Hello, hello my fellow misfits,
It’s me again and today I have a lovely Gem with me that might be even a bit controversial. But for once I don’t care and just go ahead anyway because this series is definitely one of my favourites of all time and it doesn’t deserve the bad rep it’s getting at all. But I have always said that, since the beginning of time, unfortunately not too many people agree with me, but I think that’s down to them having not as good a taste as me.
So here we are, with a Hidden Gem about
Together With Me: Next Chapter
Yes, okay. This is the third season of a show, but let’s be honest. Bad Romance you can just watch the BL cut (which I would strongly suggest, because the events from Bad Romance are extremely important for the development of our characters) and who has not seen Together With Me. It’s such a staple in our community, I am not going to insult you by thinking you haven’t watched it. But for me the third installment of this show was definitely by far the best as the acting and also the storyline itself just totally blew my socks off.
Synopsis:
Knock and Korn are living happily together. They have finished university and finally started working. Things could be so good with our two love birds.
But the reality of being a working couple and also a long term couple is soon taking over both their lives. Knock still behaves like a teenager in school while Korn really wants to make an impact at work. Korn also still isn’t able to come out of the closet and is demanding that their relationship is staying hidden. Tricky when you work together. With all these issues mounting together, can our two heroes find a way through all these obstacles that life is throwing in their way?
Cho and Yiwah at the same time also have their own issues. Cho started working and being the diligent young man he is, he works pretty much day and night, leaving Yiwah, who is still working on her final university project, pretty much to her own devices. And when her good looking boss starts showing an interest in her, will Yiwah stay strong?
Farm on the other hand is still behaving like the sex craved bad rabbit, we saw at the end of Together With Me. When his friends demand him to stop his promiscuise lifestyle and he by chance gets a love confession from the rather sweet Rit, he finally decides to give love another chance. But what happens when Farm’s doctor finally shows up again? Will Farm stick with Rit or is he falling down the rabbit hole that is Bright once again?
Why You Might Like It:
The storyline is really, really good, if you ask me for my humble opinion. As someone who has been in a long term relationship, I can definitely vouch for the fact that a lot of the stuff that the team brings up in this show is pretty realistic. Relationships change and at some point you will start to look back at your entire life and won’t put love always first. It’s a long process and it takes work to make a relationship work long term. In this series they made this so clear and I love them for it.
The whole series is pretty much about the topic of cheating. Emotional cheating, physical cheating. They look at this from different angles and with different stories, but in the end it’s all about this big topic of faithfulness in a relationship. I for one find this concept incredibly interesting. Not because I think cheating is awesome, but because it’s rare to see the same topic from so many different angels. We can see how people react when being cheated on. We see the reaction of people who cheated. And depending on the relationship we get totally different outcomes. It’s really an interesting study into the human psyche. And it shows that love doesn’t stop you from making mistakes. But I am not here to write an entire review on this, I am afraid.
The acting is awesome. Everyone in the cast definitely improved A LOT over the time that this show was running, and in comparison to Bad Romance the acting of everyone is really stellar. When Bad Romance felt sometimes a bit like a bad school production, Next Chapter is really the grown up version now. I especially have to praise Max for his portrayal of Korn here. The way he manages to play these two extreme sides (the one side that pretty much worships Knock and the other side that always put other people before Knock) is so perfect that it’s really a joy to watch his character almost losing himself in between all the expectations he has for himself.
The skinship is obviously totally on point and Max and Tul are totally in their element here as always. They are not shying away from behaving like a normal couple, from throwing boxershorts into each other faces, all the way to having sex like maniacs. It’s just a beauty to behold and I still think they are the official kings of skinship.
Why You Might Not Like It:
Cheating. The entire plotline for all three couples is about cheating. If you don’t like this as a concept, then please just move along, you won’t be happy with this show. If you are interested to see how different people deal with different kinds of cheating, then this is absolutely for you.
The skinship is real obviously. We are talking Max and Tul after all. So again, if heavy skinship is not yours, then you won’t be happy about this show. Because there are A LOT of kisses.
The relationship between Farm and his “harem” is extremely fucked up and toxic. Again I think they continued Farm’s storyline in a realistic and quite frankly scary way, but I think it’s a good portrayal of how things could have gone for someone like Farm. But it’s definitely not for the faint of heart as it’s really, really fucked up. Like proper. So if you don’t like watching a complete fuckfest of a relationship (and I don’t mean the fun kind of fuckfest, thank you very much), then stay away.
Conclusion:
I always found it rather sad that due to the topic of cheating this series got such a bad rep. But I honestly think that they went about all this in a very clever way. They make it understandable. And just because you are in love doesn’t mean you are perfect and won’t make mistakes. Quite the contrary is the case. The more in love we are, the crazier we usually behave as well.
So yeah, I always loved this series especially because I love to follow humans on their journey to being hopefully better humans. I like to see when they fuck up but realise due to the power of their love that maybe some other paths for the future are the right decision. So I totally think if you like cleverly written storylines that go deep into the human range of emotion and behaviour, then you will LOVE this series.
It will make you cry, it will make you swoon, it will make you throw your pillow at the screen in anger. And for me that’s one of the biggest compliments I can give a show. If they manage to make me feel something. And this show definitely managed to do exactly that.
*first posted as part of Content Team (BLDA)
Your Heart's Content 