Love Is Like a Cat (2024)

This show is like a cat, and I'm allergic

I really didn’t have high hopes for this project from the get-go. Mixing Thai with Korean BL sounds like a decent idea on paper, but the execution turned out to be incredibly clumsy. Peach Of Time did it first - it felt awkward then, and it feels awkward now. I’m not saying this concept can’t be done. Because Of You actually pulled the mixing of languages off quite well. But that’s because some of the characters in the show were actually multilingual, so it made the entire thing a whole lot more believable because they effortlessly switched between languages, depending on who they were talking to. In this show, however, Uno somehow understands Korean perfectly, but he cannot speak the langue at all. How in the world would you ever get to that point? Listening and speaking skills develop hand in hand. Of course, it is quite common to have an easier time understanding a language than actually speaking it. But I simply don’t see any way in which someone would understand everything as well as Uno does (down to words like 'euthanasia‘ which you won’t find in basic vocabulary lessons unless you attend a very odd language course) without being able to make at least simple every-day conversation. The same goes for Uno’s manager who understands Thai but doesn’t speak it, and his assistant assumably too, because he never speaks to Uno in Thai but understands him without any struggle. It makes no sense and took me out of the show completely. For everyone who isn’t magically able to understand Thai/Korean, the instant translation earpiece was a very cheap way out. I suppose I gotta praise them for at least trying to address the language barrier in some way, it just was a little bit too convenient for my liking. Especially regarding the TV show they were filming. The audience obviously does not have a fancy insta-translator, and when we saw the manager watching the show, there were never any subs. So, how are the Korean viewers supposed to get anything of what Uno was saying?

But anyhow, the language nonsense was the least of the show’s problems.

The even bigger issue is that the world of this show feels completely empty. You know those stories where the places actually come to live and you feel the vibe of the coffee shop, office, house, or whatever through the screen, or even through pages of a book? Well, this was the opposite of that. It never feels like you’re watching people going about their lives, moving naturally around the world they live in. It feels like you’re watching actors on a set. A set that refused to cast any extras. The main place of the show is a dog cafe. But somehow, we see a grand total of ONE dog at the entire cafe, and we never get to see a single customer who isn’t part of the main cast. The same goes for the vet clinic, although, there we actually get to see one other client (I believe), which didn’t add much realism, but at least it was something. It was incredibly strange to watch and ruined the immersion.

But the most glaring issue, by far, is the romance.

You see, the two love interests don’t actually interact (apart from a brief encounter) until half way through the show. I absolutely don’t mind if you take a while to establish the characters on their own first, before you introduce the romance. If well done, that in itself would not be an issue. The issue is that in this show, those first episodes felt incredibly wasted. It didn’t really feel like I was getting to know the characters well. Somehow we spent 6 episodes introducing them, and I still couldn’t connect to either of them. At no point did I feel like I actually know these characters. Uno just felt like a caricature of an aloof, stand-off-ish celebrity. I have no idea how he even got famous in the first place, because that generally requires charisma, and Uno has none of that. Dae Byeol loves animals. That’s all I could take away from his character. And that he struggles financially, maybe. Both of them felt like empty shells who weren’t appealing to watch at all. Much like with the set feeling just like that, a set, the characters also felt just like characters rather than actual people.

When the two main leads finally do get to interact, the romance feels as empty as the characters do. There was no romantic chemistry there whatsoever, and the build-up is clunky as hell. This is yet another show that feels like it should’ve been a bromance, and on the day of filming, someone decided to add some romance into the mix. So, they came up with very few moments that were supposed to be cute, but they come so out of the blue and feel so awkward that I went 'Wtf is going on?‘ Instead of 'Awww!‘ which is definitely not the reaction you want when watching a romance series. It’s not even that they established a friendship that felt believable. They just went from not really liking each other to loving each other without putting in any effort of making the two actually bond for more than a total of five minutes. It was completely wasted, and I was honestly shipping Dae Byeol with the vet and Uno with his assistant more than I was rooting for the two of them. Dae Byeol had more chemistry with the damn dog than he did with Uno.

This series might go down as the show with the most awkward hug scene in BL history. It was actually painful to watch. Uno hurt his foot while they were out looking for their dog. They sit down and Uno goes on an incredibly forced monologue about how his dog trauma came to be (their conversations in general feel clunky and forced, but this one was the worst instance). Then, Dae Byeol proceeds to wrap his arm around him in the most unnatural way anyone has ever hugged anyone ever. It felt like he was forced to hug that one relative he doesn’t like, because his parents told him to be polite, not like he was getting close to someone he apparently has feelings for. It was supposed to be cute, but I had to pause the show because I was laughing so hard at how bad it was. The scene of him applying ointment for Uno wasn’t much better, but it wasn’t quite as horrendous.

Speaking of Uno’s trauma with dogs… He got over that way too quickly. How nice would it have been if the show actually depicted him slowly overcoming his fear with the help of Dae Byeol? But we cannot have nice things, apparently, so instead, he basically healed himself by the power of nothing. If getting over trauma/fears was that easy, it would leave therapists everywhere jobless.

The ending feels unearned and plot lines get resolved way too quickly and without any meaningful resolution. They're just wrapped up because it's episode 12, and we need a happy end now.

In terms of acting, the side characters were actually doing really well and were a lot more likeable than the main characters. Especially Uno’s assistant and manager were both hilarious and nailing their roles, so that was honestly the best part about this whole thing. Mew is a very charismatic person, usually, but somehow, he failed to add any charisma to Uno which made watching him incredibly boring.

If you’re debating whether you should watch this, I suggest you don’t. There really isn’t anything here to get attached to or fawn over. It's genuinely one of the most unenjoyable BLs I've ever watched. It's bad, but not even funny-bad, just plain bad. If you’re looking for a show with cute animals in it, you won’t find it here, and you’re honestly better off just watching dog or cat videos on Youtube. At least those are cute and not as awkward as whatever the hell this was.

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That was disappointing...

First, there is a "dog" cafe without dogs... that's strange as hell.
There is ONE dog in the whole show.
All Koreans understand Thai for some reason without translation devices or so it seems.
The story was soooo slow going in the beginning and then the ending was rushed. What did they wait for? Most of the inbetweens scenes did not much for the love story. The "traitor" was still in the final shot - I only thought WTF? There was a chance for an emotional outbreak for what he did, but nothing happend.
The production value was high, but for such a subpar story it was wasted.
The chemestry between the two leads was ok-ish, I guess a language barrier is not so easy to overcome. They still lacked passion and longing for each other.
All in all I could have skipped it and not miss a thing.

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