This documentary pulls together oral history to trace a very specific New York chapter of gay life in America. Back in 2014, someone found a box stuffed with hundreds of letters sitting in a storage unit in LA. These letters went all the way back to the 1950s and were written to a young guy named Reno Martin, who'd later become known in Hollywood as agent Ed Limato. When Martin left home to chase a radio career, his closest gay and queer friends kept writing to him just to stay in touch. Every letter's signed with a fake name and ends with a warning to burn it after reading, which tells you everything about an era when just being gay, or dressing in drag, could get you thrown in jail. The filmmakers actually tracked down the surviving writers, now in their eighties and nineties, and turned what could've been dry historical digging into something genuinely personal and intimate. The people behind this doc found the original letter writers themselves, several of whom are stil...
From the very first minute, this show makes it crystal clear that you are not meant to take any of it seriously. It is a bizarre little sci-fi comedy, a Korean-Thai BL collaboration, about an alien prince who crash-lands right into a struggling bakery. These kinds of joint productions are usually trying to tick boxes for audiences in both countries at once, and this one is no different. Eight episodes, about 25 minutes each, and the whole thing somehow still feels undercooked. The production quality is surprisingly weak for a collaboration of this kind, the editing feels awkwardly stitched together, and while the whole palette screams goofy sci-fi fun, the series never actually manages to pull that off.
Wooju is a young guy trying to get his late father's bakery back on its feet, except he genuinely cannot bake to save his life. One night a spaceship comes crashing down right on top of the place. Out of the wreckage come two aliens, a prince named Raon and his loyal canine servant Hachi, who later loses his mind over how good earth dog food is. After some awkward back and forth and the whole "yes we are aliens and no we cannot pay for the damages" conversation, Wooju refuses to let them leave and puts them to work instead. Using magic they start producing all kinds of baked goods, and somehow the bakery turns into a hit. It comes out that Raon did not just end up on earth by accident. He actually came looking for Wooju's father, who had been his mentor and close friend back on the planet Kaunclion, where the father had also taught him how to bake. Running alongside all of this, Raon's fiancée shows up on earth looking for him, but ends up falling for a cop who is basically like a brother to Wooju. There is also this whole thing about earth being full of aliens with possibly destructive intentions, and the cops getting pulled into figuring it all out. A villain appears out of nowhere and it turns out he was behind the deaths of both Raon's mother and Wooju's parents, which is a lot. The cops eventually get him in what is framed as some kind of life or death showdown. By the end, Wooju discovers he actually has alien blood running through him, and Raon takes him back to space, while his fiancée chooses to stay on earth for the cop she fell for.
Was this supposed to be a spoof? A parody? Some kind of extended sarcastic bit? Honestly, whatever it was going for, it did not work. The plot was witless, completely illogical, and just plain stupid. I could not figure out what was happening at any given moment. Characters were casually switching between Thai, Korean, and English mid-conversation and everyone around them would just respond in whichever language with zero issue, like that was completely normal. Nobody in this show felt even remotely relatable. The acting is genuinely some of the worst I have come across, and I am not entirely sure any real direction was given beyond handing everyone a basic concept and letting them figure it out. Even the romance between Wooju and Raon, which is supposed to be the heart of the whole thing, is so flat and underdeveloped that it does nothing for me. An alien falling for a human is actually a fascinating dynamic with so much potential, and this show just wastes all of it without ever digging into the relationship in any meaningful way. Wooju is meant to be a baker but puts in zero visible effort, and you can tell he has no idea what he is doing, yet we are supposed to believe he is running this bakery. Delusional to another level.
The goofiness of it all genuinely had the potential to make this something memorable, a fun trashy watch at the very least, but instead it is just a coherent mess where nothing lands. Every single character, including the leads, ends up feeling like a caricature. I tried to stay with it, I really did, but I found myself fast forwarding through most of it just waiting for it to end. The last few episodes, especially the finale, were close to unwatchable, and I could not keep track of the pointless supporting cast at all. I have seen some bad BLs, and this one is going to join that list because it is a tragically wasted idea. (2.5/10)
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