Santa Santa Santa

Okay, so I'm not entirely thrilled with the "only gay for you" trope, and I've never been much amused by the "I've loved you all my life, I only love you, now don't touch me" trope either.Thankfully, they pretty much shattered both by the end of the ep, when it becomes obvious that Santa is *really* gay for Ew, and Ew really doesn't mind some heavy duty touching when it comes right down to it. Remember, if the things that have already been said are true, both of them are virgins until The Night in this ep.Okay, general grumpy housekeeping out of the way, so...This was the best confession scene I've ever seen in a BL, and displaces Ohm's coming out confession to his mother in He's Coming to Me. But what REALLY surprised me was Santa in this scene, because he acted Cooheart right into the ground with it. Just freaking brilliant! And it takes A LOT to just flat out steal a scene like that from Cooheart.Also a big thank you, Director New, Cooheart, and Santa, for making the make-up post-confession hug a full-body squeeze for all you're worth clinch instead of the only-the-lips-touch plank we generally get.That alone wipes away all the grump-making stuff. Unless they somehow manage to blow it in the final two eps (that oh gosh Mom's got cancer bodes ill, especially if Ew is somehow forced to choose between him mom and Cake, or at least thinks he must), I'll feel fully justified in a post I put up on Reddit a while ago where I made it my pick as the number one BL series of 2022.

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Penultimate Suspense

Maybe it's because I'm a writer and screenwriter, but I saw the big "uncle" reveal coming several eps back, and started wondering how they would reconcile all the cousin humping that would ensue. At this point, I doubt they'll bother, and I don't care. It's a plot hole, but there are holes, and there are holes. This one isn't all that damaging as plot holes go. And anyway, there is an apparently universal rule in writing soap operas (all BLs are, in one way or another, soaps): In the end, everybody will be revealed to have been connected to everybody else.In the meantime: What I really love about this is the breadth and depth. Most shows have one or the other. ITSAY, for instance, goes deep, deep into two characters in a relatively small canvas. It is a small but nearly perfect gem.Others go wide, with big stories, but they are a mile across and an inch deep. Star Wars is a perfect example - vast panoramas, star-spanning adventures, incredible CGI, and characters as thin and transparent as tissue paper.Both have their places, and both can be wonderful entertainment.One of the reasons Coppola's Godfather movies are considered by many critics to be the best American films ever made is they combine both into masterful works of art. You remember all the characters because they are all fully developed over the nine or so hours of the three films together. You remember all the action and conflict because it sprawls across the entire vista of the story. And of course the production and cinematography is insane.The directors of KP obviously owe a huge debt of gratitude to The Godfather, but then, just about anybody who does a Mafia flick these days does. And they do a bang-up job of paying off that debt, at least so far.There's not much typical BL fluff in this one. It's a series for grownups, not young teen girls, and it makes no concessions to that sensibility (thank god!). The production is meticulous - often better than shows made for western audiences on Netflix, say. For instance: I made a mistake in an earlier review I posted here, saying that in an early ep, a Glock was used that was actually a paintball gun. And I know a lot about guns. But I got to wondering how such a well-produced show could make such a stupid goof, when everything else about firearm use was spot on, so I did some research. I was wrong. It wasn't a paintball gun. It was a real Glock. Turns out there are a ton of little companies that make custom barrels for Glocks. It took me a while, but I found the exact barrel shown in KP. It's also the sort of thing a rich gangster would happily pay the extra thousand bucks for. As I say, impressively meticulous. So far, there has been almost nothing in KP that has blown me out of my suspension of disbelief. It's easy to let myself fall into the flow of the narrative and just let it float me along. While watching a lot of BLs, I end up throwing stuff at the screen. Not this one. (BTW, this is barely a BL, and only insofar as all of the romantic and sexual relationships being between male adults - otherwise, it's a full-steam ahead drama that would work with any sexual pairing.So far, rating the actors, Vegas and Pete are head and shoulders above the rest.Kinn and Porsche are at worst competent, and generally much better than competent.Kim and Chay are the closest thing to a standard BL trope, but it's difficult to decide just how good they are based on what we know about them up to this point. Maybe Ep 14 will resolve my dilemma about them. At any rate, there's no doubt about the chemistry all three couples display, although in terms of sheer intensity, Vegas and Pete just say the hell with it, and set the screen on fire in a way none of the others quite manage to accomplish.The pacing has generally been both gripping and effective, all of it leading up to this penultimate ep, which sets the table for what I expect to be a monumental season finale next week.Mafia BL seems to be a coming thing, but I'd bet this will set the standard for a good while yet to come.

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The Is "Perfectly Mame"

And exactly what I've been coming to Mame for ever since I first watched Love By Chance (and every single Mame offering since). Including, yes, dare I say it, that patented Mame Steam.I see in the main review section there are already the "oh so problematical" crows cawing about Mame's manifest sins - which are only sins to children who live in a child's world. So let's be honest for a moment: when boys fall in love, they almost invariably have sexual experiences with each other. And they don't generally follow scripts written for them by girls who have no concept of what male sexuality actually is. Honestly, there is nothing hornier in the world than a 16 year old male, and that hangs on for several years after.I get it. BL originally started out as romance fantasies for young girls, but it has grown and expanded far beyond those boundaries. Mame still dishes out the romance with skilled hands, but in her tales, romance has at least a nodding acquaintance with the reality that boys who love each other have sex with each other, and it is often hard, hot, and heedless. So what I suggest for those who write up laundry lists of all the terrible things Mame has her characters do, just don't watch. Mame isn't going to change, and if you don't know by now what you're going to get with one of the shows, well, you should.In the meantime, those of us who enjoy what Mame gives us will continue to do so. And continue to ignore the freelance content warning some people just love to post.And if we are this deep into the pool at only Ep 4, I can hardly wait to see what's waiting down the road!

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It Is What It Is

Fluffier than air, right to the end. Shin is the adult in the relationship, and Minato is a blockhead, although given his past, understandably so. Something which Shin seems to understand right from the outset.There was never any real doubt as to the outcome, at least not to anybody who watches any significant amount of BL. But that's okay. It was comforting watching MInato's squirmy antics while knowing that in the end he would succumb to his own feelings and do the right thing for both himself and Shin, rather than continue to punish himself for his own past.And, of course, to get right down to the wonderful trivia part, nobody does impossibly cute guys like the Japanese.

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Sigh. More of the Same

It's relatively rare, thank God, that a 12 ep series in entirely constructed around the fact that one of the MCs is almost pathologically terrified of his own emotions, and in his flailing frenzy, he's wreaking terrible pain on the only one who ever loved him. (Because old teach certainly didn't).And after a certain number of episodes (say, 11) you're so exhausted watching this endless display of emotional sadism, you just want it to be over, no matter how it ends.I suppose, if this runs true to Nipponese form, there will be a relatively unbelievable come-to-heaven moment on Minato's part, and we'll get the patented (at least from the preview) run to true love confession time. I'm sort of dubious that will save this thing for me, though.

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A Sudden Attack of Lazy, Stupid Screenwriting

Sigh. I just suffered through this idiotic "plot twist" with Plus & Minus, and it ruined what could have been a decent drama.Yeah, yeah, blah, blah... I get it. Kim is sacrificing his own and Mek's happiness because He. Knows. Better. and does so without a single word of consultation with the man he (supposedly) loves. Instead he serves him up a heaping helping of utter dishonesty, with a big side order of uncomprehending, dumb misery, just so the screenwriters, bankrupt of talent and imagination, can insert the obligatory Ep-10/11 disastroust plot twist.So from the Ep 11 preview, it looks like they will separate, Mek remaining not just clueless, but utterly deceived by the man he was ready to sacrifice everything to love. In the real world, Mek would go overseas, find somebody decent to love, and build himself a good life without a man who manipulates him "for his own good." But this is soppy, sappy BL world, so the fujoshi army will be able to coo and moan over how their "love" for each other survives all travails, including vicious rejection, lies, time, and distance, and puts them back into each other's arms again."Spit. I wish they'd put an up-front warning on these things: Stupid and despicable plot twist ahead.

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Uh...Wut?

Well, okay. Since this is billed as a comedy, I'm willing to cut it some slack. Even brainless fluff can, if it's funny enough, be worth the ride. But I draw the line at dreary, brain-dead fluff, and the funniest thing about ep 1 is the Eng. subs, which were apparently done by drunk parrots who speak English as a fifth language. I get that in the wake of UWMA, everybody was hot to ship Boun and Prem, but this looks like something cobbled together on the downlow just to ship them into *something* while the heavy lifting in putting the Win and Team vehicle, Between Us, together for its much delayed but highly anticipated release.Prem's character is about as realistic as the plot is comprehensible - that is to say, not at all. His primary facial expression (he has only two) is petulant, and his primary vocal expression is a whine. He also seems to be dumb as a box of unbuttered popcorn. Can't say much about Boun, who appears for about ten seconds, but I do have to admit his smoldering glances during those ten seconds brought more promise to this series than anything I saw during the rest of Ep. 1. Apparently, we're going to be treated to a solid hit of Long with his shirt off, which is a plus, and I've always liked Tiger - who is getting to that make or break age (24) for a solid BL career. I'm glad to see he's finally going to be a MC in the upcoming Boxer In the Heart - about which, it seems, little else is currently known. Anyhoo, I'll stick for Ep. 2, but you know, Boun's slow-burning sexiness can only carry this thing so far. If it doesn't improve, I'm out.

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It's Not What You Think

This seems to be so obvious to me that I'm surprised nobody else is picking up on it. Maybe it's because I have personal experience with lot of this.There 's a big fat clue in the details section of the MDL entry on this: "Mental Health."I'm sure that people reading that, at least judging from a lot of the comments, think it relates to KSJ and his issues, but the real mental basked case here is HJW, who is a laundry list of obvious disorders. So let's list them.1. Most prominent is how deep into the autism spectrum he obviously is.2. Next is his debilitating introversion.3. Then come lifelong depression, anxiety syndrome, and self-destructive anger issues.4. Add a soupcon of adhd to account for the bouts of impulsiveness, and his hyperfocus on a solitary (natch) skill, cooking.What I just wrote explains just about everything KJW has done through both seasons, as well as all his past-life flashbacks.KJW is stuck inside his own brain and he can't get out, can't save himself, and is slowly destroying himself because of that.

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