Love Sick - The Series
Time to take a look at the Thai BL drama, Love Sick: The Series. This show ran for two seasons over 2014 and 2015 and remains immensely popular. It's also THE benchmark for Thai BL, and has had an enormous influence on all BL ever since it first screened. But is it really that good?
Summary: Noh and Phun attend a prestigious Thai boys high school, oddly nicknamed Friday. Noh, blithe and sarcastic, is the president of the music club. Quiet and intelligent Phun is very popular and handsome, and one of the leaders of the student council. Both boys have girlfriends who attend an obviously expensive girls' convent school - the beautiful elegant Aim is Phun's long-term girlfriend, and cute Yuri is trying as hard as she can to be Noh's official girlfriend. Phun's father tells his son that he must get rid of Aim and date a friend's daughter for political benefit. Desperate, Phun comes up with a plan to deceive his BL-loving sister Pang into believing he and Noh are boyfriends, in the hope that she will dissuade their father from his awful plan. Noh agrees to the plan once Phun offers to get him quick funds from the student council for his music club, but Noh immediately regrets his decision when the charade starts to get out of hand. Noh and Phun soon find themselves unexpectedly attracted to each other. They consider how best to live their honest affections and at the same time not hurt their girlfriends.
Love Sick is a very, very long series - even longer than 2 Moons and (what seemed like an eternity) Advance Bravely. You'd think it would have a focus to justify the length, and it ostensibly does by following the flowering relationship of Noh and Phun. But the choice of creating an enormous number of characters around the boys scatters all that focus and chops up the narrative beyond recovery. It creates another very serious problem that nearly renders the show unwatchable: almost none of the characters gets any development. At all. It's incredible that such a long series dedicates zero time to giving its characters any depth, even when we are introduced to nearly all of them (there must be at least 40 of them with speaking parts, it's ridiculous). They operate mainly as functions of the plot or padding, but contribute very little else. Only the central group of characters around Noh and Phun are given some personality: Aim and Yuri first and foremost, followed by Noh's friend-turned-suitor Earn, and then the some of other students in the music club. The writers also make an atrocious choice to create sub plots around some of the other girls at the convent. These all fail - uniformly and abysmally - to add anything to the series except irritation. The absolute worst offender is the plot relating to Jeed, a new girl at the convent who soon morphs into a psychopathic horror of a human being. Why the writers thought anyone would have any interest in her - as a lead character in the series! - is beyond me. I can only imagine that they thought they would widen their audience and their appeal by doing so.
It's such a bad choice that it ruined my enjoyment of the first series completely. When I watched the second season, I found a youtube playlist by Lindsay Patten that mercifully edits out all the worthless subplots that don't have an impact on the central Noh/Phun plot (though the subtitles can be... cryptic, there are hopefully some better playlists or edits out there). This made watching the second series far more interesting and entertaining for me. There's a number of episodes at a seaside resort with only Phun, Noh, Aim and Yuri on holiday that are some of the best scenes in the entire series. It goes to show what can happen when writers get the chance to focus on just their main characters, giving them room to breathe and develop in a narrative full of some pretty decent drama, humour and romance. There's a scene in a swimming pool with Noh and Yuri talking about their relationship that's really touching. Once back at school, there's a distinct effort to give the boys in the music club more of a chance to stand out as individuals. Noh's best friend Om is a silly vulgar clown; he acts tough but he's just a marshmallow. Per has a reputation for being a ladies man but he has secrets that lead him to vent angrily, or even violently - as actually happens in one tremendously thrilling scene. But the most surprising pleasure for me was seeing my favourite BL actor Chanagan "Gun" Apornsutinan who played the hazer Prem in 'Sotus'. He's much younger and friendlier in Love Sick and playing smartarse brass band leader P'Film. A lot of juicy tension and drama arises when Earn makes it clear to everyone in the school that he is in love with Noh. There's a terrifyingly effective side plot that runs through the first half of the second series involving revenge porn that has serious consequences for a number of characters. We are also given three new BL sub plots involving various boys at Friday which work quite well.
All of this is subservient to the central relationship - which is as it should be, but Noh and Phun only just hold their heads up above the king tide of subplots and characters. The finest aspect of the series is that their challenging situation gives Noh and Phun the chance to show some moral backbone and learn how to be courageous. Sure, they fully comprehend that they are cheating on the girlfriends, but they also understand the implications of what they are doing and try to remedy them. They are both sincerely shocked that their very sudden, inexplicable love has put them in such a moral dilemma. It's this noble instinct of doing right in respect of their girlfriends, regardless of how it might affect their own relationship, that elevates the boys above the simplistic idea of them being heartless cheaters. It's sad and poignant, watching them pine for each other but then unconsciously hurt each other by dating someone else. When circumstances mid-way through season two finally push the boys towards making a definitive decision about what they want for their future, the tension and drama really ramp up.
Make no mistake, this show follows the stock standard BL formula. (To be fair though, Love Sick struck its own variation of the mould that created a whole new, massively successful formula! That's no small thing at all and it should never be overlooked.) There's not a lot of creativity or originality, and while I didn't watch it with high expectations, but it's hard to avoid feeling disappointed at its slightness nonetheless. There are the usual aggravations associated with the typical BL drama template: the contempt for women that verges on misogyny; any openly gay men are all effeminate, vacuous, promiscuous and bitchy, barely worth the time it takes to mistreat them; parents are either negligent or venal (or both) and seem content to ruin their children's lives to save face; homosexuality is vehemently denied by every single character with the sort of bullshit justification that can be poisonous. In one scene, a jealous Phun asks Noh how he would respond if Earn confessed that he liked him (Noh). Noh retorts to Phun heatedly, "I'm not gay. So don't look down on me by assuming that I'd go with any guy who happens to show any interest in me." I almost threw my shoe at the TV in white-hot anger when I heard this. It's so offensive on so many levels I had to pause the show and walk away from the screen for a while.
Production values are average, dialogue is perfunctory, direction is lazy, flashbacks are used way too often, the screenplay is too episodic to create cohesion or impetus, and the acting is only tolerable. However, the extremely personable actor playing Noh - Kongyingyong 'Captain' Chonlathorn - is very noteworthy. The camera loves him. Seeing him dance and sing drunkenly onstage at a beach concert is one of the funniest, most joyous scenes in BL ever created, hands down. He's a great new talent, very charming and funny, and the series owes a lot of its success to him. However, like most of the young cast, his acting skills aren't quite up to par. Generally he's good but sometimes he's just too hammy or looks out of his depth. He improves somewhat in season two though.
So on the surface there's not a lot about Love Sick that recommends itself. Yet despite all these flaws it still manages to entertain. This is a series mainly worth watching for Captain's charisma, its decent (albeit glacially paced) portrayal of the central relationship, and its realistic depiction of high school life. But do yourself a favour and watch an edit of both seasons online that removes the unnecessary plotlines and characters, especially those involving the convent girls. You might actually enjoy it more than I did.
Postscript: Can I also just say that Love Sick has the most frequent, obvious and distracting product placement I have ever seen in a movie or series? Fast food, gyoza, iced tea, convenience stores, chat apps, phone sim cards, phone ringtones, clothing, ads that flash up on screen for a split second every few minutes. It happens multiple times per episode and it's blatant. There are even certain scenes that have clearly been devised solely for the purpose of product placement.
Rating: 11 out of 20
Ending: Sweetly happy
Summary: Noh and Phun attend a prestigious Thai boys high school, oddly nicknamed Friday. Noh, blithe and sarcastic, is the president of the music club. Quiet and intelligent Phun is very popular and handsome, and one of the leaders of the student council. Both boys have girlfriends who attend an obviously expensive girls' convent school - the beautiful elegant Aim is Phun's long-term girlfriend, and cute Yuri is trying as hard as she can to be Noh's official girlfriend. Phun's father tells his son that he must get rid of Aim and date a friend's daughter for political benefit. Desperate, Phun comes up with a plan to deceive his BL-loving sister Pang into believing he and Noh are boyfriends, in the hope that she will dissuade their father from his awful plan. Noh agrees to the plan once Phun offers to get him quick funds from the student council for his music club, but Noh immediately regrets his decision when the charade starts to get out of hand. Noh and Phun soon find themselves unexpectedly attracted to each other. They consider how best to live their honest affections and at the same time not hurt their girlfriends.
Love Sick is a very, very long series - even longer than 2 Moons and (what seemed like an eternity) Advance Bravely. You'd think it would have a focus to justify the length, and it ostensibly does by following the flowering relationship of Noh and Phun. But the choice of creating an enormous number of characters around the boys scatters all that focus and chops up the narrative beyond recovery. It creates another very serious problem that nearly renders the show unwatchable: almost none of the characters gets any development. At all. It's incredible that such a long series dedicates zero time to giving its characters any depth, even when we are introduced to nearly all of them (there must be at least 40 of them with speaking parts, it's ridiculous). They operate mainly as functions of the plot or padding, but contribute very little else. Only the central group of characters around Noh and Phun are given some personality: Aim and Yuri first and foremost, followed by Noh's friend-turned-suitor Earn, and then the some of other students in the music club. The writers also make an atrocious choice to create sub plots around some of the other girls at the convent. These all fail - uniformly and abysmally - to add anything to the series except irritation. The absolute worst offender is the plot relating to Jeed, a new girl at the convent who soon morphs into a psychopathic horror of a human being. Why the writers thought anyone would have any interest in her - as a lead character in the series! - is beyond me. I can only imagine that they thought they would widen their audience and their appeal by doing so.
It's such a bad choice that it ruined my enjoyment of the first series completely. When I watched the second season, I found a youtube playlist by Lindsay Patten that mercifully edits out all the worthless subplots that don't have an impact on the central Noh/Phun plot (though the subtitles can be... cryptic, there are hopefully some better playlists or edits out there). This made watching the second series far more interesting and entertaining for me. There's a number of episodes at a seaside resort with only Phun, Noh, Aim and Yuri on holiday that are some of the best scenes in the entire series. It goes to show what can happen when writers get the chance to focus on just their main characters, giving them room to breathe and develop in a narrative full of some pretty decent drama, humour and romance. There's a scene in a swimming pool with Noh and Yuri talking about their relationship that's really touching. Once back at school, there's a distinct effort to give the boys in the music club more of a chance to stand out as individuals. Noh's best friend Om is a silly vulgar clown; he acts tough but he's just a marshmallow. Per has a reputation for being a ladies man but he has secrets that lead him to vent angrily, or even violently - as actually happens in one tremendously thrilling scene. But the most surprising pleasure for me was seeing my favourite BL actor Chanagan "Gun" Apornsutinan who played the hazer Prem in 'Sotus'. He's much younger and friendlier in Love Sick and playing smartarse brass band leader P'Film. A lot of juicy tension and drama arises when Earn makes it clear to everyone in the school that he is in love with Noh. There's a terrifyingly effective side plot that runs through the first half of the second series involving revenge porn that has serious consequences for a number of characters. We are also given three new BL sub plots involving various boys at Friday which work quite well.
All of this is subservient to the central relationship - which is as it should be, but Noh and Phun only just hold their heads up above the king tide of subplots and characters. The finest aspect of the series is that their challenging situation gives Noh and Phun the chance to show some moral backbone and learn how to be courageous. Sure, they fully comprehend that they are cheating on the girlfriends, but they also understand the implications of what they are doing and try to remedy them. They are both sincerely shocked that their very sudden, inexplicable love has put them in such a moral dilemma. It's this noble instinct of doing right in respect of their girlfriends, regardless of how it might affect their own relationship, that elevates the boys above the simplistic idea of them being heartless cheaters. It's sad and poignant, watching them pine for each other but then unconsciously hurt each other by dating someone else. When circumstances mid-way through season two finally push the boys towards making a definitive decision about what they want for their future, the tension and drama really ramp up.
Make no mistake, this show follows the stock standard BL formula. (To be fair though, Love Sick struck its own variation of the mould that created a whole new, massively successful formula! That's no small thing at all and it should never be overlooked.) There's not a lot of creativity or originality, and while I didn't watch it with high expectations, but it's hard to avoid feeling disappointed at its slightness nonetheless. There are the usual aggravations associated with the typical BL drama template: the contempt for women that verges on misogyny; any openly gay men are all effeminate, vacuous, promiscuous and bitchy, barely worth the time it takes to mistreat them; parents are either negligent or venal (or both) and seem content to ruin their children's lives to save face; homosexuality is vehemently denied by every single character with the sort of bullshit justification that can be poisonous. In one scene, a jealous Phun asks Noh how he would respond if Earn confessed that he liked him (Noh). Noh retorts to Phun heatedly, "I'm not gay. So don't look down on me by assuming that I'd go with any guy who happens to show any interest in me." I almost threw my shoe at the TV in white-hot anger when I heard this. It's so offensive on so many levels I had to pause the show and walk away from the screen for a while.
Production values are average, dialogue is perfunctory, direction is lazy, flashbacks are used way too often, the screenplay is too episodic to create cohesion or impetus, and the acting is only tolerable. However, the extremely personable actor playing Noh - Kongyingyong 'Captain' Chonlathorn - is very noteworthy. The camera loves him. Seeing him dance and sing drunkenly onstage at a beach concert is one of the funniest, most joyous scenes in BL ever created, hands down. He's a great new talent, very charming and funny, and the series owes a lot of its success to him. However, like most of the young cast, his acting skills aren't quite up to par. Generally he's good but sometimes he's just too hammy or looks out of his depth. He improves somewhat in season two though.
So on the surface there's not a lot about Love Sick that recommends itself. Yet despite all these flaws it still manages to entertain. This is a series mainly worth watching for Captain's charisma, its decent (albeit glacially paced) portrayal of the central relationship, and its realistic depiction of high school life. But do yourself a favour and watch an edit of both seasons online that removes the unnecessary plotlines and characters, especially those involving the convent girls. You might actually enjoy it more than I did.
Postscript: Can I also just say that Love Sick has the most frequent, obvious and distracting product placement I have ever seen in a movie or series? Fast food, gyoza, iced tea, convenience stores, chat apps, phone sim cards, phone ringtones, clothing, ads that flash up on screen for a split second every few minutes. It happens multiple times per episode and it's blatant. There are even certain scenes that have clearly been devised solely for the purpose of product placement.
Rating: 11 out of 20
Ending: Sweetly happy
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