There is a time for weakness and a time for strength.

The Thai BL series Not Me can’t be defined as a single genre. It encompasses various emotions, ideals, and complicated human understanding.

And rightfully so.

Change isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s something that happens over time and with persistence. Not Me highlights this, and it also highlights that true power doesn’t lie in a single individual; it lies in being united.

No matter the differences in opinion that exist, injustice is something everyone can get behind. But fighting for it can seem like one of the loneliest battles.

I’m not sure if there’s much more I can say about Not Me that I haven’t already said. This show took a set of twins, a group of vigilantes, a cop drowning in guilt, their families, and gave them all a voice.

Not Me let each of them speak, and they didn’t allow one to speak louder than the other. Not Me didn’t walk away from one character and abandon them simply because the audience wasn’t feeling them. Not Me let all of them have their moment.

And that’s how life should be.

We don’t always feel the people around us. We don’t always understand the people in our lives, but it’s important to remember that everyone has a story.

Until you walk inside another’s person’s shoes, it’s not possible for you to fully understand their story.

Not Me didn’t just say all of that; it screamed it.

I’ve done several write-ups involving Black and White (from my perspective as a twin), Black, White, and Sean, Dan and Yok, and Black and Todd. Everything I felt in all of those write-ups still stands. As a matter of fact, my feelings about them have strengthened.

I’ve written this sentence a lot, but I’m going to write it again because it held true to the end. “Not Me doesn’t expect viewers to forgive or even defend the characters in the show; it asks us to think about our own lives because of these characters. It makes people realize that sometimes there is no right choice.”

From beginning to end, this show never wavered, especially when it came to Black and White. The twins are the heart of Not Me, lending themselves to the Yin and Yang view of justice. They remained connected while also attempting to keep their own identities. They were twins other twins can relate to. They were twins the world found themselves wanting to understand. It isn’t easy to understand a multiple, even those fighting for the same cause.

White tells Sean near the end, “Nobody wants to live in someone else’s shadow. My brother sacrificed this role for me. Then he may find the way that belongs to his true self.”

At that moment, every twin watching, including me, said, “And that’s on point.”

Black and White love each other. Wanting different roles, places, and friendships doesn’t mean they don’t want the same thing. They both want justice, but they have different ways of finding that justice. Black lost his life and mission to White when his brother assumed his identity. He doesn’t want to step back into that role now. He wants to forge his own path.

And he’s doing that.

The same goes for Dan and Yok. Each character in Not Me is complicated because real life and real people are complicated. The world isn’t defined simply by right or wrong. It isn’t a simple question of black or white. A gray area exists because there isn’t a single person who hasn’t crossed into that gray area, who hasn’t made a choice that left them stumbling away from their original beliefs.

While every character in Not Me is a perfect example of this, Dan probably stands out the most. He existed on the right side of the law but saw the dark underbelly that encompassed it. The darkness touched him, he was betrayed by it, and he was threatened by it. He let fear push him into the gray void, a lonely place where he had to accept the consequences of his decisions and think about his heart.

Yok saw this inside of Dan.

The finished painting of Dan hanging in the gallery symbolizes his complex chaos of emotion. And the punch Yok gives Dan is full of understanding while reminding him of their past.

War is not without casualties. All of the characters in this drama are as much casualties as they are winners.

In truth, no one can write about this show and be able to write about it with a hundred percent accuracy. Believing we can means missing the show’s point. We’re not supposed to be accurate when talking about Not Me; we’re supposed to relate it to our own lives.

I love that Not Me represents gay romance and equality, but I love even more that the romance took a back seat to the fight this show gave us. I love that doing this made the romance stronger.

A massive shout out to the cast, crew, screenwriters, and director.

I won’t forget this show anytime soon. I won’t forget these characters. Every one of you gave it everything you had, and you succeeded. Not one person involved in the production held back, and it shows.

For a drama that will leave you satisfied and changed, check out Not Me on the GMMTV Official YT Channel. You won’t regret it. You’ll walk away from it feeling moved.

“This is what we call fulfilled.”

Rating- 4.5 out of 5