Kissing Game (Netflix Brazil) S01: B+

A strange new disease starts spreading among teenagers from a private high school, somewhere in Brazil. Bel (played by Luana Nastas) is the first one to fall ill after a rave that was attended my most of her high school. Her friends Chico, Fran and Alex (Played by Michel Joelsas, Iza Moreira and Caio Horowicz) are the first ones to notice that the disease is transmitted mouth to mouth. After a second student falls ill, they create the kiss map and connect everyone who kissed during and after that party.

By this point you know I am a fan of Brazilian series, so I was more than in when saw this release on Netflix last week. Colorful and weird is how I would describe it. The series first three episodes grow strong with the kiss map and who kissed who. This creates lots of drama among the students as cheating and sexual preferences come to light with this kissing disease.

The first symptoms are black spots around the lips, hallucinations and marks that are visible with black light, a neon glow of your veins. Ending up in blindness and over all insensitivity. Apparently the disease affects more dramatically teenagers that have some unsolved feelings and emotions. Yeah that pretty much sums every single teenager.

This neon marks makes the perfect excuse for the use of black light on some scenes, that makes it very colorful and also beautiful to watch. This disease might be the coolest and most visually attractive in the history of tv sickness.

With this disease around the students start using protection, mask made by cellophane paper to continue kissing whomever they like. This made me think They knew about this pandemic! I wonder when they made this series because at times it feels like the predicted the situation that we are in right now.

The rest of the three episodes of the season, six in total, got lost in some mythology in order to leave things open for a second season. But it sort of feels that they just name dropped genetic experiments, local tribes, and political conspiracy without them having any meaning or support to the events that happened. That is my only complain about the series, the origin of the disease wasn't strongly explained and seemed like something they really didn't think about going into production. But we also have to remember that this is a teen drama, they don't always are logical or very real and dramatic.

The teens that star in the series give solid performances and have a special chemistry, no complains on that either. Specially Chico a teen that describes himself as not gay, just someone who enjoys just rubbing his body with someone. Kinda weird and kinky, but he falls in love with someone struggling with accepting his own sexuality. It made a very interesting love story to watch. Also the unexpressed love that Fran felt for Bel.

Watching a series about a strange disease that spreads by kissing during a real life pandemic, might no be the brightest idea, but the tone of Kissing Game makes a little bit lighter than what you might think. Also with only six episodes long is perfect to pass the day by, instead of watching tiktok.