them that easily.

I also did not enjoy what they did to Punn and Claire, who had been my favorite characters in season one. Punn just randomly starts developing severe trust issues in Claire just because he is no longer her number one priority and she now sometimes focuses more on other things and people as well like her childhood friend Korn, who is going through a tough time and whom she had basically neglected for Punn until now. Her setting some boundaries should not be enough to send Punn off into insanity as it did this season because it is such a vital part of their relationship in season one that they both care and love each other to the point where one of the main reasons why Punn doesn't go completely insane in season one is exactly because of Claire. After his whole character arc in season one, I cannot believe that his trust would be so easily broken by a one-time instance like Claire not telling him that Korn is the culprit right away but instead choosing to try to peacefully resolve the conflict on her own first. Not to mention that Punn's evil arc doesn't even add anything significant to the plot besides causing a rift between the gifted students for two episodes or so because he never actually ends up using the powers he copied for anything really bad.

As for Claire, she pretty much faces the same fate as Mon this season. They say that they want to take matters into their own hands and try to help Korn before he ends up in jail for the rest of his life or something even worse happens to him since he is still their friend after all. This whole thing is framed as some girl power move in the show, which is ironic because they just vanish for the rest of this story arc after outsourcing their plan to Pang and Time, making them rely on men once again to solve their problems. It also heavily plays into the stereotype of "girls are emotional and boys are logical," while simultaneously praising itself as some feminist plot point.

But Pang is by far the character that was hit the worst this season. Instead of showing how he grows into some charismatic leader that guides his friends into a bright and hopeful future, he just gets treated badly by them all the time. Everything he does gets framed as something terrible and he is held responsible for every single little thing, even things he doesn't have anything to do with. He does what they want but it ends badly? That's his fault. He ends up going with his own idea and resolves the problem? The other students feel betrayed by him for not listening to them. He is nice to his friends? Probably just because he wants something from them, that sly manipulator.

No matter what happens, he cannot win. His friends believe he doesn't truly care for them the moment he even makes a small slip-up and all his hard work trying to accommodate for them and their needs gets unrecognized. He could easily use his potential to simply make them do whatever he wants instead of playing friends with them but the other characters don't even stop for a second to consider that he is sacrificing his own mental health by refusing to use his potential on them just so that they can have their freedom.

He gets blamed for not saving Korn and for not realizing that he had this whole evil scheme planned from the beginning when really, there was no way for him to know because it was shown that despite his inner dissatisfaction with his own life, Korn was actually still planning to warn his friends of the virus instead of spreading it before the director interfered. But instead of putting the blame on Korn, or later on the director after they find out about the manipulation, they just put it on Pang, who at best only indirectly influenced the whole thing. After Pang witnesses Korn's suicide attempt, not knowing if he survived it, and he is led to believe that Time has died under his watch, too, none of his friends offer their condolences or mental support to him. We only see a half-hearted scene of Ohm knocking on his door once to check up on him but that really doesn't change anything because right after, Ohm suddenly decides to also blame Pang for everything and says he's ruining his nice and carefree life, which really doesn't suit his character at all because he is supposed to be one of Pang's best friends. Even Wave, who suddenly becomes uncharacteristically sweet this season, just lashes out at Pang as he seems fit, and then when the writers need him to, he goes back to loving Pang unconditionally. Really, almost all members of the original cast turned into detestable characters in the second season because all of them were willing to let their juniors die from the virus to keep their own comfort and literally didn't bat an eye while blaming Pang for their own mistakes and driving him into such a deep depression that he even says in one episode that he'd rather die than continue on just to push forward his ideals, which ended up just bringing him more pain than good.

In the end, Pang isn't even the one who really affects any change. For the last two or three seasons, it suddenly becomes "The Gifted: Grace is the Best" and the writers conveniently give her some clairvoyant ability to fix all of their problems, not even addressing the whole can of time paradox they have opened by doing so. Yes, Pang makes the final decision in spreading the soundwave and making everyone in the whole country gifted but before that, he just passively stands around while Grace cleans up the whole mess.

But really, the biggest problem this season has is that it just feels like the writers thought they needed to change things up a bit so it's not entirely the same plot as in the first season, so they simply resolved what should have been the main conflict— getting rid of the Gifted Program and creating equality amongst the students of Ritdha Wittayakom High School— in the first few episodes and forcibly introduced some new, even bigger problem with NYX-88. The characters already struggled to solve the much easier to solve problem and now this? A basic "a deadly virus has spread" storyline like in every other dystopian piece of media? Really?

The writing just felt so uninspired and it really just infuriated me at some point. Characters changed their personalities at the whim of the writers instead of actually developing or developed new abilities as needed. The story jumped from Director Supot being the villain to Miss Darin being the villain to the ministry being the villain to Korn being the villain back to Miss Darin being the villain again but this time with Punn's help to Director Supot being the villain again but this time with Pom's help to Chanon being the villain to Director Supot being the villain once again to even future Grace being the villain for a brief second at the end. I saw people praise the writing of the show in the comments under the episodes but really, nothing made sense. The writers just hoped you wouldn't notice that there were so many plot holes as long as they made the story convoluted enough.

Just to address some of the things that really made no sense: Why did the ministry suddenly change their opinion on the Gifted Program? Because someone else took charge of it? Am I really supposed to believe that the Ministry of Education is the highest-ranking entity in the entirety of Thailand and one man has the capability to shut down a whole project that was framed as crucial to the development of the country until now just because he wants to? And there's also really nobody in the entire government who questioned whether it was ethically and morally correct to let a batch of kids die because of some useless power play?

Also, if Director Supot has the ability to make a person believe they are a whole other person, why not just use his potential on the minister from the start, before he could notify anyone else of his potential and take security measures, if the minister is the only member of the ministry standing in his way? Why not make him believe they are best friends or even make the minister make him a part of the ministry so he can closely monitor their actions? And if you can actually use your potential on someone else with the same potential as long as they are mentally weak enough, why didn't Supot at least try to use it on Pang while he was clearly depressed and mentally unwell?

It also makes no sense to me why the director would send Namtaan overseas because her ability could be a danger to him since she can see the past but not use his ability on Namtaan herself by telling her to stay away but on her mother instead. If Namtaan was never under the influence of his potential and knew that the real reason she was sent away was that she was a danger to the director all along, why did she not try to get back by herself? Why did she not tell her friends about it and encourage them to steal some of the director's belongings, ship them to her before he found out, and she would then proceed to uncover all his secrets far away, securely tucked away in her overseas home? And if anything, wouldn't it be more secure for the director to not tell Namtaan she's a danger to him and then quickly infect her with NYX-88 to make her compliant as soon as he got his hands on it? I get that Namtaan's actress probably really didn't appear in the series because of some scheduling conflict but then why even say that that was a possibility?

I just really feel like it was such a shame that they decided to waste the perfectly fine story from season one by continuing it like this and I honestly would not recommend this season to anyone, even if they were fans of the first season. I felt like I was wasting my time watching it and it just make my blood boil with how bad it was. The more time I spend writing this, the more things I find that either don't add up and I could keep going if I wanted to but I think this much is enough.

Citeste mai mult

"Ad astra sapientiam trans corpora infirmorum."

Back when "The Gifted" was first released in 2018, I heard many people raving about the series and recommending it to me. Although the general premise of the show did appeal to me, I put off watching it for a total of four years because I simply didn't think I would like it as much as everyone else and I didn't want to go into something with high expectations just to have them shattered immediately. Now that I have finally watched it, I am glad that I waited because I feel like if I had watched it back then, I would have undeservedly given it a worse rating merely because I would've been disappointed by it.

Don't get me wrong, "The Gifted" is certainly a good drama and I didn't feel like I wasted my time watching it. But it was just not the 10-stars-worthy drama everyone made it out to be.

First of all, the anthology-esque narration style utilized in the first few episodes has both its pros and cons. On one hand, it allows you to dive deeper into each character's psyche and develop a better understanding of each of their potentials and their corresponding downsides. However, this kind of narrative only works well if all of the characters are equally compelling to watch, which they, at least in my opinion, weren't. While I thoroughly enjoyed Claire and Punn's episodes (Episode 4 and 5, respectively), I could barely get through Namtaan's and Korn's episodes (Episode 3 and 7). But there were also some episodes that I felt rather neutral about, such as Ohm and Mon's (Episode 2 and 6). So, what differentiates these three sets of episodes, and what makes some better than others?

Claire and Punn's episodes are immersive and engaging because they actually succeed in presenting a thoroughly crafted character study. The characters start out with very clearly defined characteristics and while they don't suddenly turn into completely different people by the end of their episodes, you can definitely see them grow out of the negative aspects of their personalities a little bit and learn from the drawbacks of their potentials. It makes you root for these characters throughout the rest of the series and not only makes you understand them but also their relationship to each other better.

While Ohm and Mon's episodes succeed in conjuring up an overall impression of the character, their personality and imperfections, and potential, they do fall a little bit flat in comparison to Claire and Punn's episodes, simply because their storylines are not as exciting to watch. In their episodes, you can easily tell where the story is going to go from the first few minutes and in Mon's episode, it's even directly spoiled at the beginning, which I wasn't really a fan of.

However, no episodes were as bad as Namtaan and Korn's. Their characters are so flat and one-dimensional and they don't change at all throughout their respective episodes. I quite liked the overarching storyline of Namtaan's episode and its mystery flair and it did end up being important for the overall plot but instead of making me sympathize with Namtaan, it made me annoyed with her and her reckless curiosity. The fact that her actress, Lilly Nichapalak Thongkham, is also easily the worst actress in the series and her expression never really seems to change, didn't make it any better. I understand that the actress was a novice at the time but so were most other actors in this series and she really did not sell the role well for me. As for Korn, while I did not have any real issues with the actor, I found his character to be insanely boring. He is depicted as kind and caring and a good friend in Claire's episode, which made me like him for a while, but the fact that he instantly turned his back on her after being rejected by her and his character did a 180 and turned into just a basic lonely, sad boy didn't sit well with me. His episode starts out with him being miserable and ends with him being just as miserable, essentially rendering his episode pointless.

I also don't understand why the show almost completely forgot about the twins, Jo and Jack. I'd much rather have watched an episode about them than Korn since their potential was barely explained besides them being synchronized perfectly and it seemed like it had the "potential" to be interesting.

Furthermore, I don't think the story is anything special and I also don't think it's particularly well-written. The concept of students being divided into different classes based on their intelligence or some supernatural powers has existed for a very long time in various iterations. At first, I thought the show would try to stand out from other shows revolving around the same trope by really taking its time and slowly building the conflict while primarily focusing on its character-driven narrative. But that never happened. In fact, most of the previously established characters ended up being pretty much unimportant for the finale. And the two characters that did end up mattering, Pang and Wave, had simply not been invested as much time in as they should've, resulting in two pretty shallow characters.

Especially in Pang's case, the only things we really learn about him are that he is academically ungifted but can somehow do the mental gymnastics to construct his plan for the finale and that he is driven by the ideal that all men should be equal. He is framed as this boy with an immensely powerful potential and the only one who could possibly defeat the evil director but it doesn't exactly take a genius to come up with a way to defeat both of them. The story should've at some point invested some time in developing Pang's potential to actually become stronger than, let's say, Punn's potential because as it stands, Punn could easily just copy Pang's potential and use it against both him and the director since technically, he doesn't have the same potential and they are therefore not immune to him. This could be easily solved by, for example, establishing that Pang's potential has developed in such a way that he can now also shield his brain from being manipulated by others or by simply not giving Punn the ability to copy others' potentials.

The finale also just overall felt very disjointed in the context of the whole show. I actually liked how up until around Episode 10, everything was decently predictable in the sense that it had been foreshadowed at some point before, making it so that certain plot points didn't just appear out of nowhere all of a sudden, but there was still enough kept hidden so you would be excited to see how all of the details would unfold. However, by the last three episodes, it had just become an amalgamation of plot twists stacked together in a huge messy pile, essentially resulting in a game of "I made this plan to overthrow you." - "Well, I expected you to make this plan, so I made this other plan to sabotage your plan." - "Well, I expected that you would expect my plan, so I made a counterplan to the plan you made in expectation of my plan." and so forth. The way every single Gifted character besides Pang and maybe Wave was also remarkably passive in the last three episodes and some of them suddenly acted completely out of character at the end, didn't make it any better.

I also felt like some plot elements were sort of unnecessary. Aside from Claire and Punn's relationship, which I really loved, all of the romance plotlines felt discardable to me. I didn't think Pang and Namtaan had good chemistry at any point in the series and I would even argue that whatever Namtaan and Wave had going on for one episode was slightly better, although I also did not like it very much. Unlike a lot of other viewers, I also didn't really see a whole lot of chemistry between Pang and Wave and the little bit I did see seemed very one-sided from Pang's side. Even Chanon and Pom's storyline seemed more romantic to me than Pang/Namtaan, Wave/Namtaan, or Pang/Wave. I cannot say I cared for Wave's tragic backstory either, it just failed to get me to feel for Wave and there were lots of other parts in the show that made me sympathize with him more than his weird middle school crush on his teacher. If these parts had been cut out and instead used to develop Pang, Wave, and the twins more, the story could have been infinitely better.

Overall, I just think "The Gifted" really suffers from having such large quality differences between different episodes that while some are really good and could be worth 10 stars, others are just so boring and poorly written that it really drags down the entire show's rating for me, which is why I gave it 7 stars. I can see why other people really like it and it's an enjoyable and lighthearted enough watch to be a good introduction into the paranormal/supernatural mystery drama genre but if you are already into this kind of stuff and have seen quite a bit of it, it just doesn't hold up as well in comparison.

Citeste mai mult

If a brain aneurysm was a drama

One of the first things a writer should consider before writing a story is whether they want it to be character- or plot-driven. If they are a particularly good writer, they might even be able to conjoin both narrative styles to create a well-rounded, thoroughly enjoyable product. If they are a particularly bad writer, however, they will end up with "Blacklist".

The problem with "Blacklist" is that it feels like watching someone go through an identity crisis: it simply doesn't seem to know what tone it wants to set, what world and what stakes it wants to establish, or what themes and topics it wants to incorporate into the story for what reason. It constantly flip-flops between a variety of common mystery drama tropes and plot devices without particularly focusing on anything, which essentially means that it accomplishes nothing. I saw a lot of people compare this drama to "The Gifted" but I truly fail to see the resemblance; aside from the largely similar cast and the fact that they briefly mention that the classes at Akeanan High School are being assigned based on the students' grades in Episode 1, a plot point which they end up never addressing again anyway, there's nothing even remotely similar. As someone who still fundamentally enjoyed and appreciated the work that went into the first season of "The Gifted," I cannot in good faith recommend "Blacklist" to fans of the series.

I truly found it baffling how they managed to get every single aspect of the production wrong. Not only are there enough plot flaws to go for miles but the camera work, direction, color grading, acting, styling, and sound editing are all painful to watch as well. If I tried to list everything wrong with "Blacklist" in detail, I could sit here until my age quadrupled and my body started decaying, so I will try to keep it as brief as possible while still mentioning the most important points of critique I have to offer.

Let's take a look at the technical aspects of the production first. The lighting and color grading throughout the entire drama change at the whims of the set crew and editors. Some shots are well-lit and true to color, while others are dimly lit and have a horrendous brown tint to them like there's a sepia filter overlaying it all. There are also times when the shots suddenly turn grey for no reason. Those scenes are not flashbacks or plot intersections that require to be highlighted in grey to aid with the visual storytelling but just regular scenes that they made grey for fun. The editors also seem to not have cared about scene consistency at all because the real mystery in this drama is how in some shots, characters will empty their bottles and in the next, they're completely full and sealed again.

The sound editing is also terrible. You can hear voices echo, loud surrounding noises that drown out the actual lines, or clearly hear when audio has been added in post because no effort was put into making the recordings match up with the lip flaps of the characters or adjust it to fit the background noises that would normally naturally occur if the scene had been shot anywhere but in a soundproof recording studio.

The subtitles are just as bad as the audio sometimes with many grammatical and spelling errors and in the last episode, there are even whole sections where characters are speaking but there are just no subtitles to translate what is being said. I suppose the subtitlers also felt too miserable to continue translating this.

I am usually very lenient when it comes to styling in school dramas because the characters obviously need to all wear the same thing. But the problem in this drama is that the few ways that they chose to individualize the characters' wardrobes just don't work. Lila is supposed to be the mean, fashionable girl but sometimes she will literally wear the same whimsical, juvenile hairstyle as Teacher Jinmanee, a grown woman who is presumably at least in her 30s. Title also used to wear a jacket at the beginning of the show, which worked pretty well to make him appear more laid-back and relaxed, but they ended up scrapping it a few episodes in and it never came back, even after he returned to Blacklist. They also basically gave Andrew the same styling as Wave in "The Gifted" in the last few episodes with the earrings and chain necklaces, which in my eyes served no other purpose but to be eye candy for the many people who just tuned in to see Chimon look handsome. The outfits that they gave the characters to wear outside of school are also incredibly basic and did absolutely nothing in terms of visual storytelling and to be honest, most of them weren't even very flattering for the actors. The fact that the best outfit one of the Blacklist members wears in the entire series is when Andrew just puts on some random shirt that belongs to Pakkard's father is laughable.

The acting is also subpar, which is really sad because there are so many good actors and actresses in this but the combination of the bad direction and the actors just having nothing to work with with those characters because they essentially have no personality to go off of probably lead to whatever this flat, boring acting was. The only actor that had some notably good scenes acting-wise was Ohm and even then his acting was still much worse than in any of his other projects because even if he gave his most, there's nothing to salvage this trainwreck in my eyes.

As for the plot, it's unnecessarily convoluted and everything is treated like an afterthought. There are so many serious topics in this, ranging from drug addiction and distribution to school shootings to illegal gambling to sexual abuse and rape to physical violence, and every single one of them is treated like it's just some cool and fun plot device to spice up the plot and not a serious problem that affects our society on the daily and needs to be properly addressed and unpacked. The morals of this drama are actually pretty messed up if you ask me: they pick and choose whether someone is evil or something is morally reprehensible or not based on their feeling in the moment.

They sympathize with a school shooter who tried to kill Lila and Bantad, her love interest, even tells her later that she should've just gotten shot. Blacklist also just casually beats up people left and right without even knowing if they are truly involved in any kind of illicit activity but we're still supposed to root for them because "they are the good guys" and it spontaneously always works out for them. They literally waterboard Joe in one episode to get information out of him when he's not even a member of The God's Hands, which if you don't know is a literal torture method and illegal because it's a human rights violation. But the most infuriating part to me is how Traffic doesn't even believe his sister after she tells him she was sexually abused by Teacher Jinmanee when she is clearly traumatized and has physical signs of abuse on her body, then shames her for being a drug addict instead of helping her, lets her abuser get back to her, and then lets the rapist go and teach at another school elsewhere. There were no repercussions whatsoever for Jinmanee besides her having to switch schools when she tried to kill Viking and Fah and possibly other students and sexually abused multiple female students. Instead, the characters even tell her that they love her and that she's a good teacher and praise her to no end and when I saw that, I truly hoped that the writers of this show would never get a job ever again. Every other criticism of the show that I had collected in my mind up until this point suddenly paled in comparison because while things like calling a group of girls "The Veggie Gang" are cringey, they are at least not as absolutely disgusting and vile as excusing literal crime simply because the people committing it are beautiful or handsome.

Meanwhile, Principal Karin is never shown to be evil until he is just said to be the mastermind behind The God's Hands and a rapist. He even appears to be a reasonable and caring principal in the first eight or so episodes, actively providing mental health sessions and counseling to students traumatized by the school shooting and rehabilitation programs to students affected by the Miracle drug that circulated around school. Andrew is also never shown to sabotage Blacklist until he is suddenly revealed to be Principal Karin's little puppet in one of the last episodes and is just ostracized from his group for no reason because of it. He literally did nothing wrong and is treated as some evil traitor when Title literally betrayed them more often than Andrew did and even put their lives in danger on various occasions. Andrew's father even explicitly states in one scene that Principal Karin would never have been caught if it hadn't been for Andrew, so I really don't understand what the writers were going for here.

The narrative choice to include a character episode for each member of Blacklist also doesn't work because the members barely appear in each other's episodes and therefore no group unity is built whatsoever and the characters' personalities are also not being developed although an entire episode is being dedicated to them for supposedly that very purpose. Each member seems expendable and it's never shown why they would need to be in the group because often characters just conveniently have the same skill sets all of a sudden if the story calls for it. Their motivations for joining are also unclear as they keep changing or simply make no sense. In one of the first episodes, for example, it is stated that Bantad joined Blacklist because he wants to get a scholarship but that's not available to students in the rearmost class at the moment and Teacher Wanpadej promised to give him one if he joined. In a later episode, however, it is said that Bantad voluntarily got into Class 4/6 and Blacklist at Teacher Wanpadej's request to get a "free scholarship," which implies he already has a scholarship but it's just not free, which also makes no sense because scholarships are by definition supposed to be free. I am not sure if it's a translation error and they meant a full-ride scholarship but regardless, the story is inconsistent.

All of the characters are also boring and I can't tell you more than one or two traits that they have. Traffic is always angry and in real life, he would probably be an abusive boyfriend. He will literally growl at Melon and risk her getting sexually abused by Jinmanee just because he doesn't want to believe his sister. He also insulted Fah and even completely forgot about her until the last three or so episodes when she was supposed to be his driving force in the story. I hate how he will scoff at Melon and just drag her around like she has no free will and we're supposed to think he's hot while he acts worse than a dog with rabies.

I was excited to see Highlight's relationship with Orange at first because I thought unlike the other relationships it might work out well since they've already been together since before the story starts and the actors, Ohm and Prigkhing, have great chemistry. And it looked promising at first because the way Highlight described his relationship with Orange seemed very cute and I could really understand why they would work well as a couple and then they just break up immediately. Are the writers really trying to convince me that Highlight and Orange broke up after two years because Highlight lied to Orange once? And they didn't even try to make it a steady decline in trust that leads up to them breaking up, it was just over all of a sudden and both of the characters became pretty unimportant to the plot after.

Title is also a mess. I hated his character because he was an asshole to everyone and even flirted with Orange right after she broke up with Highlight, which no good friend would do. He already has a love interest that he has some vague deep history with, so why did they even need that storyline with Title and Orange when it lead to nothing? Just to fill some runtime? How about they used that to actually develop the story instead? They also all act like he died after he leaves Blacklist and say that they can't talk to him anymore because they might get exposed as members of Blacklist as well, which is so weird because wouldn't it be more suspicious if they suddenly stopped talking to him completely when they have been friends all this time? But I digress.

As for Andrew, Jimbae, and Bantad, I honestly barely remember them. They exist and they do something when needed but they have no memorable qualities whatsoever. Their love interests are equally unimportant and I really question why any of these characters exist. Maybe if you melted all of the characters together, you might get enough personality to make one decent one.

Either way, this drama gave me a massive headache and I had serious trouble finishing it. Even while writing this, I just got so upset halfway through that I wanted to bang my head against the wall, which probably would've killed less of my brain cells than watching this drama did. I don't understand how this drama still has an 8.0 rating at the time of writing and I honestly wonder what's wrong with the people who enjoyed this. I just hope nobody wastes their time with this drama because there are a lot of other things you can watch to simp for whatever actor you currently have the hots for that appears in this.

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Do you want us to be friends?

It is actually really rare for me to give a drama, especially one that is solely romance with no other significant plot component, 10 stars. And that is simply because I feel like giving a 10-star rating means that it's so good that I can love it in its entirety despite its flaws and that doesn't happen to me very often but "Bad Buddy" was one such case.

Does this drama have flaws? Definitely. Were they enough to taint my memory of this drama? Definitely not.

What I love about this drama is that while the main enemies-to-lovers conflict still feels very over the top and exaggerated like in most romance dramas, it still manages to utilize this trope effectively to discuss very real problems. This drama did not feel like something that was made by straight women in an attempt to satisfy their fantasies about queer men; it felt like something that was made by people who really cared to create something that would resonate with queer people.

Pat and Pran's feelings didn't just come out of nowhere. They didn't simply hate each other one day and suddenly realized that they actually loved each other since long ago. Their romance felt like an organic by-product of them being forced to spend so much time together and always having to look out for each other specifically *because* they were enemies and eventually realizing that they had more in common than they thought they would and that their personalities actually meshed together pretty well. You can clearly see the natural progression of them developing these feelings but then being set back during high school because they were separated by Pran's parents and now that they are in their early adult years and can make their own choices, they just decided to not hold back anymore.

The build-up to their relationship was silent, which is another thing I really enjoyed watching because that's how it is for most queer people. There is an innate uncertainty that comes with dating as a queer person that goes beyond the usual "Will they like me or will they reject me?" that straight folks experience because you don't just feel scared that they will reject your feelings but your entire being, fundamentally destroying the potential for any kind of future relationship with them, may it be as friends or just acquaintances. The pining looks and tender smiles Pat and Pran gave each other resonated with me because I could relate them to my own experiences as a queer person.

Another aspect of the story that I really enjoyed was how they essentially gave the two main characters the same inner conflict of trying to align their desire to be accepted by their families with the wish to please them and fulfill their expectations but still created two unique approaches as to how these conflicts play out. While Pat is much more willing to give up his family for Pran and live a life where he constantly faces rejection by them, Pran ponders over this problem much more. Despite the fact that his parents have enforced unreasonable rules over his life and have most likely inflicted some sort of trauma on him just because of their own personal problems, he is struggling to withdraw from his family and really wants to forgive them and wants them to approve of his relationship with Pat, even if this approval might not come immediately. You can see how these two characters try to find a middle ground between their respective views and are willing to accommodate for each other even if it goes against the grain of their personalities because they are just so in love. While I can personally identify more with Pran, I also appreciated Pat's storyline and am sure many others could see themselves in him.

I also loved the introduction of Ink, a character that wasn't in the novel. Unlike a lot of characters that are just created for the screen adaptation of something, she organically fit into the context of the story to the point where I didn't even realize she wasn't in the novel until I read it. Although she and Pa are just a side couple, their relationship felt fleshed out and realistic and really made me want to root for them. I also liked how Ink wasn't just treated as a plot device to cause a rift between Pat and Pran and enforce some sense of heteronormativity over them but was a memorable character of her own and subverted the trope of girls in BL only being there to either cause drama and break the main couple apart or to be someone's sister or mother. Ink is a good friend to both Pat and Pran and while Pat did have a crush on her at some point, it isn't treated as something that "makes him straight" but is instead used to showcase his bisexuality. In a similar way, Ink also serves to show that Pran really has no romantic interest in women and the series doesn't shy away from actually calling him gay— he isn't just in love with Pat but otherwise straight like so many characters in BL but he actively denies ever having any interest in women beyond friendship and even though you can clearly see him appreciate Ink and enjoy her company, his relationship to her feels fundamentally different than his relationship to Pat. By extension, Pa fills a comparable role wherein she isn't just used to cause some unnecessary misunderstandings between Pat and Pran but actually diverges from the usually passive sister role in BL to indulge in her own love life and fulfill her role as a good and supportive sister to Pat.

The drama also strikes a good balance between depicting sexual acts but not sexualizing the characters. A lot of BL dramas that do include sex scenes make them feel very fetishistic and make the male leads fall into stereotypical top/bottom roles. Yet at the same time, dramas that completely shy away from even addressing sex while featuring allosexual adult characters have a tendency to feel very stripped-down and adapted to the general public's level of acceptance towards queer content and often don't even feature the characters kissing aside from the one big kiss at the grand finale. But "Bad Buddy" shines a light on all facets of their relationship in a respectable manner: between showing these soft scenes of them just holding hands or laughing and being dumb together to these small, soft pecks they share that feel like the characters really adore one another and sex scenes that intentionally feel vague enough so you cannot definitively say who was the top or bottom in this situation, if anyone even was, but also definitely cannot deny that it did happen.

So after raving about this drama for so long, was there anything I actually didn't like? Yes, and that "thing I didn't like" is called Wai. I hated Wai's character and I wanted to punch him in the face on more than one occasion. I hated how he treated Pran, acted unnecessarily aggressive, and even outed his supposed best friend in public just to frame himself as the victim afterward. However, I can understand why Pran forgave him in the end because it is in line with his character in the rest of the show: he is someone who desperately holds onto his friends and family, even if they hurt him. While I didn't agree with his choice to forgive Wai, I could sympathize with him and could not confidently say that I would have acted differently in his stead as we share a lot of common characteristics.

Overall, the drama has its flaws but the acting is just phenomenal and you really feel for the characters and their stories and I cannot deny that I probably cried like a baby multiple times while watching it. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is interested in BL and wants to see a healthy, cute depiction of a gay couple.

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This might be the worst BL ever produced...

Not only is drama actually unbelievably homophobic, playing into heteronormative stereotypes and portraying gay people as inherently predatory unless they are basically just straight people who "happen to be gay just for this one particular guy," it also normalizes and makes light of themes such as rape, sexual assault, emotional and physical abuse, and gaslighting. Not to mention that the author of the original novel, who was also involved in the writing and production of this drama to the best of my knowledge, loves to fetishize the LGBTQ+ community while simultaneously exploiting them for shock value in her own works.

This drama was neither created by gay people nor was it created with gay people in mind. It is obviously catering to fujoshis/fundanshis who simply view queer people as material for their sexual fantasies and get off to the borderline pornographic sex scenes in this drama. It's absolutely sick how viewers enjoy and support this and its many sequels and spin-offs when it's so blatantly harmful to not only the LGBTQ+ community but also survivors of rape and abuse.

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When you have a good idea but the script is due tomorrow

The premise of "Color Rush" is a welcome fresh breeze in the world of BL dramas. The BL genre as a whole generally suffers from a "same premise, different execution" syndrome, often revolving around the mostly unremarkable life of some high school or university students, which for some reason also tend to be members of the communication arts or engineering faculty of their school. While "Color Rush" is also set in a high school, the story manages to stand out with its magical soulmate concept and subtle mystery undertones, turning the BL romance, in theory, into only a sub-plot and not the defining, overarching storyline.

However, the drama does not quite achieve this effect for several reasons, the most glaringly obvious ones being the poor writing and the lack of chemistry between the lead characters.

If it had been one of the side characters that had been hit with the poor acting, it probably wouldn't have had such a negative effect on the drama. But since it's one of the main leads, Hwall, that lacks the proper abilities to portray his character Yoo Han, the entire drama suffers under it. Yoo Han's character feels underdeveloped and his acting is incredibly stiff. Like a puppet that can only follow its master's orders, he just reads his lines with little to no emotion or engaging intonation. It is not so bad as that you would feel incredibly appalled by it to the point that you needed to drop the drama immediately but it is certainly enough to take away from your investment in the romance between the two main characters.

Secondly, the writing is poorly paced and structured. While the first few episodes are also rather fast-paced, it's still in the realm of the understandable for such a short drama. The last few episodes, however, jump from one plot point to the next, scrambling to tie together the many loose ends of the drama, resulting in neither a satisfying conclusion to the mystery nor the romance aspect of the series. At some point, I felt like they were just throwing in a bunch of facts that were never even alluded to before just to find an excuse as to why plot point x ended up the way it did.

Overall, it's not the worst drama I have ever watched and it surely isn't the worst BL I have ever watched. However, it certainly would benefit from a re-write and some acting training for Hwall, as well as simply from a longer duration as 15 minutes per episode are just too short to cover the extensive worldbuilding that is going on here, especially since the drama is only 8 episodes long.

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Beautiful flowers grow on trees with strong roots.

"INFLUENCE" is a truly impressive title.

Despite its short length of only five episodes, the drama deals with themes such as sexual assault, domestic violence, and guilt in a nuanced, respectful manner. The three main characters, Yuri, Satoko, and Maho, feel multi-faceted and three-dimensional. Although they all clearly have their flaws, the drama still manages to evoke sympathy and understanding for their actions through its immersive and detailed storytelling.

It carefully crafts each character's personality and background to give the viewer an insight into the girls' motivations and intentions, yet it never seeks to excuse any of their actions for pity points from the viewer. The goal of the drama was never to depict three "badass murderous women." Instead, it shows three morally grey women who made poor life choices due to parental neglect and the expectation to "mind your own business" and "keep face" that is so ingrained in the Japanese society. Now, they not only have to carry that guilt until the end of their lives, they are also stuck in a perpetual cycle of murder and death until one of the characters, Yuri, eventually chooses to break said cycle by sacrificing her own future.

At no point did I feel like the friendship between Yuri, Satoko, and Maho felt unnatural or inauthentic or found myself wondering why they chose to do the things they did. The writing, acting, and production are incredible and I can highly recommend this drama to anyone who wants to see a female-led mystery that also addresses heavy topics and offers up valuable criticisms on society.

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Color Rush? More like Plot Rushed

I know that many people were confused or even angry about Hwall not returning for the second season but to be honest, I didn't even particularly care about that. It was his decision and surely the producers knew what they were getting into too when they decided to make a second season despite this. While I didn't think that the first season was outstanding or anything, I still appreciated the overarching theme and concept and high production value in terms of the filming and editing enough to want to watch the second season. Needless to say, I was beyond disappointed.

The second season suffers from much the same writing and acting problems as the first season, only that they are even worse. I saw a lot of people praise Hyuk's acting and portrayal of Se Hyun but to be honest, I thought it was just as bad if not worse than Hwall's acting in season one. In the first 6 or so episodes, his expressions are minimal, and even when I noticed a minimal improvement in the last two episodes, it was still not enough for me to want to praise it. Even Yoo Jun's acting, which was one of the few redeeming qualities of the first season, was reduced to him having to play a depressed, emotionless Yeon Woo. At times, I thought it was almost laughable how Yeon Woo consistently delivered his lines in a serious and earnest tone, even when it didn't even really fit the situation. It was like I was watching a satire of a mystery romance drama instead of something that was meant to be taken seriously.

As for the plot, nothing makes sense. I could understand why the first season mainly focused on the romance aspect and not the mystery, as the characters needed to be introduced and the concept of Probes and Monos needed to be explained to the viewer first before further delving into the world. However, to me, it is simply bad writing when almost all the things that were previously established in season one are either completely ignored or actively contradicted in season two. Due to that, it feels like the writers are just speedrunning from one new plot point and one new fact about the world to the next without any room for the viewer to take a breather and process the information in between. Sometimes characters know things they couldn't possibly know or suddenly have abilities that they never had before, such as Yeon Woo and his friends Joo Haeng and Min Jae suddenly developing advanced hacking and programming skills.

And while I thought the idea of a crime syndicate using Monos' desperation to sell them illegal drugs and surgeries to induce an artificial Color Rush was interesting, it was executed poorly. First of all, the motivations of the leaders of the syndicate seem extremely unclear and wishy-washy. If they were really only interested in finding a way to make Monos see color to capitalize off of it, then why not just invest in the further development of their drug Lazulata? It is clearly shown to be working and even Yeon Woo himself states that there's no way that a Color Rush could be faked like that. Why invest in some sketchy surgery, which is even said to put them at a loss, and take the lives of innocent people for no reason? Clearly, the leaders also don't enjoy having to get rid of the bodies, so why not just try to make the drug work for longer periods of time? It simply doesn't make much sense.

Even the way they wrote Yoo Han out of the story was bad. He got kidnapped by what now? Clowns in an amusement park? Really? Instead of introducing another mystery which they will probably never be able to resolve considering that a third season hasn't been announced yet and they have no way of knowing whether Hwall will be able to reprise his role should another season happen, this seems like such an ill-advised choice. There were so many ways how they could've written him out, just to name a few:

1. They could have said that Yoo Han's parents forcibly sent him away so he wouldn't be with Yeon Woo anymore. This would've made much more sense as it had already been established that Yoo Han is the son of an influential family and needs to be protected at all costs. Since Monos are said to be violent and often murder their Probes, it would have made sense for the parents to keep the two apart.

2. Yoo Han found out about the dealings of the crime syndicate introduced in this season before Yeon Woo as he wanted to surprise him by finding his mother for him. The organization found out about this and got scared because Yoo Han's family could ruin their plans. So they murdered him alongside their other victims to keep him from telling on them. In the end, Yeon Woo buries Yoo Han alongside his mother.

Even the production value has decreased since the first season: especially in the first few episodes, the show lingers on shots way too long, to the point where I sometimes thought my screen got frozen just to realize it wasn't. Furthermore, while the writing in the first season was already bad from a plot angle, it at least had a very distinct, almost poetic tone to it that made the show more immersive and added to its fantasy flair. This writing style was completely abandoned in the second season and instead, the writing just feels choppy, rushed, and comical.

I wouldn't recommend this drama to anyone because it honestly just felt like a waste of time and has little connection to the first season; it almost even feels like the two are completely different dramas at times and I really can't stand it.

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