Set against the backdrop of a bistro and a dentist’s office, the Taiwanese BL My Tooth Your Love unveils a captivating story that takes dental phobia, post-traumatic stress, and trauma and turns it into love.

Starring actors Andy Wu (Bai Lang) and Snoopy Yu (Jin Xun An), My Tooth Your Love introduces a carefree bistro owner who is afraid of dentists forced to seek care for a toothache by his older sister.

An earthquake, a plant, and an interesting array of predicaments throw Bai Lang and his new dentist, Jin Xun An, together, inviting viewers into a much more complex story than first introduced.

Nothing is more fun than watching contrasting personalities trying to fit into each other’s lives. Bai Lang’s fun-loving energy and Jin Xun An’s tsundere distance don’t exactly mesh, but an interesting dynamic forms throughout the drama, one of trust, security, and need. And it completely sells the series.

While there are fun moments inside My Tooth Your Love, the real beauty is found in each character’s trauma. Trauma itself isn’t beautiful but learning to face it, deal with it, and share it can be. My Tooth Your Love goes beyond romance and takes two characters in need of partners who can understand and support them.

Bai Lang blames himself for his parent’s death, his dental phobia stemming from the night his parents died in a car accident after he begged them to come home because of a toothache. Carrying the tooth from his childhood inside a capsule as a reminder, he suffers from flashbacks and insomnia.

On the other hand, Jin Xun An struggles with domestic abuse and a past broken heart.

Neither man trusts easily. Both men tend to suffer in silence, pushing away the people closest to them. As frustrating as this can be, I know from my own experience with domestic abuse and PTSD that people with trauma aren’t trying to be frustratingly non-communicative. They don’t communicate because they’ve either learned to hide what they’ve been through or have been taught to. There’s no easy way to unpack that. There’s no easy way to break down walls that took years to build.

My Tooth Your Love is honest in portraying trauma and abuse, even in its light moments. Rather than only focusing on how the two leads push each other away, it also focuses on their learning to reassure each other. It focuses on them learning to let someone in while also learning to respect their partner once they invite them into their protective walls.

The same can be said for the secondary couples. While they don’t get as much screen time as Bai Lang and Jin Xun An, their stories are equally inviting, with the most prominent secondary storyline between bartender Alex (Alex Chou) and his young protégé RJ (Michael Chang). An age-gap romance about a boy dealing with pressure at home and the emotionally closed-off bartender who mentors him, their story is as artfully beautiful as the leads.

There is a firm thread of respect throughout the entire series. Each couple not only learns to respect each other and themselves, but they also learn to respect personal space and shared traumas.

Sometimes a drama theme gets lost in the romances taking place on the screen. Sometimes there’s no real clear plot. But with My Tooth Your Love, it never loses the respect it starts with, and I found myself invested in how each character found each other.

For a drama about finding love and respect in unexpected places, check out My Tooth Your Love on Gagaoolala and Viki.

Rating- 4 out of 5