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, I recapped episodes 13-14 of The Prisoner of Beauty. The cousins are multiplying and murdering (or trying to), and Wei Shao is stuck in the middle of it all. Family can be rough.
I also recapped episodes 7-8 of Khemjira. Despite objecting on a fundamental level to episode 8 being two hours long, both episodes were good. We even get sex that doesn’t involve hand-intertwining.
What did I watch this week? Don’t judge me (at least not to my face), but I was in a hurt/comfort kind of mood with one recent show and one blast from two years past.
Let’s start with the new hotness:
My Magic Prophecy – ทำนายทายทัพ – 2025
Recently aired Thai supernatural thriller(?) BL with 10 episodes.
A young man haunted by his ability to see people’s futures meets a doctor who is going to die soon and doesn’t believe in fortune-telling.
I went over the initial setup in my initial review, so you can find everything initial there. What you’re getting here is my final review.
This is one of those shows that has a mysterious magnetic pull despite having nothing plot-wise that drew me in and plenty of problems, because as soon as an episode was released, I had to watch it.
I think I really like watching Sea cry
This makes me feel like a bad person, but he’s really good at it. Sea plays our hurt fortune teller, and he cries in a way that’s painfully vulnerable-but-strong-but-vulnerable. Most of the time, he’s a, er, sea urchin with sharp spikes to keep people at a distance, but his tears are also armor. Don’t get near him, he’s too hurt.
But one cocky, arrogant doctor refuses to leave him hurting without doing anything. This actor, Jimmy, gives good hugs and manages to be likable despite his character being such a know-it-all. Our doctor likes to show off, unless he’s struggling, and then he hides it all behind his confident attitude. In that way, he has something to learn from the fortune-teller’s honest emotions.
And I like that the show respects our fortune teller’s pain. What he’s suffered is horrible, and it’s not something you ever recover from. This isn’t a show where one conversation fixes everything for him. He’s always going to be sad about what happened. But with a lot of hugs and support, he can get moving again.
The rest of the plot is…
There’s a bad guy or two running around, and our characters know who they are from the beginning. Even the “secret” bad guy is obvious. Our second couple is a doctor and a cop who had a thing or something. They spend their time in various locations talking about the bad guys or how they had a thing or something. I didn’t find any of this particularly engaging.
Thankfully, it’s only 10 episodes long, so the silly not-thriller plot isn’t dragged out. We also get First, an actor from The Heart Killers and Not Me, getting to stretch his acting chops in a non-romantic role. He’s also a good crier.
So it’s all about the crying
If you don’t feel like crying or watching someone cry, it might irritate you. Since I was in the mood for hurt/comfort, this hit the spot perfectly.
And I wasn’t satisfied with just one hurt/comfort show, so I had to find another:
Bed Friend – อย่าเล่นกับอนล – 2023
A friends-with-benefits-to-something-more Thai BL with 10 episodes.
A young man with a traumatic past he can’t escape agrees to be friends with benefits with his horny co-worker. ‘Cause why not.
In some ways, this is a very different show from above. There’s no “thriller” aspect. It’s one of those “workplace” dramas where nothing about their jobs matters. Work is just a place that has your friends, one of the leads from “Your Sky”, and your lover, conveniently all in one place. It also has some bad guys that you can’t escape.
As for what people’s jobs are and why they do them. Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter.
Our hurt character here is also a bit of a sea urchin, but he never cries in front of others. His trauma comes not from loss, but abuse. He’s cold, beautiful, and a sad part of him thinks he must deserve this since it keeps happening.
Enter a goofy co-worker who likes sex
And was also Prince Calvin in The Next Prince (Prince Calvin is not THE Next Prince, he’s just Some Prince).
This co-worker is not particularly deep and has a good moral compass. He doesn’t like seeing people suffer.
The “likes sex” part makes our hurt-lead think his co-worker is a player who carelessly breaks hearts and cheats, which isn’t true. At first, this keeps our hurt-lead away, but that part of him that thinks he deserves to suffer decides he might as well also get some sex out of it. They enter a friends-with-benefits relationship.
Since the co-worker isn’t a bad guy, as he gets closer to our hurt guy, he sees the vulnerability under the cold surface. He takes an interest in him beyond being just a bed friend.
But it takes too long
Trigger warning, this show has a fair amount of SA as the past keeps repeating for our poor lead. It’s not necessarily gratuitous or graphic, but it’s a lot.
On top of that, he lives in a strange nightmare world where his co-workers sometimes notice and want to help, only to forget in the next scene. I started to wonder if the show was an expressionistic piece where we see everything from our hurt-lead’s head, because what the other characters were doing made no sense. Except to keep putting him in harm’s way all alone.
Seeing bad men abuse him was hard. Seeing those around him waffle back and forth was a different kind of hard.
The show is only 10 episodes long, but it’s not until later in those episodes that things really change for him. I would have preferred it to start earlier so we could see him heal and feel supported for longer.
While our hurt-leads problems were thankfully not fixed in one conversation, other problems were. These problems felt very fleeting and unimportant, but did take time on screen.
I liked it for our unique lead
We don’t get a lot of beautiful, cold, confident, vulnerable underneath leads with slightly self-destructive streaks. He was complicated. I like complicated.
His partner was, by comparison, perfectly simple. Open, honest, into sex. I understand why someone who’s been through so much is drawn to that kind of person. They made sense.
I also enjoyed seeing some of our Domundi actors from just a few years ago in different roles and with different partners. (Domundi is the company responsible for Your Sky, The Next Prince, Khemjira, and plenty of other shows I haven’t watched.)
In general, I recommend this with reservations. Watch it for our complicated/simple pairing and the hurt/comfort, ignore a lot of the rest, and be careful if sensitive to SA scenes.
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