Welcome to my weekly blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching but not recapping.
My recap of Oh No! Here Comes Trouble is up to episode 4! Rewatching this show is a delight.
After a month or so of struggling to find anything that caught my eye, this week I started a bunch of dramas. I’m going to talk to the two I am the furthest into and enjoying the most.
First, while I don’t typically follow actors too closely, the To Sir, With Love couple have a new show and I had to give it a try. So, I watched:
Laws of Attraction – กฎแห่งรักดึงดูด – 2023 (Pictured)
A currently airing Thai thriller-BL, I’m at 4 out of 8 episodes.
An opportunistic immoral lawyer and a rigid do-gooder come together over a tragic case.
I’m loving this show, but it’s not without gigantic problems. So I’ll start with a warning that the production of this show is Not Good. If I didn’t like these actors and what the characters were doing so much I may have bailed after some truly horrible digital … experimentation? I don’t know what they were trying to do. The setup is also terribly clunky.
It improves after the first episode, not that it’s good so much as less distractingly bad.
It’s also another soap-logic type show, with various logical leaps and reality shortcuts. If realism and logic are requirements I’d look elsewhere.
I’m loving it. Film Thanapat Kawila, who played the sweetest man ever in To Sir, With Love, has weaponized his adorable smiles to make them the unhinged mask of a broken man who has given up on goodness. He’s not one of these ‘cold on the outside but actually a teddy bear’ types but does genuinely bad things. He’s also a shameless flirt.
He gives me Wen Ke Xing (from Word of Honor) vibes and I love it. There aren’t enough characters who cover their pain with smiles and flirting in dramaland.
His co-star, Jam Rachata Hampanont, is the less flashy character again but still gets to kick people, now in skinny jeans. He’s properly attracted and repulsed by the handsome but morally bankrupt man who he can’t keep away.
There’s a plot here and though it’s not going to win any awards for cleverness, it is more unique than most of what is out there. Rather than being in school together or working together, these two are brought together by a tragic death and wanting to learn the real story – if for very different reasons. They’re also both aware of their own sexuality and attraction to one another so there’s no angst there. The issue is their dramatically opposing views of justice and reality. Since they are navigating a morally ambiguous world with these different viewpoints there are plenty of opportunities for conflict and understanding. Even if it’s clunky in places, it’s still refreshing.
Can’t wait to watch the other half of this show!
The Chinese fireman shows’ simplistic morality must have burnt me out because my other review also has some interesting moral grayness:
Miraculous Brothers – 기적의 형제 – 2023
A Korean supernatural-thriller bromance, I’m at 6 out of 16 episodes.
A struggling, unpublished author’s entire life is upended when a young man with an unpublished manuscript literally appears in front of his car.
The moral grayness here is more complex than in the review above.
First off, we have a man who has been beaten down by life and in a moment of weakness, takes someone else’s novel and claims it as his own. He’s hard to like at first because he lies so much in a desperate effort to protect himself.
Then, we have a younger man with amnesia and dark disturbing flashes of memory who is more honest and caring, but also potentially very dangerous to those he sees as bad guys. He’s sweet and cute and a little scary.
Their relationship is complicated both by the lies between them and the protective instincts they have for each other. And that’s before they start learning more about what’s going on.
We also have a police officer suffering from past trauma and abuse, back at work, and encountering gruesome murders.
We also have older murders and evil rich chaebols and corrupt police and the past coming back to haunt everyone. Some want the past to stay buried, others are trying to redeem themselves.
We also have strange, unexplained supernatural abilities.
Then there’s that book, and the original author, and why they may have written it.
Somehow, all of this ties together.
It’s a lot, and I’m enjoying the ride. The show doesn’t have the flashiness or intense drama that fantastical shows can have, and the down-to-earth tone gives it an interesting flavor. I’m a little worried that it’s going to all come together in a tangled mess with loose ends flying everywhere, but for now, I’m enjoying watching where it goes.