Welcome to my Saturday blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching, whether at the beginning, middle, or end. Whatever I want, because I’m petty that way.
This week was fun for me because I started recapping two new shows.
First, is the recently aired timey-wimey-thriller BL(?) 4Minutes. Come for the confusing, twisted, dark, murderous plot, and stay for the cats.
Second, is the currently airing crime-adventure BL Jack and Joker: U Steal My Heart! which has stolen my heart in the first two episodes. The real test is, can it keep it?
What did I watch this week? Just one review this week, but I make up for it by going on and on. I’ve got a final review of:
The Trainee – ฝึกงานเทอมนี้ รักพี่ได้มั้ย – 2024
Recently aired Thai workplace BL with 12 episodes.
An aimless young man accidentally becomes an assistant director intern under a short-tempered mentor and falls for him.
I gave this show a glowing initial review and the first half of the show deserves all the praise I gave it. Unfortunately, by the time I was done, I felt like I’d watched workplace/personal growth propaganda masquerading as a BL.
This show is a not-great BL and an okay workplace ensemble comedy
To be fair, from the beginning our “main” couple Ryan and Jane shared the spotlight with the other intern and mentor characters. I liked seeing these side characters and their growth alongside our main lead, Ryan’s, growth.
But around the midpoint, it started to lose its charm for me as the show focused heavily on two other interns’ relationship. I liked these characters and even had personal reasons to empathize with their story, but the conclusion felt very much ado about nothing. If we were going to spend that much time on them, I wanted a bigger reward than I was given.
Around here, I realized the drama was more of an anthology, with each intern getting their own story that once it was over, we were mostly done with them. I liked some interns more than others, so I was disappointed to realize their part of the story was over.
But the bigger sin of the story about all this was how disconnected Ryan and Jane, but particularly Ryan since he was one of the interns, felt from this. He sat with them, stared blankly at them, and grew alongside them, but wasn’t very involved with them. At one point I thought the Forrest Gump poster in the editing bay symbolized Ryan, but Forrest Gump was a catalyst for change in all those around him. Ryan wasn’t.
All of this made our main couple feel like an afterthought tacked onto a workplace drama.
We didn’t learn much about Jane until the last few episodes and it was focused on his career. I never felt like I got to know him. Then the conclusion to Jane and Ryan’s romance was a baffling use of a hated trope that didn’t even seem to matter, to Ryan, to the story, to anything.
None of it was romantic. Then, as though they’d forgotten to shoot enough romance, they stuck some relationship stuff into the on-screen text messages at the end. I felt cheated.
No one wants a mystery where the murderer is captured off-screen. I don’t want a romance where important conversations happen somewhere else. It makes me wonder what decisions happened in pre-production. Did someone sell their quirky, workplace drama by adding BL? Did the people with the money only agree to make it if it ended how most BLs end lately?
“You can’t hate it unless you love it”
(This quote is from a movie I’d recommend to everyone.)
I’m complaining this much because there were parts of this show I loved. There was a lot of lost potential, disappointing me more than something like Pit Babe ever could.
I loved the quirky, absurd tone. I loved the depiction of a production company, a world I’m somewhat familiar with. All the side-side-characters, the other editors, the clients, the creatives, the art department guys, felt very real. I liked all the interns, their backgrounds and quirks, seeing them enter this new world and find their place in it.
I’m a reluctant workplace romance watcher anyway and tend to avoid them. So it hurt all that much more when the rare workplace romance I let into my heart disappointed me this way.
Perhaps if you go into this wanting a workplace drama with a side of BL, you’ll reach the end a lot happier than me.