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 31-32 of The Prisoner of Beauty. It finally occurs to Wei Shao that Man Man may not be having the best time with him.
I also recapped episodes 3-4 of The Proper Way to Write Love. Hiro makes no progress in his revenge, but Natsuo makes progress with Hiro.
What did I watch this week? I’ve got a final review of:
The Wicked Game – เกม รัก ลวง – 2025
Recently aired Thai Soap-y Former Cop + Poor Rich Boy BL with 10 episodes.
The unloved and abused youngest son returns home to steal the family company and drags a do-gooder former cop into the mess as his bodyguard.
Here’s a link to the official teaser.
The show aimed for big twists and huge emotional stakes, but the writing just wasn’t strong enough to carry them. I’ll take that if it’s still fun, but instead of fun, we got lots and lots of crying. So much crying. When will writers learn that my cold, dead heart is unmoved by attractive actors crying?
For the initial set-up, you can read my initial review, where I had hopes and dreams for this show.
After crying, the show’s biggest problem for me was the love story
Shocking no one who’s watched more than a dozen romantic dramas, our two leads met once as kids. Once. And this single meeting, where one protected the other, and then they sat on the swings, is the basis for all of their love.
There are ways they could have used this that might have been fun and interesting.
What if our rich guy seized on that moment with all his hopes and dreams, and our former cop barely remembered it?
Or what if it had been a bigger moment? Our poor rich guy was in danger from something more than childhood bullies?
What if our former cop felt responsible for not being there more in the rich guy’s life, during his truly horrible childhood?
But none of that happened. Instead, it became a constantly referenced flashback to explain why our two leads loved each other, because otherwise, there wasn’t a lot. They spent as much of the show working against each other as together.
And crying. They cried a lot. Did I mention that?
Outside of the romantic love story, there was the family love story
These rich siblings would do anything, anything, for Daddy’s love. Kinda. To be fair, there were some other motivations. Like their mothers. But mostly, it was rich people fighting for Daddy’s approval so they could inherit the business because they believed that would make them happy.
And by fighting, I mean trying, and failing, to kill each other. There were no clever business moves. No strategic plans. No setting up someone for a fall that involved more than putting documents on someone’s desk. No assassination attempts that involved much more than sending someone out with a gun.
It was over the top, but it wasn’t over the top enough. It wasn’t wicked enough.
I’m always good for a poor rich guy, but this wasn’t it
If you love these leads, if you get catharsis over watching attractive people cry (we all have our things), maybe this can be it for you. Otherwise, I’m not recommending this one.
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