3
5
Not the worst think I've ever seen.
This series had potential that was never realized. It had a fairly talented cast - including Kaleb Ong, one of the best actors in BL, Axl Romeo, and RR Roque, who was a surprise.It had some interesting story ideas, like a minister who has an interesting night job, interesting class difference issues, an unusual, mildly creepy, but ultimately engaging sibling relationship, and portraying an effeminite gay character in a very positive way (and for the first time in human history, had an uke who was taller than his seme - this counts as a major miracle).
But many of these plot points went nowhere, like the minister performs his night job once and then it's never referred to again. The class and power dynamics were never really explored.
I think there are three main problems with this series.
- The script is not good. It wanders all over the place and needed a lot more discipline and to link the stories together better - and build up to issues rather than springing them out of nowhere. It needed to focus on the themes it introduced, instead of handwaving away all the conflicts.
- The directing drains all the energy out of the production, not to mention the actors. Meet My Angel was not good in most regards, but the acting, especially Kaleb's, was spectacular - maybe the best single performance in a BL of all time. Here, he's... there. In My Chinito Prince, Axl was compelling and sexy - here he's... there.
- The editing. The series wandered all over the place, with strange scenes included and critical ones left out - like there's a critical conversation between Omeng and Lemuel in the last episode... that apparently happened offscreen, because there's a sudden and total reversal in their relationship that came out of nowhere.
The technical qualities of the production like sound weren't great, but they were above average for a DIY like this and adequate. The OST was good, but it sounds like all the other Filipino BL OSTs and is used way too much to the point it gets irritating.
I don't think I can recommend this series - there's no payoff for the investment, and the actors (epecially the ones that drew to watch this) are poorly utilized and give their least compelling performances to date.
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This is truly awful. In the most boring way.
I'll start with the good. The music is good. The cast is pretty good. Noh will probably seem lifeless to you, but I think that's bad directing, not bad acting. I think he's capable of displays of restrained and subtle emotion, but you only get to see it once or twice. The main couple are undoubtedly cute together, and they have strong chemistry. Bbomb has a really, really hot body and he's very sexy. Jin is adorable and his smile is really something.The bad: There is no plot. None at all. The characters merely run in circles the entire series, and it's hard to convey how completely unexaggerated that is. Do you know how many times people get injured playing football? I don't - I lost count. (That's slightly exaggerated - but Jin does get injured more than once, and it serves exactly the same plot function both times.)
There is only one source of drama in this series, and it's jealousy. Both characters are endlessly jealous over the other so much as being in the same room as anyone else - girls, boys, houseplants, they're jealous of everything. It's always a misunderstanding, and the characters never, ever discuss it - they just retreat somewhere, sulk, and refuse to answer the phone or communicate in any way. With no exaggeration, the number of times this happens is so great, often several times in a single episode, that I can't tell you how many - really, I'm not kidding.
Bbomb is so psychotically jealous that Jin should really run for his life, because he's going to end up strangled to death in a fit of rage. Although the chances are 50/50 he'll be able to escape if Bbomb is currently recovering from a football injury.
There are a lot of supporting characters in this, and none of them serve any purpose whatsoever. If you're here to see Kaownah & Turbo, prepare for disappointment. There are hints that Turbo likes Kaownah, but it never goes anywhere. At all. And Kaowah is surprisingly terrrible in this - I think again, very strange directing. Ball, played by the actor who is the fujoshi's brother in Oxygen, appears two or three times and one of the support characters is smitten by him (and Ball is almost fatally cute), but nothing happens. At all. He's not even in the finale. Boss, who played Kao in Oxygen is in this a lot more than I was expecting, and he's wonderful in a completely opposite role (reserved, manly, aristocratic - I would love to see him play a villain), but it's not enough. The guy who plays That in Manner of Death (the hot guy with the motorbike) does nothing significant.
I'd say about 75% of the run time is characters eating and drinking, or traveling to a from eating and drinking. The other 25% is people sulking in jealousy and implausible lack of communication.
All the friends have a master plan to get Jin & Bbomb together, but it makes absolutely no sense - it's totally incoherent and illogical, and appears to be more or less randomly sabotaging the two endlessly until... they get together?
Jin is so wracked by internalized homophobia that not only will he not allow Bbomb to tell anyone they're dating, he won't even let Bbomb hug him, even when they're alone in private - until the final episode, when he does something so totally outrageous and out of character your mouth will hit the floor - let's just say it involves involuntary outing, and if the person in question didn't already know, it would have been the worst thing any character has ever done in a BL (other than villains).
There is not one tired trope that isn't stuffed into this. If one of the main characters hugs someone, the other will show up at just that moment and misunderstand. If someone has a drop of alcohol, vomit and a piggyback ride will result. Playing football? Guess what happens? It often feels like a checklist they need to get through each ep.
Bbomb's house in Chiang Mai is so gigantic that it doesn't fit in a wide frame shot - seriously, it's not a mansion, maybe not even a palace, but an entire city-complex. If I were to guess, I'd say at least 2,000 sq m. And two people live there. With no domestic help. What is the point of this absurdity?
Despite the main couple's chemistry, they never really get anywhere, and the ending of 2gether is an orgy of pornographic debauchery compared to how this ends. There's a stuffed animal involved. And nobody f@#$s it, which would have been more interesting and satisfying than what happens.
When you finish the first episode, you'll say "This guy is too negative - it's not THAT bad." When you finish the last episode, you'll say "why didn't this a$$hole warn me it was this bad?" because it's much worse than I can convey in words.
Given the above, a four rating may seem high, but the quality of the production is good (other than the directing and writing), and the actors did as well as anyone could with this awful, miserable script, and I can at least say you're never without eye candy, so I think a four is reasonable. I can't imagine ever rewatching even one scene in this. I don't think there was even a gratuitous shower scene to go back to.
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This is a beautiful story.
This is more LGBTQ+ focused than the majority of BLs, which have a focus on boys being cute together - and that's perfectly fine. I love those too. But this series may not resonate as much with audiences who are looking for that type of romance. There are many cute and heart-warming moments here, but this is a coming-of-age story, so the arc is about Mico being unable to attain love until he's able to attain self-acceptance.Anyway, a lot of the criticism is over the lack of communication between the leads, which is odd, as most BLs heavily lean on implausible failures of communication to generate the final dramatic hump of the series. Here, I thought the communication problem was entirely authentic, and its resolution equally true to life, requiring outside help, whereas often in a story I'm thinking "you know, these two have mutual friends who know both sides of the story and can easily fix this..."
The acting is very good. JC is great, suffusing his character with confidence in his intellect, bold nerdiness, and insecurity about everything else. Tony is underrated - playing someone emotionally and verbally reserved, he has to pack a lot of emotion into subtle moments. His nervous giggling as he's gearing up to sing is masterful and authentic - and at the end of Ep 5, during a pause before an important moment, he worldessly radiates with an understated stare so much vulnerability and longing that I audibly gasped and started crying, and I'm tearing up just thinking about it now. And his desolation in Ep 7 may crush you. The support characters are all well-cast for their roles - I loved that everyone in the friend group (the Padawans) is clueless except Junjun, who sees everything. It was nice to see a minor character play a crucial role - that he was called was the best possible decision that could have been made and he was the only path to a happy ending.
The script is tightly written, with many layers of meaning, the central poem of their school project woven through the story, so that you can pick up new things with each viewing. (Note if you're watching with subtitles that lines that sound clunky are often from the poem.) Even the t-shirts reflect feelings and internal conflicts, and the heart on Mico's wall represents where he is, etc. The project performance in Ep 7 was a little too on-the-nose, but it was well-setup throughout the series so it worked. Or notice the color of Xavier's backwards baseball cap in Ep 6 and think about what that symbolizes. Both characters have an arc, and the resolution depends on a powerful statement of the importance of self-acceptance.
The cinematography and set design were artful, with delightful color coordination (e.g. Ep 8 with Mico's pink accessory in the closed tea shop), the music was beautifully integrated, e.g. he final music cue in Ep 5 was perfect to maximize the impact of the final line. The editing is stunning - there are scenes where you'll gasp at the way they managed to overcome safe distancing to give you real intimacy.
All of this was accomplished within the tight constraints of the COVID/social media setting - and I wonder if maybe that inspired a higher level of creativity.
There are a couple of issues. The side couple is adorable, but they didn't really serve much purpose in the story. Kookai's importance ended with her declaration towards the beginning, and Seph never had one - only Junjun was needed throughout, and the time would have been better spent developing Xavier's context, or more time establishing Mico's character at the beginning - or just making the series an episode shorter.
There are also a couple of important scenes that are non-linear but it's very unclear and confusing about where they fall in the story. I like that the production respects the intelligence of the audience, but we needed a "two weeks ago" or something in a couple of cases, or some other means of context. If you're reading this before watching, the most important is a conversation in Ep 8 involving the teacher, which occurs between Ep 1 & Ep 2.
The second one is a 1:1 conversation in Ep 8 with JunJun that occurs prior to a group chat the Padawans have at the end of Ep 7 and explains the strange things they say to Mico and advise him to do.
I've rewatched much of this several times, and this is is one of my favorite BLs of all time. I highly recommend it - just be forewarned it may take 1.5 episodes to get into it.
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Shallow & Dull
This is basically a rehash of Anti-Reset except the human is the uke.The beginning of this felt like it was adapted from erotica, because if the robot takes of his glasses, he goes into Dom mode, but they only did it once for 20 seconds. Then because the series was a chaste as an afternoon special aimed at 12-year olds, they had to pad the rest of the series, so we essentially watch a series about a robot doing maid stuff for a brat.
There's really no point to this series. I don't understand why you would make not one, but two series about AI/human love without it being more than superficially relevant to the story. There was so much to explore within the framework of the concept and yet none of it was. For example:
- Is Ever 9 conscious and sentient? How do you define those terms? Humans are also machines, with our DNA as the blueprint, and our thoughts are electrical impulses in neurons that set off chemical signals to other neurons. We have "basic programming" in the DNA, and then we learn everything else through communicatinon and experience (our version of "machine learining").
- If he is sentient, and it's clear enough that he is to at least create an issue worthy of debate and resolution, does he have rights? Can you install a device in him that sends him painful shocks to ensure obedience? If you need such a device in the first place, then doesn't that implicitly concede that he has free will?'
- If Ever 9 earns money, is it his, or does it belong to his "owner"? If he's creating anything of economic value (including services) and is not compensated, isn't that slavery?
- Why does Ever 9 have a Dom mode and what does it mean that he uses it? Are the glasses essentially a restraint that keeps him from its true personality? In which case, is it his choice when to take his glasses on or off, e.g. put them on to go to work or for social events, then take them off at home to spank Luo Bu Shi?
- What does all this mean in the Eastern spiritual framework? They at least touched on that briefly, but not as an exploration so much as a declaration.
- Does Ever 9 have to poop if he eats? (OK, that one might not be an issue worthy of exploration, but admit it: you were wondering.)
It could have even been a metophor for the LGBT experience - can you marry a robot? Adopt children with one?
But nope, it's about static characters with no real arcs. You could say that Luo Bu Shi had an arc, but does he? He eventually confronts his father, but what he says is so out of character in content and style that it comes off as unearned.
I will say that the actors are very attractive, and do a fine enough job, but overall, if I could go back in time, I wouldn't watch this, except maybe the dom scene.
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Cute but a bit shallow
This was a cute romance with good chemistry between the leads - especially in the earlier episodes. The dialogue was fairly snappy and cute, and it had many nice moments.I think the premise is a little wasted. There were two directions they could have taken, but didn't. One would be to accent that he's a robot and doesn't really understand humans and human society outside of what someone could read, and all the funny situations that develop from that. There's a scene where the main character is so turned on by the robot that he has to "relieve himself" - I would have liked to see him wondering what's wrong with him, and asking himself is Ever 9 is in effect sophisticated porn.
The second, and probably the one that would have made the most sense, is to examine what a person is. What are we? We're constructed with our DNA as a blueprint and we have basic emotional and behavioral settings also programmed by our DNA, and the rest of what we are is based on whatever we experience. Is an artificial being like Ever 9 much different?
We often blame things we do on past trauma, essentially "programming" that we have no control over, so why is an AI any less a living thing, provided it is truly autonomous?
This was totally ignored, even in the decisions his uncle makes.
This reduces the premise to a shallow gimmick and the plot is formulaic and predictable. I enjoyed it until the last 2 episodes, which degenerated into a tedious montage of past happiness played against a truly sappy love ballad.
Speaking of which, the music in this was tiresome and got on my nerves in the last two episodes.
The acting and production values are quite good. Ever 9 is just robotic enough to seem not quite human while conveying emotion clearly, and the main character is good at portraying how closed and clueless he is in dealing with humans and only able to open up to a robot (another lost opportunity for examination).
This is a good series to binge - it was hard to wait for a weekly episode at the beginning, and the last few episodes are better all at once, especially the last two. I wouldn't enthusiastically recommend it, but it's cute and entertaining and short enough that even if it's not really your thing it's not a huge investment of time.
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- The acting - excellent overall. Especially the BL couple, who were so natural and comfortable - I think there was a lot of ad-libbing, but it worked really well.
- The music - a big step above the usual Thai drama standard. The music was serious when it needed to be. It was actually dark and beautiful in the "almost-kiss" scene late in Ep 7 - I was really surprised and moved.
- The men. Jeez. Other than the main character, the boys were stunning, especially In.
But unfortunately:
- The writing. So, so bad. First of all, the main character is unlikable. He's a hypocrite and is trying to steal another person's girlfriend. He has no positive qualities - he's not intelligent or funny, he has no integrity, and when he has any agency at all, he becomes abusive with it. Also, what's the message here? If you're a loser, join a biker gang and start acting like a dick and you'll be cool?
The BL couple is written nicely, but there's NO PAYOFF!!! Not even a single kiss! It doesn't make any sense - one boy is not gay, but he agrees to date the other because he doesn't want to lose his friendship? WTF?
If you're here for the BL, it's not worth slogging through this awkward, unpleasant mess. I couldn't find an InSun cut, but if you can, it might be worth it, provided there's a payoff in Our Skyy - I haven't watched it yet.
It's a pity, because there were a few nice writing touches, like the conversation in the aquarium - it's like there was a good writer for the dialogue, but the worst one in the world for the plot.
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Cute and worth watching, but a little messy.
The first four or five episodes of this are unusually delightful, with painfully shy culinary student Lukchup and his friends vs his crush, the popular senior architecture student and picky eater Ram and his friends. All of them are nice people and their interactions are cute and dynamic.The architects repeatedly find excuses to have lunch with the chefs, in sort of a take on Sheherezade but with cooking instead of storytelling. It's really sweet and well-written, with hints of attractions outside the main couple, and I could easily have watched 13 episodes of that and not gotten bored.
Unfortunately, a huge amount of screentime is devoted to the scheming of the wannabee-girfriend and a campaign of very serious bullying. While this plotline is decently handled and the good-guys aren't complete idiots like they usually are and deal with the situation intelligently, it felt a little like a completely different show. There's the main BL, with, shall we kindly say, "understated" acting against the bullying storyline and the lakorn acting of the villainess. She's quite good and convincingly loathesome, but it's just too overpowering for a series like this.
The external threat wasn't at all necessary as there were plenty of characters and relationships to explore. Lukchup is painfully cute, and Ram is handsome enough, but their relationship is so chaste that eventually it becomes awkward and unbelievable, especially as the popular secondary couple Sky & Phai go from 0 to "let's go to my place and f@#$" in 15 seconds (They actually do say this, albeit in euphemisms). The main pair actors are apparently not planning to be professional actors, and it shows with their total unwillingness to do anything gay (even a fujoshi fantasizing about them doesn't have them so much as kiss) whereas the guys playing Sky and Phai seriously commit and provide what could have been red-hot if there had been any setup.
Likewise, it's hinted that Lukchup's handsome older brother and his super-hot manager are involved, but this is never explored, and there are two het and one BL couple that use up a chunk of the finale. One of these couples is cute and does have a bit of time throughout the series, but their progression is rather sudden at the end.
If they had stuck with the earlier structure and explored the interactions and developing relationships of the two groups, this would have been a better series. As is, it's messy and the later episodes are things you just want to get through to reach the end.
I can recommend this, because I got real enjoyment from it, but I did do a lot of fast-fowarding in the later episodes. The ending is satisfying but underwhelming.
Story: 8. This is high, but the beginning is really good, and even though I didn't like the evil-female storyline, it was well-written and the good-guys are not clueless and handle it well. The OTT effeminate gay character is not played just for laughs (and is really good-looking), and immdiately sees through the villainess.
Acting: 6. As typical of Thai BL, the understated style prevents unskilled actors from being embarassing, but there aren't any standouts either. Many of them do a great job of being cute. I'll leave it at that.
Music: Better than average, and very catchy.
Rewatch: I would and probably will rewatch the initial episodes, which I would probably have rated a 9-9.5.
Overall: 7.5 - but if I could split the series, 9 for the first half, 6 for the second half.
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Excellent Short
DON'T read the synopsis on GagaOOlala - it spoils the story.This was really good - it's beautifully shot and edited, with fantastic color grading. The acting is good - the bigger guy is a stronger actor, but the cute one holds his own.
This is very narratively tight - the meaning of the strange opening scene becomes starkly apparent at the end - it's quite powerful. There is one plot hole which will almost certainly come to mind, which is "do people not ask each other what they do for a living?" I think this is somewhat plausible given how they meet and immediately launch into a fairly physical relationship, but the story appears to span at least be a few days so it's a bit odd, although I will say that I dated a guy for 2 years and he had no idea what I actually did - just that I had an office job.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter - this film isn't trying to be realistic, it's about perspectives.
This is NSFW - it's not graphic, but there's a lot of love going on. A lot of hot, sweaty love.
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A Disappointment
The acting in this is very good. Both leads do a good job. The OST is good, but overused on very high volume. It's filmed decently and the overall production quality is fine.But the story... it's a BL because of Ep 6, but that's about it. Other than that it's mostly two guys talking about their girlfriends, including the very last scene, which is between one of them and his girlfriend. BL has a weird obsession with straight guys.
I like slow-burn relationships, but there is really almost no burn at all - until suddenly they're on fire. The final episode was entirely getting in and out of cars and the gf meeting, and the ending was mystifyingly open. If you're going to make us slog through this, at least let's have a nice payoff, not an abrupt ending with no closure.
I really got no pleasure out of watching this and I can't recommend it.
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Wonderful Short.
I think people are rating this as if it were a regular BL series with twelve 45-min episodes. Judging it as a short, it's really good.The castdid a great job of realizing two chracters in 12 minutes, and I really cared what happened. The loser kid was so adorable (he's a dork) and the sad guy did world-weary well. The way the story unfolded was not entirely predictable, even though it went to the "fall and end up with faces too close together" trope which needs to be taken out to a field, soaked in gasoline, and burned. I would have give this an 8 but for that.
Anyway, well worth 12 minutes.
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There was so much extraneous time-filler in this series that it felt like a shameless cash-grab. I had to set it on 2x or even skip some scenes that were just too much torture to watch.
Going back to it later, my reaction didn't change much - Book & Frame are enjoyable largely because of Ohm, but the storyline is bad, and the exploitative use of very troubling events without examining them with any depth or there being any consequences was actually disturbing.
Anyway, all the actors have been improving, and they're nice to look at, but I can't express how disappointed I am in this season.
If you like the actor who plays Frame (Ohm Pawat), then I recommend He's Coming to me, where he's amazing. And maturing well, I must say. He's also great in The Shipper, although mostly straight in that series.
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Good, but some wasted potential
This is a different kind of BL, with complex characters that aren't caricatures or archetypes like most BL characters. Even the "villain" isn't a villain.The acting is superb, although a bit uneven, with Kris & Porsche playing Dome and Vee with a searing intensity in a forbidden love storyline, Boom & Jump a bit one-note but cute as Saen and Aii, and Tae & Suar in the middle as Fah and Thorn.
The cinematography and art design are the best I've seen in a BL, including I Told Sunset about You - it was stunning enough to carry me through the weaker parts of the story.
Which brings me to to the biggest problem with the series, which is the writing and pacing. The story is too ambitious for 12 episodes and too much was attempted. Unfortunately, the expedient chosen to get through it was time jumps. The jumps totally deflated the most exciting couple, Dome and Vee, and their story just died and I lost interest in it. They skipped over all the key scenes, like Dome & Vee's respective denouments with Pan, parting for Saen & Aii, etc.
The final drama between the main couple was insufficiently set up, and while the emotion and charactization was complex, realistic, and well-executed, Thorn made too many decisions that didn't make very much sense for his character - there were things he did that are understandable in the moment, but not in the long term, like the communications breakdown with Fah.
And the finale was a huge disappointment - an entire episode where nothing happened wasted on what could have been much-needed development for the secondary couples. In the end, the total lack of passion between the characters undermined any sense I had that anyone was in love - they all interacted like friends, with pecks on the cheek going where a love scene belonged. Considering how dark and mature the themes of the series were, the junior-high level of the romance (and that's being generous) made the whole series fall flat for me. Dome & Vee's final scene is a LOL product placement - it was mouth-hanging-open shocking to see such an electric couple ending in such a pathetic way.
I'm not saying there needed to be sweat-soaked love sex scenes - Vee & Dome had scenes were they weren't even touching that could burn a house down (before they became wet cardboard). But at no point did any of the other two couples, or Vee & Dome after the first time jump, feel like romantic pairs. Fah & Thorn feel like their roles were written for brothers, not lovers, and Saen & Aii's romance was primary school from beginning to end, with Aii never ceasing to act like he was afraid of getting cooties from Saen. If you replaced them with 8-year olds, the story would work just the same.
I still gave it a high rating, but there's no excuse for this not being a 10 with all the superlative ingredients it had.
Story: 7 - High points for complex characterizations, but poor marks for continuity and failure to bring stories to convinving conclusions and jumping over resolutions with lazy and enervating time-jumps.
Acting: 9 - Of all the actors, the only ones that I long to see again are Kris & Porsche, preferably together. The others were decent, and would probably outshine most run-of-the-mill BL actors, but suffered in comparison to that superb pair.
Music: 7 - nothing special but did it's job.
Rewatch: 5 - I would rewatch Vee & Dome, but that's about it.
Overall: 8.5 This is higher than the suggested score, but there's no rating for "production values", and this was an 11/10. I would have rated it a 9.5 or 10 up until the first time jump, which led to a huge dropoff for the series - this was a very unfortunate decision.
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Had Potential
Overall, this was a disappointment, given its initial promise. It had many things going for it, but in the end the writing, or lack thereof, reduces this to a mediocrity.Tae's Phap was a really original and different character, and he and Singto were a good odd couple. This doesn't follow the standard seme-uke formula - their personalities are what are opposites, not their appearances and sexual positions. Their appearances are of course opposites, but that's a reflection of their personalities, not the masculine-feminine polarity we usually get.
The story is actually funny at first, with a fairly clever cockroach cam in the first episode, but the humor is unforunately dumped later on for the usual unnecessary implausible miscommunication-based melodrama.
it feels like this was a 10-episode story that was dragged out to 12, forcing Maze to cease his development in Ep 9 and backtrack, which just made him seem like an asshole and ruined the audience's desire to see them together. At the beginning, Maze has real reason to be furious with Phap and frustrated with him. When he returns to that state in Ep 9, it's just depressing and made me not care anymore.
Even the ending, when Phap returns, there's apparently a plan, but what it was I have no idea - have Phap act like Maze for no apparent reason?
Phap isn't really given much backstory, which I suppose isn't critical as he's a care-free artist - but Maze really needed one. We do get his central motivation and the reason why in the very last part of the last episode, but as there was no build up to it, it was too late to have any meaning.
Also, the central conflict for both couples is the relationship between Maze an Nueng which is confusing. Maybe there's a subtitle problem, but their relationship seems pretty clear and it's incomprehensible how Phap and Tharn can misunderstand it - especially Phap, who had it explained to him.
One thing I will say - it's more or less revolutionary that all the characters are jealous over other men instead of the usual women thrown in for no apparent reason other than to add some unwelcome heteronormativity.
The time wasted on incomprehensible drama could have been invested in the secondary couple, which were so unfleshed-out that it was difficult to care about them, other than Yacht being so adorable. They are never really integrated into the story - they're more or less just nailed to it. And with no context, they're just two guys who show up and won't tell each other how they feel but like each other for reasons that aren't ever discussed.
It's not all bad - it tries a lot of new things, the characters are original and interesting (at least at first), and the first half of the series is very engaging and charming. Tae is the real standout, playing an impish and odd artist - we've really never seen anything like this before and it was very refreshing. It's a pity they derailed his character in Ep 9.
It's worth watching just for Tae, but I wouldn't go in with any great expectations.
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It's not good, but not the worst, either.
This is a tough one to review. I'll start with negatives and end on positives.- There are too many characters. None of the story arcs get enough time to be developed, and many of them are just abandoned. This is very unsatisfying. If it had been 6 interns, it might have worked better.
- It might be my Western outlook (being sorry is not enough - accountability for one's actions means accepting the consequences, like being fired for framing other employees and bribery), but it's profoundly disturbing when characters are the most horrible people in the world for 11 episodes, then suddenly feel bad at the end and are totally forgiven and get pretty much everything as a reward. Even if you can accept that morally, it's exceptionally unsatisfying plot-wise. You want the good people who suffer to come out on top, not the horrible people who spent the whole series tearing everyone around them down - we're not talking slightly bad, we're talking seriously malicious.
- Since there are 8 male characters and only 2 horrible and evil female characters, it would have made more sense to make this a BL. You could have two of the 8 be straight and 6 paired off. Why would you not just have Kim & Copter get together? Or Tae & Tee? Or alternatively Tae & Bas? Only Tee has anything to do with a female character, in a rather pointless storyline that goes nowhere.
- I don't know if any BL writers have ever had a regular job, but the Thai management style according to dramas is horrible and counterproductive. That hotel would fail in weeks with that level of incompetent management. Bosses bully and arbitrarily punish people. It gets really old in this series.
Positives:
- Tae is a really good actor. In Ep 10 he has an opportunity to show what he can do, and it's first-rate. He's playing off a very good actress, which always helps, but I haven't cried that much in a long time, and he's powerful yet fairly subtle and restrained, given what's going on. It felt appropriate and real. He's the standout throughout the series. The acting in general is pretty good. Most of it is not terribly inspired, but none of it is embarassing - that's typical of Thai series, which thankfully almost never stray into overacting.
- The BL couple is really cute. Kay is adorable and Pleum is really, really attractive. They don't have much screen time and their relationship is insufficiently developed, but it's not bad for the time given it, and there's no mannequin kiss - it's one of the best we've gotten, and would have been a strong conclusion if they had been a focus of the story with better buildup.
All in all, I can't recommend it. You might skim through ep 1-9 for the BL couple and Tae, then watch ep 10 & 11, then don't watch ep 12 if you don't want to be upset.
Story: 3 - it's a mess, and whoever wrote it doesn't seem to have known where the story was going as it was being written.
Acting: 8.5 - It's really more like a 7, but Tae drags the average up with his 10 performance.
Music: 7 - not memorable and not in the way.
Rewatch: 3 - I'm shallow and I would probably rewatch Pleum's scenes, in many of which he's wearing a skimpy muscle shirt. He has a hot body and I'm shallow. He's handsome and charming, too.
Overal: 6.5 - The suggested score is 5.5, but that seems a little too harsh - there are some nice things in here.
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Entertaining and fun
You can't come into this expecting too much - it's silly and madcap. The humor is... Thai, so it's not for everyone (a bit too slapstick for my tastes).Anyway, the boys in this are really good-looking (Ko is a 10/10 for me and Teng is pretty close behind), the rural setting is a refreshing change from wealthy urban engineering students, and the plot starts off strangely with shamans, potions, and ghosts, but then becomes a normal BL.
Some people seemed confused by the potion - the shaman is obviously a fraud, as he charges 10 baht which is $0.30 for a love potion, then hands them a small plastic bottle of water. You're never meant to think that there's any chance that it's real. If someone had the power to make people fall in love, he'd charge a lot more than that, right? He's be a billionaire. If you're not convinced, the boy the potion was for was already obviously smitten with the main character, and after he drinks it, he doesn't magically change - their relationship evolves the normal way, and Ko doesn't seem to give it much thought soon after it fails to work..
It's also kind of nice that nobody makes a big deal out of sex on a moral level, although they do treat it as sealing a commitment. The character Tak is apparently seriously hung - he's able to make a ghost moan like a banshee and a guy he schtups later on asks him if he's even human given how painful it was - I thought that was kind of funny - no "how could I have gotten drunk and slept with that guy I hate?" but "Damn that thing is big - I'm going to be sore for a week."
If casual sex after drinking bothers you a lot, maybe skip this. Or if cheating on your gf with a guy bothers you, also maybe skip this. Otherwise, just go into it expecting light entertainment and you'll enjoy it. It's not that long, so it's not like you have to spend 10 hours on it.
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