assez

The love scene — the generic sound design was absolutely atrocious. Here's a clear example that slow doesn't always equal sensual. I understand that the show might be trying to showcase its actors in a way that appeals to a horny teenage girls, but please, please… could you take a step back from doing it so obviously? Maybe five steps. Or fifteen. Thank you.

Surprise, surprise — aside from that, everything else was acted well. In my vocabulary, this is a well-told story. Every actor with even the slightest importance brought their A-game. The picture quality, character styling, group dynamics, cinematography… all of it was solid, often even above that.

But the love scene? If I’m being kind, it felt like you were trying too hard: too much time spent saying nothing new, showing nothing we haven’t seen a million times before. If I’m not being kind, it felt uncomfortably close to selling young boys to lewd gazes — the music, the long camera takes, and the overall directorial style of this scene didn’t help the case, even if the acting remained decent.

I was honestly worried, with the two-episodes-per-week format, that these last two episodes would fall flat. But no — they were very well done, aside from this one misstep. I’m positively surprised, enough so that I would place this series among the best of the year, for me at least.