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Journey With You (Chinese Series)

By Golu
I've always had kind of a love hate relationship with Chinese historical BLs. Some are genuinely excellent, but then there are others that cram in so much plot that keeping track of all the layers of betrayal and scheming gets exhausting, and I end up checking out mentally. Part of the issue is also just how much content is out there in this space, so something really has to stand out to keep me hooked. In this case, the production value is genuinely impressive, top tier stuff, but story wise, I just couldn't bring myself to actually care about these characters. There's a ton of political scheming and backstage manipulation running throughout. Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, a hostage ends up falling for his own Prince Charming. The show runs eight episodes, each around 50 to 60 minutes long. After spending three years guarding the border, Fifth Prince Yin Qi gets called back to the capital because of a secret letter, only to end up walking straight into a deadly...
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Smoggie Queens: Season 2 (UK) (TV Series)

By Golu
The whole gang is back for season 2 and it's a really fun return. I watched both seasons one after the other, which probably didn't help, because coming straight off season 1 this one felt just a tiny bit flat by comparison. Not bad at all, just hard to live up to. Mam, Dickie, Stewart, Lucinda, Sal, Neil, everyone's back and still very funny. It picks up right where things left off, same madness, same crowd, six episodes, thirty minutes each.

Dickie is single again and already on the hunt. Mam has some seriously uncomfortable history coming back to bite her. Sal is stuck in this messy situation between Danni and Mel, and Mel has started seeing someone new, this really insufferable TikTok type. Lucinda's thing with Neil hits a wall when she finds out his ex-girlfriend's name is tattooed on his back. Stewart is out and living his best life. Dickie deals with being single the only way he knows how, by making everything about himself and convincing himself every random person he meets is somehow his rival. Mam is still the one keeping everybody from completely falling apart, but this season her estranged wife shows up and suddenly she's got her own mess to deal with. Stewart's deadpan humor while navigating everything new continues to be absolutely brilliant. The episodes this season are all quite specific in their setups. The first two see the gang somehow losing a white rabbit inside a carpet warehouse, with these fun Alice in Wonderland touches thrown in, and Stewart's first date ends up turning into a coleslaw fight that drags everyone into it. There's a full episode around a charity football match called Nipple Aid, raising money for people with extra nipples, which is just peak show. Another one is built around the Mr Teesside Beauty Pageant, officially described as a competition of beauty, talent and bulges, and Stewart enters despite Dickie telling him he looks like the human embodiment of a perverted rat. One episode has a straight group completely taking over a gay networking event, and Nan, Mam's nemesis, is back which was a very welcome surprise. The last episode follows Dickie putting on a drag show for elderly people, and that one may not be everyone's thing.

The show delivers exactly what you'd want from it. My problem was just that I came in with sky high expectations after season 1 and that's a tough thing to shake. The laughs are still there but there were moments that felt a bit much or just didn't click for me, and part of that might be how deeply local some of the humor is. Every episode still has real ambition behind it, you can tell a lot of thought goes into the outfits, the writing, the jokes. The characters feel even more settled in themselves this time and the situations they get into are wilder, but the humor doesn't always hit as hard. I really missed Dickie being his fully arrogant self, that edge is still there but it's been turned down a notch. The cast together though is just something special, they genuinely feel like people who actually know and love each other, and it wouldn't surprise anyone if they've built their own version of this found family behind the scenes too. Every single character is written so distinctly that you end up rooting for all of them. Mam is still the beating heart of the whole thing, always putting the group before herself. Her storyline with her ex-wife and her past is handled really well, the show doesn't make it melodramatic but it doesn't ignore it either, because these are real things that people in the queer community go through and they deserve to be shown properly. The show also just gets campy humor in a really specific way, the dry delivery, the casual irreverence, the complete lack of pretension, and this gleeful embrace of everything loud and over the top.

This season is still wonderfully strange and silly and sharp, and even when something doesn't land the whole thing still pulls you along with it. Really hoping this isn't the last we see of this group. (7/10)
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