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The production team and broadcaster issued apologies and reportedly agreed to tone down or edit offensive scenes. The show continued airing and was not fully suspended, though it remained controversial. It even earned a “Most Scandalous” award in some contexts due to the uproar. The writer’s real-life connections and identities of certain characters reportedly became public fodder amid the publicity.
What DMD does exceptionally well is intimacy. There’s a real sense of taste and intention in how those scenes are handled, especially toward the end. In both series, the NC scenes appear in the final episode, and they land differently because they feel earned. They read as the culmination of everything that came before, not something inserted for shock value.
Love Upon a Time also truly sticks the landing. The ending feels clear and complete, without the rushed, careless energy so many dramas fall into. Genuine narrative closure is rarer than it should be, and it makes a noticeable difference.
The director’s cameo was a delightful surprise, and his English was impressively crisp. I already admired him after Khemjira, and this only deepened that respect.
I’ve written over 7,000 comments on MDL, and this is the first time I’ve ever felt compelled to praise a production company by name. The level of care and craftsmanship DMD brings to their work deserves recognition. That final episode made me laugh, made me cry, and left me sitting there genuinely grateful that television like this still exists.
Back in the day, that lakorn was genuinely controversial, drawing condemnation from the Thai Airways union and even a lawsuit against the author. So now I’m wondering if history is about to repeat itself with GMMTV.
First time in my life questioning whether Toto was speaking actual French or just casting Harry Potter spells with a questionable baguette accent. 🤣
First time genuinely worried that Thai Airways’ legal team is already drafting a defamation lawsuit against GMMTV as we speak. 🤣
The only thing I know for sure is that I laughed so hard my skull filed a formal complaint.
That’s a fair point about each couple needing 12 episodes too. With this many storylines sharing one season, something was bound to get compressed. Maybe that’s part of why S2 works better for me as an drama-only viewer, since I’m not aware of what’s missing. I just get what’s on screen, and on its own it lands really well.
Now you’ve got me tempted to pick up the novels after the season ends!
Yotsuya has been in love with Shito for years. After all that time, they finally move beyond their intense workplace rivalry and begin seeing each other in secret. But Yotsuya is far from secure. Once Futami transfers back to the Tokyo headquarters, that insecurity becomes impossible to ignore.
Futami is outgoing and disarmingly direct, with that distinct Kansai bluntness and a habit of teasing. He has known Yotsuya since college, respects him deeply, and still carries the impact of the advice Yotsuya gave him back then. But in Yotsuya’s eyes, the only true rival has always been Shito, and that creates a quiet frustration in Futami. If he cannot surpass Shito at work, he will never be someone Yotsuya truly recognizes. So from the moment he returns, he sets his sights on Shito.
Shito, competitive to his core, cannot ignore the easy closeness between Futami and Yotsuya. There is an undercurrent of jealousy there, whether he admits it or not. That tension quickly escalates into open conflict, and the two clash head-on at work like natural enemies.
Caught in the middle is Yotsuya. He worries that Shito’s attention is drifting toward Futami, and that fear quietly eats at him. He cannot bring himself to say it out loud, which only makes his vulnerability and fragile confidence more visible.
Futami, for his part, may simply be a straightforward, slightly provocative, competitive guy who means no real harm. He likely has no romantic feelings toward either of them. And yet his presence alone is enough to destabilize the balance between Yotsuya and Shito. Ironically, that disruption is exactly what pushes their relationship forward. That is what makes this BL so compelling. The so-called outsider becomes the catalyst for emotional growth.
That last line in Episode 21 wrecked me. When Tiger says, “What about me, Nao? I like you too,” it hits so much harder than a typical confession. It feels like he’s finally stepping out of the background and claiming his place in the story. And the wordplay with “Nao” meaning “cold” in Thai just twists the knife. Tiger is all heat and intensity, while Nao is genuinely oblivious to his feelings, to the point of giving a girl a chance after her confession. That emotional gap is exactly why the confession lands in such a bittersweet way.
And then Tiger says he would die for Nao. I know that kind of line can sound over the top, but here I believe him completely. The show has built him up as someone who acts first and never holds back, especially when it comes to Nao. So when he goes up against Chet and his crew alone, it’s not bravado. It’s just who he is. The farewell letter before that confrontation pushed me right over the edge. It leans into the classic tragic romance setup, but it works because the emotional groundwork is already there.
I also loved that Nao’s twin brother figures everything out. It gives us an outside perspective that validates Tiger’s feelings, almost like the story itself is saying this love is real, even if Nao hasn’t faced it yet. It makes Nao’s innocence stand out even more.
I’m well past 30, but the part of me that loves intense, all-in romance is alive and well. Characters like Tiger remind me why that kind of storytelling still works. It’s not about age. It’s about whether a character truly earns that level of devotion, and Tiger absolutely does.
Honestly, this season just shows how much potential the earlier couples had. I wish Season 1 could be remade with this level of writing and emotional depth. I know plenty of people loved it as it was, but to me it feels like a missed opportunity compared to what we’re getting now.
That last line in Episode 21 wrecked me. When Tiger says, “What about me, Nao? I like you too,” it hits so much harder than a typical confession. It feels like he’s finally stepping out of the background and claiming his place in the story. And the wordplay with “Nao” meaning “cold” in Thai just twists the knife. Tiger is all heat and intensity, while Nao is genuinely oblivious to his feelings, to the point of giving a girl a chance after her confession. That emotional gap is exactly why the confession lands in such a bittersweet way.
And then Tiger says he would die for Nao. I know that kind of line can sound over the top, but here I believe him completely. The show has built him up as someone who acts first and never holds back, especially when it comes to Nao. So when he goes up against Chet and his crew alone, it’s not bravado. It’s just who he is. The farewell letter before that confrontation pushed me right over the edge. It leans into the classic tragic romance setup, but it works because the emotional groundwork is already there.
I also loved that Nao’s twin brother figures everything out. It gives us an outside perspective that validates Tiger’s feelings, almost like the story itself is saying this love is real, even if Nao hasn’t faced it yet. It makes Nao’s innocence stand out even more.
I’m well past 30, but the part of me that loves intense, all-in romance is alive and well. Characters like Tiger remind me why that kind of storytelling still works. It’s not about age. It’s about whether a character truly earns that level of devotion, and Tiger absolutely does.
Honestly, this season just shows how much potential the earlier couples had. I wish Season 1 could be remade with this level of writing and emotional depth. I know plenty of people loved it as it was, but to me it feels like a missed opportunity compared to what we’re getting now.
Meanwhile, I loved it so much I could have screamed into a pillow. The youth of it all, the first love, the ensemble energy. Watching these five boys goof around makes me feel ten years younger.
A lot of people say they don’t believe Ko001, that there’s no way he didn’t actually kiss Ko002 on the boat that day. They refuse to accept that it was just clever camera work. Honestly, though, that interpretation feels truer to me.
It’s that conversation with August that plants the seed, the first moment Ko001 really starts to wonder whether he’s fallen for Ko002.
My favorite moment from the previous episode was Ko001 convincing himself that Ko002 went to the bookstore to meet a girl. He trails him there, then gets all passive-aggressive about it, heading to school early just so he won’t have to ride with him. That fumbling, ambiguous teenage way of handling feelings you can’t quite name yet is exactly what I find so captivating. And realistically, I just don’t see their first kiss happening somewhere that public and exposed.
The cinematography, color grading, and editing are so polished that I half suspected they’d quietly swapped directors. As someone who’s been burned more than once by Director New starting strong and stumbling at the finish, I’ve decided to give him one more chance.
Nothing gets easier. Work stays precarious, parents keep aging, the hospital stays indifferent, love does nothing for burnout. The show won’t lie about that.
What it gives you is smaller. You’re allowed to stop sprinting. You can want something even when wanting it scares you. You can admit you were a coward and still try again. And a freezing night with your head on someone’s shoulder can be, no qualifier, the best thing that happened all day.
I spent years sure I was too tired for any of this. The show doesn’t argue. It just says being tired doesn’t disqualify you. You don’t have to run. You can walk next to someone and let that be enough.
Somewhere in Episodes 7 and 8, the show stops being a clever premise and turns into a quietly devastating family drama. On the surface it still looks like slice of life. What makes it feel distinctly Thai is the way the big turning points keep barging into that ordinary texture. Japanese slice of life tends to stay quiet and let the meaning sit in what goes unsaid. The Thai version here would rather feel everything out loud, letting the sweetness and the grief and the irritation exist all at once.
On the romance side, Save finally realizes that what he feels for Guy is not admiration or confusion but the real thing. The realization is too big to sit on, so he kisses Guy on impulse. The moment is clumsy and completely sincere, exactly what this version of Save would do. Guy is in a harder spot. He has already been burned by betrayal once, and a single kiss does not reset that. His hesitation reads as honest rather than frustrating. He can care about Save and still not be ready to pick up where they left off.
Grandpa’s thread is peaking at the same time. The BL novel he started to chip away at the family’s old debts and keep the orphanage afloat begins to find readers, and his family is openly proud of him. Then, right as the good news lands, the show slips in a new worry. His eyesight is going, probably cataracts, and his vision keeps drifting in and out of focus. It’s handled gently, with no big dramatic scene, which is exactly what makes it sit so uneasily. He is successful again, finally, and his body is starting to quit on him.
My favorite thing in Episode 7 is the rhyme between Save and Grandpa. Save is feeling his way toward being honest about his sexuality. In the same stretch, Grandpa literally hides in a closet because he cannot bring himself to tell his old writer friends that he has switched to BL. The gag is funny and also pointed. He is scared his peers will think less of him, that the genre is beneath a “serious” novelist. Underneath the comedy is plain insecurity, the same fear of not being safe that keeps a lot of queer people from coming out. Two men a couple of generations apart, hiding from the same kind of judgment for different reasons.
Episode 8 adds another layer when we learn that Save’s uncle is gay, and that an old misunderstanding has kept him and Grandpa at a distance for years. The generous read on this family is that they are warm, durable, and people of conviction. The blunter read is that they are all stubborn, Grandpa most of all. Put those traits under one roof and a rift between the uncle and his father feels almost inevitable. The love is there. What gets in the way is pride, fixed beliefs, and a wound nobody wants to reopen, and together those make an honest conversation feel out of reach.
Being a Thai PBS production, the show refuses to stay purely in the feelings. It works in a very current problem: scams. Grandpa gets taken in by a scam operation and hands over the savings the family scraped together over weeks. Watching the money disappear is bad enough. What actually broke me was the aftermath. That night the whole family crowds into Grandpa’s room, not to lecture him but to keep him company while he lies down in his shame. They are worried and upset, and they choose to stay by him anyway. That was where I lost it (thank goodness I had barely any makeup on).
Add it all up, the fragile thing between Save and Guy, Grandpa’s secret career and failing eyes, the estranged uncle, the scam that empties the family account, and on paper it should collapse into soap opera. The show sidesteps that by staying in the small moments. An impulsive kiss. An old man quietly pulling a closet door shut behind him. A whole family packed into one bedroom so Grandpa does not have to sleep alone on the worst night he has had in a long while.
So I recommend it, with one caveat. Do not show up expecting a sugary BL built on fanservice. Watch it instead as a grounded family dramedy that happens to carry a BL thread through it, a show about love and pride and the daily work of staying afloat. That is what Thai PBS does better than almost anyone, and it is why a story this messy keeps landing exactly where it means to.