Be My Favorite ep 3 thoughts
So, I wrote up a whole thing in a chat message, and then decided to post it here because apparently I have thoughts on this show (which, well, I already knew)
I liked so, so many things about yesterday's BMF, but most especially that Kawi is starting to show moments of awareness of the others around him. He's been so focused on himself, what he wants, in the first two eps, that he has appeared almost completely oblivious to those around him, even Pear, beyond what he wants from them. He's also been, in many ways, oblivious to his own reactions to the things around him, or if he is/becomes aware of them, he brushes them off if they don't match what he expects.
While I can understand and empathize with his disappointment that Pear calls a friend (or... more than 1?) to their dinner, you can see that it does become more than just disappointment. He does recognize that friendship is likely going to be all that he gets, and he doesn't push it by taking Pear up on her polite offer of a ride home. Is he disappointed? Yes. But, when he and Pear end up having lunch together, again he doesn't really push for anything more, which sets him up neatly as a contrast to incel-in-training Not.
And while he was visibly unhappy about Not showing up wanting to talk to Pisaeng, and he may have misinterpreted what Pisaeng would have prefered, I don't disagree with him removing himself from a third-wheel situation. He may not know their full history, but he does know that there is something there that isn't for him, and as a fellow introvert, I would likely also remove myself from their interaction, though probably not as pissy as Kawi does it. And later, when Pear tells him about how Pisaeng is lonely, and that there had been some sort of fight between Pisaeng and Not and maybe the others as well, even though she doesn't know (or at least, share) the details, Kawi does see an opportunity to maybe help. Is it selfish, because getting Pisaeng his friends back would make Kawi's life easier by allowing himself more space after the kiss? Sure. But, Kawi also knows loneliness. And even as he is trying to reduce his own loneliness, he does take the opportunity to try to do the same for Pisaeng. He just completely lacked the context for WHY they were no longer friends, and so this effort backfired spectacularly.
One of the things that really jumped out at me in their confrontation at the end was how quickly Kawi responded with "and unsafe" when Pisaeng asked him if he made Kawi uncomfortable. I feel like that was probably the most absolutely honest moment on Kawi's part, and also the most likely response to be misinterpreted. It's been all of what, a day? for Kawi since Pisaeng out of nowhere kissed him. We don't know anything really about Kawi's history before uni, or what has happened between uni and the wedding, but from what we've seen... he's likely never even thought about being gay, or bi, or anything. He's been so focused on Pear, for better or worse for like a decade, and his complete lack of social skills and social life probably means that if anyone else was ever possibly interested in him....... he didn't notice? Or never interacted with the person in any way where it might eventually become obvious, just like we see that Pisaeng already saw him and liked him before they ever really interacted, but it is clear that Kawi had less than no idea before the kiss. So, Kawi has just been kissed, and he reacts badly and runs away, and then decides that that is too much for him to think about and he needs to withdraw himself from Pisaeng's presence instead of (but also, accidentally, giving himself time to) dealing with it in the immediate (to him) aftermath. And he sees a chance to do that with Pisaeng and Not. If he can help patch things up with the two of them, *he* can get the space he desperately needs. Misguided, yes. Selfish, yes. Necessary, yes.
Misinterpreted? Abso-fucking-lutely. Pisaeng takes it the way anyone not in Kawi’s brain would take it - Pisaeng is a queer man who has spent the last few days deliberately inserting himself in Kawi’s life because he sees their interactions through his own, infatuated, rose-colored glasses when Kawi starts responding to him. He has interpreted all of their interactions up to the moment at the lunch table as some form of flirting, not realizing until Kawi flat out tells him that Pisaeng’s “messing with you” isn’t funny, isn’t nice, is hurtful. That I think is really the moment he starts to second guess himself, but even then, especially at the moment Kawi invites him for drinks, he doesn’t let himself see it as anything more than awkward flirting. Kawi has gone from this quiet, loner person Pisaeng liked from afar to someone who has inserted himself into Pisaeng’s life, how else is he supposed to interpret it? But... then Kawi says that he feels unsafe around Pisaeng. And, well... it’s not like there are a lot of positive outcomes for the gay community when the straights feel “unsafe” around them. Maybe that isn’t what goes through Pisaeng’s mind, but that is DEFINITELY something that hit me hard. Pisaeng doesn’t know that Kawi doesn’t really mean that he feels physically unsafe around him (and, well, maybe Kawi doesn’t quite realize this either? Who knows), and is really more referring to emotional and mental safety.
And we do see Kawi... maybe not backtrack, exactly, but he doesn’t understand at all why Pisaeng reacted to his response the way he did. This is what made me interpret the “and unsafe” as NOT meaning that Kawi felt physically unsafe around Pisaeng, but instead being more of the “he just doesn’t know how to deal with all the emotions and thoughts and reactions he had to kiss and it’s all so far outside his wheelhouse that he doesn’t even know where to BEGIN to process it so the best thing he can do is just... distance himself mentally AND physically from Pisaeng”. He doesn’t understand what a supposedly completely heterosexual man telling a gay man that he feels unsafe around him could lead to in other circumstances. I don’t see any of Kawi’s reactions in this episode (yes, even the pushing Pisaeng away hard enough that he hits his head) as homophobic or unreasonable. He was just kissed against his will by a drunk man he has only ever interacted with over the course of... two days? The drunk man isn’t really responding to him, and he’s so overwhelmed by it all and the time travel and everything that, like... he just needs to get away.
These two communicate in very different ways, and there have been a lot of assumptions on both sides, and a large lack of awareness on Kawi’s part. But he is starting to realize that the others around him, Pear, Pisaeng, Max, Not, his father, are not NPCs in a video game that just do what he wants them to because he has a goal in mind. He has spent so much time not realizing that he does, in fact, have an effect on the world and the people around him, that of course he isn’t going to be great at it when he finally starts to look away from himself. He’s socially awkward, very aware of his standing among his peers, and overwhelmed. He’s not a perfect, completely empathetic lead. He’s an asshole, in a lot of ways, but an asshole who has potential to be better, if he can start paying more attention to the impact he has on the world and the people around him. We see flashes of it, already, in ep 3, that we did not see in eps 1 and 2.
I really like this show, a lot.