Reviews

JossGawin’s Impactful Performance & A Standout OST – A Memorable GMMTV Series

Only Friends” and its sequel “Dream On” deliver an intense, character-driven story that stays with you long after the final episode. One of the strongest elements is definitely the OST, especially “No One Can” by Gawin Caskey. The song captures the emotional tension of the series perfectly — raw, haunting, and incredibly memorable. It fits the tone of the story so well that it feels like an extension of the characters’ inner worlds.
I also want to highlight the performances of Joss Wayar and Gawin Caskey. Their chemistry and acting are genuinely impactful. Both portray complicated emotions with so much depth, especially in the more emotional and confrontational scenes. They bring their characters to life in a way that feels real and believable — you can truly feel their struggles, vulnerabilities, and connections.
Overall, this series stands out because of its bold storytelling, powerful OST, and the strong performances from the cast, especially JossGawin. If you enjoy relationship-focused dramas with great acting and memorable music, this is absolutely worth watching.

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A series that will warm your heart!

A very heartfelt and comforting series that leans more towards the slice-of-life genre, focusing on family bonds and human relationships, rather than being a classic rom-com. It features dramatic and fantasy elements, with the latter not being a silly or annoying trait. The show is actually very grounded and manages to incorporate the aspect of the talking cats very naturally to the story, adding only charm and soul to the series, which makes it unique in the right way.

The writing is solid overall and fun in the way it draws parallels between cats and humans. Every detail matters, serving as a means to progress the plot or contribute to the development of each character. As for the characters themselves, interestingly, almost from the very beginning, they feel very fleshed out, set within a strong world-built that makes you feel like you already know who they are and care about them. It was also refreshing to see the older characters having a substantial contribution to the story and being given proper attention, rather than being reduced to simple plot devices.

Acting-wise, whether the series demanded a more dramatic performance or micro expressions, First and Khaotung's portrayal always felt very natural and their chemistry was beautiful. Of course, credit goes to the very capable cast they were surrounded by as well. Both veteran and young actors did a great job at portraying their characters along with the actors who voiced the cats.

Overall, I genuinely enjoyed this series and I definitely recommend it to people who prefer more light-hearted dramas or feel stressed and overwhelmed. I didn't expect to get as invested in this storyline as I did, but I was pleasantly surprised by the emotions it evoked in me and the sense of healing and comfort it provided in every episode, making me look forward to the next one. It's not a gripping type of series with intense cliffhangers or heavy conflicts --and it doesn't aim to be-- but every element, from the characters and the writing to aesthetics and the music, is made with a lot of care, leaving a warm and positive aftertaste.

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Sweet and mellow slice of life

One reason I started watching verticals is because it's such a new form and I'm curious about how people might start to develop new ways of telling stories. Mostly at this point it's a capitalist slop of hot garbage, but I felt like this show is a move in the direction of "hey, we've got a unique new way of presenting a story, what can we do to make use of a vertical's particular features."

It's not really that this show breaks new ground in the kind of story told, but they put a level of effort into creating unique characters with recognizable roles in the story rather than using the same old trope-laden archetypes and dialog, and then they present the characters' journeys in a way particularly well suited to short form episodes. So often verticals give us these info dumps and compressed scenes where events happen in quick succession in order to move the story faster, but it gives a very "story outline" sort of feel to the show. This show uses the short form to do what I think of as "extreme close ups" of character moments.

As a result, the pace is slow, especially at first, but in a way that makes me want to say "mellow" rather than "boring.," and really fits the slice-of-life genre. The character development and plot movement is achieved by showing us up-close moments in which a character realizes something, changes, makes a decision, or experiences a growing connection with other characters.

For example, at the very beginning of this sort of "flash marriage" set up (they met on an arranged date through a service rather than had parents arrange it), they are polite but akward with each other. One of the first plot sequences is the ML having a conversation with a friend who tells him that intimacy (in the sense of feelings) doesn't come from politeness. It triggers a change in his approach to the FL which shows both that he wants a closer relationship and is the start of the romantic developement (the inciting incident, if you will). The show avoids straight-up exposition and instead lets us *see* the change in a conversation that feels real, an expression on ML's face, and the in the related decisions he makes in the next two-three episodes. We know that the friend's comment landed, we learn the ML's goal, and it happens quickly, but also it feels very grounded and real.

The characters are recognizably linked to a lot of (especially vertical romance) character tropes, but they are dialed down about a million and given specific details and motivations so the characters feel real. For example we have a "abusive mother/kind mother in law" set up, but the abuse feels realistic and rooted in mistaken beliefs about parenting and specific difficulties. Over time, we come to see the mother as loving her children but also deeply misguided and bound by her own struggles rather than as a characiture of pointless malice. The mother-in-law's kindness is not overstated ("here are 25 villas and a private island! You are my only possible daughter-in-law that I recognize and the saviour of our family!!!")--instead there is a sequence of a few episodes in which the mother-in-law's supportive reactions and statements show that she values and respects her in-law as a person and wants to support a healthy marriage between the two.

The sibling relationship is also notably different from so many verticals in that it includes both love and pain (as a sibling, this gets my stamp of approval, and so refreshing over the absolute loyalty/absolute malice dichotomy most seem to go for).

In short, while the characters fill familiar roles and you can sort of guess what kinds of things might happen between them, the execution feels very satisfying because the characters feel more fully formed. We can understand why they take these actions, they change and grow. All presented as a series of important interpersonal moments, which allows the writers to mostly avoid creating stupid scenarios that telegraph what's happening.

It gets decidedly more tropey towards the end and they shove in an early early connection that I don't love, but the show stands as a decent entry into the romance category even outside the vertical subcategory. Definitely worth a watch if you like watching well-crafted characters fall in love.

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This is an absolute masterpiece

What a fantastic gem 💎. The most beautifulI drama I have ever watched over more than 200. I didn’t prioritize watching this great show and I regret. It is absolutely gorgeous and addictive. It has all, so moving, emotional, cute, sadness, Joy, heartbreak, tragic, epic, beautiful love story, fights, Fantasy, everything you can enjoy in this drama style.
The story is amazingly staged, well articulated and rich, you never get bored along these 40 episodes
First, I love the ML, Tantai Jin is everything, handsome, dark, cute, pityfyl, lovable, attaching, majestuous. The actor becomes one of my preferred chinese actors as whenever I see him in a show, he is doing great.
I also like the FL, who is also doing great. They are such a beautiful couple, with wonderful chemistry.
Never cried so much in front of a drama.
This is really a must to watch, and it is my favorite in this style.

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Strong beginning but nc-scenes alone don't tell a story...

While watching the first two episodes, I thought we get something different and interesting from Thailand for a change, but the script writers had no clear vision and in the middle of the series it felt just flat. We got our 2D awful father, of course the family of the other one was not better anyways and we got a side-couple to fill in the minutes.

The nc-scenes in the beginning were a story driver but that also collapsed in the middle of the show. At least they did try very hard to show us always different scenes, but that could not save the series. The endless explainations of the meaning of "peaches" was also getting on my nerves. It's ok to set it up once, but there is no need to repeat it every episode.

The side-couple could have been a balancing force with the sex-driven main couple but that also failed when in episode 4 they had sex quite quickly considering one of them was extremely reserved. After that the side-couple is just an afterthought with barely any screentime.

Production quality was ok, there where the occasional sound problems due to on body microphones, they used a lot of blur for no reason and an excessive amount of lipstick. The pacing was all over the place, especially in dialog scenes between the sentences they streched the time. This made some parts of this show quite boring. Instead of 60 minutes per episode, 40 would have been enough. Overall this is just an average show, started with a strong premise but it ended up in smoke and blur.

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unexpected gem

I decided to watch this drama after seeing a few people give positive reviews online. I’m glad I did!

The chemistry and tension build between the two main characters is insane 🔥Moreover the story and plot felt interesting and well executed, which can sometimes be a miss with good romance series.

-Spoilers-

I think like eveyone agrees, the storage cubpboard and bakery scenes were top tier and had my heart racing.. But can we also talk about the training days, Thara helping Vicky build stamina, resilience and strength. A perfect mix of passion, tension, comedy and drama 🧡

My only reasons for not giving above 8.5 stars:
-imo the storyline of them being childhood friends could have been done better or even not included at all as it’s been done a lot now in other series

overall absolutely loved this drama

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The 10 Year Countdown

Friends to lovers is actually peak romance, sometimes the yearning makes it equal to enemies to lovers. That's how good a well done friends to lovers story can be, but only when done right.

Countdown to Yes got a lot of it right - especially the hesitation about turning your friendship into a romance. It's confusing, it's frustrating because no matter how much you run the scenarios in your head, you can only envision a disaster. Because why change the perfect relationship, even if you know the new dynamics will be even more perfect?

But that's just one aspect of a friends turned lovers relationship, outside of that you can go many ways with the yearning. People thinking "why on earth have you not started dating yet?!" or thinking "don't ruin your relationship by changing it". Other love interests, years and years of pining, maybe even some seperation (which they did have in this, more on that later).

Having your couple's only conflict be their own confusion? That can get a bit tricky.

They did have the seperation like I said, but that actually did nothing for the plot, except create more internal conflict. Wataru and Minato have been friends for years, having met in high school (better than childhood friends might I add), and they drift apart only to meet again for their '10th anniversary'. And Wataru is worried about both ruining their friendship and that Minato and he will drift apart again, which are valid concerns. I just wish the entire 11 episodes weren't based on just the two.

Nevertheless, I really loved them as a couple, there was no doubt at any point that they weren't in love with each other and I'm pretty sure every other character was silently thinking 'just date'. The chemistry was really nice and their sweet scenes, while a bit far and few, were really worth all the angst that never came.

I would recommend this, it is a nice short and sweet watch - and I do have a weakness for stories about photographers and their cameras that can only capture their love interest.

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meh

I really looked forward to watching this as I really enjoyed the first reason. I loved the adult lesbian workplace romance, comdey and main character casting.

season 2 let me down a little to be honest. I still rated it a 7 overall due to ep 6 kinda saving the day, and my love for the main characters however this season could have been done so much better…

-Spoilers-

Hiroko’s inability to communicate and lack of understanding for wha Ayaka wanted (despite her constantly saying it) became frustrating and unrealistic at times for an intelligent adult relationship.

Hiroko sleeping at another girls place naked, platonic or not, is also quite problematic and was never really addressed with Ayaka🙃

luckily Ep 6 felt sincere and brought things together, but it took too long imo to get to this point. Anddddd if I’m talking in terms of satisfaction, a lot of build up for verryyyy short kiss scenes.

maybe I’m too spoilt with Thai GL 🙈

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Kinky But Intensely Loving

I loved this gem of a BL that had so many viewers clutching their pearls and being disgusted by its content. That I found odd and a bit disingenuous. For most BL watchers, there are seemingly no issues with quite popular BLs that have blatant sexual abuse, often paired with strong emotional and physical abuse as well. Oh, sometimes it is subtly committed by stunningly handsome characters to make it palpable, or they are produced humorously, or even sweetly displayed, and yet somehow, all of that passes muster. In fact, there is a whole subgenre of Bl literally devoted to abuse with hardly a peep and is called ‘innovative’. Where this series fell is in its production value. The script was generally weak and the editing in place was atrocious. Sound was inconsistent in many places. Although I honestly thought the two actors had good screen chemistry, the direction on what to do and how to do it was graceless and appeared fumbly. If you are going to do a series related to a specific genre like BDSM, then study the subject matter and make it look like these guys like it, or hate it, or one was into or and the other was not, or were uncomfortable – anything that gave us more emotional reaction so we know how they are actually feeling. It seemed quixotic.

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Nearly Perfect Drama, but I Worry About the Writer's Childhood

Nearly every mother in Go Ahead was a nightmare, but the way the children grew, adapted, and supported one another made this a rewarding watch. GA had everything: humor, heartache, struggles, triumphs, and healing. The family relationships were everything, as they sacrificially watched out for and supported one another. Family in this context didn't necessarily mean blood, as the closest individuals weren't related at all.

I'd just watched Shine on Me with Song Wei Long in which he played an attractive, competent CEO. He didn't have to work at being attractive and that role seemed an easy one for him, but he surprised me by his portrayal of a traumatized soul. He depicted the dead-inside, long-suffering young man well. Tan Song Yun was perfect as the free-spirited Li Jian Jian; Zhang Xin Cheng did admirably as the cautious overthinker; and Tu Song Yan was superb as the kind-hearted father figure of them all.

The drama never stayed dark for overly long. Sweet moments were interspersed among the serious scenes. The children as teens had many warm, loving interactions, some of the best parts of the drama. Beyond relationships, the drama featured many of my favorite things: food, books (I've put Our Starry Starry Night by Jimmy Liao on pre-order), and children.

There were so many relatable situations and characters. I was once asked for a metaphor for my parents, and I said "a black hole." Ling Xiao made that same comparison, and I could identify with his reasoning.

It took me a long time to decide to watch GA, because it had a "Melodrama" tag, along with "Depression," "Child Abandonment," and "Mental Illness." It didn't sound like a good time! I generally avoid melodramas, but this had enough sweetness and light to balance out the heaviness. There were tears, but they were mostly good ones, and there was plenty of laughter to counteract the sad times.

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Cacophony of Nonsense

MELODY OF SECRETS – REVIEW

A more fitting title for this series would have been “Cacophony of Nonsense.” Good Gods, I thought I’d seen the lowest point of logic with “Dare You to Death” (aka Bore Me to Death). Cops (Joong/Dunk) who are all lovey-dovey and totally fail as cops, while people are being gruesomely killed around them for utterly lame reasons. At least there was the possibility of a clarifying outside perspective with two cops.

Here in “Melody of Secrets,” that was completely missing, and crime mystery or not, I’ve never experienced such nonsensical confusion as here. I’m going to talk about Book and Force now, because it didn’t help that so many characters with partly similar names were involved in the plot. So, after a disjointed, out-of-context intro, we find Book, who lost his memory at the age of 17, and the series picks up TEN years later—meaning we’re dealing with a main character who, for the past 10 years, has known his mother, his grandmother, and absolutely EVERYONE solely based on the assertion that they are who they are. NOTHING in Book’s behavior suggests this. No, he just lets 10 years pass as if memory loss were nothing more than an annoying mosquito bite. Then Force shows up, and immediately they’re in love and in semi-NC scenes—and this is even BEFORE Book’s diary is mailed to him, where he recognizes his own handwriting and learns about all the happy years he spent with Force as a couple. And this is where it gets funny. If he lost his memory AT age 17, but had a romantic relationship with Force FROM age 17 onward, why does he even need a diary from the time AFTER age 17 to remember anything—that is, the last ten years, during which he actually had NO memory loss?

And that’s just one example. So he spends ten years satisfied with not recalling anything. For TEN years, he doesn’t encounter a single person who happened to know him—a guy in a restaurant who served him time and again, friends, classmates—and he himself doesn’t even notice how strange it is that, apart from his family, no one else seems to exist who knew him before, or how strange it is that the family apparently makes no effort whatsoever to reactivate his memory—on the contrary, they are very keen on him NOT remembering. And that’s when it became clear to me where this was probably headed, and I was right in the end. (Endariel Poirot's little gray cells!)

Before I get to that: what follows is a wildly edited string of snippets, jumping from character to character, from event to event, place to place in a way that’s more reminiscent of a roller coaster ride. The author had presumably written the novel backwards, and now all the events have to be crammed in—and as the series progresses, it becomes clear: the author has completely bitten off more than he can chew here. There are so many motifs and plotlines that they completely overwhelm the writer, director, and actors. Inspector Dao’s “subplot” alone is just confusing, and I never really understood her motive until the end, nor the motive behind the main mystery: Book ISN’T at all who he thinks he is. The person he thinks he is died 17 years ago, and his mother and grandmother hypnotize a stranger to believe he is that person. Purpose? Zero. It never really becomes clear what the point of such an action is supposed to be. But it gets even worse, because Force is also neither the person Book ever knew as a real person nor as a fake person, nor were they ever a couple, and yet they jump into bed immediately. Why? To Book, he’s a stranger who merely comes up in a diary, and as we learn at the end: he has no memories or feelings—perhaps instinctive ones—because Force NEVER KNEW Book at any point. And why is Force even playing along?

And here comes the bombshell. Book’s fake persona, which he assumed through hypnosis, was in love with Force’s BROTHER, who—for utterly preposterous reasons—constantly introduced himself using Force’s fake name. By that point, at the very latest, a significant number of my brain cells had died.

I’ll leave it at that, because there’s a whole legion of illogical plot holes that are more reminiscent of a crumbling suburban road than a story.

I’ll leave it at that, because there’s a whole host of illogical plot holes that feel more like a crumbling suburban road than a story.

As for the acting: unfortunately, after “Only Friends,” my impression is confirmed that—forgive me—Force simply isn’t a very good actor. Whether it’s distress or sexual arousal, anger or determination—somehow it all gets lost in the uniform facial expression of tired eyes and raised eyebrows. As for Book, I’d say “Only Friends” shows he can act—I’d call him middle-of-the-road; they make for a pretty nice ship, but nothing that really blows me away. When Inspector Dao acts with more expression than Force in their scenes, it has to be clear: something’s just not right here.

So when the whole mess finally comes to light, I slap my forehead at having witnessed what is arguably the most idiotic collection of plots I can recall, thereby dethroning “Dare You to Death” in my book—a series I had previously dubbed the dumbest BL of all time. The fact that Book and Force decide in the end to start over as a couple using their real personas might be seen as a consolation for BL fans, but I just found it grotesque—because Force and Book exist as a ship, it just has to end this way. Unfortunately, that’s nothing new in BL series. So the love and NC scenes between Force and Book are the only thing that actually carries some value, which they act out decently – if you pull a mask over the immovable face of Force, that is. It was a punishment to watch, an insult to logic and hence I award this series, solely for the nice romance scenes which were good,

2/10

And now I need a strong drink.

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