My Sweet Professor (2022)

Short episodes about bromance

These episodes are two to three minutes long each. There are two male leads: lead A is a doctor at a hospital who hasn't seen or met lead B for eight years. A and B used to be great "friends" (the rainbows are everywhere) until B suddenly disappeared without a trace. When they meet again, A isn't very interested in B's why behind the disappearance because he's so upset. But of course they gradually figure it out, and with them, you figure out what happened as well.
The actors were great, although I'd not seen them in anything else before. The music was mostly not there, but i think everyone will recognize the karaoke song. The storyline had some holes i wish they'd filled. I wish this was a 6 hour long series, and preferably without the censorship.
I don't consider this a spoiler, but a necessity: it has a happy ending.

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Implied BL with a puzzling title

I stumbled upon this mini series by chance. It's gratifying to see that implied BL series from China can still exist despite the pervasive censorship. However, I'm not sure if BL series in which the romantic elements are at best heavily implied will continue to be released. Without publicity, even viewers who do not mind the fact that the romance is implied may not get to even hear about them. Yet, publicity will likely draw unwanted attention to such series, causing them to be cancelled.

Another problem with the current censorship rules is the fact that it will almost certainly affect the production budget, particularly for shows that are low-budget to begin with. After all, not many would risk investing in productions that most likely will not be commercially successful. The form that My Sweet Professor takes reflects this problem. It looks quite clearly like a condensed version of a story with much more substantial development. The story does get told, but the depth of character development, which can help viewers immerse themselves in the story and empathize with the characters, is gone. Additionally, the creators of the series have to resort to rather choppy editing to tell the story in such a condensed manner. The scenes quite haphazardly switch from the time when Gao Yuan and Huo Shang are high schoolers to eight years after, when they are adults. Furthermore, the reason behind Huo Shang's disappearance (critical to the story) is done through the speech of another character rather than through actual flashbacks. (And the revelation isn't even quite complete or convincing.)

What I can appreciate about the series, though, is how the leads' attraction to each other is quite obvious despite being implied rather than directly portrayed. It is clear from the start that Gao Yuan's resentment towards Huo Shang for disappearing eight years before is that of a lover who is coping with his boyfriend's unexplained disappearance. The way Huo Shang tries to approach Gao Yuan again is also clearly the behavior of someone trying to patch things up with his lover.

Unfortunately, there are many loose ends in the series. There is no real explanation of why Huo Shang does not try to look for Gao Yuan earlier. The corporate power struggle that Huo Shang is facing at work is also barely explained (it feels as though the truly censored parts of the story are not even the BL elements.) In the end, My Sweet Professor is a series that would have been much better if it had even been an eight-episode series with standard-length episodes. As a sign of how underdeveloped the story is, we do not even know why the series is entitled "My Sweet Professor".

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