Disappointing
Let’s start by saying that I read the book and loved it. my impression of the show began off with how disappointing the adaptation is. Imagine my shock when episode one they changed the entire timeline from the book. Which meant everyone’s motivations now had to be completely rewritten. Mai stayed pretty much the same but now he has a fellow intern magically show up to handle the plotline where Jade thinks Mai should pair up with Ae. and because Ae and King are no longer an integral part of the main plot they’re shunted to the side and all the friendship chemistry goes sideways.Ae is supposed to be a quiet smart influence on Mai. Helping him along with wooing Jade. but since Jade no longer needs to misunderstand that relationship that meaning is lost.
Jade is supposed to be a “mid” character. quietly helping everyone around him yet he’s rewritten and (surely coached) to be loud and, let’s be honest, slightly annoying, instead of kind and self defeating. you get more incite into his character through his brothers conversation with Mai in the last episode than you do in the enitre series.
Honestly, I could go on for pages and pages so instead I’ll try to keep it short. I know this series suffered from a lot of changes and recasting in the beginning but instead of getting better due to the delays is seems like they ended up having too much time to make too many changes and they got lost somewhere in the middle and ended up lost out in the wilderness of story land.
in short, my suggestion is to go read the book, I enjoyed it. the adaptation should be enjoyed for purely seeing Tutor and Yim interactions. I’d suggest skipping episodes 2-4 though. Yim isn’t really allowed to have emotional range until that episode.
gosh. I’m still suffering from the disappointment.
if you want to see how adaptations should be done go watch the Thai adaptation of the Japanese BL manga Cherry Magic.
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Mosly unwatchable but with some nice moments
Perhaps there are viewers who enjoy this sort of romantic comedy/farce, but I find the main character just too pastiche in rather annoying sort of way. I couldn't take him seriously, couldn't empathize with him, and eventually just fast forwarded through a lot of his screen time. If only the character arcs had been as well defined as the abdomens on show the basic storyline might have yielded a decent series at this length, but instead we get a very jerky and episodic stream of comedic set pieces and mostly stiff dramatic acting from the support cast.Mostly Jade needs to be more loveable. The basic story is reasonable: an otaku who is resigned to experiencing love vicariously through the friends he tries to mediate between finds someone who sees beneath the surface to find him much more attractive than he seems at first blush. But for that to work we need to see more of what actually makes Jade loveable, and we just don't see enough of that to empathize with them.
There are some nice moments and some decent acting here and there, e.g. some of the emotions shown as interactions are Rashomoned are well acted and work to some extent; or the moments Jade and Mai spend looking through Jade's sketch notebook of Jade's time with his new intern.
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I Personally really liked this! Tutot & Yim are a wonderfull BL Couple!!!
Yes Jade was a bit over the top! But I guess in the original story it´s the same?I love that it was so unique and something different!
If u can life with Jade being over reactive and a bit to sensitive (maybe he has a form of Autism?) U can enjoy it! It was so funny and I love how clueless he sometimes was! It´s not the Actors fault for the story being a bit otp! If the director says they should act like this they do it! ! I personally Love Tutor & Yim together <3 Hope we get another drama with them very soon!!!!
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PAINFUL
Absolutely terrible. This made me wanna poke my eyes out.I was so excited to watch this. I was a fan of this couple in Cutie Pie and was hoping they would be SOMEWHAT similar to that in Middleman's Love. I really liked Jade in Bed Friend and I have no idea what happened to his character. He was the most annoying person on the planet and I hate to say that, because I like Yim very much. Tutor's character was nice as always, but I think this ship was ruined. I'm telling y'all, every minute of this was painful and cringy LOL I think I only watched till the end because I really love James. Everything about the show was poorly done. The script was terrible, the story didn't make sense, the side couple was very weak and I didn't like anyone but Uea. I like King but even he was annoying.
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only for romcom's fans, and that's mostly why is so underrated
I usually don't write reviews, but I think this is a pretty underrated drama as of now (6.4 rating!).Honestly, I was expecting much worse given the comments and the ratings: it's a very classic romcom with exaggerated and nonsensical humour, BUT the actors did quite a good job with their roles.
It made me laugh a lot, smile, giggle and care for the main leads, especially Jade's character.
I think the main problem for many people is exactly Jade's characters, who's over the top BUT is clearly on the spectrum (English is not my first language, so pardon me if writing it like this might sound offensive): Yim gave it his all to act with the whole body, with his lips, his hands... I think it had to be a very challenging role.
I haven't read the novel nor I've seen the previous series (Bed Friends - but I will), so I don't know how Jade's character is in the novel... but I really really liked the fact that he was not "just a goofy nerd", and that Mai (and all the friends and coworkers) understood and embraced that.
That said: TutorYim were lovely, I liked NetJames too and their dynamics as an already established couple in this series (as I said, I don't know about their couple in BF so I understand this might not be good for BF's series fans).
It's a fun thai romcom but there are some very nice, heartwarming and deep scenes (ep5 coming out to family, ep7 coming out at work, ep8 honest dialogue about ex boyfriends...).
Nice songs for the OST, the direction and editing (and dialogues!) were pretty average even tho' it didn't look like a low-budget series... that's a pity because the idea perse was pretty nice (reminded me of "Kahogo no Kahoko", 2017 Jdrama) and I loved how Jade's character became braver and braver but still being himself.
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Perfect series to relax and have a good time
What can I say ?I was super excited to see this serie from the trailer and because of the previous one Bed friend, who have watched know 😏.
For those that were bothered as me, because of the inner voices that we are able to hear almost all the time, in my opinion it smoothened throughout the episode.
Now about the serie... I think is mainly good and nice to watch, please keep on mind that it won't be the same as BF, as they try to explore and enlight different aspects.
I liked the performance of the character's pair portrayed by NetJames, TutorYim and LeoTai because it's presented a vision of both introverted and extroverted persons, their strugglings, behaviours and actions;
Also it's a challenge produce a serie with 8 episodes only and 3 couples, but I have to say that they made a good work, I doesn't feel like they were rushing the events ( I have seen the uncut version🙃) .
I got the feeling that this year Thai BL are taking to another level, challenging themselves more and more ... for the point I mentioned earlier they made a good job.
With this serie I had a really good time, a chill serie that leave a taste of happiness.
Hope that my review would be helpful😉
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a little better as it went on (watch suggestions)
Overall: unless you enjoy over the top humor with a ton of comedy sound effects follow my watch suggestions. 8 episodes about 45 minutes each. Aired on Mandee Channel's YouTube (cut), GagaOOLala (cut), iQIYI (uncut) and Viki (I assume cut). Mandee Channel/Domundi also produced Naughty Babe, Bed Friend, Cutie Pie and Why R U.Watch Suggestion (watch the cut version & play at a faster speed unless noted)
- skip episodes 1, 2 & 3 (though shirtless Mai in ep 3 is nice)
- watch ep 4
- watch ep 5 to 48min/standing on the podium
- watch the uncut version of ep 6 15-18 minutes which includes a brief kiss with the side couple (this scene was totally removed from the cut versions for some bizarre reason)
- watch the uncut version of ep 7, can start at 27 minutes with Gus/Tong or to skip over something sad that happened in the past and start at 37 minutes and end at 43 minutes, then you can watch thru to the end with Mai/Jade or skip to 1hr 4min to see their final scene
- watch the uncut version of ep 8 which has a lot of sweet moments and NSFW scenes with Mai & Jade
Content Warnings: hits played as comedy, vomiting (in uncut ep 2), molestation off screen, past death/grief
What I Liked
- enjoyed some of Uea/King's moments (like in episode 5)
- Mai's flirting (wished they had shown why he liked Jade earlier than ep 5)
- Jade's and Mai's supportive family
- cute moments
- how Jade did have agency in episode 8 and initiated things
- good consent/communication in episode 8
- that it has a wide release on 4 different platforms
Room For Improvement
- the three minutes of cringey animation didn't hook me
- Jade's exaggerated/yelling was irritating especially in the beginning episodes
- cringey editing, voice overs and comedy sound effects that didn't make anything funny
- the side couple was oddly hot and cold (note, apparently the cut version removed several of their scenes which is contributing to their confusing interactions with each other)
- not happy with the Uea/King reluctant/violent dynamic, how King was jealous/retaliatory at Uea in ep 6 for just talking to another guy
- slow pacing/repetitive, in episode 6 as an example Mai had almost a duplicate conversation with his mom
- bad decisions with what they cut, I was happy they cut the vomiting scene in episode 2 but why on earth cut an entire scene including a kiss with the side couple in episode 6??? I normally would expect a cut version to reduce a NSFW scene but there wasn't anything to cut up to episode 7 (and then they did cut the NSFW scenes in ep 7 and 8)
- the NSFW scenes were kind of choppy, one of them oddly stopped and then re-started
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Ignore the hate
You will like this or you won’t and I’m a liker.Reddit yelled about Yim’s acting being awful and over the top and yea he was ott as Jade but it wasn’t bad acting, it was purposeful. Jade is a very insecure, quite innocent, anime obsessive and this story is told wholly through his eyes. So to me it makes perfect sense that the series felt anime coded. I enjoyed Jade and Mal’s journey to love very much. Uea and King becoming number 1 Jade protectors was also delightful to see.
Overall it’s a really enjoyable journey. Watch the uncut if you can because it also has some really nicely done spice scenes.
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trash
jade acts like a 5 year old girl in this whole series. how in hell he cannot figure out mai is the one falling for him. even a blind person can tell mai is in love with jade. we wasted 5 to 6 episodes and jade please stop screaming like a girl in your next series. we don't like it. to be honest the side couples should be in the main roles cause they act like they are in their age range like a grown adult. and of course I love to see king and uea together. and production team, stop playing the ost every 5 seconds I hate the song cause I listened the ost for a billion times.and for the family of mai, mai's mother is so fake. I can tell she does not want mai to be gay. I can see in her eyes. I love jade's family at least they can act they are supportive to jade.
and finally this series is trash
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How sad
IQIYI and Mandee should be ashamed of themselves and the CEO's & script writers should have to give personal apologies to both Tutor & Yim. This was horrible!!!! I 1,000% percent watched it to the end because of Tutor and Yim. For fans to wait so long to be handed this pile of crap is aggravating. It has potential, especially if they hadn't made Yim's character and total freaking clueless idiot!! Had they left him the way he was in Bed Friends I feel like it would have been so much better. I'm hoping the novel isn't this bad. Anyway... It sucked and hopefully Tutor and Yim can bounce back because I freaking love them in everything else.
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Don't judge a book by its cover
Middleman's love is exactly like a lot of people described it. A typical office romance with a predictable storyline, obnoxious Thai humour, ridiculous characters and circumstances and a main character so extra it borders on annoying.Or at least that's what I thought for the first 4 episodes but, DAMN.
Jade starts out as a very outgoing, meddling and to some maybe even annoying character. He's high energy and his face and voice are all over the place. He very much feels like Thai humour was just poured into a character. That is what it seemed like and that's how I expected it to stay. I didn’t think this show would ever turn into anything more than just something I could laugh at. So colour me surprised when episode 5 rolls around and they actually get into Jade's backstory.
Without spoiling anything, this show spends 4 episodes focussing on humour and the crush Mai has on Jade. But when episode 5 rolls around it actually gives all of the characters much more depth than I initially expected.
Jade isn't just obnoxious and annoying, he's hurt, self conscious and afraid of getting hurt again. Mai isn't just an emotionless man that's endlessly chasing after his crush but a guy who's trying to stay determined and both do the right thing while still honouring his own feelings.
This show doesn't deal with the endless layers of trauma that Bed Friend does, but that's not the point. It's a show about Jade, the middleman, finally getting noticed by someone and how his past and own mind desperately try to deal with the attention.
So if you're a TutorYim fan, like (or don't get angered by) Thai humour and you're looking for an easy to watch bl that still has some depth but doesn't deal with the endless layers of angst that every bl seems to have nowadays. Than Middleman's love might be for you.
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