XeniaLee

THE INTERNET LIED TO ME

I watched this because I got so many recommendations online and I have the feeling we either watched different series or I am just not the right person to watch this. Every time Thee started singing it was just cringing me out. I was not even there when Thee proposed and I still wanted to leave.
First couple of episodes were mostly okay though. Except Thee trying to pay Aran and intimidate him with guns, casually trying to SA him and everybody just accepted that? Like you all got no backbone, moral or something? And Aran you okay? Because your bf is somehow abussive and a random stranger just tried to buy you, but well okay, I guess that's life.
For Peach and Thee, they probably should have stayed friends, I never had the feeling they really liked each other, especially not Peach. Peach was good on his own and having Thee in his life was mostly a headache. Also Thee bearly learned anything about spending behavior or social skills. Peach just started to accept it, while Thee was constantly ignoring his boundaries. Like episode 9. "pls don't propose to me" episode 10 "proposed and immidiately get married". And not only that, Thee decided that while he can't even brush his own teeth and is as mature as a 3 year old, it is a great idea to adopt TWO children, without even getting consent from his partner. Peach will end up being a single mom for two children he never even asked for. And don't let me get started on eps. 10 "I don't need to ask for your consent since we are married now". No thank you Khun Thee.
I liked Moks character, he was also somehow the only reasonable character, but thier story didn't get enough attention at all. Same for Peachs and Plubs backstory. But there was a lot of guessing going on all the time. Like did Thee and Peach actually ever got physical? Who knows? Surely not me, because I thought they were just cuddeling the night at Peachs house until mum scolded them for not waiting until marriage. What was going on with the bracelet Mok gave Rome? Why would a CEO of a perfume company would be so endlessly rich if he is not acutally in the mafia, are you growing money trees? Is there secretly felix felicis in your perfume bottles? How can a company run by Thee survive at all? Whats has been going on between Tawan and Aran what made them breake up in the first place? What really happend at Thees birthday party? Also the whole plot of Peach getting financially stable to be able to adopt Plub out of the orphanage makes no sense at all (Thai law you have to be at least 15 years older than the child you adopt - which Peach surely isn't)
And also can someone explain me what nationality the wanna be mafia family has? Since Thee repeadetly gets scolded for his bad thai, which makes me think that he is not native. His family lives in Hongkong, but Thee somehow speaks thai and english with his family. And then his own brother, who unlike Thee, does not live or grew up in Thailand, corrects Thees thai? Are they Thai and Thee is somehow unable to speak his own native language? Or is Rome just language god and the whole family decided to learn Thai for funnsies?
Over all most of the story was poorly written and really predictable (like I knew they would adopt these children the first time they went to the orphanage). All threads like Wiwid and Shohei were not really threatening and didn't really had a proper motiavation or background story. They just appeared out of nowhere. The scene where Mok and Thee did fight the Shohei guy and just ended the whole thing with just one fist fight was so disappointing. I really did like the scene where Thee shoot Wiwid thoug, that was some really nice acting. And I also think Thee asking AI on how to life and buying gmmtv was somehow funny.

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DEAR GMMTV, THIS IS A MESS, LET ME EXPLAIN WHY, THEN PLS DO BETTER

Warning: This review is really long and I wrote it entirely myself as a non-native English speaker. I genuinely tried to understand this series and ended up taking notes, rewatching scenes, and mapping the plot just to follow what was happening. If you don’t want to read all this, scroll to the TL;DR summary at the end.
I also want to make clear that this review comes from disappointment and a wish for improvement and is not at all meant to harm or hurt anybody who worked on the series or any viewers who enjoyed it. I watched the whole show and wrote a detailed review because I am actually invested and a fan myself. That said, let’s dive in.

So I watched this since I saw and liked Joong and Dunk in other dramas, so they already got a bonus from me here. But I still can’t describe how incredibly disappointed I am in this series and I seriously can’t understand most reviews here. It is so chaotic that I don’t even know where to start. And Jades super cringe, bad sticky tattoo which changes colors and magically appears and disappears, especially in swimming scenes, is the least of my worries here.
HOW DOES THE MAIN PLOT EVEN WORK?
Since the series never clearly explains the intention nor rules of the game, I can only try to reconstruct what the original idea might have been. A deadly truth or dare game meant to expose the sins of the “Avengers” group out of revenge. Each person receives a letter and must choose between truth or dare. If they choose truth, they admit their sins and die in a way related to their original sin. Or they choose dare, which is either helping the murderer or pick another victim. Nothing else makes sense to me, like this game can only function if you are forced to choose and if choosing different options acutally gives you a different output, if not this is not a game at all. If you think different, feel free to enlighten me. The problem is that the outcome rarely depends on the choices. Characters die even after completing dares. Some never receive both options. Sometimes multiple letters appear, sometimes none. At that point it stops functioning as a game at all.
Since the series is so chaotic I genuinely had to make a chart to even follow or understand the “game” content. Let me explain (here the 8 avengers in “death” order):
1. Puifai – Truth: Guilty for knowing all sins of her friends and not doing anything at all
Dare: Kill herself
Output: She pretends to kill herself, the letter at her place is fake, she is acutally the murderer. (Check ✓)
2. Tar – Truth: Guilty for r*ping Puifai.
Dare: ???
Output: Picks truth and dies. (✓)
3. Belle – Truth: Throwing acid on another girl (for who knows what reason, never mentioned) and forcing (?) Puifai for abortion.
Dare: Pick Cher or Jay to die.
Output: She picks Cher to die (but Cher is protected) and Belle is killed anyway (because Tonkla picked her). (✓)
4. Tonkla – Truth: Guilty for hit and run, killing a man with a stolen car.
Dare: Pick Cher or Belle to die.
Output: Picks Belle to die (which she does) and gets killed anyway. (False X)
5. Time – Truth: Secretly filming tapes (of his friends) and selling them online.
Dare: Bring the car.
Output: Brings the car, but gets killed anyway. (X)
6. Jay – Truth: Guilty for sleeping with Puifai (which I guess she consented to since nothing else is ever mentioned) and getting her pregnant (which he didn’t knew)? Puifai is kinda just mad that he didn`t help her.
Dare: Pick Cher or Champ to die (but Cher was already picked)
Output: He picks neither and gets out (✓)
7. Cher- Truth: Secretly sleeping around with her friend’s boyfriend and reveal Champ that Puifai was pregnant.
Dare: ???
Output: She never picks, she should have died because Belle picked her but ended living since Champ protected her, but died later on. (✓)
8. Champ- Truth: Buying drugs, sleeping around, helping Tonkla hide a body.
Dare: Drugging Cher and handing her over.
Output: He drugs Cher but the murderer still tries to kill him. (X)
9. Jade and Kamin – Truth: None existent.
Dare: Find the culprit.
Output: Well, they kinda do and they don’t die, so I guess that’s somehow correct. But it makes no sense that they are included in the letters at all (since they not only are not avengers, but also the motive for the murder was revenge and justice for their actions, but Kamin and Jade are not guilty in the first place) It was so incredibly funny to me that even the game masters where so disappointed in their police work that they had to dare them to actually do their job – so I had to include this here.
So as you can see I had to get really invested in this and still can`t make any sense out of it. Why force characters to choose if the outcome stays the same anyway? Why then play a game in the first place? The game is following neither any rules nor any structure. Sometimes they not even get both options to pick from or even get multiple letters? The idea had a lot of potential but it was really poorly done.

JADE AND KAMIN
In the first episode Kamin was introduced as a strict, somehow cold, successful supervisor. Who is professional, married to his job and strictly separates private and work. Somebody who follows laws and rules and will always prioritizes doing what is “right”. (Like questioning the police officer’s son, zero f***s given for hierarchy). Which I think was a good intention and interesting character design. He then also proceeds to give in to Jades flirting immediately and under no pressure, moving in with his subordinate, getting distracted from work all the time, makes Jade walk through the office naked and f***s on the office floor. He also later introduces a trauma of losing somebody, which we never learn what this person even was to him. But that trauma is not only not sufficiently covered, but also barely has any impact on him, his actions, or the series. He has no character arc and loses his whole backbone and personality in episode 2.
For Jade on the other hand I had the feeling that the intention was, that he is the nice, local, loving and caring police guy. Somebody who helps the neighbors and cares for his brother. Somebody who everybody likes, but who is somehow silently lonely and shy. (His brother Jay says he never dated except Yu, but Yu later says that they never dated, so it feels like some one sided interest to me. But it also shows that Jay actually knows a lot about Jade. They also help out the lady at the food street stall (while they really had more important stuff to do, but more on that later). But then Jade also proceeds to openly and absolutely shamelessly flirt with Kamin, showing no interest in work or solving the case at all. He also has an actual terrible relationship with his brother. Jade is not listening when Jay says something and screaming at him for no reason all the time. Jade did not ask his brother ONCE, how he felt when his friends died. Not even when he told him that the girl he liked (which is now “dead”) was pregnant with (most likely) his child. Jay has a serial killer threatening him (while he is actually innocent) and he never even thinks about telling his police big bro ANYTHING nor asking him for help. Like how much do you hate each other? (But then supporting that Jades boss moves in?!) And I didn’t even mention that Jade should not at all be handling the case, when his little bro is not only deeply involved but one of the main suspects …
The start of the relationship between Jade and Kamin had to be happening off screen. Because I didn’t saw it. Jade was from the first second intensively flirting with his new boss, which he just MET. And then proceeds, to FORCE him to move in with him. Then walks around almost naked and makes breakfast for the guy he barely knows. Both characters were introduced as somebody who would not blindly run into a relationship but then proceed to immediately act as if they had been close for YEARS. These people don’t know each other, they are boss and substitute. These characters would never act that way. There were no secret glances, no slow burn, no fire and no chemistry at all. It makes me seriously sad thinking how good these characters and their development could have been, if they would have actually had stick to their personality.

THEY DO ANYTHING BUT INVESTIGATE
I truly hope that the Thai police is not really as useless as shown in the series. After Puifai died they decided without any reason nor evidence that the murderer has to be one of the remaining 7 avengers, which of course is not the case. So they somehow decided to not only not investigate anything outside of this 7 people, but also never truly investigated nor (properly) protected any of them inside of this 7 people. It felt like everybody in this series considered the incredibly violet death of multiple students a minor inconvenience, even their own parents.
Even after they found the first letter (Tar) where is a picture of all 8 heads bloody and scratched out (which was a clear sign to me that somebody wanted all of them dead, but in later letters there are only the faces scratched out that are already dead, so I guess that was a mistake) they still never even considered that the culprit is propably not an avenger. The followed ONLY one trace (and that not even good), which was the korean drug king. Because apparently the ONLY way the culprit could get drugs in Bangkok is THIS drug dealer (which was ofc wrong). Furthermore, getting the drug kings customer list is not beneficial at all to them, since they never investigated a list of possible culprits they could compare it too.
They never talked to anybody at the university, which is where I would start if I am trying to find a shared enemy of a group of ridiculous students, who know each other from university. They only visited Puifais (who died Eps. 1) parents and home in episode 6, and never visited or talked to ANY of the other relatives. And not only that, it also took them until Episode 4 to even REQUEST Puifais autopsy report. Which is propably why they never wondered why Puifais autops was done by a different doctor and then just disappeared. In general, is the whole forensic team barely giving any information or needs multiple episodes to drop relevant information (But our investigation team was not interested in Puifais cause of death anyways, so why have forensics in the first place I guess.)
They never tried to understand the game nor try to figure out what everybody’s “truth” is. They also didn`t do anything about it after they found out what their truth was, even if some of the avengers committed serious crimes. Like why did nobody ever talked to the girl Belle threw acid on? You KNOW that Champ helped Tonkla to let the body disappear and you do nothing?! They asked for an alibi ONCE (which was for Champ in Episode 7) and then continued to not even check it.
I am not an investigator myself, but to me this does not at all look like they will figure something out, ever. More like, it is only 8 people, if we wait until 7 are dead we hopefully know who the culprit is.
They are also incredibly unprofessional: The first thing Kamin and Jade do after getting their own letter is telling one of their 3 remaining main suspects about it, just to name one example. At this point I had the feeling finding the copy shop in Bangkok which is even able to print shiny glitter red letters on black paper would have been more useful.

DO YOU HAV ANY MOTIVATION TO BE ALIVE OR DO YOU AT LEAST WISH YOUR FRIENDS TO NOT BE DEAD?
Everybody in the series was acting as several cruel murder cases is as threatening like Sunday morning coffee. Not even the avengers, after their friends died like flies, and they got threatening letters, were afraid nor did anything to protect themselves. Also none of the avengers told the police anything useful ever or put any effort to stop this. Like some of them are trying to protect their own actions because they actually committed real crimes, I get that. But why didn’t Jay or Cher said anything? Jay did nothing, Cher didn`t kill Puifai and beeing a wh*re is not a crime. They also collectively decided to not accept to be protected by the police. Which was meaningless anyways I guess, because even when they had police force following them around they somehow all died without anybody seeing anything.
Jay is actively and willingly sneaking out of the hospital to MEET the murderer. Champ who lives with at least 3 bodyguards/butlers decided to move to a house in the middle of nowhere with Cher, then also proceeds to actively and willingly meet the murderer. Like dude, you are rich, how about a long nice vacation somewhere anywhere but Bangkok or hm, maybe just stay where you are? None of them even tried despite KNOWING that they are about to be dead (no matter if they pick truth or dare).

CONSISTENCY WHERE?
The whole series felt like they filmed multiple scenes without any context and then asked an intern on their first day to put in in any random order. Jade and Kamin keep popping up at scenes without any explanation how they got there, why they are there, where they are or how they knew they want to go there. Why is the scene where they visit Puifais parents in Episode 6 and not when she was actually “killed”. There is no chronological order of the events from the game, which makes it even harder to follow the game at all. Random pool scenes. Kamin and Jade going on a “detox” date day or reparing/ cleaning the house while 4 students are dead and Jades small brother might be next. More random pool scenes. Why did they have a sleepover at the office one night? Why is the POLICE breaking in an (I guess) abortion clinic searching for Puifais abortion documents? First of all, you are the police, you don’t need to break in, second, how did you know this is even the right clinic when you had no idea about Puifais abortion documents (because well, apparently you were there to get them?) Who is the random man there, also trying to steal (?!) stuff? I am not even sure if this is actually an abortion clinic, because the scene just happened without any explanation about where or why they are. Kamin randomly starts smoking in Episode 8, like Kamin? I don’t think you do actually smoke. I mean that’s just a small thing but the order is just such a mess. The only consistency in the series was that somebody needs to tell Joong that when you swim freestyle your head is supposed to be under water (this is why you wear goggles). This not only makes you way faster (better aqua dynamic and weight balancing) but also makes you look way less likely to look like you are actively drowning (don’t forget to breath though pls <3).

THE SPECIAL OPS TEAM AND THEIR HAT CHANGING CAT
So the special ops team consists out of Yu and his boyfriend and a random third dude who is never introduced. This random third dude, who is always wearing an old style gray hat (which apparently he has multiple from in multiple colors because in Episode 9, when they are tracking down Jay, he took some time off from saving Jays life to change to a brown one) And this fashionable hat guy, is also clearly seen in the backflash scene where Kamin is telling Jade how he once lost a team member in a gun battle. But wasn’t Kamin coming from the U.S. and wasn’t he new to the team and nobody knew him before? So apparently hat guy has an identical twin in the U.S. special ops team who also loves hats, he is Schrödingers Cat, Kamin lied to Jade about his origin and the whole team is just pranking Jade OR this was just bad script and a “oh we need another random statist in this scene – you with the fancy hat, come here”. Pick your favorite.

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