Playboyy ep 1 : Bad exposition, messiness and unsexy
Playboyy is a show that was on my waiting list and I thought it could really be a breaking point for Thai BL. However few days ago, I started to think what I was expecting from this show and the first thing that came to my mind was that I wish the sex scenes were going to be sexy. It’s not about being graphic or showing nudity, although from the teasers, we knew it was going to be the case. Sex scenes in BL are still not in the right place, most of them fade to black or the camera pan elsewhere. They also become more and more explicit as of lately but explicit doesn’t mean sexy. In contrary, most of the explicit sex scenes that are mainly aired on Thai BL are goofy, there are almost always close up on the ML face and it’s the most off putting facial expressions, the movements are exaggerated, they have music on the background that does not fit and the slow motion. I always felt like some sex scenes are similar to the ones in parodic movies and I always felt uncomfortable because sex scenes between two men always got censored because “nobody want to see that” which is so untrue. And the ones that got out came across as unsexy to me, mostly the men were groaning hard and going hard at it and basically doing too much. So I expected a lot from Playboyy but it seems that it’s following the same pattern that are currently seen in BL : goofiness.
Bad exposition and Messiness
The First episode is central to a show, it’s what introduced the characters, their motivation, the main plot which will be developed throughout the series. For Playboyy, if I hadn’t seen the descriptions of the characters and the show, I wouldn’t understand almost everything that was seen in ep 1. There are characters, some are named, others are not, some are rich kids, others are an escort, a pizza man and a nude model. We understand that the rich kids are a group of friends who are university students and one of them disappeared and has a twin brother that no one was aware of his existence and want to know the truth. We have a clear understanding that the series is going to center around sex but if I didn’t know the plot I would have thought that it was going to be Only Friends pt2 and that Zouey is the main character that is going to have his sexual awakening a la Mew and First is the hyper sexual, over bearing friend a la Boston with a little bit of Not me plot. I would have never guessed that it was going to be an investigation and infiltration in the sex work of Thailand.
What I would have done if I was the screenwriter
I would have centered the first episode on Nant disappearance : who he was, the reaction of his disappearance and his brother wanting to know the truth and finding out about Playboyy agency. I would of had Nont either revealing that he was his twin or pretend that he was Nant and tell to the group friends that they needed to infiltrate the Playboyy network as undercover and they would learn of former and current Playboyy workers with Zouey and First getting to close to former Playboyy (Teena and Soong) and the others of current Playboyy. Like that, you would get a full picture of the characters motivation and the plot of the show and meetings that make sense. What we got was too messy, coincidentally the rich kids are making out with Playboyy workers, without knowing anything about it. Or at least have Jump (the escort) tell his friends of the rich kids friend group that he met at Zouey birthday party and they decide to get close to them to rip them off because again coincidentally the Playboyy bunch are fooling the same group of friends without realising that they are all connected. I just can’t wrap my head around how Soong knew that he was supposed to please First when he is an actual pizza delivery guy and explained to First that he also deliver other services with a certain message after the BJ so how did they know. Same for Teena, he is a nude model for the art class, he sees a student get turned on and actually follow him in the bathroom to help him up. Nothing was natural about the way the characters met each other. I saw someone say that the two scenarios are regular porn plot, the delivery guy that end up having sex with the client and the nude model doing the same with someone that is painting him. It still don’t explain how it could translate in real life (for them).
I am not giving up on the show, it’s only the first episode and I am waiting to see more to have a concrete opinion but I feel it could be enjoyable if you put aside your brain and not think about the coherence but that’s the issue, the show was not sold as some sort of sex centric show with no plot, it was sold as a critic of the realities of sex work in Thailand. The first episode was just bad exposition, messiness and unsexy.
