Welcome to my weekly blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching but not recapping.
This week I recapped through episode 5 of recent favorite On A Starry Night/Hoshi Furu Yoru ni and the 1st episode of Thai slice-of-life BL Moonlight Chicken.
I only have one show to talk about this week, because I finished:
GAP – ทฤษฎีสีชมพู – Thailand 2022 (Pictured)
A recently aired Thai GL with 12 episodes.
GAP is about Mon, who has admired and looked up to Sam ever since they knew each other as children. Now an adult, Mon goes to work for Sam and discovers she’s changed for the worse.
This Thai GL resembles a lot of Thai BL in that it is silly, over-the-top, and the plot really isn’t there. These things can be flaws or features depending on your mood and tastes.
I’ll talk about what felt like the biggest flaws first. The writing was mediocre, this has never stopped me from enjoying a show, but Mon’s character was particularly underwritten. This problem compounded itself because Mon’s actress was the weaker of the two leads. Then, the end was frustrating-if-well-intentioned, mirroring dozens of Thai BLs with its final conflict and resolution. If it had ended at episode 10 I would have been happy, by episode 12 I was unhappy.
(I know that Gap, like many of these shows, is based on a novel. I still expect the drama writers to come up with good scripts.)
I also wonder about production issues. Sam had a pretty awesome group of friends that felt tragically underused. One of the strengths of Secret Crush On You (from the same production company) was the other couples and Sam’s friend group. There were no other couples in GAP, though one of Sam’s friends and Mon’s friend seemed to always be together. It felt like something went awry behind the scenes there.
On the other hand, Sam and Mon were a cute couple. At first, I thought Mon knew her crush on Sam was romantic, but instead, both women were GL-romantically-sexually clueless. Their strange courtship and panda-mating-like complications were surreal and funny. Sam at times seemed to be a parody of the typical male CEO love interest, unashamedly telling Mon that the romantic set-up she’d brought her to was prepared by the maid. It was these scenes where the show really shined.
Also, Sam’s clothes. They were awesome.
Overall I think this would be a hard sell to anyone not already interested in Thai BLs and/or interested in a longer GL series, but it’s worth watching if you fall into one or both of those categories. I think Thailand has more, longer GL series coming out and I’ll be excited to try them.