My brain is burning but it was worth it!

Aside from the fact that I have a headache from all the thinking this show made me do, this was such a good watch! Watching people do something they're good at while you also try to figure it out is a weird kind of fun I enjoy.

What I loved:
1) The Teamwork! I live for the teamwork on variety/ survival shows. Though most of the games were mind power based, the preparation and strategy needed to figure out the solutions needed a lot of teamwork and I think for strangers (it did seem like they met on the first day of the show), all the teams worked together incredibly well.

2) The Games. I tried to play along but it's hard when the focus keeps shifting to the people actually supposed to be playing! I guess that was the point though, but the games they picked were genuinely so interesting. It was a mix of very common games, made much more complicated than they usually are and I loved it.

3) No betrayals or backstabbing or deceit. Strong words, but this may have been my favorite part of this show. There's always this aspect of having to betray someone you form an alliance with in elimination style competition, but I loved that each university was a team, and there was no need to form alliances and break them to get ahead in the game, just their skills.

What I didn't like:
1) MATH! So much maths!
The only thing I didn't like, like throw some trivia in there or something. They did have some games based on strategy, reasoning and probability, but a solid chunk of it was maths.

I had a great time with this, it was the break I needed from all the thinking I had to do for my assignments, projects and such.. more thinking.. loved it.

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For the friendships we formed along the way

I've come to find that I'm more invested in the friendships formed in dating reality shows than I am in the relationships, which is a beautiful paradox but the friendships are just so pure!!

I will also always maintain that what the audience sees is probably less than a quarter of what happened and that we have no way of telling what exactly happened behind the scenes and to what extent, and at the tip of it all, these people were just trying to find a good connection.

So obviously we'll laugh and cry with them, get annoyed at times and relate to them at others, as I'm sure the contestants themselves did. And this was a genuinely surprising experience, watching this, because I got to witness some incredible people tell their stories and share their experiences and I got to see them develop incredible connections with everyone else.

The sensitive topics were handled with care, and the host was genuinely wonderful at being supportive of the contestants. And despite a few ups and downs, I'm hoping they got something good out of their time on the show.

There was some romance, a lot of drama (a lot) and even more amazing friendships, which was definitely my favorite aspect. Whatever they choose to take forward, I hope they choose to take those friendships forward.

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Childhood friends, neighbors,

Lovers..?
Yeah, they didn't have enough time to develop it fully either way.

There was nothing extraordinary, mostly because they didn't have enough time to cover the basics, but they got somewhere, and established something, so not all bad.

Like I said, childhood friends and neighbors, have had a crush on each other for the longest time but just won't open up to each other for.. reasons. It's not like they were being subtle either, so it makes me wonder why neither of them caught onto the fact that the other person had a crush on them, but that's a question for another time.

What followed was a lot of flirting, wound dressing and the pettiest of all misunderstandings, leading up to them almost becoming a couple. Still can't tell what happened despite the fact that it was very clear.

It was cute though, I enjoyed their banter and they were very sweet together despite insisting they hated each other. There were literally just three other characters and they weren't bad either. But I cannot not bring up the music, I believe they literally got one of the leads to walk up with a mic and just sing while the footage ran and used that as music. It was not good.

It was very short and unsubstantial, so it would make a good background watch.

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Blue Boys + Bad Guy

Oh.. they really need to invest in some writers..

Let's get this out of the way, we're not here for substance or depth, while it is entirely possible to make it with just eight episodes, that's not why you watch this.

This is a whole lot of drama, a whole lot. That, plus some good chemistry is the equation for this series.
And obviously Blue Boys + Bad Guy
Take the story of Bad Guy, but replace ex with best friend, and then add the story of Blue Boys part 2 to this. It doesn't make much sense just reading it, but you can make the parallels as you watch.

All the aspects were the same, there's always three or more people in the relationship, one person always ends up getting hurt, there's definitely morally questionable relationship behavior and of course, a ton of drama. Watch it for the drama and you just may enjoy it, but it's hard when you've watched two other series just like it right before you watched this.

I will say, the chemistry itself scored a couple of extra points from me, and hey, at least this time they didn't have a weirdly ambiguous ending.. who am I kidding? It was.. it was weirdly open ended even though it wasn't.

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Dramatic boys

Jeez. How?!
How did they manage to create more drama and even more chemistry, with a new character no less?!

I'm dumbfounded, because this could have technically been concluded with five episodes, those last three episodes were completely unnecessary. I guess technically it was needed to set up Bad Guy, but that's all just parallels, the story was complete after episode 5.

Which sucks because they had chemistry. Good chemistry, I was invested for a minute there because more than half of the second part focused on Jae Min and his new love interest, and a half of the leftover half was spent on fixing the messes from part 1.

Although they concluded it pretty neatly, a lot of it just felt unnecessary. Other than the fact that I am way more invested in Bad Guy now, it didn't really do anything for me story wise. The acting was still good, chemistry was good all around, and if I didn't find out that the MC and the SL are the leads in another series, I would've been angry about the wasted chemistry, but they are, so eh-
This was a confusing experience.

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Blue boys, you make me a mad girl

Now, first off, it was almost perfect for most of the runtime. I watched the compiled version of the first four episodes, and by my calculation, it was almost perfect until what would be the last episode in part 1.

They set up the connection between the leads very quickly and very well, and the conflicts they introduced were new and played very nicely into the set up. Even until the ‘last’ episode, the story building was incredible, I'm just angry with the way they handled one aspect of the conflict.

For a short series, they managed to stuff in conflicts about work, economic disparity, sexual experiences and unwarranted jealousy, but of course the one that caused the most damage was the oldest page in the book, the love rival.
The character is of course completely unreasonable and coming off borderline stalker - ish, but they're just doing it because they like one of the leads! Ugh-
In a matter of a few minutes, they managed to overshadow the good chemistry and connection the leads built over the past few episodes. All that hard fought connection, down the drain.

Finally coming to the second point, I'm not going to reduce my rating since I know there's a part 2, but I get how frustrating it must have been to watch a series end like THAT. Come on, you don't do that.

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Cute, simple and fun

That's pretty much it though but it had me invested.

There truly isn't much to say because essentially the story is about a green flag introvert and a green flag extrovert falling in love with each other. The only real red flags are seemingly connected to their “introverted/extroverted” behaviours and tendencies, but take even that with a grain of salt, it's not all there is to those certain scenes.

They solved all misunderstandings pretty quickly, there was a sort of gradual and steady progression to their relationship every episode, and both the leads had quite astounding character development. It was nice. Yeah. It's all complimentary but I can't exactly rave about their relationship either, it was nice and a bit more nice.

The second couple though, had more drama and oomph to their relationship, and with their very limited screentime and extreme chemistry, I was way more invested in their up and down. Yes, yes, I loved the drama that came with their friends to lovers arc, but it managed to create a good balance between the extensive cuteness and slowness of the lead couple.

The only complaints I have are about little things, really nitpicking if I think about it, like the angel/devil stuff (made no sense), the thing with the ex, and why Khun Shy could never get out of his apartment! Get the turtle a lead role please! I could practically feel the desperation to escape that fish tank in every scene he was in.

Honestly, this was a perfectly decent watch, for when you're in the mood for minimal drama, a lot of cute moments and a little golden retriever of a male lead.

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Hardwork and heartwarming moments

These are the feelings evoked in someone when they watch their favourite team or the underdog team, hey, even their own high school basketball team play.
You've seen where they started, everything they had to go through, you feel their joy, frustrations, exhaustion and exhilaration. You find yourself cheering for them at every moment, and that's when you know, they have your attention.

This was more than just your underdog, rag tag team coming together to form a wonderful team, more than just being a plot device to generate some awws and sighs, no this felt so realistic. Be that it is based on real life events, there was so much heart in this movie that it felt like I was watching the actual people it was based on on screen, not just the actors.

All the characters had equal focus, another thing I love seeing in sports based titles. There was no star player, the coach wasn't the lead amongst the leads, this may have been one of those rare instances where everyone listed as a lead, genuinely felt like one.
It's hard to get the audience invested in a lot of characters without revealing much about them, but the amount of focus they each got, their actions on the court, the way they played as a team, it was more than enough to absolutely love them all.

The acting was great, the cinematography was great and I truly felt the word “rebound” as I watched. The meaning of the word, which I thought would be lost in the rest of the story, was indeed the most important thing after all.

The uplifting story, the subtle comedy and the sense of togetherness and familiarity this brought to me are just some of the reasons I would highly recommend.

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This.. just..

What.. happened

I'm not saying this was great in the first place, but it was going fine. Even though Mon had the personality of cardboard, it was nice to see two complete introverts have a romantic storyline. It was awkward and slow, but it was fine.
The comedy was better than fine and I was enjoying the unfiltered friendship between the housemates

Then came all the cliché misunderstandings and blatant lies. Two people who barely talked to each other in the first place weren't talking at all, and everytime So opened his mouth after a point, the only things that came out were lies. Even if they couldn't talk to each other before, they could at least communicate.
It hit me that the simple set up was really masking a shallow follow up, and what was slow, was now boring and slow.
I was not a fan of the "I have to lie to him to protect his feelings" thing, and I hated that they subverted that into the storylines of the support characters.
And what was with that finale? Specifically the last few minutes because despite my frustration, I did not sit through twelve episodes for that!

Despite all that, I did like a few things. I liked that the characters actually apologised for things they should apologise for, instead of brushing it off. I liked the awkwardness between the leads that lasted throughout, it was kind of refreshing. A character actually saying they want to follow their dreams and still date their love interest. Most of all, I loved the friendship between all the characters. It was honest and unfiltered, and I was only dissapointed that two people with massive potential to be a romantic couple within that group didn't become one.

What I thought was going to be a nice ensemble series didn't really turn out that way, and I can't even say I'm dissapointed, because I don't know if that's what I feel. It didn't have great potential, just a few good moments.

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Yawn

Does this company have some sort of obsession with having their leads going somewhere to escape their problems, meeting their love interest there and still having tons of problems? Do they have some sort of pact to always include this plot in their series?

Boy goes back home because he doesn't agree with the job ethics in his company, meets boy who broke his heart years ago, they fight and reconcile, then they start dating. There, I've summed it up the best I can, which is already way better than how they did it.

A majority of the story involved the leads reconciling and fighting and reconciling and fighting all over again. Even though I knew why they drifted apart, I couldn't really understand why they wanted to reconcile and be together. I didn't care enough about them to want them as a couple either, they had almost nothing going for them in my view. I thought alright, at least they don't have some weird love rival thing as well, but they introduced that as well, in a way that made no sense.

The side couples were a little better, more established and while one couple seemed like they could actually hold a conversation for the most part without it becoming an argument, the other, well they barely interacted, so I don't know what to think.

I was so bored, I watched all of it sped up and it was still way too slow. I wouldn't recommend.

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That was.. short

The 10 minute special didn't really give anything away (it's actually 20 minutes but I believe the full film screening is part of a fundraiser to produce the full length series), which is good and bad.

Bad, because I got more information from the synopsis than I did from watching the special, which isn't necessarily something negative, just a tad bit of confusion that's cleared up only when the synopsis is read. The special is actually clear enough on what exactly is going on, but if there's no precedent establishing the story, it can seem a little vague.

Good, because after reading the synopsis, everything slots into place. You see the main characters, their motivations and a bit of their backstory clearly, but despite that, there's very little information to go off of, building anticipation about how the rest of the story would play out.

The project seems to be crowdfunding to produce the series, and I would certainly be very interested to see how the story goes, I'd say this special set it up quite well.

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The promise unkept

I was promised angst, and drama, and so much emotion. After the prequel, I expected that much. The kind of angst that is caused by well written conflicts and misunderstandings because, let's face it, we enjoy red flags in dramas sometimes. I wanted love triangles and squares, and a ton of aching and heartbreak, and.. nope. They delivered nothing but the misunderstandings. Not well done either.

There was definitely a mood shift between the prequel and the series, they added comedy (which completely unnecessary, one of the worst aspects they added, especially since it did nothing for the story), the characters were incredibly inconsistent compared to the prequel, it was jarring going from a moody and emotional couple of episodes to a sitcom kind of series.

The leads were fine together (the child actors were really good though, I have to say), but the chemistry was almost non - existant during some scenes, which felt frustrating since you would expect two individuals who have liked each other for 10+ years, being confused about their feelings, being seperated from each other with no contact for over ten years, you would think the passion and yearning would be overflowing. It just wasn't. Like I said, they never really got that angst right, despite it being readily available to implement.

One thing I did like, was several of the supporting characters. It's weird because most of them started out being kind of pushy and a chore to watch on screen, but ended up being solid individuals. I especially loved that none of them actually crossed any line when it came to the leads, whether it be confessing their love or providing advice or nudging the leads on to confess to each other, none of these characters crossed a line, which is something I see quite often.

Talking about the actual misunderstanding now, I did not like it. I wanted something complex and emotional, and even though the reason Phupha chose to leave was because of a valid fear for him, the wait period of ten years and the payoff certainly didn't work for me. 10 years with absolutely no contact because of his reasoning was just a bit too unreasonable for me.

I'm a little dissapointed with how this played out, right up until the ending. There were so many scenes which could have been cut out, or the time they were used for could have been used to deepen their relationship, and it's a shame it wasn't. This was a slow burn story that never really picked up the pace, and thinking about it, two episodes somehow managed to tell a better story than ten did.

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A close look into complex emotions

Strictly speaking, there was nothing complex about the emotions shared by the leads. But time and circumstance complicated it way more than they could handle at times. It doesn't help us handle it any better that this is based on a true story.

Phupha and Nanfah are very simple and straightforward characters, but their actions sometimes confused the other person enough to create a whole bunch of misunderstandings that were entirely unnecessary. But this was more a story of reconciliation than the mistake, the impact of time and distance on the relationship between two people, which ended on unclear terms.

They managed to pack a whole lot of emotions in just two episodes, and though the story and a lot of the details felt a tad uneven, this is first and foremost a look into the thoughts and feelings of the leads on their broken connection. In that, it excelled.

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Nothing Campus

Before anything else, I'll just say I don't want anyone who doesn't tell me that my eyes sparkle like a bus stand. I just won't have it.

Aside from that, there isn't much to say.

I've come to expect a certain quality from Strongberry, and even if it wasn't Strongberry, it all just felt.. very bland? Nothing really happened, they met, they fell in love with nothing else happening. Not saying that that's a bad thing, but here it was done in a very amateurish way that it felt bad. Theoretically, they could have done this story with just the leads, and they almost did because there are only four other characters and all of them had no feasible part to play. A second lead who stood no chance, a professor, a boss and a senior and that's as descriptive as one can get. Every aspect felt low in quality and I'm just not very impressed.

The only real thing to say anything about is the cute moments between the leads that were few amidst unnecessary drama and misunderstandings. It just all felt.. meh.

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Of actions and consequences

Honestly speaking, I didn't catch a lot of the symbolism and easter eggs they probably hit us with because I wasn't in the right mood to be paying attention to all the details when I started. What did catch my attention (and made me inevitably pay more attention to the rest of the series) was the balance between actions and the subsequent aftermath. Butterfly effect, ripple effect, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, whatever you want to call it.

I watched a lead make bad and impulsive decisions whose after effects he only feels a while later, being guided by a jaded and patient lead with a dark past that led him down the path he was currently on. I watched them navigate situations messily, learning lessons along the way, and growing (even though it took a while for one of our leads to do it, while all our other lead needed was closure).

The show is shot in a very art house manner, theatric, with twelve acts, scene lighting, long conversations and an air of sombre. It's slow and dramatic, but stick with it and you get to witness a story of love and loss, growth, acceptance, forgiveness, a story written on the shores of sadness. All of this leads to one of the best finales I've watched, truly. Stories like this usually end on an open note, but the point of the series was closure, and we do get it.

Sombre, sorrowful and full of meaning that I may not have quite caught onto, but it did make an impact.

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