Home School (2023)

I thoroughly enjoy the series; however, I had hoped for more focus on the camaraderie among the entire gen6 student group. While there were a few noticeable plot holes, I am optimistic that a potential second season could address these issues with the new generation of students. I must applaud the actor who portrayed Master Prasath – his performance was truly remarkable. He deserves recognition and an award for his outstanding portrayal. Despite the divisive nature of his character, he executed it flawlessly, evoking strong reactions from the audience.

The inclusion of the twin brother's role was a stroke of brilliance as they provided a much-needed balance between humor and the show's underlying tragedies. A special mention goes to Indy, who performed exceptionally well despite being a rookie. The series' commendable exploration of societal issues such as misogyny, corruption, and the struggles of the working class is praiseworthy.

I extend my sincere appreciation to the dedicated individuals behind the scenes who tirelessly brought this series to life. A special shoutout to the director, Fon – your consistently exceptional work never fails to impress. I am hopeful that this show garners the attention it deserves, as it is truly a worthwhile watch.

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Great dark academia Story but I have no idea where it went wrong

Jumped into the story because it starred all the actors I knew and the prospect of watching them play as fellow high school mates felt exciting to me.

Had a great start. I loved how they tried to build up a slow-burn suspense. The drama kept me questioning and had me on edge because I was too curious to know what was happening behind the facade of Home School.

But somewhere along the story went all wrong. The ending screwed up. so the poor review score is mostly because of the poor execution of a good story.
I hyped myself up because of all the actors I loved and now I'm highly disappointed in the drama.

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Interesting idea that could not stick the landing

A wonderful cast and characters with so much potential, but the overall story was fumbled. The motivations and ideologies of the headmasters were widely unclear and seemed to change randomly and their redemption arcs, if they can even be called that, were unearned and made no sense. And the message they were trying to send of “fighting violence with violence will turn you into a monster” just falls on its face when the person your fighting against is a crazy man with no conscious who is going to kill you and you’re trapped in the middle of the woods. In my opinion, that is a perfectly good time to kill someone

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Home school, no school

I initially liked the idea of this show and enjoyed the earlier episodes but halfway through, I couldn’t take it seriously. It became absurd and unreal and the order of how things were revealed was so, so ineffective.

For instances:
- Tibet being the son of one of the masters is actually an interesting idea, however, since we know nothing about this Master Phut or their relationship and bond as father and son, prior to Tibet attending Home School, we could care less. And so did Tibet; this was a father he didn’t remember or care about. A father he didn’t try to know or understand why he had to die or ‘kill himself’. Tibet only applied to Home School because his mom wanted it and he wanted to do it for her. So when Master Praset was revealed to have been the one behind Phut’s death, it was a well-duh no-brainer moment. Hence, Tibet’s reaction to everything Master Prasat disclosed felt over the top.
- The name Home School is self-explanatory but it was nice getting a flashback of where it originated from and how it came to be, however, it was revealed so late into the show that at that point it was… ‘Okay…good to know I guess?’.
- Run and Rin/Maki’s reunion is supposed to be the biggest angle but it was delivered so poorly that I watched them hug it out with a straight face. Gun and Film’s acting was good enough, I blame the camerawork and editing for the disappointment. Understand this is supposed to be a reunion after six long, desperate, and confusing years where the loving older brother suddenly fell off the face of the earth only to be discovered to have been locked up for years, and the production team couldn’t spend more time making it magical? Even the after-dialogue fell flat. They seriously reunited because Run recklessly ran out in front of an incoming large group of students and luckily his sister was among them and happened to recognize his backside in the dark. There was no suspense, no beautiful moment, no omgoodness yes they’ve finally met again! I swear, I can’t remember if they played any music but if they did it did nothing for me.

This series didn’t feel school-ry. The lessons were predictable and cliche. Besides, isn’t three years too freaking long to be learning about accepting your peers as your family…? There are no good direct callbacks, for example, why have the students run laps every morning? To build their stamina and make it easier for them to chase their parents later on? Or was it just to have a former professional runner as a PE teacher? What happened to the ducklings??? What was the long-term point for raising ducklings and how was that experience and learned skills applied to the later episodes or life in general? Why did the students have to learn to work together when the end goal is to have them kill their parents separately? I wished the ‘lessons’ had a bigger role than just a device used to torture the students. And how are we supposed to believe that GEN 6 is the only class in 15 years where students have fallen in love therefore the school had to invent a new rule to forbid it? You're letting teenage boys and girls run wild here, c'mon now.

Although I’ve listed a few above, I believe the show’s biggest downfall is that there were no decent builds and follow-ups, especially for a mystery/thriller. The suspense, if any, was short-lived. A lot of prominent revelations turned into background noises fairly quickly. The main villain was obvious from the opening in episode one. And much to my displeasure, this series really gave me Naruto vibes. In the ‘action’ scenes, all the characters do is talk each other’s ears off and/or reveal their sad backstory. I can’t count how many times I begged the characters to stop talking and just act. This could have ended at 14 episodes had they just cut out the filler (and if someone had just shot Master Prasat). I also don’t understand the students’ constant need to ask endless arbitrary questions when they obviously weren’t going to get straight answers. Some of the students are praised for their cleverness or for being outstanding but really all they’re doing is questioning the masters to death. I know Master Prasat has a gun but he was outnumbered 1:7 if we include one master. I kid you not, Prasat having a gun is the only reason the series has an additional three episodes. Once they saw that he had one gun that fired one bullet at a time, they immediately backed off and let him do him. Crazy story, I know.
The whole ‘don’t fight violence with violence’ has been tossed out the window by the ‘good’ characters so many times, I don’t know why the characters continued to shamelessly maintain that they weren’t using violence. I guess shooting someone is violent but punching, smacking, and assaulting with a deadly weapon aren’t?

I don’t mind a big cast, I actually like this one for its diversity but that’s when you run into common issues like poor character development or unfair screen time. Which is what we have here.
Run and Maki, respectively are smart characters and were held to high standards, so when they got together it wasn’t wrong to assume that they would do something amazing together. Two heads are better than one, right? Well, that wasn’t the case here. Instead of combining their higher intelligence and skills, Maki became a damsel in distress and was constantly used against Run.
I enjoyed the group of six: Maki, Tibet, White, Nai, Pennueng, and Phleng a lot. But I wish they’d put in more effort to search for their peers as they were fully aware of the danger around them. They’re a good group of friends but they’re also that good group of friends that don’t really care about anyone not part of their clique.
Given that the students have been through countless strange and dangerous scenarios, you’d expect them to grow some smarts or cautiousness about them but they remain relatively naive until the end. Not knowing who to trust is one issue. Trusting the same villain(s) is another.

I would definitely rewatch earlier scenes and interactions, but I’m not sitting through all 18 episodes again. Not even for Mek and Mok!

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A nice watch

This had been on my list for a while, as someone who loved The Gifted. For the most part, this was enjoyable and well-written, and all the side characters were fleshed out.

Its biggest drawback, I’d say, is the pacing. While it may be consistent and steady, it’s SLOW. Especially in the first few episodes, it feels like it takes the characters a very long time to figure things out, and it also gets a little repetitive with all the characters acting similarly in how they question the Masters. Even Maki wasn’t doing much with her backstory.

As the drama went on, and Run played a bigger role, I think that was, for the most part, fixed. I enjoyed gradually getting the backstories of all the side characters and learning about the school’s origins. The pacing was still a little slow, but I didn’t mind it as much.

I, however, do wish the drama was a little braver with its themes. The “don’t sink to their level” and “be a good person” theme has been seen in a lot of Thai dramas, like The Gifted. While it’s definitely a valid worldview in the real world (and one I hope many people follow), it unfortunately makes for boring television. Our main characters are tossed around by the antagonists who are actually willing to do things that move the plot forward. And the stakes also feel lower because we know that nothing is going to end up happening to them — after all, they have to be rewarded for their goodness in the end.

Ultimately, I still enjoyed this one a lot. Though I think it could’ve been a bit more compressed and more extreme, the themes are good, the ships are subtle but cute, and the story is well-written.

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Slow Burn Thriller

For some reason I binge things multiple times before I write a review.

This one I have seen twice and am on round three.

Why?

Because it's like one of those classic old timey thrillers that slowly unravels the plot and gets more and more intense and twisted until the Final Buildup when you scream "WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?"

And I did scream that.

Several times.

I knocked off one star for just a few little things:

There are fourteen leads in this show.

FOURTEEN.

And all of them kill their roles but I can see why managing a plot with fourteen main characters can make the plot drag just a little bit.

And it did drag just a little bit--there were at least two episodes where it just felt like a Plot Placeholder. Maybe cutting it down from 18 episodes to 14 would have helped, but even the Filler Episodes had some great little moments, and we did kind of need to know that background of all fourteen of these kids in order to understand their actions and attitudes, so there you go.

Also, while I didn't do shots every time I heard the words "Home School" in a single episode, I did start counting during one episode and ran out of fingers and toes in about fifteen minutes(that's just one segment of a 45 minutes show).

HOWEVER

I love me an old fashioned type thriller and this was it!

There was plenty of mystery and unanswered questions that were tied up nicely(for the most part) and there were plenty of comedic(thank you JJ and AJ) and a couple of swoon worthy moments too(like, can Kay and Jamie be a couple in another series? Because EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE)

Every character was human.

There was a lot of gray in every one of the students and I felt for all of them once I knew why they behaved the way they did. Jingjai and Hugo's backstory was more heartbreaking than I expected and I wanted to hug them as much as shake them for the rest of the series.

Even the villain (which was actually pretty easy to spot) was someone who thought he had a good reason for his actions(even if it was twisted, it made sense to him and that's what makes villains like this creepy.

Some people don't like Nani or his acting, but I think this genre is PERFECT for him.

True, Nani doesn't overreact or over-emote; he plays everything very subtly and very close to the chest and this type of character he was playing fit him to a tea. GMM should give him more characters like this because Nani is one of those actors who can make characters like Tibet(who seem to push down their emotions to avoid being hurt) really interesting. And Tibet's final confrontation with Prasath was FABULOUS!!!

Dew and Jane were fantastic as Nai and White(the side romantic couple). Watching them dance around their feelings for each other was super fun.

Nani and Film as Tibet and Maki where the nice kind of main romantic couple that didn't have the drama to deal with an felt natural in the friends to lovers trope, which can sometimes fall on it's ass, but this time it didn't.

Chimon STOLE THE SHOW for me.

Pennueng was so adorable I wanted to give him a hug and Chimon's performance was spot on--so much so that my brother walked in while I was watching and thought Chimon was actually on the Spectrum, and I had to get my brother to Google Chimon to prove that he wasn't.

The climax was almost perfect. I'm a little bit sick of the girl always getting hurt and needing to be saved by the guy, and kinda wished Tibet or Nai or White or even Run got shot instead of Maki, so that Maki could confront one of the baddies the same way that Run(with Champ) and Tibet(with Prasath) did, but hey, sometimes the soapy trope works better and I suppose this could be one of those times.

Plus, I did love that Run was able to hypnotize Champ with the click of a pen and force Champ to punch himself into a bloody pulp, so that made up a little bit for the girl gets hurt and guy takes revenge trope.

"Home School" was fun and would make a great low-key Halloween rewatch, which I'm totally going to do now.

Ignore the flaws and give this show a shot--it's worth it.

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Home School: A prison disguised as a boarding house or a safe haven?

Thirteen students with troubled upbringing who were essentially abandoned get selected as the new generation & enrolled in a “mysterious” boarding school to continue their studies for the next three years. What seems like your typical prestige school for well off kids to further their education & future, hides many secrets within. With its strict rules, eerie teachers, and isolated location, the students must put their differences aside and work together to unravel the truth of a missing student as well as the school’s origins & true intentions.

With each new episode, we learn a little more about each student, their upbringings, their traumas, etc. “Unique & peculiar” in its curriculum is definitely an understatement. In the beginning I couldn’t tell whether or not the Masters were secretively clever or just outright insane, and maybe they were both but IT WORKED!! The lessons and teachings were far from the typical “norm”, and instead consisted of games that dabbled in physical and psychological aspect. It focused more on morals & values. To be better people in society, because without "good people" they cannot achieve a good society. Instead of punishing the bad kids or the ones who did wrong "which kinda annoyed me in the beginning lol” they punished the ones who were good, punctual, obedient etc…
And it made sense because life & society is not fair...bad guys get away...and in order to create fairness in society people have to expose the truth and find the truth if they deem suspicion. Make them grow, reflect, and heal as individuals. See the world for what it is to make changes but don't look at it so negatively with hatred, otherwise nothing will change and will only create monsters of destruction. In theory Home School was sought to be a safe haven for students who had no one to depend on, however its good intentions were shrouded with hatred that everything ended up becoming twisted causing more harm to the students.

One thing I wish this series did focus on though, is more background on the teachers/masters. I felt like they were soo essential to the students experience within the boarding house, they explained some but not all. It wouldve been more interesting to see how they got recruited, what they went through to want to be apart of Home School etc etc and even some more details on the previous generations. BUT all in all, with all its flaws I was without a doubt pretty engrossed in this show, and with that bonus ending, Im really manifesting for a S2…and i dont like multiple scenes but I kinda want more!!

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Be patient with this one

It is easy to give up on Home School halfway through. After all, we may not really care much about most of the characters at the start. The teachers at Home School are either cold or creepy (often both, actually). And the students can be pretty unlikable too. But I guess the creators took a bit of a gamble here. The characters do become more interesting and likable apart from the one who turns out to be the main villain of the series.

It is unfortunately very easy to be frustrated with the series if you start off with the assumption that Home School and its teachers are part of an unrevealed dark conspiracy. This is because of the ambivalent way in which they are portrayed. They seem every bit like the bad guys who have tricked parents into enrolling their children in a school that ends up abusing the children and cut off the children's contact with the outside world. However, some of the "lessons" the teachers try to teach seem to have values even though the teaching methods are highly unconventional and manipulative to say the least. There were times when I was left incredulous, thinking that the writers have made the teachers laughable villains. At times, the teachers seem to place emphasis on conventionally good things like love and trust for one another; at other times, they seem to be cruelly teaching the students about the ugliness of the world. The ambivalence in the portrayal of the school does, however, have a purpose. There are early hints about this and it becomes increasingly clear to us--the school has not always been what we think it is like.

To be honest, the ethicality of the tactics employed by Home School to educate the young people remain questionable all the way even though a twist in the story makes us focus more on the main villain or the mastermind behind the villainy. Regardless of what Home School aims to do, I can imagine how emotionally scarring it can be for a young person to go through the school, especially for someone like Pennhung who appears to be a character with unspecified special needs. This is one of the weaknesses of the story, making the plot twists less convincing than they could have been.

At times, I also wished that the writers had written in more interesting lessons. Some of them are just too predictable. Take for example the game in which the students are made to play a musical-chairs game. They are told to find a place to sit down before the music stops--the number of chairs keep decreasing, but those who fail to find a place to sit down will be punished. Of course, it turns out that the students did not have to sit on a chair. They could literally sit anywhere. In another game, they students are made to play a game in which they have to identify the lizard, who can order anyone of them around. Of course none of the students turns out to be the lizard. The atmosphere would be different if there had been more interesting "lessons" written into the script.

Despite the flaws of the series, there is enough in the series to keep me watching. The strong performance by many of the actors and the good story pacing contribute to making the series more watchable. There are holes here, but the story is quite good

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New mystery concept of a school

Everything I see in the beginning just left lots of questions in my head, making me curious about what happened. The school is so mysterious, even those students were brought to it without knowing any clues about the direction. The weird curriculum also made me surprised. I love some personalities from the students (especially Pennhung he is so soft wth)
I see metaphor of bad treatments from parents to their children. All of the Home School students have their own scars that come from the same source ; family. And the mystery between the masters made the story more thrilling, and also the weird exams. And the ending??? Is there s2 for this? Because there are still a lot of things that left question marks.

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