BLISS RATING: ★★★★
“How would you indirectly confess to someone? I would sing to them. I think – I would draw them.” – Quote from Class Crush Crisis
I adored this series. It is cute, simple, sweet, and innocent. I loved that they were young teens literally playing the parts of, well, young teens! What we see is the naiveness of their innocence rule over their decision making skills and impulsiveness coupled with heightened testosterone levels rule over their behavior. The flaw, however, is the fact that the direction of the story gentrified them too much. There was little of the angst of being a teenager. In other words, they sanitized the story too much.
The entirety of this story is an idealized version of a fantasy. Every teenage boy dreams of being able to live on his own at a young age, away from his parents. Everything about this story is quintessential. Since Lee-ith (Yujeen Aeiyapol) is attending a school that has just now started to admit boys, which is a distance from his home, he convinces his parents to have his own place nearer to the school. Previously, it had been an all-girls school. While the mother wants Lee-ith to study something more serious, he wants to be a musician. Yet, his mother, for somewhat legitimate reasons, does not quite trust Lee-ith to stick to the rules of study-first before music. So, she pairs Lee-ith up with a roommate who is studious, steady, and serious. In exchange for reduced rent, he must report to her if Lee-ith begins to slack off from studying or skips classes for music. By chance or perhaps good luck, she happens to pair up a rival of Lee-ith named Putter (Yugene Yannawat). The two have already clashed at school. In a real sense, both seem to be in the early stages of having ‘feelings’ for one another. Of course, they are completely undefined and unorganized.
Since there are so few boys at this school, the male students decide to form their own club, which is a ruse to try and develop friendships and also to dispense sage advise on how to pick up girls. Most of this is carried out as pre-pubescent ritualistic behaviors and is crude at worst. However, feelings also begin to spill over among several members and thus there is this agreement that no dating will be permitted among members. This begins to cause problems because as Lee-ith and Putter settle in as roommates, their relationship grows stronger and feelings towards one another lean more towards romance.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? While this series is certainly light-hearted, there are some interpersonal issues that arise among friends that causes tensions that I thought the series handled well. Lee-ith has a best friend named Indy played by Hero Aschawin, who because of misunderstanding, jealousy, and confusion nearly destroys their friendship going back to childhood. Who helps salvage this and other issues is a captivating character named Jia played by Buffet Idea. He is an amateur card reader and fortune teller. Slowly, Indy and Jia begin to develop an interesting and original relationship that I rather enjoyed. These two for being so young did a great job of establishing what I thought was a rather realistic and organic connection between two characters, originally not meant to be, but somehow thrown together that fits. Hero Aschawin and Buffet Idea made it work without feeling their relation was contrived or set-up. It honestly felt fresh and looked it. These two brought gentleness and naturalness to their connection. I simply liked these two together. I do hope we get to see these two in future projects together. There is a naturalness between them that is adorable.
Two notions that are worthy of note here. I liked the way the series handled each protagonist ‘dating’ the other and how both ‘came out’ to their parents. It is astonishingly refreshing to see (and hope) that modern day parents are beginning to become more enlightened and are embracing a willingness to allow their sons (or daughters) to date whomever they chose to. And I thought the way the protagonists’ handled conflict was well done. They talked; communicated their issues, although at times it was uncomfortable to do so. Both among themselves and the issues between Lee-ith and Putter. The whole matter when someone started a rumor of ‘shipping’ Putter and Indy which caused a gross misunderstanding, while a stupid childish and infantile mistake, caused by non-thinking was resolved in a thoughtful and mediative fashion. Lee-ith admitting that he “was a jerk to the person he liked” and apologized showed frank grown and an understanding of what being in a relationship is all about. Misunderstandings, jealousies, and arguments are bound to happen and when you are young and unprepared on how to handle those, it can be difficult and strain friendships and relationships. This series handled those issues very well.
Where this series begins to falter is in its idealism. Nothing is this perfect. Nothing. Bls need to ‘grow-up’ and begin to paint at least a modicum of some reality. Even a little bit so others, in particular those who are not gay, do not think, this world really exists. Everything always works out; in life it does not. I am not sure, nor is it realistic, to believe, that two young men, who are in their mid-teens, living together and attracted to one another with raging hormones, would not have ‘experimented’. These two did not even kiss, which by their very nature is unrealistic. The series never even showed a kiss as every time they started to; some ‘legitimate’ reason stopped them from doing so. This is not honest.
I am not advocating necessarily a further intensity with their relationship but there was not even a discussion about anything sexual except the usual dismissive references. It is not realistic or honest to not think of how ‘turned-on’ both must have been and how do they deal with that. Is that not part of the process of living/ being together? Of growing up as a teenage boy? While these guys are so astonishingly sweet and young, they glossed over the issues that indeed would be affecting a boy 15, 16, or 17 to merely present an idealized sanitized version of a Pollyanna world. Rather than being even just a little bit realistic, ignorance becomes bliss. You simply cannot have two healthy young teenage boys, attracted to each other, with astonishingly high raging hormones acting like they are playing in a sandbox. Deal with realities.
I did appreciate the fact that the performers were all quite young. But in reality, you took away their youth and made them caricatures. They did not seem real to me. They seemed made up living in a pretend world. The organic aspects of just being a teenage boy are merely glossed over.
Unquestionably, this is an entertaining, cute, bromance of puppy-love unions that is sweet and adorable. If only just a little bit of reality would have been thrown in to make this series just a little bit more relatable to the real world.
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