The Best Story (2021)

this is sad asf. (ATTENTION SPOILER)

i think this is one of the best serie i ever watched, even if the end was sad it fitted perfecly and shows how hard it is to confesso your feelings to other people. The start is really cute but then i started to cry and cry AND CRY, expecially when he read what the girl wrote on his shirt. There were some problems with the translating in the end that i hated cuz i couldnt understand what dew wrote on best's shirt.
the acting was perfecly perfect for someone like me that doesnt know anything about it and i love the cast they seem so cute and caring☹?. In the end this is in my top 10 fav bl ?‍♀️?

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what a bittersweet ending..

I get and at the same time don't get why this series has a low rating. It did the best it could with only 3 episodes and it told the story of Dew and Best beautifully, sure this drama may not have a happy ending but I would like to see it as a better sweet ending and an ending let to your own interpretation. Best changed cause of Dew, he became more lively and happy and more interested in life. Dew realized his feelings long ago for Best when he found his diary. I loved that he was secretly watching him and falling in love with him. The things that I didn't like was the girl and the mom. The girl had no fucking right to tell Dew's mom anything about Dew, its up to Dew and Dew only and the mom being fucking unreasonable when she found out that Best liked Dew, and made him change to any state. Bitch tf, they are not even in a relationship yet and you get mad cause his friend likes him? Again, this series had only 3 episodes so that can't do much. If it had atleast like 8 or 12 episodes I am sure this would have been a top tier bl. Now the acting, the acting is just spectacular. Best's actor really did a splendid job. The way he portrayed the emotions of someone who has a crush was so real and the way he expressed sadness was just *chef kiss* almost made me teared up. Dew's actor also did a splendid job. The chemistry between these two is undeniably spectacular. You could see the love from their eyes. The music is also so good and Best's actor can sing very well. Overall, this was a really nice drama. I would like to think in some years Dew and Best will be together, even its against his witchy mom's wishes and that bitch fern get what she deserve for being a fucking bitch. This was a really nice drama, its short but it was great.

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very realistic

i loved this drama a lot. it shows everything in a teenage love story, like crushing over then in secret, cheesy love song, writing in the notebook about feelings, snapping pictures. you can tell best is so head over heels like all of us were in middle/high school at times! they dont hang out often but you can see a very strong connection and feelings popping out of the screen and it really captures you in all the good places. just enough to make you cry at the saddening parts. best friends hyping him up and ultimately taking care of a sad best when he couldnt tell dew his feelings. it really grabs all your attention and gives us that connection to the viewers feelings because weve been in bests shoes before somewhat. when best wrote “กูชอ…” (i li…) then seeings ferns confession absolutely broke my heart! and dont get me started on fern!!! that honestly angers me a lot how she betrayed dew like “if i cant have you no one can” .. i wanted to reach through the screen and fight her 555555 but anyways this is a very beautiful realistic story that also gives the viewers a connection to both the characters. i honestly wish it was a lot longer!

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Cute Crush

Really liked it...but I'm not sure why! Imagine having such a crush that you don't know what to do with yourself or how to behave when you see that person. Imagine realising that it somehow crept up on you!

It was a lovely short drama.

What I liked: Yinwar. I've only seen them in music videos and a trailer (a mini drama itself!) for their concert. I love War's (who played Best) acting; his expressions are great. I liked Best's friends - nicely portrayed as true friends who hugged and tried to cheer up their friend when he was down. There were so many things I thought were sweet.
What I didn't like: not overly fond of school dramas, but it was sweet

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Reminded me of what it felt like to be a teenager

Though I've never experienced a love like this, I know how quintessentially queer of an experience it is. To have your teenage love be reciprocated, but have it happen at the wrong time is also just a universal experience.
Part of me wishes it was longer and had a happy ending, but that's not what the story is about. It's about the beauty and pain of youth, how queer people hold back a lot more with our feelings because there's so much that could go wrong.
The cinematography, music, acting, everything was top notch. I only wish there were better subtitles, I looked all over and it's the same translation everywhere but some scenes are not subtitled at all. Regardless, it feels like an important drama to watch, just to take a break from all the BL tropes and watch something more grounded and realistic.
This series combines love and warmth with reality and heartbreak in a beautiful way.

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The Best Story depicts a sweet, simple, and sentimental high school romance. This BL drama doesn’t do anything too different from the norm, so the ordinary love story between two teenagers will feel familiar to you. There’s an age-appropriate wholesomeness that will definitely appeal to younger (and older) BL fans. It does a wonderful job at capturing the innocence of first love, including all the bashful glances, the playful teasing from your friends, and the butterflies in your stomach when you encounter the boy you like.

Best and Dew are cute to watch together. There’s a little bit of conflict at the start, but the rest of their interactions are filled with warmth and positivity. I especially love the scene where Dew teaches Best how to shoot a basketball, showcasing their intimacy through a simple platonic moment. Other scenes highlight Best’s shyness or apprehension around his crush, which feel very authentic and relatable. Overall, their romance seems down-to-earth, relying on small ordinary moments to convey the romantic rapport between the main characters.

Where The Best Story shines is its beautiful cinematography. The drama looks gorgeous with lush colours, warm hues, and a dreamlike ambience that sets a distinctive aesthetic in all the scenes. If you look closely, the entire series is filmed in classrooms, school courtyards, and a tiny bedroom. Yet, the production team transforms these mundane environments with colour grading, lighting techniques, and intuitive camera angles, giving each scene a polished and stylized look. There’s some fabulous production work that elevates the quality of the series.

Although my review has been positive so far, The Best Story falters in its final act. The last episode should’ve focused on Dew, who doesn’t receive as much character development up until now. Instead, we get a big smack of bigotry, jealousy, and pettiness from the only two female characters in the drama. I really hate the conflict introduced by the evil mom and the scheming love interest, which clash so much with the pleasant vibe of the series. The last-minute melodrama feels abrupt and forced, as if the storylines are engineered just to drive a wedge between the couple.

All along, The Best Story has been building up a blissful and pleasant schoolboy romance, until the fantasy comes crashing down in the final episode. Not all BL dramas need to have a happy ending, but damn this one hurts. The ending makes me take off my rose-tinted glasses as I scrutinize The Best Story with a more critical eye. I start to notice the barebones plot, the shallow characterization, and the disappointing romance that goes nowhere. These storytelling flaws were always there, but I overlooked them because the series had seemed so charming until now.

After the last episode, I ended up feeling less enthused about The Best Story, but that shouldn’t diminish the excellent qualities of the series. There’s still a lot to enjoy about this BL drama, from the aesthetically pleasing visuals to the positive portrayal of adolescent friendships. Even if the story is nowhere near the best, it’s certainly decent enough if you’re a sucker for a wholesome high school romance.

***Spoilers Ahead !***

STORY
Simple story
Best is great friends with Bright and Ray.
The Best Story has a remarkably ordinary story about a high school student with a crush on his classmate. There aren’t any twists and turns, scandals and secrets, or curveballs and complexities. It’s simply an age-appropriate love story featuring down-to-earth teenage characters and their mundane lives.

The Best Story also does a fantastic job at portraying high school friendships in a positive light. Best really has the best friends in Ray and Bright, who are both so supportive of him during his ups and downs. Sure, there’s a little playful teasing from time to time, but these two friends are loyal to Best and always have his back. They offer him love advice, emotional support, and absolutely no judgment. They’re there for him when he needs his friends the most.

More than the romance itself, the emphasis on friendship may actually be my favourite part about The Best Story. Even if Best doesn’t get with the guy in the end, I think he lucks out having such a positive network of friends. Hey, who needs a boyfriend when you got your bros? ?

ROMANCE
Wholesome romance
Dew gives Best a piggyback after he falls unconscious.
The relationship between Best and Dew is very, very wholesome. Their romance consists of longing gazes, bashful smiles, and pleasant conversations. In fact, I don’t even know if there’s enough to classify what they have as a romance. It’s more like a schoolboy crush, which never develops into anything more.

You may be disappointed to know that Best and Dew don’t become a couple at any point in the series. There’s no kissing, no affection, and absolutely no physical intimacy between them. In fact, the tragic part about their relationship is that they never confess their feelings for each other. They come close on several occasions, but have to resort to cryptic Instagram stories to communicate their love.

Basically, Best and Dew have a crush on each other. However, it doesn’t work out before they can even start dating. The end. ?

ACTING
Good acting
The actor playing Best (War) looks so good on camera, radiating in every scene.
The acting from everyone in The Best Story is pretty good, but the one who catches my attention the most is Best’s actor (War Wanarat Ratsameerat). Mostly, it’s because of how telegenic he looks. This drama is my first exposure to the actor, who caught me off-guard with his wide eyes, rosy cheeks, and angelic smile. He looks so good on camera, almost radiating in every scene.

After watching The Best Story, my first order of business was not to write this review, but it was to look up every piece of information about War online. I checked his age, read his bio, translated his Twitter feed, stalked his Instagram, and marked down all the other BL series he appeared in. After consuming the entire experience, consider me an official fan of this actor. Where do I sign up for his fan club? ?

ENDING
Sad ending
Best cries as he walks away from Dew without a love confession.
I must emphasize how much I hated the ending in The Best Story, which really brought down my overall opinion of the series. Everything in the first two episodes indicated that we were headed towards a happy ending. Best was on the verge of confessing his feelings, Dew seemed to reciprocate the crush, and their romance was progressing nicely. OR SO I THOUGHT.

In the final episode, Best and Dew don’t end up together because of Fern’s outrageously out-of-line meddling. After Dew rejected Fern, they had a nice conversation and cleared the air with each other. Let’s be clear that he didn’t lead her on, he was completely honest with her, and he treated her with so much respect. Dew was the perfect gentleman, whom she immediately stabbed in the back. ? What was Fern’s agenda when she went to Dew’s mom and OUTED HIM behind his back? Did Fern think snitching on him would make Dew like her more? Or was she simply doing it out of spite? Either way, Fern had nothing to gain from outing her closeted friend. It was a scummy lowlife move and she had no right to do that to him. WTF!?

Homophobia
Fern tells Dew's mom that her son might be in love with another guy.
Dew’s mom is also trash, reacting horribly to a nasty rumour just because she suspects her son might be gay. She uproots his entire life, chucking him out of the house without listening to her son. What’s your endgame here, lady? Are you just gonna relocate your child every time he gets along with a male acquaintance? The next time Dew makes a close friend in Chiang Mai, will you panic again and deploy him to another city instead? ?

Worst of all, the mom character feels SO contrived. She doesn’t show up at any other point in the series, only existing for this storyline alone. She has no characterization other than being a stereotypical bad parent with no logic or compassion. It’s infuriating to see this new character suddenly show up in the final act, and her only purpose is to deny her son happiness. Ugh, I’m just so angry with this ending, like a painful curveball thrown straight into my face. It feels duplicitous to build up this sweet, sentimental gay love story, only for homophobia to win in the end.

Ending explained
Dew has read the journal entries and he's aware of Best's feelings for him.
What makes the ending in The Best Story so tragic is that we find out Dew had feelings for Best all along. As you may have predicted, Dew read those journal entries and he’s completely aware of how Best feels about him. Dew reciprocates these feelings, but he’s just as shy and doesn’t want to make the first move. He has been observing Best from afar, waiting for him to confess. Except the love confession doesn’t happen, and it will never happen now that he’s moving away.

The Best Story is a tragic love story about two schoolboys who like each other, but they don’t end up together. Best never confesses because he doesn’t believe his feelings would be reciprocated. However, Dew also doesn’t confess due to shyness, passiveness, and a little hopelessness about their relationship. With such a homophobic mother, can you blame him for not taking more initiative to pursue this romance?

What Best & Dew wrote
Best stops himself from finishing his confession on Dew's shirt.
What Best wrote on the shirt and what Dew posted online are partial sentences that say: “I like-“. However, they both stop themselves from completing the full sentence: “I like you.” Their love confessions are interrupted midway, each for various reasons.

For Best, he hesitated to finish his confession after seeing Fern’s message on the shirt, making him doubtful once again. Like before, he feels insecure about competing against Fern (aka. a girl) for Dew’s love. For Dew, he posted that Instagram story to let Best know that his feelings ARE reciprocated. Yes, I like you too! However, he’s also unable to complete his love confession. Dew is now forced to move away, plus his mom is strongly homophobic, so he doesn’t feel any hope about starting a relationship.

Best sobs because he got confirmation of what he always desired: Dew’s reciprocated love. Even though both of them know about their mutual attraction, they can’t be together due to circumstances out of their control. That’s what Best finds so upsetting, because he finally learns that Dew wants to have a romantic relationship. Except it isn’t possible for them to be a couple anymore. Sadly, their romance is doomed before it can even begin.

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it doesn’t end in an HEA

OK, so I’m all for realistic endings, and not not everything being happy roses but I really do come to the stories to escape life and although I think this was cinematically done really well and gave us a realistic ending it also felt almost like a slap in the face because his friend is a really bad person and she doesn’t get punished at all. The show just ends, and then his mom ships him off because she is also homophobic.

I think this has great potential if there would be a season two, and we would get more of an ending.

I didn’t see any of the reviews at first that said it didn’t have a happy ending so I went in thinking that we would get one so it’s my fault for not looking further into the series before starting it

But for anyone who likes their stories they have a happy ending. This does not have it, so I would not start it if you are someone like me.

that being said I love YinWar.

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NOSTALGIC EMOTIONS says "hi"

I admit this series has noticeable BL tropes and cliches but I think they worked. I always thought way better series are disappointingly shorter than average and worst ones. The character of War which is Best puts me in his shoe easily. I was really relating all the things I did for my crush. The nostalgic feeling of having butterflies in your stomach everytime you come across your crush. I relived it in the best way possible.

I thought the cinematography for this one has nostalgia and old-school effect attached to it just like The Yearbook and I Told Sunset About You. I love that the setting seemed to happened back in the days were walkmans were everyone's gadgets. I just love the overall feeling of the series. I also want to point out a kinda similar scene of 2gether in some scene in this series: Best playing songs in front of the crowd where Dew watches it just like Sarawat on stage and Tine watches him. I thought the Best's friends who support him to get close to Dew is cute being not homophobic which is a less of a burden. I thought that the actors really played their respective roles very well. The "yearning of attention from your crush" is what really makes me relate to this miniseries.

There are few things I want to talk about that is unsatisfactory: bad bitch trope and homophobic parent. I know these things exist but please for the love of God, I'm begging you to remove bad bitch who always plan to ruin relationship just because they can. One thing about the homophobic mother of Dew who annoys me as the girl. God, I don't even like them.

Apart from those, I commend the OST of this drama, being a chef's kiss. I also thought the plot is rather simple and easy to follow as it is relatable that it made me feel things. In fact, when Dew moved and Best just cried seeing that apparently Dew has feelings for him too which is for me, the reason why this series needs to be longer or have a second season. That cliffhanger made me hope for a season 2. If it plans to have a second one they better deliver.

This one is just one of the best BL that caught my heart strings.

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Astonishingly Good BL Series

This is an astonishingly series that went in a completely different direction than I expected it to. I was convinced that I would perhaps get through one episode and then go, “Eh”. But I was so very wrong. The dynamics of this series is quite profound. This series ends so remarkably that I was deeply and profoundly moved by it. While it is only three episodes, they managed to capture the angst, trauma, and reality of two high school boys floundering trying to figure out what they felt and how to act on that. . It is one of the best coming of age stories I have seen in a long time and frankly brilliantly acted.

You can read my full review at BLBliss.com.

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A heart-warming and emotional series about young love

For a 3-episode series, I went in with little expectation as I knew they would just rush into things and the freedom that a full-length series possess on developing characters will be lost here. But this was surprisingly good. The series gently touched on a lot of topics and I have nothing but appreciation for that successful attempt.

The story dives in to the school life of Best, who is secretly in love with a basketball player named Dew but has no courage to talk to him let alone confess his love. Egged on by his friends, he decides to write a love song for him which he gets a chance to perform during the school festival. Dew is enamoured by the performance and rest is history. Or is it?

What starts as a soft and sweet story about secret love, supportive friends and finding the inner strength to not keep it a secret anymore suddenly takes a different turn. Only when you feel that things are looking bright for the 2 main leads reality hits like a truck. Not everything falls in to place because you made a genuine attempt. We see the characters confronting jealousy, self-acceptance, homophobia and family pressure. Will their young love survive all these?

War and Yin did an exemplary job at playing the characters and their chemistry together was undeniably good. The supporting characters aptly shouldered the responsibility of pushing the narrative forward.

In conclusion, this series plays with your heart-strings and you feel a plethora of emotions. If a series about puppy love and strong emotions is right up your alley give this one a watch

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