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Chained To My Bully Stepbrother (AI Vertical BL Drama)

This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat.  The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...

BoyBand Love (Filipino) (Web Series)

There has been a plethora of BL series from Philippines in 2020. If I had to guess, its the stupendous success of Thai BL series (which even gets a mention in this show) thats responsible for this. But as expected, not every series can give you a good product. This series has every stereotype and drama that you would expect in a show: forced conflicts, love, separation and back to love; a boy and a girl fighting for same guy, a person exploring sexuality, a loud trans person etc etc.

A pinoy Boys Band LMTLSS consists of 4 members: Aiden is the lead singer and most popular of them all, Danny is the other singer and other two are Rico and Jamie. Looks at the fact that the four don't particularly like each other, their company sends them on a 3 month forced time together. Danny has a crush on Aiden, even though they are supposedly rivals; Rico is trying to hide his sexuality behind a forced straight man facade and Jamie feels a bit misfit in the band. Primary story is about Aiden and Danny. The four eventually bond and Aiden and Danny become good friends till suddenly Aiden's girlfriend comes into picture. Danny is sure about his feelings for Aiden but he is not so sire since he has always dated girls. The remaining episodes are about Aiden struggling with what he really wants and is Danny really the love of his life. Meanwhile we see Rico finds a pretend girlfriend to meet his family and eventually become his real girlfriend. Jamie had found a friend in their manager but thankfully it was not turned unnecessarily to love.

The show is 9 episodes of about 20-25 minutes each. Most of the series can actually be seen in a fast forward mode (someone really needs to come up with the features). The show's production and everything is very amateurish. They are supposed to be a famous boyband but the hotels the stay, the gigs they do are worse than a simple college wanna boyband. The leads don't have the kind of charm that a show of this kind needs. They seemed amateurs in addition to a weak script and a below average direction. A couple of times, script was cringy and I was like wtf is going on here. There were a lot of songs in last few episodes which for a not native speaker like me were a deterrent.

I watched this show just for the sake of it, but it is completely avoidable. Watch some of the other Filipino shows from this year instead. they are much better. This one suffers from real poor production quality and a weak script. (4/10)

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