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 started recapping another show with episode 1 of Let Free The Curse of Taekwondo. It’s grim and miserable in a very kdrama way, but a ray of sunshine shows up.
I also recapped episodes 3-4 of Love Is A Poison, in which our lawyer stops worrying about the conman and starts worrying about his own feelings. The succulents try to help but he’s not listening.
My final review of the year is an unusual one:
Spare Me Your Mercy – การุณยฆาต – 2024
Recently aired Thai mystery thriller with a gay romance subplot and 8 episodes.
A stern cop returns to his rural childhood home and encounters an enigmatic doctor and a few too many people dying a little too early.
I think this show is an interesting mystery and a poor BL. But I wouldn’t call this a BL anyway. Let me get into it.
Starting with our main characters
Our doctor is a man of secrets. He cares deeply and tirelessly for the terminally ill patients under his care, many of who are in great pain as their illnesses progress. A few of whom have died earlier than he predicted, including the mother of our cop.
The doctor knows about our cop thanks to talking with his mother as he cared for her. When they finally meet there’s an instant… not sparks. Something.
But then there are those pesky premature deaths. The cop is intrigued by the doctor but also suspicious, especially since his mom was one of them. And then more people die. Who is dying naturally and who isn’t?
The doctor says he’s innocent and it’s understandable for his patients to die. But the doctor is hiding things.
They eat food off each other’s faces, but to me, it’s not a BL
It’s a side romance in a mystery plot. The cop is suspicious of the doctor, the doctor is hiding things, and they go on some nice dates and have some nice chats. It’s oddly lacking in intensity and suspense. They have nice chemistry, but the speed with which their closeness develops feels out of pace with everything else.
To grow so close that fast while one suspects the other of maybe being a murderer, it feels like there should be a strong physical attraction between them. But their romance is chaste. At one point the cop is ready to move in but they haven’t even kissed. He may have done this to investigate the Doctor more closely, but it still feels off.
There’s nothing wrong with a chaste romance, but I need a more compelling reason for why they are so drawn to one another despite the dying people. Or more tension on their dates.
Distracting as this is to me, it hardly ruins the show, because the focus isn’t romance. If it were a BL, it would be. But the real focus of this show is the mystery.
And the mystery is very compelling
Because it’s not just about whether or not certain people are murdered, there’s a deeper moral quandary at play here. I don’t want to get into it because it’s maybe a spoiler, but that issue is explored with interesting depth. The show doesn’t try to sell a particular point of view but shows the complexity from various viewpoints.
The mood is dark and eerie, the plot twisty, setting us up to think one thing and then showing why it may not be true. The characters are also dark and twisty in ways not usually found in a romance, with even our leads making questionable choices. The acting is good, especially the doctor, managing to make characters with deep flaws sympathetic.
And it’s nice to be in rural Thailand.
Don’t get me wrong, the mystery isn’t perfect. It would have benefitted from having another episode or two to fully flesh it out. The cops in the show are about as competent as in your typical Korean drama, which is to say, not. At one point I think our lead cop searches for evidence he’s already seen. I don’t know why there is constantly an x-ray of hands up in the coroner’s office.
But it’s still interesting and gripping enough to be worth watching.
A digression
I loved the opening credits to True Detective Season 1 and I’m not surprised to see many others appreciate them too. Not for BL, but I’ve noticed many mystery series from various countries using that credit design as their template. Never have I seen a show copy quite as directly as this one but you know what? It looks good. Good for them.
I think the world could use more stories with lgbtq+ side romances
Some people like romance but not Romance. They want it to be a side dish, not the main meal. The number of stories that exist with romantic subplots featuring lgbtq+ characters is still rare. This is one of those shows.
If you’re one of those people, maybe this is a BL to you and it could be your favorite.
(This show also reminds me of To Sir, With Love, another show I don’t consider a straight-up BL but one I adore. If you liked that show, maybe give this one a try?)
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