It was no secret that the BL drama scene is full of “landmines”. Many times, we would click in to watch a new BL series only to regret succumbing to our curiousity.
2020 was touted as the tipping point for the BL genre. Thanks to the pandemic, people were cooped up at home and production houses started to upload whatever dramas they had in order to capture the stay home market. Unexpectedly, interest for BL drama series caught on, thus began the rise in popularity for everything BL.
The phenomenon prompted a gold rush of sorts by producers to cash in on the growing BL pie. At the same time, actors were still cautious about taking on BL roles. After all, being typecast in the minority BL genre is a big gamble for someone who wants to make it big. This resulted in a shortage of good talents taking part in the production of BL dramas.
Therefore, amidst the blooming of BL dramas in the later half of 2020, many of them were actually just a waste of time. Ironically, even viewers who were watching dramas for good looking actors started to complain about the lack of quality in BL series. At the risk of getting trashed by fans, here are some of the BL dramas that I think you can give it a miss.
Why R U
Aired at the same time as 2gether The Series, Why R U was playing catch up with the BrightWin popularity. Unlike the former, which had 1 main couple and 2 side couples, Why R U had 2 main BL couples to helm the show.
Apparently, the production team adopted a film-while-airing production process. So filming was affected by the lock down in Thailand. So much so that the last few episodes were mainly focused on just one couple – TutorFighter.
Which was ironic, because the series opened from the POV of Zon, from the SaifahZon couple.
Other than storytelling, the production team was obviously chasing after clicks. For those who enjoyed raunchy and steamy sex scenes, Why R U had no lack of them. In fact, the whole of episodes 9 and 10 were devoted solely to Tutor and Fighter making out. They had sex in the hotel room, sex in the bath tub, sex in the pool, sex on the beach and sex in the middle of the sea.
If you like soft porn, this would be the series for you. In fact, you can jump straight to Episode 9 for 100 minutes of soft porn. On YouTube. For free.
The redeeming factor was the more innocent interaction between SaifahZon, especially when they were being chanced upon by their classmates while they were doing silly things to each other – stuff close male friends would do, but bordered on being “too much”.
Zon’s helplessness was cute, but was sometimes too washy for comfort. Unfortunately, SaifahZon was basically cut out from the series after episode 8, and returned in the finale to tie up loose ends on their storyline.
While one could say that Why R U suffered because of the pandemic affecting its filming schedule, the fact that the producers chose to replace SaifahZon’s scenes with sex scenes of TutorFighter spoke a lot about their intention.
Full marks for effort, for the actors Saint and Zee had to take one for the team by being part time soft porn actors, but zero for what a BL drama should be.
In fact, this series would deepen the prejudice against BL dramas, as being low quality and depending on sex to drive viewership.
EN of Love
The other BL drama to avoid was also surprisingly popular based on Twitter retweets.
EN of Love, by Studio Wabi Sabi, focused on 3 BL couples in – no marks for guessing it right – a Bangkok university. Instead of telling 3 storylines concurrently, EN of Love was split into 3 mini-series, with each series focusing on 1 couple within the same BL-verse. So each couple got about 4 episodes of air time, and cameo-ed in other couples’ stories.
Like many BL dramas, EN of Love suffered from the usual issues – bad acting, non existent storytelling and insincere post-production. Many fujoshis still supported BL dramas despite all these failings only because of one thing: the eye candies. In fact, even mainstream drama stuck to this mantra of engaging good looking, if not spectacularly dashing, actors and actresses to ensure a teeny bit of success for their drama productions.
Not EN of Love.
Right from the first episode, it was apparent that the producers weren’t concerned about looks.
Either that, or the producers had serious judgement in beauty.
Or the actors paid them to play in the drama.
Thankfully, the choice of actors in the looks department improved as we progressed through the mini-series. In fact, the last of the 3 mini series gave a sensing that EN of Love had reverted to the usual mechanics of BL dramas.
In a way, the mini-series format saved the drama. One could start from the 2nd mini-series, without the need to know exactly what happened in the first. By the 3rd series, you would be forgotten for thinking the first mini-series belonged to another drama.
If you’re still curious, you can jump straight into the 3rd mini-series “EN of Love – This is Love Story”:
My Engineer
My Engineer was a highly anticipated and highly popular BL series. Before it aired, there were always tweets about this series, how the premiere date had been postponed and whatnots, and a lot of discussion would ensue. Admittedly, that did create heightened anticipation for this engineer de la engineer BL drama.
It also followed the love stories of 3 couples, with a focus on Bon and Duen. In fact, the storylines were your typical cheesy teenage romcom 偶像剧, but the drama somehow just sent shudders down the spine every time I watched it.
The series opened with a weird duet that seemed to throwback to the lakorn of the 90s. So many questions popped up when I first heard the song. Why was it a male-female duet? Why was the melody and arrangement so cheesy? Why did the singers use that “oily” style of singing? Why did the opening credits look like a high school powerpoint presentation?
The awkwardness also extended into the actual show itself. Why did they say Bon was a hunk when all we saw was a skinny boy? Why did Duen cry like he was a girl? Why did Frong’s (not Frog) school uniform look like that of a real estate agent? Why did Ram, with all his manly tattoo and cool demeanour, allow King to plant a flower into his hair? Why didn’t Thara observe doctor-patient confidentiality?
The drama also suffered from a typical flaw of trying to fit an existing story into the BL genre. It was as though they scripted the series like a mainstream romcom, and then decided to cast an all-male cast.
However, if you suspend all judgement, the series is a rather easy show to watch. In fact, if you replaced all the soft roles in each BL couple with an actress, most of the scenes wouldn’t feel so out of place.
Challenge yourself not to clench your fist when you watch this series:
Parting Words
Fact: BL drama suffers from low quality production. Fujoshi and BL fans knew this, but supported the BL genre nonetheless, because of… passion and the hope that some day more talents would be willing to invest their time and effort into the niche genre and elevate the overall standards.
This hope was not all futile. GMMTV revolutionised BL drama and everyone who watched their early productions would know that their production standards had improved. If not, we would not have gotten 2gether and The Shipper in 2020.
However, there are still BL dramas that just don’t make the cut. Many people liked those dramas because they supported the actors or the original novel. However, fans still need to maintain an objective and fair criticism of the dramas, so that investors and production teams alike know what to improve on in their next project.
If you were to make an introduction to someone who has never watched a BL drama, you wouldn’t want to show them Why R U and make them think all BL dramas are sleazy and like soft porn.
Neither would you introduce EN of Love, because impression counts, and the cast in the first episode was downright ugly. And My Engineer with the shuddery opening song and out of place couple interactions?
Really, what we really want would be to show them the best dramas. 2020 was a good year for BL drama and there were many good productions, like Cherry Magic and I Told Sunset About You. Those are the BL dramas we should be introducing to newcomers!
If you are a BL drama fan, be sure to check out my other posts on this topic. Till then, try not to get BLown away!