This review may contain spoilers
Lost me after 7th episode
I am confused and a little speechless. I was incredibly invested and fully enjoying the show up to it’s 8th episode. When Koh manipulated the three of them into meeting each other in his hotel room was the highlight for me. The moment with Pheem and Jira in the rage room was great, and the moment of Koh interrupting Jira’s painting process of Pheem was very well done as well.But what the hell happened afterwards? The next morning Koh was suddenly all lovey dovey which felt a bit out of pocket after what happened and Jira just went along with it. I felt like I’ve missed a whole episode or two in between. Suddenly Koh was in love with Jira and Jira was also in love with Koh but it felt a little too sudden imo. Their relationship started at a super slow burn pace and there should’ve been at least one or two more episodes of complex emotional buildup between them before their feelings reached the level of ‘love’.
An intense love triangle story should’ve been more than enough to concentrate on in only ten episodes, added to the mess that Jira is a broke artists who has to work for a rich IT guy who has no qualms about using him to lie to people to get his way. We already have enough of a moral dilemma here to go in depth with: Jira’s artistic integrity vs doing what he feels he has to do to survive in this world plus his complicated feelings towards his boss and Pheem.
The AI discourse here felt very performative and bare bones, unfortunately. It’s an important topic to discuss and as an artists I do feel for Jira and the overall need to include the debate into the show but it felt like a half-formed thought. The short exchange of arguments between Koh and Jira felt like they were parroted from the internet with only the barest understanding of the subject. I in no way doubt that Nuchy is much more knowledgeable about the subject than the show would make me believe based on the superficial argument exchange between Koh and Jira, so why so tame?
The subject needed a more in depth discussion than what the show gave us.
The show made a bold move by making Koh use Jira’s art to feed into AI but never fully committed to the consequences. I personally wanted a more intense fall out between Koh and Jira, their confrontation felt too quick, too parroted without many layers such an argument could and probably would believably have.
I called it a bold move bc considering it’s a BL and OffGun it is expected by the average viewer to end in a happy OffGun ending (which it did, poorly) but how would a show make the both of them get back together without compromising it’s integrity? Not to mention in only one episode.
Well, the answer is it doesn’t. The ending was an expected disappointment bc they didn’t even try to make Koh apologize or understand Jira. One could say Koh learned to be less selfish by respecting Jira’s wish to stop pursuing him (and respecting the sleeping boundary to a degree) but what about the AI situation? That was never mentioned again and that was their biggest fallout. What happened? Idk, nothing I guess.
Jira moved on with creating his art but not really bc he still kept painting Koh and then suddenly realized that he wanted to see him still and sell him this new painting of them that he painted bc it was special. That’s nice and all but where is his character growth? What changed? Did he not care anymore about what Koh did? Did he suddenly not care that his and Koh’s ideologies did not correlate at all? It felt like a forced happy ending.
Overall I’d consider the show to have a strong start, strong middle but a very weak ending. Truthfully, I expected better from Nuchy knowing how much I loved Not Me but it is what it is. Maybe it’s bc it’s a Jittirain novel, I never liked any of her previous works so that could be a potential reason for me not liking it despite Nuchy but still.
Also, this show absolutely needed to have more episodes to dive deeper into these complex societal and relationship problems. Ten episodes were not enough, things felt rushed. There was a part where Ing pointed out that a muse does not have to be synonymous with a lover and I thought the show would do something with that idea, like make Jira realize that Pheem could become his muse after Koh’s AI betrayed but no, his muse and lover has always been and continued to be Koh, which was a bit boring.
I’m still giving it a pretty high rating bc it had a lot of good things going on for it as well and I would like for BLs to have more of these mature, complex storylines, just done better.
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This review may contain spoilers
Fluff over Substance, again.
The characters experienced zero growth. Thee stayed the same, as out of touch as ever only now he’s also obsessed with Peach on top of that. Same with Peach, he started as the good samaritan guy, stayed the same, no changes. The only change is that he married Thee at the end, that’s it.Their relationship was strange. Dynamic felt more like a parent child dynamic. Thee was so out of touch with everything that he needed Peach to explain to him the most basic concepts like saying thank you, apologizing, having manners etc etc. and that’s what usually parents teach their young children. Thee would do or say something outrageous and Peach would patiently and slowly explain in almost childlike, simple terms why the things Thee said or did were not ok. It’s not just the fact that he told Thee what was technically not ok or weird but specifically the way he explained it. Like a parent to a child, which made their dynamic at times a little uncomfortable to watch.
Humor, while I did enjoy it at first, wasn’t absurd enough to carry the whole show for me. The first couple episodes were fine but then the humor started disappearing more and more, being replaced with fluff, a touch of melancholy and audiences’ wish fulfillment. The main reason I decided to watch this show was bc of the viral and funny clips of Thee and I thought there would be more considering the show is 10 episodes long but alas, there wasn’t more. The best funny parts are all there to find as YouTube shorts. Just watch them instead If you’re thinking of starting the show mainly bc of the comedy.
Peach as an audience-insert.
Yeah, Peach was the bland straight guy (in comedic terms). He was the typical good guy with no interesting personally traits. His main function was to explain to Thee why his outbursts were wrong and also act as the audience self-insert. He’s the one Thee lives for, dotes on, buys things for and basically is ready to do everything for him. Peach though, is a strong, independent ̶w̶o̶m̶a̶n̶ so he doesn’t need all of Thee’s gifts bc he’s self- sufficient being the most sought after photographer in the country no less. But it’s still nice to feel doted on regardless, right? Thee is doting on the audience, not Peach. Peach is a mere vessel for said audience.
These types of audience self-inserts aren’t rare in the romance genre. Being a millennial I remember the hype Fifty Shades of Grey garnered as well as Twilight and those two were the epitome of reader/audience self-insert. Well, nothing has changed in the trends over the years it seems bc Me and The reflects the same idea and garners the same popularity.
The glamorization of money and wealth is nothing new in Thai BL but in this case it really rubbed me the wrong way. I’m not against wealthy characters or mafia love interests but in here it felt so gratuitous and tone deaf. Thee’s completely unlimited source of money, him buying unnecessary things, wasting said money on stupidity like paying for all sizes of engagement rings bc he couldn’t find out the right size of Peach’s finger. I know that it’s supposed to be funny and probably not to be taken too seriously but the overall humor isn’t continuous or absurd enough to ignore this glamorization of pure wastefulness. If the whole show (or at least most of it) was absurd comedy I wouldn’t have said a thing but it’s clearly not the case here so the tone-deaf constant flaunting of wealth stands out like a sore thumb.
The whole Aran/Tawan situation was stupid. Not even incomprehensible just stupid. They were an on and off couple that had their problems (never explained the depth or exact nature of those problems) and after Aran refused several times to get back together with Tawan he sure as hell still ran back to him tail wagging the moment Tawan got into a problem (of his own making). Then they hugged and everything was fine lol. No depth, no character development, just unnecessary superficial fluff.
Mhok and Rome were the only ones I was somewhat interested in but they clearly didn’t get enough screentime for anything really. You can barely call them a side couple with how little screentime they got (same with Aran and Tawan btw).
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