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...
Our leads are Cal and Ricky. Ricky is the wrestling team captain and also makes a habit of bullying Cal constantly, throwing gay slurs at him whenever he gets the chance. Cal's father happens to be the wrestling coach, and Cal is genuinely terrified of him. After one bullying incident goes too far, the coach decides Ricky needs to start training Cal personally. Wrestling actually matters a lot to Ricky because things at home are rough, money is tight and his mother is physically abusive, so he agrees to take it on. What starts as humiliation and outright hostility slowly turns into this confusing tension as all their physical training starts blurring the line between rivalry and attraction. While Cal is busy trying to prove himself in the ring, Ricky is dealing with feelings he doesn't really know how to process. As the tournament gets closer, both guys are getting pushed to their limits by expectations, jealousy, and pressure from everyone around them. Ricky's girlfriend catches the two of them kissing and threatens to expose them, and she follows through. Cal is dreading what his father will say, but in a genuinely surprising twist, his dad turns out to be completely supportive. After a bit more drama plays out, Ricky's mom eventually comes around too, and the two of them finally get to be together.
You can pretty much guess what happens the moment you put the bully and the bullied in a room together, and true to the genre, attraction follows. Cal has clearly had a thing for Ricky this whole time. Whether Ricky was secretly hiding his own sexuality all along or whether this is specifically about Cal never really gets explained, but honestly it doesn't matter much. There's only so much story you can fit into an eighty minute runtime anyway. The two characters are pretty much opposites but the attraction between them builds regardless. Ricky does eventually confess his feelings for Cal, but he also keeps failing to stand up for him, still makes fun of him sometimes, then comes back and apologizes and somehow that resets everything between them. As the story moves along it becomes clear that everything Ricky claims to hate about Cal is really just everything he's been taught to suppress in himself. The obligatory annoying girlfriend shows up too, the type who's always ready to pick on someone weaker and dangles the threat of dating the school's golden boy for social clout. The actors do a solid enough job, they look good, and a handful of wrestling scenes add a bit of physical heat to things. Both guys are clearly carrying a lot, family pressure, expectations, and their own confused sense of identity. (5/10)
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