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  • Location: Buffalo, NY
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ShanTeaTime

Buffalo, NY

ShanTeaTime

Buffalo, NY
Call It What You Want thai drama review
Completed
Call It What You Want
9 people found this review helpful
by ShanTeaTime Flower Award1
May 7, 2021
6 of 6 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 6.0
Story 7.0
Acting/Cast 8.0
Music 6.0
Rewatch Value 6.0
This review may contain spoilers

We'll Call This A Half-Success

I knew not much going into this. I had seen the trailer of this series and was interested immediately. A show calling out the BL industries darker side? Much like K-pop, its not all glamor and fun. There are many toxic elements in any entertainment industry! What we get is a showing of unhealthy practices in the BL world. Kinda like "Lovely Writer" but shown in a more serious sense. Unhealthy dieting. beauty standards, Labeling as "tops" and "bottoms" rather than character names or actors names. No cell phones, the agencies posting for their actors. Total control over their lives during unhealthy contract sentencings. This is important stuff to discuss and apparently this show is based on true events? Which we will get into more later.

One thing I take issue with is the power dynamic between James and the one actor Ait. Love or not that's abuse of power and just wait until after working together. I understand they are both adults, but I guess the original idea was to actually show that uneven power dynamic and how problematic that is. I wish they would've stuck with that because its so relevant. Another negative was the green screen while there driving scenes. It was so bad! Like it was distractingly bad lol. I get this was probably really low budget because what advertisers wanna work with a show calling out other shows? But if it's that much of a problem just don't have scenes in moving cars. Keep it to stationary locations, even simply having it so the car is parked! Simple fix.

Moving onto the background of this show. It is (supposedly) heavily based on the "2Moons2" controversies which I looked into. First hint: in the show the company is "Motivation Village" where the actual company is "Motive Village" that's enough for me already lol. But their past controversies speak for themselves. Even with the lead actor Earth dropping out of the 3rd season, which who knows how that'll work! If they recast again that's ridiculous. The show within this show being called "2 Nights" very similar to "2 Moons". Talking about how the previous cast was fired, like with the entire recasting that apparently kept the old cast out of the loop. New actors claim indirectly that the studio Motive Village played favorites and left them jobless while being contractually bound. Company responds with claiming they were "imagining things". As well as the dietary issue with Pavel, mention of it in show. It's a lot and makes me glad I never liked the "2Moons2" franchise in the first place if the management and owner are this toxic and trash!


So where does this show shine? Pretty much all in the actor who played Bas. He's fantastic. His descent into depression and suicidal thoughts from trauma was done really well. Building it up and him brushing it off until the end. Tees sexual abuse, disgusting! Like I wanted to hug Bas so badly! Marco being a supportive dude was also really nice. These elements were key to my investment in the story, because this is something to be heard! The actor did such an amazing job with the emotion and I really teared up for him.

I'm lowkey surprised they got an actual actor from "2Moons2" Kaprao to play himself basically. I mean I think he's going to be in season 3 so shocked about that. There are also heavy implications at the after credits scene that there will be a season 2. I'm not sure how much they can really do with that, other than Tee getting what he deserves. JAIL. But I would watch it if it happens! I wanna see more growth from this series. Let's go even further into this stuff and give it the spotlight it deserves!
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