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Mixed Nuts, Part 1: Genre Smoothies
157 Plays2 years ago
BL is really leaning into genre in a big way, and we're too big nerds to let that go uncommented upon. Ben, NiNi, Ginny and Shan talk some successes and failures in genre blending over the winter season in Playboyy, 7 Days Before Valentine, Dead Friend Forever and Love For Love's Sake.
**TW for Dead Friend Forever: discussions of violence and gore**
**TW for Love For Love's Sake: discussions of suicide and self-harm**
Episode transcript available here.
00:00:00 Welcome
00:01:15 Grab Bag Part 1: Genre Shows
00:02:37 Playboyy
00:18:42 7 Days Before Valentine
00:29:35 Dead Friend Forever
00:50:03 Love For Love's Sake
01:13:39 Outro
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Brown Licker Podcast
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to the conversation about BL, aka the Brown Licker Podcast.
00:00:27
Speaker
And there it is.
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm Ben.
00:00:30
Speaker
I'm Nini.
00:00:30
Speaker
And we're your drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie who are sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.
00:00:36
Speaker
Four times a year, we pop in to talk about what's going on in the BL world.
00:00:42
Speaker
We shoot the shit about stories, all the drama going into them.
00:00:46
Speaker
I review from a queer media lens.
00:00:49
Speaker
And I review from a romance and drama lens.
00:00:51
Speaker
So if you like cracked out takes and really intense emotional analysis.
00:00:56
Speaker
If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the discourse.
00:01:02
Speaker
If you generally just love simping.
00:01:04
Speaker
There is a lot of simping on this podcast.
00:01:07
Speaker
We are the show for you.
00:01:15
Speaker
We're literally doing it live, man.
00:01:19
Speaker
Great start.
00:01:25
Speaker
We're keeping that in.
00:01:26
Speaker
We're absolutely keeping that in.
Grab Bag Discussion with Guests
00:01:37
Speaker
And we're back.
00:01:39
Speaker
This week we are doing our grab bag episode.
00:01:44
Speaker
We will be talking about quite a few shows.
00:01:48
Speaker
But first, we have guests.
00:01:50
Speaker
Say hi, Ginny and Shan.
00:01:51
Speaker
Say hi, Ginny.
00:01:52
Speaker
Hello.
00:01:53
Speaker
Hello.
00:01:53
Speaker
Say hi, Shan.
00:01:55
Speaker
Hi, people.
00:01:56
Speaker
Like Ben said, we're here to do a grab bag.
00:01:58
Speaker
Actually, we're here to do two grab bags.
00:02:01
Speaker
It's a two-parter.
00:02:01
Speaker
Fun times.
00:02:03
Speaker
The first part, we're going to talk about a bunch of genre shows.
00:02:06
Speaker
It's going to be fun.
00:02:08
Speaker
We're going to have a good time.
00:02:09
Speaker
It's always a good time when Ginny and Shan are with us.
Critique of Playboy the Series
00:02:12
Speaker
Today, we are talking about Playboy the Series, Seven Days Before Valentine, Dead Friend Forever, and Love for Love's Sake.
00:02:21
Speaker
You may use the timestamps we provide to jump to your relevant section.
00:02:27
Speaker
Look at Ben being a good cruise director.
00:02:29
Speaker
I love it.
00:02:38
Speaker
We begin with Playboy the Series.
00:02:42
Speaker
Since I did not watch this show, Nini or Jenny, would you like to describe Playboy for the people, or do you want me to describe it based on my three-episode experience?
00:02:52
Speaker
I feel like this is all you, Jenny.
00:02:54
Speaker
Go.
00:02:55
Speaker
Playboy is a show that tried to be about the complex lives of sex workers and people exploring new thresholds of kink and instead was simply a hot mess that devolved into several different directions, did not say what it intended to say, or perhaps intended to say horrible things, we're not clear on that, and disappointed nearly everybody.
00:03:21
Speaker
How was that?
00:03:23
Speaker
Very well done.
00:03:24
Speaker
That is it in a nutshell.
00:03:26
Speaker
Janine and I watched this to the end.
00:03:28
Speaker
Shan quit.
00:03:29
Speaker
Ben quit way earlier.
00:03:31
Speaker
I want to just give myself credit for hanging in there for a long ass time.
00:03:34
Speaker
I think I made it all the way to like episode nine or ten before I had to stop.
00:03:38
Speaker
I'm just going to own it right away.
00:03:40
Speaker
I quit at the end of episode three.
00:03:42
Speaker
I said this is not for me and I have nothing nice to say.
00:03:47
Speaker
I'm going to just leave now.
00:03:49
Speaker
He really did.
00:03:50
Speaker
We're here to talk about the genre BLs of the season, and Playboy technically counts as a, I guess, murder mystery.
00:03:58
Speaker
But, oh, okay.
00:04:00
Speaker
I'm invoking the shipper.
00:04:03
Speaker
Wow.
00:04:03
Speaker
I know we said we're never going to talk about this again, but I am invoking the shipper.
00:04:08
Speaker
Proceed.
00:04:10
Speaker
What a hot fucking mess this was.
00:04:14
Speaker
This show wanted to be about so much and in the end ended up being about nothing.
00:04:19
Speaker
It's offensive, it's sensationalist.
00:04:21
Speaker
I found it bad in a particularly banal, uninteresting way.
00:04:25
Speaker
And I'm mostly upset because when it started, it wasn't great, but it had some ideas.
00:04:30
Speaker
And then those ideas just completely fell by the wayside.
00:04:34
Speaker
Listen, guys, I am the sex and story person.
00:04:38
Speaker
This was right up my alley.
00:04:41
Speaker
I don't know if you've ever seen the phenomenal classic short bus.
00:04:45
Speaker
Jenny was like, this is giving me short bus.
00:04:47
Speaker
And I was like, oh, tell me more.
00:04:48
Speaker
I'm seeing it.
00:04:49
Speaker
That was maybe episode four.
00:04:51
Speaker
And by episode six, I was like, I don't know that it's giving short buss.
00:04:56
Speaker
It thought it was saying something about sex that it actually wasn't saying because in the end it's all about monogamy and the power of love.
00:05:03
Speaker
Which, yeah, okay, it could absolutely be about that.
00:05:07
Speaker
But that's not what it was sold as.
00:05:09
Speaker
I can't even continue on it.
00:05:11
Speaker
Jenny, you have to take over for me.
00:05:12
Speaker
It's just bad.
00:05:13
Speaker
I don't like it.
00:05:15
Speaker
What you said is key because it wasn't sold as being about monogamy and the power of love.
00:05:20
Speaker
And it's fine for a show to be about that.
00:05:23
Speaker
But if a show is going to give you a bunch of seamy, underbelly, kink, sex work, highly stigmatized sexual topics, and then it's going to come around and being like, but actually monogamy and the power of love is what it's all about.
00:05:38
Speaker
Then you are only further stigmatizing those topics.
00:05:43
Speaker
If you put them in,
00:05:44
Speaker
and then you don't land on a positive note with those topics, you're just reinforcing what everybody already thinks about them.
Hopes vs Reality for Playboy
00:05:54
Speaker
That is not what the show was sold to us as.
00:05:56
Speaker
And I'm furious about it because I want to see more material that deals honestly with some of the more difficult sexual topics and the more controversial areas of sexuality that
00:06:09
Speaker
This show promised us that and then it ended up being like, but if you're in true love, then all problems are solved.
00:06:16
Speaker
And the kinkiest people are somehow also the evilest.
00:06:19
Speaker
Oops, we don't know how that happened.
00:06:21
Speaker
And it's just infuriating.
00:06:24
Speaker
I'm not even going to get into what Playboy is actually about because in the end, it doesn't matter.
00:06:29
Speaker
I'm just gonna be straight.
00:06:31
Speaker
There are people who enjoyed this.
00:06:33
Speaker
I was not one of those people.
00:06:35
Speaker
I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask so we can unpack some stuff here.
00:06:41
Speaker
Let's go around the table, starting with Shan.
00:06:44
Speaker
When we all signed up to watch Playboy originally, what were you hoping for based upon the initial promotional materials?
00:06:54
Speaker
Oh, this is such a loaded question.
00:06:55
Speaker
Now I have to invoke OnlyFriends.
00:06:57
Speaker
So Playboy and Only Friends share a writer.
00:07:01
Speaker
Only Friends, as was very thoroughly discussed on this podcast, also ended with a message reinforcing monogamy and the power of love in a show that claimed to be about something else.
00:07:11
Speaker
And so I went into Playboy actually really eager to see another work from this screenwriter because I wondered if maybe some other things had happened on that show that got in the way of this message that he has been claiming to be trying to put out in the world.
00:07:25
Speaker
And so I expected, based on the promotional materials, based on the way the folks behind the show were talking about it, I expected this to be very much a sex and kink positive show, very much a show exploring the many different ways that sex and sexual relationships can evolve, can look, trying to also shine some light on the lives and experiences of sex workers,
00:07:49
Speaker
All of that was part of the promotion of the show alongside the murder mystery aspect.
Failed Story Arcs in Playboy
00:07:54
Speaker
It was never clear to me going in how much about each of those things the show would be.
00:07:59
Speaker
It seemed to be trying to tackle a lot.
00:08:00
Speaker
So I was interested to see how it would weave those things together.
00:08:04
Speaker
And it just didn't really.
00:08:06
Speaker
And it didn't do a lot of those things it was claiming to be doing.
00:08:08
Speaker
What about you, Jenny?
00:08:11
Speaker
Very similar to Shan.
00:08:13
Speaker
I expected and hoped for a lot of showcasing of sexual diversity.
00:08:18
Speaker
And as Nini said, I was hopeful in the first episodes.
00:08:21
Speaker
She and I hung on so long trying to defend what the show might be trying to do.
00:08:26
Speaker
It did look like it was trying to show somebody who was averse maybe to touch, maybe was asexual, maybe had trauma.
00:08:33
Speaker
We weren't clear.
00:08:34
Speaker
That was an interesting thing to explore.
00:08:37
Speaker
People in sex work for various different reasons, people who were very clear about their kinks and interests.
00:08:44
Speaker
And I was hoping for a mature, in-depth exploration that didn't treat sex itself like it was this shocking new frontier that sort of accepted this is something that's a part of many people's lives and can be treated with seriousness and playfulness at the same time.
00:09:04
Speaker
I did not expect the plot to hold together because there were simply way too many characters, but I at least wanted the core messaging and character development around sexuality to be consistent and interesting and positive.
00:09:18
Speaker
And the longer the show went on, the worse it got in all of those respects.
00:09:25
Speaker
So going in, I was expecting there to be some really fun examination about masculine sexuality.
00:09:32
Speaker
And then very quickly, I realized the show was doing porn setups as basically just a joke.
00:09:41
Speaker
They weren't really doing with that what we thought they might be.
00:09:45
Speaker
Like, they're introducing porn setups to talk about the inherently artificial nature of porn and the lack of genuine connection happening for men who are projecting their expectations of sex onto the false notions they might be getting from adult content.
00:10:01
Speaker
And that is not what happened at all.
00:10:03
Speaker
So I left very quickly because I was like, I don't need this.
00:10:08
Speaker
And I thought their Sex Ed 101 messages were deeply muddled by some of their own unfortunate choices.
00:10:17
Speaker
Speaking of unfortunate choices, let's go around the table again.
00:10:21
Speaker
What was the unfortunate choice that this show made that pushed you over the edge and either quit it or decided you hated it by the end?
Trust Issues with Playboy Creators
00:10:30
Speaker
I gave it a long time.
00:10:32
Speaker
I really tried with this show.
00:10:34
Speaker
I tried to read some of these deeper themes and messages that both makers of the show and people watching the show were claiming were embedded in the work, and I couldn't find it.
00:10:43
Speaker
I think it was kind of a slow trickle for me of things that just kept adding up.
00:10:47
Speaker
But what might have really been the snapping point for me was what they did with Zoe's storyline.
00:10:54
Speaker
someone who was maybe sex averse or sex repulsed.
00:10:56
Speaker
I was very much looking forward to development of that as he fell in love with somebody and was trying to work through that.
00:11:01
Speaker
The way that the show resolved that storyline, his falling in love with somebody just made it go away.
00:11:09
Speaker
He just suddenly was fine with sex one day, just like that.
00:11:12
Speaker
That's all it takes apparently.
00:11:14
Speaker
And then even further down the line in the show, they undid it even further by completely retconning his entire issue and changing the source of it from the beginning.
00:11:22
Speaker
But that moment when they just showed him just suddenly magically being fine with sex through the power of love, after what had felt like a setup of a serious sexual dysfunction issue that he wanted to work through, it just felt so disrespectful to me.
00:11:36
Speaker
It was a moment where I was like, oh, nothing this show is doing matters.
00:11:40
Speaker
It doesn't take any of it seriously.
00:11:42
Speaker
I was silly to trust that it did.
00:11:44
Speaker
That was just kind of it for me.
00:11:45
Speaker
I was like, I can't do this anymore.
00:11:46
Speaker
I'm out.
00:11:48
Speaker
Jenny?
00:11:50
Speaker
There wasn't one moment.
00:11:51
Speaker
It was just a slow decay of trust and interest over time.
00:11:57
Speaker
I think the storyline between First and Soong, first of all, it was badly acted.
00:12:05
Speaker
Is First the thermometer boy?
00:12:07
Speaker
Yes.
Community Response to Playboy
00:12:10
Speaker
Spoiler alert, that's why I left.
00:12:12
Speaker
Spoiler alert.
00:12:14
Speaker
I hung in with them well past the thermometer.
00:12:17
Speaker
That story could have been really interesting about the complexities of a Dom-Sub relationship that also has a very real financial angle.
00:12:27
Speaker
They keep being drawn to each other for reasons I did not understand and the show did not really justify.
00:12:34
Speaker
It could have been such an interesting exploration of a really complex power dynamic and instead it was just...
00:12:41
Speaker
Two people taking turns being mean to each other and then senselessly coming back to each other with no kind of nuance or complexity.
00:12:51
Speaker
So frustrating.
00:12:51
Speaker
Nene, did you have a breaking moment with this show that you recall?
00:12:58
Speaker
There are so many moments where I had to push through, like the toe-sucking incident.
00:13:03
Speaker
I had to push through.
00:13:04
Speaker
There was a dog food incident.
00:13:06
Speaker
I had to push through that as well.
00:13:08
Speaker
When I was over it, though, was the main character is supposedly pretending to be his twin brother.
00:13:16
Speaker
And there were hints along the way that maybe there was no twin brother.
00:13:21
Speaker
And there was maybe a dissociation happening there as this person tries to come to terms with their self-image in the wake of having kinds of sexual experiences that he enjoyed but didn't think he should.
00:13:38
Speaker
And there was a lot to unpack there.
00:13:39
Speaker
But then they showed the twin brother's dead body and I was just like, okay, no, this show is shit.
00:13:47
Speaker
I was over it at that point.
00:13:49
Speaker
I stayed till the end because, as I said to everybody, I wanted my complaints to be specific and comprehensive.
00:13:56
Speaker
But yeah, that was it for me in the end.
00:13:58
Speaker
The fact that they sold it as some sort of psychological deep dive and it ended up being not even a bog-standard murder mystery with a cartoon villain.
00:14:11
Speaker
I'd like to follow up with something Jenny mentioned in her response.
00:14:17
Speaker
You talked about how this show was a slow betrayal of trust for you.
00:14:24
Speaker
Let's talk about this creative team.
00:14:27
Speaker
So with Chi-Win and Den, this is their second outing together.
00:14:33
Speaker
How are we feeling about Den and Chi-Win as a creative duo?
00:14:40
Speaker
I don't trust Den anymore, which is a shame.
00:14:44
Speaker
He's very, very vocal on social media about the shows he's doing and the way he talks makes it sound like he's coming from this forward thinking, sex positive, let's push the boundaries way.
00:14:58
Speaker
But then the two shows, as Shan mentioned, Only Friends and Playboy just felt so regressive in their ultimate messages and in how they treated their most boundary pushing characters.
00:15:11
Speaker
So I, with much regret, because I was very excited about him as a new voice and a new presence in the scene, fully do not trust him anymore.
00:15:21
Speaker
Chi-Wen I have more grace for because he's got a much bigger resume and he's made some things that I really love.
00:15:27
Speaker
Secret Crush on You is one of my shows of all time.
00:15:30
Speaker
Why Are You is also a favorite of mine.
00:15:33
Speaker
I am watching Deep Night and am curious to see what he's doing with Den's involvement, maybe less in the story side of things.
00:15:43
Speaker
I'm glad for your answer.
00:15:45
Speaker
I've been dealing with my own version of BL Burnout for a while, as you all have gotten to hear in real time on this show.
00:15:55
Speaker
So I am currently not watching Deep Night.
00:15:59
Speaker
I've been curious about your reactions as we get deeper into that.
00:16:03
Speaker
I'm tired of getting disappointed around the 50 to 70% mark of these shows and then being grumpy for a month as they stumble their way to the end.
00:16:14
Speaker
I'm about to be like Nini and just binge shows after they're done.
00:16:18
Speaker
It's a technique that I highly recommend for a lot of shows, actually.
00:16:23
Speaker
Not every show, but a lot of shows.
00:16:25
Speaker
Shan, you traditionally used to like to binge shows after they were mostly done.
00:16:31
Speaker
You started watching live because you unfortunately met me.
00:16:35
Speaker
It's all your fault, bestie.
00:16:39
Speaker
Where are you currently on, Den, Chiwin, and your general vibe with showrunner teams that have let you down and engaging with future work?
00:16:50
Speaker
I really agree with what Ginny said about Den and Chiwin in particular.
00:16:56
Speaker
Chiwin has a long history.
00:16:57
Speaker
I've really loved some of his work.
00:16:59
Speaker
I've really disliked some of his work.
00:17:01
Speaker
I think that's how it's always going to be with Chiwin.
00:17:03
Speaker
He's a little bit hit or miss.
00:17:04
Speaker
He tries things and it doesn't always work.
00:17:06
Speaker
But I'm willing to come into each of his new projects with benefit of the doubt, see what he's trying to do.
00:17:12
Speaker
With Den, I'm much more wary after these couple projects back to back.
00:17:17
Speaker
I'm always wary of creators who speak so much on social media outside of their work to try to shape opinions about it rather than letting the work speak.
00:17:28
Speaker
That has been a wariness that I've had around him from the beginning because he's been very vocal about his active projects.
00:17:35
Speaker
trying to shape and define the fan response to them in a way that I find a bit off-putting.
00:17:42
Speaker
With these projects in particular, I feel like he's been really trying to claim a mantle that he is not actually owning and earning with his work.
00:17:51
Speaker
So yeah, similar to Ginny, I don't really trust him anymore.
00:17:54
Speaker
I will not be live watching any more shows that he's writing.
00:17:58
Speaker
And I'll be waiting to hear from other folks that I trust about whether or not I should be even venturing into them at all.
00:18:04
Speaker
I'm going to give it a zero, which I never give shows.
00:18:09
Speaker
I was actively offended and I don't want to talk about it anymore.
00:18:13
Speaker
Jenny, do you have any final thoughts about Playboy you want to share?
00:18:17
Speaker
No, I want someone to make a good sex show.
00:18:21
Speaker
That's all.
Analysis of Seven Days Before Valentine
00:18:23
Speaker
This show is going to get a DNF from the conversation.
00:18:29
Speaker
We did not finish it.
00:18:30
Speaker
You don't need to either.
00:18:32
Speaker
And with that, let's move on.
00:18:43
Speaker
The next show we're going to talk about is Seven Days Before Valentine.
00:18:47
Speaker
Wait, so which one of us watched this?
00:18:49
Speaker
Was it just me and Jenny?
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, just you and Jenny.
00:18:51
Speaker
I'll talk a little bit about it and then I'll let you two take over.
00:18:55
Speaker
We jumped on to seven days before Valentine because Punisak Suki was running this project.
00:19:02
Speaker
We all know him from 180 degree longitude passes through us, which is a favorite of mine.
00:19:08
Speaker
So we were really excited to see additional work from him, adapting someone else's work this time.
00:19:14
Speaker
The initial premise is about this guy named Sunshine, who is an aspiring actor who has a kind of ugly breakup with his boyfriend who's now seeing someone else.
00:19:26
Speaker
He meets this supernatural being which is able to grant him a wish to erase someone from existence in order to help him reunite with his boyfriend.
00:19:39
Speaker
He gets seven days of attempts to erase someone and then the world resets and he progressively erases different people who he believes are the person responsible for why he and his boyfriend didn't work out.
00:19:53
Speaker
I ended up not finishing the show because I was struggling with it as a weekly watch.
00:20:00
Speaker
Nini came behind it late and watched it basically in two or three sittings and seemed to have a much better experience with it.
00:20:06
Speaker
I want to go to you first, Jenny, because I think you live watched the whole thing.
00:20:12
Speaker
I did live watch the whole thing.
00:20:13
Speaker
And I do think that Nini did it better because I think it was better suited for a binge.
00:20:20
Speaker
Obviously, we know going in that this guy is not going to end up thinking that erasing somebody every night is a great thing to do.
00:20:28
Speaker
Like, that's a horrific premise.
00:20:30
Speaker
His journey of really internalizing what he's doing and the horror of it is slow to unfold over 10 weeks or so.
00:20:40
Speaker
It moves too slowly.
00:20:43
Speaker
I think it actually would have been a better show with shorter episodes.
00:20:46
Speaker
I think the episodic breaks are where they need to be, but I think that each episode could be tighter and brisker.
00:20:53
Speaker
Nini and I both also read the source novel.
00:20:56
Speaker
I don't know how much we want to get into that, but I think we both were fascinated by how much the adaptation team added and enriched the very simple core story.
00:21:08
Speaker
It was a beautiful show.
00:21:09
Speaker
I think Nini will talk a lot about that.
00:21:12
Speaker
The sort of root of this man who's lonely and has felt like he's had one person who loves and is a partner to him abandon him and his desperation to get that back.
00:21:25
Speaker
Being slowly replaced by his attachment to this other person who's locked in this weird Faustian situation with him.
00:21:33
Speaker
There was some good meat in there and some really good scenes played out.
00:21:38
Speaker
So I am glad I watched it.
00:21:41
Speaker
I think I would have enjoyed it better on a binge.
00:21:43
Speaker
And I think it would have been a better show if it had been just edited more tightly and moved faster through this character's realizations.
00:21:53
Speaker
I think that's mostly how I felt about it.
00:21:56
Speaker
So I did watch it on a binge.
00:21:59
Speaker
And I remember when we were discussing it, saying that it felt like being in the theater for some really experimental play.
00:22:09
Speaker
Just sitting in the dark, thoroughly enjoying watching this thing unfold, not knowing where it's going, but having a real good time.
00:22:18
Speaker
That's how it felt to me going through it.
00:22:20
Speaker
It was a little trippy.
00:22:21
Speaker
It was deep and interesting in the places that it needed to be deep and interesting.
00:22:28
Speaker
I liked the rhythm and meter and cadence of the dialogue.
00:22:33
Speaker
I don't speak Thai, but I do sing and getting a rhythm and meter.
00:22:37
Speaker
You can kind of feel the way that it was written, the kind of poetry maybe that it was meant to evoke.
00:22:44
Speaker
I was thoroughly enjoying the soothing rhythm of how it was written.
00:22:49
Speaker
The set design is outstanding.
00:22:51
Speaker
There's some stuff happening on like TVs and signs and all kinds of things in the background that was just crazy fun.
00:22:58
Speaker
It's a very moody, atmospheric kind of piece.
00:23:02
Speaker
It's set up kind of like folklore or fairy tale, something supernatural.
00:23:07
Speaker
I had a really great engaging time with it.
00:23:10
Speaker
I truly enjoyed it.
00:23:11
Speaker
I thought it was beautiful to watch.
00:23:14
Speaker
I also agree with Ginny that it feels long, but then when you go through it, you're like, well, what would they cut?
00:23:21
Speaker
Where would they cut?
00:23:22
Speaker
Everything that's there feels like it needs to be there and then the things that you're thinking, well maybe they could shorten this or that, they add to the atmosphere of the piece in such a way that helped me immerse myself in the work.
00:23:37
Speaker
Like there's some long portions of it where it's just a character singing or like Sunshine doing the monologue from Macbeth.
00:23:47
Speaker
Maybe they could have cut this, but then when those things are happening, I'm literally glued.
00:23:51
Speaker
I can't turn away from them.
00:23:54
Speaker
It's definitely not BL.
00:23:56
Speaker
It's very experimental work that I personally enjoyed, but it's not a traditional narrative at all.
00:24:06
Speaker
Shan, did you watch this show at all?
00:24:09
Speaker
I did not.
00:24:10
Speaker
When the show started airing, I still hadn't watched 180 Degrees Longitude Pass through us.
00:24:16
Speaker
So I remember when y'all started the show live asking whether I should watch it.
00:24:22
Speaker
And you, I think, Ben, are the one who told me, no, no, I want you to watch 180D first.
00:24:28
Speaker
And as I was working through that binge, you all were continuing with Seven Days Before Valentine and kind of realizing, oh, this is not really holding up the same mantle as that show.
00:24:37
Speaker
So I ended up never diving in.
00:24:39
Speaker
And then the final reviews of the show were pretty much mixed.
00:24:44
Speaker
It didn't feel like something I needed to prioritize to watch.
00:24:47
Speaker
I still haven't watched it.
00:24:48
Speaker
I'm not sure if I will.
00:24:50
Speaker
The only similarity really between 180D and this is that they both feel theatrical, but they feel theatrical in different ways.
00:24:57
Speaker
180D is not anything like Seven Days Before Valentine.
00:25:01
Speaker
I think what you said about this feeling kind of folktale or fairytale-esque was spot on, Nene.
00:25:07
Speaker
In contrast to 180, which is all about these really deep, complex character interactions, all these characters felt very archetypical, and we were kind of watching these archetypical themes play out in a way that was quite effective for a lot of it.
00:25:25
Speaker
But yeah, very different story strengths than 180 had.
Sunshine's Journey in Seven Days
00:25:29
Speaker
So since the two of you finished the story, do you have any comments on the arc that Sunshine and Q go through over all the resets they do together?
00:25:39
Speaker
I mean, I think here is where we would actually do like a little bit of novel comparison.
00:25:44
Speaker
The novel is so much more simplistic.
00:25:46
Speaker
There is so much less happening in the novel on a narrative standpoint.
00:25:52
Speaker
Q is not a character that gets his own arc in the novel.
00:25:57
Speaker
Q is just a character that shows up every night, gives Sunshine his wish who he's going to erase and then despairs.
00:26:04
Speaker
Whereas in the show, Q is a fully fledged character in his own right with his own arc.
00:26:10
Speaker
And it is suggested as well, his own Q.
00:26:15
Speaker
I enjoyed Sunshine's arc in the show.
00:26:18
Speaker
A very lonely character who is sort of figuring out that he doesn't need to grab onto this one person and hold onto them super tight and be terrified if that person leaves him basically kicking and flailing to save the relationship once it's over.
00:26:36
Speaker
The way that that arc plays out, the way that Sunshine learns over the course of the seven nights, he starts with, oh, we'll just get rid of the new guy.
00:26:47
Speaker
That'll bring him back to me.
00:26:48
Speaker
And then he goes deeper and deeper and further and further out, trying to find the ripples of how his relationship went wrong until I think it's a sixth night when he asked to have himself erased.
00:26:59
Speaker
And then by the seventh night, he just wants Q to be happy.
00:27:04
Speaker
It's really so well done.
00:27:07
Speaker
I think the nicest little storyline is around Sunshine realizing the importance of community.
00:27:17
Speaker
You see him initially very fixated on I need this one person to come back to me.
00:27:22
Speaker
And as the story wraps up and everybody's restored, you see him starting to see these other relationships with people who are in his life because of his ex, but also maybe care about him, who he could have some kind of community with.
00:27:41
Speaker
I think that was one of the most important character growth lines of the show, specifically with the ex's friend and realizing that maybe the way he had seen her and his relationship to her had been very clouded by his own self-image and assumptions about people seeing him as somebody who should be discarded.
00:28:02
Speaker
What did you think about the Mephistopheles-esque character because he wasn't in the book?
00:28:07
Speaker
Oh, he was my favorite.
00:28:09
Speaker
The liquor and flower shop, so much fun.
00:28:13
Speaker
Every scene.
00:28:14
Speaker
There were a lot of scenes in the show that I was kind of bored during because, again, I think they were just not paced very tightly.
00:28:21
Speaker
But every scene with this liquor flower shop owner, I was riveted.
00:28:26
Speaker
He was so engaging and dynamic.
00:28:30
Speaker
As an atmospheric character, he brought so much richness.
00:28:35
Speaker
What did the two of you rate the show?
00:28:38
Speaker
I gave it a 7.5.
00:28:39
Speaker
I think it's worth watching if the premise interests you, if you like great theatrical settings or cinematography, it was beautifully shot.
00:28:51
Speaker
And if the sort of Faustian theme and things like that are interesting, definitely worth a watch.
00:28:59
Speaker
I gave it an 8.5.
00:29:00
Speaker
I think that because I binged it, I had a slightly different experience and there were some things in the pacing that maybe I enjoyed slightly more because of that.
00:29:11
Speaker
I don't think it's for everybody.
00:29:15
Speaker
But if you like Faustian stories and you like experimental storytelling, I think it's a good one.
00:29:23
Speaker
It's getting an 8 with an asterisk.
00:29:26
Speaker
I think that's fair.
Themes in Dead Friend Forever
00:29:35
Speaker
so next up we are going to be talking dead friend forever beyond clouds horror slasher thriller shag you pick up this one tell us what dead friend forever is about
00:29:49
Speaker
Dead Friend Forever is, I think, maybe the first attempt in this genre to do a long form horror story.
00:29:59
Speaker
One of actually the big discussion points about the show is exactly what genre it lives in and what it's trying to be.
00:30:04
Speaker
It ended up blending a lot of different horror subgenres together.
00:30:07
Speaker
It did some good mystery work.
00:30:10
Speaker
It did end up having a couple BL love lines, but that didn't follow the normal beats because of the genres it was living in.
00:30:18
Speaker
I think ultimately it is the story of a teenage boy who was harmed by many people and the fallout of that.
00:30:28
Speaker
Ginny, I feel like you know more of the lore behind the show and kind of the buildup to it.
00:30:32
Speaker
Do you want to add to that?
00:30:34
Speaker
So this was a showcase for Beyond Cloud's new stable that they first brought in through their reality show, The Hidden Character.
00:30:44
Speaker
And then this was the drama that a large number of these new guys got to star in.
00:30:50
Speaker
So some of the storytelling choices, there were some scenes that I felt like, this is really just for your resume reel, isn't it?
00:30:57
Speaker
But that said, it was well constructed.
00:31:00
Speaker
It was, I think, a good choice to make kind of this slasher genre that lets you have a lot of different characters with very vivid personalities that let these new actors demonstrate their talent without taxing them too hard on too much complexity.
00:31:18
Speaker
I really enjoyed this show.
00:31:20
Speaker
I have some notes, but overall, I thought it was fantastically well done, and especially as a way to launch about half a dozen new faces into the scene.
00:31:31
Speaker
And also a way to launch the cooperation between Beyond Cloud and Salmon, the very beloved writer of Thai BL Suspense.
00:31:40
Speaker
Her skills and Beyond Cloud's orientation and vision seem to be a really good match.
00:31:46
Speaker
So I'm excited to see her writing and their production team do more together.
00:31:53
Speaker
I think actually finding out that she was the writer is the thing that finally sucked me into this show.
00:31:58
Speaker
I jumped in, I think after episode eight, I kept hearing how good the writing was.
00:32:02
Speaker
And then I think Ginny told me that Salmon was the writer.
00:32:04
Speaker
And I was like, oh, let me get in there.
00:32:07
Speaker
I'm with you.
00:32:08
Speaker
I want them to do a lot more collaborations in the future because she is one of the stronger writers, I think, working in TyBL.
00:32:14
Speaker
And they are one of the stronger production houses.
00:32:16
Speaker
So it's a really nice pairing.
00:32:19
Speaker
I was watching this weekly with you all, and then we got to the end of episode four, and the teaser indicated a flashback, and I was like, I saw The Untamed.
00:32:29
Speaker
I'm not spending 27 episodes on that.
00:32:33
Speaker
Oh, not The Untamed catching strays.
00:32:35
Speaker
Rude.
00:32:36
Speaker
I will allow it.
00:32:37
Speaker
We're going to get so many notes.
00:32:41
Speaker
Look, I enjoyed The Untamed, but it was so ridiculous.
00:32:45
Speaker
And I just was not in the mood because I am not that keen on horror.
00:32:50
Speaker
As a Black person who was raised in the South, I do not need to watch horror to trigger my fight-or-flight instinct for fun.
00:33:00
Speaker
So, I'm not that keen on the genre.
00:33:03
Speaker
It does not do much for me.
00:33:05
Speaker
I find that I can really only give about...
00:33:08
Speaker
two-ish hours to a slasher concept before I get tired of it and need to walk away.
00:33:13
Speaker
And that happened to me with Dead Friend Forever because we were in it for about four episodes, which was about three-ish hours.
00:33:19
Speaker
And I was like, I'm done.
00:33:21
Speaker
I'm taking a break.
00:33:22
Speaker
And then Shan, after episode eight, was like, this show is very good.
00:33:26
Speaker
So jot that down.
00:33:27
Speaker
I was like, I'm so sorry, Bessie.
00:33:29
Speaker
You're going to have to finish it.
00:33:31
Speaker
I was like, God damn it.
00:33:34
Speaker
It was really good.
00:33:36
Speaker
I enjoyed a lot of the character writing.
00:33:39
Speaker
When they decided to delve into the horrors that these boys had inflicted on Nan, played by Barcode, who was really good in this show, the show decided to really full commit to it.
00:33:51
Speaker
Holy shit.
00:33:53
Speaker
Like it was Korean level how deep they got into the bullying.
00:33:57
Speaker
Yeah, like they did not hold back.
00:33:59
Speaker
They really went for it.
00:34:00
Speaker
Everybody wanted to see all of those boys die by the first flashback episode.
00:34:05
Speaker
Everyone was like, never mind.
00:34:07
Speaker
Kill them all.
00:34:08
Speaker
Whoever's out in the woods killing them, get them all.
00:34:12
Speaker
Here's another axe.
00:34:13
Speaker
I think they did a good job in illustrating the ways that boys just choosing to be a little bit shitty can snowball.
00:34:23
Speaker
There were a lot of points in the flashback where one person not being a coward or not being cruel could have saved all of them from the disaster that befalls them.
00:34:36
Speaker
It's important that we understand why all of these boys need to die if we're going to watch them all get brutally murdered.
00:34:43
Speaker
Speaking of the brutal murder portion of it, let's talk about the final episode and the bloodbath we got.
00:34:51
Speaker
Let's start with our favorite deaths.
00:34:54
Speaker
Who is the most bloodthirsty of all of us?
00:34:56
Speaker
It's definitely Shan.
00:34:59
Speaker
Shan!
00:35:00
Speaker
It's no contest.
00:35:01
Speaker
It is 100% Shan.
00:35:02
Speaker
100%.
00:35:03
Speaker
The highlight reel of deaths, which was my favorite?
00:35:07
Speaker
I really liked...
00:35:09
Speaker
Fluke and Top kind of taking each other out together.
00:35:15
Speaker
So these are both characters who had been antagonists throughout the show.
00:35:20
Speaker
Top had been the most overtly aggressive antagonist throughout the show.
00:35:23
Speaker
He was just horrible, annoying.
00:35:25
Speaker
Like you could never see why anybody would ever like that kid.
00:35:28
Speaker
And Fluke had been the bystander who saw everything happening, didn't actually do any of the perpetration directly, but also never intervened and never tried to make any of it stop.
00:35:39
Speaker
In their final scenes before their deaths, they were both standing in the same place they had always been, denying their accountability, saying, I refuse to accept blame.
00:35:47
Speaker
I refuse to apologize.
00:35:48
Speaker
I refuse to die.
00:35:50
Speaker
And then they got into this little battle with each other and ended up going over the banister.
00:35:54
Speaker
They had already both been grievously injured.
00:35:57
Speaker
Fluke's injury probably being my favorite.
00:35:59
Speaker
He ended up stabbing his own eyes out, which I thought was just such an appropriate poetic ending for him before then falling to his death.
Significance of Deaths in Dead Friend Forever
00:36:07
Speaker
Jenny, you were a huge fan of this show the whole way through.
00:36:10
Speaker
You're up next.
00:36:11
Speaker
Who was your favorite death?
00:36:13
Speaker
My favorite death was New.
00:36:18
Speaker
I think he's the last confirmed death because it's left sort of vague what happens to the last few guys.
00:36:24
Speaker
What I love is that he's been on this big revenge course.
00:36:29
Speaker
And as far as we can tell, he's been doing everything.
00:36:32
Speaker
He overdid it.
00:36:34
Speaker
He caused the deaths of two people who weren't at all involved.
00:36:38
Speaker
Narratively, he needs to die.
00:36:40
Speaker
But he goes through this whole cycle of, is this what Nan would have wanted?
00:36:46
Speaker
Nan, did I let you down again?
00:36:47
Speaker
He's got huge guilt on him.
00:36:50
Speaker
He's been shot.
00:36:51
Speaker
He's bleeding out.
00:36:52
Speaker
he sees Nan come to him and sort of say, yes, big brother, you did a great job destroying all these people who destroyed me.
00:37:02
Speaker
Thanks for that.
00:37:03
Speaker
So it's this very cathartic and almost sweet moment, even as he is dying.
00:37:09
Speaker
And I really liked it.
00:37:11
Speaker
Nene.
00:37:15
Speaker
So in my view, the people who most needed to die didn't, or maybe they did, who knows.
00:37:20
Speaker
But the death that I found most satisfying, poor, dying slowly in the background while everything is not about him.
00:37:33
Speaker
Given that his need for the spotlight pushed almost everything that happened, I thought I was really elegant that he just literally gets dumped on a couch and basically forgotten to die.
00:37:46
Speaker
Because I'm last, I get to cheat.
00:37:49
Speaker
My favorite death was Fluke because all he did was watch people be cruel and do nothing to help them.
00:37:55
Speaker
And he was driven to insanity and stabbed his own eyes out.
00:38:00
Speaker
I thought that was excellent.
00:38:02
Speaker
Really good thematic death for that character.
00:38:05
Speaker
A plus.
00:38:07
Speaker
But my favorite death in terms of playing with genre themes has to be T stabbing White to death.
00:38:14
Speaker
A lot of folks in the discourse were hoping that he was going to be the final girl.
00:38:20
Speaker
It's me.
00:38:21
Speaker
I'm folks.
00:38:22
Speaker
I did not want White to die.
00:38:25
Speaker
I didn't think that boy deserved to die, but I thought it was appropriate.
00:38:28
Speaker
And he died in a really fucked up way.
00:38:31
Speaker
Genre wise, it was definitely appropriate that he died.
00:38:34
Speaker
It was a totally fair storytelling choice.
00:38:37
Speaker
I'm not mad at the show about it, but I'm really sad.
00:38:39
Speaker
Oh, but we do have things we're mad at the show about.
00:38:42
Speaker
We sure do.
00:38:43
Speaker
Let's talk about that bullshit-ass final 10-15 minutes with P and Jen.
00:38:51
Speaker
P and Jen?
00:38:52
Speaker
I'm technically T, but let's focus on P and Jen.
00:38:56
Speaker
P and Jen are the bigger problem here.
00:38:58
Speaker
Who wants to go first?
00:39:00
Speaker
Oh, good.
00:39:00
Speaker
I'll go.
00:39:00
Speaker
Oh, no, no, no, no.
00:39:04
Speaker
No, no, no, no, friend.
00:39:05
Speaker
I am going to go first.
00:39:06
Speaker
I was going to say, Mitty's got to go on this one.
00:39:08
Speaker
Because let me tell you, Jin was the living worst because Jin was the nice guy.
Unresolved Arcs in Dead Friend Forever
00:39:15
Speaker
Jin just thought that his friends could be shitty as hell to Nan forever.
00:39:20
Speaker
And as long as he smiled at him and was sweet to him and he put enough quarters in the Nan machine that maybe Nan would fuck him.
00:39:27
Speaker
And then when Nan... trigger warning.
00:39:30
Speaker
When Nan ends up being assaulted by his tutoring teacher and Jin sees that, what does he do?
00:39:38
Speaker
Does he try to stop it?
00:39:39
Speaker
Does he try to comfort him?
00:39:41
Speaker
Does he try to help him?
00:39:43
Speaker
No, he records it and puts it on the internet to ruin Nan's life.
00:39:50
Speaker
He needed to die bloody.
00:39:52
Speaker
And he did not die bloody for me to see.
00:39:55
Speaker
And I was upset by that.
00:39:57
Speaker
Now P, I have words for P. Because your man is basically run out of town on a rail by these losers.
00:40:08
Speaker
You!
00:40:10
Speaker
are all set to get revenge with his brother and then one of them slangs you the dick and you're done with the whole revenge thing?
00:40:21
Speaker
Really?
00:40:21
Speaker
You gave up on the revenge?
00:40:23
Speaker
Are you serious right now?
00:40:24
Speaker
You ain't odd.
00:40:25
Speaker
You ain't bad.
00:40:26
Speaker
You ain't serious.
00:40:27
Speaker
You're really trying to protect Jin after everything?
00:40:31
Speaker
You know what he did.
00:40:33
Speaker
Oh, I can't even...
00:40:34
Speaker
Pienjin needed to die bloody so that I could see.
00:40:37
Speaker
That did not happen.
00:40:39
Speaker
The psychological horror of whatever the story is saying happened with them at the end that they never left the house, that they're trapped in there.
00:40:44
Speaker
I don't care.
00:40:45
Speaker
I needed to see them die bloody.
00:40:48
Speaker
The end.
00:40:49
Speaker
Now you can talk, Ben.
00:40:50
Speaker
Thank you.
00:40:55
Speaker
I'm just going to say it straight up.
00:40:56
Speaker
I fucking hated it.
00:40:58
Speaker
I feel like that was where the BL aspects of it got in the way of the horror aspects of it.
00:41:05
Speaker
It feels like the show didn't want to show them dying horrible bloody deaths because they were the primary BL pair.
00:41:15
Speaker
And I was not that keen on them doing a whole, they didn't make it, but here's a little bit of fluff for the people who need that so that they can check out from facing that reality.
00:41:28
Speaker
I didn't like it.
00:41:29
Speaker
I wanted to see them also die bloody painful deaths.
00:41:33
Speaker
They hedged.
00:41:34
Speaker
They showed Jen also being affected by the toxin that New inflicted them with when he was taking a knife to his hand.
00:41:43
Speaker
But they didn't finish it.
00:41:44
Speaker
And I was grumpy about it.
00:41:46
Speaker
I agree with both of you.
00:41:47
Speaker
And I think it's a shame because I thought that what the show was doing with P through like episode nine was so interesting and so smart.
00:41:57
Speaker
He cared about Nan, but he had also ended things with Nan before he disappeared.
00:42:03
Speaker
He thought that Nan had been cheating on him.
00:42:06
Speaker
Things didn't end with them in a good place.
00:42:08
Speaker
So he kind of reluctantly came along with New into this plan to get revenge on these boys who had ruined Nan's life.
00:42:16
Speaker
That whole arc that played out was honestly some of the best mystery writing I've ever seen.
00:42:20
Speaker
It was so masterful.
00:42:21
Speaker
The reveals were perfect.
00:42:22
Speaker
The pacing was awesome.
00:42:24
Speaker
I was so hype about this show.
00:42:26
Speaker
And then around episode 10 is when they started pulling their punches on P. And it seemed to me to be related to this P and Jin stuff.
00:42:37
Speaker
It started with P and Jin finding out the roles they each played in Nan's life and his downfall.
00:42:44
Speaker
I expected that to be a big moment of realization for P. Like, oh, this boy that I've been interested in
00:42:51
Speaker
was the person who filmed Nan being assaulted and put it on the internet.
00:42:57
Speaker
Like that should have been a very, very big deal for him to find out that Jin is the person who did that.
00:43:03
Speaker
But it wasn't.
00:43:04
Speaker
P didn't care, really.
00:43:06
Speaker
He had a very brief reaction and then moved on and continued protecting Jin, but didn't create a fracture in their relationship at all, which it absolutely should have.
00:43:15
Speaker
That for me is when the writing of the show started to falter.
00:43:17
Speaker
And when I started to feel like, like you said, Ben, there were some other influences external to the show interfering with the story revolving around P and Jin being a popular BL ship.
00:43:28
Speaker
And them not wanting to bust them up.
00:43:30
Speaker
And then that also led to, I think, this weird choice with the ending to imply that P and Jin survived and got to be happy.
00:43:37
Speaker
Oh, but maybe they didn't.
00:43:38
Speaker
Maybe that was a dream and they're in the woods.
00:43:40
Speaker
But we're not going to show you.
00:43:41
Speaker
We're going to leave it open.
00:43:42
Speaker
Shippers get to interpret it the way they like.
00:43:44
Speaker
The horror fans get to interpret it the way they like.
00:43:46
Speaker
Everybody wins.
00:43:47
Speaker
But when you make those kind of weaselly, non-choice choices, nobody wins.
00:43:52
Speaker
At the end of episode 11, they dropped that axe and then they panned over to it.
00:43:56
Speaker
And I'm like, oh boy, I can't wait to see somebody get fucking chopped up with that fucking axe.
00:44:01
Speaker
And no one got fucking killed with the axe.
00:44:04
Speaker
I am so disappointed.
00:44:07
Speaker
Chitty, what about you?
00:44:09
Speaker
Where did you get off, so to speak?
00:44:12
Speaker
It didn't feel ambiguous to me so much as it felt like a classic horror movie gotcha.
00:44:18
Speaker
You think they got out free and they're fine and they're all happy.
00:44:21
Speaker
Whoops.
00:44:22
Speaker
Nope.
00:44:22
Speaker
They never left the woods.
00:44:25
Speaker
I think if they landed on that just a little bit harder, if, for example, we'd seen a hand pick up that axe and drag it along the ground and then cut to black.
00:44:35
Speaker
Oh, that would have been so good.
00:44:38
Speaker
I think it might have been Wen Ka-ching Apologist who suggested that.
00:44:42
Speaker
So I don't want to take credit for it.
00:44:43
Speaker
But lovely.
00:44:45
Speaker
My alternate ending.
00:44:48
Speaker
I do think because the ending was so brief and we don't actually see them back there, as Shan said, it leaves a little room for people who really want to believe in P and Jin's happy ever after to believe that.
00:45:01
Speaker
And I think that's a bit cowardly, although I do understand the market forces that maybe led them to do that.
00:45:09
Speaker
I also would have really loved to see like a full character devolution.
00:45:15
Speaker
The way that we got with Fluke, very appropriately poking his eyes out and T stabbing his new innocent love.
00:45:26
Speaker
I would have loved to see that kind of character-driven end for both P and Jin.
00:45:31
Speaker
So I'm a little disappointed in that.
00:45:33
Speaker
But my real quibble with the ending that we got is just that they didn't land quite hard enough on it for me.
00:45:40
Speaker
I don't like a psychological ending to a slasher.
00:45:43
Speaker
When I'm in a slasher, I'm expecting my bloodlust to be sated.
00:45:47
Speaker
I don't want to think through the horror at the end of a slasher.
00:45:50
Speaker
Gotta agree.
00:45:52
Speaker
That's scary.
00:45:54
Speaker
My only other real strong critique of the show is given the way that White died, given that he was a victim in the end, I was frustrated by how underwritten he was relative to all the other characters.
00:46:07
Speaker
We just never got to know him.
00:46:08
Speaker
We didn't understand what motivated him.
00:46:10
Speaker
We didn't understand why he liked tea.
00:46:12
Speaker
We knew he had nothing to do with what happened to Nan.
00:46:14
Speaker
And that was intentional.
00:46:15
Speaker
He was meant to be an innocent victim in this.
00:46:18
Speaker
but I would have liked to know him better.
00:46:20
Speaker
I think where my frustration with this really came bubbling to the surface is he had a hallucination at the end, just like all the other boys.
00:46:27
Speaker
And he was hallucinating boils on his skin.
00:46:30
Speaker
And we never knew why.
00:46:32
Speaker
We never got any backstory to explain why his specific fear was centered on this visible disfigurement, this idea that he was going to be rejected because he was dirty, quote unquote.
00:46:46
Speaker
We can fill in some guesses.
00:46:48
Speaker
A lot of folks have put forward theories, but we shouldn't have to put forward a theory for that.
00:46:52
Speaker
All the other boys had hallucinations and fears that were very clearly tied to what we knew about them and what they had done.
00:46:59
Speaker
We didn't get anything like that for whites.
00:47:01
Speaker
They wanted him to be part of it, but we never knew enough about him to understand what brought him to that state and why those were his fears.
00:47:08
Speaker
And that felt a little lacking to me in the end.
00:47:13
Speaker
So final ratings, Nenea.
00:47:17
Speaker
I ended up at an eight and a half because I just thought that it was egregious that I did not get to see P and Jen die bloody.
00:47:29
Speaker
A. And B, I also thought that the way the show was structured was really good, but I think that it may have been more effective for the flashbacks to have been interspersed with the present day rather than being a section on their own in the middle.
Ratings for Dead Friend Forever
00:47:47
Speaker
Jenny?
00:47:49
Speaker
I also gave it an 8.5.
00:47:51
Speaker
It was so tight and so well written, did almost all of what it set out to do, did pull its punches a little at the end, did weaken story-wise over the final three episodes.
00:48:06
Speaker
That's why it's not higher, but I did really love and appreciate it.
00:48:10
Speaker
Cheyenne?
00:48:13
Speaker
I gave it an eight for the same reasons basically that Nini and Ginny just said.
00:48:18
Speaker
I think it was an excellent show for nine episodes.
00:48:21
Speaker
And then I think it kind of weakened in the final arc.
00:48:26
Speaker
I give a lot of weight to the ending of a show like this.
00:48:29
Speaker
And I think having to leave on a bum dissatisfied note at the end of a slasher is just kind of a bummer.
00:48:36
Speaker
For the reasons Shan gave, I gave the show a 7.5.
00:48:42
Speaker
Release is a huge part of horror storytelling and not giving us release after three months pissed me off.
00:48:52
Speaker
I don't want to give the show a seven because I feel disrespectful to how well executed this whole project is.
00:48:59
Speaker
My primary feeling with different forever is dissatisfaction.
00:49:03
Speaker
When I think about it, I should be reveling in the bloodlust at the end.
00:49:08
Speaker
And I did not get that.
00:49:11
Speaker
I know.
00:49:11
Speaker
Right.
00:49:13
Speaker
One thing I did enjoy at the very end is everybody hallucinating baby Barcode basically coming for their asses.
00:49:20
Speaker
That was so good.
00:49:22
Speaker
Barcode had such a great time playing that character.
00:49:25
Speaker
You shouldn't leave this segment without talking about how good Barcode was in this show.
00:49:29
Speaker
He was amazing.
00:49:32
Speaker
They let Barcode play off of a lot of different characters in a lot of different ways, particularly with some of the fantasy scenarios.
00:49:39
Speaker
And I'm really excited for future work from him.
00:49:44
Speaker
That averages out to 8.125.
00:49:45
Speaker
We'll give it an 8 from the conversation.
00:49:48
Speaker
Recommended if you want to watch a long-ass horror experience with the caveats that we have some consternation about the ending.
00:50:04
Speaker
Let's head on to the main event for this episode.
00:50:07
Speaker
Love for love's sake.
00:50:09
Speaker
Ben, you got this one.
00:50:10
Speaker
Take it away.
00:50:12
Speaker
Finally, a show I watched properly the whole
Premise of Love for Love's Sake
00:50:15
Speaker
way.
00:50:15
Speaker
We've been here for an hour and 20 minutes talking about shows.
00:50:18
Speaker
I either quit or started late.
00:50:21
Speaker
Love for Love's Sake is a Korean BL.
00:50:26
Speaker
A 29-year-old man wakes up in some sort of strange world where he is back in high school dealing with some sort of game interface telling him he has to go make his Borbo happy.
00:50:40
Speaker
The show initiates from him meeting with an old friend who's a writer who asked him to beta read his book.
00:50:47
Speaker
And he was pissed about this het nonsense going, why does this boy have to be sad and suffer in other people's happy ending?
00:50:55
Speaker
His friend goes, well, they're adapting my book into a game.
00:50:58
Speaker
If you could, would you make him happy?
00:51:00
Speaker
And then he passes out drunk because that's what happens in Korean shows.
00:51:04
Speaker
And he wakes up in the fantasy world.
00:51:07
Speaker
And now he's got this game interface telling him to do stuff.
00:51:10
Speaker
His mission is make Chai Ya Woon, his blurbo, happy or die.
00:51:16
Speaker
As the show goes along, the game gives him different rewards, sends him different quests, and this gets complicated by some reveals we get late in this, but
00:51:26
Speaker
Let's pick up there with the initial conceit.
00:51:30
Speaker
Shan, you watch this live with us.
00:51:32
Speaker
Let's talk through the live watch experience of this.
00:51:37
Speaker
I was very familiar with this type of storytelling where someone dies in our world or whatever and then wakes up in another world and has to deal with the fantasy conceits of it, particularly around gaming and such.
00:51:48
Speaker
And also, I played a lot of fucking video games.
00:51:52
Speaker
So a lot of this stuff was super legible to me right away, and I did not need a lot of hand-holding.
00:51:57
Speaker
But you expressed some frustration early on with this.
00:52:01
Speaker
Just so that I understand when Ben teaches me Japanese terms that I remember them, is this what they would refer to as isekai, Ben?
00:52:10
Speaker
This is what we would call isekai.
00:52:13
Speaker
Look at you, Dean.
00:52:14
Speaker
I learn things.
00:52:15
Speaker
I learn things every day.
00:52:17
Speaker
The live watch of this show was extremely fun.
00:52:21
Speaker
A lot of the discussion week to week was about like, what exactly is going on here?
00:52:26
Speaker
Because the show didn't want to tell us.
00:52:28
Speaker
I think what might have frustrated me a bit in the beginning was not understanding fully the rules of the universe, which as we get to the end becomes clear why that was.
00:52:38
Speaker
There was a purpose to that in the storytelling.
00:52:40
Speaker
It's not always that easy to tell at the beginning of a show how confidently the story is being told and like how intentional all the choices are versus what's just a misstep.
00:52:49
Speaker
But the show, I think, was confidently told, like it knew what it wanted to do.
00:52:52
Speaker
And what it wanted to do ultimately was leave a lot of room for interpretation in what this game world was, why it worked the way it did, what the choices of the characters meant, what the characters themselves even were.
00:53:08
Speaker
So I thought it was great as a live watch, honestly, and I'm really glad that we watched it that way.
00:53:14
Speaker
I got a lot out of those weekly discussions where we would all unpack what we thought was going on, the questions that we had, things that we noticed as we were trying to figure out what this world was about.
00:53:27
Speaker
An early moment in the show that just gutted me and like had me clutching my chest and like in it no matter what was when Myung-ha was in the game, he would get these scores over the heads of people to see what Ya-Woon, what was it called then?
00:53:43
Speaker
The attractiveness score or the like score or something like that.
00:53:46
Speaker
It was the score about his affection level, how much Xiaowun liked you.
00:53:50
Speaker
Right.
00:53:50
Speaker
So because his original mission, as we understood it, was to make Xiaowun like him, he would see where his affection level was sitting.
00:53:57
Speaker
It was always hilariously low.
00:53:59
Speaker
And then he unlocked this new power to be able to see how Xiaowun's affection level was sitting for other people as well.
00:54:06
Speaker
The score was very low for everybody.
00:54:07
Speaker
But then we see that the lowest affection score that Xiaowun has for anybody is for himself.
00:54:14
Speaker
I screamed.
00:54:14
Speaker
I screamed.
00:54:15
Speaker
It was a knife straight into the heart.
00:54:18
Speaker
Like, oh my God, this poor boy.
00:54:20
Speaker
And you just fully understood him in that moment.
00:54:23
Speaker
It was done so craftily through this established power that Myung-ha had, the way that the show moved on from it quickly.
00:54:31
Speaker
Like, I'm not even sure how deeply Myung-ha even processed it as the player in that moment.
00:54:36
Speaker
It was just so artfully done.
00:54:37
Speaker
And I was like, oh, this show knows what it's about.
00:54:40
Speaker
It really instilled confidence in me from that point forward that I was along for a ride here and that the things I didn't understand, it was because I wasn't supposed to understand them.
00:54:49
Speaker
Once we clicked into that, the experience of watching each set of two episodes each week, having deep discussion about them and unpacking them along the way was such an awesome way to watch.
00:54:59
Speaker
It's not that it's bad in a binge, but I think it's one that really benefits from stopping to think between installments and let your mind wander and process all the different things that it threw at you.
00:55:09
Speaker
With that in mind, I want to ask Jenny, because Nini's been very busy, but Jenny, you generally receive through the grapevine what's going on with the project, even if you're not really watching it at the moment.
00:55:21
Speaker
What was it like for you seeing the show engender such positive brain rot in people and then going into it yourself fairly spoiled for some of the big reveals?
Existential Themes in Love for Love's Sake
00:55:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:33
Speaker
It was a totally different experience.
00:55:36
Speaker
The main reason I didn't watch it live is that Korean BL is real hit or miss for me.
00:55:41
Speaker
So I always let you guys go into it first and then tip me off if you think I might like this one.
00:55:47
Speaker
Around episode six, I was like, hey, should I watch this?
00:55:49
Speaker
And Chan was like, no, just wait till it's all over.
00:55:52
Speaker
But yeah, I was seeing a lot of hype.
00:55:53
Speaker
It was clearly making people think a lot.
00:55:57
Speaker
And then it was really cool watching the conversation turn.
00:56:02
Speaker
I didn't realize right away what was happening, but it was clear that this was getting really existential all of a sudden in ways that people hadn't necessarily been anticipating.
00:56:12
Speaker
Seeing people suddenly less up in their heads about what exactly is going on and more like, oh, I'm suddenly hit with all these emotions about all of these ramifications of what I've learned.
00:56:27
Speaker
And then I did not intending to pick up the gist of the big reveals.
00:56:32
Speaker
And so I went into it kind of knowing what it was going to be.
00:56:35
Speaker
So I had a very different watch experience from those of you who watched it live.
00:56:40
Speaker
It was a good watch experience.
00:56:41
Speaker
It might have been better for me because I was immediately looking out for all of these little indications and all of these deeper ripples of meaning.
00:56:51
Speaker
For me, it was more like, I know what we're getting to.
00:56:54
Speaker
So as soon as I saw that, I knew what it meant, which was also a good experience, just a different one.
00:57:02
Speaker
From this point on, listeners, we are going to discuss major reveals and spoilers about the end of this show.
00:57:10
Speaker
I have a personal family experience around drowning.
Impact of Myung-ha's Story
00:57:16
Speaker
And so when we saw Taimunga's eyes in that sequence, when he kept like teleporting around the world, because of all of the water sounds we had been getting in the show, I was like, oh no, I'm not going to put that out there.
00:57:32
Speaker
But I very much felt it coming.
00:57:36
Speaker
This show ends up being about Tae Myung-ha's suicide.
00:57:40
Speaker
And we end up in an uncertain place about what all we're experiencing with him.
00:57:50
Speaker
We started this show thinking that it was a game.
00:57:56
Speaker
And recognizing that the show was dealing with some heavy themes and
00:58:00
Speaker
recognizing that there seemed to be an element of Ya-Woon being a stand-in for Myung-Ha's need to develop self-love.
00:58:09
Speaker
And I don't think we realized how literal that was going to get.
00:58:13
Speaker
It was heavy to realize this character that we had gotten invested in was gone.
00:58:22
Speaker
In her notes, Nini has a comment about the good place relative to this show.
00:58:27
Speaker
So I want to come to you now, Nini.
00:58:30
Speaker
You went into this show with us basically telling you, we know you're busy, but in no uncertain terms, you must watch this show.
00:58:38
Speaker
We will not be telling you about it on the podcast.
00:58:41
Speaker
You will be watching.
00:58:42
Speaker
So I actually went in unspoiled, but I did binge it after it was over.
00:58:50
Speaker
It played with genre in a way you start out thinking that it's a sci-fi thing where he's trapped in the game.
00:58:56
Speaker
And it ended up being this sort of existential, heavy, magical realism thing.
00:59:02
Speaker
When the game starts malfunctioning is when I realized that all was not quite right in terms of how we were processing originally what the show we thought we were getting is.
00:59:17
Speaker
In the beginning, it's cool and fun to look at the show as a video game and try to be like, oh, there are the NPCs.
00:59:22
Speaker
There are the dead pixels.
00:59:23
Speaker
There's the background map.
00:59:25
Speaker
Yes, Ben, I do know Game Things.
00:59:27
Speaker
All the little video game elements of the story.
00:59:30
Speaker
You're picking up on all that and you're having a good time.
00:59:33
Speaker
In the meanwhile, it is giving you flashes of these things.
00:59:35
Speaker
Like, it's giving you that flash of Ewan being the person that he hates the most.
00:59:40
Speaker
The game malfunctioning in little bits and pieces, things like that.
00:59:46
Speaker
You're getting all these hints, but you're not putting them together until something big and catastrophic happens.
00:59:53
Speaker
It's so well done.
00:59:54
Speaker
I was having such a good time with it.
00:59:56
Speaker
And then I get to the end and you realize exactly what's happening.
01:00:01
Speaker
That this is all... It's the gods playing dice, right?
01:00:05
Speaker
It's them saying, this is the way that we have decided that you deal with your afterlife.
01:00:13
Speaker
Ben talked about my note about The Good Place.
01:00:15
Speaker
For me, that's what it was.
01:00:16
Speaker
It was about Myung-ha having to find a way to accomplish the things in death that he didn't accomplish in life.
01:00:26
Speaker
Of Death Man being an ending, of death being an opportunity to still learn and grow and maybe have a life afterwards.
01:00:36
Speaker
Whatever it is that you have to learn to take with you into the next life.
01:00:41
Speaker
Basically, it's Myung-ha learning to pour so much love into himself that he can feel it either in his afterlife or in the next life.
01:00:51
Speaker
And that idea of deathmut being the end, people found it bummed them out.
01:00:55
Speaker
I found it really comforting.
01:00:58
Speaker
I really want to get into how everybody perceived this project and the major feelings it engendered in them that they walked away with.
01:01:07
Speaker
Jenny, where are you sitting with the resolution of the show and how you're carrying it forward with you?
01:01:14
Speaker
Good question.
01:01:17
Speaker
It left me feeling, I think, less sad than it might have left you.
01:01:24
Speaker
Nidhi compared it to The Good Place, I found myself thinking a lot about The End of the World with You, which is also about characters wrestling with the desire to die.
01:01:35
Speaker
The theme that I often am wary to engage with in stories, but I found both of these to be very affirming and loving towards those characters while also saying, what if you made a different choice?
01:01:53
Speaker
not because it's the natural or the easy thing, but because there's reasons to do that.
01:02:02
Speaker
For Tae Myung-ha to turn his focus away from meeting other people's needs and say, actually, what if your happiness mattered?
01:02:16
Speaker
What if you gave yourself the love and care that you want to give to this character that you see yourself in is such a resonant theme.
01:02:26
Speaker
I came away not needing necessarily to know how I interpret the character's final state or status, but feeling like I'd been gently led through this experience of love yourself more and
01:02:44
Speaker
work to make yourself happy instead of walking into the sea.
01:02:51
Speaker
It was a very life-affirming watch experience for me, although it did have this deep melancholy around it also.
01:03:00
Speaker
One of the things I really like about the ending of the show is that
01:03:03
Speaker
It is so open for interpretation.
01:03:05
Speaker
There are no two people who have the exact same interpretation of what the ending means.
01:03:09
Speaker
People took what they needed from it, I think, and what they preferred to believe, and the show left it open for people to be able to do that.
01:03:17
Speaker
I ultimately didn't actually receive this show as a BL or a romance at all.
Interpreting Love for Love's Sake Ending
01:03:23
Speaker
Important note here, perhaps, is that I am an atheist and I don't believe in the afterlife.
01:03:29
Speaker
And so for me, this was a show about something really tragic that happened and maybe being able to be given this small chance to find self-love.
01:03:45
Speaker
I don't think Ya-Woon is an actual person that Myung-Ha fell in love with.
01:03:49
Speaker
I think he is a representation of Myung-Ha's own self and his need to learn to love himself.
01:03:55
Speaker
And so I did find it quite sad and quite melancholy, but in a way that I thought was just so lovely.
01:04:03
Speaker
Such a lovely way to deliver that message about the importance of self-love, about the importance of trying, about not giving up.
01:04:10
Speaker
I really loved it.
01:04:11
Speaker
I found it beautiful.
01:04:13
Speaker
And it's the rare instance where a show ends ambiguously, but the audience is not fighting with each other over the interpretation.
01:04:23
Speaker
As the resident sad boy of the podcast team, let me tell you, I chose the saddest interpretation possible for this.
01:04:31
Speaker
Of course you did, bestie.
01:04:33
Speaker
Absolutely you did.
01:04:34
Speaker
You sure did.
01:04:36
Speaker
Even sadder than mine somehow.
01:04:38
Speaker
I was talking about the end and Shannon was like, damn, man, shit.
01:04:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:44
Speaker
You live like this girl?
01:04:45
Speaker
Shit!
01:04:48
Speaker
I was really caught up in the character of the nebulous writer, the god figure and author of this world, seemingly.
01:04:58
Speaker
I like the idea of someone who clearly cared about his friend, not really knowing what to do with his friend's tragedy, and trying to find a way to remember him kindly.
01:05:13
Speaker
I think that's where I connected to.
01:05:15
Speaker
Less so in Myung-ha's final moments or afterlife, but more in the grief that the people in his life have to live with after his passing.
01:05:28
Speaker
I like the idea of somebody immortalizing a friend of theirs in an experience where the player is asked to please make him happy.
01:05:38
Speaker
This is why you're the melancholy boy, because I didn't even go there.
01:05:44
Speaker
One of the really interesting live discussions that we had was around the role of the game creator.
01:05:51
Speaker
A lot of speculation about who he was.
01:05:53
Speaker
This idea that he was a friend who had lovingly created this place for Myung-ha.
01:05:58
Speaker
And I was like, no, because why would a friend force these cruel choices on someone he was trying to help?
01:06:07
Speaker
The cruelest choice that I think really stands out for people in the game is when Myung-ha is forced to choose between saving his grandmother or saving Yaowoon.
01:06:16
Speaker
And that was a big point of focus for a lot of the speculative discussion.
01:06:21
Speaker
Who put him in this game and for what reason?
01:06:24
Speaker
Are we talking about a godlike figure who is putting him through trials?
01:06:28
Speaker
Or are we talking about a friend who's trying to give him a path to self-love?
01:06:32
Speaker
One of the things that I love about this show is that there are so many things like that throughout where you could focus on a thing that happened or something that was going on in the background or like an interaction and
01:06:41
Speaker
And you could unpack it and come up with so many different interpretations for it that could be true.
01:06:46
Speaker
The show is just loaded with stuff like that and so many details.
01:06:49
Speaker
Once you know where the ending is leading, if you go back and watch it from the start or just think back, there are clues the whole time about the drowning.
01:06:58
Speaker
There are water sounds from the first episode.
01:07:02
Speaker
You can hear water when Myung has a certain state.
01:07:05
Speaker
The place that he is talking with this author in is
01:07:10
Speaker
is in some kind of otherworldly dimension that never connects to anything else in the show.
01:07:16
Speaker
He always looks wet.
01:07:18
Speaker
His bangs are plastered to his forehead.
01:07:21
Speaker
He always looks like he's soaked.
01:07:23
Speaker
They definitely knew what they were doing the whole time.
01:07:26
Speaker
And the show is just loaded with these small details that the production baked in.
01:07:30
Speaker
It's just so well done.
01:07:32
Speaker
The show is basically a Rorschach test.
01:07:34
Speaker
It's so interpretable.
01:07:36
Speaker
It's hard to do that in a show.
01:07:39
Speaker
It is incredibly difficult balance to maintain.
01:07:44
Speaker
That was part of the fun I had chatting with everybody.
01:07:46
Speaker
Shan was talking about the back and forth we were having where she really rejected my interpretation because she thought a lot of the choices in the game were cruel.
01:07:53
Speaker
I'm on Shan's side.
01:07:54
Speaker
I think it's a cruel and whimsical god.
01:07:56
Speaker
And I was talking about how ugly grief can be sometimes and how sometimes some of that will come out where you get mad at them.
01:08:04
Speaker
I like that a big part of the resolution from Young Ah is to reject the bullshit choice of choosing the boy he likes or his grandmother.
01:08:14
Speaker
That seems like the kind of frustration that somebody who's listened to a friend who's suffering fall into a really negative spiral over something that is not a correct way to place things against each other, like an either or in their life.
01:08:27
Speaker
And I interpreted that as sort of an externalization of their frustration about that kind of stuff.
01:08:33
Speaker
And I remember liking that interpretation, Ben.
01:08:35
Speaker
Not really a denial of the cruelty, but like an acknowledgement that sometimes we're cruel to people we love because of our own frustration.
01:08:42
Speaker
I really ended up liking a lot of different interpretations of the show.
01:08:44
Speaker
Even if I didn't share them, I really enjoyed reading people's thoughts about it.
01:08:48
Speaker
I really liked that part a lot.
01:08:50
Speaker
I really loved that everybody took something from this and it was appreciable.
01:08:54
Speaker
Someone gives you their interpretation and you just go, hmm, and then you sit with it for a bit.
01:08:59
Speaker
And there's not a I agree or disagree.
01:09:02
Speaker
You just receive what that person is connecting to and you learn a little bit about somebody else as a result.
01:09:10
Speaker
We didn't talk a lot about the side characters, but I liked Chao Woon-Ki being in this because he was very funny on Boy's Planet.
01:09:17
Speaker
And I really liked what O Min-Soo did with Chun Sang-Wan because that boy was a very fun version of Queer and his crush on Tae-Myeong-Ha, but we'll get no satisfaction from it.
01:09:31
Speaker
I remember Ben being very disappointed that we never got to meet Kyunghoon's boyfriend in Canada.
01:09:38
Speaker
Right.
01:09:39
Speaker
We never met the Canadian boyfriend.
01:09:40
Speaker
I'm so mad.
01:09:41
Speaker
I'm like, that boy doesn't exist.
01:09:42
Speaker
Yes.
01:09:43
Speaker
And I said, Ben, you're not allowed to meet the Canadian partner.
01:09:47
Speaker
That's the joke.
01:09:48
Speaker
That's literally the joke.
01:09:50
Speaker
They go to a different school.
01:09:53
Speaker
You don't know them.
01:09:55
Speaker
That's the joke.
01:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, but you showed me, what's that show?
01:09:58
Speaker
Goblin.
01:09:59
Speaker
We went to Maple Nation.
01:10:00
Speaker
We can go find him.
01:10:03
Speaker
I do think maybe one of the consequences of the way the show ended and how that absorbed our attention is that the side characters got maybe a little bit of short shrift.
01:10:11
Speaker
Who are they?
01:10:12
Speaker
Are they players in the game?
01:10:13
Speaker
Are they characters in the game?
01:10:15
Speaker
Are they real?
01:10:15
Speaker
They kind of got lost a little bit, but those performances
Final Thoughts on Love for Love's Sake
01:10:18
Speaker
were great.
01:10:18
Speaker
And I really liked the dynamics between the characters inside the game.
01:10:22
Speaker
So ratings.
01:10:24
Speaker
Let's start with you, Jimmy.
01:10:26
Speaker
I gave it a nine.
01:10:28
Speaker
I thought it was really excellent, beautifully done, a really good experience.
01:10:33
Speaker
As a story, it's not something that I want to go back to.
01:10:37
Speaker
Shannon.
01:10:40
Speaker
I also gave it a nine.
01:10:42
Speaker
I do think that there was some fuzziness here and there.
01:10:47
Speaker
It was short.
01:10:47
Speaker
Then there were maybe some shortcuts that had to be taken because of the time that they had.
01:10:52
Speaker
It didn't quite get to the 10 level for me.
01:10:55
Speaker
It's a strong recommendation with a big trigger warning caveat about some of the really heavy content that it gets into.
01:11:02
Speaker
And I'm leaving it at a nine.
01:11:03
Speaker
Nene.
01:11:06
Speaker
So I gave it a 9.5.
01:11:08
Speaker
And the reason that I gave it a 9.5 is I often come to this show and to our watches in the spirit of let things play out and see what happens.
01:11:23
Speaker
Because of doing this show, I have become a long view kind of person.
01:11:28
Speaker
And so on an episode by episode basis, I now tend to give things a lot more latitude as being links in a chain.
01:11:40
Speaker
I'm always the one here being like, okay, I did this, but you don't know what they're going to do next.
01:11:44
Speaker
Let's give it some space.
01:11:45
Speaker
And I think that this show, I think more than any other show that I've watched, has really rewarded that way of processing it for me.
01:11:55
Speaker
The fact that I let it play out and let it play out and let it play out and in the end it tied everything back out that I had noticed.
01:12:04
Speaker
I gave the show a nine.
01:12:07
Speaker
It ends ambiguously, and the audience does not have consensus.
01:12:13
Speaker
I think that is a totally fine choice, but considering how heavy this show was, I don't know how I feel about how much of the audience just walked away only connecting to the BL romance arc of it.
01:12:33
Speaker
And so it's a nine for me from a recommendation standpoint.
01:12:38
Speaker
I have to gauge the viewer when I'm recommending it to them because I don't know that the viewer ends in the same place with the show.
01:12:47
Speaker
And I'm not entirely certain where the show even wants us to land.
01:12:51
Speaker
I think it's fine for the show to turn that mirror back on us at the end as a completely valid choice, but it complicates it as a recommendation.
01:13:02
Speaker
It's a nine from the conversation.
01:13:05
Speaker
I think a nine is a valid recommendation from us.
01:13:08
Speaker
It is a worthwhile show to watch if you are okay contemplating suicide and the social impacts of that.
Excitement for Genre Exploration in BL
01:13:20
Speaker
Well, should we end on a joke after that?
01:13:25
Speaker
I was going to say, maybe we should have taken a joke after that.
01:13:41
Speaker
I am really excited that we're getting more and more genre BL.
01:13:44
Speaker
It's something that I've been eager to see.
01:13:48
Speaker
Me and Nini probably are the most forgiving viewers.
01:13:51
Speaker
I love seeing shows take wild swings, even if they end up kind of missing.
01:13:55
Speaker
So my feelings overall are bring it on, bring us some wacky combinations, give us some things that make us incredibly moody.
01:14:04
Speaker
Let's expand this.
01:14:06
Speaker
media world and give us BL with all of these other genre flavors added.
01:14:11
Speaker
I love it.
01:14:12
Speaker
I'm agreeing with Ginny on that.
01:14:14
Speaker
I think it's cool to see BL venture outside of the basic middle-of-the-road rom-com model that it started in and really try out some new stuff in its storytelling.
01:14:27
Speaker
I do appreciate when shows are going to go into genre that they have a firm grasp on the genre that they're playing in and that they try to meet the standards and expectations of those genres.
01:14:39
Speaker
I think the shows that we discussed today...
01:14:42
Speaker
mostly, really came to play in the genres that they were in, put together some really interesting, provocative stuff, gave us a lot to think about.
01:14:50
Speaker
And I'm really excited to get more of that in BL.
01:14:54
Speaker
I really enjoy good genre blending.
01:14:57
Speaker
All genres have their own conventions.
01:15:00
Speaker
And I enjoy when people who are writing in those genres are playing with the conventions and they understand them and they know how to bend them and twist them and maybe even in some cases break them.
01:15:12
Speaker
It's interesting watching BL experiment with that.
01:15:15
Speaker
It's had different levels of success, granted, but I like watching it happen, though.
01:15:22
Speaker
What I really like about genre blending in BL is it gives these creators a chance to really say something.
01:15:28
Speaker
And there was some of that here.
01:15:30
Speaker
I think the Playboy team had things they wanted to say, but they made a goddamn mess of it.
01:15:35
Speaker
I walked away from Dead Friend Forever and Love for Love's Sake with a lot that I was thinking about in response to the narrative and the events that the shows wanted to unpack.
01:15:47
Speaker
And even though I didn't manage to finish Seven Days Before Valentine at the time, I was with them for this examination of Sunshine's character and the nature of his relationship and the selfishness at the core of his character and unpacking that.
01:16:02
Speaker
This was a really cool experience beyond just
01:16:05
Speaker
There's two pretty boys.
01:16:06
Speaker
They smile a lot.
01:16:08
Speaker
There's some juice.
01:16:09
Speaker
They're going to kiss, which was a really nice change of pace.
01:16:13
Speaker
Despite the sort of mixed responses we may have had here, I really enjoy that the space exists enough to allow the people who have the money to let people try to do stuff like this.
01:16:29
Speaker
Okay, and on that note, that is going to wrap us up on this genre grab bag.
01:16:35
Speaker
Next up in part two, we're going to talk about some Japanese BL.
01:16:41
Speaker
We out.
01:16:42
Speaker
Say bye to the people in chorus.
01:16:47
Speaker
One, two, three.
01:16:49
Speaker
Bye.
01:16:51
Speaker
Oh my god, you're so bad at this.