Nolan Peale

O.K. this episode 11 breakup was so ridiculous that I wish they would have just skipped it. Since Achi hasn't given any signs really that he's fallen out of love with Punn, finding a few notes on a screenplay and a few words from Tle makes me think that this couple wouldn't last if facing a real problem. I think it would have helped if they had included something else that would have reminded us that Punn had doubts about Achi's sincerity before now. Maybe add in 1 scene with his acting coach where Punn is supposed to be working on a romantic scene and the coach recommends that if he's never been in a relationship before that he just try one out to improve his acting and say that lots of actors do that. That's the kind of unscrupulous coach that Praew would hire and that would start to sow doubts in Punn's mind before the conversation with Tle. I know that might cut into the 20 minutes spent on them being miserable, but I think we could afford a little less time spent on that.

Yeah. Its not like there weren't 12 hours to fill in the series and we haven't had many other series that have a main and a side couple where the side couple gets fleshed out so you can understand the characters and their story has emotion. Heck, many series of this length can cram in 3 couples.

Yeah. The questions they debate don't seem befitting a college level. They are little moral questions where the right answer always seems to be "well it depends, really." So what they are graded on seems to be elocution, oratory and rhetoric...like someone dropped a 17th century English gentlemen's education into Thailand at some point and it never left.

Pok did not make me cry this episode. He did not. Nope. I just happened to have allergies for a few minutes.

Debate in Thailand is very weird. I guess it has to be weirded up so the series isn't bogged down with it. But the leads don't seem to be much for debating. If I were to rewrite this series, I'd make Zo more argumentative and looking for a fight. But that's me. I guess this episode shows that he really isn't into debate at all and is more into impressing his mother. Lost opportunity.

Anyway, Guy and Pod are probably the two actors at GMM who I confuse the most consistently. Like if there was a series starring Guy, but half-way through a scene they substituted in Pod to finish it out, I don't know if I would notice. I really like Pod in Slam Dance, or was that Guy? Guy was in SOTUS 2? or was that Pod? Anyway, making their backstory some kind of hindrance to the main storyline in episode 10 is just weird. Instead, they should have given us a scene that helped us understand why Jeng made his decision. We can assume that the guys either were mean to him or just stopped inviting him out after practice and he took the hint. He's a good enough actor that he could have handled a scene where he realized that his teammates weren't going to be supportive of him and how disappointed and hurt he was about that. That would have added more to this episode than trying to slam in another pair. Yeah, there was a hint before, but not enough of a hint that it needed to be paid off. Especially since to introduce it they had to have some kind of election where Zo became president of the club in the middle of the school year and have the national debate society change its rules a month before the big debate. (I guess that's plausible. The debate society is probably full of former debaters so their meeting to discuss whether to change the eligibility rules probably lasted 10 months since everyone felt that they needed their turn to give a 10 minute case for the change followed by a 10 minute rebuttal)

Anyway, Zo is probably going to win the trip to Finland, but it would be much more exciting if the episode 11 break up had to do with Joke winning. Joke has waited for Zo for a few years and even though he tends to run after him now, he'll be o.k. with Zo studying abroad. Zo loses more if Joke wins, though. His character shouldn't be o.k. if Joke takes his prize. It'll probably be Nita just so they can wrap this up.

O.K. cutsie interludes aside, I did like some of this tropey mess. I like that as Sailom came to the mansion to live there for awhile that they met I at the gate that I don't think we've seen before that gives us a sense of how large Kang's family estate is, since we can't really see the house even up the path. They don't have a lawn...they have a park. But its like Kang is bringing him in to something like Eden where Sailom is going to be safe from any debt collectors and Kang can keep him away from being an escort. That was probably why Kang had the grandmother make this a 24/7 deal because just being hired by Pimfah would have given him money, but wouldn't have kept him safe.

I also liked how the shirts the poor boys have been wearing have grown even dingier than they were in the first episode. Someone is paying attention. Guy's now looks like its a few washes away from being completely threadbare.

Sailom passing Kang an eraser for a boost was also unexpected.

Now for the minus: Look, this isn't a long series with a lot of time to spare, so I hope we get maybe 20 more minutes of goo goo trope happiness before it starts to spiral out of control again. After the bullying, its been Kang rescuing Sailom from danger and ruin and captivating stares. If they plan to launch Guy and Nawa I'd like them to do it in earnest next epsiode. Yeah, they were cute fighting by the door, but I'd like them to actually have that first moment.

Also its time for them to clarify what role Name is going to play in this. He's been very ambiguous. Is he a villain? A friend? They gave him a backstory that he's connected to Saifah and given its BL I wouldn't be surprised if he's supposed to be a 3rd of 4th couple. Yeah, he was there to offer Sailom a job as an escort, but that might be just the only kind of job he could offer. And don't get me wrong - BL is notoriously bad when it comes to depicting gangsters - but its very strange that Sailom and Saifah weren't really punished for Kang pulling a gun on Name's goons. That's NOT how this works, otherwise everyone would get out of debt by waving a gun around. I know they want to keep him nebulous, but if he's supposed to play a role more than leading Sailom into a life of crime, i'd like him to come into focus soon.

Yep. The whole point of that being his "favorite umbrella" was to lend something to Sailom that would make him have to seek him out to return it. He went out of his way to to that. There wasn't really a need for a second umbrella and this childhood connection except that BL fans go gaga over the idea that two lovers are somewhat destined to meet. Oddly, the umbrellas both look brand spanking new despite being half a decade or more old. I guess Sailom put it in that drawer years ago because it was a treasure to him so he kept it nice. And Kang never actually goes out in the rain, so its never been blown about in the wind. LOL

On the other hand, to be fair, if you read the second paragraph of MDL scenario, you know that by episode 6 "gangsters being unrealistic" is going to fall to about item 9 on your list of things you'd be demanding be rewritten from your student assignment.

What kind of gangsters ask for permission from the principal? I think we're missing something from the novel that they don't want to talk about because fans have to fall in love with both the characters and having one be a brute to innocent bystanders wouldn't work. It would have been o.k. for me if they would have said that in exchange for protection money from the school, they'd take care of the drug problem, but would be extorting cash from the principal going forward to make that happen. Also make sense if they said "we want to know who the low level dealers are in the school so we can torture them and see what they know." Or "We need to get into that school. There's a teacher there who owes us money from gambling or who we have something on because he's a drug user and regular at our brothel. We have photos of him with a 14 year old girl that will guarantee that he won't go to the police after we take this hammer to his knees. Then you show up as a substitute, and remind the principal about that time you saw him snorting coke and how it would be a shame if he also fell in the tub." Over the top, but at least not "We're gangs with a search warrant and we only hurt other gang members who do the real crime around here."

I had to laugh at that scheme. So, Mr. Principal, how is inviting a rival gang into to your school to root out the gang that is already in your school going to actually help? You've just taken sides in a gang war and now the war is now in your school. Yeah, the kids are sure in good hands with someone looking after their safety like that. But I get the sense that this is a "Good" BL Gang we're dealing with here. The kind that just battles other gangs for territory but somehow gets rich without engaging in illegal activities. Kind of like a vigilante Elks Lodge or Kiwani's Club.

O.K. I'm hoping the umbrella scene is just a sign that these two were friends in the past and had a falling out over something big that built into the bullying and fighting we saw before. That would help explain why Sailom and Kang calmed down way to quickly. But the ferocity of the hatred between the two we saw in episodes 1 and 2 was way too over the top for me to buy that "Kang once did this one nice thing for Sailom on a rainy day and ever since then Sailom has been crushing on him so all of what we saw was just for show." Like a lot of people say they like rivals to lovers or enemies to lovers stories, but BL doesn't produce a lot of very good ones. It worked in My School President to have this reveal that Tinn didn't really hate gun, or to find out in Bad Buddy that they really always wanted to be friends, but I was promised something "Dangerous" here.

I'm actually hoping to find out that they fell out over something substantial and that the thing they fell out over hasn't resolved and might resurface at any time and they could spiral into being enemies again. Alas, GMM TV knows what sells. Something like I Told the Sunshine about You, which was probably the best rivals to lovers BL ever produced in Thailand may win awards, but "we were always really lovers destined to be together" BLs make money. So I'm guessing what we get is "One day, someone did some basic act of kindness to someone so they were destined to be lovers from the day they were born."

As you know, two people can never just meet and fall in love after getting to know one another. They must have met before and been destined by the stars to fall in love and they must be carrying their torch for their missing piece until they find it. Otherwise, I guess its not romantic enough. It has to be ROMANTIC or nothing at all in BL.

I think this is one of those rare cases where the fact that the actors were novices actually worked in the series favor. Zhang Chi was probably supposed to be the standard cold Seme, but Yang I Hsuan could never hide the fact that he found Hong Wei Zhe amusing. I'm going to guess that there are a lot of outtakes from this series where they had to reshoot because someone was giggling. They looked like they enjoyed themselves and that translated into those adoring looks and twinkles in his eyes.

One of the things that's worth remembering is that the framing device for this series is a group of very drunk students sitting around a barf bucket attempting to amuse themselves by telling tales about buddy lines. Its hardly the Decameron here, but if you remember that, this makes some sense. The reason they speak so slowly with long pauses is that the narrator is probably having to repeat himself to be understood, forgets where he is, and sometimes, just blacks out mid sentence.

I guess it's appropriate since the only reason he got it was because Rak complimented Chalam. He put like 2 seconds of thought into it. Serves him right for being so jealous. Makes him look like the clown that he is.

You know, I'd find a satisfactory ending to this being Rak hooking up with Rando Skater Boy one afternoon. Yeah, sure, that would mean any time spent watching Dino and Rak walk around acting like boyfriends while not being boyfriends wouldn't have an emotional payoff. But at least it wouldn't be a story that ended in episode 3 and dragged on for 7 more hours.

I am very concerned that bib overalls are going to make a comeback. Quit trying to make them a thing.

The actor who plays Beer is Nan from the promise, yes?

Usually the episode 11 breakup involves them actually separating. In this case, though, while they are technically still together, they are separated because Kawi is in the ICU where Pisaeng can't visit him. It looks like he can view him, but he's isolated.

Ugh. I wish they'd just banish SOTUS as a thing that we have to cover in Thai BL. Just run us a 4 minute montage since we know its going to happen. Absolutely nothing happened during all these rituals. I guess it was an opportunity to show how Dino gets jealous whenever someone else so much as stands next to Rak. Other than that, all that happened was that Rak fell down and didn't get hurt. And they almost got in trouble for flouting some made up rule, which they continued to flout and didn't face any consequences for.

Hopefully when Rak starts working at Mhee's bar something interesting will happen. But sorry, SOTUS activities at this point is just filler, doesn't add anything to any series.

In the first two episodes we had Rak losing his boyfriend to his best friend and the best friend slitting his wrists and going into an mental hospital where he talked about how his sliced wrists were beautiful but would be perfect if they were still spouting blood. And then Rak's former boyfriend shows up and attempts to rape him. But hey, yeah, this is supposed to be a simple cute series. Puppies and rainbows for everyone.