The Middleman's Love

Well… it is what it is

Look, I only watch this for TutorYim. I love them as a couple, but I feel like Yim is always getting the same roles. I like the storyline so far, but I do get why people‘s ratings are pretty low. I hoped for this show not to be cringe, like Bed Friend, but yeah…

The acting they deliver is great. I mean, I couldn’t play Yim‘s role at all or Tutor‘s role either. (I loved them in Cutie Pie). I feel like the storyline is pretty classic, but it still has something yk what I mean?

I currently am watching it on youtube but i had it on hold after 2/4 parts bc of the cringeness. (If you like comedy it definitely is sth for you). Still, I must say I‘m pretty excited for the next few episodes to see if the series gets more mature and how it evolves. I am hoping for more mature progress!

Read More

Disappointing

Let’s start by saying that I read the book and loved it. my impression of the show began off with how disappointing the adaptation is. Imagine my shock when episode one they changed the entire timeline from the book. Which meant everyone’s motivations now had to be completely rewritten. Mai stayed pretty much the same but now he has a fellow intern magically show up to handle the plotline where Jade thinks Mai should pair up with Ae. and because Ae and King are no longer an integral part of the main plot they’re shunted to the side and all the friendship chemistry goes sideways.

Ae is supposed to be a quiet smart influence on Mai. Helping him along with wooing Jade. but since Jade no longer needs to misunderstand that relationship that meaning is lost.

Jade is supposed to be a “mid” character. quietly helping everyone around him yet he’s rewritten and (surely coached) to be loud and, let’s be honest, slightly annoying, instead of kind and self defeating. you get more incite into his character through his brothers conversation with Mai in the last episode than you do in the enitre series.

Honestly, I could go on for pages and pages so instead I’ll try to keep it short. I know this series suffered from a lot of changes and recasting in the beginning but instead of getting better due to the delays is seems like they ended up having too much time to make too many changes and they got lost somewhere in the middle and ended up lost out in the wilderness of story land.

in short, my suggestion is to go read the book, I enjoyed it. the adaptation should be enjoyed for purely seeing Tutor and Yim interactions. I’d suggest skipping episodes 2-4 though. Yim isn’t really allowed to have emotional range until that episode.

gosh. I’m still suffering from the disappointment.

if you want to see how adaptations should be done go watch the Thai adaptation of the Japanese BL manga Cherry Magic.

Read More

It... Has a plot... (If you squint really hard)

I will have to say I AM GOING TO WATCH THIS SERIES TILL THE END BECAUSE IT JUST STARTED TO GET GOOD.

I started watching because of Bed friend and that Yim and Tutor will be the main couple. Was really excited too. But GOOD LORD does the director not know how comedy works. I think the screenwriters who wrote it did not intend this much over the top acting and the actors probably really tried their best to fulfill the vision of the director. (Seriously, Yim and Tutor have better acting roles in 6 min shorts and have been successful characters is other dramas ie Cutiepie. Even in Bedfriend Jade was a better character).

The 1st episode was so painful and I had to physically hit the wall with how over the top Jade was. But pretty sure the director figured what he was doing wrong cuz in the 2nd episode onwards, Jade seemed to have toned it down a bit though not much.

Mai is a good character as in he's the calm to Jade's chaotic nature and I think they worked well to an extent. But perhaps we need a bit of a balance where Jade needs to match Mai's energy since Mai seems to be able to catch up to Jade more times than not.

For Uea and King, I have no notes. They are perfect. They are the definition of a healthy relationship and act like it. And after what happened in Bedfriend, this was a suitable outcome. Not to mention how they both are more than happy to wing man Jade (seeing as they have been good friends in a long time.) We support friends supporting friends.

Tong and Gus are good too. I liked seeing how Gus was trying hard to win Tongs affection and Tong wasn't reciprocating but when faced with Gus ignoring him, (What's this? the consequences of my actions?) Having Tong chase after Gus was entertaining and brings an homage to the previous series (Bedfriend).

Once you get to episode 5, The heavier, more relatable stuff kicks in and it's actually starting to be good. (At least compared to the almost derailing of the comedy scenes were.)

Khun Cheewin Thanamin Wongskulphat, if you are reading this: (Press X to Doubt) before you start the comedy, please try to make the MC relate to viewer first. Or at least let them sympathize with MC before you throw in the fact that they're bat shit crazy. But you a have very good eye for support characters, so A for effort on that part.

Or you know, you can just stick to sexual tension and heavier themed based drames. You seemed to have more success in those areas.

Also: If you are going to make a driving scene in the day, PLEASE DON'T MAKE IT LOOK TOO OBVIOUS THAT THE CHARACTERS ARE IN A STATIONARY CAR. SOUND EFFECTS CAN'T SAVE BAD CAMERA ANGLES AND EDITING!

EDIT: I am convinced that this director is only well versed in sexy time scene cuz.... Well when you get to episode 7 & 8 you'll get it...

Read More

trash

jade acts like a 5 year old girl in this whole series. how in hell he cannot figure out mai is the one falling for him. even a blind person can tell mai is in love with jade. we wasted 5 to 6 episodes and jade please stop screaming like a girl in your next series. we don't like it. to be honest the side couples should be in the main roles cause they act like they are in their age range like a grown adult. and of course I love to see king and uea together. and production team, stop playing the ost every 5 seconds I hate the song cause I listened the ost for a billion times.
and for the family of mai, mai's mother is so fake. I can tell she does not want mai to be gay. I can see in her eyes. I love jade's family at least they can act they are supportive to jade.
and finally this series is trash

Read More

Mosly unwatchable but with some nice moments

Perhaps there are viewers who enjoy this sort of romantic comedy/farce, but I find the main character just too pastiche in rather annoying sort of way. I couldn't take him seriously, couldn't empathize with him, and eventually just fast forwarded through a lot of his screen time. If only the character arcs had been as well defined as the abdomens on show the basic storyline might have yielded a decent series at this length, but instead we get a very jerky and episodic stream of comedic set pieces and mostly stiff dramatic acting from the support cast.
Mostly Jade needs to be more loveable. The basic story is reasonable: an otaku who is resigned to experiencing love vicariously through the friends he tries to mediate between finds someone who sees beneath the surface to find him much more attractive than he seems at first blush. But for that to work we need to see more of what actually makes Jade loveable, and we just don't see enough of that to empathize with them.
There are some nice moments and some decent acting here and there, e.g. some of the emotions shown as interactions are Rashomoned are well acted and work to some extent; or the moments Jade and Mai spend looking through Jade's sketch notebook of Jade's time with his new intern.

Read More

Trying to put unnecessary comedy ruined the series

Sorry not sorry!!!
It was a disaster and here are some facts I think were fuel to it:

1. I couldn't concentrate in most of the episode with Jade's continuous shouting through the episode. GOD!!! It just made me super exhausted just by looking at him
2. Why make Jade's character so dumb and annoying just to introduce a comedic angle to the story(which i didn't even found funny). I haven't read the novel but wasn't Jade's character meant to be Kind and Naive. Not dumb and annoying.
3. Trying to stretch the story, by letting Jade not ignoring all the obvious flirting by Mai and still Jade trying to match him up with someone else..
4. Why KingUea are soo different here than they were in Bedfriend and had so little screentime
5. Jade character should have been given more influence of how he was the middleman and also exploring his backstory more.


I think the whole blame for this is to be given to the writers and directors. I will explain why:
It's said that an actor is a directors product. So in general there are high chances of having bad perfomance of the actors ,if the direction is bad. Well in some cases the actors are equally bad in acting as well. But this was not the case here. We have seen Tutor and Yim before, they are decent actors. I personally was cheering for them when they were given their own series as leads. They have good chemistry and are visually appealing as well.
I was left utterly disappointed .

Anyway the second couple were cute and were the only thing that made me watch the series through the end.

Read More

PAINFUL

Absolutely terrible. This made me wanna poke my eyes out.
I was so excited to watch this. I was a fan of this couple in Cutie Pie and was hoping they would be SOMEWHAT similar to that in Middleman's Love. I really liked Jade in Bed Friend and I have no idea what happened to his character. He was the most annoying person on the planet and I hate to say that, because I like Yim very much. Tutor's character was nice as always, but I think this ship was ruined. I'm telling y'all, every minute of this was painful and cringy LOL I think I only watched till the end because I really love James. Everything about the show was poorly done. The script was terrible, the story didn't make sense, the side couple was very weak and I didn't like anyone but Uea. I like King but even he was annoying.

Read More

only for romcom's fans, and that's mostly why is so underrated

I usually don't write reviews, but I think this is a pretty underrated drama as of now (6.4 rating!).
Honestly, I was expecting much worse given the comments and the ratings: it's a very classic romcom with exaggerated and nonsensical humour, BUT the actors did quite a good job with their roles.
It made me laugh a lot, smile, giggle and care for the main leads, especially Jade's character.

I think the main problem for many people is exactly Jade's characters, who's over the top BUT is clearly on the spectrum (English is not my first language, so pardon me if writing it like this might sound offensive): Yim gave it his all to act with the whole body, with his lips, his hands... I think it had to be a very challenging role.

I haven't read the novel nor I've seen the previous series (Bed Friends - but I will), so I don't know how Jade's character is in the novel... but I really really liked the fact that he was not "just a goofy nerd", and that Mai (and all the friends and coworkers) understood and embraced that.

That said: TutorYim were lovely, I liked NetJames too and their dynamics as an already established couple in this series (as I said, I don't know about their couple in BF so I understand this might not be good for BF's series fans).

It's a fun thai romcom but there are some very nice, heartwarming and deep scenes (ep5 coming out to family, ep7 coming out at work, ep8 honest dialogue about ex boyfriends...).

Nice songs for the OST, the direction and editing (and dialogues!) were pretty average even tho' it didn't look like a low-budget series... that's a pity because the idea perse was pretty nice (reminded me of "Kahogo no Kahoko", 2017 Jdrama) and I loved how Jade's character became braver and braver but still being himself.

Read More