Twins (2023)

want to see the actors in something else

Overall: the leads' excellent chemistry couldn't save Twins' poor writing. 12 episodes about 45 minutes each. Aired on GagaOOLala https://www.gagaoolala.com/en/videos/3782/twins-2023-e01 ; re-aired on Lovemedia Thailand YouTube channel https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIFuZIdAgzTjbXN2ypTCNBGNY0PQQTgxG&si=TmjC1-YF7k_mWZTd

Watch Suggestions (unless you enjoy slow pacing, stupid decision-making and poor communication)
- read the synopsis/watch the trailer and skip episodes 1-3
- episode 4 watch up to 10 minutes, then 29 and then at 36 minutes
- episode 5 start at 17 minutes and can watch on a faster speed to the end
- episode 6 watch 18-20 and 23-24 minutes
- episode 7 start at 18 minutes and can watch on a faster speed to the end
- episode 8 start at 10 minutes and can watch on a faster speed to the end
- episode 9 watch 24-25 and 29-31 minutes
- episode 10 watch 15-30 minutes
- episode 11 watch 12:20-15:20 side couple
- episode 12 watch entire episode

Content Warnings: violence/fight/beaten up, manipulation, non con picture taking/sharing, cyberbullying

What I Liked
- a sports based BL
- good chemistry with the main couple
- a side couple grew on me

Room For Improvement
- needed the twins to be better differentiated similar to Not Me, even if one was dressed like the other, the voice and mannerism should have immediately signaled to the audience who it was, there were a few times I wasn't sure who was supposed to be who in a scene
- slow pacing, entire first episode was set up, watched most of the series on 2x speed
- Sprite needed to say something way earlier, his brother Zee was a nonredeemable jerk and all the characters shared 3 brain cells
- way too many side characters introduced quickly, took awhile to figure out who was who and then several plot threads weren't developed well
- toilet humor at the end of episode 3
- for one couple, the pursuer was a bit too aggressive and the pursuee was a bit too reluctant for too long
- choppy editing
- in episode 10 the fictional 'so drunk can't remember in the morning what happened but was an active participant during' cliche
- final episode rushed several character endings
- terrible characters that didn't get any consequences, just the "leave us alone/don't do this again or else...."
- plot holes/nonsense writing

Read More

Almost lost my mind with the annoying dragging of the lie till the last ep

Was this a good BL series? - No
Was the script good? -No
Was it entertaining? - Not really
Did I like it? - Not really
Did I keep watching it? - well hell yes!!!
Do I know why? - I have absolutely no idea.

Still I don't know what i feel about this series. Like I said it was not the best one and probably I will never re-watch it. But something made me keep watching it every week and to my surprise enjoying it as well.

I think it is the acting of the leads. They are good and have great chemistry. The side characters acting was also good. Otherwise I was absolutely frustrated with the script.

1.First off all the pilot trailer seemed really thrilling, but the series itself was nothing similar to that. There was nothing new rather then the general troupe of twin swap and love story in confusion.
2. Omg!!! I can't even complain about the writing of the series, what could have been a really great plot.. they just ruined it by dragging the lie to the very last episode.
3. The plot of the spy seemed to be completely unnecessary. It did add some jealousy element but that could have been easily done without the spy plot as well.
4. Never fully explored the backstory of both the twins. Why is Zee so rude to his teammates. I really don't like him.

Anyway, In conclusion I absolutely loved Frame and Ryan together. I support them and hope they get better projects in future would love to see them again.

Read More

Going down the hill

It started very promising. The first few episodes up to like the sixth episode were truly entertaining. I especially enjoyed that playful bond between team players and Sam and Tom's friendship—absolutely the cutest thing ever and a reminder for the BL industry that two people can be very close and touchy while staying friends and not developing any romantic feelings. Honorable mention for characters having consistent personalities, which is rare in Thai industry. Now the couples, during those six episodes, we've got to see a very original story of Sprite and Zee. I absolutely loved the acting of these two. It's actually admirable to play two people at the same time and still make them very recognizable and visibly different. About Jack and Mike: great chemistry, finally we're starting a relationship from a mutual attraction instead of hate or random mutual love at first sight. Sam and Tan—overall, they were pretty cute.I know many people thought they were awkward, but personally, I think it just added to their charm. New relationships tend to be awkward and imperfect sometimes.
Then we got past the sixth episode, and the downfall had begun. Truly random, unnecessary problems; chaotic scenes that didn't really make sense chronologically. I feel like I've watched them, but I didn't—the director just poured whatever to fill up the space between the 6th and 12th episode. I could let this go if the 12th episode was really worth all the bs, but I'm afraid it wasn't. I mean, I like how they mentioned some issues and resolved them, but bro, they had 6 random episodes that gave nothing just to overfill the 12th episode with every possible plot point they found. They could've further developed Tan and Sam's storyline, shown us more about Jack's family, and, in general, more about Mike and Jack's dynamics (during those 6 episodes they appeared maybe like 4 times are you fr). They could've shown us more about the relationship between Zee and Sprite getting better, it seemed like they suddenly just let all the bitter feelings that we've learned about in the summary go. There were many, many possibilities, all wasted now. I set the rewatch value as 5, because I'm definitely watching those six episodes again, but I'll act like whatever comes next never happened. I suggest y'all just come up with your own ending; I bet it'll be more interesting.

Read More

Fantastic Cast with a Subpar Script

Let’s be honest, the cast is the only thing that made this show watchable in the least. Many are praising Frame and Ryan for their chemistry, which they rightfully deserve, but I haven’t seen anyone praising the other cast members. Every single actor who played a member of the volleyball team, as well as Tan’s actor, did really well. They gave us really likable characters we could be invested in even though the writing failed both them and us. They all deserve SO MUCH better than they got. I really hope we can see some of them working together on projects in the future. Preferably ones that deserve them.

***Spoilers Below***

The writing…oof. I’d like to think they at least tried, I really would. But I’m not sure how much they did.
- The entire basis for the switch was thin at best to begin with and made no sense as the story went on.
- We never get to see anything that explains why Zee goes from wanting nothing to do with volleyball to seemingly wanting to play again. Maybe even liking it? There could have been some interesting storytelling if they explored his dislike of volleyball (I think we all understood why) and actually had him quit or showed him caving to the pressure to go back. But there’s nothing. At most we can presume he missed it once it was gone when he saw Sprite training that one time.
- It would have been a lot more interesting if someone on the volleyball side found them out. Eapecially since Sprite was SO BAD at volleyball to start. They made it seem like Tom might catch them bc his mom was also in the hospital but that went nowhere. Those brothers met IN PUBLIC several times but no one every stumbled upon them.
- Sprite needed to confess to First, if to no one else, waaaaaaay sooner. First gave him every possible opportunity to tell him that he wasn’t Zee and Sprite constantly chose to lie to him.
- Sleeping with someone then letting your twin, who is a complete asshole to begin with, interact with that person while being (surprise!) a total dick then wondering why he’s upset at you?! At this point I wanted First to tell Sprite to fuck off and never give him another chance. That was HORRIBLE. (And kind of SA-y to let him think he was sleeping with someone he wasn’t, imo)
- Many characters were made way dumber than they should have been for the sake of the plot.
- First’s sister and her friends at the end? And for that to be it, just left hanging? Was that necessary?
- The rest of the team never finds out about the switch. Not even Sam who is dating Sprite’s best friend?
- No consequences for mom forcing Zee to play this sport all his life even though he clearly didn’t want to.
- No character development for Zee even though he was so vocal about not wanting Sprite to be him, not wanting to play or go back to his life anymore, etc. Basically all gets brushed under the rug.
- Zero awareness or consideration by Zee or Salmon for the fact that the team has had Sprite around for months, that Sprite and First have been velcroed to one another or for the fact they KNOW Sprite likes First and First doesn’t know about the switch. Sure, Zee is a dick but what is Salmon’s excuse?
- The spy storyline fell flat. We never found out what he gave Zee or what it did to him that apparently resulted in Sprite playing that match. This didn’t feel necessary at all.
- The Tom storyline was set up waaaay too in advance for when we finally got answers and that also fell flat.

The last episode wasn’t as bad and disappointing as I expected it to be, but it wasn’t that good. It certainly wasn’t good enough to make up for the outright anger the last like five episodes gave me over the stupidity of Sprite and the story/plot.

In the end: I loved First. I loved Sprite when he wasn’t being so stupid and lying to the guy he liked so much. I loved a lot of the guys on the team.

I would set rewatch value to zero if I could.

I’m only giving this a 6.5 for the actors.

Read More

what do we look for most in bls?

nc ? u get hot scenes between tons of couples…
chemistry??? you can feel the heat between the male leads the whole time
plot? you literally have a big plot with someone pretending to be someone else
hot actors? ask and you shall receive
comedy? god have u met sprite ?? bro is the defination of laughing
SIDE COUPLE ARE JUST MWAH
see people are gonna say this is a waste of time but in reality you can’t expect actors who are new to bl to be perfection. but I’m ngl I’m rooting for them. I don’t usually write reviews but after looking at all the negative reviews I think I should let you know

this is worth the watch and you are missing out!!!!!!!
you can come cancel me if you don’t like it smh

i feel like towards the end writers changed their pace and plot and it ruined it for me. But the last episode made up for it.

Read More

a lot of hype for randomly resolved storylines

Last episode just premiered, and I'm sitting here thinking wtf did I even watch. Granted, I made it to the end so it was entertaining enough to keep watching, but there was a lot of unfulfilled potential.

Story-- The premise here isn't original, it's a Parent Trap style twin swap story where we follow one twin in his efforts to save his brothers dream after his brother was attacked in his place. After watching Not Me, it's hard to do the twin trope better than that, but this one is a more of a lighthearted and innocent story, so for the concept it works fine.

Something about this show just doesn't flow very well, or should I say nothing this show flows well at all. Part of it was probably poor acting, but the writers/directors/producers must have all been totally out of sync because the story was all over the place and the drama behind it all just made no sense.

Acting-- Frame, the actor who plays the twins is kind of a poor actor, his scenes are exaggerated and the characters themselves are not so well written imo. You have one that's supposedly wild dog crazy but when he has to play his brother he's a huge softy, and then the other who's apparently incredibly popular who's just a POS in general, and they just arent on the same page, makes no sense at all.

I did rate the acting well though because the cast is pretty good otherwise, I wish the rest of them had more screen time. I love the side couples, and even the main couple is cute at some points, but theres just a lot of drama dragging on.

Music-- Yhe music is fine, nothing too crazy, just unimpressed.

Anyway, with all of its flaws, I was able to make my way through it, I was even excited to get those new episodes every week. It was a "happy" ending, it just didn't really make sense, and I left unsatisfied. Worth a watch? Up to you.

Read More

So Much Wasted Potential

Anyone who thinks this was going to be a Not Me 2.0 is going to be very disappointed. I mistakenly thought this was from the same director because someone said so but this isn’t true. This is a dollar store discount version at best.

I really wanted to like this series because it had
1) twins
2) volleyball sports theme
3) a plethora of hot guys

What they got right
Casting Frame as Zee/Sprite
Pairing Frame with Ryan
Pairing Tan with Sam
Having a friends with benefits with Jack/Mike
The bad guys were the most convincing characters in the series until they were caught. Then it went downhill in sloppy writing.

What they got wrong
Salmon had potential but due to 1) poor character development 2) poor acting she became annoying
Namkning and her mean girl friends were a waste of time in this whole story. Taking the, out would’ve made no difference. How they ended up was beyond stupid.
The volleyball training was a bit of a hot mess. Original Zee would not be a star being so self center. How Sprite became good with half ass training dumb.
The scholarship kids on the volleyball team was bandaid together to have a semi happy ending that left me with WTF dumbfounded
The chemistry of Ryan with Frame was there but the storyline was a hot mess due to pacing and awkward editing. Some part was due to underacting and others were overacting. This director clearly cannot lead his actors to give any convincing performance. Neither actor seemed in sync with each other.
The baddies became so lame once they were caught. The acting was cringey to watch.
I don’t understand why the dude with the baseball cap showed up in last episode for Dedeuw
Mike and Jack was the messy relationship that made no sense. It was leading to friends to lovers then we come to the end of them being friends with benefits. What they lots the plot of the story.
How Zee was an asshole who all of a sudden became a functional human being with no arc left me confounded.
The mom who was a tiger mom to Zee seemed to become normal too without rhyme or reason.
Why did First ex come back. Only to disappear without rhyme or reason.
Everything with the editing was a mess. The pacing and sequence is just all over the place which made the story hard to follow. I spent so much time trying to connect the dots

Read More

Loved it. Definetly a good watch.

Sometimes I wonder why MDL reviewers need so much for a TV show to be PERFECT.
I loved this series for the most part. While, yeah, it was quite frustrating to see the lie go on until the last ep. They pulled it together and sealed the deal. It would have been cooler if there were 13 episodes because that ending was rushed.
I get it, it is frustrating to see the characters not developing until the final episode, but they had the best potential and they kept it up.
TBH, I wasn't expecting much from this series, but once you watch it, it's good.
Lemme just give you a quick glimpse without any spoilers.
Zee and Sprite are twins and Zee gets hurt so Sprite takes his place. There, he completely changes the atmosphere and finds love while he is at it. First was that love. First was a very sensitive person and overall made his character very realistic. I think anyone would have reacted that way. I was hoping First would find out about the twins switching places earlier, but it was not murdering anybody with that. Take it from me, it's a good watch and if you don't like it, please say that this review did not help :)
Now, support characters were Tan and Sam who were a very wholesome ship. One thing that put me off tho is that Sam was completely fine with a whole damn stranger hitting on him. But then they became closer so it made better sense then. And the other support characters include Mike and Jack. They're basically a friends-with-benefits duo who don't get together in the end. That made me sad. And the other support characters are Salmon, Koh, Tom, Deddeaw, those seniors that I never got the name of, and all the other volleyball players, and the parents. So, zee and Salmon are a ship. A very cute one to say.
My favorite support character was surely Deddeaw. Deddeaw Is a very religious boy who is very wise and was the sole reason of my smile throughout the series. Loved him.
So, yeah, overall, love the series and I'll definitely rewatch it.

Read More

I still feel sorry for First

I didn't expect much from the plot so I was not really disappointed but I was a bit irritated with all the loose ends. It's good that they didn't try to explain everything in detail but a lot of things still didn't make sense. I liked the side couple, that was a nice side story and they had a good chemistry, but nothing deep there. But in the end, I was just pissed at Sprite and Zee. I just didn't like how it all ended with First. It felt really unfair how he was tangled in their sh*t and how they fucked with his head. For me, there should be more explaining and more apologizing. I mean how could you forgive someone so easily and how could they not question the change in Zee’s behaviour? I believe there were a lot of people who enjoyed this but I think it wasn’t for me. Also I really despised the toxic mother in this show and wasn't happy with the nice family picture their showed us at the end.

Read More