HIStory Season 1: Obsessed
Of the three sub-series that make up season one of famed Taiwanese BL program HIStory, HIStory: Obsessed gets by far the most thumbs up from its dedicated fans, and it's easy to see why. The other two don't even come close to its ability to immerse its audience it its out-there narrative and - let's be honest - its totally bonkers BL overkill.
Summary: Shao Yi Chen and Jiang Jing Teng have been in a loving relationship for ten years ever since university, but suddenly Teng announces that he is going to marry a woman. Distraught, Chen runs away and is promptly struck by a car and killed. Chen is then reincarnated as himself ten years earlier (is that really how reincarnation is meant to work??), back at university and before he and Teng had ever met in person. Chen sees this as an opportunity to find some backbone and completely alter history, to ensure Teng never enters his life. But fate has other ideas, and the two boys are drawn together again when Teng finds one of Chen's obsessive-stalker drawings of him and searches him out. When Chen resists as strongly as he possibly can, it results in a terrible accident.
I'm very sorry to say that this sub-series scrapes the bottom of a very scummy barrel. There's almost nothing good to say about either the plot, the characters, the acting, the script or the production. Teng is a horrific human being, and no matter how often the story tries to paint his vices in a positive light, he only ever comes across as entitled, dismissive, selfish, cruel, callous, violent and possibly even a rapist. I don't care how insecure or worthy of rescue he is deep down; on the surface, he's a psychopath who ought to be locked up. Chen is too insipid to inspire any pity, and the actor who plays him does a horrendous job.
That's not to say that there aren't any interesting ideas here. Being a HIStory instalment, there are a couple of original elements that are designed to make the audience think or wonder in awe. A strikingly beautiful image is used in the reincarnation scenes, where Chen is shown writhing naked in water in near-total darkness. At a funeral service, Teng's girlfriend Jun Yi approaches the edge of a lake and beckons something unseen in the water to come to her. Her actions make more sense once you see the ending of the series, but here they are mystifyingly weird, almost supernatural. But the show's main focus is to have its audience reassess their ideas about what it means to be fated to love someone. When Chen tells his best friend Mu Bai that he wants nothing to do with Teng, Mu Bai (who knows how obsessive Chen is/used to be about Teng) responds pointedly by saying he can't avoid his own fateful love, no matter how terrible the loved one is or how cruel he will surely treat him in the future. "Just waiting to be crushed," as he puts it. "Instead of trying to stop loving him, I'd try loving him even more. A temporary happiness isn't such a bad thing. You can never know the future, even if you think you've already lived it. You need to wait to know what happens in the future." There's plenty to unpack in this disquisition, and the audience's ability to stomach it relies heavily on how much they believe in fated love and passive inaction as positive action. But the important thing is that it convinces Chen. And we all know what happens when the protagonist lets their guard down in a BL drama.
The final episode fatally explodes in the audience's face with a monstrous shitstorm of turgid exposition, manipulations and heavy-handed contrivances. Jun Yi reveals Teng's nasty secret to Chen, provoking such an onslaught of poor acting and gruesome overwrought melodrama that it's difficult to believe anyone involved with it will ever work in TV again.
Rating: 8 out of 20
Ending: Violently happy
Best scene: Teng's dream sequence.
Summary: Shao Yi Chen and Jiang Jing Teng have been in a loving relationship for ten years ever since university, but suddenly Teng announces that he is going to marry a woman. Distraught, Chen runs away and is promptly struck by a car and killed. Chen is then reincarnated as himself ten years earlier (is that really how reincarnation is meant to work??), back at university and before he and Teng had ever met in person. Chen sees this as an opportunity to find some backbone and completely alter history, to ensure Teng never enters his life. But fate has other ideas, and the two boys are drawn together again when Teng finds one of Chen's obsessive-stalker drawings of him and searches him out. When Chen resists as strongly as he possibly can, it results in a terrible accident.
I'm very sorry to say that this sub-series scrapes the bottom of a very scummy barrel. There's almost nothing good to say about either the plot, the characters, the acting, the script or the production. Teng is a horrific human being, and no matter how often the story tries to paint his vices in a positive light, he only ever comes across as entitled, dismissive, selfish, cruel, callous, violent and possibly even a rapist. I don't care how insecure or worthy of rescue he is deep down; on the surface, he's a psychopath who ought to be locked up. Chen is too insipid to inspire any pity, and the actor who plays him does a horrendous job.
That's not to say that there aren't any interesting ideas here. Being a HIStory instalment, there are a couple of original elements that are designed to make the audience think or wonder in awe. A strikingly beautiful image is used in the reincarnation scenes, where Chen is shown writhing naked in water in near-total darkness. At a funeral service, Teng's girlfriend Jun Yi approaches the edge of a lake and beckons something unseen in the water to come to her. Her actions make more sense once you see the ending of the series, but here they are mystifyingly weird, almost supernatural. But the show's main focus is to have its audience reassess their ideas about what it means to be fated to love someone. When Chen tells his best friend Mu Bai that he wants nothing to do with Teng, Mu Bai (who knows how obsessive Chen is/used to be about Teng) responds pointedly by saying he can't avoid his own fateful love, no matter how terrible the loved one is or how cruel he will surely treat him in the future. "Just waiting to be crushed," as he puts it. "Instead of trying to stop loving him, I'd try loving him even more. A temporary happiness isn't such a bad thing. You can never know the future, even if you think you've already lived it. You need to wait to know what happens in the future." There's plenty to unpack in this disquisition, and the audience's ability to stomach it relies heavily on how much they believe in fated love and passive inaction as positive action. But the important thing is that it convinces Chen. And we all know what happens when the protagonist lets their guard down in a BL drama.
The final episode fatally explodes in the audience's face with a monstrous shitstorm of turgid exposition, manipulations and heavy-handed contrivances. Jun Yi reveals Teng's nasty secret to Chen, provoking such an onslaught of poor acting and gruesome overwrought melodrama that it's difficult to believe anyone involved with it will ever work in TV again.
Rating: 8 out of 20
Ending: Violently happy
Best scene: Teng's dream sequence.
Comments
However, there were many points when I found my self thinking, "Chen, sweetie, are you sure you wanna use up your second shot at life on THIS man? Especially, during that last 30 minutes of the show. The writers took Teng from this distant jerk to FULL CHUCK BASS. You NEVER go FULL CHUCK BASS.
Yet, much like gossip girl I somewhat still enjoyed it?