A Boss and a Babe (2023)

A boss, a babe, and a lot of bad writing

I really wanted to like this, and in certain moments I did. But only if I turned my brain off enough in order to enjoy the fluff. This is gonna be a long one, so strap yourselves in.

To start this off, let’s talk about Force and Book. When I first saw them in Enchanté, I liked them as a pairing, and I still do. But I think that’s only because I’ve seen plenty of behind the scenes clips of them, and thusly know that they love working together, and enjoy each other’s company. They’ve been great friends for a really long time, then got cast in a BL together, which is a very heartwarming story. If I didn’t know all that, I probably wouldn’t enjoy them together as much as I do. Objectively speaking, I don’t think they have much romantic chemistry. They do have chemistry, don’t get me wrong. But whenever I see them together, it mostly feels like two best friends - which granted, they are, but you shouldn’t be able to tell that while watching the show. It becomes especially apparent when physical intimacy is involved. They’re solid with hugs, but anything that goes beyond hugging just feels slightly off. I don’t feel any sexual tension between them, which makes scenes of that sort very awkward to watch. It feels more like someone dared them to make out in a game of truth or dare, and they are awkwardly being peer-pressured into it.
When it comes to their acting ability in general, I don’t think they’re the greatest actors, but I think they suit the roles of Gun and Cher really well. Since the show doesn’t ask for many moments of intense emotion from them, they’re doing a pretty decent job. The acting gets rough during supposedly sad and moving scenes. Clearly, they just need a bit more practice. And I feel like maybe it would be good to try pairing them with different acting partners in the future. I feel like there might be more romantic chemistry there, and they could thusly unfold their potential better. They’d probably be great at playing brothers who love to annoy each other tough. And by that I mean playing actual brothers, not step-brothers who get romantically involved or something like that (Yes, I’m looking at you HIStory 4 Close to You).

The acting or the lack of romantic chemistry, however, isn’t my main issue. In regular, light-hearted scenes with a bit of humour, they’re doing well enough to make me smile at their oftentimes cute interactions. My main issue with the series is the writing. And it started to show from the very beginning.

Gun is supposed to be this tough, cold, unapproachable guy who is feared by his employees. That in itself isn’t the problem. The problem is that the Gun which characters tell us about does NOT exist. We’re being told one thing, but shown a completely different thing. Gun took an instant liking to Cher, opened up to him incredibly fast, and Cher basically had him wrapped around his finger by episode two. This completely clashes with the image of the stern, unapproachable, antisocial boss we were sold. Judging by what we were told, Gun should’ve taken a long time to warm up to Cher. He should’ve treated him very roughly at the start. But instead, he basically turned into a love drunk puppy whenever Cher was around. At no time did I believe in the image of Gun that was sold to us. If you wanted me to believe that he was this hard-to-please, bitter boss, you would’ve had to show me that for more than maybe one or two scenes. And now you may say "Well, he had a reason to open up to Cher so easily! After all, he’s been listening to his ASMR videos for a while!“ While that is true, it is no excuse to me. After all, it’s not like he really knew Cher from his videos, he only knew his voice. I do believe that this may be a factor, why he could’ve taken a quicker liking to Cher. But quicker doesn’t mean basically melting whenever Cher’s around from like day two. Or even in the last episode, Cher said that Gun apparently doesn’t say what’s on his mind, when that’s entirely untrue from what we’ve seen. The thing is, all this could’ve been easily avoided. Just don’t have characters talk about how scary and hard to approach the boss is. Have him be a regular boss. Then it would’ve been way more believable that he’d take a liking to Cher that quickly. If you don’t want to show a period of time where he’s being cold towards Cher in the beginning, don’t write it into your story. Simple as that. Then again "regular boss easily falls in love with his new intern“ doesn’t sound like quite as intriguing of a story.

The next issue, in my opinion, is the way this show writes conflict. We have a few different conflicts, such as Cher taking the blame for that one employee who gave the evidence to the boss of that other company, or the whole "I’m just an intern, you’re a company owner“ conflict. Both of those were handled very poorly. For example, when Cher takes the blame for his co-worker in the first scenario, Gun (who doesn’t know Cher is innocent yet) is obviously very upset. They end up having a fight in Cher’s condo during which Cher suddenly bursts out saying "My life has been a big mess ever since I met you! It’s freaking exhausting! We should’ve never met!“ This made no sense to me at all. It was never really shown that meeting Gun really messed with Cher’s life at all. Sure, he had to face his own feelings, but what else happened? Gun was being nothing but welcoming and nice to him up to that point, so this came so out of the blue. It seemed like the writers just wanted to have some dramatic lines in there, so they threw in that dialogue, even if it made no sense given the context.

The whole intern dating the boss conflict was handled poorly too. First, I have to give credit where credit is due though. I usually really dislike boss-employee (especially intern) relationships, because of the imbalance in the power dynamic. And I still think it’s problematic, but in this show, it didn’t really irk me all that much. That’s because despite Cher being the intern, it never felt like there was a power imbalance in their relationship. Sure, Cher is more child-like and immature than Gun, but he has a lot of moments in which he’s serious. So I never felt like this was something to be concerned about. Nor did Gun ever use his position as the boss, to take out his mood on Cher in the office after a fight or something (for example by making him do silly tasks or such). So I was positively surprised by that.
However, the conflict that came from the whole boss-intern-dynamic could’ve so easily been avoided. Cher was only working at the office for a very limited amount of time. By the time the two got really close, he had like a month or two left, I think. First of all, Gun should’ve just waited to make any romantic move on Cher until his internship was over. Just because that’s what’s objectively the right thing to do. But even if he didn’t, at least when it very obviously became an issue for Cher, they should’ve just paused their relationship. If it is such a big deal for Cher that people are talking, then why not just wait to actually be together until your internship is over? You only had like a month to go. Couldn’t you have kept it in your pants for that long?? I just don’t get it. Since this conflict could’ve been so easily avoided or solved, it just felt silly to me.

Then we have the conflict of Gun’s mother not wanting Cher to be with Gun. And this is the part of the show that made me really furious, because it turned the character of Cher into an inconsiderate asshole. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Cher altogether, simply because he’s pretty annoying in my opinion. But he had his moments. I was fine with him, until this conflict turned him into an absolute idiot with no regard for Gun’s feelings. So, the issue at hand is that Gun’s mother tells Cher that she doesn’t think he’s worthy of being with her son. That’s an interesting conflict! If you were in that position, what would you do? Talk to your significant other about what their mother told you? Tell them that you feel unworthy without mentioning their mother? Tell them that you need a bit of time to become someone you’re proud of, to then be the best version of you in your relationship? Well, not our boy Cher! Instead, he leaves a note on the pillow, saying that they aren’t suitable to be together after all, at least for now, and to please not come looking for him. At this point, I was screaming at my computer screen because WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, CHER???????? Gun has at multiple times voiced his fear of losing his happiness, aka Cher. Cher kept telling him that he needn’t fear, because he’d always stay with him. Even when Cher already knew that he was going to leave, he still told Gun that. Clearly, Gun was very insecure about this, and had a fear of abandonment that he was very open about with Cher. So you’d assume that Cher wouldn’t just leave him like a fucking asshole. I understand that Cher was in a difficult position. And I’m not saying he should’ve stayed with Gun if he didn’t feel comfortable (yet). But what he should’ve done is be considerate, and tell Gun that he has to do certain things before they can be together. That he doesn’t have to worry, because he’ll be back. That maybe in the meantime, they can just be friends or something. But nope, he just left a note and walked right out. It is justified later by Cher saying, that Gun wouldn't have let him go if he told him the truth. But I don't buy it.
This whole thing actually would’ve been a super intriguing plot to explore! Having Gun revert to his old grumpy and closed-off self (which we didn’t see much of, as mentioned before, but you get what I mean) would’ve been very interesting. Seeing Cher struggle to keep away from Gun as he tries to find out what he needs to become, in order to feel worthy of being with Gun. If this had happened half-way through the series, and was then explored, it would’ve made for an interesting plot line. But of course that didn’t happen. This happened in episode 11, leaving no room for exploration. The conflict basically didn’t even last a whole episode, because by the end of it, thanks to the power of montage and time-skip, Cher was back at Gun’s office, asking him to be his boyfriend. Sigh.
I would rate this series much higher, if Gun had just been like "I’m definitely not getting back together with you“ and slammed the door in Cher’s face. Which would’ve been the logical thing for him to do. He let Cher in (which apparently was hard for him, because of his fear of people leaving, which wasn’t portrayed properly but oh well), just for him to hurt him like this. It would make sense for him to revert back into his shell, not wanting to let anyone close ever again. But of course this is episode 12, so we need to resolve this quickly and get to a happy end. And thusly, Gun immediately takes Cher back, proving once again that Cher has him wrapped around his finger and that there’s nothing of a tough, hard to warm up to boss anywhere in sight. Of course Gun's mom is now suddenly on board with Cher too. I'm not saying she couldn't have changed her mind, but I just don't think winning an e-sports competition would really impress this woman.

I think part of the problem is, that the writers weren’t interested in exploring conflict in a meaningful way. They wanted to make a cute, light-hearted show, but figured they needed conflict of some kind, to keep it interesting. I honestly would’ve preferred if they just fed us fluff for 12 episodes straight (or well, gay), instead of shoehorning in these stupid conflicts and then not doing anything with them. Or even better, they should’ve turned this into 8 (or at most 10) episodes, because it felt very repetitive and it was just dragging by the end.

There were more issues, that I’ll not dive into as much, because this review is already way too long. But some of those issues are:
- Why the hell was there one random scene of Jack and his mom, and then we never got a scene from Jack’s perspective again? That should’ve just been cut and told to us through dialogue.
- The whole storyline of Tian having been sexually abused by her stepfather had no point being there. It wasn’t explored at all, but just served as some shocking twist that wasn’t needed. If you’re going to throw in such a serious issue, do it properly or not at all.
- Similarly, I struggled with the inclusion of Jack suffering from depression. I’m all for including mental illnesses in BLs, even if they aren’t at the forefront of the story. It’s important to do so, even. But the way they went about it in this show felt off to me. It didn’t feel like a sincere portrayal, but rather like someone in the writer’s room was like "Imagine how much praise we’ll get if we include some sort of mental illness!“, so they threw this in to fill some woke quota, rather than being genuinely interested in depicting it in a sincere way. Maybe that’s just my subjective feeling though, I can’t quite put into words why I’m feeling iffy about it in this case specifically.
- Also, the whole Thoop storyline just came to an abrupt and unexplained end. What happened to his drug case? What happened to the step-father? It felt like it resolved itself magically because well, this is episode 12, and everyone needs a happy ending now! Similarly, we never got an end to the whole storyline with Gun's former friend, Time. That plot thread just vanished into thin air.
- The last episode was filled with excessive cringe. I love some amount of cringe and a lot of fluff, but this was A LOT to handle. When Jack spit his drink in Cher’s face, saying he’s choking on his public love declarations, I heavily related. He’s now officially my favorite character in this mess.

I’m aware that my review sounds rather negative. But there definitely were really cute moments in this show that I was able to enjoy. So despite getting angry at the writing, I still found myself smiling quite a lot. Still, I cannot rate this any higher than a 5 due to the mentioned issues. I feel like we need to hold BLs to a higher standard if we want to get more out of them than just mindless entertainment on a Sunday afternoon, when you got nothing better to do. The show is cute, but if you pay attention to the writing, it’ll lose its charm pretty quickly. If you like Force and Book, you’ll probably enjoy this despite all the glaring issues. If you aren’t a fan of them, I’d recommend skipping this entirely. Or at least just fast-forwarding through it. If you’re interested in office romances, you’ll probably find a better one, after all there’s plenty of those out there.

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unexpectedly dark for a lighthearted romcom

Overall: I was okay with this as a 'turn your brain off' romcom, but then there was an extremely dark plot line (also zero consequences for a trash character?!?) and the plot ran around in circles (definitely could have been 8 episodes instead of 12). I'm rating this more harshly because GMMTV has the money and experience to make an excellent series. Unfortunately, I was left disappointed with this one. Aired on GMMTV's YouTube channel.

Content Warnings: past rape for 3 years involving a child/step parent, past suicide, mental health struggles, non con/dub con touching, homophobia, fight/beaten up, non con picture taking/posting, unwanted public outing

What I Liked
- good friendship dynamics (and that they raised the difficulty of the boss/employee romantic dynamic)
- Yacht with his blue hair
- the established couple is adorable (but they didn't get enough screen time nor a plot)
- addressing mental health struggles (except that Cher should not have talked about Jack without Jack's prior approval and they also made it seem like everyone was happy that Jack stopped taking medication when in reality as I understand it medication is something to be taken as a management strategy, it's not a long term cure)
- a supportive ex
- neutral, comedy sound effects

Room For Improvement
- this was oddly very dark, I think they still could have had some serious parts (focusing on the mental health struggles as an example), but it almost felt disrespectful to have the rest be a light romcom, I'm not sure how to explain this but I didn't like the combo of extremely serious plot with silly plot
- lack of consequences for a trash character and instant forgiveness for the mom
- Thup, there are things that even if your loved one says you should keep secret that you don't keep secret and tell the authorities/school personnel and what was going on was one of those things. Thup wasn't a young child, he should have been around 12 to 15 when this was happening and then afterwards to let rumors circulate about Cher, he did not seek justice for his sibling and he had the gall to blame Cher....ugh
- paper thin plot that went around in circles
- cliche poor communication with fully grown adults, Cher's totally stupid "plan" in episode 11
- consent problems: there were some things they did really well but there was also poor consent including Cher ignoring Gun's physical boundaries in the beginning, Gun locking Cher in his car, "if you don't let me touch you I'll kiss you instead"
- I realize they were going for comedy, but many jokes didn't make me laugh
- Gun letting Cher be jealous for his own entertainment instead of clearing up the miscommunication
- nonsense things (we won't get into the hr headache this would be in reality), Cher is never shown to be doing anything with his ASMR channel, we barely see him gaming
- the cringey title

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