A pretentious BL with very poor execution

This is a long and tedious series. The first two episodes are not indicative of how this series will continue, and you will be exasperated by the end of it because so much of the promise of the first few episodes is totally wasted. The director is just stringing people along with a lot of angst that is just never treated with any kind of sincerity and feels totally illegitmate. Even as they use everything to keep you watching, drawing upon your tear ducts, and plying you with pitiful scenes of disabled people suffering in miserable conditions, they still bore you to death with repetitive, and meaningless scenes. There are also far too many characters, and too little movement in every episode to keep anyone interested in the general progression of each individual story.

The main issue will always be to me, that all the major ideas are treated with little to no real honesty. What does this mean in a BL? Well, if you want to introduce people with major disabilities you should really treat their conditions with some heart and sensitivity. You can’t just mention it or depict it and then totally treat it like it’s irrelevant. They don’t seem to know what to do with the idea once it’s been introduced. I also suspect that they just use it to keep you vested in the story like how a panhandler uses an injured limb to keep you paying attention to them [sorry for the example, and any panhandler that does this is far more worthy of the attention than this drama]. Name’s selective mutism is first treated with some kind of brutal intensity because they really want to make you watch the next few episodes. He suffers more and more with each passing episode, but then it suddenly disappears, and we hear nothing more about it, like it never existed. The suffering is intense but it is also not real because there is no consequence to it. Name moves swiftly to a normal life and all his past trauma does not affect his relationship with his mother or his future boyfriend, and none of us even know why we cried about it. Now if there was some transition we would treat it as a real thing, and if it crops up again, as it should, being as severe as it was depicted, we would believe in it. It just vanished, and you will note the character also has far less screen time because he’s not relevant anymore, and not useful in producing the phony angst they constantly use to keep you enticed to watch the next episode.

Before I move on to the other disabled character, I want to talk about just how this phony angst and unnatural suspense is used in the relations between normal healthy people like Gun and Golf. After waiting an almost supernatural amount of time to get together – beyond a decade – they finally jump right into a relationship. Forgetting how Gun has to be the shyest person on the planet to wait so long, never letting Golf even know who he really was, he jumps immediately into becoming his husband, and that really is what he became in a matter of minutes. Then they somehow abandon each other, or supposedly Golf abandons Gun while working like a maniac at his new job. We find out later that he only works like that so they can get visas to move to the US and marry legally. They have a break-up because Gun is mad that he was abandoned for 2 years while Golf was securing their visa. Forgetting that this is awfully unlikely, given that Golf has always been the more communicative, outgoing member of the couple, and that he would still have plenty of time to spend with Gun, they resolve the issue in a matter of minutes after reading a touching note from Golf. Then Golf, who supposedly abandoned his lover, asks Gun to marry him, and he blithely accepts. This is just idiotic. They really should have broken up or they should have a long period of time where they healed their wounds and gradually reconciled with each other. But their drama was all phony and was as irrelevant as anything you would experience having lost your pet rock.

The third story involving Champ is just so hum-drum, and so unrelated to any BL content I’ve ever seen, it almost feels like a random throw of the dice as far as content. The only reason this story is even here is to provide more angst to keep you watching. First, Champ’s grandpa slowly gets sick and they give you the kiss of death cough in early episodes, and slowly string you along with more hints that gramps is getting worse and worse till the inevitable croaking occurs in episode 8. But Champ’s story has more deaths to keep you vested in a story that has nothing to do with anything you normally would be interested in. The death of Lucky the dog is just a gimmick, and then you are teased with possibly more deaths to come as if you are being groomed to become a necrophile. Now Champ is supposedly angry at his family for like a century because they never told him about dying Grandpa, and Lucky, and is a spiteful little bitch who pouts at his job thinking about this, but has finally decided to cry it out with them after a century because it’s time for some more phony angst to draw you into the final episode. Just to show you how little they even thought about this character, they have him finally show some interest in a relationship for the first time when he must be about 30. Champ is basically asexual till that point and you can’t help but wonder why he hasn’t shown any interest in anyone after hundreds of opportunities. It’s just incredibly lazy writing.

Now, I’m going to return to the last story and the theme of disabled people finding love. Now, Remember Me does do a lot of innovative things even if it is mostly boring, so why do I really hate this drama? I think it’s because it’s doing something really distasteful and borderline unethical in its treatment of disabled people. The last story concerning Nan and Chompu is really kind of perverse. Mean who will be forever remembered as wearing the ugliest wig in any drama in history which we were all visually bludgeoned with for most of the series, is really in the worst role of his lifetime. His grating, insincere, snide, and flippant demeanor in every scene seems fitting for a superficial person who has no depth of character, but he’s supposed to be some saintly, heroic person. This role is just meant to appeal to his fanbase, in my opinion. The actual character is an afterthought and feels totally out of place. His interactions with Chompu are just emotionless and he never conveys any affection for his love interest. He doesn’t even care about who she is, or what she wants to do with her life. It’s all about her accepting his love. Chompu has no agency, and is treated as nothing but the pitiful object of Nan’s affection. Her initial rejection of him was, again, phony angst, and she instantly accepts him when he finally finds her after a needlessly drawn-out search. Even her brother follows her around everywhere, taking care of her, and making all the decisions for her like she’s totally helpless. This is a series that is really tone deaf, and thoughtless. It uses disabled people as props, rather than treating them like people.

There is nothing they wouldn’t do in this series to keep you watching except actually creating any real content. I’m just surprised they tried all these new ideas. It’s a series that incorporates elements of four different genres [Bl, gay drama, coming of age, slice of life], and employs elements of nostalgia, and family dramas. It also makes a feint of depicting the lives of disabled people. But, it’s like a diver doing an incredibly complicated dive and landing it with a belly-flop. It’s just not enjoyable, no matter how creative they tried to be, and the episodes moved along at a snail’s pace because there were too many characters, and too many story-lines. Even considering those big drawbacks, there was a poor use of time with many redundant, and unnecessary scenes. The incredibly redundant music score also adds to this tediousness. You felt like you had to mute the sound to continue watching this series after the first few episodes. In the end, they just wrapped up all these stories in the most facile way, because they never did the work to actually make you feel them, and completed the series with nearly meaningless happy endings that no one actually earned. It just feels totally flat at the end of the series, and you felt like no emotions you experienced during the show ever meant anything. Remember Me was just a huge wasted opportunity, and I don’t really even want to see any future content from the people who made this show. They just don’t seem to have any concern about producing good content, and are just seeking praise from people for being innovators.

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A technical review of the screenplay

I just don’t know why people don’t understand that this series was poorly written. Before you start attacking me, I am fine with you liking this series for whatever reasons – maybe it made you think of your own relationships, or about the complexity of relationships in general. It is enough to like this series just for the chemistry of the two mains, the OST, and the acting. That’s all fine. It just doesn’t take away from the fact that this is written very poorly. There are innumerable technical flaws with the writing and they occur consistently all the way up to the end.

I know I’ve mentioned it before but let’s just look at the restaurant, again. First of all, there is no way that this restaurant would ever have been financed [and as we know, Ji Woo had no money to finance this himself]. No banker would look at Ji Woo’s business proposal and think that it might be a good idea setting up a ritzy Italian restaurant in a small Korean village. As the banker I would also ask Ji Woo what experience does he have in business, because this doesn’t just involve being a chef. Restaurants are one of the riskiest businesses, so as the banker I would already be wary of financing anyone, let alone this proposition set forward by Ji Woo. If we get past that, how is it that Ji Woo stays afloat with no customers for a year? Why doesn’t he even try to drum up business, doing some advertising, and possibly mending fences with people in his community, as well as changing the menu to accommodate the palate of the local inhabitants? The ingredients are super expensive for this kind of restaurant and he would have to pay for rent, and utilities. How does he stay afloat? Where is the staff at this restaurant? When he finally does get business how is he able to be the cook, the waiter, the dishwasher, and the cashier for every customer? I’ve run this kind of business, and I’m telling you that that is impossible. The example of the restaurant I’ve been talking about here is just a concrete example of a flaw in the writing and should give you an idea of the sloppiness that is endemic throughout this screenplay.

Now a lot of the other issues in this screenplay are open to interpretation and I’ve been going around in circles talking to people about them. Here’s the unquestionable flaw with how various issues like mental health are raised and dropped in this series without explanation or without any reasonable follow-up. In a good work of literature you develop your themes and your characters constantly and there is no confusion unless specifically intended by the author for artistic reasons [oh, I can already see some people saying there was artistic reasons for this nebulous mess]. You shouldn’t have to work and struggle to figure out what is going on and what a character’s motivation is. It’s like when a chef prepares an intricate meal but no one has difficulty understanding that it’s delicious. The chef has done all the work for you. Here, we are constantly working to figure things out, and that is the problem and why it is not a good screenplay. Let’s talk about the mental health issue. First of all, does Ji Woo have something like severe depression? There is no backstory that explains this to us, so we can’t ever be sure. Before his parents died, did Ji Woo suffer from depression or did he get it from his parents dying, like a form of PTSD? Did this possible mental illness affect his relationship with Seo Joon? What is the resolution of this possible mental illness after they get back together? None of these questions are ever answered, and leaves you constantly guessing as to the character’s motivations. People were speculating that he has a reason for abusing Seo Joon because of his “mental Illness”, but we are left wondering at the end whether this is due to a mental illness or him just him being an asshole. There is no conclusive explanation for any of this and it is central to the story because we never know why Ji Woo acts the way he does. Why is he nice to everyone other than Seo Joon? Really, people with mental illness are not going to be so selective in who they treat well. I never really know who Ji Woo is and the only personality trait I can clearly understand about him is that he is a little shy. If I was in a creative composition class, I would be given an F for the development of this character, and since he is the central character that would sink my whole work into the ground.

What about Seo Joon? I understand that he is totally in love with Ji Woo and would give his right arm to find out where he went, but he strangely neglects to go after him. Anyone in a committed relationship would tell you that this would never, ever happen. Let’s assume that Seo Joon’s connection to Ji Woo is incredibly strong, and something akin to a parent’s love for their child. Just imagine instead of calling 911, and scouring the streets every night for your kid, you send them some text messages, saying that you missed them, and hope they are having some nice cake, at least, for their birthday. This is just such aloof behavior on Seo Joon’s part, and it makes you think he just doesn’t really care, but at the same time you know he is desperate to find Ji Woo by other things, like how he finally sends someone out to search for him in the crazy way that he does, stopping all work till he gets what he wants from his boss. Why does Seo Joon forgive everything that Ji Woo does? Where is the backstory that tells us that Seo Joon has always been a saint, a little Buddha hiding away in the movie business? That seems like it would be an interesting story to explore - like how many lives has Seo Joon saved with his indefatigable kindness? I’ve just never seen this character trait developed so I’m always surprised by it when it comes up.
There are constant questions of all the character’s motivations and who they are. As another example: the girlfriend. Why does Ji Woo’s girlfriend want to get back together with him? Didn’t she ever figure out that he was gay? How deep was their relationship? Is this the only person she can think of to have a relationship with, and why are there no alternatives? I can never figure any of this out. The little girl who becomes attached to Ji Woo like he’s her father, but why? He doesn’t seem like he’s very good with kids, and is certainly cold with virtually everyone. Why does she suddenly run away from everyone? What kind of trauma does she have in her past that causes her to act out like this?

Let’s talk about proportions, weighting, and structuring. This series has eight episodes of angst and the drumbeat of it is constant, followed by 2 episodes of fluff. It is frontloaded with endless seeming conflicts between the Main Leads, with no development, save one moment when they momentarily reconcile after finding the young girl. In many good screenplays we see a lot of dynamic progressions between the characters. This is very stimulating and provides a lot of the entertainment in a given fictional work. This screenplay, instead, focused on the same scenes of vitriol and fighting continuously. Seo Joon attempts to reconcile with Ji Woo, and Ji Woo pretends he doesn’t care about Seo Joon. This scene is repeated in endless seeming variations for eight episodes. This is totally uncreative, and very, very tedious to watch. Why are there 8 episodes of this and only 2 with a totally different kind of screenplay? And why are there two totally different worlds in this one screenplay that seem almost entirely disconnected? If you think this is common, you are mistaken. Even in a fairytale there is continuity, and the dark undertones of the past are not forgotten as they are here.

Throughout this series, the viewer has to constantly work to figure things out, and no resolution of things is really complete or satisfactory. The conclusion of a year long conflict between two people is usually not decided in a quick two minute conversation. Sometimes it is, but it is usually not. The viewer needs an explanation as to why, in this particular case, a two minute conversation suffices to resolve the year long conflict. We might have some clarity on Seo Joon’s side, but what causes Ji Woo to suddenly become amenable to making up? The former 8 episodes are moving the audience hard in the direction that these two are no good for each other and should break up, but we have no counter for this and so we feel Ji Woo’s explanation is just too weak. He seems to have been affected by some texts he read. We instantly think to ourselves, but Seo Joon did many far more persuasive things to convince him that he loved him so why do those texts even matter? Let me pose an alternative. We needed something more dramatic here, like Seo Joon saves Ji Woo’s restaurant from financial ruin, or he saves his life somehow, then Ji Woo sees the light, but a few texts like I hope you had a yummy cake for your birthday? Is that what finally breaks through to him? For most of us it is not enough, and that really is indicative of weak writing.

If I was in a creative writing composition class, I would give this screenplay an F for poor research, poor character development, and illogical plot construction. I would give it very low marks for any artistic consideration as well, because there is nothing beautiful about the use of language here, or any deep symbolism. In describing any art work you can take a dispassionate look into the framework of the piece and appreciate it intellectually and not through your emotions. This is the best way to tell whether it is a good piece of art or not. I find many people on here are not doing that at all, but just running to conclusions based on a desire for this to be good, rather than looking at its parts and analyzing them. But what is the point of beating you over the head about this? Do I want to just belittle the people that like this? Not at all. I want you to enjoy good art when you find it and not waste your time on the things that are not close to being good. I would like people to spend their time looking at a Van Gogh painting rather than the doodle of a five year old, and this is my only point in criticizing To My Star. Good luck to you finding better series in the future.

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A wonderful realistic drama with brilliant cinematography

I found this BL to be spectacular. There is something so totally different about it and we might not see another like it. It’s unique character is attritutable to the distinct directing style of David Bigander. I think that he has crafted this BL like a great director that puts his own personal stamp on his work which some have described as Bergmanesque with a fusion of Thai cultural influences.

I’ll address the main issue that people have with this series – the pacing. The director has chosen to go with a very sedate flow for this very unique drama and I think it works in most places. It lends this work a sense of spaciousness and tranquility that you’ll seldom see anywhere else. Directors are always under a lot of pressure to trim out any excess filler because every minute of production costs a fortune, so I’m sure that this was something David Bigander fought for, and I appreciate his decision to keep the drama moving at this stately pace.

This is a mature work where we have virtually no tropes and a mostly adult-acting cast. It has a very trouble-free plot that always supported the narrative, and the strong realism in the drama. There was just a lot of beautiful cinematography which includes a lot of the brilliant shots of food. Even though it is a show based around food, the central love story is by no means submerged under the culinary thematic material. There was definitely a compelling drama, but it was not your normal one. It was just more a drama depicting unconscious struggles between the main characters.

The actors all performed magnificently and Mark Siwat comes into his own perhaps later in the series, but was performing well throughout – his character was just directed in such a way that he expressed very little emotion in most of the earlier episodes. There was a lot of time spent on character development which was done in nuanced ways. We see Mark’s deep connection with his mother in the series with many scenes that occur in flashbacks and in their trip to Nan. We see a slow progression with Mark as he gradually breaks out of his shell, fearing his mother’s non-acceptance of his relationship with Zung. His face was a mask in the earlier episodes but David Bigander did this so we could see the difference when his mother finally gave him permission to pursue his interest in being a chef and going after his love-interest. The internal struggle comes to a head in episodes 8-10 with some visceral acting from Mark Siwat that conveys all the incredible turmoil that he was experiencing while trying to finally confront his dilemma between being dutiful and pursuing his two passions [Aue and cooking].
Zung does a wonderful job conveying his feelings with just his eyes. His interactions with Mark are how his character is unveiled and those interactions are very internal, like an inner monologue that occurs between people that are closely tied together. Every time we see him struggling with Mark we see how sensitive and compassionate he is. His interactions with his staff members and his former “girlfriend” Eve also portray him as a charming and considerate individual. The supporting cast was also depicted beautifully and vividly. I think Nuna’s character is really well rounded. We see her effervescent, comical, and gregarious side in the first few episodes, and also witness her completely serious personality when we see her interactions with her former boyfriend. Almost all of the main characters are kind and considerate people which makes the drama very uplifting and almost spiritually pure – this is again a mature drama with adults confronting their hardships with seriousness and a simple nobility of character.

Throughout the series, David Bigander has infused a lot of other thematic material including art and religion to create a holistic landscape, more complete than any other BL I’ve ever seen. There is a sense of realism that is also unmatched. The natural interactions of people without histrionics even when deep emotional turmoil is being depicted is just unique to BL’s that rely so heavily on Hollywood-like drama. The settings are also so realistic: Aue’s kitchen, Mark Siwat’s dorm room, Wat Phumin temple, Mark’s room in house at Nan, and the restaurant in Nan are all examples of this.

Overall this is a magnificent series that I would consider to be among the best BL’s ever produced. It has probably the best cinematography of any of them, and it’s realism is also unrivalled. It’s certainly worth watching and rewatching because it’s a series with considerable depth. Congratulations to David Bigander on crafting this wonderful drama, and I hope to see many more from him in the future.

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A traditional BL executed superbly

This is not an ground-breaking BL and it is not anywhere near being artistically magnificent. But it is a great BL. This is what we watch BL's for. If you don't like this BL, you're not among the typical BL audience. You want something that is totally new because you are bored with all the standard BL formulas, or you have super-high artistic standards and hope you are watching a Fellini film. Guess what, most of us aren't here for that. Nonetheless we did get a drama with a lot of character development and exceptionally complex and realistic depictions of what real relationships look like. That was the part of this drama that took us all by surprise. The rest of what we liked involved some exceptional acting by War and Yin. Now I have been watching both of these guys and I'm not surprised that Yin improved as much as he has in this drama. He's actually roommates with War who is really one of the best actors in the BL business, and I secretly hope that they are lovers (lol), but I;m sure War rubs off on him. Everyone is surprised Yin has improved so much in this series, but I'm sure that War has motivated/coached him to get him to this point.

I think whoever looked at this drama really worked hard to improve it over the previous versions, and I'm talking about the novel as well as the first version which is part of En of Love. The idea that we start with a rape that develops into a relationship is really kind of absurd. This drama is not deep enough, or artistic enough like a Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, to handle a rape being the starting point of a relationship. I'm glad they switched to drunken sex being initiated by the person who was supposed to be raped in the previous versions of the story. This was a fatal flaw in the initial series, and I was dismayed by people talking about the book who made light of this. I am not a person that likes to censor artistic liberties, but this simply did not work here, and I think it was a very smart decision of the writers of this series to edit that silly scenario out of this drama. There were just a lot of smart decisions by the screenwriters and the director that improved the series over the previous versions, including removing the lame idea of Vee kissing his girlfriend [who he broke up with], as a memento of their former love for each other in a public place where everyone would know about it. They improved that scenario a lot and they really worked at it. instead of Yin volunatarily kissing Ploy, he is basically kissing her against his will and after she reveals that she has been emotionally and physically abused by her current boyfriend.

What is wonderful about this version is that every conflict is resolved quickly. New conflicts are allowed to develop which is fine because that is what happens in real life, but endless, implausiible miscommunications that are dragged on for 4+ episodes are just not done here, thank god. I really appreciate this drama for treating us like adults and not dragging on stupid storylines that we know couldn't last for more than a few minutes in real life. You should see this as somewhat ground-breaking, even if the overall plot is commonplace.

What should you love about this show? The acting is incredible, and the story is solid - just forget all the other ones that are similar. The characters feel like living, breathing people with all the personal issues that lead to natural feeling dramatic situations that we can all relate to. The ending is just spectacular and is one of the best in the BL world. If you want a wonderful uplifting moment to your day, binge-watch this till you get to the end. The angst will mean nothing, because you will get to an ending that will fill your mind and heart with a kind of rapturous, glowing, euphoric feeling. What else could you want ? This is what you came to watch BL's for, and you couldn't hope to find something much better than this.

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