adhoc

"I don't see that their characters have evolved at all."
That's basically what I mean when I say they don't seem to really be 7 years older. Everyone seems stuck in a lot of the same routines and habits (and even dialog sometimes) from college.

And I'm getting frequent "fan service" vibes.

I would have loved to see Tee--the director of Season 1--direct this season. In fact, I'm wondering how much of the success of TTTS-1 was due to Tee's ability to overlay Mame's story with his own creative vision. And I do feel that the incidental/background music in TTTS-1 was very effectively used to help us understand if the scene was meant to be light and cute or sad and poignant. TTTS-2, there is not a lot of this type of music, and I miss it.

Besides the audio and subtitle issues, my thoughts:

1. I am not a fan of Type still bopping Techno on the head when Techno misspeaks or whatever. Aren't they both supposed to be 25 or so? It's not that funny any more.

2. Type tells his friends about his problems at work. When Tharn learns this, he says to a drunk Type "If something was wrong at work, why didn't you tell me? Even though those guys are your friends....I still feel jealous."
I totally thought he was going to say "... I'm your boyfriend, why couldn't you tell me?"
Instead, it's the old "I'm jealous" line from T/T S1. Seriously? Is this just a bad translation? Because I'm over the whole "jealous" thing. Not that it can't happen after 7 years, but it feels like a stale trope right now.

3. The episode left me feeling like Tharn and Type enjoy having sex with each other and are attracted to each other, but I'm not getting a whole lot more. And I'm not getting the sense that anyone is really 7 years older. (Tharn, perhaps, but then he was always older. :-) )

Later that night, Type does actually explain to Tharn why he is upset, and Tharn does end up saying "Forgive me". But the way it's done, there's no real "light-bulb" moment.

What I mean is, I don't get that Tharn *really* understands how useless Type feels in the relationship. And I don't think Type really explained himself as well as he could have.

And I think the reason you don't fully remember Type's explanation, and Tharn's "please forgive me", is that it was underwhelmingly acted. It should have been a bigger moment, IMO.

Haha, I'm not sure I can invest that much time for so little romance! But part of the problem for me with this series is that I just didn't sense any romantic chemistry at all between the leads. Oh well. By "second lead," do you mean the female lead should be going after the secondary male--the one who's the *real* catch--instead of the male lead? :-)

This is a classic "enemies to lovers" trope in the world of literature and movies. I remember watching a reaction where some of the production team commented on the relationship, and I think this helps answer your question:

SPOILERS:
Tutor starts off in the show feeling very much alone, though he has friends. His dear sister and mother are far away. He is trying to make enough money to pay the debt collectors (because his parents made some bad business decisions and owe a lot of money), so he tutors, plus he works at P'Kae's cafe. And it's still not enough. It's exhausting.

Plus he has to study hard and do well on exams in order to keep his scholarship (or discounted university tuition, I'm not sure which.)

Then P'Kae has to lay him off and he cannot find other work. More stress, more feeling alone in a big, cold world. How will he ever pay off the debt? It seems impossible.

Enter Fighter. Fighter also feels alone in the world, but not because of money problems. He is alone because he has no love in his life, and not many friends. Dad does not show love. Mother is gone. Life is about family duty, and that is all.

True, Fighter and Tutor do not get along. But Tutor tutors Fighter a bit at HwaHwa's request, and Fighter starts to warm up to Tutor. He appreciates that Tutor has pride and doesn't want Fighter's pity or charity.

Fighter starts doing small things for Tutor. For example, he brings Tutor take-out food after a day of hunting for work. (Tutor rejects it. Pride, again.) Fighter later buys the products in the make-up store to help Tutor meet his quota. Then he puts on the Koala suit to help hand out fliers, even though he doesn't have to do any of this. Tutor starts to think that he misjudged Fighter. Maybe Fighter is a good person who truly wants to help him.

And then Fighter pays off Tutor's family's staggering debt. (It's close to $50,000 U.S.) Just pays it off. Later, Tutor tells Fighter he'll give him free lessons as long as he wants--Tutor is still trying to process that Fighter cares about him enough to do this wonderful thing.

Fighter is like Tutor's Prince Charming. (This is some of they said in the reaction video.) Tutor has been feeling so alone for a while, and suddenly there is Fighter is paying all this attention to him and making his worst problems vanish! The more Tutor gets to know Fighter, the more he sees Fighter's good qualities. He starts falling in love with him.

Fighter loves how Tutor is kind to him. To everyone, really. For example, in one scene Tutor makes his own dinner (noodles) and then shares with Fighter. In another scene, when Tutor's food order at Fighter's home is not what Fighter likes, Tutor eats the offensive food and gives Fighter part of his own food. No one has cared enough about Fighter to do something like that before. He also witnesses how loving Tutor is with Tutor's sister when they are at the airport. Tutor seems to provide the caring, the nurturing that Fighter craves but has never had.

I hope this helps to explain why these guys go from disliking each other to falling in love.

Thai have nicknames--short, user friendly names besides their official first and last name.
Watching Thai BL and Instagram, etc., I have seen nicknames that are not English.

Nicknames can be Thai, Chinese, whatever. I think English nicknames may appeal a bit more to a lot of younger folks, and maybe that's why we see a lot of English nicknames in current Thai BLs.

Well, yes and no. Saint did okay, although he's not the first face I think of when I think of the "Tutor" character. However, I think with better direction and an actual, tight script, Saint could have brought much more to the role of Tutor.

There were moments where I really appreciated his acting--for example, when he cried at the airport, or after his talk with Fighter's dad at the cafe--and then there were times when I thought he needed more guidance for a particular scene. My sense of the script is that it had a lot of simplistic dialog that didn't really help guide the actors either.

At the end of the day, I'm giving Saint a pass because I think *he* is one of the reasons Zee was able to give us some outstanding performances.

I could be wrong, but I think that Zee's admiration and respect for Saint (along with his being a fanboy, and me thinking he finds Saint about as attractive as he's going to find a guy, romantically speaking) allowed Zee to "go there". I mean, to let go and become this young man who falls passionately in love with another boy. I think that Saint inspired *trust* in Zee. (And I think when he was hesitant to kiss Saint at the start of shooting, Saint finally got exasperated and said "Man up!" And by golly, Zee did.)

I may not be giving Zee enough credit, but I wonder if he'd have done so well if he'd been paired with someone else. I really don't know.

The one piece of damage they did not fix is the lack of chemistry between the leads. Should have named this Still 2gether: The Bromance Continues.

And don't forget that it took them a YEAR for Sarawat to finally get around to explaining his actions that time when Tine when to the hospital... I had to force myself to finish the ep.

With episode 1 completed, the evidence speaks for itself. Bros it is!

Thank you for the suggestion! Is there any specific Lee Jong Suk drama that you recommend?

In one of the most thoughtful and insightful Instagram posts ever, Tul just announced that he's going for his Masters in Architecture at NY's Columbia University in the fall. He did add that his starting in the fall depends on the COVID-19 situation.

I'm also still trying to figure out how Saifah and Zon went from being enemies (because Zon felt Saifah was stealing Zon's girl, plus Saifah was mean, telling Zon no woman would ever want him, or something like that) to liking each other.

I guess you could say their mutual dislike magically vanished because they fell into Zol's fiction. But were they in her fiction, do we know?? And even if they were in the fiction, I still didn't think there was a really clear moment when they went from hate to liking.

He's so cute in Why R U!

Interesting thoughts here. So I have a question for you. If a BL couple is not delivering the desired performance (though I think a lot of viewers would disagree that Bright/Win's performance was really all that bad), can we put any blame on the director and Production team for not helping the actors to succeed?

It would be interesting to know if Production saw a problem here and tried to correct it with focused workshops (which was done for Tharn/Type, for example, when Mew was not able to deliver in a specific scene), discussions with the actors (to make sure they understood the characters, etc.), small changes to the script, and so on. OR did Production take a more hands-off approach? Or was the director actually reasonably satisfied with Bright's and Win's performances?

I agree you're right, the actors absolutely have a responsibility to carry out their roles to the best of their ability (and to show up on time, prepared, lines memorized, understand their character, etc.). And if an actor is not really engaged--for example, they just took the role because their agent said it would be a great opportunity--then that's definitely on the actor.

But beyond that, if the desired chemistry/performance is not happening, I do expect the director, with his/her Production team, to figure out where the problems are and to address them, in order to pull better performances from the actors. Even if the actors are young and kind of embarrassed by B/L, and/or even if one or both of them may be miscast. Just my opinion.

So she's 18 and Tommy is 24. I could totally see them as a couple in a cute PG (or PG-13) rom-com. Because they are both adorable and funny, separately and together.

Tsuliwaensis said: "one can expect that Lhong won't even have a redemption arc (he already received forgiveness after all), but rather be treated like anyone else in the next season and also very likely get a cute honey as well to help him get over Tharn."

OMG, I posted the same thing in another forum. That Lhong will probably not only be back for Season 2, I bet he'll have a short story arc where he will find his own guy/happy ending.
Because come on, folks, look how much air time Lhong got in TT S1 *after* he tried to KILL Type! And then in the special episode, Lhong was shown in a very sympathetic light, even apologizing to Thorn for what he did to Tharn. (He never says he is sorry for what he did to Tar.) l get that Production seems to love the actor, Kaownah. I doubt they care if lots of inter fans hate the character he plays and don't want to see him in TT2.

I remember when Wat says to Tine (I'm paraphrasing): "The thing about Pam is that one day she will belong to someone else. But you will be mine and only mine." And then Bright puts his arms sort of lackadaisically around Win and pulls him in for a hug. When I saw that, I remember thinking "Gee, could you drum up a little more enthusiasm?"

Thanks, you're right, I fixed it!

Amen.