Last Twilight The Series is coming to an end after 3 months of fascinating viewers with a fresh take on the BL drama genre. Indeed, with the trend in BL drama focusing on over-the-top settings like triads and racing, the topic of a visually impaired and an ex-offender finding love is down to earth and closer to life. What’s more important was how the storytelling in this genre had matured over the years.
Why Watch the Series?
It has been a long time since I’ve watched a BL drama (in full). Ever since Bad Buddy, I was swamped with work and watching variety shows became a more convenient source of entertainment. Hence, when I saw the many tweets and IG stories swooning over how Last Twilight was the best BL of 2023, I thought I would give the series a try.
The first premise of the drama that attracted me was the overarching storyline of 2 characters, after being relegated to the margins of society, trying to find their way forward. Already, I could think of a synopsis that went along the line of “eventually finding redemption in each other…”. But I quickly realised no one writes such synopsis any more.
Secondly, I liked how the script wove in a fictional novel “The Last Twilight” and got the viewers to pursue the growth of not just Mohk and Day, but also “Mee”, the key character of the namesake novel in search of light in her life. I later found out from the BTS videos that, unlike most BL dramas, Last Twilight was not a novel adaptation. Instead, the director built the story from the ground up. Even the novel “The Last Twilight” was fictional. Given how I found the story development to be mature and complete, I would say the script writing team and GMMTV has really grown since the time I first watched SOTUS in 2016.
On the Storytelling
The freedom to build a script from scratch has its pros and cons. For one, there’s no worry of spoilers. And no matter how the drama ends, there would be no one complaining that the drama did/did not follow the original IP. The team could also fit the storytelling nicely within GMMTV’s BL drama formula, which of course, was also a con, because now we know that the first and second kiss would take place at Ep 6 and Ep 7, respectively, and everyone was all hyped up about the emotional wreck that would take place at Ep 11.
That being said, the production team still served up a helluva tear jerker in Ep 9. It was a very successful episode because it made the audience accompany Mohk and Day in their search for “the last twilight”. The production team took their time and it had a great effect because by the time we reached the revelation that Day lost his sight completely, the viewers were already deeply involved in this emotional rollercoaster.
There were times in the drama where I expected some drama of an emotional outburst from one of the characters. But they didn’t. (Think: the initial interactions/storming between Mohk and Day; when Day’s father made his appearance; when Day’s mother “broke up” Mohk and Day) That was also how I realised the storytelling of Thai BL had surely matured. Characters handled situations like normal people did. And yet the story developed with the viewers hooked.
What the production team did well was to tell the story in a very detailed and sincere way. For example, the use of the goldfish to illustrate the development of Mohk-Day’s relationship. Or quoting (though quite cheesily) “The Little Prince” to hint at the connection between the 2 main characters. As a jaded drama watcher, I couldn’t help but notice how I was gradually drawn into the story arc of the 2 leads. It was like… At the Chatuchak scene, it was expected that Day would encounter a “harrowing experience” which would end with Mohk coming to the rescue. But it was not after we saw how Mohk handled a personal conflict that portrayed his struggle to juggle between his personal and work life.
I also liked how the scriptwriters contrasted Mohk and August through their languages of love. August was always replacing Day’s old and broken stuff, whereas Mohk was always repairing them for Day. Both focused on the love language of “gifting”, but they expressed them differently. For Day, who was struggling to come to terms with his disability, it was natural for him to seek comfort in the old and familiar, which then logically explained how he developed affinity for Mohk.
Maturity – the Recurring Theme of the Series
Again, this handling of story development worked as a double edged sword. When the time came for the break up scene in Ep 11, many viewers were up in arms. “Seriously? Over this? Day, can’t you just talk it out with Mohk?” To me, there was one key element that perhaps many viewers overlooked.
Back during the “August story arc”, when August pretended to like Day in order to “give him good memories”, it already dawned on me that I shouldn’t view the series from the POV of a middle-aged person. If we did, we might as well watch our kids trash their lives. Instead, we should approach from the POV of a bunch of young people, likely to be in their late teens, figuring out how to get their lives on track, much less handle a situation as complex as a close friend losing his sight. August’s decision may be naive in the eyes of us oldies, but he didn’t have the luxury of hindsight, or even insights to many life choices. Therefore, it made sense to him to do what he did. And he also learned – the hard way – that it was a lousy decision.
Therefore, could Mohk and Day have made the sensible decision to sit down and talk about Mohk’s great career opportunity and how they could have managed it without breaking up? Yes. If they were in their mid/late twenties. If Day wasn’t fresh out of a 2nd trauma of losing his eyesight. If Mohk had time to move out of his survivor’s guilt of losing his sister. If both of them weren’t young men with raging hormones (and don’t forget Mohk has anger management issues).
But they didn’t (as the production team tried to explain by cramming a whole lot of information in the final 10 minutes of Ep 11. Heck, they even had to have Day’s mother do an abstract analysis of why things wouldn’t have worked out if they forced themselves to remain together). The thing is, they were young people finding their way around in their lives. And being first timers to such experiences, it’s inevitable that they make decisions that we (viewers) all know they would regret later in life. I guess this is the allure of watching drama, because it reminds us of the mistakes that we made as youngsters and we all hope that the characters can come out of the mess better than we did.
Character (Under)Development for Mohk
With the series drawing to a close, the only disappointment that I have was how underdeveloped Mohk’s character was. In the days between Ep 10 and Ep 11 (I had binge watched Ep 1 to 10 thinking the series had already concluded), I noticed how the story focused on Day. We had a fuller picture of Day’s social circle and how they handled Day’s disability. And Mohk’s unique social circle was confined to Porjai and her cheating boyfriend. The “fullness” of Mohk’s character was also confined to how “tender” he was – which was rather one-dimensional in hindsight.
As mentioned, I was motivated to continue watching this drama because of the premise of two marginalised folks making sense of their new life challenges. Since I’m an ex-prison officer, such topics of reintegration piqued my interest too. But I must say the portrayal of Mohk’s challenges were at best patronising.
For example, Mohk was a car mechanic. He had a technical skill. These are the guys who have the least difficulty in finding a job after release. The ironic thing was that in the series, the car workshops refused to employ him due to his criminal record. Yup, if you’re telling me that Mohk had an issue securing white collar jobs, that would be realistic. Car workshops? Unlikely. One thing they got right though, was that employers tend to lowball ex-offenders in terms of pay.
(Side note: I know Mohk’s employment as an aircon technician was a way to move the story forward, but this is funny when contrasted to him being unable to secure a job as a car mechanic. In a society that’s unaccepting to ex-offenders, aircon maintenance companies would think twice about hiring ex-offenders because their technicians would enter their customer’s premises and they are fearful of the backlash if the customers did not like the idea of having ex-offenders in their premises. Mechanics, though, do not face such situations.)
But of course, the main storyline was about Day – or the challenges faced by a visually impaired person. It would be challenging for the production team to juggle both back stories. And since society is sympathetic towards the physically disabled more than ex-offenders, the logical choice was to focus on the former.
It was also the glossing over of Mohk’s backstory that culminated in the logical plot holes in Ep 11 that viewers could not come to terms with. Why would Mohk not bring up the topic of him being selected for the job?
Although he is “Phi” to Day, Mohk is nowhere much older than Day. His mental development was also stunted with his incarceration; when he couldn’t find a proper job during his community based programme and post release, he was also missing out on a lot of growth opportunities through interaction with the average members of the society. If he was 18 when he was imprisoned, his mental age was definitely not over 18 when he met Day. It was why he couldn’t handle it as well as, if not better than, Day when this issue arose.
Day displayed a hell lot of rationality in the scene. He saw that Mohk was being super emotional in the handling of the issue (which is the reason why ex-offenders tend to be stuck in vicious cycles, because they lack the rational mind to make good decisions under duress (notice how he left his work halfway and incomplete to search for Day?). Breaking up seemed extreme, but it was the only way to pull Mohk from the emotional stress and set his mind on working out his career.
Parting Words
There is supposed to be a time jump between Ep 11 and Ep 12. Such tropes are usually deployed to indicate a character growth – mostly from a trigger incident that culminated into the time jump. In this case, I think this reinforces the fact that both characters weren’t mature enough to have handled the situation “the mature way”, and whatever story development that happens after the time jump would have been another attempt at “redemption”, this time, to right the wrong in Ep 11.
Technically, time jumps signal either a happy or an open-ended ending. Fans are fearful that the director would kill off Mohk to create a bad ending. However, since the drama had followed a rather restrained way of storytelling (and being consistent about it), I doubt the possibility of such an over-the-top plot twist. I would think the production team would choose an open-ended ending, so as to pave the way for a second season or at least a special episode. They’re in the business of making money after all.
Till then, don’t get BLown away!
*Disclaimer: All pictures used were of the property of the producer, even if they were posted on Twitter by fans. This post is meant for sharing the joy of watching BL; if you’re offended by BL content, please click away from this post.