Disappointing Ending

First of all, Earth, Santa, and Prem were amazing and they deserve 500000/10 stars.

But I am left feeling so disappointed with the ending. The last two episodes were like torture. I never read the novel, but the series until ep 11 never indicated that the entire plot would cease being about Cake and Eiw's relationship (which is what I cared about, what I was expecting), and end up being entirely about Eiw's relationship with his parents.

There was no relationship development, there really was no character development (except Eiw became less shy??). They pretended there was a happy ending, but it touched on nothing. The last two episodes are entirely Eiw and his family sobbing uncontrollably and Cake hovering in the corner sometimes, awkwardly.

I guess the esteanged and dying parent storyline (besides coming from out of nowhere at the end of the season) hit too close to home for me and that’s why I'm grumpy. But like... Eiw spent an hour explaining why he hates his dad who abandoned them because he never stopped smoking. Really? Youre not at all mad that he abandoned you and your family for years, missed out on hugely important events? You're just mad... that he smoked?

The ending seemed to suddenly become an anti smoking commercial and an egregious melodrama, with almost no romance whatsoever. So... if you, like I did, thought you were about to watch a romance, you might as well stop watching after the one makeout scene.

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It's so bad...

Hands down the worst plot of any piece of media I have ever consumed.

The resort setting is beautiful, the soundtrack was good, the main 2 actors were super hot, so it takes a special kind of bad to mess all that up so hard. But it is a special kind of bad.

Episode 0 is pretty good. It's not amazing unless you're comparing it to the rest of the series. I suggest watching episode 0, then episode 12 but STOP at the "two years later" transition (that scene was just cringe, not cute).

Here's another example of how bad it was: I suffered through episode 11 and totally intended to watch episode 12, but life got a little busy for a couple days, and then LITERALLY a month later I remembered I never finished this drama. How do you forget to watch the finale? When it's as exciting as watching paint dry, I guess.

I would be totally willing to watch another series with the two main actors. The jury is still out on whether or not they can truly act, but they are cute and had good chemistry once in a while.

I don’t even know where to begin. The constant "LodeStar Productions" transition. The severely unnecessary and triggering behavior of Nine's girlfriend. The way everyone had bouts of going monotone and stone faced. How everyone at the office would just stare into space and stir coffee all day long. The completely bizarre backstory about the theme park.

Oh, one of the best (worst): Nine and Danouea, after their one night stand, get back into relationships with the people they had broken up with prior to the one night stand. They then sleep with each other again, thus both are clearly cheating on their significant others. Meanwhile, Nine constantly admits he has a girlfriend. Everyone including Danouea knows Nine has a girlfriend. But when it's in the news that Nine's girlfriend is famous, Danouea is mortally offended, absolutely beside himself in shock and betrayal that... Nine has a girlfriend. Did I mention Danouea had even MET Nine's girlfriend (although it was Candy pretending to be his girlfriend but that doesn't really matter), she had been introduced to him as Nine's girlfriend, and still... it's a huge (time wasting) plot point that Danouea is heartbroken to find out Nine has a girlfriend (but he knew that the whole time).

And so on with the cheating. All they do is cheat on other people with each other, then Danouea has an entire breakdown twice over Nine cheating on him once they get together. Honey, why are you surprised?

Candy was the only redeeming part of this series. That's all I have to say.

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Problematic, but.........

Never have I gone from so much hate to something almost like love before seeing this series.

First of all, if you only watch 6 episodes or less, you will hate it. There is no doubt about it. The beginning of the series is revolting. I had read the reviews and knew what I was getting into, and I was still disgusted by the rape "jokes," the homophobia (both blatant and ironically unintentional), the stereotyping of sexual assault victims, and the romanticized sexual assaults.

But morbid curiosity and my endeavor to watch all Thai BL dramas overcame everything and I finished the series. I fully expected to hate the entire thing.

But then, something strange happened.

By episode 7, I started to think that it was kinda not that bad anymore... and I weirdly started to ship TT together, even though two episodes ago I absolutely hated them both and would have rather watched them die slowly and painfully.

By episode 11 or 12, whenever it was that Type admitted to being in love with Tharn, I practically squealed with joy. How did this change come about? Well, I don't know exactly, but I will say this.

There will be people who watch all 12 episodes and still hate it. There are some potentially unforgivable issues (with Tharn's character in particular) that some may never be able to get past.

But, in my opinion, Type's character development, from beginning to end, was what really won me over. It was really awesome to watch him open up, learn to empathize, come to terms with being not-exactly-straight, and eventually become proud and confident about his love for Tharn. Almost more importantly though, was how thoughtful and selfless he became. How he puts himself and his relationship on the line to help bring justice for another childhood sexual assault victim, was like... damn. That really hit me. His character had come full circle, and I was so glad he got his happy ending.

I want to remind people to be careful about how they critique authors who write about sexual assault. My issue lies with Tharn not taking no for an answer and touching Type while he was asleep, and how Tharn never had to face any repercussions for it, and never realized he was doing something wrong. That's icky.

What's not icky, or wrong, or "annoying," or anything else negative, is to write about sexual assault and how it affects the rest of a character's life, or wanting to seek justice for what happened, or even wanting a knight in shining armor to save them from it.

I'm saying this because I saw someone on Twitter bash MAME for using gang rape as a cheap trick in all of her stories.

Some people use writing as a coping mechanism for dealing with trauma that might have happened to them or someone they love. They can write about it however they want.

If all stories only had perfect, flawless characters, there would be no story. Characters, like people, are going to make mistakes. It's about coming to terms with the difficult aspects of life, or overcoming them all together, that make a story good.

This story won me over in the end. I thought when I started the series that my review would end with "Do anything necessary to not watch this show," but instead, I will say, consider giving it a watch, as long as you make the time to watch it through until the end.

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Cute moments of grown up TT

If you ignore the flaming pile of hot mess that was Leo and Fiat, the first 10 episodes of this show are good. I still dont know why they chose to pretend seven years had passed, it would have been the exact same story if it was their first year out of college, but whatever. The job problems and non-school settings mixed with coming home and cuddling with each other for ten episodes was adorable.

Then the end just... was weird. The monk thing came completely out of nowhere. Then I was so looking forward to their post-monk reunion but it was a giant flop. Thorn met Tharn and gave him a hint that Type was back early, so I was all excited that Type was going to propose back with all of Tharn's family there and it would be this huge surprise... but then he was just standing there. In the kitchen. And was all, "why are you so surprised I'm here???" Because you came back a week early?! Why did you even bother? Why did Thorn know bit not Tharn? What was the point?

The Champ and Doc side plot was cute, but Techno was robbed of having a romantic relationship with someone. Anyone. I would have loved that. But Champ is an Aro/Ace king and it would have been cute to see him explain more than just standing there like a dummy when Doc confessed.

I completely forgot that the cousin and his boyfriend across the hall were in the show. They were boring and a little creepy. Maybe don't wear children's pajamas while having sex?

And what about Klui and Seo?? They were there for a second and then very much gone. Imagine if there was no Leo and Fiat, cousin and boyfriend, and instead we had ChampDoc, TechnoAnyone and a more developed KluiSeo side story. That would be so much better.

Also, this comoetely doesn’t matter but I hate Tharn's hair in season one, but liked Type's. And I hated Type's hair in season two, but liked Tharn's. Seriously, though, what was Type's hair doing this entire season? It never moved. It was so weirdly voluminous. It looked like he was hiding a bowling ball in it.

That's it. That's the review.

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Half and half

This series has approximately 1 million flaws, but Zee and Nunew's acting, chemistry, and visuals are not one of them. For that alone, this drama is worth watching.

That said, it seems like this plot was written by two different people -- one who is extremely good at writing and one who is extremely bad at it. I really loved the series until about halfway through episode 8, and would have given it perfect marks up until that point. But, after hands down the best love scene in all of BL history in episode 8, the quality comes to a crashing halt.

Let's start with the secondary couple. Ugh. They were one of the biggest problems for me. You have Yi, a rich and successful businessman and Diao, a...... yeah, I never figured it out either. Who is he? He goes to university, for what, we don't know. Who is he to Yi? Because he lives in Yi's house, which, apparently, Yi does not live in for quite some time. How did this random guy come to live in Yi's house? It's played up as this huge mystery, but basically, Yi caused harm to Diao in the past (which Diao doesnt remember, because the harm caused him to lose his memory... only of what happened this one time). Yi feels so guilty about it, he lets him live in his house. Along the way, he fell for Diao. Okay, sounds good. But when we actually find out what happened, it's a huge letdown. First of all, it was an accident, there's literally no need for Yi to feel guilty for 20 years, but i could let that slide. However, it also happened when they were kids.

Wait a minute. They knew each other as kids? Where did that come from? All we knew about Diao thus far was that he's Kuea's best friend and they studied in the UK together. We know Kuea and Lian are childhood friends, but now Diao and Yi are, too? And each pair just happens to be best friends with each other as adults? What?

Also, the accident should have left physical scars, especially if it caused him to "lose his memory," which would have been apt (and cute for Yi to kiss later, you’re welcome for that idea), but Diao has none. All we have left to hope for is that, when Diao remembers what happened, or Yi tells him, they can finally communicate and forgive and move on. But it turns out Diao did remember, suddenly, somewhere in the middle of the series, but off camera, and just casually drops that he remembers and it's no big deal.

When Yi is confessing his feelings to Diao, it's cute and all, but this man was already living in your house. Under what context did that even happen? He wasn’t even your fake boyfriend before? It really just was a, "here, childhood friend I barely speak to, live in my mansion and I'll just crash at work because I cant bear to look at you for years" kind of thing? And Diao just goes with it? But cimplains the entire time that he’s lonely? Ugh!!!!

Okay, next major problem: all of the drama between the main couple could have been resolved by them having one five minute conversation. Miscommunication and keeping secrets and "I'm waiting for the right time to tell him," are common tropes, but they're played to the extreme in this series. At one point, Lian literally says, "I'm waiting for the right time to tell him," but somehow finds time to confess that he loves him and that they should get married, if not today, then tomorrow. Lian's character always knew about everything Kuea was hiding, but not vice versa, and it was ultimately a weird power balance. And weird that Lian kept insisting he loved Kuea, and wanted to marry him, but wouldn’t confess the secret he was hiding that ANYONE could have known would hurt Kuea if he found out about it and didn’t understand the reasons behind it. Lian was also very good at percieving Kuea's feelings, up until the time Kuea had a clearly miserable look on his face all the time; it was then that Lian decided everything was great between them and he should publicly propose. Ugh!!!!

And then there's the end, which just felt rushed and shallow. Yes, the message was sweet, but the ending would have fit a 2 hour movie better than a 12 episode series. The entire actual plot would have fit into a movie much better. So much time was wasted on the 2nd and 3rd couples, the excessive screen time of random characters like the club owner that no one was even friends with.

But I don't want to do a disservice to Zee and especially Nunew. I literally cannot believe this is Nunew's first acting role. He did an incredible job, and put shame to every other actor in this drama except Zee and the veteran adult actors. Zee was great too, and kept up with him, but Nunew really shined. I hope to see so much more from this couple in the future. They have the potential to make incredible work and bring huge social change as well.

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