This Indian series is being sold as a story about a gay man falling for his straight best friend but honestly, at its heart, it's really about friendship and what friendship can look like when it gets complicated and messy and emotionally loaded. It's available on the YouTube channel of Last Leaf Pictures, seven episodes of about 30 minutes each. I had mixed feelings throughout and a big part of that comes down to how I felt about one of the lead characters, but more on that in a bit. Anshul and Kavith are the two men at the centre of everything. They first meet on a train heading to Delhi, both of them not really ready to go back to their hometowns. They get off midway, turn around and head back to Mumbai to give themselves one more shot at the life they want there. Anshul is an aspiring actor with a young son back in Delhi living with his grandmother. Kavith is gay, freshly out of yet another relationship, his 17th by his own count over the years. The two strike up this unusu...
Bing had a rough childhood, bullied constantly and traumatized about his looks, bad acne and a couple of kids who made his life miserable. Fast forward and he gets plastic surgery, comes back to town as this hot guy that everyone suddenly wants a piece of, including the same boys who used to bully him. He's loving it, enjoying the attention and sleeping around freely and it all feels like this sexually liberating new chapter for him. Then one night at a bar he runs into Max, the bar owner, who Bing recognises as another kid from back then, someone who bullied him and broke his heart. He decides to get revenge, seduces Max, sleeps with him and then walks out leaving this savage note basically praising Max's size but roasting his performance in bed. Max is furious and decides he needs to sleep with Bing again just to prove a point. Meanwhile circumstances push Bing to move in with his cousin and share a space with a distant relative called Fuji, a straight guy who's initially pretty uncomfortable with how openly gay Bing is. From here the show splits its attention between Max becoming completely obsessed with Bing, his body and wanting him constantly, while also slowly realising that this is the same guy from his childhood and struggling to understand why Bing would even want revenge. On the other side Fuji starts questioning his own sexuality and he and Bing begin falling for each other, but for Fuji it feels more like an experiment and he just can't bring himself to go all the way. Eventually Max and Bing work through their whole mess and the enemies become lovers thing plays out exactly how you'd expect.
If raunchy BL is your thing you're going to find plenty here. The guys are shirtless basically the whole time and the scenes are spicy, there's no other word for it. And honestly the fact that pretty much every guy in this show has an insane body doesn't hurt at all. That's probably what I meant when I said these shows are terrible but you can't look away. Bing sleeps around constantly and you get the sense that a lot of it comes from the self worth issues he's been carrying since childhood, this feeling that he's not capable of real love. The Max and Bing dynamic is all over the place emotionally though. Their very first hookup is already problematic because Max was drugged, and after that Max basically turns into this pushy, horny mess who doesn't really take no for an answer. Bing is happy to go along with it but still, it's a lot. They've got physical chemistry for sure but their actual romantic journey is hard to take seriously. Fuji is honestly the more interesting character here. He starts out as this clueless straight guy and then slowly learns, grows and starts genuinely questioning things. He even considers being with another man and his reasons are actually really sweet. He sees how badly Max treats Bing and just thinks his friend deserves better. And then you've got this whole dynamic where Bing sleeps with plenty of men but doesn't love any of them, and the one guy who actually loves him is someone he can't be physical with. Max even throws it out there that a relationship without a sex drive won't last. Is he right? Who knows, but it's actually one of the more interesting questions this show raises and it's not something you see discussed much in other BL dramas.
At the end of the day the show touches on some real stuff but never goes very deep, it's mostly using the sex to pull people in and honestly in this market that's just how it works. Will I ever think about this again or rewatch it? Absolutely not. (5/10)
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