Hit Bite Love (2023)

Have you ever watched a show that made you feel like you are a dirty pedophile? If not, and if you are looking for one, then this one is for you!

Before anything, lets talk about the good things:
1.Newyear and Jur's King and Burger. Newyear somehow reminded me of a young Ohm and Jur's obvious over acting is endearing. I think the series will have a more positive reaction had they made them the focus of this show.
2. Is there a number 2?

Truth be told, I cant tell how anyone behind the show thought this was a good idea. This series is so reminiscent of the director's past works- Make it Right and What the Duck, but it seems like they never learned their lesson and instead amplified what people hated from those shows. Now lets talk about the not so good things:
1. The story. Cramming so many things within a 6 episode show is just too much, plus you really cant tell what the show is about. Is it a love series? Is it a murder mystery series?
2. Just like Love Sick 2, they managed to add another 2 of the most annoying characters ever on a tv show. There's no need to explain why Bookko's teacher is so despicable. And there's Mint's Pakaiwan. Also, special honorable mention to Ning's Pimtha, because
3. I really dont understand why some showrunners are so intent on making girls the villains in a boy-love series. Adding hate-able female characters doesnt automatically make viewers accept boy-love, if anything, its just lazy writing.
4. Speaking of lazy writing- this one seems like a mash up of a few other shows but is much more poorly executed. It is quite obvious that Burger King's story is derivative of Kieta Hatsukoi and there's an abvious attempt to make this into an Agatha Christie show.
5. I mentioned earlier that this show can make you feel like a dirty pedophile - the short shorts (it somehow felt like shorter shorts from Make it Right) is just too much and way too distracting. There was also quite a lot of disturbing shirtless scenes. I remember i was cringing during that scene when King removed his shirt and is trying to strip Burger - they obviously doesnt have what it takes to do that mature scene (they look like naked 10 year olds with those tiny bodies) but to force it does not look sexy, at all.
6. Bigboss' permanently constipated puppy sad look face. No matter what scene he is in, its the same sad face.
7. If they're planning season 2, which we all know is coming despite all the company's drama, I sincerely hoped they kept Pakaiwan dead because we dont need to see her anynore.

What's sad is there are hints that this could be a much better show. Overall, if you lower your expectations, it is still watchable and because of Burger and King i will give it a 6 (and also because i hate giving lower than that). Skip if you can only watch a few shows a week and save your viewing time for something much better.

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Disastrous

There's only so much you can stuff into a 6-ep series. Unfortunately, everything stuffed into this is awful.

The first question is, what genre is this? It was marketed as a BL, and most of the couples in this involve two boys, although only one is just two boys. The other two are everyone's favorite thing, love triangles.

Or is is a murder mystery? Maybe, except the dead body at the beginning is not the same body as turns out to be the case, nor at the same level of deceasedness. Which makes me wonder if Thai emergency services frequently transport live people in body bags. If so, I hope they remember to poke air holes in them.

Or is it about a rivalry between two bitchy girls? On the surface, no, that's not what it is, but that leads us to wonder why almost the entire runtime of this series is consumed by two almost supernaturally unpleasant people who I'm sure almost the entire audience wishes were not in the series at all.

The all-male love triangle involves a boy who's into BDSM, which is handled with the usual BL sensitivity, i.e. none at all, portraying it as deviant and possibly evil - certainly PTSD-inducing, and instead of his partner finding a way to accommodate his tastes, BDSM-boy is forced to give it up in the name of True Love, which can never include "deviant" behavior in BL. There's actually a scene where non-BDSM boy wants to break up because he realized that BDSM-boy has a slight preference for being a dom over a sub, and so he feels that he is horrendously depriving him of pleasure. Seriously, that's the conversation. Then he goes on to describe how flicking him with a toy whip makes him feel like he's inflicting violence on someone he loves. Sigh.

The love triangle with the girl involves a self-indentifed slut (who had sex with a grand total of one person, so what is the message here? ) and two step-brothers. Another favorite theme of BL audiences. Let's combine cheating, an evil female, and incest into one storyline - yay? I don't actually mind step-brother stories, but I know that a large part of the audience does mind, a larger part of the audience doesn't like cheating, and almost the entire audience doesn't like stories to be chewed up by evil girlfriends.

The only reasonably uncomplicated storyline is between Burger & King (get it?), and it is cute largely because the two boys are adorable. It's certainly not because of their acting ability or the amount of time spent on their story.

Which brings us to the topic of acting. I don't want to be too critical, because these are all beginners and they were clearly doing their best, but each of them only has one facial expression and it's not really enough. Maybe if they had two each it would have worked better. Non-BDSM-boy has kicked-puppy face, King has "did I live the iron on?" face, Evil Girl #2 has "what is that smell?", etc. There are one or two experienced actors in this (like Art, as beautiful as ever, but he has at most 60 seconds of screentime).

Worse, there is, again, an awful trans character who is loud, ridiculous, and an awful person, because Thail BL is unable to conceive of anything but "straight" people as being "good" and "normal". That's improved a decent amount in BL in general, but that progress hasn't reached this catastrophe of a series.

Perhaps worst of all, it doesn't end. None of the relationships get anywhere, and even though we know whodunnit, that story isn't resolved either. Couldn't they at least have left it as a mystery if they were going to end on a cliffhanger? What possible motivation do I have to continue watching this into the next season?

This series is a ripoff of the Spanish show Elite, which is far better. A central problem with Hit Bite Love is that it's set in high school (because that's a BL law or something) and it's themes are adult. Because of this, and because most of the actors are underage, the series is crippled by conservative Thai morality and so the story can never dig its teeth into any of its themes. This is so serious an issue that even when boys are at the swimming pool, if there's any romantic connection between them, their torsos are wrapped in big towels, as if having two boys who like each other shirtless is Crossing the Line.

Other than the cuteness factor of BurgerKing and Art being on my screen, the only positive quality is the background music, which is better than usual, and actually supports the story, such as it is. Although the theme song has so much autotune I assumed it was on purpose - although it does sound like a malfunctining robot and I'm not sure why you would want that.

I would skip this. If you had to decide between this and watching, say, Gen Y 2, then I would probably just kill myself. But Hit Bite Love is a lot shorter, so more of your brain might survive if you were to choose it.

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