Forever one of Wong Fu's longest, carefully written and shot, and most thoroughly edited series, Single by Thirty is an emotional roller coaster ride. This rewatch, I remembered that episode 5 in particular will have you alternately rooting for and crying for our main characters, and the finale is particularly moving, as well. As usual, I am doing my best to not spoil anything or to be as vague as possible when describing plot points so as not to spoil the surprise, but please also do be warned that Phil and Wesley and the whole writing team are definitely putting us through drama knowing who we are cheering for, even though the ending is reasonably predictable, though also very satisfying.
The music is particularly powerful in this series; Joanna has quite a beautiful voice, and the writers beautifully tied her talents in to the overall plot of Single by Thirty, especially towards the end. The wedding scene is particularly powerful
They also captured a key insight very insightfully; romance can walk hand in hand with conflict. Most great friendships in my life have been fairly devoid of conflict. Plenty of other relationships with the people in our lives besides romantic partnerships are naturally sources of conflict: mother, father, (especially at a younger age) sister and brother, landlord, roommate, classmates / coworkers on a project together where the work duties are ambiguously separated... Pretty much every relationship besides with your grandparents and close friends generates more conflicts. But friendships are a great space to just bond, vent, and commiserate, etc.
On the other hand, throughout our childhoods, many of us saw our parents argue frequently. The mental models we have for relationships are rife with conflict, the movies we watch about real life relationships, cohabitation, marriages, etc. are rife with conflict, the famous stories about love are always rife with conflict.
So Wesley and our writers really hit the nail on the head here. There is a lot of beautiful philosophy in Wong Fu's shorts in addition to normal romantic drama / comedy plot.
But let's wrap back around and summarize a few of the main characters as well. Our main characters are Joanna and Peter, who were very close friends back in high school. They bump into each other in their home town again, when Peter is 30 and Joanna is a smidge younger, 1 month from turning 30. They bump into each other very randomly; our (re)meet cute happens when Peter's good friend Mark invites his Instagram connections to his 30th birthday. Joanna and Peter have both left romantic relationships fairly recently, and they know each other very well, which leads Joanna to come to Peter's 30th with her new roommate Chloe, who is sisters with a good high school friend. Besides falling for the main pair, we definitely love Chloe for her outrageous, confident energy and how she and Mark repeatedly push Joanna and Peter to be confident, to put themselves out there after life's rejection(s), etc.
Joanna is a tiny bit of a manic pixie dream girl, though the energy in her disposition is more internal, sensitive, and domestic than the typical cheerleader energy of Avril Lavigne in her "Girlfriend" music video. Peter, on the other hand, has very introverted, older-brother, risk-averse Asian-American son-of-immigrants energy, and Joanna makes it her mission to pull him out of his shell.
5.1 / 6 Stars
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