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Chained To My Bully Stepbrother (AI Vertical BL Drama)

By Golu
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 ...
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Padayon (Filipino Mini-Series) [Continue]

By Golu
This is yet another 6 part mini-series from the stable of Philippines. The episodes are about 15-20 minutes each but thankfully the production and quality and story and message this series is trying to convey is much better than some of the other rural Filipino productions that I have seen, especially the ones that were conceived and released during COVID. I am still catching up on a lot of backlog that I have from those times. At the core this is yet another BL of two young boys, but it also subtly touches upon social issues like sexual abuse, mental health problems, divorce, gender discrimination, bullying, childhood trauma, sexuality, trans etc.

The location is in a remote Filipino province. Kai, a young boy and hi smother take care of a huge manor house. Enter Andre, a rude , rich, spoilt brat who is sent by his father to spend sometime there since he has had enough of his self-indulgence. The time is just when covid is picking up everywhere. As expected he treats Kai very condescendingly and is dismissive of him, but Kai overlooks a lot of his behavior as he sees something worth saving in Andre (may be he sees how this lonely man is miserable). Before you know a friendship starts to develop and soon the boys are kissing. He also begins to see the people he has been calling insignificant as hardworking, industrious, and severely taken advantage of. Thanks to Kai, he starts to get an idea on what life is like on the other side of rich folks. Kai's best friend Drix gets a bit jealous by this proximity. Eventually he realizes Kai is gay and he has to accept it and support Kai, which he does. Just when the relationship is starting to develop and accepted, Andre's ex-girlfriend shows up. Kai is deeply hurt but Andre finds Kai and with great emotion as well as vulnerability, tells him that he really likes him and wants to take a chance on them being together. 

The above is the core story, but in between all this, there are a lot of friends in the circle and we see glimpses of social issues that I have mentioned above. They are just briefly talked about but none of them goes into any details. There are a plenty trans characters and they are all very easily accepted and never made fun of. They convey their hardships along with their dreams and aspirations of meeting that certain special someone. Scenes when Drix and Kai's mother accept him for being gay are handled really well. Especially when the mother gently and softly tells him that she ‘knows’. And her acceptance of him is complete, full, and unconditional. It is a beautiful story. The two lead actors are extremely handsome and they both do a wonderful job at acting. My problem here is that the makers have tried to cram in too much in a tiny amount of time, because of which I felt that the core love story was sidelined. I really wish more time was given to the couple, their journey from master-servant to friends to lovers. Given it is a low budget production, the makers have tried to do there best and it should be applauded, especially considering how many awful other Filipino series I have had to endure. In short I would say that this low production show has their heart at the right place. They have a winner in the lead couple and their chemistry. How I wished, they either just focused on them or took 1-2 social issues and detailed them out rather than just glancing those and in the process not being able to do justice to anyone. (5.5/10)
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