Match Play: Re-edited Version (2025)

Short, enjoyable watch. Watched the re-edited 6 episode version.

Sweet romance. No consent issues, boundary-crossing, or stalking/harassment.

They don’t get together until the very end of the final episode and they plan to keep it a secret. I’d be invested in a longer show where they deal with the public fall out. Also, they keep talking about Doha not getting along with his idol group members, but they never explain why and in the final episode they just say they made up with no further explanation. So not sure what the point of even including that conflict was.

Very chaste, which is probably to be expected. One lip press where one character is wide-eyed in shock (but I would consider it most likely consensual). One post-credits kiss with a tiny bit of mouth movement.

The problem was, you couldn’t convince me that these guys have any romantic feelings for each other whatsoever. They were very friend-coded in their facial expressions, body language, and tone. Doha was the one pursuing Jaeyeon, who was meant to be unsure about his feelings, but he played into that so well that even by the end I felt like he wasn’t really that into Doha. The post-credits scene where Doha tells Jaeyeon to call him and says he’s doesn’t want to be the one always calling first didn’t help with that. I think it would have been way more enjoyable if Jaeyeon was really into Doha the whole time too and there was a whole forbidden romance yearning / longing thing going on, but that wasn’t at all present.

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