One Year (Thai Series)

I usually try to at least skim reviews before starting these BL shows, just so I don’t sink my time into a dud. I really should’ve listened to myself this time, because this series turned out to be eight hours I’ll never get back. The premise had some genuine potential, but the acting and direction did absolutely nothing with it. Making it through all eight episodes, each roughly forty five minutes long, felt like work.

A young man named Kim moves to an island city to live with his uncle. There’s supposedly a reason for the move, but honestly, it barely matters. After arriving, he meets a chef named Tao Sor. When Kim sees him again the next day, something has changed: Tao Sor doesn’t recognize him at all. We soon learn that the mysterious chef has a condition that erases his memory every morning, so someone has to repeatedly remind him who he is. Kim begins falling for Tao Sor and proposes a plan to the hotel where Tao Sor works: they can attract tourists by offering cooking experiences with the chef, helping bring more business to the hotel. They agree to it. Tao Sor may forget everything every morning, but he’s also a gifted painter, and he keeps experiencing recurring visions of Kim that he paints. Those visions lead him to believe that the two of them share some deeper connection. Near the end, we discover that Tao Sor isn’t actually related to the family he’s been living with. Years earlier, the family lost their biological son. When the older brother found a young, amnesiac Tao Sor washed up on the beach, the family decided to pretend he was their missing son, even teaming up with a doctor to ensure that his memory would never return. The romance between Kim and Tao Sor never develops into anything meaningful. In the end, Kim simply goes back home. And as if that weren’t enough, nearly half the series is taken up by a girls’ love subplot I genuinely couldn’t care less about.

This show is pretty much one problem after another, and there’s nothing redeeming to balance it out. Kim is supposed to be the lead, but he behaves in ways that make him nearly impossible to root for, let alone like. Most of the time, he’s just rude and unpleasant. He isn’t the only one, either. Tao Sor’s brother is an enormous red flag himself, essentially kidnapping a child and pressuring him into becoming his brother. Then there’s the doctor, who goes along with everything because she has a crush on the older brother. Since Tao Sor is so emotionally fragile throughout the series, I was expecting a slow-burn romance. Instead, everything moves far too quickly, and then Tao Sor immediately forgets that any of it happened. He never gets the opportunity to reflect on their time together or figure out whether his own feelings are genuine. Kim is basically exploiting Tao Sor’s amnesia to push this relationship into existence. And then we have the girls’ love plot, which could honestly be removed completely without the show losing anything. It doesn’t even receive a proper ending, because although Kim apparently discovers who Tao Sor’s real mother is, he never actually brings them together. This is easily one of the worst BL shows to come out this year. (0.5/10)