4
Sakura_Falling
Where The Cherry Blossoms Fall
This review may contain spoilers
Not My Type
Am I beating a dead horse with writing a review five years after this drama came out? Absolutely. Am I going to do it anyway? Yup. I've been in a bit of a slump lately when it comes to dramas and decided to go back and re-watch one of the first Thai BLs I ever saw. I remember TharnType being toxic and really not that great despite some cute moments, but was it really THAT bad? It was so much worse.
When I first watched TharnType, I think I was very much in that oooh, new shiny toy phase. I did not have a 100+ dramas under my belt so my standards were low and I was easily distracted by fluff. Now much more seasoned, that wasn't going to fly and what I came away with was a new appreciation for just how incredibly toxic this drama is and how poor the writing is and by poor I mean I think a child could write a more cohesive story. I know that's mean, I'm sorry, but seriously, how do you read through a script and not see all the glaring errors?
One of the more benign issues with this drama is the timeline. It's not at all clear cut and trying to figure out how much time has progressed is just a waste of brain cells. We do get a brief "three weeks prior" in the first episode to show Tharn and Type meeting and that they do initially hit it off, but that's about it.
The lack of any more than that one scene is another issue in that Tharn's love for Type is never properly established. We know that he fell for Type, if not at first sight, then sometime during that three week period before Type found out that he was gay. The fact that isn't shown though was an error on the writer's part as it makes Tharn seem like some kind of crazy masochist or something who fell in love with Type despite his abusive treatment.
Tharn and Type are both walking red flags as far as I'm concerned despite the fluffy moments between them in the latter half of the drama. While I found redeeming qualities in them in the past, at this point, I really can't. Though I guess from that standpoint, I can figure that they deserve each other.
- Tharn lost any respect I may have had for him by sexually assaulting Type not once, but twice. I'm not excusing Type's behaviour, I'll get to him in a minute, but acting like a child and destroying personal property was not an excuse to assault him. Nor was any of his other harassing behaviour of getting into Type's personal space. The mature thing to do would have been to report the damage. Also, he liked Type, okay, but all the touching and forehead kisses, again, when Type was asleep, was he oblivious to how inappropriate that was or did he just not care? It wasn't romantic in the slightest, it was actually downright creepy.
Tharn is supposed to be the good guy. He's the one we're supposed to root for and he does get better, but he's also a contrarian. He likes to come across as this understanding person with his puppy eyes, yet at the same time, he can be utterly oblivious or downright selfish. That shower scene. Type said no, that should have meant he backed off immediately, no questions asked, but he chose to sexually assault Type again. Other moments include when Type had his panic attack. Common sense would dictate when someone is panicking and telling you to let them go, you do so. Instead, Tharn continued to crowd his space and then got ticked off when Type kicked him. There's also the fact that he didn't realize something was going on with Tar when it was painfully obvious something was wrong or that Lhong was in love with him which was also quite obvious. And while Tharn could be a sweetheart, for some reason it felt surface level. He never initiates a conversation with Type about his mental health, about the toll his trauma had taken on him or how he can help and support him. That being said, though it's not presented as such, it's likely that he has his own trauma from losing his virginity to Thorn's friend San. There's not a lot of detail given and ages are unknown, but the way it's presented makes it seem to me like Tharn was also potentially a victim of sexual assault.
- Type is quite simply an ass. How he has any friends when he's an abusive jerk to essentially everyone he meets is beyond me. And he is abusive, certainly verbally, potentially physically as well. His redeeming qualities are pretty much nil and while he does mellow, he's still an ass in the end. His character was also frustrating to watch in terms of his mental health. One of Thai BLs favorite things is using the power of love as a way to heal anything and everything. In this case, it magically cures Type of his PTSD. This was back when the only gay for you was going strong so it didn't cure that and Type still hated gays. But yeah, love, oh, and one sexual assault blowjob and he was good to go! No more panic attacks for the rest of the drama. Why waste your money on therapy when that's all you need? Seriously though, the inconsistency was grating.
One of the things that I found really frustrating about this drama and that I have found is pretty consistent with Mame's writing, is that she likes to take issues like depression, sexual assault, rape, etc. and use them as plot devices, but in a very flippant manner. A number of these characters went through serious trauma, but it's not treated that way. It's there when it's needed and convenient and forgotten when it's not. There were opportunities here to actually have meaningful dialogue about these traumas within the story, but instead we were subjected to a writer who apparently couldn't be bothered to do any kind of research and who exacerbated the characters' traumas. Tar, despite the absurdity that no one, especially Tum, caught onto his depression, was the one character who's mental health issues felt realistic. They actually tried to show the symptoms of depression. He was also, coincidentally, the one character who had been to therapy. That's one character out of four with likely trauma who was shown some effort. Sad.
The acting was good. Mew and Gulf had serious chemistry and that's the main reason why this drama was and still is so popular and why it worked. That being said, did Mew look in any way like a 19-year-old? Absolutely not, he looks his age which would be fine if not for the fact that Kokliang, who played Tar, looked about 15-years-old despite them actually being only a couple years apart. It created an awkward, borderline predatory dynamic between them that was just uncomfortable to watch. It also made it really hard to imagine Tharn falling in love with Tar and them being together.
While there is a lot of negative, there are a couple of positives besides the acting. The biggest one is Techno. He's the one bright spot in this drama and I loved him. He was entertaining and uncomplicated and a genuinely likable person. Mild did a great job portraying him. The music was good. I liked it then and I still like it now. There are some sweet scenes between Tharn and Type that I do like. The production quality as a whole, minus the writing, was pretty good honestly.
Going back and re-watching this, I was hoping for a bit of a fond, albeit slightly toxic (it is Mame after all), trip down memory lane. Sadly, my mind had apparently blocked most of the negative scenes and just remembered the sweet fluff. As you can imagine, there actually wasn't much there to remember after all. I will say that watching it, it's nice to see that progress has been made in the industry, there are fewer BL dramas like this being made though there's still room for improvement. It's safe to say I will NOT be going back to this one ever again. However, I am still left with one burning question: how the heck is Lhong not in prison?
When I first watched TharnType, I think I was very much in that oooh, new shiny toy phase. I did not have a 100+ dramas under my belt so my standards were low and I was easily distracted by fluff. Now much more seasoned, that wasn't going to fly and what I came away with was a new appreciation for just how incredibly toxic this drama is and how poor the writing is and by poor I mean I think a child could write a more cohesive story. I know that's mean, I'm sorry, but seriously, how do you read through a script and not see all the glaring errors?
One of the more benign issues with this drama is the timeline. It's not at all clear cut and trying to figure out how much time has progressed is just a waste of brain cells. We do get a brief "three weeks prior" in the first episode to show Tharn and Type meeting and that they do initially hit it off, but that's about it.
The lack of any more than that one scene is another issue in that Tharn's love for Type is never properly established. We know that he fell for Type, if not at first sight, then sometime during that three week period before Type found out that he was gay. The fact that isn't shown though was an error on the writer's part as it makes Tharn seem like some kind of crazy masochist or something who fell in love with Type despite his abusive treatment.
Tharn and Type are both walking red flags as far as I'm concerned despite the fluffy moments between them in the latter half of the drama. While I found redeeming qualities in them in the past, at this point, I really can't. Though I guess from that standpoint, I can figure that they deserve each other.
- Tharn lost any respect I may have had for him by sexually assaulting Type not once, but twice. I'm not excusing Type's behaviour, I'll get to him in a minute, but acting like a child and destroying personal property was not an excuse to assault him. Nor was any of his other harassing behaviour of getting into Type's personal space. The mature thing to do would have been to report the damage. Also, he liked Type, okay, but all the touching and forehead kisses, again, when Type was asleep, was he oblivious to how inappropriate that was or did he just not care? It wasn't romantic in the slightest, it was actually downright creepy.
Tharn is supposed to be the good guy. He's the one we're supposed to root for and he does get better, but he's also a contrarian. He likes to come across as this understanding person with his puppy eyes, yet at the same time, he can be utterly oblivious or downright selfish. That shower scene. Type said no, that should have meant he backed off immediately, no questions asked, but he chose to sexually assault Type again. Other moments include when Type had his panic attack. Common sense would dictate when someone is panicking and telling you to let them go, you do so. Instead, Tharn continued to crowd his space and then got ticked off when Type kicked him. There's also the fact that he didn't realize something was going on with Tar when it was painfully obvious something was wrong or that Lhong was in love with him which was also quite obvious. And while Tharn could be a sweetheart, for some reason it felt surface level. He never initiates a conversation with Type about his mental health, about the toll his trauma had taken on him or how he can help and support him. That being said, though it's not presented as such, it's likely that he has his own trauma from losing his virginity to Thorn's friend San. There's not a lot of detail given and ages are unknown, but the way it's presented makes it seem to me like Tharn was also potentially a victim of sexual assault.
- Type is quite simply an ass. How he has any friends when he's an abusive jerk to essentially everyone he meets is beyond me. And he is abusive, certainly verbally, potentially physically as well. His redeeming qualities are pretty much nil and while he does mellow, he's still an ass in the end. His character was also frustrating to watch in terms of his mental health. One of Thai BLs favorite things is using the power of love as a way to heal anything and everything. In this case, it magically cures Type of his PTSD. This was back when the only gay for you was going strong so it didn't cure that and Type still hated gays. But yeah, love, oh, and one sexual assault blowjob and he was good to go! No more panic attacks for the rest of the drama. Why waste your money on therapy when that's all you need? Seriously though, the inconsistency was grating.
One of the things that I found really frustrating about this drama and that I have found is pretty consistent with Mame's writing, is that she likes to take issues like depression, sexual assault, rape, etc. and use them as plot devices, but in a very flippant manner. A number of these characters went through serious trauma, but it's not treated that way. It's there when it's needed and convenient and forgotten when it's not. There were opportunities here to actually have meaningful dialogue about these traumas within the story, but instead we were subjected to a writer who apparently couldn't be bothered to do any kind of research and who exacerbated the characters' traumas. Tar, despite the absurdity that no one, especially Tum, caught onto his depression, was the one character who's mental health issues felt realistic. They actually tried to show the symptoms of depression. He was also, coincidentally, the one character who had been to therapy. That's one character out of four with likely trauma who was shown some effort. Sad.
The acting was good. Mew and Gulf had serious chemistry and that's the main reason why this drama was and still is so popular and why it worked. That being said, did Mew look in any way like a 19-year-old? Absolutely not, he looks his age which would be fine if not for the fact that Kokliang, who played Tar, looked about 15-years-old despite them actually being only a couple years apart. It created an awkward, borderline predatory dynamic between them that was just uncomfortable to watch. It also made it really hard to imagine Tharn falling in love with Tar and them being together.
While there is a lot of negative, there are a couple of positives besides the acting. The biggest one is Techno. He's the one bright spot in this drama and I loved him. He was entertaining and uncomplicated and a genuinely likable person. Mild did a great job portraying him. The music was good. I liked it then and I still like it now. There are some sweet scenes between Tharn and Type that I do like. The production quality as a whole, minus the writing, was pretty good honestly.
Going back and re-watching this, I was hoping for a bit of a fond, albeit slightly toxic (it is Mame after all), trip down memory lane. Sadly, my mind had apparently blocked most of the negative scenes and just remembered the sweet fluff. As you can imagine, there actually wasn't much there to remember after all. I will say that watching it, it's nice to see that progress has been made in the industry, there are fewer BL dramas like this being made though there's still room for improvement. It's safe to say I will NOT be going back to this one ever again. However, I am still left with one burning question: how the heck is Lhong not in prison?
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