The Director Who Buys Me Dinner (2022)

A unique holiday gift

What is Christmas without a BL? A grey and dreary experience

Released during the festive season, the BL family could congregate at home and snuggle by the ubiquitous fireplace, with a cup of hot chocolate in hand, to savor this hidden gem, irrespective of any religious themes it possesses

From the onset, religious themes carry enormous symbolic angst

Two men, connected by a red string of fate that stretches or tangles, but never breaks, are cursed to reincarnate. The transformative power of gay love holds the key to their emancipation

The notion of religious or spiritual dogma, with its implication of a malevolent entity lurking in the shadows, evokes within me a sense of foreboding. But if we shift our attention to the men themselves, we find it amusing to ponder the possibilities and intricacies of their amorous journey

If we judge the cinematography on its own merits, we find the visual reinforcement of love to play an important role in our sympathy towards the men. The producers proved to be people well trained in showing, more than telling

Let us give the producers and actors a big round of applause!

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Half-Cooked, Dont Eat

A hard pass, unless someone buys you dinner to watch it. The plot synopsis here in MDL is a little bit different from the actual story, in the series Yu Dam has lived for 300 years and Dong Baek was in fact a man in his first iteration. And no, they dont die, only Dong Baek is bound to die.

The format for Korean BLs are just too short to be properly appreciated. I just dont understand why they cant just increase the episode runtime to better tell the story.

There is an ambitious premise hidden somewhere. It is a fantasy romance and yes, they were trying to do something different from other BL by telling a unique love story that spans hundred of years. It reminded me of another Korean BL "First Love Again". However, just like that series, this story looks good on paper but has failed in execution. What we got are 10 16-minute episodes that spends the first 2 and a half minute recapping and showing the opening credits and another minute and a half end credits. The problem is there is just not enough story in the 12 minute remaining time for me to chew upon. There wasnt enough to savour the characters, it wasnt even enough to taste their chemistry.

The title says The Director Who Buys Me Dinner, but after the first 2 episodes the dinner between Director Min Yu Dam and Soel Dong Baek stopped. I would have loved to see it every episode like some sort of closing credit.

The fantasy side also wasnt fully explained, there wasnt any proper explanation about how the curse happened, or how the director lived for hundreds of years? Do we even really consider living a long life a curse? Did he meet any previous Dong Baek aside from the first and the current one? Who was that who possessed Dong Baek? Was the curse lifted by the end of the story or if he is still aware that he is or was immortal? Did he just suddenly also forget about his long life? What happens to Dong Baek at the end?

Also, whats the point of the Denis character?

What's sad is you can actually see the making of a good series under all the ingredients they were trying to shove in your mouth. If they just spent a little more time baking the story, and maybe just adding a little more sugary sweetness it would have been great.

I used to like short series but after a few duds i am starting to hate the format. It is very evident that in this series , the short runtime worked against their favor. Open ended stories are good way to end stories but here it just felt lazy.

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