Nolan Peale

I guess the whole episode had only one mood, so they only needed that same bit of light and lively background music. They do need to change it up a bit.

Episode 2
I'm assuming that this is going to turn out like other series and Tae Hyun has like Da Yeol for awhile but the only way to get him to notice him is to pick on him. I don't think its like semantic error or MODC where through picking on someone you fall for them. Although the leads share couple dynamics with those series. This is probably (and because I won't read the web comic, I won't know) more like the first 4 episodes of My School President.

I do think Tae Hyun doesn't understand that something like archery could mean so much to someone, especially if they don't ever smile while doing it. He needs to work on his empathy a bit. He's immature that way, and for an A student, he seems to lake discipline, but I'm not about to declare this the most toxic of all toxic beginnings.

It does seem like an odd choice to cut out the parts of the prequels that gave the reunion scene dramatic weight, as well as the explanation, but include a 4 minute long set up for a gag where an incompetent, pervy boss sits on a vibrator. If you didn't watch the prequels (which I didn't), this was a very mediocre opening act. Its almost like those series where "if you didn't read the book, you can't understand the series, and if you have read the book, its great!". Like we need to take the remedial Promise 10 as a pre-requisite before we can take Promise 101.

Ep 1 Notes:
-Kim Achita Panyamang is the go to child actor when it comes to playing a BL lead with the baby fat still on him. I hope 8 years from now the BL industry returns the favor and casts him as a lead.
-I wonder what neighborhood they filmed the street scenes in in front of the coffee shop. It looked like it might be in a soundstage. The streets were so clean. I don't think Chiang Mai is an exceptionally dirty city, mind you, but if that is an actual street, kudos to whomever keeps the streets clean in Chiang Mai.
-I thought the first 20 minutes were great quality-wise. Then...well...they went full cliché with the early death of a father. Followed by an unexplained ghosting. Followed by missed connections. Throw in the pervy boss who doesn't fit in the series, and I had to downgrade this to average.
-I hope they have a better reason that most for the ghosting this time. Not "I chickened out" or "My mommy found out and told me to leave you, so I did so in the most cowardly and abrupt way possible". Give me space alien abductions, secret spy missions of great importance to the King of Thailand. Maybe a 3rd wish to a genie that wasn't well as well sought out as I thought it was. Coma brought on by a strawberry allergy. Anything but "because I was young and a coward."

I think he was more suffering from the realization that he and beam should have had life insurance policies and gone to a lawyer earlier to make it clear that the business was a partnership and not comingle so many funds together without a will so that the parents could just waltz right in and take everything from him.

I figured they wouldn't get together because Alan is too classist to date a chicken seller. But apparently, mom had squirrelled away a noteworth sum of money and taken out way too much life insurance, so Gaipa has the money now. LOL. Its no wonder the bank manager showed up at her funeral. She was probably the reason he was making is cross-sell insurance sales targets each month. He needs to get that son hooked into the bank's financial planning services ASAP or he won't have a mark.

Regarding the police, I'm assuming a text message from Uncle Kit with a photo of the wealthiest boy in the country tied up and a note to "submit to my wishes if you ever want to see him alive again" with an address to an abandoned warehouse should be enough evidence for the police to start asking questions. So I'm assuming both Palm and Chopper did the smart thing and texted that info to Ben when he told them to call the police. Or that Ben just called his Army Colonel father and asked him. Who knows. But I mean, if you're going to send a text message like that, and the police come and find a bunch of people shot, even corrupt or lazy police are going to have to start asking questions.

Final thoughts - O.K. I've seen too much bad BL in my life to generally hate this one. And part of the issue is that it didn't live up to my hopes and expectations. So I need to make an effort to appreciate what was presented, not what I hoped would happen. So it was fine. And whew...that was a great kiss at the end. However, I really do hope that someday Thai BL will take the sub-genre seriously when working for crossover appeal. I like that it wasn't a high school BL, but I was hoping for something a bit more thrilling in the Lakhorn. Actually, I was hoping it wouldn't be a Lakhorn at all, but some kind of suspense thriller where the boys had to work together to uncover the truth about who killed Neung's father, or plot some kind of revenge for his death. That's not what we got though. The guy we thought was evil when we first met him turned out to be the bad guy and he got more wicked the longer the story went on. If there was a mystery, Ben solved it rather easily. And it wasn't so much revenge, but self-defense with a police bust thrown in.

Overall it gets a passing grade since as far as bodyguard to lovers stories it was better than most. I just hope that the next time we revisit the bodyguard-lover story, we get something worth writing about other than how bad Thai bodyguards seem to be at their jobs.

Left out of the ending, I assume, was the part where Alex read the news in the year 2022 and went back to 2012 and invested a bunch of money in bitcoin and got out in 2021 as a multi-millionaire to fund his movies. Also, was an early investor in Moderna. He has this knack...

I agree with the posters below that the ending erased the character development of everyone. Despite all the modern attitudes towards sex, all this effort was really about making sure that at least for this group of friends (save Kat), everyone's life partner turned out to be their first love from high school. That seemed to be the biggest problem for everyone - failed high school romance.

I'm going to assume that Phuwin's character never became a rock star, though. Now that he's got a supportive environment, he no longer has that chip on his shoulder to actually get good at his instrument and work through the struggles to succeed. He also just writes insipid music that doesn't mean much because he no longer has any relatable but personal struggles to inspire him and most of his money comes from writing jingles at an advertising agency. LOL.

Notes:
-Run might be the first actors in a BL series in awhile to play a doctor who IRL is actually old enough to have completed medical school and a residency. I will never be able to tell him from his brother Games, though.
-I can't actually tell how old Tin is supposed to be. Or Khana.
-I kept waiting for the relationship problem to reveal itself. Like I kept thinking Tin would walk in on Park with someone else. Nope. I have no idea what this is supposed to be about. Maybe nothing with them. They are already a couple and they stay a couple the whole time, and its just all about how this same sex couple is inserted into the fabric of the supportive neighborhood, while they visit food stalls. That's fine with me, actually.
-I'm not actually put off by the kids. Since with the exception of Park, the people in the neighborhood aren't wealthy (assuming he's wealthy as a doctor) and aren't the kinds of people who would hire daycare or nannies, so childcare would be a chore that would just fall to whomever in the neighborhood was around and available. That said, I wish at least one of the 3 children was a boy, since two of the girls seem to be the same age. Who knows, maybe they are the same girl. Tin's sister is the tiny one. Khana's cousin is the sassy talker. And hospital girl is what exactly?
-Once again, I would like to remind BL writers that the life expectancy in Thailand actually isn't as low as they think it is, so having everyone in their 20s having at least 1 if not 2 dead parents isn't realistic. Although I like the idea that there appears to be a neighborhood grandfather, because all the other men dropped dead at 50. LOL
-I'll give this one a try, but will drop it if they don't develop a storyline next week.

Yeah, I noticed that too. That girl is too old. But the point of this series is to get Wen and Jim together by the end, not to figure out who was to blame in the past relationship. We don't have enough info to analyze it, so we'll just have to go with what she said. They were dating before Jim came into the picture and she told him to stop dating Jim. There was enough attachment there for her to want to keep Beam despite finding out that he was cheating on her with another man, and she wasn't open to and open relationship with him.

It just wouldn't make much sense that these two characters would meet and like each other. I was worried initially that they would meet to scheme to break up Wen and Jim and fall for each other that way, because every other one of the Midnight Series involved a scheme of some sort. But that isn't the case. While Pattaya is a small city and there probably are a limited number of single gay men for them to choose from, Alan is a classist and isn't going to start dating a chicken seller just because he's lonely.

He is, but I'm guessing he does see it as a problem. Another complicating factor in his life. "Do you need to do this now? Go back to being just poor. We can do something about you being poor. Why add to the trouble right now? Go be rich, then work on the gay thing. Priorities, son. Priorities." :-)

Well, we only have to go by what she said about her relationship. Which was that their dads were friends and introduced them when they went to college and they started dating then. We know when he died. It was written on his columbarium door. I'm not sure why they would keep the fact they were dating a secret from their parents when their fathers wanted them to get together.

Tough call. If they had met in college, they had been "dating" for 14-15 years when Beam died at the age of 34. I some time, their parents have to start wondering why its taking them so long to get married. While I think she was very mature and collected when meeting Jim, she probably did intend to marry Beam, even if he kept lying to her about breaking up with Jim.

Ep 5-6
-I was surprised to find out that Li Ming's mom is actually alive. I'm assuming she's remarried and abandoned her kid to start a new family, something that happens a lot in Thai dramas. "She checks in from time to time" doesn't scream "mom is off working abroad to earn money to help out."
-I think Khao needs to be cast as someone who doesn't get his guy more often. He's good at being shot down. Sure, he probably doesn't want to be known as the BL Actor who never has a happy ending, but its a living.
-Was glad that they didn't overdo it with Heart's accident.
-I guess I would have wanted to have the backstory with the ex fleshed out earlier. I know that people are getting tired of Jim's "wall", but the accident happened in 2018, so it really wasn't that long ago. And he wasn't really fighting about the affair until near the end. They appeared to have been happy for a long time before it fell apart. Everyone mourns differently, but 4 years isn't that unusual after losing someone you spent a decade thinking you'd be together with a long time.
-Yeah, Li Ming had to visit the mother by himself and handle it himself. Jim strikes me as the type of guy who'd agree that they shouldn't even be friends if that's what the mother wanted.
-Not really sure how this is going to end next week. Will Moonlight Chicken be saved? (Probably not). Will Jim and Wen be together? (80/20 chance). Will the baby be born healthy (let's hope). Will Li Ming get a job in Australia and leave Heart behind? (Maybe).

Yeah, I can't think of situations where Alan and Gaipa would meet before the series ends. Pattaya isn't that big of a town, so there aren't going to be too many young, single gay men in the pool. So maybe they'd run into each other on Grindr. But Alan is a classist and is not about to date a mere chicken seller just because he's lonely.

The hospital don't really care. They want to free up the bed and in the absence of family, someone in that room had to step up.

Gong has his own life to live and Alan was never his boyfriend. In the absence of anyone else, it pretty much had to be Wen.

17 is the cutoff for onscreen kisses in the Thai code, so they were both old enough.