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My Boy thai drama review
Completed
My Boy
1 people found this review helpful
by labcat
Nov 13, 2021
12 of 12 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 5.5
Story 5.5
Acting/Cast 6.5
Music 6.0
Rewatch Value 5.5
This review may contain spoilers

Had the potential to be better

The basic story in this series isn't great, but it could have been serviceable had the script and/or editing been improved.

We have a freshman who is a few years older than most other freshmen, and he meets a senior in the university who is younger. The freshman has been through certain awful stuff in life, but the senior encourages him to be more cheerful and open up to others. The two of them fall in love, but a creepy ex-boyfriend of the freshman threatens their relationship, as does the senior's struggles to come to terms with his own sexuality.

The above actually makes for an ok story. Unfortunately, the series ends up pretty disjointed and incoherent, with plenty of needless digressions to characters who have no relation to the main story and inconsistencies in characterizations.

The series starts off on the wrong note, taking the enemies-to-lovers approach. I'm not complaining about the lack of originality here; we can have an ok BL rom-com with this approach. Unfortunately, the delivery really leaves much to be desired here. First, Tha/Satha (the senior) gets inexplicably upset because the Nut (the older freshman) occupies the table that Tha usually takes. Come on, it's a university, and the table can basically be used by any student, and the freshman has no idea that the table is the unofficial property of this senior. Furthermore, despite how significant it is for the story, Tha's behavior is here is totally unlike him for he is actually quite a nice person who doesn't just go around bullying his juniors. (In fact, he has even stood up for a couple of juniors whom he sees being bullied.)

Then, just as inexplicably, Tha becomes friendlier towards Nut during a modeling gig. But that's when Nut, supposedly the more mature one, seems a tad too unfriendly towards Tha. And this is just one of the many examples of inconsistent character behaviors. Even before Tha starts to have feelings for Nut or realizes that he has such feelings, he behaves jealously when he sees Nut with other guys.

The bizarre behavior of Nut's ex is also another part of the series that leaves me dumbfounded. OK, so this ex-boyfriend is an asshole because he is in a relationship with Nut but is having sex with many other people when Nut is not ok with an open relationship. Then Nut leaves him, and the he vows to hunt Nut down wherever he goes (no indication of how long ago this takes place before Nut becomes an overaged freshman. (I also have no idea why Nut would just suddenly disappear instead of breaking up with the boyfriend.) So the ex goes from being portrayed as a promiscuous asshole to being portrayed as some sort of psycho stalker. Erm .... oooookaaaaay..... Then, bizarrely, not long after he is beaten up by Tha for harassing Nut, he is suddenly reformed. This is such a great example of bad storytelling that it ought to be recorded in textbooks for the benefit of the benefit of posterity.

In the end, the series could have been quite a decent feel-good BL about a man who gets over past hurt and a man who learns to come to terms with his own sexuality. And that seems like what it tries to be eventually. But the pointless digressions and inconsistencies in the characters (could there be some commercial reason to write in too many other characters?) prevent what is at least ok about the story from being properly developed.
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