BLISS RATING: ★★★
“Love makes no sense at all. But it is the most powerful and amazing force in the entire universe” – Glenn Close
We have a term in the United States that, perhaps cannot be easily translated into other languages. But this term completely describes this series. It is a ‘hot mess’. The story makes no sense, the translations even less sense, and the characters are merely caricatures. Yet, I enjoyed it. Well, not all of it, but parts of it, especially the end. What made this enjoyable is the characters were just so cute, adorable, and had pleasant dispositions about them, that it was hard to dislike them.
I simply will not summarize this series because I did not understand it. It made very little sense to me. I do know it had something to do with ‘creditors’ and ‘debtors’ with a side order of boxing. That is the story.
Sun (Prem Chawaltrujiwong) is a handsome but rather inept collector of debts. (In this case, I am guessing that he collects money for the loan shark). His personality is such that it is difficult to believe he means anyone harm. So, he is rather ineffective at collecting or threatening. But besides his handsomeness, he stands out because of his astonishingly beautiful red hair that brings an aura of incandescence around him. There is something so charming about him. He is sent by his father to collect a considerable supposed debt from someone on an island. He is Arthrit (Boun Guntachai) who is also equally handsome with a hair color almost as dramatic as Sun’s. He is a hard-working owner of a resort. Sun sincerely believes Arthrit owes his father money. But in reality, it is the other way around, which because of fairly inadequate translations, I never could figure out why.
One would think with all this cuteness, this story would be interesting. But it is not. It is characterized as a comedy and there are some amusing moments. But most of the time it drones on with banal scenes that make no sense and are so trope-like and cliché. All of that could have been easily resolved if the two of them had just sat down as adults and talked. Unfortunately, this went the way of most Thai BLs. Rather than having a real story, they create superfluous silliness to fill in time. They want us to believe these two are falling in love, when the only thing we see is a lot of juvenile behavior on both their parts with perhaps just a bit of sexual tension. Of course, there is near the end, the obligatory ‘accidental’ kiss that is so overused that it is now meaningless, trite, and a standard cliché.
This series is filled with very pretty locations and handsome men with a surprisingly good story at the end. Again, typical for Thai BLs, they give meat to the bones of the story in the last episode. Why could the story not be developed like that from the beginning? Boun and Prem have good screen chemistry and are a stunningly handsome couple. But if you want us to believe they are falling in love, then give us something. When they finally express their commitment to each other, we get a passively weak hug. An accidental kiss, or a scene where they sleep in bed and act as if nothing happened between them, is just not believable and does not give a sense of a deeper connection between the two.
There was, however, another couple highlighted secondarily, that really steals this series with some fine acting and an intensity to their relationship. It is between Ashing (Lee Long Shi) who is a want-to-be- boxer. His whole story is a bit unfathomable, but there are some strong moments of conflict with his father that are poignant and give this series some incredible intensity. He wants desperately to be a boxer, but his father will not allow the boxing ring to become anything more other than a place for practice.
When a young man named Mangkorn (Top Tunjaroen), is introduced as a ‘debtor’, he is told to serve Ashing until his father can pay back what is owed to Ashing’s father. There is obviously a built-in hostility but as they get to know each other, the hostility turns more towards acceptance with a hint of understanding of each other. As Mangkorn trains with Ashing, the feelings for each other deepens and they end up attracted to one another.
Their relationship is a sold one and is presented effectively and very realistically. When they look into each other’s eyes, you can sense the seductiveness and the sexual tension between them. Surprisingly, there is way more emotional connections between these two than the main couple. Their kissing scene was creative, refreshingly different, and rather sensuous. And it felt genuine and sincere.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? In terms of cuteness, they all did. But in terms of impact on the story there is no question that Top as Mangkorn and Lee as Ashling are the clear winners. They brought depth, sincerity, and a sense that they understood their characterizations. They were able to make us believe they were their characters. Surprisingly intense, they added more depth to this series than would have otherwise been. Kudos for these two for taking rather small roles and turning them into big ones.
This series is cringy in a lot of ways though. Arthrit’s younger brother, Nemo (Tiger Hudchaleelaha) is in a very controlling relationship with an arrogant and obnoxious individual named JJ (Mon Waruncharoentham). He finally breaks free of this menace but in doing so has to slap him to finally rid himself of JJ. While I fully understand the level of anger and frustration Nemo was feeling, it seemed out of place and out of character for him to resort to such tactics. It is a bit disappointing that the direction of the series went that way. The failure here is the message. Is this how you handle frustration by resorting to physical abuse?
While it bills itself as a romantic-comedy, I found very little of it funny; amusing perhaps on occasion. Some scenarios were simply down-right perplexing. (For example, the whole thing with handcuffing Sun. He was on an island; literally, where could he go? But I do suppose if you wanted an excuse to be with someone, handcuffing is an option). They could have added so much more humor to those scenes and/or heightened sexual tensions more, but instead it was mostly light fluff. It was difficult to even see they liked each other let alone wanting to be together. There has to be some sense of romantic realism shown, even in a comedy, for an audience to believe, or want to believe, that two people are attracted to each other.
Sadly, this is a ‘throw-away’ series that could have been fun but became only mildly amusing. I did not hate it for sure, as the end was rather compelling. But I wanted this whole series to be so. I am not sure I could not have spent my time more wisely.
Oh, the time I spend looking at good-looking guys!
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