solipsism5
This review may contain spoilers
A pretentious BL with very poor execution
This is a long and tedious series. The first two episodes are not indicative of how this series will continue, and you will be exasperated by the end of it because so much of the promise of the first few episodes is totally wasted. The director is just stringing people along with a lot of angst that is just never treated with any kind of sincerity and feels totally illegitmate. Even as they use everything to keep you watching, drawing upon your tear ducts, and plying you with pitiful scenes of disabled people suffering in miserable conditions, they still bore you to death with repetitive, and meaningless scenes. There are also far too many characters, and too little movement in every episode to keep anyone interested in the general progression of each individual story.
The main issue will always be to me, that all the major ideas are treated with little to no real honesty. What does this mean in a BL? Well, if you want to introduce people with major disabilities you should really treat their conditions with some heart and sensitivity. You can’t just mention it or depict it and then totally treat it like it’s irrelevant. They don’t seem to know what to do with the idea once it’s been introduced. I also suspect that they just use it to keep you vested in the story like how a panhandler uses an injured limb to keep you paying attention to them [sorry for the example, and any panhandler that does this is far more worthy of the attention than this drama]. Name’s selective mutism is first treated with some kind of brutal intensity because they really want to make you watch the next few episodes. He suffers more and more with each passing episode, but then it suddenly disappears, and we hear nothing more about it, like it never existed. The suffering is intense but it is also not real because there is no consequence to it. Name moves swiftly to a normal life and all his past trauma does not affect his relationship with his mother or his future boyfriend, and none of us even know why we cried about it. Now if there was some transition we would treat it as a real thing, and if it crops up again, as it should, being as severe as it was depicted, we would believe in it. It just vanished, and you will note the character also has far less screen time because he’s not relevant anymore, and not useful in producing the phony angst they constantly use to keep you enticed to watch the next episode.
Before I move on to the other disabled character, I want to talk about just how this phony angst and unnatural suspense is used in the relations between normal healthy people like Gun and Golf. After waiting an almost supernatural amount of time to get together – beyond a decade – they finally jump right into a relationship. Forgetting how Gun has to be the shyest person on the planet to wait so long, never letting Golf even know who he really was, he jumps immediately into becoming his husband, and that really is what he became in a matter of minutes. Then they somehow abandon each other, or supposedly Golf abandons Gun while working like a maniac at his new job. We find out later that he only works like that so they can get visas to move to the US and marry legally. They have a break-up because Gun is mad that he was abandoned for 2 years while Golf was securing their visa. Forgetting that this is awfully unlikely, given that Golf has always been the more communicative, outgoing member of the couple, and that he would still have plenty of time to spend with Gun, they resolve the issue in a matter of minutes after reading a touching note from Golf. Then Golf, who supposedly abandoned his lover, asks Gun to marry him, and he blithely accepts. This is just idiotic. They really should have broken up or they should have a long period of time where they healed their wounds and gradually reconciled with each other. But their drama was all phony and was as irrelevant as anything you would experience having lost your pet rock.
The third story involving Champ is just so hum-drum, and so unrelated to any BL content I’ve ever seen, it almost feels like a random throw of the dice as far as content. The only reason this story is even here is to provide more angst to keep you watching. First, Champ’s grandpa slowly gets sick and they give you the kiss of death cough in early episodes, and slowly string you along with more hints that gramps is getting worse and worse till the inevitable croaking occurs in episode 8. But Champ’s story has more deaths to keep you vested in a story that has nothing to do with anything you normally would be interested in. The death of Lucky the dog is just a gimmick, and then you are teased with possibly more deaths to come as if you are being groomed to become a necrophile. Now Champ is supposedly angry at his family for like a century because they never told him about dying Grandpa, and Lucky, and is a spiteful little bitch who pouts at his job thinking about this, but has finally decided to cry it out with them after a century because it’s time for some more phony angst to draw you into the final episode. Just to show you how little they even thought about this character, they have him finally show some interest in a relationship for the first time when he must be about 30. Champ is basically asexual till that point and you can’t help but wonder why he hasn’t shown any interest in anyone after hundreds of opportunities. It’s just incredibly lazy writing.
Now, I’m going to return to the last story and the theme of disabled people finding love. Now, Remember Me does do a lot of innovative things even if it is mostly boring, so why do I really hate this drama? I think it’s because it’s doing something really distasteful and borderline unethical in its treatment of disabled people. The last story concerning Nan and Chompu is really kind of perverse. Mean who will be forever remembered as wearing the ugliest wig in any drama in history which we were all visually bludgeoned with for most of the series, is really in the worst role of his lifetime. His grating, insincere, snide, and flippant demeanor in every scene seems fitting for a superficial person who has no depth of character, but he’s supposed to be some saintly, heroic person. This role is just meant to appeal to his fanbase, in my opinion. The actual character is an afterthought and feels totally out of place. His interactions with Chompu are just emotionless and he never conveys any affection for his love interest. He doesn’t even care about who she is, or what she wants to do with her life. It’s all about her accepting his love. Chompu has no agency, and is treated as nothing but the pitiful object of Nan’s affection. Her initial rejection of him was, again, phony angst, and she instantly accepts him when he finally finds her after a needlessly drawn-out search. Even her brother follows her around everywhere, taking care of her, and making all the decisions for her like she’s totally helpless. This is a series that is really tone deaf, and thoughtless. It uses disabled people as props, rather than treating them like people.
There is nothing they wouldn’t do in this series to keep you watching except actually creating any real content. I’m just surprised they tried all these new ideas. It’s a series that incorporates elements of four different genres [Bl, gay drama, coming of age, slice of life], and employs elements of nostalgia, and family dramas. It also makes a feint of depicting the lives of disabled people. But, it’s like a diver doing an incredibly complicated dive and landing it with a belly-flop. It’s just not enjoyable, no matter how creative they tried to be, and the episodes moved along at a snail’s pace because there were too many characters, and too many story-lines. Even considering those big drawbacks, there was a poor use of time with many redundant, and unnecessary scenes. The incredibly redundant music score also adds to this tediousness. You felt like you had to mute the sound to continue watching this series after the first few episodes. In the end, they just wrapped up all these stories in the most facile way, because they never did the work to actually make you feel them, and completed the series with nearly meaningless happy endings that no one actually earned. It just feels totally flat at the end of the series, and you felt like no emotions you experienced during the show ever meant anything. Remember Me was just a huge wasted opportunity, and I don’t really even want to see any future content from the people who made this show. They just don’t seem to have any concern about producing good content, and are just seeking praise from people for being innovators.
The main issue will always be to me, that all the major ideas are treated with little to no real honesty. What does this mean in a BL? Well, if you want to introduce people with major disabilities you should really treat their conditions with some heart and sensitivity. You can’t just mention it or depict it and then totally treat it like it’s irrelevant. They don’t seem to know what to do with the idea once it’s been introduced. I also suspect that they just use it to keep you vested in the story like how a panhandler uses an injured limb to keep you paying attention to them [sorry for the example, and any panhandler that does this is far more worthy of the attention than this drama]. Name’s selective mutism is first treated with some kind of brutal intensity because they really want to make you watch the next few episodes. He suffers more and more with each passing episode, but then it suddenly disappears, and we hear nothing more about it, like it never existed. The suffering is intense but it is also not real because there is no consequence to it. Name moves swiftly to a normal life and all his past trauma does not affect his relationship with his mother or his future boyfriend, and none of us even know why we cried about it. Now if there was some transition we would treat it as a real thing, and if it crops up again, as it should, being as severe as it was depicted, we would believe in it. It just vanished, and you will note the character also has far less screen time because he’s not relevant anymore, and not useful in producing the phony angst they constantly use to keep you enticed to watch the next episode.
Before I move on to the other disabled character, I want to talk about just how this phony angst and unnatural suspense is used in the relations between normal healthy people like Gun and Golf. After waiting an almost supernatural amount of time to get together – beyond a decade – they finally jump right into a relationship. Forgetting how Gun has to be the shyest person on the planet to wait so long, never letting Golf even know who he really was, he jumps immediately into becoming his husband, and that really is what he became in a matter of minutes. Then they somehow abandon each other, or supposedly Golf abandons Gun while working like a maniac at his new job. We find out later that he only works like that so they can get visas to move to the US and marry legally. They have a break-up because Gun is mad that he was abandoned for 2 years while Golf was securing their visa. Forgetting that this is awfully unlikely, given that Golf has always been the more communicative, outgoing member of the couple, and that he would still have plenty of time to spend with Gun, they resolve the issue in a matter of minutes after reading a touching note from Golf. Then Golf, who supposedly abandoned his lover, asks Gun to marry him, and he blithely accepts. This is just idiotic. They really should have broken up or they should have a long period of time where they healed their wounds and gradually reconciled with each other. But their drama was all phony and was as irrelevant as anything you would experience having lost your pet rock.
The third story involving Champ is just so hum-drum, and so unrelated to any BL content I’ve ever seen, it almost feels like a random throw of the dice as far as content. The only reason this story is even here is to provide more angst to keep you watching. First, Champ’s grandpa slowly gets sick and they give you the kiss of death cough in early episodes, and slowly string you along with more hints that gramps is getting worse and worse till the inevitable croaking occurs in episode 8. But Champ’s story has more deaths to keep you vested in a story that has nothing to do with anything you normally would be interested in. The death of Lucky the dog is just a gimmick, and then you are teased with possibly more deaths to come as if you are being groomed to become a necrophile. Now Champ is supposedly angry at his family for like a century because they never told him about dying Grandpa, and Lucky, and is a spiteful little bitch who pouts at his job thinking about this, but has finally decided to cry it out with them after a century because it’s time for some more phony angst to draw you into the final episode. Just to show you how little they even thought about this character, they have him finally show some interest in a relationship for the first time when he must be about 30. Champ is basically asexual till that point and you can’t help but wonder why he hasn’t shown any interest in anyone after hundreds of opportunities. It’s just incredibly lazy writing.
Now, I’m going to return to the last story and the theme of disabled people finding love. Now, Remember Me does do a lot of innovative things even if it is mostly boring, so why do I really hate this drama? I think it’s because it’s doing something really distasteful and borderline unethical in its treatment of disabled people. The last story concerning Nan and Chompu is really kind of perverse. Mean who will be forever remembered as wearing the ugliest wig in any drama in history which we were all visually bludgeoned with for most of the series, is really in the worst role of his lifetime. His grating, insincere, snide, and flippant demeanor in every scene seems fitting for a superficial person who has no depth of character, but he’s supposed to be some saintly, heroic person. This role is just meant to appeal to his fanbase, in my opinion. The actual character is an afterthought and feels totally out of place. His interactions with Chompu are just emotionless and he never conveys any affection for his love interest. He doesn’t even care about who she is, or what she wants to do with her life. It’s all about her accepting his love. Chompu has no agency, and is treated as nothing but the pitiful object of Nan’s affection. Her initial rejection of him was, again, phony angst, and she instantly accepts him when he finally finds her after a needlessly drawn-out search. Even her brother follows her around everywhere, taking care of her, and making all the decisions for her like she’s totally helpless. This is a series that is really tone deaf, and thoughtless. It uses disabled people as props, rather than treating them like people.
There is nothing they wouldn’t do in this series to keep you watching except actually creating any real content. I’m just surprised they tried all these new ideas. It’s a series that incorporates elements of four different genres [Bl, gay drama, coming of age, slice of life], and employs elements of nostalgia, and family dramas. It also makes a feint of depicting the lives of disabled people. But, it’s like a diver doing an incredibly complicated dive and landing it with a belly-flop. It’s just not enjoyable, no matter how creative they tried to be, and the episodes moved along at a snail’s pace because there were too many characters, and too many story-lines. Even considering those big drawbacks, there was a poor use of time with many redundant, and unnecessary scenes. The incredibly redundant music score also adds to this tediousness. You felt like you had to mute the sound to continue watching this series after the first few episodes. In the end, they just wrapped up all these stories in the most facile way, because they never did the work to actually make you feel them, and completed the series with nearly meaningless happy endings that no one actually earned. It just feels totally flat at the end of the series, and you felt like no emotions you experienced during the show ever meant anything. Remember Me was just a huge wasted opportunity, and I don’t really even want to see any future content from the people who made this show. They just don’t seem to have any concern about producing good content, and are just seeking praise from people for being innovators.
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