HIStory Season 3: Trapped
A new HIStory series is about the closest thing that BL fans have to mandatory viewing. Each sub-series has an original spin on the usual BL tropes, and they're generally well-made, well-written and have great casts. The latest instalment, 2019's Trapped, has all of this and more, on paper. So has its great promise and hype translated into another top-tier series?
Summary: Policeman Shao Fei has been obsessed for years with finding definitive evidence that gangster Tang Yi was implicated in the murder of both Tang Yi's own gangster mentor and Shao Fei's colleague police officer. He tracks Tang Yi relentlessly, following him everywhere and accosting him in public. This gets him into trouble with his boss and Internal Affairs on numerous occasions. Tang Yi is trying to 'clean up' his gang by removing it from the drugs trade. This draws the attention of other local gangs who suspect his motives, and suddenly Tang Yi and his sister find themselves in danger. Shao Fei is accidentally caught up in the ensuing violence. Finding themselves thrown together more closely, their feelings of enmity and suspicion change into something more unexpected.
I'm sorry to say I found very little of interest in this series. The gangster story is a total mess and very poorly conceived. It never comes together properly, and merely serves as an excuse to hold back revelations about some of the key characters until the final few episodes. Scenes such as gang leader negotiations, fights or torturing suspects are laughably staged. We've seen them done dozens of times before and far better than here. They contribute nothing to the story or to the characters they are supposed to represent. As the central plot and driving force behind the motives of the two men in the BL drama, the gangster story is tired, ineffective and weak, and unfortunately distracts from elements of the story that are far more interesting - such as Tang Yi's close relationship with his murdered mentor (seen in several flashbacks that have a real emotional resonance), his protectiveness of his fiercely independent sister who can more than hold her own in the gang business, Shao Fei's admiration for his murdered colleague, and the complicated motives of a rival gang leader holding a grudge against Tang Yi. It's no coincidence that these are all inter-personal and emotional strands of the narrative. Whenever a HIStory instalment excels, the portrayal of its characters' emotions, motivations and challenging relationships is always the strongest reason why. So hiding these key elements behind a shoddy, incoherent gangster tale with poorly staged action sequences and next to no impact was a deadly decision that ultimately ruins this series.
As for the BL itself, it has its moments. There's a cute scene involving a dozen angry voice mails that ends up as rather sweet. There's also a touching birthday cake scene. But everything degenerates quickly in the last couple of episode, as the BL loses all of its naturalness by becoming contrived, corny and camp. And not in a good way. The actor playing Tang Yi, Chris Wu, a former member of Chinese boy band Super131, is so strikingly beautiful and so restrained in his acting that he almost distracts from the fact that the actor playing Shao Fei makes your skin crawl, he's so bad. His terrible, heavy-handed acting sinks like a stone in every scene. So little of value happens in the first ten episodes that I'm tempted to suggest that you skip them and start at episode 11. The police officers at Shao Fei's workplace could be considered comically inept, but if that's what the narrative is aiming for, it fails completely because they are are all so annoyingly childish. There's a second BL sub plot involving Shao Fei's coworker Li An that presents him as so innocent and infantile, it's impossible to take him seriously as a police officer.
This series made me so angry. I have high expectations of HIStory, especially after giving us a sub-series as beautifully polished as Crossing The Line in season two. HIStory 3: Trapped is BL at its most artificial and vacuous, where nothing its main BL characters can say or do overcomes its total lack of credibility, bad acting, or its uninspired, boring void of a story.
Rating: 7 out of 20
Ending: happy
Best scene: Tang Yi's sulking princess display during the voice mail scene
Summary: Policeman Shao Fei has been obsessed for years with finding definitive evidence that gangster Tang Yi was implicated in the murder of both Tang Yi's own gangster mentor and Shao Fei's colleague police officer. He tracks Tang Yi relentlessly, following him everywhere and accosting him in public. This gets him into trouble with his boss and Internal Affairs on numerous occasions. Tang Yi is trying to 'clean up' his gang by removing it from the drugs trade. This draws the attention of other local gangs who suspect his motives, and suddenly Tang Yi and his sister find themselves in danger. Shao Fei is accidentally caught up in the ensuing violence. Finding themselves thrown together more closely, their feelings of enmity and suspicion change into something more unexpected.
I'm sorry to say I found very little of interest in this series. The gangster story is a total mess and very poorly conceived. It never comes together properly, and merely serves as an excuse to hold back revelations about some of the key characters until the final few episodes. Scenes such as gang leader negotiations, fights or torturing suspects are laughably staged. We've seen them done dozens of times before and far better than here. They contribute nothing to the story or to the characters they are supposed to represent. As the central plot and driving force behind the motives of the two men in the BL drama, the gangster story is tired, ineffective and weak, and unfortunately distracts from elements of the story that are far more interesting - such as Tang Yi's close relationship with his murdered mentor (seen in several flashbacks that have a real emotional resonance), his protectiveness of his fiercely independent sister who can more than hold her own in the gang business, Shao Fei's admiration for his murdered colleague, and the complicated motives of a rival gang leader holding a grudge against Tang Yi. It's no coincidence that these are all inter-personal and emotional strands of the narrative. Whenever a HIStory instalment excels, the portrayal of its characters' emotions, motivations and challenging relationships is always the strongest reason why. So hiding these key elements behind a shoddy, incoherent gangster tale with poorly staged action sequences and next to no impact was a deadly decision that ultimately ruins this series.
As for the BL itself, it has its moments. There's a cute scene involving a dozen angry voice mails that ends up as rather sweet. There's also a touching birthday cake scene. But everything degenerates quickly in the last couple of episode, as the BL loses all of its naturalness by becoming contrived, corny and camp. And not in a good way. The actor playing Tang Yi, Chris Wu, a former member of Chinese boy band Super131, is so strikingly beautiful and so restrained in his acting that he almost distracts from the fact that the actor playing Shao Fei makes your skin crawl, he's so bad. His terrible, heavy-handed acting sinks like a stone in every scene. So little of value happens in the first ten episodes that I'm tempted to suggest that you skip them and start at episode 11. The police officers at Shao Fei's workplace could be considered comically inept, but if that's what the narrative is aiming for, it fails completely because they are are all so annoyingly childish. There's a second BL sub plot involving Shao Fei's coworker Li An that presents him as so innocent and infantile, it's impossible to take him seriously as a police officer.
This series made me so angry. I have high expectations of HIStory, especially after giving us a sub-series as beautifully polished as Crossing The Line in season two. HIStory 3: Trapped is BL at its most artificial and vacuous, where nothing its main BL characters can say or do overcomes its total lack of credibility, bad acting, or its uninspired, boring void of a story.
Rating: 7 out of 20
Ending: happy
Best scene: Tang Yi's sulking princess display during the voice mail scene
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