Revisiting TV hot gay couples: The much loved Oliver Sabel and Christian Mann aka Chrolli, from the TV Series "Verbotene Liebe" (forbidden love) 1995–2015, a German soap opera.
The Chronique of Olli and Christian's forbidden love story from their first encounter, their marriage, their divorce and much more…💖💔💞
If you want to catch up with their love story...
This is the Christian and Oliver story of Verbotene Liebe. It starts when Olli comes back to Düsseldorf after working on a cruise and ends w
i hate you. i'm entering your house with a gun. oh wait. i'm saving your life. i'm hugging you while you cry. i'm hesitantly touching your back to comfort you. i'm carefully pressing an ice pack to your bruises. what did i come here for again?
honestly, i'm not an OG forcebook fan. i wasn't there from their enchante days. in fact, i started liking forcebook's acting three weeks after a boss and a babe aired. so, i don't know if i'm qualified to state my opinion (because i once posted this on my now-deactivated twitter, and the discourse wasn't pretty), but here goes nothing.
forcebook's commendable acting in a boss and a babe
so, after episode 9 of a boss and a babe, i now believe forcebook are capable of carrying heavy roles. they're dynamic actors, and now it's clear how many facades both gun and cher are wearing. even though i don't watch enchante, from the clips i saw here and there, they've improved tremendously. and kudos to them for their hard work.
gun gungawin, at the beginning of the series, is very stoic, strict and unfriendly. he shuts people down with his signature cold stare. he doesn't have a close friend. he's alone, and he prefers it that way. he overthinks but doesn't show. i personally think gun doesn't like skinship because it creates this bond, and he can't bear the thought of losing that someday (like how he lost thyme). yet, when he meets cher, his walls crumble. he becomes friendlier and happier. he doesn't care about what others think (contrary to how he was before cher). p'force portrayed him really well.
then comes the sunshine, cher saran, the bright and kind of idiotic intern (sorry, cher T_T). he's the mood maker. he's everyone's helper. very selfless because he has a gigantic heart. he ducks every conflict and traumatising emotion like a pro gamer. he cares so much about gun, but doesn't know how to show it with words. he's goofy and silly. and he keeps all the pain to himself. he hides them in the deepest part of his heart because he doesn't want anyone to know. he doesn't like talking about his struggles because that's who cher saran is. but you see the pain in his eyes when the light goes dark. and p'book's ability to distinguish the happy cher and sad cher so smoothly blows me away every single time.
episode 9 is a whiplash of pain, heartbreak, sadness, confusion, betrayal, loyalty, trust, disappointment, true love and sacrifice. i just want to say kudos to forcebook for bringing guncher to life. i shed so many litres of tears last night. i still will cry if i rewatch ep 9.
my bias towards p'aof's works
i'm a huge fan of p'aof (the director/screenwriter of he's coming to me, 1000 stars, bad buddy and moonlight chicken). i adore his works because of his precision in crafting the characters, choosing the most suitable bgms, his vision, the cinematography, the richness of symbolism and metaphor in his works, and his ability to bring out the best in his actors.
i'm beyond excited knowing my beloved jimmysea is now under p'aof's wings with another potentially heartbreaking series, last twilight, soon-to-be-aired this year (or early next year). i know p'aof will trigger all these emotions and potential in jimmysea, and i'm just ecstatic to see them nailing mork and day.
so, i posted this thought on twitter, and some didn't agree. i do understand that p'aof's works can be quite conventional and old school, but hear me out; even though it is, he's so good at it.
and it's funny how when i look at forcebook, i'm like— damn, p'aof really needs to give them a script. i've been manifesting a forcebook + p'aof collab ever since.
perhaps, i am biased. because i like p'aof's style, and i'm confident he has that freaking good script for forcebook somewhere in his stash (or his galaxy brain), and i hope god listens to my prayers. but as always, it's ok to disagree. this post doesn't intend to impose my thoughts on anyone.
so, yes. i just hope one day, forcebook will get a very good script to match their abilities, because god damn it, please don't waste their talents. i'll be furious.
and i hope only friends will be the beginning of forcebook's reign because these men know how to act, and they're nailing it.
Oh so Cher's little brain has been running nonstop since Gun first started directly pursuing him, huh? Just a hamster wheel go-go-going on what Gun really feels, what he wants, what's going to happen, what could go wrong. That's how I took it, anyway, when he said he's been exhausted since they met. He works so hard to keep up the cheerful front and to smooth things over and not to let anyone worry, but that boy has ANXIETY and it's been wearing him to a thread.
So often through the show he answers Gun's sincere expressions of feeling with jokes, and I've been unsure how to read that, but now it's very clearly that that was partly about distance and protecting himself. He's never been all in on this, the anxiety has been too loud. At the same time, he wants to be, he wants the love and support Gun keeps offering him. He wants that shoulder to lean on.
The flashback with the gift of the gameboy hurt, because that was his family once. Those were his people that he felt safe and happy with, and then it all got torn apart. It's frustrating that he can't trust in Gun's steady, sincere love, but I get it.
(And Gun, on his side, needs to stop acting like the boss/intern thing doesn't matter, like the family and career consequences don't matter. Cher doesn't need to hear "as long as we love each other, everything will be fine." He needs his fears heard and addressed. He doesn't make it easy, but come on Gun, I believe in you.)
So I was rewatching My school president…and y’all know the scene where Gun officially meets Tinns parents? Tinn’s dad was trying his hardest to win Gun over…and then it hit me. Tinn might’ve told his dad about Guns dad passing away, how much his dad loved music, and how hard his unexpected death hit Gun.
And even if Tinn didn’t tell his dad, you can see how Tinns dad wants to make a connection through something he knows Gun likes. Gun was definitely nervous and we even saw him practicing saying hello to Tinns dad, but Tinns dad had a way of making the meeting less tense. Just look at his smile rise while he watches Tinn and his dad bicker/interact. It went from nervous to genuine smile.
When I stopped to remind myself that Gun no longer has a father figure, it made that meeting the parents scene so much more important and emotional. Gun is getting a bonus parent that wants to win him over and genuinely shares similar interests to him just like his father.
I see a lot of people clowning Cher for being like, "I'm an ally," and then kissing his boss with tongue. You all bring up valid and hilarious points.
However, I do need to shout-out how sneakily good the writing is being in this show, because something queer folks don't really mention, due to the potential harm any misconceptions could cause, is the fact that it's incredibly common for people to ease themselves into a queer lifestyle under the guise of being an ally, because the reality is some people do matriculate into queer friend circles first, before exploring the rest of their sexuality. It's just how they need to do it. We just never say it, because we don't like the idea of bigots being able to misconstrue it as us converting innocent straights or some BS.
I'd also be lying if we said we didn't suspect it in the back of our minds every time we get an ally in an otherwise queer friend group. Because any gay person will tell you they do. Only it's not out of curiosity, or sexual interest, or anything like that. It's because we look after our own. We know how hard that shit is, and we're on the lookout for it so we can help if it's asked for. Otherwise we shut all the way the hell up, and give them the space to figure things out.
And the reason I mention this is because we see this play out with Cher, we see it in the behavior of his friends. The knowing gays sharing a knowing gaze when they all went out to dinner together, was textbook gay non-verbal, "Yeah, we thought right." And the fact they don't tease Cher, and just gently prod for information is so true to life, because that's exactly how this situation would play out.
A Boss and a Babe is honestly being slept on in a way I can't abide. It's just so authentically queer. I've never seen anything like this come out of Thailand.
Listen, Cher is a terrible intern and Gun needs to fire him for everybody's sake including his own else it's gonna get real HR-ey up in this bitch. I kind of love that Cher doesn't give a shit about this job though 🤣 he's there to flirt with his boss, be nice to everybody and check the internship box so he can graduate. I mean, I get why some people can't rock with this show but I, personally, am having the time of my life. Cher is a MENACE.
Yessss! Cher said fuck capitalism this job🖕🏻can’t you see this beautiful man is hurting? He doesn’t need to work! He needs special coffee orders, BBQ pork, queer friends, late night rainy noodles, office hugs, and maybe throw in a kiss 😚 for good measure idk just spitballing here 🤭😏
I'm loving what GMMTV are doing with A Boss and a Babe. Presenting Cher as an Ally with queer friends, proactively doing things for the cause, while subconciously falling for his out gay boss, and not shying away from whatever is developing is something I don't think I have seen much of coming out of Thailand. The main leads are either already out, or they have their sudden gay awakening because of this one person, despite everything in their lives prior indicating that they are otherwise straight (even if they have never dated anyone prior to the events of the show). The Journey of Ally to queer friend group to first queer relationship would be fairly common in real life, so having it shown on screen is refreshing.
The pacing of the show feels right as well. Some relationships don't needs weeks and months of angst to work out if a relationship is a good idea or not. We have plenty of stories about people trying to get together, working out if their crush likes them. We need more stories like this, where we deal with being in a relationship under inconvenient circumstances. Lets see Adults being Adults in relationships. Lets see them getting giddy about having someone to share their life with, while acknowledging that relationships and life aren't always sunshine and roses. I don't know the trajectory of the rest of the A Boss and a Babe, but it is certainly a step in the right direction for the future of BL stories.
