Broken: Enemies Attract Review: Evan Adams, Isabel Feldman, and the Quiet Work of Becoming Yourself

When you hear the name Evan Adams, what comes to mind?

I’ll admit that for a long time — for me — it was the abs. The endearing smile. The voice so smooth it melts a person like butter.

But lately, as he takes on more roles, that’s changed. It’s more about his growth as an actor. And Broken: Enemies Attract is the clearest evidence yet that abs don’t define him, that he’s complex, and that he’s a talented actor that continues to grow.

Miles Cooper is not the TYPICAL bad boy

Miles Cooper (Adams) isn’t just the bad boy who’s done a lot of things he shouldn’t have. He’s a man in search of redemption and a better life.

People have misconceptions about who Miles is and what he wants. He’ll take them — he’ll wear them, he’ll let you believe them — but that doesn’t mean he wants to. His life is far from perfect. It’s a nightmare. And that nightmare is exactly what drives him to want more and then actually work for it, which is a distinction this genre doesn’t always bother making.

Miles transfers schools so scouts will see him play football. He wants scholarships. He wants college. He made the move that was right for him, full stop. Did it matter that it put him on a field with his biggest enemy? No. What mattered was his future, and that he was building toward a better one.

That’s a seventeen-year-old with a plan. In a vertical drama. I was not prepared.

Isabel Feldman arrives fully formed

This is Isabel Feldman’s first vertical drama, and she has the entire YA drama thing down.

She plays Laney Cho, a Korean American girl who feels an intense pressure from her parents to be perfect — and who genuinely cannot bring herself to do anything except study, be perfect, and be the best. Not won’t. Can’t. Feldman plays that as a physical condition, not a personality trait, and it’s the right read.

Here’s the official synopsis:

“After discovering her boyfriend’s betrayal with her best friend, 17-year-old Laney Cho agrees to a fake relationship with his rival Miles Cooper. As their arrangement intensifies, she must decide between living for herself or for others.”

So, Laney catches her boyfriend Owen cheating — with her best friend, which is its own special knife — and that launches her straight into Miles Cooper’s orbit, where he suggests they fake date.

About the fake dating

Fake dating isn’t my favorite thing. I do get the plot device — I understand what it’s for, I understand why it works, I understand that it has kept this entire genre in business.

But it always, always ends with the revelation that it was never fake for either of them. So for me, I just wish they’d get straight to the point and admit that they like each other.

Instead we get the round-and-round wheel of miscommunication and chaos. Laney and Miles like each other and respond by trading jabs and finding it nearly impossible to open up. They’re so different that locating any common ground is genuine work for them.

And Laney doesn’t believe her parents will ever accept Miles, because he has a rap sheet and that would bring shame on her family.

I’ll say the thing: her insistence on bringing up his past feels disingenuous. It’s also very insulting. She reaches for it when she’s frightened, and she uses it as a reason instead of admitting it’s a fear, and Miles has to stand there and absorb it every single time.

What I will and won’t speak to

I do understand that in her culture, disrespecting elders is not acceptable. Neither is an A-minus. Neither is dating someone her parents wouldn’t choose. Laney has been raised knowing her parents’ word is law. She didn’t know how to be anything other than the good girl they expected.

I don’t like to speak about things I don’t understand, or about other people’s cultures.

Culture: the shared set of beliefs, values, customs, and behaviors that a group of people learns and passes down from one generation to the next. And even within a shared culture, the interpretation is always different from family to family. But culture and tradition and expectation — all of it makes up part of who we are.

That said, here’s what I think this show gets right – Miles challenging Laney to think outside the box was essential. Not to her rebellion — to her growth. To her seeing that being honest with her parents wasn’t necessarily disrespecting them or abandoning her culture.

What it actually was? It was allowing them to get to know her. And it was inviting them to embrace change alongside her.

Those are not the same thing as walking away from where you come from. The show knows the difference, and it’s careful about it, and I appreciated that more than I expected to.

The strongest characters here are the two leads

Laney, because she challenges her own beliefs and her own fears in order to grow — and, more than that, to really embrace what it means to be Laney. She fought for what she wanted. She didn’t settle. For a girl built entirely out of other people’s expectations, that’s the whole arc.

Miles, because he works through family problems and works his way up from second-string quarterback, and does both without asking for credit. He tries to give her space. When her mother insists she get back together with her ex, he’s hurt — and he doesn’t want an explanation, doesn’t want her to tell him what it really was. He just tries to push her away.

Because he thinks she wants him to be her secret. And for him? He wanted to tell the world they were together.

That’s the ache of this whole thing, right there. Miles knows he’s made mistakes. He also knows he’s paid for them. What he doesn’t want is to keep paying for them forever, to everyone, on a loop, as a condition of being loved.

He wanted to grow. That’s it. That’s all he was asking for.

And Laney knew she was miserable without him. As for Owen — she didn’t want to be anywhere near him, which, correct.

The part where I believed it

It’s genuinely fascinating to me how actors pull off making an audience believe there are real feelings between two characters, because I could not fake it. Not for a second. Not if you paid me.

But watching Adams and Feldman on screen — as Laney finally opens her heart and tells him she doesn’t want him to be a secret — I believed those two people were in love. It felt natural. It didn’t feel performed, and it didn’t feel forced, and in a format built on compressed emotional beats, that is not a small accomplishment.

Two careers worth watching

I love when an actor makes you think about their character and the role they’re playing.

Adams keeps advancing his résumé, but he’s also upping his acting game. He’s grown a lot since his first vertical and he continues to grow with every role he takes on. The Miles Cooper of this series would not have been possible for him a year ago.

Feldman is just starting out, and I can’t wait to see where the road takes her. She has such potential, and I’m hoping she finds her way — because we’d want that for anyone. Everybody deserves the chance to chase the thing they want.

Credit where it’s due

We love that this drama isn’t just the usual faces, and that CandyJar is taking an active stance on representing different cultures and ethnicities in its programming.

It matters. It matters for the people watching who never see themselves, and it matters for the stories themselves, because Laney Cho’s specific pressure is what makes this more than a fake-dating plot. Swap her for a generic golden girl and you lose the entire spine of the show.