#ben meta series

[bengiyo]

Knock Knock, Boys! is an Ideal First BL for New Viewers

I often talk on @the-conversation-pod about how I react to BL from the lens of a queer media critic actively trying to recruit queer media viewers to BL. I want those viewers to join us in BL, and so I value shows that have strong character writing and satisfying resolutions for their drama. New viewers don’t always understand or recognize romance or BL tropes right away, and sometimes things go over their heads. In that vein, Knock Knock, Boys! may be one of the most useful shows I’ve encountered in the last year for this exact purpose. 

Rating: 9, Highly Recommended

Runtime: 12 50+ minute episodes

Country: Thailand

Network: WeTV

Availability: WeTV, GagaOOlala

Knock Knock, Boys! places four young men at a transitional point in their lives. Split evenly between first-year college students and working adults, each character is running from something. Peak is running from a marriage to a woman, Thanwa is running from a bad relationship with his ex-boyfriend, Latte is running towards graduation, and Almond is running away from his sheltered existence. Over the course of the show, these two pair off based on their shared age brackets in one of the most sex-positive shows I’ve seen this year, with a common theme about how honesty and commitment to each other gives people the space they need to grow. More than anything, this show values patience and kindness in relationships in a way that I cannot overstate.

As the ice starts to break, they learn that Thanwa and Latte have had active sex lives (Thanwa exclusively with men, and Latte with all sorts of people) and establish a rhythm within their home. Thanwa makes most of their meals, and Almond has to wake Latte up every day because he ignores alarms. The original conceit that connects our quartet beyond their shared housing incident comes from Almond promising to pay the rent for a year for anyone who helps him lose his virginity to his high school crush, Jumper. Hijinks ensue as the boys try to befriend Jumper, and angle for him and Almond to grow closer. As with any story like this, Latte ends up developing feelings for Almond, while Peak and Thanwa grow closer. 

More spoilers ahead, I want to talk about each character, and what I liked so much about each. These boys became one of my favorite friend groups we’ve had in a while. I am a huge fan of age gaps in queer friendships, and this show has much of it.

Thanwa: Played by the talented Seng Wichai, Thanwa is a great answer to the question of “Where do the quiet gays go?” He clearly knows his way around cruising spots, or knows how to use the apps, and yet everything we know about his shows that he’s geared towards domestic life and his hobbies. He dresses like a normie all the time, he loves cooking, and he loves eating. He’s clearly a thoughtful and reliable friend, and it’s that commitment and reliability that eventually gets him a job he actually wants to do. More than anything, he gave far more grace to a closeted man he cared about than I ever expected AND HE WON. Seng remains one of my favorite BL performers because of his ability to play ugly and goofy. He’s so beautiful because he is capable of playing weirdos well. 

Peak: Played by BL veteran Best Vittawin, Peak is running from compulsory heteronormativity. He’s expected to marry the daughter of a family close to theirs, and he is letting this all happen to keep his stern father happy. Peak has been running away from himself ever since his mom died. He saw how much that hurt his dad, and he’s struggled to be a problem-free son for a long time as a result. The weight of expectation on him presses down on Peak so hard that he can’t even focus half the time, and literally zones out as he tries to cope. Best gives a wonderful performance as Peak, especially in the final episodes, as he finally unburdens himself and blossoms as a result. This is my favorite Best character of all time, and Peak is one of my favorite portrayals of what it means to love someone enough for them to leave the closet on their own terms. 

Almond: Played by Nokia Chinnawat, who appeared in Thank God It’s Friday (2019), Almond is such a fun view into what modern gay boys could be like. He’s young and horny, and he wants to get laid! He’s not embarrassed about this, but he is shy. I loved the way the show used his enthusiasm as a way to further its PSA agenda in such a fun way. Almond is also one of the few rich kids we’ve had in these dramas that isn’t inherently insufferable. I like how his wealth mostly comes up as a problem solving tool, and he doesn’t feel too much like a snob after the first few interactions. I also loved his arc of getting over his unrequited crush on Jumper into recognizing his feelings for Latte. Nokia himself shows a real knack for physical comedy and expressiveness that makes me genuinely want to follow his career beyond this show. 

Latte: Played by Jaonine Jiraphat, Latte fills the role of our sexually experienced queer in the group. Confidently pansexual, Latte was so much fun for me because he and Thanwa had no shame about the sex and relationships they’ve had before. I loved how consistently Latte was shown to be emotionally present and sincere in all of his relationships. It could have been so easy to present him as promiscuous or slutty, and instead they present him as beloved. Every one of his former lovers we encountered seemed happy to see him again, and also resolved about the time they’d spent together. More than anything, I deeply appreciated how patient he was with Almond without suddenly becoming a sexless being because his boyfriend was shy or nervous. Jaonine was incredibly charming in this role, and I hope casting directors take notice. 

The Supporting Cast: The supporting characters were perfectly calibrated for their roles in this show. Jumper (Pak Varayu) made total sense as Almond’s crush, and has a great arc of Almond falling out of love with him, and becoming briefly enemies with Almond before reconciling. Lookpeach (Guitar Tunthita) plays the role of the modern faghag in a way that feels like Thai BL doing corrective work on the role of fandom in BL, and I have deep love for this character. Jane (Naya Gorrawiya) is the friend that everyone deserves; I loved the reveal about how personal her understanding and support for Peak has been this whole time. This show even calibrated it’s villain well in Max (Tuss Thotsawat), who showed that there are far worse things than cheating in broken relationships. 

Final Thoughts: I am so excited to show this show to my friend Emily, who’s been watching BL with me since early covid lockdowns. While this show has a few small stumbles that keep it from getting a 10, I don’t want to downplay how refreshing it was to watch a show that had a clear vision of what it wanted to be, and executed it the whole time. I commented during episode 1 that it felt more like a romcom than a BL, and the show said that through Lookpeach in its final episode! It built believable queer friendships in front of us, and understood the emotional core of most of its angst and drama all the way through. This show avoided veering too far into melodrama, and remembered that it was a romantic comedy the entire time. It also managed to be consistently sex-positive without feeling exploitative of its talent, or by letting the audience down on the sex front (I will be thinking about Almond and Latte’s first time and the morning after for a long time). This show also has parents apologizing for the knots they tied their children into. I don’t know a better Thai show airing during this season. This show is a real delight, and one I urge you all to show your friends who might be looking for a gay romcom. 

[istanchan]

Something I noticed in Step By Step

Ep 9 - The shift of the light

Pat starts off with light around him framing his face. When he sees Jeng for the first time, Jeng is blurred in the background with the flames in the front. Jeng has always been in the back of his mind, and Pat has always had other things to worry about. But all that is changing. Jeng likes him, he doesn’t know how he feels, and Jeng is leaving.

Pat closes his eyes, makes his wish, and blows out the candle. The light vanishes around him. The camera then flashes to Jeng, who is now lit up, a spotlight shining down on him. Pat can’t ignore Jeng anymore, he can’t tamp it down. We don’t know what he wished for but if were to take a wild guess it would most likely have something to do with Pat’s lovely situation with his boss Mr. Jeng.

Anyways, This moment was done so beautifully and the way the light was used so clever. I didn��t see anyone else talk about it so I wanted to :)

[wen-kexing-apologist]

On the Subject of Pat 2.0

Hello! It’s your resident 25 year old working their first job out of grad school with no family in the area and a friend group that is comprised mostly of people older than them here to talk about "Pat" Phakphum Tangwatthana another resident 25 year old working his first job out of grad school with no family in the area and a friend group that is comprised mostly of people older than him. 

I have seen some confusion or distaste around Pat and Pat’s storyline in the most recent episode, and I understand the criticism around the editing needing to be tighter, but I do just want to talk about my own perceptions of Pat and why I didn’t need any more explicit explanations for his behavior than we already got. 

It’s essay time :D

Pat and his emotions in Episode 9: 

We start the episode on Pat’s point of view, cutting back to the previous evening and establishing Pat’s level of inebriation

Gif from @pharawee

Everything is ghosting and blurry and it is very clear that Pat was out of his head if not out of his body when he was having fun with Jeng on the dance floor. This is evidence enough as far as I am concerned that Pat had absolutely zero knowledge of Jeng’s dance floor confession. But what he does remember is learning Jeng is queer. Which as we are all aware, rocks his fucking world. 

Now, I wrote in my previous timeline that narratively, Pat has never had the time to contemplate the sexuality of his boss. At the very beginning, he spills glass jelly on Jeng’s shoe and meets a kind and very attractive man, and then he just simps over this very Lorge Man for awhile while Jeng is actively trying to manage a crush on an employee because he understands would be a huge HR Violation if he were to try to pursue that thread. But Pat has been flirting hard, in ways that are obvious if you are queer and able to identify them, but less so if you are straight and don’t automatically look at the level of familiarity as flirting. However, we have to look at when, where, and how Pat and Jeng break their professionalism and where they maintain it.

Pat only initiates the break in professionalism when he is drunk and/or out of the office. His criticisms of Jeng he gives in the review? Drunk. His commentary about how when he first met Jeng he was nice and he is having a hard time reconciling that Jeng with micromanaging boss Jeng? Drunk. Hanging all over him and tugging at his shirt? Drunk. Hanging all over him and tugging at his shirt round 2? Drunk. 

The rest Jeng initiates. He engineers the dinner in his office, he asks Pat to come over on Sunday to work, he suggests Pat get ready at his apartment, he suggests he and Pat share a hotel room, he asks Pat to accompany him to the furniture store, he calls the video of drunk!Pat cute, he asks Pat to go on the restaurant tour with him. 

So, from this we know that Pat is aware enough of the office gossip and when in control of his mental faculties, is able to temper his feelings towards Jeng while at work. And that Jeng has been simping hard from the beginning, and Pat has been reciprocating the energy whenever Jeng starts the interaction. 

But we also know that Pat has a difficult time handling his other emotions, especially while at work. Partially because he is young, partially because he is exploited, partially because he is almost certainly spending a lot of his time focusing on a) not having a meltdown and b) not hitting on his boss in front of his coworkers. 

Anyway, the timeline of Pat’s immediate emotions around Jeng’s sexuality confession I have previously outlined so just keep that in mind while I continue to ramble about Pat in this episode. 

Pat learns Jeng is gay, freaks out about it because Jeng is fully aware of everything Pat has been doing, and Pat is fully aware that Jeng has been intentionally flirting with him this whole time. Spirals about it in his dreams the whole night and wakes up hungover and having an existential crisis about what the fuck comes next for him. 

He takes the day off, tries to give himself some space to think, process, reassess, and figure out his next steps. But instead…his Mom is in town, and in his kitchen, cooking him breakfast. 

What is she doing here? He doesn’t know, it’s a surprise, and a good surprise because we know he has a good relationship to his parents, and you can tell that from the way he interacts with his mother. But a mother is going to mother, so she’s going to comment on his eating habits, and he’s going to lie about how often he eats instant noodles, and she’s going to check in on his health, having seen him absolutely plastered the previous evening, and she is going to ask about the very kind and handsome man that helped Pat home and made sure he was safe. 

And she’s going to say a passing comment about Pat being a burden to his friend.

Which, looking at Pat’s face here, was not really what he wants to be hearing at this particular moment. Not when he is trying to get Jeng out of his head, not when he is trying to create space to figure out what he is feeling about that entire situation, the reality that he could have what he wants, the understanding that Jeng has been wise to Pat’s attraction to him this whole time. Not when he got in to that whole situation with Jeng last night because he was trying to distract himself from being sad about breaking up with Put. His parents live in another country, they have no idea what is going on in his life, his mother sees her son was out with a nice man and so has no reason to suspect something would have been wrong. So she stumbles right in to one of Pat’s sore spots. 

“Where did you meet him?” she asks and Pat’s goes:

If anyone needs a live action shocked pikachu face, look no further. He knows he cannot tell her. He knows what it would sound like, what it would seem like, how inappropriate it would appear for him to say “I met him at work” and even more so if he has to say “that is my boss.” 

He’s had the realization that Jeng is gay, and therefore that a relationship between Jeng and Pat is possible, and he is now having the realization of just how bad it would appear to literally anyone on the outside. Even now, even before they are dating, when they are just coworkers and friends, his mother knowing that he was out, late at night, that drunk around his boss??? Absolutely not. Pat recognizes that and quickly shifts the focus of the conversation away from Jeng, asking his mother about a doctor’s appointment she is supposed to be getting to. 

Another outfit, and another day has passed. Pat is staring at the stuffed tiger that he got on his furniture -date- shopping trip with Jeng. A stuffed animal that he has been using as a replacement for the shark stuffed animal that he had when he was with Put and that Put has used to manipulate Pat into talking to him and into considering re-entering into a relationship with him. This tiger here is serving as both a reminder of Put, the fact that Pat was unable to love Put because of his feelings for Jeng, and as a reminder of Jeng, whose sexuality, level of availability, and messy HR potentiality are all front and center in Pat’s mind. So he hides the tiger away in a drawer where he doesn’t have to look at it, so that he isn’t faced with a constant reminder of the personal crises in his life, because he is young, and his parents are here, and he’s never experienced this particular combination of emotions before, and to talk to his parents about his dilemma he would have to explain this situation to his parents and I don’t think Pat believes he can talk to anyone about it. Because all of his friends besides Ae are friends from work, Jaab is Jeng’s brother, Jen and Jaab are going through it and Jen is quitting, Kanon was on the production team and Kanon is married to Ae so whatever Pat says to Ae may get back to Kanon pretty quickly. Chot is fully incorporated into the office life and is fully aware of what is going on (and in fact may think Pat and Jeng are much further ahead in their relationship than they are) but Pat thinks he’s being sly about his feelings for Jeng, and Chot being directly in the office rather than on an outside production team is not going to be a draw to talking about his feelings for his boss. 

Meanwhile, Jeng is approaching the other queer in the office to ask if Chot has seen Pat cause he hasn’t been in the office in a few days and realizes that Pat is taking days off without even

notifying him. Readers, I do not need to show you Chot’s face throughout all of this. Chot is 150% convinced that Jeng and Pat are in the middle of a lover’s quarrel. I need a Chot live reaction to finding out that Pat and Jeng haven’t fucked yet, and a gravestone for Chot when he learns that Pat thought Jeng was straight. 

Alright, so, Jeng is in his sad boy hours clearly pining after Pat in the office in front of Chot, but pushes that all back down in order to perform his necessary duties as a boss. Jeng too, is trying to keep control of his emotions, but will end up losing his grip of them and having an utter break down. 

But this is not about Jeng, this is about Pat 

Pat’s Mom is here, but she’s settled in, and Pat’s off work, so maybe now he has time to try to process some of his emotions? 

Nope! Dad appears!

And what? Another surprise! Another parent coming to stay at his house without warning, and for what reason? 

…

Oh. 

Oh shit. 

Pat has completely lost track of the passage of time. Which hey, works for Ae going from 0 to 30 weeks out of nowhere. Why does his Dad come to Thailand around this time every year? 

It’s almost Pat’s birthday, and Pat has completely forgotten. This man has been juggling all of his work, a ton of his coworkers assignments, MLM schemes (the only mlm Pat is interested in is…nevermind), the Forge project, The Forge commercial shoot, leading the commercial shoot, his relationship with Put, his breakup with Put, navigating remaining professional in a workspace with his recent ex when emotions are still raw, and his mounting feelings for actually gay actually single hot boss man. On top of that, Pat is living alone, surviving off of ramen noodles, and (iirc) waiting to see if he makes it past the probationary period and is actually going to be allowed to stay on as an employee when that window is over. Jen is an adult, and not one Pat knows very well, Chot has his shit together and is engaged, Ae and Kanon are adults, married, and soon-to-be-parents, and Jaab is his age but is just as much if not more of a hot mess than Pat is. Pat gets convinced to go on that restaurant tour by Ae and their other friend, but those two are straight and therefore will not get what Pat is spiraling about after finding out Jeng is gay. So where can Pat go? Who can he turn to for advice? Who is going to have the time and the understanding and the patience to help him navigate all of these rising pressures? 

Well, we get a good indication, of where that is heading because Pat’s dad takes one look at Pat’s utter shock at realizing that he has forgotten his own birthday and states: 

Life must be pretty hard lately. His father is in the know, he’s gettin’ wise, gettin’ with it. It’s a great dynamic of Pat pretending to be fine for the sake of his mother, and then having no ability to hide from his father because the initial shock of the realization meant he wasn’t able to mask his emotional state. 

He burns his ramen noodles, his father cooks for him. Gives him vegetables. Calls it like it is in Pat’s life even though he doesn’t have the full context. 

Pat returns to work, and Chot starts doing his gay fairy godmother deal, vague-posting about what he thinks Pat’s problem is through the lens of his own issues. He knows Pat is young, and Pat is coming out of a relationship, and that Pat does not have a lot of guidance on the whole Being Gay in Thailand thing, despite being pretty comfortable in his sexuality and navigating his relationship with Put pretty maturely, if we’re honest. Chot is reaching out, Chot is extending the hand, Chot is trying to turn the tide of their relationship from just work friends to friends who can rely on one another in their personal life.

Now, Pat has been dissociating for the entire conversation thus far, because realizing he has forgotten his birthday because he’s been so caught up in everything has started his death spiral. When Jeng came out he tripped into it and was gripping at the edge of his remaining sanity by trying to give himself time and space to work through his emotions, but the arrival of his father and the understanding that he has not been thinking about himself for however long is what starts this final (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempt at managing his emotional state. 

But Chot’s admission that being gay is hard for Krit, snaps Pat out of it a little bit, and we get Pat’s “At least he’s straightforward with showing you that he loves you” and now…Pat has not been paying a whole lot of attention to what Chot was saying, so this is either Pat being very good at processing information while dissociating, and/or Pat picking up on the part of the story that is most relevant to him and attaching his own frustrations with his current situation to it. 

“At least he is straightforward with showing you that he loves you” 

Okay, so let’s explore who this is about. That’s right. It’s about literally every possible romantic pursuit of his in the last few weeks/months. Put, MLM guy, and Jeng. 

On the Put end of things, Put left Pat two years prior, valuing his job over his relationship with Pat while simultaneously struggling with his own queerness. When Pat and Put get back together, Pat pours his whole heart and soul into trying to make the relationship work. Because he needs it to work. Because he’s in love with his boss and he can’t be in love with his boss because that way madness (and job loss) lies. We do see moments of them being lovey-dovey, we see moments of flirtation, but the show is extremely intentional about showing that Pat and Put’s relationship is not a happy one. Put ignores Pat over dinner, that dinner scene where Put is mostly focused on his cellphone is dimly and cooly lit, with the tiniest smidge of warmth behind Pat and nothing anywhere close to Put. 

They make out in a hotel and Pat asks if Put likes him, and Put does not give him an answer, he just flips the question back around on Pat. Pat doesn’t answer either, not at first, he just kisses Put, and then realizes that it doesn’t feel the way it used to, and whatever feelings he may have had for Put before are no longer there. Because he is in love with his boss. So he leaves Put and goes to the party to seek out the person he wants to be around/with. When Pat breaks up with Put he calls him out on his attempts to manipulate him. So Pat is sad about the break up, sure, and he is allowed to be. But he is also reconciling here with the fact that Put never showed interest in him, unless and until Pat was threatening to leave. 

Then we get MLM guy, who is very forward in his interest with Pat. Pat is picking up what MLM guy is putting down (he thinks), and gets all excited about the prospect of having another Hot Tall Boi to channel his energy into so that he isn’t left to think about Jeng or Put’s return to Thailand. Pat is excited for the “date” and is devastated when it turns out this man wasn’t interested in him at all, he just wants him to join a multilevel marketing scheme. After which Pat is harassed at work and hounded by this man until he is literally threatened. So now Pat has to grapple also with the knowledge that the one person who seemed to be obviously, openly interested in him, was just using those emotions to get something out of him. Yet another manipulation.  On the Jeng end of things, Jeng is forced to be subtle about his love for Pat by nature of the power imbalance inherent in a boss and employee relationship. Jeng has been intentionally engineering his romantic advances to have as much plausible deniability as possible. Which means, Pat, thinking that Jeng is straight, has not picked up on them. Or rather has convinced himself that Jeng wasn’t being intentional about making moves. If Jeng had been more obvious, had pursued him the way that Pat is used to being pursued, that is, more explicitly, if Jeng had even been more obviously queer, then Pat would have known immediately. But Pat has a luxury that Jeng and even Put do not, which is that him being clockable will not ruin his whole life the way that Put and Jeng as famous, prominent people would run the gauntlet if that information were to get out. Put says it himself in Episode 8: “A famous person like you might not be able to come out a lot, right?”

Jeng isn’t clockable as queer to the average person, and as Pat has been actively trying not to read into things, and has been trying to rein in his own horniness for Jeng, Jeng isn’t clockable to him either. SO…all of this to say that Pat feels that Put was not straightforward with their love, and that Jeng has been disguising all of his attempts at wooing Pat under a safety blanket of work. So Pat is feeling primarily hurt, lied to, and betrayed. 

So, what we end up getting with Jeng is…manipulation. He has manipulated every situation to get Pat and him alone together, while at the same time not clueing Pat in to the fact that is what he was doing. While additionally not clueing Pat in to the fact he is gay. While also not clueing Pat into the fact that he’s Jaab’s brother until Pat literally walks into the middle of an interaction between Jaab and Jeng. While also not initially clueing Pat in to the fact he is Pat’s boss even after Jeng realized. 

The past two people that Pat has been interested in have manipulated him over and over again. 

His coworkers have manipulated him over and over again. 

How else is Pat supposed to see Jeng not being explicit about his feelings? He’s being manipulated once again by Jeng not saying anything. 

Chot lets Pat know that he can talk to him about anything, and Pat says “it’s ok, it’ll pass”. 

Why is that relevant? CAUSE OF PARALLELS THAT COME LATER. 

Anyway, Pat is giving an explicit invitation to talk about his feelings, and he brushes it off. Because Chot is an office friend in his office where his boss who he is having feelings about works, and Pat is very much oblivious to the fact that any gay within a 20 mile radius can see what is going on between Pat and Jeng. So he thinks he can’t be honest. Because that puts him and Jeng both in a sticky situation. 

So he puts on a brave face, because he thinks that he can, because Jeng isn’t supposed to be in the office today. Because Chot told Pat that Jeng was out and Chot was covering. (Yet another reason why Pat may not want to talk to Chot about Jeng, Chot is literally acting as his boss right now). Because the thoughts Pat is having, the feelings that he is having, they are manageable so long as Pat does not have to face Jeng…

Except Jeng appears. On a day that he is most definitely not supposed to be here. They are at working, they are at work. Jeng does exactly what Pat has just indirectly told Chot he wishes someone would do. 

He pulls a “boyfriend” and gives his jacket to his freezing love interest. 

Now, is this something Jeng would do in the office? I fucking hope not. But currently, Jeng and Pat are sitting in the back of a dark room, with literally all the other queer people in the office. This is a safe space, this is a shelter. It’s why and how Jeng and Pat’s closeness has progressed in the most recent episodes. Because they have been away from the physical office space, around the straight and sometimes homophobic coworkers, and instead, on set with literally every gay boy known to Man. Jeng knows Chot knows, Jeng knows Jaab knows, having realized that Pat had no idea that he was gay, Jeng has decided he has been approaching things wrong, and gets bolder. 

But, Pat has a) still not processed everything, b) is still oblivious to the fact that everyone around him knows exactly what is happening, c) is in the office, and d) is in the office with JENG who Pat was explicitly told would not be there. So you can imagine the stress he is under, and you can imagine with his track-record of manipulative men, that he is thinking very much that Jeng is playing with his emotions. 

Because Jeng is playing with his emotions. Not intentionally. But Pat himself has never experienced this particular set of challenges before and Jeng is always on the brain. Pat’s emotional state is out of whack and it is at least 50% Jeng’s fault. Pat, again very maturely, hands that token of affection off to Chot, so that it will seem like nothing. So that it will read as nothing to anyone around him. Because Pat doesn’t know that they know. 

Pat, who has still not had the opportunity to get the time and space that he needs from Jeng, because his parents are in town on an extended stay, because he had to go back to work eventually, because Jeng is now right there, once again does the mature thing, and walks away from the situation. He makes space. 

Jeng follows after him, which again, makes it extremely obvious that Jeng is acting inappropriately close to Pat. But Jeng knows everyone in the room knows, which is why he can get away with it. But Pat just wants to be alone and Jeng is not letting him. 

They retreat to an isolated corner. Where they have one of the juiciest conversations to date: 

Jeng: “Did I make you uncomfortable in any way?’

Pat: “No, I’m just tired,” 

Jeng: “Is it my fault?” 

Pat: “No,” 

Jeng: “I’m sorry” 

Pat: “Why are you saying sorry to me, when I said it wasn’t your fault?” 

Jeng: “You didn’t answer my text, ever since that day”

Pat: “Mr. Jeng, could you stop texting me? If it’s not work related. Don’t invite me to go eat. Don’t drop me off at home.”

And Pat says all of this without making eye contact with Jeng. When he finally does look up? He can see how devastated Jeng looks.

It confuses him in fact, to see this strong of an emotional reaction to Pat drawing these boundaries. Because, while Pat has not explicitly stated this yet, he thinks Jeng is fucking with him. This reaction is running very counter to what Pat is anticipating from this conversation. 

So he has to say something else to fill the silence, and to soften the blow: 

“Uh…I want to thank you. Thank you for everything. But please don’t do it again. Especially in front of everyone.”

“I can’t say no.” 

And I take this two ways coming from Pat. First that Jeng being his boss puts Pat in the terrible situation of potentially not feeling comfortable saying no to Jeng. Because Jeng has power over Pat, even though we all know (or I at least hope based on this entire show so far) that Jeng is not the type of person that would take a personal vendetta out on Pat for rejecting his advances in the office” 

Which is why I want to take a secondary lens to this conversation, and read that “I can’t say no” line as a double entendre. Jeng has let Pat know he is gay, Pat has placed all of their interactions into the context of that new information, Pat has realized that Jeng has been pursuing him this whole time. Pat realizes there may be reciprocated feelings involved. Pat tells Chot indirectly that he wants someone to be straightforward in their love. Jeng gives him the jacket. Pat has now been offered a much more clear admission from Jeng about his interest. Pat has feelings for Jeng. Pat has very strong feelings for Jeng. Pat hangs off of Jeng at every given opportunity the second he is out of his head. If Jeng pursues him, if Jeng is genuinely interested in him, if these feelings he has are reciprocated, and Jeng does not give Pat space. Pat will give in to his feelings and they will start an incredibly inappropriate workplace relationship. 

Pat can’t say no because Jeng is his boss, and Pat can’t say no because he’s been DTF from the moment he laid his eyes on Jeng. 

And again, I argue that Pat has actually been navigating this entire situation incredibly maturely. He removes himself from situations where he may be seen engaging in inappropriate workplace relations, and sets firm boundaries around what type of contact he and Jeng can have. 

Pat tries to leave, Jeng pulls him back, wraps him in a hug, and does the thing Pat wishes people would do and is straightforward in his love for Pat: 

Gif from @bellepark

Now here is where shit gets fun (read: terrible) for Pat emotionally. Because, ya know, he hasn’t already been dealing with enough shit. Pat sees Jeng: handsome, rich, successful, talented and cannot possibly fathom a reality where Jeng is actually in to him, a 25 year old in his first job, no wealth, no successful business ventures, who is feeling very much like the is untalented because of Chris’ mom on the commercial set. Jeng is everything, Jeng has everything, what could Pat possibly offer?

Gif from @bellepark

It legitimately does not compute. It is far, far simpler for Pat to assume that Jeng is fucking with him, toying with his emotions, possibly even trying to get Pat to admit to feelings so he can turn around and have him fired. 

And If it is true that Jeng likes him, then how much has Jeng’s crush impacted his ability to accurately critique Pat? Was Pat only told that he was doing a good job by Jeng because Jeng had a crush? Was Pat given the commercial spot because Jeng had a crush? Is Pat even good at anything or does Jeng just want to fuck him and is therefore elevating his positions in order to leverage Pat’s growing importance to get Pat to do what he wants?  

Pat has spent too much time lately being manipulated and being bullied and that is where he is coming from in his interaction with Jeng here. He is young, he does not understand what Jeng could possibly, legitimately want in a relationship with him, and if he lets himself believe that it makes sense for them to be together, then he will not be able to stop himself from getting in to a very dicey HR situation.

Jeng goes home, has a #hotgirlmeltdown and this is where I bring up the parallel that Pat told Chot “It’ll pass” and unfortunately for me Gaga has made it so that when I screenshot I get a black screen so I can’t capture the translation there. But I will just write it down: 

“I can handle it…I think I can…I’m fine,” 

It reminds me of Pat saying “it’s okay, it’ll pass” 

Both of them are lying, but Pat was detached from his feelings when he lied whereas Jeng is consumed by his. 

But this is not about Jeng, this is about Pat so we are gonna cut to Jen’s going away party. 

Pat is wearing the same outfit as when Jeng confessed and Pat rejected Jeng so we know that Pat is coming in to this party riding a massive emotional wave, and trying to temper that storm. Because he doesn’t have time to process that right now, because this is Jen’s party, and because Ae sees Jen sulking and hands Pat the responsibility of talking with him: 

Pat is gonna have to compartmentalize whatever feelings he is having to go handle Jen’s emotional state. 

The significant beats I picked up on in this conversation with Jen are the following: 

Pat saying he wished he had a home in another province to go back to 

Jen saying it is a safe zone for him 

Pat having the reality of being able to run away from his problems immediately crushed by Jen saying that he cannot pursue his dreams back home because everything is in Bangkok 

Pat having the reality of being able to run away from his problems crushed again when Jen says “Well, everything is here and look at how bad it is” 

Jen brushes off his own feelings and asks Pat how he is doing, and here is the crucial part. Huge shout out to @lurkingshan for pointing this out in a conversation we had last night. Jen is quitting. Jen is no longer a coworker to Pat. Pat has someone who is gay, who is no longer going to be involved in company business, and who is moving home to another province and therefore Pat can feel comfortable being honest because Jen is about to become very detached from his world.

“I don’t know, I’m very confused,” Pat says. And this is the first time he has voiced an emotion since he told Jeng he was sad about his break up with Put.

“Is it Mr. Jeng?” 

Pat has his shit rocked by Jen asking him about Jeng so casually, like it is no big deal, like he is In The Know. Pat has really been operating under the assumption that no one could tell he had a crush on Jeng. 

“These two brothers are the same” Jen gets it. Jen is telling Pat he gets it, and he’s telling Pat that neither Jeng nor Pat have been slick. 

“I don’t know, it’s like he’s playing with my feelings,” 

And I know this line may be a point of confusion for some people, because we know that Jeng is being sincere. We know, as an audience, how much of a fucking simp Jeng is for Pat. Jeng would crawl on his hands and knees for Pat. Jeng would almost certainly renounce his family and his title and his wealth for Pat. And if we didn’t get that from the last eight episodes, we are explicitly told how much Jeng likes Pat immediately before this scene. Pat consumed every waking thought in Jeng’s head. WE know this. Pat does not. 

Pat thinks Jeng is playing with his feelings because of what I outline earlier re: all the manipulation Pat has been through recently with MLM guy, with Put, and with the situations Jeng has manipulated to get them alone together. 

Pat believes Jeng is too good to be true, because he’s moved past the stage in the office job where he was so burnt out, stressed out, and exploited that every piece of constructive criticism felt like a personal attack. Pat isn’t angry at his workplace anymore, and therefore isn’t channeling his rage at Jeng anymore, and therefore isn’t focusing on Jeng’s flaws anymore, and as a result thinks Jeng reciprocating Pat’s feelings is too good to be true. Also because Pat doesn’t trust himself. Pat doesn’t see the parts of himself that Jeng sees. Pat doesn’t know why Jeng would like hin because Pat doesn’t understand the ways in which Pat brings life and joy and play in to Jeng’s otherwise extremely serious, almost entirely work-related life. 

But Jen will not let Pat have that. Jen is older, Jen is wiser, Jen is an outside, relatively neutral third party where Pat and Jeng are concerned (Jaab is a whole ‘nother story). Jen can understand where and how Jeng and Pat are good for each other, and as a result he is quick to tell Pat not to sell himself short. 

And he gives one of the most important pieces of advice that he can give to Pat is that if Jeng truly likes him, he’d find a way to tell Pat. 

This singular piece of advice is going to save their relationship I tell you. 

Whatever hope, whatever resolve that Pat has to navigate this storm. To figure out if Jeng actually likes him, if Jeng will do something that convinces Pat that he’s serious is crushed the instant Chot tells Pat that Jeng resigned. 

Now, those of us in the workforce should be screaming “FUCK YEAH!” because Jeng is taking the responsible adult route by stepping away from his role as boss. Which, if Pat and Jeng were to get together would eliminate any conflict of interest, and if Pat and Jeng weren’t to get together would eliminate any fears Pat would have about Jeng a) harassing him b) firing him or c) retaliating for Pat’s previous rejection. 

But…to Pat?! Well, he’s just ruined Jeng’s life. Jeng quit his job, from the company that he built. Pat understands that between Jeng’s position and Pat’s position, Pat is by far the more replaceable of the two. This is Jeng’s family’s company. Pat has realized that he fucked up. Pat is realizing that Jeng is not overstepping boundaries because he is trying to harass Pat, but because he has genuine feelings because the second Pat said to keep it work-only Jeng up and fucking left so that Pat wouldn’t have to worry about seeing him around. 

Pat is thinking, Pat is contemplating, Pat is dissociating, and as he goes to wander like a zombie back to his house at the end of the day, SURPRISE Happy Birthday, Pat! Mr. Jeng baked you a cake! 

AND THIS IS A LOT TO PROCESS CONSIDERING THAT PAT FORGOT HIS OWN BIRTHDAY! But Jeng remembered, and Jeng made something for him. I would love to go on and on and on and on about the lighting in this scene, but this write up is, as usual, far far longer than I anticipated, and a lot of the lighting details were covered in this phenomenal post by @istanchan

So we are just gonna go with the major take away from this scene. The flame is ignited between Pat and Jeng, Jeng is out of focus, and when Pat blows out the candles, extinguishing the flame, Jeng comes in to focus. Pat is now forced to face his feelings about Jeng, in a way he has been desperately trying to suppress for however long of a time frame this episode covers. 

Pat goes home, yet again dissociating because the second that he reattaches his consciousness to his body he knows its fucking over. 

And at this point, Pat has exhausted all avenues. He tried to get over his initial crush on Jeng by dating Put, and realized that he was not actually interested in that relationship. He tried to give himself distance and time to process his emotions immediately following the coming out incident, and was interrupted by his mother, he tried to brush off his feelings in the hope that they would pass, he returned to work and tried to get back into the groove of things under the safe assumption that Jeng would not be there, only to have Jeng show up. He asked Jeng to keep their interactions work related only to have Jeng hug him and tell him he really likes him, he started to have a conversation about his feelings with the only person who would understand, who is about to leave the province, and he maybe is feeling a bit better, and certainly more resolved. We can tell that also in the way that Pat approaches Jeng’s office after his talk with Jen, only to have the rug pulled out from under him with the update that Jeng has resigned. 

He has tried and tried and tried to get over Jeng. He has tried and tried and tried to convince himself that Jeng can’t actually possibly like him back. This man has tried. And he can’t take it anymore. He sits down, his parents sing him happy birthday, they immediately pick up on the fact that Pat isn’t doing well, and they ask the fateful question: 

And this is the first time Pat has really had to sit and process everything. This is the point where he settles down, both exhausted and having exhausted all other options…and everything hits at once. 

“This is the year I forgot my own birthday” my life has been so busy and chaotic I have fully lost track of time (starting a new job, being exploited at new job, getting new boss, getting micromanaged by new boss, being hate crimed at work by my coworkers, best friend gets pregnant, working to get Forge client secured, trying to do 90% of the labor in a one sided relationship with Put, filming Forge commercial and trying to convince the Forge people that he is competent)

“I even forgot that you’d come back to see me every year,” I am a bad child for forgetting my parents would come to visit. 

“It’s like I focused on everything except myself,” I have been avoiding my own feelings and focusing on others (i have been suppressing my feelings for Jeng, I have been trying to put those feelings elsewhere, I poured all my energy in to work and in to the MLM guy and in to Put)

“But I don’t know how to deal with this feeling,” I have tried fucking everything I know to manage my emotional state, which I know is already a weak spot of mine and something I am actively working on and nothing I have tried has brought me even remotely close to working through these emotions. 

His parents immediately jump in to help, but the problem is Pat without context is not making a ton of sense, and the only thing they really have to latch on to is “I don’t know how to deal with this feeling” and his parents give him a hard truth. 

“You can’t escape anywhere.” 

It was something that Pat started to realize in his conversation with Jen, when he told Jen he wished he had a house to escape to, and Jen reminded him that he could have no dreams there. But Jen is heartbroken and fleeing from the bad things in his life, so it hits a little different when Pat’s parents, who he loves, who seem to generally have their lives together, who are divorced but still clearly get along, who love and care for one another despite no longer being married, and who are emotionally very mature, and shining examples to Pat of how to navigate emotional turmoil look right at him and say “you can’t escape this feeling,” 

And Pat has a breakdown. 

Which, in my opinion, makes complete and total sense and is incredibly justified considering everything that he has been through in recent months. Everything that he has been trying to navigate and manage while he is alone in another country, away from his family, with no friends to talk to because of the ways they are connected to him. 

And doesn’t it just suck that you finally have the people who have supported you all your life look right at you and be unable to do anything but hold you through your tears. Physically he has support, but there is no way out of these emotions but through them. 

This is the release, and he still has a lot of shit to sort out, but he’s had a good cry and he’s ready to press on. He goes shopping with Ae, and while he does still seem distracted, he is doing better, he is participating in conversation rather than fully dissociating, he is teasing her (“can i have that cake?”) so he is moving more towards a point of equilibrium. Ae has her baby, makes him an uncle, and that is enough to shake Pat out of the depression spiral he has been in because look at the amazing miracle of life he has just witnessed. 

He returns home from another chaotic and exhausting evening (helping his bestie deliver her baby on the back of a bus #casual) and finds a package waiting for him. 

An incredibly well utilized in-universe ad, of a snack Pat mentioned he liked once, in passing, months ago to Jeng. Jeng has always paid attention to Pat, and I don’t know how much attention Pat has allowed himself to pay to Jeng that would get him to realize that. It’s the aspect of this whole thing that Pat has not been ready or willing to acknowledge. Because the second he realizes that Jeng is gay, the depth of Jeng’s engagement and focus on Pat becomes a lot more clear.

Pat find the happy birthday note from Jeng and collapses on to the bed surrounded by the snacks to think about things. 

To think, in particular, about what Jen said about Jeng finding ways to show he cares if he is serious. 

It cuts to Jeng, who is being driven to the brink of madness, who has been trying to maintain distance, but needs more than life itself to let Pat know that he is serious. It has been days, days at least since he has last spoken to Pat, and he cannot stop thinking about the final thing Pat said to him “Why do you like me, it doesn’t make sense,” 

Jeng sends this message

And the episode ends before we see Pat get that text. I am very excited to see his reaction when he reads that, surrounded by wasabi peas. 

Now, maybe I am way way overanalyzing all of this because I will always come to Pat’s defense, maybe I am trying to convince people that if you just follow the lines and the lights and the body language everything you need to understand Pat is right there because there are so many parts of Pat that live in me, (though many that don’t), maybe I am blind to where the gaps in this episode rest when it comes to how they wrote Pat’s story, but I didn’t need more explicitly stated moments for Pat leading up to this breakdown because, well…

It makes sense to me. 

(thank you to anyone who made it to the end, I recognize this is a long post even for me, haha oopsie. I would be unsurprised if I hit 10 hours total of work on this post between screen-shotting, double checking scenes, and writing it)

[sleazyjanet]

one thing i find so funny in the lost fandom is all the people going like "why did this character not remember this time travelling other character?" likely because you usually don't expect someone to time travel, for one. and also because memory is not a kind mistress

like, ben is likely not going to remember juliet (except subconsciously, if anything) because 24 years passed between when he was 12 and seeing a 30+ years old juliet, and when he was 36 meeting a... also 30+ years old juliet, and while she stayed more or less the same, admittedly, it's been 24 years for him. very likely for him to have forgotten

it's the same with danielle meeting jin in the present timeline of s1/2 etc. like no! she's not going to remember a man she saw for like thirty consecutive minutes and who then disappeared before her eyes. arguably, given her lack of sanity, it's likely she even thought she hallucinated him

and on a similar note, yeah, likely danielle didn't remember BEN from the night he stole alex because, well, it was dark, she was half-asleep and it was a traumatising enough event that she likely repressed it, while simultaneously clinging to it

[waitmyturtles]

TW: probably unpopular opinions on Step By Step’s filmmaking!

I’ve had an insane work week so far, so I don’t have the largest amount of time to write an analysis of Step By Step, episode 8, and I’m already late in watching it anyway. But I will largely point everyone in the direction of @lurkingshan’s EXCELLENT analysis of Jeng’s reaction to Pat’s reaction that Jeng is gay (and to @neuroticbookworm’s post-Shan analysis of their prediction of the road ahead, which I subscribe to). 

I’m also late in watching this because I allowed myself the spoilers yesterday, and was admittedly frustrated to learn that the payoff of this episode is that Pat learns about Jeng’s preferences... in an episode that’s over an hour. It’s a very unpopular opinion I have! The editing and some of the writing of this show suck. I’m gonna repeat myself -- I would prefer crisper writing and dialogue. But I am still in favor of the deep focus on Pat and his mindset. It’s just that in some moments (like in the second restaurant), he’ll disappear and we won’t get feedback on that disappearance until MUCH later. (And forget about Jaab and Jen, I’m leaving that alone for this analysis. The show definitely had the time to examine that more in an hourlong+ episode, but didn’t.)

ANYWAY. Citing @bengiyo‘s and @ginnymoonbeam‘s conversation about Pat’s radar -- I want to build off of @bengiyo‘s comment for a moment, on something I realized when Jeng was with Tae, when Jeng got the text message from Pat that the restaurant crawl was on. Something I realized when Tae was asking Jeng about Pat’s intentions is that:

For Jeng, WORK IS LIFE. We’re spending a lot of time, and the show spends a lot of time, dealing with the boss-to-subordinate conflict. BUT. I would argue that Jeng’s whole world is work. The man is LITERALLY WORKING TWO JOBS, TWO HIGH-LEVEL, EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP JOBS. Man’s insane. 

I give Pat the gigantic benefit of the doubt that he “could” or “should” have known Jeng’s preferences intentions. (@lurkingshan, @bengiyo, and @ginnymoonbeam all know that before seeing the episode, I did state incredulity that Pat DIDN’T know this, so I recant before you all!)

BECAUSE: what PAT is seeing in front of himself, vis à vis Jeng, is a man that is WORKING ALL THE TIME. So I think Pat’s radar is off, in my opinion, because he can ONLY see Jeng as a boss and a leader, and would not allow himself to cross the boss-subordinate boundaries, even in settings where they are “working” on Jeng’s “other” job, because Jeng is a boss in that other space as well. 

And while Jeng doesn’t see this as “working,” Pat certainly does. 

I mean, I’ve tried to get glasses of wine with some former bosses of mine, just to create intimacy and get to know them out of office spaces, and like, all we talk about is work. Some people can’t relax and separate. I get that.

I think Pat ASSUMED Jeng was like that, because in doing social activities, it seems, from Pat’s perspective, that Jeng is still working -- and for that restaurant crawl, he totally is! And Tae knew to call that out and maybe tease Jeng for being a little delulu, which, accurate. 

So I write this, now not in criticism of Pat’s radar, but in grudging support of it, and I say grudging because I do not think the editing of the show is supporting the slow burn anymore. Unpopular opinion, I know. I think this show is doing Pat dirty. I believe the payoff will be good. But the show is dragging and not giving us enough by way of internal communication on Pat’s part to demonstrate intriguing development that grabs me. 

But we get a confession next week. Let’s see how long it’ll take to get there. 

[soppybitorag]

The Captain as Man, Mirror, and Medals.....

a 🚨Red Lever🚨 meta on The Captain appearing in a mirror (and a cracked one at that) in the opening credits of Ghosts and what that could mean in the context of s5e5 and beyond :-D

What do mirrors symbolise?

Briefly, they outer vs. inner perception; who we are vs. what we let people see/want people to perceive us as. Mirrors Cannot Lie, and thusly expose our reality. Reflections are often said to be a persons True Soul, an idea across many early civilisations. It wasn't reflected light rays hitting your eyeballs, it was you seeing your Soul.

But also, we are 'mirroring' people when we copy them, appearing unoriginal and inauthentic.

Captain as Portrait and Mirror -

Now, ghosts can't see their reflections or be captured on camera/film. We don't see Captain looking *into* the mirror, just what is shown to us: the outer self/controlled perception. Also, the way he is framed makes it look like a portrait, something signifying power, virtue, and importance.

What we *see* is a middle-aged man of supposed stature, with a collection of earned medals (reflected, they'd be the right way round, which they aren't irl).

A soldier.

A Truth, as Mirrors Can't Lie.

Portraits can be twisted, however, such as The Picture of Dorian Gray. In it, Dorian's portrait grows more grotesque because of his sins and vices, whilst retaining his external beauty over many, many years.

Captain, likewise, is forever going to look the age he died, much like how Dorian is forever the age of when he got the portrait made. (Not saying they're similar in personality or really any deeper than that, just thought it note worthy.)

It'd be remiss to forget that in the opening creds, Robin is next to the mirror, flickering a lamp.

He is litterally shedding light on the mirror, implying a deeper meaning/more to be understood about what's there. There's also the fact that the mirror is cracked (cracked? definitely distorted).

Cracked Mirror Symbolism -

Cracked Mirrors can be seen as a form of deception: if distorted they can warp the image presented (even when we expect the truth from them), making things appear closer than they actually are (a common occurance in fairytales, for example), or taller/bigger/wider/fractured.

Some people believe broken mirrors weaken the spirit of a departed person. Oscar Wilde famously used this belief to mark a characters' death in, you guessed it, Dorian Gray.

It's worth noting that Dorian Gray is also the story that led to Wilde's imprisonment for homosexuality.

Cracked Mirrors are notably bad luck in many cultures, too. Romans believed that Gods observed them through mirrors, so breaking them was severing that connection, thusly having the Gods curse you with bad luck.

Ultimately, cracked mirrors present a fractured sense of self, where the inner and the outer are at odds with one another, or there is discontent in one or the other. Perhaps both.

What does this mean for Captain?

Well, we *see* a man of stature/inportance with war medals. Virtuous.

In actuality, the medals were always forever out of his grasp (making things look closer than they are) as he never left Britain, as much as he maybe would have liked to. He stole the medals to deceive the Veterans by façading (being inauthentic/copying/mirroring) as one of them, but bad luck had him put them on clearly wrong to all but him. If he had a mirror, he could've fixed it.

He was most likely one of the lowest ranking people in that room, in a house he once had control over, but no longer did.

Those actions directly led to his death, where he forever is entrapped with and condemned to wear unearned medals.

Of course, he most likely wanted to be perceived as integral/noble by people, but he just wasn't. He thinks himself a coward, wearing a mask, and forever will be. It's no wonder that in his purgatory/button house afterlife, he elects to seek control over how people see him. He's just The Captain.

some extra things I wanna throw in here

Captain died looking into Havers' eyes. He could probably see his own reflection at his end. But at least it was in the eyes of someone who truly knew him and loved him. For him. Told him as much. Because Mirrors Can't Lie.

Also, one way to rid yourself of the bad luck caused by breaking a mirror is, apparently, touching a tombstone with one of the shards and burying it deep down innthe ground where spirits can't find it, at nighttime.

So here are some completely random images.

[the-conversation-pod]

Adult Swim

We originally planned to talk about Step by Step during Work, Bitch, and Nini hadn't planned to watch La Pluie until the fall. However, because all of us refused to give up on La Pluie, Nini joined us around episode 8. Both of these shows inspired more writing than we've seen since the heyday of Bad Buddy or I Told Sunset About You. Surface-level engagement was all-but-impossible with either of these shows, and honestly wrung us out more than we were expecting.

It's time for the kids to get out of the pool for the grown folks to talk as Ben and Nini open their third eyes and discuss Step by Step and La Pluie.

Listen on Apple Podcasts!

Listen on Google Podcasts!

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond to chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

0:00 - Welcome 1:15 - Intro 2:08 - Step by Step 4:40 - Step by Step: A Moment of Simping 8:40 - Step by Step: Big Themes 16:52 - Step by Step: The Romance 25:45 - Step by Step: Story Execution 50:25 - Step by Step: Where are we on Tee Bundit? 53:10 - La Pluie 57:50 - La Pluie: The Soulmate Myth 1:08:22 - La Pluie: Lomfon is Rude! 1:13:30 - La Pluie: Tai Also Deserves Some Smoke 1:18:26 - La Pluie: Tai’s Dad Read as Queer 1:20:48 - La Pluie: The Romance 1:32:06 - La Pluie: Depiction of Male Anger 1:35:50 - La Pluie: Treatment of Nara 1:40:47 - La Pluie: The Side Characters 1:44:02 - La Pluie: Sequel Potential 1:46:01 - Outro

The Conversation: Now With Transcripts!

We received an accessibility request to include transcripts for the podcast. We are working with @ginnymoonbeam on providing the transcripts and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes. When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

0:00 - Welcome

Nini

Hello, hello! Your QL fandom aunty and uncle are here with giant sunglasses, brown liquor in a flask, a folded five-dollar bill to slip into your hand when no one is looking, lukewarm takes, occasional rides on the discourse, deep dives into artistry and the industry.

Ben

Lots of simping! I’m Ben.

Nini

I’m Nini.

Ben

And this is The Conversation. About once a season, we plan to swan in and shoot the shit on faves, flops, and trends that we’ve been noticing in the BL, GL, or QL Industry. Between seasons, you can find us typing way too many words on Tumblr.

1:15 - Intro

Nini

Hey Ben, what are we talking about tonight?

Ben

Tonight it's time for Adult Swim. Kids: out of the pool! This season led to so much more writing and meta than we've seen in a really long time. There was so much to say about both of these shows that we ended up needing to move both of these shows out of separate episodes and just shove them into one. 

Tonight we will be discussing Step by Step and La Pluie, and then we'll return with you all at the end with some final thoughts. Nini and I are bracing for this, because we have a lot to say to each other. [laughs]

Nini

This is gonna be round two of fight night apparently, not on everything but on some things. So you guys stay tuned and we'll see you at the end!

2:08 - Step by Step

Nini

Okay, Ben this time I got my eye black on for you. So let's talk Step by Step. Tell the people, what is Step by Step about?

Ben

Step by Step is a workplace drama that centers around a young man named Pat, who is maybe 25 — there was some confusion about that at the end?

Nini

Shade!

Ben

…who is returning to Thailand after completing some of his graduate studies, and is now working at a large corporation inside of an office tower. He is the low man on the totem pole in the sort of digital division of this corporation, and is having a very difficult time. Very early on, he has a kind of flirty interaction with the largest man who has ever existed in BL, and takes a shine to him, but is disappointed when he realizes he's his boss. 

Pat eventually ends up in conflict with his new boss whose name is Jeng…slowly the two of them start to work better together. Jeng ends up putting Pat in charge of a BL advertising project in a mostly queer team, and over the course of the show there ends up becoming this huge misunderstanding between the two of them about whether or not they're on a romantic arc, as the show is also unpacking a lot of really huge themes about where queer people do or don't fit in corporate structures that are more than willing to profit off of them, as Pat and Jeng try to figure out what their relationship is supposed to be.

Nini

I think that was a very fair précis of the plot of Step by Step.

Ben

If you're listening to us and you've watched Step by Step, you may be familiar with the fact that…reactions to the last arc of this show were mixed, to put it mildly. Nini and I ended up falling on opposite sides of the fence on this one, so we have a lot to unpack. 

4:40 - Step by Step: A Moment of Simping

Ben

I'm [gonna] let you have this part first: I want you to just go ahead and have your little fun before we get into the big stuff. We can begin with talking about Man Trisanu and how much you really enjoyed his performance.

Nini

His performance, yes, but before we get to his performance…I mean we say in the intro that there is lots of simping on this show, and I've been listening to our old episodes: we haven't simped nearly enough? So I'm just gonna do like a quick two minutes of absolute simping for Man Trisanu, because my god that man is large. That man is so large that for like the first three episodes, every time he came on screen, like my brain made like the boinga boinga boinga sound, like I could not actually focus [laughs] on what was happening — I had to watch episodes multiple times…

Ben

[laughs] She’s just posting awooga gifs in the chat all the time.

Nini

If I was the kind of person who would get embarrassed by this stuff I would have been embarrassed by the way I behaved. But I don't get embarrassed by this stuff, so I wasn't embarrassed by the way that I behaved looking at this man [laughs]...throughout, but especially in the first three episodes. I just kept staring at him. And then as we got like further and further into the show it was very clear that he's also a good actor, so I was invested in the character emotionally? But that also did not stop the fwarh noises in my brain. The man is large. And he's large and he's attractive. And he's large and he's attractive and he's talented. That's basically my kryptonite. 

That doesn't mean that I cannot be fair about the show—there are things that I'm gonna say about the show that are not complimentary, even though in the end—I'm just like skipping to the part where I score it, I gave it a 9—there are problems with the show, do not get me wrong. But overall, I found it incredibly enjoyable. And I can't lie to you: Man Trisanu was part of why I found it enjoyable. Not just because he is large and attractive but also because he is quite a good actor. Okay, so I got my yah yahs out.

Ben

Solid 20% of the chat is just Nini going: “THAT MAN IS BIG!”

[both laugh]

Nini

He’s a biggun! [both laugh] At one point I definitely just sent a voice message that said “Timberrrrr!”

Ben

It’s like, it would be Tuesday and everybody's in the chat just, “Lorge.” [laughs]

Ben

In terms of simping, I really like Ben Bunyapol’s work in this one. Nini and I tend to fall on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to…the guys we're attracted to in these shows? Unsurprisingly, she was super into Man and all of his work; I really liked a lot of stuff Ben was doing, and I like Nini's commentary that Ben is definitely someone's problem, right now.

Nini

Oh my god, somebody is staring at the ceiling up at night, like, thinking about Ben Bunyapol because that boy is…I mean, not my style, but I can appreciate good lookin’, I can. That is somebody's problem.

Ben

I really like what he was playing with in this. I really—we'll get into this when we talk about the queer themes in this—I really like the specific type of queerness he portrayed in this. And I know that must have been really difficult to hold with everything else he was doing on the show.

Nini

I concur, he also showed some talent. There’s quite a few newbies in this cast, Ben and Man are both newbies, and you see a little bit of that, but mostly they, I think they acquitted themselves very well.

8:40 -  Step by Step: Big Themes

Ben

Since we're disclosing our ratings early in this one: as you all know, Nini gives me a lot of shit on this show about how friendly I am to shows with my scoring? I gave this show a 7.5, because I think the problems in this show make it hard to recommend to people. And the more homework I feel like I have to give people, or pamphlets I have to hand out before they start watching, the harder it is for me to recommend. 

However, there are a lot of things to talk about in the show I think are good. And I think because it's Tee Bundit, and we have to talk about how much the sort of…irritated version of queerness that he's carrying around in his work comes through in his stuff? Think we should start with the big themes, because that's what he clearly cared about the most. So Nini, as someone who is thrilled with this show: what are the big themes you think that Tee is going for this time?

Nini

I mean, Tee is a guy who, kind of hits on the same themes in most of his work? And the themes that he likes to hit on are around like, queerness and capitalism, or like around the monetization of queerness and sort of juxtaposing it against the way that queer people are just kind of suffocating under this fog of homophobia. So that's like one of the things that he definitely gets into in this show, like all his other shows. 

Another thing that Tee is very into is playing with inside and outside, like perceptions of queer people and how queer people see themselves versus how the world sees them? I think that's a big thing. He loves a family dynamic where everybody knows but nobody says anything, that's another big theme that he's playing with in this. These are the things that show up over and over again in his work, that I tend to respond to. I find it really legible, so I quite enjoy it. 

What about you? What kinds of themes did you pick up on?

Ben

The big ideas, like core statements that I can read from this is that: corporations are more than willing to profit off of queer people. They absolutely want to use our talents, our social skills, our managerial skills, and our relationships as well as our lives…to sell shit. But they don't actually want us, particularly in positions of leadership. 

Another thing that comes through very clearly is that queer people cannot experience queer joy in environments that demand a very rigid form of conformity. And also, that everything that queer people want for themselves, including their joy, is not something you can have on the timeline of BL. It's going to take literally years for you to find your happiness. Which is so sad!

Nini

One of the things that I think we had discussed a little bit but didn't really delve into is that you feel a cynicism emanating off of Tee that you kind of don't like? I don't know if you wanted to get a little bit more into that, because we didn't really, like, discuss that too much.

Ben

Tee Bundit clearly—oh, there's a man I could simp for. [laughs] I think that man is very pretty, and I like how fucking angry he is all the time. [both laugh] 

So, Tee is a director who has a really strong eye. Don't know that he's found an editor who works well with him yet. Or has found a really good screenwriting team to hang out with? But he has a really strong eye, and he very clearly hated being on the TharnType set. That comes through so loudly in Lovely Writer, and you can see that this has affected the way he looks at being an adult professional in so many ways. 

Pat is so unhappy in this show. He's so stressed. And Jeng is also so unhappy, because he's so bottled up. It gets a little bit lost sometimes, how specifically pissed off Pat is about everything that's being thrown at him and expected of him. And you can feel that with Tee, that he has to…play to the proclivities of shipping culture, which he clearly despises.

Nini

He's made two shows about it now.

Ben

Quick aside about this, Tee leveled some I think fair criticism of BL as an industry, in that it is profiting off of the appearance of relationships of queer people, but they're all inherently fake, and they're meant to be fake. And apparently a certain set of fans did not agree or like that their ship was used as the example of this, and caused such a stink that they were forced to edit the episode and remove that commentary. And I don't know if this impacted later commentary that may have been in the show. I do not think it would have made the show more legible than it is? But Tee is just so irritated about the inescapability of heteronormativity in his professional life. 

You see this for Pat, who doesn't allow himself to even perceive Jeng as someone he could be with, because of the age difference, the class difference, the work difference…and the way that they are queer is very different from each other. You see this with Chot, who seems to be an incredibly talented individual, but is not someone apparently considered for middle to upper management in any way? You've got this with Jaab where he's just like ‘yeah I'm not playing that. I got money, I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want.’ 

It's so frustrating, because in this show towards the end sequence where they ask Pat to come back for one more ride to try and save this stupid department. They assemble a little team together of queers or queer-friendly people and they end up using everyone's queer adjacent skills in some way shape or form to sell, like, fucking gas stations? [laughs] So they end up having Pat's formerly shitty superior write like, a BL story about looking for, like, a specific fucking juice at the fucking gas station, so that Jaab can very publicly run around on Facebook looking for Jen, the side character he's also pursuing. And then to help pimp this out, they ask Pat to call his ex, who he doesn't want to engage with on this, to help sell this shit—who was also forced to go back into the closet so that he could pretend to be gay with his BL co-star. Which is insane.

Nini

Like when you say it out loud it's like, the levels of bullshit, like Tee is very much about piling on the bullshit. And he's like doing it and pointing to the audience and saying, ‘Look at this! Ain't this some shit? This is the kind of shit that we gotta deal with on the regular!’

Ben

I'm not even done! The head of the company baited them by stripping their marketing budget because he knew his son would use his own money to save this: creating a division between the gays because of lack of loyalty and such. And so like, that comes through fairly loudly. 

16:52 - Step by Step: The Romance

Ben

Part of where the struggle kicks in for me with this show is honestly with Pat and Jeng. Like, I have really strong positive feelings about Pat as a character, as an individual, and I have an incredible amount of feelings for Jeng as an individual—and I want to elaborate on those—but like Pat and Jeng as a unit, I feel, was super frustrating and really disappointing in this show, in a way that felt kind of pissy from Tee? Like I feel like…they don't feel satisfying on purpose. And that doesn't sit right with me, because of genre conventions and expectations. 

I'll let you talk about Pat and Jeng, because I think you feel a lot better about them than I did.

Nini

Yeah, because I think I had different expectations. I definitely took in at the beginning, or before the beginning of the show, some of the stuff around the show where Tee was very clearly saying this isn't a romance. And as we sort of went through the show, I started to understand what he meant by saying that. I think Tee has a, like a complicated relationship with BL, that much is obvious, and I think in a way, the story that he wanted to tell here—he almost resented a little bit, having to use the romance to tell the story. And it, it shows up on a metatextual level in terms of some of the themes and some of the story points and plot points running throughout the show. He's like, can’t I just tell this story? Why do they have to, like, make out? 

There is a tension there, there is a dissonance there. So it's not that I don't understand the problem that people had with it; I understand it entirely. But I was just vibin’. Because…I saw all of that as like, yeah, whatever Tee, like I see exactly what you're saying, but you also put this in here anyway, so I'm gonna enjoy the parts of this that you did put in here. That was my way of dealing with it, and that's why I really enjoyed it—because what he did put in there, for me, between Pat and Jeng? It resonated, because at first it was so much about ‘well this thing can't be and here are all the reasons that this thing can't be.’ It's clear that, like, Jeng is just falling deeper and deeper and deeper, and Pat is just like, I can't, I can't even hear that noise—to the point that he literally drowned the noise out in his own head. To the point where like Jeng actually had to tell him basically, ‘hi, I am actually hitting on you.’ And that, like, it came at the end of like a long tail because also Jeng's very aware that it's, like, an ethical minefield to be hitting on Pat because Pat works for him. So it's just like a swarm of things coming together, in a way that I personally enjoy? 

And I, I’ll acknowledge that my enjoyment of this show is extremely personal to just the kind of bitch I am. I just like this kind of, like, dynamics? I like this kind of exceedingly complicated and, ‘this actually is kind of a gordian knot, but still, through that all, I feel the way I feel and you feel the way you feel, and if we could just like figure some of this other shit out—and we're gonna fuck up figuring this other shit out for a while—then it would be solid, it would be golden.’ But like I said, I can completely understand why people wouldn't rock with that. It's dissonant, it's incredibly dissonant, I’m fully aware of that. But I was vibin’. That's just how I feel about it.

Ben

My issue is that the show doesn't say that. And we have to take that as the acceptable read to move on. Like, all of the ideas about how corporate life is evil for queer people are loud themes exemplified through the characters. I was consistently frustrated with Tee in this particular outing, because important gay decisions happen off screen, and that pissed me off. So much of his idea is about how queer people don't get to make choices—and he doesn't show the queer people making the choices they can make. 

Like for example, they get together and Pat and Jeng don't discuss what being at work is going to look like for them? Which was so irritating for me, because they don't really know each other? And like I'm totally fine with two bitches just being like, ‘let's just fuck about it for a little while and enjoy this ride while we go.’ But like, they don't say that! Like, we have to take that as meaning, and it irritates me, because he's not subtle about his other shit. It feels a little bit tacked on, because you're supposed to just understand this. 

Like—I took that Jeng was broken. I wrote a whole fucking piece about it, about how broken Jeng was by being in the closet as he is, because he lives in a big ass closet. Like his closet was so big I didn't even realize it was a closet, I thought it was an exercise room. No, it's his fucking closet. He lives there, that's insane. But like Pat and Jeng get together, and they don't discuss what being at work is going to be like for them. We don't really see their romance function at all, and they don't give us a sense of the two of them functioning as a pair until the story is over? And that irritates me because what the fuck are they fighting for? Like Jeng is explicitly fighting for the idea of Pat, and Pat is explicitly frustrated that Jeng is trying to manipulate him into the version of Pat that Jeng would prefer him to be. And that is not really confronted in this show. I can't be happy about these two getting together because that particular tension point is just submerged. It isn't dealt with, it's just shoved out of the way. That would have been okay, ‘we're just going to bury this’ is an okay choice, but it's a choice that feels like it happened off screen. 

It's frustrating because Pat's choice to break up with the MLM big tall, and his choice to break up with Put happen on screen. Pat processing his complicated post-breakup feelings with Put is executed beautifully on screen. We don't really get a functional version of Pat and Jeng on screen, and it irked me, but it low-key makes me sad, because what if Tee doesn't have enough to pull from in himself to do that properly? But he can handle, like, the painful shit and the breakup shit really well. Like that makes me sad for him…but, like, it irritates me as a viewer. If the desire to be a partner to Pat, and to change because Pat asked him to, is literally the driving force that moves Jeng through the plot—that is text—I hate that when he gets together with Pat, none of the talking about that occurs at all.

Nini

See I had a completely different reaction to that, because to me, from the time that all of that, like, wasn't happening, and then I saw the way that the plot was going, I was just like ‘oh it's a false start.’ That all makes sense to me, like the fact that Jeng spent all this time basically sweatin’ Pat, and finally, like okay, he gets somewhere, he doesn't want to confront the problems. He doesn't want to confront the problems, and Pat doesn't really want to confront the problems because Pat is just, ‘this man wants me, I want this man.’ Like, they don't talk about the issues. They get giddy on each other, they get high, nose wide open, and they don't want to confront the bad shit. So they don't talk about it. It's a false start. They don't talk about it, they don't talk about the fact that they don't really know each other, they don't talk about anything that matters…that to me tells me everything. There's a deep and intense infatuation happening there. And they're burying their heads in the sand about a lot. To me that's deliberate, and that's why it ends up falling apart. It works for me on a narrative level. 

25:45 - Step by Step: Story Execution

Nini

I think part of the frustration as well—and I think here we're going to start getting into, like, some of the structural issues—because I said that I did have criticisms about this show. And one of the criticisms that I continuously had was that this show feels like it was edited by monkeys on crack cocaine. There is a lack of a certain amount of cohesiveness to the editing, that makes it hard to follow some of what's happening. Like you have to sit with it and like really train your brain and do one, two, three passes at it, to be like ‘oh yeah, that's what was happening, that's what was happening, that's what was happening.’ So I do take that criticism. I absolutely do take that criticism of the show and I agree with it. That the graph of the show, like the way that it was structured in terms of when the pivot point happens—because it happens almost towards the end—I can see where the frustration comes from, absolutely.

Ben

There's so much in this show that is interesting, but is delivered so haphazardly that you have to work for it. Like, the only useful read I got about the hets and their role in this, was to model what showing up and speaking out looks like versus what sitting on your hands and not saying something looks like. With Khanun and Beam, and their attraction to Ae—who has a baby in a hilariously inaccurate birthing scene…

Nini

[laughs] I’m sorry, you said the birthing scene and I had to crack up, like that was the most like, hand wavy like, ‘I'm a gay man, I don't know how these things work’—like ‘she had a baby, like make it like—do whatever you think having a baby looks like, it's fine, moving on’ [laughs]

Ben

She's pushing the baby! And everybody’s screaming! And POP! It's out! [laughs]

Nini

I don't know how the baby came out, because she was still wearing her pants. But eeehh, let's leave that to the side for now. [laughs]

Ben

I'm okay with that, because everything else was so silly, I get them just not wanting to ask Zorzo to take her pants off.

Nini

There's a thematic reason that Ae has her baby where she does, how she does, when she does, like there's a thematic and a narrative reason for that. But the scene itself is like one of the most cracked-out things I’ve ever seen in my life. [laughs]

Ben

That's the whole problem with the show, like there are good ideas here but like, I don't feel them. I hate that you have to think so hard to get to them. Normally I'm okay with subtext for these sort of things, but…you have to basically rebuild the moments that are occurring in the show so that you can think about stuff. 

I ended up frustrated with Jeng by the end, because I feel like his arc peters out. Like there's a, a totally fine read on a lot of these things, but it is so…flat for me. It's fine for a show to make you play with the notion of disappointment? But the disappointment feels…petty, if that makes any sense? Like I don't think the disappointment is built into all the thematic structures. It's just built into the effect that the show wants to engender. It feels a little incongruous, and it's really irritating. I don't mind queer cinema making me feel negative emotions and walk out of a theater going ‘damn, bro.’ I just don't like the way this show is going for that, but also pretending that it's not, towards the end.

Nini

Okay, so here's a thing that we don't normally do, but I think would be useful for this show. So, let's fix it. Our mantra around here is generally: you meet the shows where they are. Right? But: is there a version of this show that you like, and what does that version of the show look like?

Ben

A big problem with this show is, they spend way too much time away from the Jian group office environment. The bubble of the Forge project goes on way too fucking long. The reveal in episode, like, 9? That Pat did not know Jeng was gay this whole time? Is really good, but needs to happen, at the very latest, by episode 8. Because it creates this huge compression effect on the back half of the show, that is so fucking irritating for me as a viewer. The Jeng crying and sad shit is great in episode—10, when that occurs? And like he and Pat get together in episode 11, but the gays need a solid ‘we're going to try to make this work’ episode. You have to put us in the interior of these two settling into each other. We need to understand what we have been yearning for for the whole show up to this point, so that we can understand what they're giving up when they've when they sever—it's romance, they gotta break up, you have to put the characters in a position where they have to figure out, ‘can I go back to the person I was and enjoy my life without this person in my life again?’ The answer is no, because this is fucking romance!—But we need to understand what the romance is and what they're going for. 

And all of the development of Pat and Jeng as a couple, that we're supposed to be benefiting from in episode 11 when they're trying to save the stupid little BL project they're working on, feels completely unearned. Yes, I understand that the reason we're not getting payoff is because their relationship is fundamentally flawed as a false start—but it doesn't flag very effectively as one, because we aren't constantly seeing the misfires when they're trying to do stuff romantically together. We need to fully confront the fact that Jeng is brainwashed into thinking that work life integration can work for queer people. It cannot. And we don't get that. So like when they break up, the feeling is like, ‘good, because y'all needed to.’ And not in a satisfying way that another show might have done. We need to move all of the beats from the end of the show back a whole fucking episode. 

Also, the decision for Pat to go off and start his own thing, take Chot and Ae, all happens off screen. This is a huge set of choices! Why is Chot running off to be with this twink? Like sure, he's playing fairy godmother in the whole show, but why does he choose to go with him? The audience is left to just figure that out. But so much of this show is about the difficult and complex choices that queer people have to make to survive in a corporate world that doesn't want us. So yes, we can infer that Chot was also frustrated with all this drama at work, and is more than willing to go work with the very talented, very successful little baby gay who showed up at his job, and go off and they gonna get this paper together. I get it. It's fine, it doesn't track as wrong for Chot to do that—but Chot's choice also matters in a show about how queer choice needs to be respected! And they don't show Chot making the choice. Like, the gay choices happening off screen are egregious to me. They need to be unpacked. If the show is about how our choices aren't respected, why aren't we showing the interior decision-making of the choices we're forced to make?

Nini

I'll definitely take your point about where the pivot point of the story happens. It's one of the critiques of this show that I completely agree with. The critical path of this show—like the throughline?—to me is so clear. What happens though, is that the critical path is sort of impacted by…like a bunch of these little side quests. Whether it is that the side quest is too present or too absent, the milestones are happening slightly off schedule. The way that it's sequenced works for me, but the way that things like lag behind or in front of each other are a little…squiffy. In terms of the way that the story is constructed, in terms of some of the things that you feel that you needed to see, or that would have made the story better to be able to see, rather than having to conjure up yourself…like, I get that, absolutely. I don't disagree with that, I think that is a valid and accurate critique of this show. I live in my head a lot [laughs] and so that didn't bother me enough to ding it, but I understand why it didn't work for you, and for a lot of other people. 

I think it's just for me that…I was fine with getting pulled along by the story, because I was invested, particularly in Jeng. First they got me with Man being, you know, the size of a barn. And then I started actually paying attention, and they got me with Jeng's character. That's where the show, like, managed to string me along the entire way; I got a hook in, and I'm just like ‘okay, this is what I'm going with.’ But none of the things that you and everybody else is saying about the show are wrong. You're all correct. [laughs] You're all correct. I just…enjoyed it.

Ben

I think for me, both places where this show really broke, and where I really disconnected from this show, were in both of the kitchen scenes, which you loved. Like if we could point to two scenes where things break for me as an audience member? It's the speakeasy scene, kitchen scene—throwing food on the ground, kitchen scene—Pat reconciling with Jeng. It ends up becoming a failure point when Jeng resigns from his company—in his Canadian tuxedo —

Nini

Denim on denim y’all!

Ben

[laughs] And he says to his dad, ‘I have dreams.’ And I'm like, ‘girl, what are they? You ain't said shit for the last three goddamn episodes! What are they? Please sir, talk to the camera, I need to know.’ And like we can infer these things, we can project onto him. I can infer that the restaurant is what's important to him. I can infer that food security for the underprivileged is important to him. But for someone who's as plan-oriented as him, it feels a little weird, that this feels like a undercooked and underdeveloped idea for the character, that's just sort of simmering in the back and I'm like, ‘what, did we even put anything in the pot? Is that just water boiling?’ 

And so we get to these two kitchen sequences. Chot has chided Pat for not properly receiving someone's feelings, which is an idea that's been all over BL recently, that I'm totally into. Like you can reject people just fine, like you do not owe people any booty at all. But if someone tells you that you're important to them, you should at least acknowledge that they made themselves vulnerable to you, and acknowledge those feelings. Fine, good. Go buy a carrot cake and run to that man. But he goes to Jeng and tries to acknowledge his feelings and Jeng's like, ‘okay, we're together now’ and they make out, and I'm like ‘oh okay, sure, I guess? What? No!’ 

And this is when the not talking portion kicks in, and then Pat breaks up with Jeng, for what I believe are incredibly valid reasons of feeling like Jeng doesn't trust him or believe in him, because he makes choices for them without consulting Pat. And Pat feels like Jeng is always undercutting him, and Jaab makes a point about this in the final episode—when he doesn't talk to Jen at all? whatever—and says, ‘you kind of manipulated Pat the way Dad manipulated you.’ And I'm like, ‘that's a very, very specific idea, that makes a whole lot of sense, that we're just going to walk away from because this is the last episode—roll the fluff!’ 

So we get to the second kitchen scene, and I'm trying to accept the emotions of the scene? Of Pat just deciding that he's going to let go of the anger because he really likes Jeng, and he likes what the two of them had together, and he just kind of wants to let it work and figure it out together—the same way I Promised You the Moon ended. And I like that, but it doesn't land here for me? And I ended up really irritated about it. And this is where I get frustrated, like Jeng through episode…10, works for me, but the dead-eyed Jeng of episode 11 and the sad depressive Jeng of episode 12—it feels like he never comes back to life. Which may have been their point, but they went out of their way to try and make me feel like he and Pat are together and they're happy and everything's going to be okay now because they're together in the final episode. It feels unearned, and it feels like they didn't finish the goddamn mission! when it comes to Jeng.

Nini

And for me, it feels exactly the opposite, because those two kitchen scenes are very clearly paralleled, you're absolutely correct: in the first kitchen scene when they're first getting together, they don't talk about anything that's important, they just kind of roll past it. But in the second kitchen scene, they stop, they take a breath, Jeng says, ‘let's talk about this tomorrow.’ He's happy, yeah, but they make a deliberate point of not doing the same shit that they did before. They make a point of saying the things; they make a point of taking a beat; they make a point of taking their time; they make a point of actually talking to each other. And to me that's why it works. I mean it works, as well, for emotional reasons that are just pure, like, me engaging with romantic notions, reasons, and I'll fully admit to that. But to me the fact that those two scenes were so different was kind of the point? And I quite enjoyed that part. 

Another problem with the show that I think makes it really not legible for people is the fact that you don't have any sense of the passage of time. Like you really have to work to figure out how much time has passed between any two events in the show.

Ben

And clearly we were on the wrong timeline from the show.

Nini

[laughs] I think they just made a mistake in the last episode. I did a lot of work on the show, but I enjoy that, so I was fine. The timeline is that the first 9 to 10 episodes happen over the course of roughly a year? And then episode 11 is very compressed. I think they do give us a chiron at one point, that you figure out it's like about three months maybe? And then the last episode, it spans years—not just including the time skip, but the actual episode itself. 

Ben

It feels like somewhere between three to five years for sure.

Nini

Yeah, the last part of the episode, like maybe the last half hour, is like a series of vignettes? But it's just that the way that it's edited, it doesn't feel like a series of vignettes. It feels like scenes that are happening in sequence, which they're not. 

Like I said, the editing of this show, monkeys on crack cocaine and ayahuasca, absolutely. Storyboarding, I'm not sure anybody did any? 

I did a lot of work to enjoy the show. But I did enjoy it.

Ben

And I hate that. I hated the sides, like they weren't even in the final episode, they're like ‘yeah we don't care about them, get them the fuck out of here.’ No Khanun, no Jen, just get them out of here. We're gonna be here for an hour and forty two minutes, but the sides required literally zero closure to help stick the landing with the mains? Ugh, man.

Nini

They were there to reinforce thematic ideas, and they leaned way too hard into them as a narrative point when they weren't supposed to be narrative. So yes, completely agree with you, that was a mess. 

It's not that I don't agree with you! We're saying that this is a fight night and I got my eye black on, but the reality is that I don't disagree with anything you're saying. It’s just that I was fine with doing that work, and you are not fine with doing that work because you think you shouldn't have to do that work, and that's…yeah, you're probably right about that.

Ben

I'm in the business of recommending things to people because I like enjoying things with people. I will not be showing this to Emily, because I have to explain too much along the way the whole fucking time. And like, I hate that! It shouldn't be this goddamn hard to enjoy the damn show. 

I ended up comparing the dissonance around this show to, say, something like 2gether, which I think is remembered fondly because of pandemic stuff, and less because the show is good. Because everybody acknowledges that the show is a goddamn mess, but there's things that they take out of it, they say ‘I really like this.’ And that's how I feel about Step by Step. I loved everything that Man did in this; I think he played a 32 year old repressed gay man really well. But low key…I gotta be honest, I'm a little burned out on feeling a bunch of fucking feelings about sad rich gay boys? Like, the West is obsessed with sad rich gay boys and I am burnt the hell out on it. Like ‘oh no, he's sad, in his penthouse…’ who cares? [laughs]

Nini

I think for me as well, because I've been spending so much time with Turtles’s Asian family trauma lens, that I dug into that side of things, like a little deeply with my brain, and I was kind of enjoying kicking that around to myself as part of this.

Ben

And that’s the thing that sucks! Like Jeng, through episode 10, works so well for me. Like I absolutely loved what Man was doing with Jeng, how he was playing him, how Ben was playing Pat as kind of oblivious to it but unconsciously flirting with Jeng.

We didn't even talk about Up Poompot! Up Poompot was in this show and he whipped ass! Up was so good! Put was an incredible character. So Put is Pat's ex, who was not a great ex to him. This is very clearly a failed first romance on a lot of different levels. Put is ambitious, and he wants a lot more from his life than to just stay in the poor town the two of them grew up in, and he clearly didn't have Pat's skills to go to school…twice, study in America, and come back to Thailand as a highly trained marketing professional who can go into a corporate environment, and even with every goddamn employee in there working on his damn nerves still be the best person that they have on their team. Put doesn't have that: he's pretty and he's charming, and he's an actor. He has to go into BL, and so he can't have a boyfriend. Which is very fucked, that gay people cannot be out in BL. Insane. Put is an incredible character. He is simultaneously deeply unlikable and also incredibly sympathetic. Up is so good in this show. 

And I think Ben, who has an incredibly internal character—who really could have benefited from a journal? So that we could hear his thoughts more often—also does a really good job playing someone who is barely keeping it together, and trying to restrain their quick temper. Ben does a good job as a fairly new actor dealing with some really complex internal things that have to be externalized, in a film tradition that leans towards bombastic. That's really difficult to do. 

Bruce is in this! Bruce had such a rough character to portray in Lovely Writer, and it was hard to really like that character even if you felt bad for them. So glad we got a character for Bruce that we loved this time in Chot. 

Zorzo is in this, she's incredible, we love her. She can do whatever she wants—she shows up on a set and we're just like, ‘hello Zorzo, what do you want to do today?’ 

It's just so much fun watching this cast work together. Even the new people. Saint had some difficulties with his romantic partner and I think that's because he was new and nervous about doing that right. But he was really really good with Ben: when Jaab was interacting with Pat, Saint was really good, and you can see why he was cast. His chemistry with Ben felt so natural, and didn't read as like weirdly sexual or romantic, which is very easy to fall into in BL when they put literally any boys in the same room with each other. 

They did a great job letting queer friendships feel like queer friendships in this show. There's so much that's genuinely good in this show, which is why I feel like I have to give it a 7.5. Like if it had just been kind of bad and muddled? I’d have probably given it an 8 for just pure gumption. But it's frustrating, because it feels like everyone understood what the mission was and the plan fell apart with contact with the enemy immediately, and they did not regroup at all.

Nini

This is sounding like video game stuff.

Ben

I'm kind of pissed! I'm in captain mode right now. I'm assessing the film and going over everyone's screens and we're talking about who fucked up here. 

50:25 - Step by Step: Where are we on Tee Bundit?

Ben

The most important thing to ask now is, where do either of us sit when it comes to Tee Bundit and Dee Hup House?

Nini

I am a Tee Bundit fan? I see some of the things that he wants to say. I think that maybe he needs some guardrails? And maybe to lighten up a little bit? Because he has good ideas, and the ideas, he makes them very legible, when he wants to. 

I am curious to see how he does with some guardrails. Sometimes an artist needs a few guardrails to really focus themselves. So I am still down with Tee, and I'm interested in seeing the rest of what he's putting out this year. How about you?

Ben

I just want to grab him—like William Shatner in a classic Star Trek episode—by both of his upper arms, and say very clearly: “You got to stop being mean to the audience, bro. They're on your side.” It feels like he's beefing with us the audience, in Step by Step. Like it feels like he resents that the only way he can tell queer stories and get funded is to do queer romance, which I don't know that he's interested in—even though clearly he cares a lot about queer existence. Which is a very complicated space to sit as an artist, particularly with what the zeitgeist is feeling right now? 

But I need him to not take that energy out on us as the audience, like we signed up for romance, bro! Stop making us feel bad for wanting that! It just feels like Tee is just mad, and yelling in the room, and we're like ‘I get that you're mad bro, but this is unfun for all of us: we are on your side, and you are taking this out on us.’ He's that friend, who's right…but fuck, dude!

[Nini laughs]

Ben

That's all I've got. It's a chop for me, I'm sorry. [laughs]

Nini

Nah, I mean, sometimes we disagree, my friend, that’s just the way it is. [laughs] For me it’s a 9, for Ben it’s a 7.5, so that works out to…8.25? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Ben

It’s not bad, but it’s not good.

Nini

8.25 for Step by Step, and entry into contention for the Girl You Tried award for this season.

53:10 - La Pluie

Nini

Okay, so we are talking all things La Pluie. Ben, tell us what La Pluie is about.

Ben

La Pluie is a sort of speculative fiction romance, set in a world very similar to ours, where a small subset of the population experience temporary sensory loss whenever it rains as a form of deafness. Of that incredibly small population, an even smaller portion of them, when they come of age—which is 20 in Thailand—they may begin to hear another person's voice whenever it rains. Those people are seemingly tied to each other by this rain-based connection and other people have described them as soulmates. 

Our protagonist Saengtai is a 22-year-old who experiences rain deafness. He has three brothers, one older, and both of his parents are what people call soulmates. When he turned 20, his parents wanted him to know that they were getting a divorce, and this shattered Saengtai’s faith in the concept of soulmates, and he spent the next two years actively avoiding speaking to his soulmate at all. Two years later, he happens to run into him in a cafe, realizes his soulmate is hot, and then [laughs] decides to maybe give it a shot. And the show becomes this ongoing exploration of the concept of romance itself, unpacking whether or not the soulmates concept is real, portrayed by incredibly emotionally aware characters. 

Our primary four characters are: Saengtai, our protagonist, who's a writer. Patts, his soulmate, who is a veterinarian, and slightly older than him, and very cool. You have Saengtai’s little brother Saengtien, who’s kind of a rascal, who does not have rain deafness but very much believes in the concept of soulmates. And then there's Lomfon, a boy who is also in school with Saengtien, who adamantly refuses to believe in soulmates, and causes his own problems along the way. There's quite a colorful cast of supporting characters, and this is probably…the most legible show that we've ever watched? From the very first scene, this show is nothing but constant payoff.

Nini

Hmm, I don't know about from the very first scene, because as you know, it took me a few episodes to kind of get there. I started and stopped, and then had to be cajoled back in [laughs] and I do not regret coming back in. The line on this for me is that I think soulmates are bullshit. I've never been a fan of this soulmate trope—in the first episode or two, I'm just kind of like, ‘I don't know that they're gonna do anything interesting with this’ and then sometime around…it was definitely around episode 4, and I know it was around episode 4 because isn't that when Tai bit that man? We're gonna talk about this, Ben.

Ben

[laughs] Tai did bite that man, in episode 3.

Nini

Tai, my precious little alley cat, that was when I decided I was in [laughs] and I was gonna keep watching. I mean he literally got drunk and bit Patts, and I was like, ‘okay this is gonna be fucking awesome.’ Who bites somebody??

Ben

Someone unhinged!

Nini

Exactly, that's the point! And you know I love unhinged, so I was in for the duration after that. That was like the end of episode 3 when he bit him? And then episode 4 it just keeps getting better.

57:50 - La Pluie: The Soulmate Myth

Ben

Let's get properly into the soulmate stuff. I stand by my comment that this show begins paying off from the very first scene. We read the blurb, we get our little intro, and he's like ‘we got soulmates in this world; I can't hear when it rains; there's a boy who talks to me when it rains,’ and we were like ‘whoa man, these two are gonna fuck real good!’ And then the show opens with divorce. And I was like, ‘never mind, I am seated!’ 

Right away, the show is telling you that it is going to challenge the presumptions built into its core premise. It spends the entire time interrogating its premise, with really legible characters. And I think you provided the clearest read on the sort of primary archetypes these characters fit, when you described them in the framework of faith. So, please elaborate on your analysis.

Nini

The key thing all our characters, our key characters are dealing with in the show, is whether they believe in soulmates or not? So you have Tien, who is absolutely a true believer, 100% believes in soulmates, no matter what has happened to potentially shake his faith in soulmates he totally believes in it. Then you have Tai, who I described as an apostate, because Tai used to be a true believer and then his faith was shattered, and so he's sort of gone against believing in soulmates. In terms of their love interests, you have Patts, who is sort of agnostic on the idea? ‘Eh, I don't know, maybe soulmates are real, maybe they're not, doesn't really matter to me. I don't know what to believe but I'm not going to let it affect what I'm doing, and this is the way I feel about things.’ And then you've got Lomfon, who is an atheist: not just an atheist, like a rationalist atheist. He's just like, ‘soulmates are bullshit, I don't buy this, I don't believe in anything that this is happening here.’ And then what the show does with those four viewpoints is sort of, brings them all around to a kind of agnosticism? So in the end, they kind of all get to where Patts started. 

Then one of the things the show does towards the end, really at the end, is bring Patts around to being…sort of a true believer? Not necessarily in the sense of the rain deafness connection being a soulmate connection, but believing in the idea of having a soulmate. I don't think that's in any way related to the rain deafness connection at all, but more about choices and the way that he feels about Tai, and the way that Tai feels about him and the relationship that they are building. I found that really interesting, where in the end everybody kind of comes around to the agnostic viewpoint, Patts is the one who moves towards a, a believer, but not in the whole myth.

Ben

I think what works for me really in the show, when it comes to the belief in soulmates or not, is…the show understands that belief without action is meaningless. In the case of Tai and Lomfon, their choices and inaction create immense harm for the people around them that they claim to care about. In the case of Tai, he hurts Patts, for years, with his silence. Like it is totally fine for him to want to work out his comfortability with the rain-based connection privately and on his own time, but he owed it to Patts to say that. Even just, ‘I'm uncomfortable having you in my head, please don't talk to me when it rains.’ That's all he had to say. It's the silence that was really cruel for me. He's hurting Patts and punishing him, because his parents let him down. That's really shitty. 

Lomfon glomps on to Tai, for whatever reason, and just determines he's supposed to be with Tai. Actively ignoring the growing relationship between him and Tien, hurting everyone along the way. Whereas Patts and Tien are both actively treating people with immense kindness and care, because of how they believe and how they move through the world. Tien cares a lot about his brother: he knows his brother was hurt by what happened to their parents, and he gives excuses for him and he tries to take care of his brother, he tries to make himself small to take care of his family and the people around them, even if he's a little bit feisty. And Patts, who maybe doesn't care about the soulmate shit at all, sees Tai once: is like, ‘whoa, I am inextricably drawn to this person,’ and pursues him very kindly. The people with the most angst about whether or not this shit is real are the ones doing the most harm to other people. It's the people who are most pissy about faith being the worst in their relationships.

Nini

Look at us here being a couple of lapsed Catholics on the podcast.

[both laugh]

Nini

There is so much that the show wants to say about that idea of faith without works being dead. So much that the show wants to say about the relationship between chance and choice. I think the show itself is agnostic on whether soulmates are real? But I think the show does also say: there is some mix of chance and choice in romance. You ran into this person in a coffee shop—that's chance. But what you do next is choice. 

There're little things sprinkled throughout, like Patts and Tai finding out—once they've decided to be together—finding out that they actually had a connection from earlier on, because Patts's grandmother used to live next door to Tai. So when Tai's parents split up and he was like really sad and depressed about it, Patts saw this kid crying, and he just decided to be kind to this kid, and he helped Tai through, like, the immediate aftermath of his parents' divorce. And in return for that kindness, Tai sort of helped him through the death of his grandmother? They never saw each other's faces or anything like that, this was a happenstance. This was a chance encounter, through Patts's kindness and Tai’s kindness in return, that became a connection between them. Again, chance and choice. It was by chance that Patts saw this kid crying, but it was a choice to be kind to the kid next door. 

That's threaded throughout the story in different parts, this idea that chance brings you to the table but choice determines what happens when you get there.

Ben

I feel very strongly, as a lapsed Catholic, that none of the beliefs matter if you're just trying to be right. What matters is how you treat people.

Nini

The show is more interested in the choices than the chances, but it does put the chances sort of in there. You know that the show is interested in the choices because of the way that it deals with the parents, and the parents divorce, and how the parents have made it through their divorce and continue to be people who are together in dealing with their children, who still talk to each other when it rains, who have moved out of a romantic phase and into a platonic phase in their lives. To the point where the mom can get remarried to somebody who is more suited to her, and this doesn't affect their friendship. 

I really enjoyed the aspects of the show that really harped on the idea of choice, and choosing how you're going to build a relationship with somebody whether it is romantic or platonic, rather than fate putting somebody in your path and that feeling like a predetermination of who that person is going to be to you. That's why in the end, I did come around to La Pluie after not being interested at the beginning. They fucked with soulmates, and I like that.

Ben

I feel the need to rant.

Nini

The floor is yours, sir. Speak directly into the microphone.

Ben

I'm so glad that this show ended by saying that the soulmate stuff was a trap. It was really frustrating to see everybody caught up in the soulmate stuff, and the mechanic of that, as this verification tool. Maybe it's the whole lapsed Catholic thing and having a very complex relationship with faith and doubt? Because I got the whole notion that the purpose of all of this is about choice. It's about what you do with the opportunities you're given, and how you treat the people when you're there. 

It was really frustrating to watch so many members of the audience just really struggle with this show, because they needed the soulmates thing to either be bullshit, or to be confirmed. I really like that the show very politely sidesteps answering that, because what matters is how people treat each other. The opening scroll of the show is a happy couple that is a guy with rain deafness hanging out with somebody who is not. Like these things were legible from the beginning for me, and it was so…tedious, week in and week out, dealing with the, like the weather report: “Are the soulmates real this week?” Stop. 

Nini

Since we're ventilating the show's take on soulmates so to speak…

1:08:22 - La Pluie: Lomfon is Rude!

Ben

Yeah, let's talk about somebody who clearly got it wrong, in the show!

Nini

[laughs] Let's talk about Lomfon getting that ass beat, and why it was absolutely necessary.

Ben

We're gonna begin where we always sat: Lomfon is rude! And Patts should have punched him harder.

Nini

[laughs] I like just, I heard like a million people just turning the podcast off at this point—but it's, it's true, it's a fact.

Ben

Look, I do not care. Here's the thing: Lomfon is beefing with people for no reason, from the jump. He's beefing with Tien in the store over a goddam magazine. He's beefing with other classmates. He has no goddamn friends.

Nini

He was rude to Bow! He was rude to Tai's boss, and he likes Tai, and he still couldn't muster up like a shred of interest in anything she was doing, or even general politeness to shake her hand and say hi how you doing. Rude!

Ben

He only cares about what he's thinking about, there's no regard for other people. Like yeah, sure. He's like, 20. And like, kids gotta grow up at some point. But also, tastin’ a little bit of fist will reorient your life a little bit sometimes.

Nini

[laughs] True!

Ben

He's just so dramatic! There's this development over the course of the show, where Tai ends up with two different soulmates with connections to him. Lomfon is like, ‘I'm hearing Tai’s voice when it rains.’ Instead of, like sending, like a group text, saying, like, ‘hey, I believe something very strange may have happened to me, I think we should all meet up next Sunday at four o'clock—because I've checked the weather and we should all be together for this.’ And they could have handled this like adults and talked about stuff. No. Lomfon is rude and selfish, and so he needs to corner Tai in the rain, kiss Tai, and be like ‘whoops, my bad!��� And then when Patts rolls up on him throwing haymakers, he's like ‘whoa bro, no, he's mine!’ He's yours? Little boy. Please. 

I got a lot of smoke for this motherfucker, I got some notes over here. This dude hung out with Tien at a cast party, cuddled with drunk Tien, calls his brother because Tien needs a ride home—and then while Tien is mostly unconscious, flirts with his older brother? Gross.

Nini

He's in his own zone. He's not thinking about anybody else, he's not interested in whether what he does affects anybody else and how it affects anybody else. And it takes, yes quite frankly, a jaw rockin’, for him to get his head out of his ass. Completely concur that it was needed. 

Because I mean, think about this okay? Even if he actually liked Tai—which he doesn't really—does he think that this is the way to go about getting Tai? Let's ponder this for a second, just a short second, okay? It doesn't even make sense. And then, he thinks that maybe he might feel something for Tien, he doesn't know…but instead of, I don't know maybe, hm! going on a date with Tien instead of Tai—like there's so many other ways that Lomfon could have gone about what he went about. He just did it in the messiest way possible. Everybody was already telling him, ‘look I'm seeing what you're doing here and I'm gonna need you to take a step back.’

Ben

Tien picked up on it because they were on that mountain, and he saw Lomfon starting shit and looking at his brother, and he pulled that motherfucker aside, he said, ‘I am a third son, bitch, I will bury you on this mountain! Don't ever look at my brother again! Their relationship is theirs, and if you fuck with them one more time, they will not find your fucking corpse on this mountain.’

Nini

Everybody who saw it told Lomfon, ‘yo, you need to mind your own business.’ And if they didn't tell Lomfon, they told Tai—so Bow told Tai, ‘look, Lomfon’s up in your business. You need to say something and get that kid away from your business.’ Tien told him mind your own business. Patts told him mind your own business—because Patts definitely knew that Lomfon had a crush on Tai.

Ben

And Lomfon’s like, ‘well I heard Tai's voice in the rain, so now it's my business,’ and instead of talking to Tai properly, he's going to go like beef with Patts and be like I'm taller than you, so. 

[both laugh] That boy got on my goddamn nerves! Like, he's an excellent character. 

1:13:30 - La Pluie: Tai Also Deserves Some Smoke 

Ben

Let's talk about how Tai needed that ass whooped too.

Nini

That's what I was about to say, like, we're on Lomfon and Lomfon deserved it, but Tai also deserves some smoke and I'm here to give it to him. Tai, baby boy. Patts carried you down that mountain after you ran up there in the first place offa some bullshit. He had to carry you back down that mountain, y’all come back down the mountain as boyfriends. You looked at that man in the car and told him ‘I want to stay over at your place tonight’ and that man beat land speed records to take you back to his house. You literally got the booty in every single room in that apartment. 

And then you decide to go on a date-not-date with Lomfon? I feel like it was a little bit too—like he was slightly flattered?

Ben

Let me just read Tai his rights. [Nini laughs] 

This man, after finally getting what he thinks he's wanted this whole time, realizes there may be a situation going on with his brother's friend. He coulda asked his brother, like at any moment: ‘yo what's up with Lomfon, like Bow is already saying dude was sniffing around, and he asked me you to do some sort of thing, and I dunno how I feel about it. What's up with you and your little friend?’ And Tien could have been like ‘oh noooo, I actually like him, why is he doing this like?’ He could have solved this any number of ways that were less dramatic than ‘let me lie to my boyfriend because I'm worried how he's gonna handle knowing that this little dude is sniffing around’—as if he didn't already know. 

It is so frustrating that Patts—who is clear from the beginning that his primary concern was Saengtai’s comfort and happiness—for Saengtai to just actively ignore this man's vocalized needs. Man is telling you, he wants you to say the things. And you're like ‘well, don't my actions show it?’ No baby boy, because you're out here with some other dude in the middle of the motherfuckin’ rain, and you need to do better. 

And then! That boy is at his mom's wedding. Your dad has said he is happy for her. He likes the guy that she's gonna be with, and he's happy for the life that they're gonna have. And this boy ruins their wedding, making it all about him, because he's mad that his parents’ soulmate thing didn't work out. Oh I was so mad at that boy. 

He was so frustrating as a protagonist sometimes, because he just shits on all the relationships in his life. He shits on his mom. He’s low key shitting on his dad. He relies on his little brother too much without really paying attention to him in a meaningful way, and he beats up on Patts. And he does the same thing to Bow, like he works with Bow. She's clearly covering for him at work. Because he works with a bunch of other people and refuses to ever learn their names or really engage with them.

Nini

This is not to say that we do not love my little alley cat Tai, but he is a fucking alley cat. [laughs] He has the predisposition and morals of one, quite frankly. Like he's scratching and biting…in some ways he's just as rude as Lomfon. But like, you see where all this stuff comes from. And you want him to like, just for a second like, dude, retract the claws, and stop making decisions for people that are more about what you want and what you're interested in than what they want and need and have said that they want and need.

Ben

This is what I mean, like, the show being legible and saying the same thing the whole time. Like, as early as episode 2 Tai is like, ‘hey I found my soulmate,’ and Tien says quite plainly, ‘you fucked with love: unfuck it.’ And when he finally has that confrontation with his parents where they show him the complexity of human relationships, where his dad also says, ‘when you have love you need to take care of it.’ 

It's so funny, like, for all that Tai is obsessed with his dad, Tien is the one who picked up on his dad's, like, core skills. And Tai is so much like his mom, I'm really glad the show finally recognized that towards the end. Tai recognizes that he's doing to Patts what his mom was doing to him: not giving him any information, leaving him to suffer in silence without giving him the context that he's desperately needing. And it showed a lot of growth that he finally got his ass together, and spent the whole episode running around looking for that man, because goddamn. 

1:18:26 - La Pluie: Tai’s Dad Read as Queer

Ben

I wanna get this aside in here, how Tai's dad read as queer to me the whole time, I don't know if he did to you?

Nini

He did, but I didn't know if that was the actor or the character.

Ben

I think it may have been both, and I think I like the way the show handled it. I think it was very useful for subtext to show that Tai's dad is queer? And to not confirm it at the text level. Because La Pluie is not interested in structural homophobia. But I thought it was a really interesting premise to consider what happens if a straight person and a gay person think they're soulmates. What happens if a man who knows who he is goes into a straight marriage, loves his sons, loves his wife, but they can't work, because they can't be the kind of partners they need to be to each other. Which is exactly what the show says, without saying it’s because the dad was queer. 

And I think I really like the show leaving that as subtext for us to consider? Because the show does such a great job at building emotionally intelligent gay relationships otherwise.

Nini

I think there were lots of markers for it, like there were markers in the character themselves, there are markers in the relationship that the father and the mother had, the way that the mother was the breadwinner and the father was the caretaker. There are markers in the father's chosen profession, he's a chef. There is a, sort of a marker in this idea of him being—I think it was a private chef to some ambassador and spending a lot of time with this ambassador? All of these are things that I picked up on, and I don't know if they were easter eggs or if they were just throwaways, but there were lots of like tiny little markers.

Ben

And also him being the one to actually say that they should break up.

Nini

Yeah, there, there are lots of tiny little, like I said, could be read as markers, could just be coincidental, but the show is so well constructed that I am loath to leave it to the idea of coincidence.

Ben

I agree. I think it's well done. 

1:20:48 - La Pluie: The Romance

Ben

Tai needed to get his shit together, because as far as I'm concerned Patts is maybe the most perfect romantic interest that BL has ever created. And that also feels really intentional for the themes that they're unpacking.

Nini

La Pluie is a romance novel. Like, if you look at the way it's structured, the way it's organized, La Pluie is a romance novel that is sort of an anti romance novel, almost? And in a romance novel, the love interest is essentially perfect. If they have a flaw, it's something that is, ‘my only flaw is that I care too much’ or some shit like that, you know, that kind of thing? [both laugh] 

Patts fits into that mould in a way, but it's also subverted a little bit? So, he's handsome, he's a vet, he is kind to animals, he’s kind to people. He's very sweet, he is a hundred percent into Tai.

Ben

He drives a Porsche. He has a very nice apartment.

Nini

[laughs] He's rich. You know what I mean? All the markers of like the perfect romantic hero.

Ben

He has no family drama.

Nini

None whatsoever…he has a little tragic backstory with grandmother dying…like he’s the perfect romantic hero in a trope sense. Listen, I think sometime around the time that Tai bit that man— and yeah I'm still not over it— 

Ben

He did bite that man.

Nini

I remember saying to Ben, ‘oh so like Tai’s an alley cat, but Patts is a literal angel.’ Because after he bit that man and then he threw up on him, still that man took him home, let him, like, lay in his bed. He gave him clothes, left him alone to change his own clothes, and then in the morning when he woke up hungover and couldn't remember shit, he woke up and there was a note because he had cleared out, he didn’t wanna make him feel awkward or anything like that. He cleared out, he left a note saying all the things that he did the night before, because he didn't know if he was going to remember…He was perfect about it. He was such a gentleman.

Ben

As one of the leaders of the Patts defense squad, I'm gonna have to lead a charge for my boy. Because my man is the best communicator. He clearly understands that something is wrong with his soulmate, doesn't pressure him to talk to him; just talks back to him, tries to be kind to him, tries to say nice things to him. Eventually sees a guy who he wants to pursue. He does not know that it’s Tai. But the first thing he does that night is like, ‘hey I don't know what's going on with you, but I saw the cutest boy that has ever existed, and I'm gonna pursue him, so uh, deuces!’ 

So they end up at this club, Tai gets low-key abandoned by his friends, so Patts takes care of him. Tai bites that man, tries to bite him again. Later that night starts fussing with Patts, accusing him of being a player, and then makes out with him! Like yes, he was drunk, but—makes out with him! Like bro! Patts starts pursuing him earnestly after that, by leaving the note. And then Tai, who does have communication skills and social skills, does the cutesy thing you would do in a movie. He's going to return the fucking clothes to Patts in a cute little bag waiting outside his job. And the two of them go out on the cutest little date, full of all sorts of great stuff. 

Also, like, I haven't talked about it that much here: Title is really really good. I love the way Title and Pee both play their characters in this show. The way Title played Tai during that dinner they had? Was so good. At one point when he asks Patts, ‘do you always eat like this?’ 

Nini

And he points with the knife?

Ben

And he points with the knife, it is so, so perfect! And Patts is so clever. Like Tai wants to hang out and they want to go on the date and he's like, ‘let me not…bullshit about who I am.’ They ride in his Porsche to a fancy restaurant that Patts clearly frequents regularly because the staff recognizes him. He hands Tai the menu and asks Tai what he wants. Tai, who also has social skills and is like ‘I don't know about this, I don't know what the rules are here,’ decides not to make the choice on ordering something, ‘cause he's not trying to hit him up style. So he passes the choice to Patts, and then Patts makes a neutral choice by just saying ‘we'll have whatever the chef’s special is for the day.’ By making the neutral choice to just accept the chef’s special, even though Patts picked the place, he is making sure Tai understands that Patts will not be forcing him to do anything. 

I just really love their date, like there's so much there; Patts is really charming, he's funny…and then moving along, the next thing Tai does, which is insane, is introduce Patts to his dad without warning. And the dad ain't shit either, picking on Patts the whole time.

Nini

[laughs] It was funny.

Ben

He hangs out with their dad, and immediately Patts’s instinct is to show the proper respect to Tai’s father. He doesn't get in the middle of their fight. He doesn't ask about it. He just sort of gives them a way to end the fight now, he politely asks about Tai and his other brothers, giving Tai a chance to talk about his family if he wants to. They go back to Tai’s place. Patts, not really thinking about it, walks in on Tai while he's changing, gets to see all the goodies. And then they have this intense moment, and they end up making out on the floor. 

I want to make a special note here about La Pluie: La Pluie is one of the first BLs that I can really remember, ever, that when there is a moment of intense sexual tension, releases it. So often these shows just bait us. They titillate us, they want us to get all hot and bothered about ‘whoa, they's ‘bout to kiss’ and then they interrupt it with some nonsense. Or they just don't do anything with it and they tease us and they make bits out of it. And as much as I enjoy these shows, it was so refreshing to see a show go, ‘what if we release it? What if they actually start making out on the floor? What then?’ 

I get frustrated a lot of times in BL about how they make these boys dickless. And there's this really lovely thing in La Pluie that Patts’s concern was Tai's pleasure. But they stop, because Tai isn't ready. And though Patts was a bit caught up in the moment, he catches himself. And they back off, and they have a conversation about what else is going on. Patts learns a little bit more about Tai—low key they played with some of the yaoi framing in that moment, because as big as Pee is, he crouches himself down and makes himself lower than Tai, and is kind of looking at, up at him in cute ways—because you'd expect Patts to be maybe the seme in this sort of framing—and they do that early on by putting Patts on the left with the date shit when Tai goes to see him, but Patts is queering that narrative by intentionally moving himself to the right when he's trying to get closer to Tai. 

When they're on their Chiang Mai trip, one of the most insane things this show does that I will never get over, is…they’re sharing the bed, both of them are awake. They know what's going to happen, we know what's going to happen, but everyone knows Tai is not exactly ready, because we haven't climbed that mountain yet. We haven't dealt with the core angst. We're both two men who are very attracted to each other, and we know we're attracted to each other—so they start to get hot and bothered, but Tai has them stop again, and Patts, our strongest soldier, pulls himself back again. But Tai, listening to his good sis Bow, is like ‘I can't keep leaving this man hanging, I can't keep starting these things and then not finishing it.’ He offers to blow Patts and it was very explicit that that's what happened. We know! 

It's so impressive to me that this show presented Tai giving Patts head as a way for him to maintain control over a sexual encounter. The whole notion about giving pleasure as a form of control is something we have not really seen explored in BL this way. I really liked that this show focused on the different ways that two men are going to become more physically and sexually comfortable with each other over time. And even after everything, after Tai has cast him aside, he still chooses to go back to Tai and try and reconcile with him, because he did lose his temper. And that was a scary moment. And I think I like that Patts losing his temper was made as jarring and scary as possible in the show, because I feel like really perfect characters need to have this intense rage about them. Because I have never met a chill pacifist in my life. The choice to be kind is so hard in a world full of cruelty, and I like that underneath the surface of Patts is a temper that he has to manage and maintain. I love my man.

Nini

I can't remember who it is, somebody put this on Tumblr: that Patts is kind but he's not always nice, and Tai is nice but that he's not always kind.

Ben

Exactly.

Nini

Tai seems like, you know, gentle and soft. But when it comes down to it, Tai is the one in the narrative who's actually kind of cruel? It's very interesting to put that on a romantic protagonist. How it ends up getting read is incredibly interesting, because that person is the romantic protagonist, it ends up getting…cast aside, and here I go back into Calvinism and the green flag label [laughs] that I thought I had ventilated with Bed Friend.

Ben

[laughs] As soon as you said that my third eye opened, and I was like—

Nini

Here I go again!

Ben

Where—where's my bat?

[both laugh]

Nini

I didn't get this out of my system the first time, somehow. But yeah, the way that that's received in a protagonist, the fact that the protagonist is kind of a little bit of a bitch boy, quite frankly [laughs], gets glossed over, and then the person who made a mistake has it sort of loom large.

1:32:06 - La Pluie: Depiction of Male Anger

Ben

I got a little bit mad about that with the fandom too like, we got all this bending over backwards week in and week out for Lomfon's rude ass and Tai’s rude ass. Patts loses his temper once, punches a boy, punches a wall, and we're like ‘oh! he's dangerous!’ And I'm like, ‘I hate this!’ 

And there's a lot more I want to unpack here in the future — this does not feel like the right time to do it, but we really need to talk about that at some point, as a community that engages with romance? Because we have a really fucked-up relationship with violence. Like, Patts, not leaving a mark on Lomfon was seen as egregious. Punching a door in frustration was seen as egregious. But like, Bad Buddy opens up with Pran shit-kicking Pat to the fucking ground, as these boys beat the shit out of each other!

Nini

I think like, it's a lot of things. It's a question of who gets to be angry, and how anger is portrayed, and men's anger, and the way that women—because of the way that we have to be socialized to protect ourselves, the way that we view men's anger that is sort of slightly different from how men will view men's anger? And how being familiar with certain kinds of angry expressions from men is, like, one of the reasons that women shrink from that kind of stuff. And there's so many women in BL fandom. 

Like I understood where that was coming from, but at the same time, the show is so legible. It's very legible that this is Patts…reaching the end of his rope, and it's very clear in the show that Patts would never actually hurt anybody. [laughs] He doesn't even really hurt Lomfon. Lomfon is fine! He gets his ass kicked a little bit, but he's fine!

Ben

As our great friend wen-kexing-apologist pointed out, this show has a makeup budget. My boy Tai got his shit fucked up on that mountain, and the makeup crew made sure he looked messed up even in that wet filming situation. They could have afforded to make that boy's mouth bruised the way it should have been for talking the way he was, and my man doesn't. And that's the thing that gets me. Like, everybody else is allowed to be an asshole, but Patts, who I believe deserves to be righteously angry about this shit going down at this point in their relationship—and it's like ‘aw, geez, I don't know about that brah.’ 

We see, through Patts’s relationship with Nara, that he would never actually hurt Tai. And that's why the intensity of his frustration I think should have been the focus, not the expression of it. I really resented the way it felt like everyone suddenly wanted to regulate Patts’s frustration. I hate the whole notion that he is only allowed to be upset in an attractive, gentle way. Because he's been gentle the whole goddamn time, and everyone has been so rude and disrespectful of him.

Nini

Like, there is room to talk about the expression of Patts’ frustration, but you can't have that room if you're using it in a reductive manner to just completely kick him out the window as a character. I don't buy that, I don't subscribe to it.

1:35:50 - La Pluie: Treatment of Nara

Ben

With Nara, we saw that Patts is capable of dealing with difficult romantic situations. Because Nara is treated so sympathetically about everything that went down with her and Patts. How she feels frustrated about Patts’s soulmate connection with Tai, long before they start talking, I think is valid. Because she felt frustrated. She felt frustrated that anytime it rains, Patts gets moody, and it feels like somebody else is in the middle of their relationship. And you got the sense from them accidentally making out in the rain one time, where Patts immediately cut it off and apologized, that he didn't want to put Tai through that, even before he knew who Tai was. I got that Nara felt frustrated that her intimacy was scheduled around the goddamn rain. She felt an innate jealousy in her own relationship that she knew she was struggling with and couldn't exactly cope with. It wasn't fair to either of them. Patts is like, ‘look if I can get rid of this I would, because I do care about you.’ 

Nara takes some time. She gets to reflect, she decides to grow. She knows that it's hard out here in these goddamn streets, and Patts is a keeper, and she tries to do the big romantic gesture. And that's why Tai liked her! Because that boy loves big romantic gestures! And Patts lets her down, he apologizes, he's like ‘I'm sorry I may have led you on, I want things to be okay between us. Because what happened between us was real, it mattered to me, and I still care about you even if I can't give you my heart like that anymore.’ Yeah, “we should stay friends” is kind of a cliche, but it feels earned here. 

And I also like that Nara got to be disappointed and heartbroken and upset about it too. I liked that people cared about how she felt. They wanted to reintegrate her into the group. The other vets liked Nara, even if she wasn't going to be Patts’ girlfriend anymore. But they understand that in the breakup, they're Patts’s friends. And you know those people respect relationship dynamics, because they didn't just look to Patts to see if Nara was okay to be around, they look to Saengtai, to see how the new person was going to feel about that—particularly because he just ran up a fucking mountain because of her—and he says it's okay, and they were so eager to reintegrate her into the group. 

And then she and Dream get to get rolling. And they let us have them at the end! She was like, ‘look, we only got five minutes left in this show, if you going to get this shit you better come correct and you better come now.’ And I loved that! Because the girlies deserved it.

Nini

She said, ‘I'm grown, give it your best shot.’

Ben

I saw some frustrations with the ending, and how a lot of the episode was Tai running around by himself, and meeting some random characters at the end, and…us not spending a lot of time with Patts, like Patts not really talking at the end? But it works for me. Tai had to deal with the silence, for the first time—that he inflicts silence on so many people, and now he's the one who has to sit in the shit that he made. 

And I liked him meeting a couple that had challenges to deal with in their relationship, and being told once again, ‘you just got to do the work bro, you gotta talk to each other, you gotta listen to what your partner is saying to you.’ And I like that the final scene with Tai and Patts is Tai not hesitating. 

Man! This show was so rewarding to watch because it wasn't trying to trick us.

Nini

The show was wearing its bona fides on the tin. It was very clear where it wanted to go, what it wanted to do. It wasn't playing with us. It wasn't trying to gotcha with us. It was just laying out its central idea, and continually reinforcing it throughout the story and the narrative for the entire way through. 

Does that make it, like, unpredictable and exciting? No. But it made it really enjoyable to watch: to watch something lay the path, and then walk the path, was more fun than it, I expected it to be, I have to say.

1:40:47 - La Pluie: The Side Characters

Nini

And, when we're talking about laying the path and walkin’ the path—man, let's just get to it, let's talk about Tien and Lomfon. 

Here are the polar opposites, okay, because in Tai and Patts, like you have an agnostic and an apostate, like they're not as far apart as somebody like Tien and Lomfon, who are a true believer and a total atheist. How do they get to the middle? All the shit that happens in the middle, especially, [laughs] how do they get through that and find their way through each other? Basically, Lomfon has to grovel, and I enjoy a good grovel, so I had a great time.

Ben

Here's the thing. My boy Tien deserves so much more than he got. My man initiated a gay pinky touch, and then Lomfon, was like, ‘hm! I don't know what's going on, but I know that I have these special signs from the universe about this stupid key chain, that I need to go kiss this boy's brother, not the one reaching out with the gay pinky touch while taking care of me while I'm sick, twice!’ I'm gonna stay mad at this man. [both laugh] 

This man ruined a gay pinky touch. Tien is so patient with both of them. Like Patts is beating up Lomfon, Tai is screaming at the universe, clearly suddenly they can all hear in the rain, Tien doesn't know what's going on—but he cuts through the bullshit right away with Lomfon, it's like, ‘I liked you! Why are you being like this?’ Even when Tai didn't realize what was going on, Tien holds back his own disappointment that his brother maybe didn't necessarily see him the right way, and still says, ‘thank you for always being on my left.’ 

Ahh! I love that boy so much! He's so good, he deserves so much more. He was dressing like an early 2000s lesbian the whole time, serving nothing but constant looks. He was so fun to watch, especially when he was being kind of sassy with everyone.

Nini

I like Tien as a character, I like his wardrobe…don't even get me started. That outfit he wore to the wedding? Unreal. I loved it so much.

Ben

I loved it. It's so good. Oh my god.

Nini

Un. Real.

Ben

That whole family looked good, like holy shit! [laughs]

Nini

We didn't even talk about Saengnuea! And oh god, we're never going to get forgiven by one of the clowns if we never even bring up Saengnuea.

Ben

He was so awkward and goofy! I, I liked that boy too. I loved Bow, I loved the vets—what's so great about the side characters with La Pluie, is they do their role just enough to help us understand the world in which these characters exist. Like Tai is surrounded by people trying to just pour love all over that boy, and he will just not let them. Patts is surrounded by a community that loves him, that wants the best for him, that wants to make sure that he gets what he deserves too. Oh my god, just—what an excellent show.

1:44:02 - La Pluie: Sequel Potential

Nini

The thing that I think that we want to end up on is, I said before that La Pluie is basically a filmed romance novel. If you are aware of how, like, these romance novels get set up—a lot of the time, it will be multiple stories set in the same universe, where each of the characters basically gets to fall in love. We know at least that the La Pluie people seem to want to get into all of the Saeng brothers and their various romances. I don't know if they will get to, but what do you think about the obvious setup for the Saengtien sequel at the end of the show, and this idea of going into, like, a Bridgerton-esque series of romances using all of the same characters? 

How do you feel about that?

Ben

Honestly…I’m a little bit nervous because I just worry that the audience won't respond to it really well. I feel like a significant portion of the audience just actively did not get La Pluie. They were really caught up in the soulmate stuff. And I just feel like a lot of the audience maybe didn't…gel with all the themes?

Nini

So as usual, Ben is the one thinking about everybody else while I very selfishly think about myself. [both laugh] And I'm just like, ‘give it to me.’ I'm ready, I'm here for it. I trust these writers, I trust this director, I think that if they get a chance to delve into this universe in more detail and focusing on different characters, I think that they can nail it? I'm ready to see what happens if they get a chance to do it. 

I don't care about whether people are going to get it correctly or not, I don't. I kind of care, but at the same time I don't care. So that being said: Ben, is this a ten or a chop?

Ben

La Pluie is probably in my top five BLs of all time, and it's probably in my top ten shows of all time right now. It's a 10. It's a 10. [laughs] It’s a 10!

Nini

All right? So for Ben it’s a 10, for me it’s definitely a 10, that leaves us with La Pluie as a 10 show!

1:46:01 - Outro

Ben

And we're back.

Nini

Okay Ben, so…lotta ink spilled over these two shows. I don't think I've seen so much meta being written, probably since the Bad Buddy era. We've got a strange combo here: a show that was incredibly legible, and then a show that made you work a little bit harder, and in both instances it feels like people didn't get it? [laughs] 

I don't know, what are your thoughts? What do you feel about this?

Ben

One of the big stories of this year is BL maturing as a genre and beginning to genre blend. Like in a lot of ways, La Pluie wants to straddle the line between BL and classic romance, and I think it does a pretty admirable job at it. Whereas Step by Step feels like the BL elements that it's trying to manage are holding it back from what it really wants to be. That feels like the sort of thing that inevitably happens with this type of outgrowth. 

La Pluie doesn't really want to say things sort of directly or inherently about queerness, it wants to talk about romance itself. And romance as a genre. Whereas Step by Step really wants to talk about queer stuff in a real world, and that's a whole lot messier to deal with. They both did some things really really well, and the audience connected to that. And what fascinated me so much about it was that the audience felt compelled to talk to each other about it. I felt like that happened maybe more organically on its own with Step by Step? Some of us kind of forced the issue on La Pluie. I know that I was part of it, like very, very directly, and it's been fun seeing people respond to that, by just us saying very earnestly: please tell us what you're thinking. And engaging with what people are writing. 

I think it's good for us and the genre to take it more seriously? It has been really fascinating for me seeing people engaging the way they are, but I legitimately feel a bit fatigued by it. And like, the last time I felt fatigue in BL, truly, was at the beginning. I know a lot of you don't watch as much content as I do, like you couldn't possibly do it, it's not healthy for you. I don't know how starved some of you have been for content that you can genuinely connect to, that can help you feel a little bit less lonely about yourself. And like I’d never gotten tired of queer cinema—I’d gotten hurt by it, but I'd never gotten, like, genuinely tired of just being in it that long. 

And I feel a little tired from all of the intense writing that La Pluie and Step by Step kind of demanded of us. It's a really fascinating time for me as a fan, to feel like the shows are demanding more of us as viewers, as we watch them, than to just be pleased by them or intrigued by them so that we'll engage and buy merch and stuff. It was really fascinating having two shows this season that really feel like they wanted us to think about things along with them.

Nini

I know that you and I have talked about that feeling of fatigue, like for me, this is the most anything I've watched in years. The level of exhaustion that I felt, and then to have these two shows sort of spring up at the end of the season, and demand—you’re correct—demand my attention…not just in terms of the shows themselves, but then in the reaction to the shows. It's sort of left me a little hollowed out, almost, a little wrung out? I don't know yet if in a good way or a bad way. It's yet to be seen. 

I remember saying to you at one point, I was like, I need something mindless to just sit and watch for the next couple of weeks, at least. Or, like, maybe longer, I just need something that I don't need to think about. And that's not a place that I'm accustomed to being in media? Because I am normally the let's get deep into it, let's get into the guts, put your arm in and come back with a beating heart kind of girl when it comes to the stories. And right now I'm just like, eh, I want something shallow and surface that I don't have to think too much about, please, just for a little while. And then I can re-engage my brain later. It's a very strange place for me to be in, I don't think it's a place that I've ever been in? But yeah these these two shows, they took it out of me, I gotta say. 

And that's how we end the season ladies and theydies! We are a little wrung out, and we'll probably talk about that a little bit more in the Lagniappe. But yeah! We tired, y'all. [laughs]

Ben

It’s gonna be fascinating, like, getting to listen back over this, because we talked really in the season about how slow it was for me to get into the spring season, coming off of the the winter hangover from Moonlight Chicken, Utsukushii Kare, My School President and The Warp Effect. And it's weird now at the end of the spring season, where…I don't necessarily feel like a tired hangover from it? It's a hard feeling to describe because the winter shows were really good, really hit something in me…

Nini

The winter shows were emotionally intense. There was like a heavy emotional hangover coming off of the winter. I don't feel that emotional hangover now, but I feel mentally drained.

Ben

Yeah, it's a far more cerebral feeling, and like the thing for me is, I grow stronger on that feeling. [both laugh] It's gonna be, it’s gonna be hard for me if these new shows don't keep up! ‘Cause, it's what I want! I do not want to yuck anyone's yums, like, there is absolutely a place for fluff in this genre. I will never, ever vote against the silly and fun shows. I just also really love meaty shows that make me think really hard while I'm watching them. And I love when that feels intentional—like we do a lot of hard thinking on our own about these shows, but damn is it satisfying when it feels like the show itself is in that conversation with us. And I really hope that this isn't the last time we have an Adult Swim episode because we got a bunch of really thinky shows to think about. 

Like, I was very harsh to Step by Step when we talked about that show, but I don't want Tee to stop thinking as hard as he does. I want him to stay in the guts of trying to unpack where queer people fit in modern Thai cinema. That's a really important thing to figure out, and queer people should be part of that conversation. And like even if I didn't think this was the best execution of his ideas, I don't want that conversation to get missed because his show didn't land consistently for everyone.

Nini

I'm tired y'all. I'm so tired.

Ben

[laughs] I’m so energized. Keep it coming.

Nini

My brain hurts! And this is the shit that I normally love, but my brain, it hurts, and my brain, she needs a break! And so, a break she shall have. [laughs] 

We'll be back at you next time with the Lagniappe, but that's it for us now! We are just going to wrap it up on Adult Swim. 

Our first Adult Swim episode: may there be others. We out! Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace.

[syrena-del-mar]

The Birth Order Theory: The Only Child in Step By Step

First things first, I already touched upon this idea about the presentation of the Birth Order Theory in Step by Step a bit while I was live-blogging Episode 9, but I was pretty much enamored with the episode so I don't think I was able to coherently state my thoughts. Episode 9 of Step by Step (in my opinion) has been one of the best so far in the whole series. Which is saying something since I've been enjoying this series immensely since the first episode. Granted, I am more forgiving regarding filming mistakes or even most timeline confusion as long as there are captivating characters that drive the story.

I already thought that most of the characters were all, generally, well fleshed out— my reservation being on Jane— but episode 9 really knocked it out of the park for me. What really stood out to me was the juxtaposition with how Jeng and Pat were able to deal with the fall out of Jeng's confession. I actually came to appreciate and understand Pat a lot more on why he reacts as he does because of this episode.

So we're back to the Birth Order Theory, but this time we're applying it to Step by Step, I promise to attempt to keep it a shorter read than my La Pluie Birth Order post.

Only Child Syndrome and the Lack of Sibling Effect on Pat

If you want a more substantive post on what Birth Order Theory actually encapsulates, you can click on my La Pluie post, where I dive into it a bit more, before proceeding. Essentially, it's a theory that reasons that the personality that you develop is affected by the order in which you were born into your family. There's no hard evidence to base its' accuracy, simply anecdotal, but for characters and stories we don't need the scientific evidence to be accurate.

The Only Child Syndrome is typically seen as a negative effect on children with no siblings. Austrian psychotherapist, Alfred Adler, suggests that while only children are at an advantage due to being the sole focus of the parents (both financially and emotionally), the "sibling deprivation" that they experience has a detrimental effect on the only child's personality since they lack interactions with their peers at home. Depending on the child's upbringing and the tactics that parents utilize, only children can struggle with anxiety and lack social skills at a higher rate than their peers that have siblings. Since only children's parents have no other children, they are often over-protected during their upbringing which can lead to overachieving children that struggle when it comes to healthily dealing with stress. They often have face difficulty sharing with peers, while also preferring to maintain direct communication in order to avoid misunderstandings.

Maybe it's just me, but I think it took me too many episodes to fully register that Pat was an only child. Personally, I believe it's because we typically see Pat being surrounded by people, especially when he's facing emotional turmoil. As a result, I didn't register how small his nuclear family was. This episode really highlighted how alone Pat is when he's not with his friends. While Jeng has his brother to depend on and cry with (not to mention the unseen sister), Pat has no other outlet than himself on a day-to-day basis. Even though he surrounds himself with friends, he goes home to a dark and empty house which contrasts Jeng, who has the choice of going home to his brother.

From what we are shown, Pat's parents are mostly absent from Pat's life. Pat's mother lives abroad, has remade her life after the divorce, has her own family and has resettled. Pat's father seems to be dating different people and likely traveling around. They both only really seem to physically reappear into Pat's life around his birthday from what they have mentioned. Life does move on and sometimes you 're not able to care for yourself as much as you like, it's important to come to terms with that and be able to navigate life regardless, but it does add another layer as to why Pat has been unable to successfully deal with his emotions. He's an only child with divorced parents. Add to the fact that the parents are all around the globe and not easily accessible, it really seems like he's the one that's always being left behind and abandoned, or at least not anyone's main priority. I'm sure this notion was only reinforced when Put chose his career over their relationship. Pat, while not immediately visible, seems to struggle with abandonment and just being alone.

I agree with Pat's parents that people entering and exiting your life is the natural cadence of life and that it does not determine the love that people have for each other. Yet, Pat is only 24 years old. This newfound realization of how he's unable to prioritize himself, plus the added emotional charge of breaking up with his boyfriend again (and on top of that, your boss confessing), is a lot to be able to really process. They're all part of the growing pains that you experience in your twenties. For the most part, Pat is navigating the growing pains alone. He doesn't have a sibling to learn from or with, so it adds a layer of hardship to that. At the end of the day, while Jeng can go back home to his brother (arguably, even his parents... though that's a whole conversation), Pat goes back to a house, where it's just him and his stuffed tiger (that is now in time-out somewhere in a drawer.)

Pat and his struggle with Conflict Resolution and Balancing Stress

Pat struggles with fully being able to express himself, we saw this when we first met him at the office, he was being ridiculously overworked. Not to mention the office rules and societal rules placed on subordinate employees, it's difficult enough to say no, but this, theoretically, also stems from being the only child in the family, where he was probably subject to more "adult influences" since he only had his parents growing up. He is an over-achiever, which we see with him having gained his Masters abroad before coming back to Thailand to work (even if he did initially run away after being abandoned by Put) so he's having to adjust. His struggle to fully express yourself correct, when you already have an issue saying no and standing up for yourself, is not going to magically disappear without putting effort to improve, even if you age.

Now I'm not saying that those moments of emotional outbursts that Pat was showing was not immature or unprofessional, but I think it really puts into perspective as to why he's reacting as he did. He's relatively young, at 24, and he's rather new in the workforce, having just finished his academic career. Everyone starts out with a level of professionality, which Pat originally was. Except his professionality ended with him becoming a doormat. The burnout of being used, combined with the new expectations that Jeng came in with, Pat's stress escalated. Pat's emotional outbursts were a direct result of not having positive coping methods. He went out with his friends and got absolutely trashed each time he was stressed. It's a rather troublesome way to manage his anxiety and stress, because it does not resolve his anxiety or stress that he already has.

I'm also not diminishing any relationships that an only child may form with friends and other loved ones, I'm a firm believer of found families, but I do think that sibling relationships, typically, guarantee a relationship that is emotionally charged and characterized with an intimacy that are not as easily formed with non-direct blood relatives [disclaimer: this assumption does not apply to every only child and I'm solely using this theory for application here.] When you have siblings that have a long history and intimate knowledge of who you are as a being, there are ample opportunities to provide both emotional and instrumental support with on another. Conflicts naturally arise in sibling relationships and as a child, you tend to learn different conflict management and resolution strategies. While only children can have the opportunity to learn the same skills, I think it can be profoundly different in how they learn and implement those skills into adulthood.

Here, when Pat is facing any professional or personal difficulties, he often turned to Ae (and Beam by default). When he was dealing with solely professional issues at work, he got accustomed to turning to Jeng for solutions or comfort. He coped by being with people and socializing with them (this includes his excessive drinking in social circles), rarely did we see 100% on his own dealing and mulling over his feelings. This time around, Ae, while still being a great friend, is just in a different stage of her life. She's engaged and has a baby on the way, this doesn't minimize the friendship, but it does signify a shift in the relationship dynamics of their friendship are bound to occur that comes with time. Plus he doesn't even have Jeng to depend on, because Jeng is the issue this time around. Even Chot, though he's a great friend, he's still a work friend. The time and understanding that is needed to nurture a friendship where Pat can fully open up to him is just not there yet. Pat, in this moment of his life, lacks that person that he can turn to and who truly understands him.

Final Thoughts

Both Jeng and Pat really shone in episode 9 and I completely agree on how heartbreaking it was to see Jeng be heartbroken, but I think Pat gets written off a bit too easily for my taste. I've seen people discuss Step-by-Step and simply cast Pat aside due to his "immaturity", I mean even I'm guilty of an eye-roll or two with some of his decisions, but episode 9 really fleshed him out.

Rather than immature, due to the negative connotation it carries, I'm starting to see him as inexperienced. He's still learning and his reactions are a result of all his life experiences. It's easy to overlook the reasoning as to why he reacts the way he does, especially when you have Jeng crying his heart out, but his reaction is a culmination of Pat's life experiences. He's just getting out of a break-up, he had no clue Jeng was not straight, he has abandonment issues, insecurity issues, and then Jeng is his boss of the same office that is filled with workers that harassed him. It's a lot to think about and he has a lot to lose if he just accepted Jeng rashly.

There's a proverb in Spanish, "Todos los hombres estamos hechos del mismo barro, pero no del mismo molde." Essentially, even if we're made of the same clay, we do not come from the same mold. Pat reactions start to make more sense when you look at the life experiences that have shaped him, instead of just simply thinking, "I would never act like that." Episode 9 really hit that message home this week.

[neuroticbookworm]

Step by Step: Good writing must not be this confusing

Disclaimer: I hated every frame of Step by Step Episode 11, so what follows is basically my stream of consciousness that is currently raging against this absolutely maddening piece of TV. I am truly happy for the people who are still enjoying the show, so if you don't want to read biting criticism about something you enjoy, do not click on "Keep reading". Have a nice day/night!

This show would've eaten my sanity away long ago if not for my conversations with @waitmyturtles and @lurkingshan, who help me make sense of my anger and frustrations towards this show and form them into coherent thoughts.

I'd pulled punches in my meta on last week's episode and only critiqued the way the writing was lacking and how a few additions could've elevated the show. And when I clicked play today, I was still a teensiest bit hopeful that the show might turn around and surprise me. Oh boy, was I mistaken.

Read more thoughts on this episode from @waitmyturtles here and @lurkingshan here.

At the risk of repeating my friends, I'm gonna keep my thoughts short and crisp. This show's pacing and cohesion have been suffering for a while now, but that was nothing compared to the mess we were subjected to in the form of Step by Step Episode 11. I am now fully convinced that the tail end of this show is so badly written that it is barely coherent. New plotlines were introduced and resolved in the same episode (this is not episodic writing, because the show does not call for it, this is just bad writing), any semblance of nuance in the PatPut narrative had been obliterated with plot developments that make no sense, and the episode was rife with comedic beats that felt so out of place that it felt like the episode was stuck mid-morph between comedy, drama, and romance.

I'm just going to leave you all with one scene from this episode that encapsulates this show pretty well, in my opinion. Pat called Put on the phone to ask for his help, while the marketing team and Jeng are huddled around him. Put pulls his usual bullshit and asks Pat not to kick him out of his life again.

Pat agrees and asks Put to apologize to Jeng for fighting, and Put refuses and tells Pat that Jeng deserved it. The camera then focuses on Jeng's face for a second, and I sat up in my chair, thinking that we might finally be shown some emotional depth in this episode.

Was Jeng feeling bad about putting Pat back in touch with Put, even for professional reasons? Does he think Put is right and feel insecure that he cannot protect Pat from all the vitriol? Is he worried that Put might still be trying to win Pat back? But before my mind can even finish following any of those thoughts, Pat abruptly cuts the call mid-conversation with Put. And just like that, that close-up on Jeng's expression and its potential meaning became null and void. Because Pat very clearly does not care what Put thinks anymore. And it completely invalidates all the reasons why Jeng might be feeling uncomfortable during this conversation.

This show very clearly wants to be cleverer than it is. It juggles multiple themes and drops all of them without a satisfying resolution. In this storytelling environment, the setups are meaningless, and the storylines have no satisfying ending. I will be watching next week to see how it all ends, but I will always mourn this show as one of the biggest could've-been-greats in Thai BL.

[heretherebedork]

I am torn between the happy ending I want for Chopper and the suffering I want everyone to endure for doubting him and isolating him.

I want Chopper to be able to lead his best life and find joy but I also want Ben and Nueng to regret how they treated him and to realize that they're treating him like he's a decade older than them when he's the same age.

I want Chopper to be able to have his happily ever after but I don't want Ben to get that same ending without his own pain.

I want Nueng to face that Chopper truly was on his side the whole time because Chopper proves it with his life, with the one thing that no one can doubt. I want Nueng to have to see that he hurt one of the people who loved him.

But I want Chopper to never be hurt because he's been hurt so much already.

I want Chopper to step in front of Palm because he realizes Nueng loves him and he has to stop his father from hurting people. I want his father to shoot him and be caught for it, for him going too far and getting caught being because of Chopper but also because of what he does to Chopper trying to hurt Nueng.

I want Ben in a hospital hallway realizing that Chopper had no power and that he hurt someone who only loved him and supported him, someone who only ever tried to be his best.

I want Nueng in Palm's arms, protected and realizing that he found new power and confidence, yes, and he needed it, yes, but that throwing Chopper under the bus was wrong.

What do I want?

Emotional catharsis and Chopper to know that he mattered.

[bengiyo]

Wandee Goodday: They're Letting Men 69 Now

The third episode of Wandee Goodday opens with the leads engaged in mutual fellatio (commonly known as a 69), and I wanted to comment on how well I liked it being used here. I asked yesterday how many other instances we had of the position in prior shows, and got confirmation from @respectthepetty and @pharawee and others that as best we can recall right now only Destiny Seeker has shown or implied the position before. Because we are hundreds of shows deep into BL at this point, I wanted to follow up on my post about Patts Wanting to Blow Saengtai and talk about this scene a bit.

One of the things I generally have to just ignore in BL is the alarming lack of lubricant usage in the genre even more than the lack of condom usage. BL boys must have self-lubricating organs with the way this genre behaves around it. It also doesn’t match the expected velocity of m/m physical intimacy that I’m used to in my own experience and the stories told by my homies. In fairness, in the couple dozen m/m romance novels I’ve read, I can only recall one 69 scene (shoutout to Ginn Hale for Lord of the White Hell, Book 1) In my experience, guys are way more likely to touch each other’s dicks before they kiss each other (something else Wandee Goodday is doing that I like).

What makes this scene standout to me is that we ended the previous episode with the guys establishing the rules of their relationship, and Wandee telling Yoryak he wanted him to pay more attention to his dick during sex. I really love coming back to them literally giving each other head, having a good time doing it, and teasing each other about it. It’s important to me that gay sex in shows about gay characters look like it’s fun for the characters and not just as a completion of a big romantic moment. It’s also very cool that this show continues to tease and show the various ways men can have a good time with each other without all the effort that goes into preparing for anal sex.

However, I will tease about the propriety rules and the usage of a blanket for modesty purposes. I completely accept this compromise for the safety of the actors and broadcast rules, but I know that I am not hotboxing myself when I’m trying to focus.

That’s all I wanted to say. I’d love for the folks who saw Destiny Seeker to chime in again about the work that show did on the presentation of m/m intimacy in BL in light of the Wandee Goodday scene. Guys should suck dick more often in BL as a sufficient enough act for spontaneous sex without implying that somehow raw, unlubricated anal works in a bathroom.

[functionalasfuck]

The thing about Ben as a character is he isn’t self aware at ALL!

He views himself as a noble person with a sound moral compass. The “class president” who could never do wrong. And he tries to live up to this. But he is blind to all the times his moral compass folds to his own self preservation or selfish desires.

And I’m pretty sure Chopper is one of the few people who have a front row seat to this. And as much as I love ChopperBen in my mind (fic writers, please bless me), I don’t like them in canon.

Because when Ben made the selfish choice. When he threw Neung under the bus to appease his father’s wrath, Chopper was understanding and supportive. Not condoning his actions, but still there for him.

But when Chopper was put in a difficult situation. Ben is only accusatory. There is no understanding anywhere in his being.

It all boils down to Ben being “nice” but not empathetic.

And we’ve seen that from the beginning with his relationship with Neung. Anytime Neung was understandably hesitant about Ben’s intentions, Ben never showed any understanding or empathy on why he might think that. Only anger and offense that the action was done.

But Chopper is one of the most empathetic characters on the show. And, because of that, I’m pretty sure he is aware that this is how Ben is. He warned Neung about him. And while I want Chopper to be happy with someone (and it could be Ben because this is fiction and we can magically fix peoples flaws with a stroke of a pen) if they existed in a world whose physics couldn’t be easily manipulated towards the outcome we want, Ben would end up being so unhealthy for Chopper.

Because Ben would take more emotionally than he ever could give back. And Chopper would keep giving.

(Not me doing a @heretherebedork style meta 🫢)

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Compartmentalizing

So I was re-watching Step By Step Episode 10 yesterday when I started to notice something. I was planning on writing about it today, but @chicademartinica beat me to the punch line. 

HOWEVER! There is more I can build off of here and so I am gonna!

I was talking with @shortpplfedup today and she started a fabulous analysis of Jeng that I hope she will post…

When she mentioned that Jeng was trying to compartmentalize Pat from the rest of his life, and both of these things (chica’s post and Nini’s brilliance) spoke to an observation I had also had, and that I touched on in my post the other day. 

Boxes. 

Last week @respectthepettymade a wonderful post about how Jeng has always been boxed in, separate from Pat and the rest, and how the preview for Episode 10 had Jeng stepping past that barrier line 

and well, you would think that after crossing that barrier, that Jeng and Pat would no longer be confined. You’d think that they’d have eliminated everything that was holding them back…

But instead, every single scene with Jeng and Pat together boxes them in. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

And I AM TEARING AT THE CURTAINS BECAUSE OF IT

Scene 1

Pat has his third eye opened thanks to everyone’s favorite Gay Fairy Godmother, Chot and has decided it is time to get over the hang ups he has and be honest with Jeng about his feelings. It is Jeng’s birthday, so on the way to confess his mutual interest, he stops to get a cake (#anticarrotcake for those of you on tumblr following the carrot cake wars)

Pat is boxed in by the display case looking at a cake he is going to get for Jeng.

Scene 2

Pat arrives at the kitchen, and calls after Jeng, who at first remains with his back fully turned, unable to look in Pat’s direction. Until he gets the courage to turn around and 

Here Jeng is, in his little box, all alone, but here Pat comes, approaching the edge of the barrier, stepping right up to the line

And collapsing over it, entering Jeng’s space, entering Jeng’s world, barreling right into it face first.

And that is where he and Jeng will stay for the entire episode, inside their own box, inside their own little world. 

Scene 3

They finish eating each other and eat cake instead and are immediately trapped together here, walls on either side as they start navigating being openly affection with each other (and perform a phone screen ad) they don’t know it yet, but they’ve already sealed the fate on, and created an inevitable downfall for themselves…at this point though, they’ve merely missed the “turn back, unstable ground ahead” sign. 

Scene 4 

X amount of time passes and we see Pat and Jeng trying (and failing) to be discreet at the office, going so far as to hold hands, touch arms and legs, and play footsie under the desk

This is a little less obvious of a box but the arms of their office chairs and the side of the desk create a box inside of which their physical affection for one another can exist. 

Scene 5 

Work ends, Pat and Jeng get in Jeng’s car and the entire day’s worth of unrestrained sexual tension comes crashing together.

Here we actually end up getting a double box, with Pat and Jeng enclosed by the car window, and Jeng’s car, existing as a current space for intimacy with Pat is also sitting in between two barriers (the window support structures in the background). They have had to spend the entire day being aware of the people around them, and while they have ultimately failed to be completely separate in the office, the second they are alone, they re-enter their own little world. Closed off from everything around them.

Scene 6

Jeng is openly flirting with Pat during office badminton, and being so obvious about it that his assistant notices and Chot has to bail him out by asking Jeng for water too so it won’t look like he is favoring Pat. Notably, the three queer men in the office are closed in, closed off from the rest of the group, in their own world. Keep the fact that Chot can enter their box in mind as we continue.

(Chot's hair in this scene is one of the best parts of the episode)

This moment, these barriers are where Jeng and Pat have no longer accidentally missed the “turn back now, unstable ground” sign on their path of doom, but have found caution tape and ducked underneath it to press on. 

Scene 7

We cut to Jeng’s condo, and the first image we see is of Pat standing alone inside the double barrier, admiring the view in front of him, we’re about to start heading towards Pat’s office homophobia journey and we’re getting a little foreshadowing here that Jeng is going to end up leaving Pat to his own devices.

But for now, Jeng enters the scene, enters the box where he and Pat can exist together, can share space together, can be open and affectionate and attracted to each other.

Jeng asks Pat to come with him to give some leftover food from the bakery to the homeless. 

Scene 8

Jeng and Pat give away the food and go and sit together under the bridge, where they are immediately boxed in by concrete pillars and discussing cruelty. This is where Jeng and Pat are at their peak. At their strongest, and you can see that because they are literally sandwiched between two concrete pillars rather than thin metal lines of window panes. 

They are at their strongest as a couple here, because this is the truest and most honest part of Jeng that he has shown to Pat since they started fucking. (And I will be referring to what they have now as fucking, they are in lust, they are in like, but they are not in love). This is where Pat has his first opportunity to get to know Jeng a bit better, what his mindset away from work is, how he is trying to solve the world’s problems. Pat gets to see the Jeng that Jeng has often had to tuck away, here in their own little world. 

And then this person enters, the artist of the stick figure drawing that sits above Pat and Jeng’s head. 

Remember Chot? Chot, gay man, one of three in the office? Remember how he was able to enter Pat and Jeng’s barriers at badminton? Alright, well, here again we have someone who doesn’t quite…enter the boundary, but does cross in to it, stands in front of Jeng and Pat in a way that does not place them all the way outside of it especially because his drawing is inside their boundary. 

Why is this important? 

Well, I wrote about this the other night but that person only says two lines to Jeng and Pat: 

“That picture was drawn by me, you look the same,” 

“It looks like us” 

Which means I have decided to interpret this character confirming his own queerness. So a second queer person is able to join Pat and Jeng in their little bubble. Jeng and Pat have hiked the trail, they have missed one sign, ignored the other, and have found their pristine view. 

But, remember, the ground is unstable and the earth is starting to quake (and not just from them...nevermind)

Scene 9

Jeng enters a work meeting with Pat, Chot, and his busybody of an assistant. Again, Jeng is boxed in, but this time he is alone. He is compartmentalizing, trying to compartmentalize his life, here he is trying to put himself back into the box of Boss, and on the surface he appears that way, but in reality Pat is sitting before him. So while Jeng may be trapped here, in the expectations of his family to run this part of the business, he is looking forward, looking forward to Pat. 

And where Jeng’s box in this scene is made of glass (we’ve been talking a lot about glass closets recently with this show….anyway) the assistant is also boxed in…around wood. Something you can’t see through. Boxed in, however, by a door. Something that can be opened, something that can be opened and reveal something beyond. Pat has entered Jeng’s world and they have spent all their time together inside that world, inside that barrier, unable to look out, and unwilling to see what is happening around them.

Scene 10

One of the least obvious visible barriers and one of the most obvious emotional barriers

Jeng sandwiched between Pat and Pat’s Dad. But he’s still boxed in here, with the top of that window wall running just barely above his head. Visually, he is still caged in here. But this barrier is made up of potential family, and Pat is out to his father, in a way that I don’t think Jeng is to his. (By that I mean I think, no I am sure, that Jeng’s Dad knows he’s gay, but it’s not exactly like Jeng can take Pat around to meet his pops. Especially not after their first encounter….). Jeng is undeterred, refers to Pat’s father as “Dad” does not try to defend himself against his angry ranting or attempts at instigating a fight cause of how many nights Jeng left Pat crying. 

Scene 11

Unsurprisingly I have many additional thoughts about this scene and the way they utilize the boundaries here, but I’m going to save the additional thoughts for a different post. 

There are many many many many instances in this scene where Pat and Jeng are trapped in a frame, but I’m using this one for the Dutch angle, because Dutch angles make things seems off-kilter. And unfortunately for Pat and Jeng that’s the way this is going, their foundation has not been built up the way it needs to be for them to be strong and stable. But they are too wrapped up in each other to see the ways things are beginning to turn. 

Scene 12

Boxed in yet again, this time with Ae and Kanon pushing themselves between them. But this barrier, this box wasn’t of their own making, this is one that Jeng and Pat were invited in to, (like literally invited to) and it is a box they can not stand together in, they must stand apart. 

Scene 13

Jeng is riding the high of unlimited access to young, talented, and enthusiastic dick and starts imagining a wedding between him and Pat. Once again they are boxed in by the archway, and personally I think it is worth noting that the most intricate, decorated, and beautiful barrier Pat and Jeng are placed inside of this entire episode…is in a fantasy. 

Scene 14

Jeng calls Pat into his office to talk about the Forge Project and a promotion to manager!

Now, obviously all visual media is up to the interpretation of the viewer. So if you will allow me to be absolutely ridiculous in my interpretation of this shot. The barrier around them here is a little less obvious (similarly to the barrier from Scene 2 when Jeng has Pat pressed up against the glass). The barrier here is made up by two separate walls, one at an angle, and one side of the barrier is hidden by Jeng’s shelves. 

Personally, I think Pat and Jeng feel like they are being careful at work, they are certainly not maintaining healthy distances, and they are by far pushing their luck, but the affection we have seen them directing towards each other in the moments in the office are 90% eye contact, 10% everything else so I’m certain in their minds, they are like ‘yeah, no one knows’ and that’s reflected in way this barrier is framed. At first glance the scene looks open, like they have freedom to move around, the windows show the city beyond and so you have all this…space. But the barrier is there, because they aren’t capable of staying in the world outside. 

Scene 15

Pat is left to his own devices, Jeng nowhere to be seen, and suddenly the real world is knocking at his door. Pat is left to view homophobic comments about him from the other side of a wall. From the inside, looking out, Pat is suddenly enlightened to the real world consequences of his relationship with Jeng, and those consequences are pressing right up against him. He is trapped here, he has no room to move around, he has no space to breathe in, he cannot fit anyone else in this space with him. He is alone and being crushed.

Scene 16

More homophobia, more vitriol thrown in Pat’s direction, and another box Pat’s found himself in. One he can’t leave, one that makes him a spectacle to others. Pat is on display. Not only does the window trap Pat inside it, but the way the whiteboard and the perpendicular dividers for the cubicles are placed fully makes it feel like Pat’s in an enclosure. Like he’s at the zoo, like he’s putting on a show. Ying and the woman in blue are on the edges of this barrier, the woman in blue peers at Pat in his enclosure, Ying reaches through the bars to keep Pat there. The only person who is fully inside that barrier with him?

Chot. 

Once again, the other gay in the office is able to exist inside the boundaries. In this case the boundaries seem more sinister. These boundaries weren’t built by Jeng or Pat, they were created by the other people in the office. 

Scene 17 

Meanwhile, Jeng is being alerted to the fact there are rumors circulating about him and Pat. But Jeng doesn’t care. Because Jeng has money, has power, and has a second job should all of this go South.

It is as Nini said, Jeng is compartmentalizing hard. Here Jeng is initially standing outside the barrier. Refusing to enter the business side of things. He’s blending in with his surroundings here almost, like if he stood still enough people might not notice him. He doesn’t want to hear anything about the rumors, so he refuses to leave the barriers he has created around himself. But just like Pat in Scene 15, the walls around Jeng are closing in, that space Jeng has around him that is supposed to be for him and Pat is no longer big enough for both of them.

Jeng is told that Pat needs to be taken off the Forge project. Jeng is told the Board is going after Pat.

Reluctantly Jeng steps back into the corporate world.

Scene 18 

A long, hard, emotionally taxing day at work for Pat and we get the next box

Okay, I lied, it’s not a box. Pat is standing at the end of a walking path and is no longer able to move forward. And though logically we know that there is legitimately space on either side of Pat that would allow him to walk around or exit, the way the cubicles line up make it look like they are trapping Pat in. 

Pat cannot move forward, his next move can only be walking back. 

Scene 19

Pat and Jeng are cuddling in the evening and the events around the office are clearly weighing heavy on Pat’s mind, but as we know by now, Jeng is compartmentalizing, Jeng is ignoring the world around him, he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. At the beginning of the episode Pat entered in to Jeng’s world, stepped through Jeng’s barriers, stayed in there with him. 

But now?

Now things are changing. Now Pat has seen what lies beyond the walls they’ve put around themselves. 

And when Pat suggests he and Jeng stay apart for a little bit, while Pat is laying in Jeng’s space, Jeng does not want to entertain the conversation and tries to shut it down in every way he can. 

And he is only successful when he moves in to Pat’s space, but it’s not because Jeng’s successfully soothed Pat’s fears. No, it’s because Pat gave up trying to express his concerns to Jeng. 

And Pat is left alone, stuck in his own head, while Jeng rests peacefully outside Pat’s world.

Scene 20

I have to give it up to Pat for valuing himself enough to ditch Jeng in the middle of the night, and then go over Jeng’s head to Jeng’s father and resign from the company. Pat’s pissed, Pat is being the responsible one, and Jeng knows he fucked up. When we see him sitting in that conference room he is moping. Full on kicked puppy dog, and I’d hope that that would be enough for Jeng to do some introspection, and to finally stop trying to keep Pat separate from everything else in his life. But we will have to wait and see how the next two episodes go. 

We end the episode with Jeng, sipping coffee, stuck back between two barriers that can barely fit him. 

SO

That is every single scene with Jeng and Pat together and even a few where they are apart, and this whole essay has been my evidence that they are throwing walls up everywhere this episode. 

The lesson here, kids, is that Jeng and Pat rushed in to this too fast. They spent all this time in a slow burn because they were valuing the workplace, because Pat was trying to get over his crush on his boss, because there were a lot of fucking considerations that needed to happen. 

But Jeng grew impatient, and got swept up in the moment, and Pat was stuck right in there with him. They closed themselves off to everything around them. They stopped paying attention to anything but each other, which meant they weren’t careful, which meant other people caught on, which meant that Pat, who has no power in this company, was forced to face reality and Jeng, who has power and is happy for the first time in who knows how long, stuck his head in the sand, refused to look at Pat’s reality, and ultimately let Pat down in a big way, and he’s gonna suffer for it. They are both going to suffer for it. 

Onwards towards the Episode 11 Curse! 

[queenendless]

Imma take a break from here for a while.

Cause I recently started on ao3.

And I wanna try to start writing something there.

Like Ben 10 stuff.

Also cosmic horror multimedia reality alternate meta series.

A working mess overall.

I hope you'll check it out when it's up.

Thnx.

[waitmyturtles]

CONTINUED UNPOPULAR OPINIONS ABOUT STEP BY STEP, EPISODE 11

I will spare y’all my biting criticism with a read-more. But, TL;DR -- my review is short (for me, HA!), and I hand this show over lovingly to anyone who wants it. 

(Thanks to continued conversations with the inimitable @lurkingshan and the utterly lovely @neuroticbookworm to ensure I’m not going insane with these thoughts.)

At this point, I don’t know what narrative lens we’re supposed to be watching this show through*. Maybe a few of them, together, but that is striking me as an understudied, overambitious, overworked, and confused approach to understanding this show.

Is it a queer narrative about how Jeng has been closeted-ish/held back in his public queer identification for so long that he’s turned into an inconsistent, incommunicative, distrusting putz? Is there a connection between his family being disapproving of his sexuality, and/or him running away from a filial fate of taking over his dad’s company -- and him being a bumbling asshole to Pat?

Is it a trust narrative about how Pat can’t trust ANYONE? Put, Jeng, Jeng’s dad, the company, Toh? Maybe even Chot? (I’m just throwing that out there, since Chot sent him into the battlefield with Jeng during the last episode -- I love Chot, I ain’t blamin’ Chot.) (Maybe I analytically get to this narrative by... assuming Pat can’t trust anyone, since his loving, COMMUNICATIVE parents ended up getting divorced?) (And in the process of that divorce, we learn, in part, that Pat’s mom couldn’t find her full potential in life unless she was outside of the marriage?) [So maybe that’s what needs to happen to Pat? Since Jeng is CLEARLY UNDERMINING Pat’s efforts to be successful on his (Pat’s) own, in multiple ways, by really not allowing Pat to have control over his (Pat’s) own life?]

Is this a MACRO MACRO narrative commentary on the failings of BL tropes and the BL industry as a whole? (The reveal of the once-toxic Ying as a fujoshi?)

It could very well be all of these narratives at the same time. However, the execution of this storytelling, at this point, is so inconsistent and choppy that 1) I can’t exactly tell, and 2) I’m so frustrated about the amount of time that I’ve spent trying to understand this show that at this point, I don’t really want or care TO care.

To refer back to my first point (*) -- I think it’s unfair for me to demand that ANY show have a singular narrative lens. But I propose that Step By Step would have been an actually successful drama if it hadn’t tried to do so much. I’m EXTREMELY biased right now on this kind of analysis, because I’ve just finished Until We Meet Again for the Old GMMTV Challenge, and watched two narrative lenses in DeanPharm and KornIntouch come together into one cohesive story. (And, fuck, I cannot believe I’m saying this about a New Siwaj show.) I mean -- you can take filmmaking classes that can teach screenwriters and directors how to handle multiple narrative lenses successfully.

Maybe that’s the word: cohesiveness. I’m not seeing cohesiveness in Tee Bundit’s Step By Step. Instead, I watched an episode with actual minutes -- MINUTES! -- spent watching an office team held in tension as internet “likes” poured in. Looking at computers. I spent MANY MINUTES watching Jaab WAFFLE over MULTIPLE episodes going back and forth on Jen... only to discover that he missed Jen’s departure to Japan -- a Very Big Life Decision that Jaab just *missed.* Okay.

And.... we are left with the break-up of Jeng and Pat. And a time jump. 

I mean. 

All that growth of the previous episodes, all that slow burn, all that processing of Pat’s growth into a hopefully successful professional digital marketer. For what. No cohesive character development or a sharpening of any narrative lenses.

The last thing I’ll offer is that I understand that Tee Bundit added themes to this show that were not present in the original novel, such as the aforementioned macro commentary on the BL industry and other workplace storylines. And, starting with episode 10, he was on his complete own, outside of the novel’s romance arc (thank you to @lurkingshan for confirming this for me). I’ll theorize, therefore, that what we’ve been watching these past few weeks is a Frankenstein-ed approach to this story where the novel focused on the romance aspect of Pat and Jeng, and Tee’s been wanting to drive home themes of workplace success (I think); professional growth (I think?!); homophobia in the workplace and the harms of either being disapproved of and/or being closeted or closeted-ish in general (Jeng, Chot/Krit, Pat), plus that macro commentary on the BL industry that got edited out. 

But, and I emphasize here: not a SINGLE one of these threads has been illuminated to the point of clarity. I’ve wondered in the back of my mind if Tee maybe threw the baby out with the bathwater on this show AFTER the whole ZeeNew debacle, but -- whatever. The seams on this show were fraying weeks ago, and it shows.

Again -- I can’t think much longer on this show. It’s over next week. After a break-up and a time jump. We’re on the express train to a likely happy ending that I’m going to guess will be totally unearned. I had high hopes for each episode, only to be sorely disappointed since episode 8, when the drag got so unbalanced that I started to raise red flags. I want to see a surprise turn towards good storytelling for this finale next week. I want to be proven wrong about my instincts, but I ain’t putting any of my money on it.

[istanchan]

Teasers for Episode 11 & Framing

The use of framing and barriers is just killing me. There are so many amazing posts that talk about framing and the use of vertical lines and barriers and I just know this episode is going to devastate me. I mean cmon, the metal gate between Jeng and Pat and then the huge expanse of the desk between Pat and Jengs Dad. These two characters have so much between them that is stopping them from being together and Tee our lovely director never fails to remind us with these lovely cues. I’ve stayed away from all spoilers of episode 11 so I can’t wait to watch it and cry.