#not just bl but really the romance genre in general and i'm of the belief a couple doesn't need to kiss or have sex to be a realistic couple

[t-u-i-t-c]

nothing like watching a bl movie from 2010 in the lowest quality possible with color-coded subtitles, very familiar faces, and the low budget being spread thin

[pinkkop]

The Sign the series and the finale episode.

Now that the finale episode is up on YouTube and I've had some time to ruminate on the finale episode to figure out how I felt about it and the show as a whole, I wanted to share my opinion on it.

The good stuff!

The Sign has been a joy to follow and I think Idol Factory has done a great job with it and I really hope the risks they took with this show pays off, both in terms of future Idol Factory shows but also in terms of how this could affect the BL genre as a whole.

They really showed that BL can be more than just romance shows. Don't get me wrong I love a good romance centered BL but it's great to see the BL genre expanding and growing to include more variety and shows with higher production value.

All the actors did such a great job with the show and I hope so badly that Billy and Babe get to work together in more shows in the future. They just had amazing chemistry which was just the cherry on top of their amazing acting.

I really enjoyed the look and feel of the show. I think they did some really cool things with the production and I thoroughly enjoyed most of the mystery and action scenes.

This was a good show that I enjoyed thoroughly ... but it could have been great

The thing is I don't think this show completely stuck its landing.

To me that seems to be a general problem in BL. So many shows struggle with creating and executing a plot that doesn't fall a little bit apart towards the end. Whether it's because they suddenly have to tie everything together but they don't have the screen time or because they don't have the time or money left for keeping up the production quality all the way through, I'm unsure why but this is a problem with so many BLs.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a fatal flaw of BL and even my favourite BLs don't stick the landing but I just wish more BLs did.

So why didn't The Sign stick the landing?

I'll leave my thoughts under the cut.

Firstly I think the police squad plot fell a little bit apart towards the end, while also leaving me with a bunch of unanswered questions about the story. It was an interesting concept and I enjoyed it immensely for the first half of the show but after that it slowly lost me and as a result also my investment in it.

At the beginning all the action scenes kept my interest with no problem but by the final episode I was struggling to suspend my belief and instead got a little bored or even annoyed, when the scenes dragged on or didn't make logical sense to me.

Like what kind if police squad would bring two injured people with them to a shoot out with nothing but guns, not even bulletproof vests over their t-shirts?

Secondly, the conclusion to their Dr. Slowmotion problem similarly felt off to me. Like the show spent a lot of time showing how the doctor was delusional and completely obsessed with Tharn and that he would under no circumstances share him with anyone so how am I supposed to believe that he just gave Tharn back to Phaya?

In the second to last episode he was ready to kill everyone Tharn knows if Tharn didn't go with him but then in the final episode he specifically sent Tharn back and waved him off like some parent sending their kid off to college. How is that supposed to make sense when the show doesn't show any growth to the Doctor's character?

It just seems so out of character and more like a fast solution because they didn't have time in the show for something else or they were struggling to come up with a better solution.

Like if the show had shown some form of growth in the doctor or shown any of their time together in the cave after Dr. Slowmotion gave Tharn his soul, it could have made way more sense that the Doctor would just give Tharn back like it was nothing.

Thirdly, because Tharn was given back to Phaya actively by Dr. Slowmotion, the year apart and Phaya's efforts to find Tharn felt so pointless to me.

I almost rioted when Tharn just walked up to Phaya after the year apart because it just felt like the problem solved itself which was so dissatisfying (@itsasta got to witness my outrage first hand, so if you think I'm exaggerating your can ask her 😅). Like this was a central conflict to the show and was solved with no impact from Tharn or Phaya, which to me, made it feel like all their struggles and fights were for nothing.

This also comes back to how I don't think it made sense for the doctor's character to give Tharn back to Phaya so willingly. If they'd just shown how Dr. Slowmotion made that decision and how Tharn and Phaya's words and actions affected the Doctor's mindset and his final decision to send Tharn back, it could have made way more sense.

Fourthly, with all the extra scenes I would have wanted in order for the show to have a more satisfying conclusion, I actually think the NC scene took up too much time.

I know! I'm as surprised as anyone that I wasn't happy with the NC scene. Like, I wrote a full on post about how much I liked their first NC scene in the show and got sent to horny jail by tumblr for it (the post is here if you're curious 😉).

So why did this NC scene not work as well? 🤔

To me it was very clear that Dr. Slowmotion only gave Tharn one possible choice: leave Phaya and stay with him instead, but I don't think that was clear enough in the NC scene.

A big part of why that wasn't conveyed too well was probably because of the directing, editing and/or planning so I'm not blaming it all on Babe. I think Babe has done an amazing job in this show, especially as his first role, and I can't wait to see him in more shows, but I think it could have been clearer that Tharn was planning on leaving Phaya forever afterwards.

Other than showing how Tharn felt, the fact that Phaya didn't have a reaction to how Tharn acted in the scene tells the audience that nothing is wrong. Like if they couldn't have made it clear through Babe's acting, that Tharn was planning on leaving for forever, they could have easily made it clear that something was wrong by having Phaya react to Tharn's behaviour and maybe even have Phaya point it out.

If the show had just made it a little clearer that to Tharn, the NC scene was their last moments together and that he was intending to leave with the doctor afterwards, in a self sacrifice, to keep all his loved ones safe, the NC scene would have felt like it had more purpose.

I would have preferred if they'd spent more of the NC scene screen time showing how much the decision to leave was hurting Tharn or even how he actually left in the end.

I'm all for lengthy fluffy NC scenes at the end of shows to just bask in the couple's happiness but if all their problems haven't been solved yet and the NC scene come at the cost of the plot or the conclusion of the show, I'd rather they spend the time on the plot instead and this scene didn't feel like it had plot.

In the end all the things I've mentioned above just meant that to me The Sign is a good show that could have been great.

I don't feel like I have wasted my time and I would definitely recommend it to others but I'm probably not going to go out of my way to do so.