Burnout Syndrome 1×06 Review: Episode 6

Burnout Syndrome is back after the New Year break. Let’s see how much twisting I have to do to justify anything any of these men do in this week’s episode. (And by “these men”, I mean Off. How far backwards can I bend?)

Episode 6 seems determined to remind us that none of these guys really have a leg to stand on when it comes to winning a battle of who has the moral high ground. Which is not at all what this show is about. I’m just saying.

I’ll be honest, I was not expecting to see any of Pheem and Jira in bed after episode 5 essentially faded to black. I assumed it would be a way of getting around the fixed pair, although I don’t know why this show would need to shy away from it. However, we pick up this episode from where the previous one left off. We just don’t get a whole lot of action.

This scene I think highlights the disconnect between Pheem and Jira. Not just in their expectations, but in their attitudes. We don’t know enough about Jira’s past relationships to judge whether or not he is someone who would actually want to take things slow. That said, we do know that he knows Pheem is a player, and this may be a way of figuring out whether or not he’s legitimately interested in dating him.

Then again, it could also be Jira putting on the brakes for himself. I still think he’s desperately trying to convince himself that he’s interested in Pheem, and he just isn’t. Going to bed with him would have only made that apparent. But it could be true what he says later, which is that he wants them to get to know each other better first.

Pheem’s response – “don’t we know each other already?” – reveals a lot about him. Because, no, they don’t know each other that well. They’ve been on, what, two dates? We don’t have any sort of timeline for this show, so I can only guess at how long it’s been, but I’d wager not long.

Now, he’s allowed to be disappointed that the night didn’t end where he expected it to, but the fact that he seems to have made a booty call as he was leaving Jira’s apartment is a little much. He appears to have taken Jira not wanting sex as a personal rejection, and that’s not what it was. (Well, it may have been, but I suspect Jira doesn’t realize that yet.) There was no reason for him to leave; they could have had a perfectly lovely evening. That he did leave, and that he left so quickly, is a huge personality tell.

Later in the episode, when Pheem is cleaning up his apartment for Jira to come over, you may notice that he seems to be preparing for a romantic (i.e. sexy) encounter, despite Jira having told him that he’s not ready to have sex yet. He’s continually setting himself up for disappointment and then getting mad when he doesn’t get what he was expecting. This is both a man who has never had to put much effort into finding partners and a man who does not seem to have ever actually dated anyone.

I’ve seen a lot of chatter online about how people think Jira should end up with Pheem, and I sort of get it. But I feel like this week’s episode proves why they shouldn’t be together. It’s the entitlement, for me. Pheem is like so many men, lamenting how much “work” he’s put into wooing Jira, only for him to not be “rewarded” for it. (I appreciate the confirmation here that he did get that new tattoo just to impress Jira.) Jira is interested, but he seems to want a relationship, whereas Pheem seems to be pursuing him with sex as the goal.

Then there’s Koh. Admittedly, I don’t know his endgame here. I can’t tell how much of his behavior was the manipulation and how much was genuine, with the manipulation as a bonus. I find it very difficult to believe he put that much effort into learning Jira’s favorite flower only for him to hurt him with that later. And I think there are some scenes where he seems to genuinely regret what he’s doing to Jira.

But for the most part, it is getting very difficult to find any scrap of humanity in his actions. I had expected by now that we would see Koh slowly becoming less of a horrible person. I guess that’s my fault for assuming.

Because I do think some of his behavior has been genuine. I don’t think that even Koh could fake tears the way he did when he saw Jira’s painting. And his paltry apology with the rose in episode 5 came before he had confirmation that Jira and Pheem were seeing each other, so that one I believe.

The issue is that Koh and Jira are both characters who live largely inside their own heads. Almost nothing about their relationship has been traditional, yet they still manage to connect. This is the kind of connection that Jira wants from Pheem and isn’t getting. Koh transformed his apartment into a garden to either help Jira with his creativity or make him feel more at home (or both). He had such an emotional reaction to Jira’s art that he’s bought two pieces and is basically forcing him to make more.

He and Jira are massively in denial about their attraction to each other. Jira for obvious reasons, though he definitely responded to Koh’s kiss with more passion than he’s shown with Pheem. With Koh, though, he simply cannot let himself be vulnerable; he can’t put himself in a position where there is a possibility of him getting hurt.

If only he weren’t such a massive control freak. That’s what his actions were about in this week’s episode. He was essentially punishing Pheem and Jira for not answering his calls in the previous episode, and he did so by blowing up their lives.

And then there’s Jira. Any spine that he may have had back in episode 2 when he quit (or tried to) seems to be gone now. He keeps telling Koh that he has problems with what they’re doing, but he doesn’t actually stop doing it. (Honestly, I would have been done as soon as someone threw urine at me.) I wonder if, ultimately, there will be a line he won’t cross.

Because he does look like he intends to leave with Pheem when he quits at the end. It’s only when Koh stops him with that “only I can understand your art” that he stays. Jira is an artist, Koh is the only person who has ever paid for his art, and he’s a very real inspiration for what are presumably some of his better paintings. While originally it may have been about the money, now it’s about not losing that feeling of finally being worth something as an artist.

But then Koh hits him with, “Did you actually think I liked you?” And I thought maybe that would be what did it. But Jira still stays, and doesn’t leave the apartment until Koh has given him permission. He hates Koh, but he also hates himself. Let’s see which one wins out in the end.

As we are now six episodes into a ten-episode run, I find myself wondering how they can possibly turn this around in the few episodes that remain.

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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