Playboyy (2023)

Probably the worst series I've ever watched, I couldn't help but laugh at how terrible it was..

This series was hilariously bad. In fact, it being so bad to the point that it was funny is the only thing that saved it from being a 0/10 for me. It came across like the outline of a script after one day in the writer's room, a good skeleton with absolutely no meat to it. The only reason I finished it was to give it a fair shot before I reviewed it and I actually like it LESS than I did at EP. 8 when I originally wanted to drop it.

It had bad and often random cuts, little to no context to character decisions or story development, the appearance of characters seemingly out of thin air on numerous occasions, uncomfortable NC scenes, far too many random and cringey English lines, and virtually no followable plot outside of what you are told in the summary. Just an awful mess that was only as entertaining as it was laughable.

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Soft Porn Trainwreck

Much like a train wreck I couldn’t look away. But before the explosion I decided to look away because I cannot unsee what I had seen already. I don’t need to see the end to know the death of this series.

I read somewhere that some of the actors are Only Fans broadcasters. I am not sure if this is true but it would make sense for the NC scenes and the zero acting ability.

For Nant, I don’t understand this character at all. Other than he was a plot device. There is no character development. I didn’t even see him in the first scene and had to rewind when his twin Non’t showed up.

How can the friends not know Non’t is not Nant? But then again all the friends are super fvcked up people.

How can Prom just hook up with Non’t after he knows it’s not Nant? It’s weird. Prom was supposedly in love with Nant. He even helped him fake his suicide to help him escape loan sharks. I thought Prom was Playboyy’s owner but it’s the pedophiler Daddy JasonLee.

Zouey and Teena are an odd couple. Teena comes across as the Only Fans broadcaster because dude just stands around looking like a prop except when he has to perform sex acts.

Yuck to First. Seriously the insertion of objects into the butt. The fisting. And biting someone’s d!ck. Soong and Pune most really need the money thst bad to put up with it. Good for Soong leaving but to upend ups it’s another psycho like Daddy Jason Lee.

Captain can rot in hell. Good that Keen found out about him and made him think he’s still with Puen. I want him to suffer in heartbreak. Shit I want someone to pistol whip some sense into him.

Porsche doesn’t deserve Jump. I am glad Jump has journalist side piece. I want them together and Porsche can deal with Daddy Jason Lee on his own.

Maybe Phop and Nuth belong together. They are both orange flag with one going green and the other red. That’s how they are coming off.

At this point I don’t care who kill Nant. Most likely Daddy JasonLee. Or will I wast any more time watching the last episode.

Even scrubbing through at 2x isn’t helping to save this self inflicted torture

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I truly hoped for better, especially since the story sounded so great and different.

The only thing worth watching this for is the story, and yet they ruined that by going ahead and rushing the ending. The actors themselves are great, the chemistry, visuals and acting itself is nothing to comment on, BUT. Prepare to get major second hand embarrassment. First of all, why, and I mean WHY would screen writers choose random English conversations out of absolute nowhere? I get that BL´s are getting a lot of recognition not only in Asia but all over the world, but come on people...
Secondly, could you have chosen an uglier brand of underwear for the poor boys to wear IN EVERY EPISODE?
Third, and honestly most importantly, I feel like the great story of friendship, betrayal, love, drugs, unconventional relationships etc was ruined by the rushed (and honestly vague) ending. I must say, I can't believe I actually spent 10+ hours watching this. The actors deserved better.

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Good Enough for a One Time Watch

I have watched the first episode two times before finding strength to watch the series completely. Initially, the first episodes were hard to watch, but with progression of storytelling I binged-watched the rest. The plot itself is good, but sometimes lacks execution. I think it is fair to say that most came for the NC scenes after the trailer, icluding myself. It was used as a plot device to show that the missing of the twin brother was linked to the sex industry, although excesive. I was happy they decided to cut down on them for the plot`s sake. Some scenes were confusing and you have to fill in the blanks yourself.

Now, moving on to the cringe part of the series. Why did they have to use japanese porn sounds or whatever it was? It was used two or three times, but enough to make your skin crawl. As well as, why did some characters speak English out of nowhere? It was not awful, but would make sense if they had prior education in a foreign country. Though, it is not applicable to Soong, for instance, as he could not have afforded it.

Costume design in some scenes is questionable. When characters are wearing corsets and leather jackets on bare skin and heels to highly dramatic or action-filled scenes, it does not really make sense and shifts your attention.

The characters are complex with their own life experiences and traumas. I like that they are not plain good or bad. However, none of them have charachter development. They ended, where they started. Constant cheating, lying and harming others only makes them slightly uncomfortable. They do not change their ways or feel like they are in the wrong. Some of the couples should not be together if not all of them. It would be more realistic if some relationships did not survive. They confess their "love", which looks more like lust or infatuation.

The acting is mediocre, the actors would better suit cheerful and light series. The most charismatic were Prom/Nont. Their portrayal of emotions was believable and enjoyable. They had great chemistry with each other and I was waiting for their couple to appear on the screen. Nonetheless, they were underdeveloped as others. Nont is supposed be a clever charachter, who plays a "detective" role. He must be vengeful and mistrustful, but the second questions arise he gives out his real identity to people, who might be directly linked to his brother`s missing. It would have been such an amazing plot twist, if they learnt from the news he is actually not their friend, as Nant`s body was found in the woods.

Overall, it is an alright series, when you do not have anything else to watch. I will be watching the second season, if it ever comes out, which I doubt.

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The BL Lack of Communication Trope Pushed to its Limits.

I'll start by saying - The show is watchable, just very disappointing.

At it's core this show is like Not Me ( stripped down, just a better version of this show) and wanted the energy of KinnPorsche - Without earning anything those shows did.

The show is confused energetically hopping quickly between a mystery, thriller, romance, softcore simulated p*rn, while attempts at "comedy".

There were too many characters for the plotline once things fell into place. The story tries so hard to involve everyone in the central plot that it makes everything make LESS sense.

I'll just list out some spoiler thoughts instead of getting to lengthy.

- Porche, First and Captain were all written terribly. The spoiled child into cold emotionally stunted adult thing is writable, these all are just the spoiled child refused any accountability. The moments we're meant to feel bad for them are BEYOND unearned, in fact, the story goes out of its way to NOT justify their motivations for just screwing with people or the things around them. Even more importantly, gives us no motivation for the group to even be friends. Zouey for as self-righteous as they try to make him late in the show for red herring reasons, has 0 reason to associate with any of these guys given to us.

- After episode maybe 3 or 4, the next 8 to 9 episodes are ALL characters lying without any HINT of motivations for their lies to be found in the series. It spreads from character to character to the point that instead of twists, the story gets predictable. Their lies make less sense in context of the surrounding plots. Aob and Prom had little reason to lie in the time frames they did that would have provided any benefit to them, or protection.

- The "daddy" is unearned. He's the big bad sure whatever. No character ever has motivation to protect him, every single character seems to know exactly who he is, but forgets who he is and what he is behind when it is convenient to the plot. In earlier episodes no one knows who their boss was, in the last 3 episodes they all acknowledge random bits of history with him, working with him, or working directly for him.

- The locker room had the lighting of a dramatic indie film, including messages projected onto characters, intimate light shows, shaped mirrors in locker rooms refracting dramatic lights. Did they start here and run out of budget or something?

- Nont being painted as the bad guy for plot reasons after everything the friends did was so eyeroll inducing. They all basically got spun into horrible situations, knowing who Porche's boyfriend was, due to their actions and their actions alone. I understand after the unfortunate last episode, it was a red herring but ugh.

I don't like to just compare shows, but this is flat out a worse version of Not Me.
It had an intriguing start but bogged itself down with an endless cast and then contrived writing trying to link it all together and then an insulting ending assuming the show will be enough of a success for a season 2.

The cast were all most very attractive at least.

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Actually not that bad

The reviews here are like a rollercoaster going up and down.

Playboyy is in essence a QL more than a BL (where most of the time one main convinced he's gay seduces his crush who's into girls). With BLs its the strong chemistry that makes it successful. Here all actors do a convincing job acting and making believe they're gay. Some BLs advocating gay acceptance (like teddybear) lack such passion.
The screenwriter (Den) is the same as from "only friends" , which is also a QL per that definition but with a well-known BL crew.

The prostitution aspect in the show is a probe not often used. The violence we saw in other mafia BLs and also the school flavour is in. There were some hot and steamy moments although "bed friend" from earlier in the year was more sensual and convincing like also "only friends" with the NC scenes.

For the couples, I thought that Nont looked a bit like Draco Malfoy's mom with the blond patches ;-) but found his acting quite good. The scene with Zouey dressed as a girl and Captain could have been more) and Zouye with Jason Lee scenes was also something to be developped. Zouey and Teena were maybe the weakest couple. Most genuine couple I was rooting for was Phop and Nuth, very convincing. Will see what season brings for them...

Hopefully these actors get some rewards and positive vibe and I wish them good luck. after their performance in a more daring series.

To bring the average score higher I gave it a high 9.5 as 6.2 is not what the ranking should be as it's not a boring BL.

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Feels faked. Like writer&director looked up kinks on Wikipedia & actors are poorly playing pretend.

Dropped after Ep7. I can't force myself to keep watching, not even for the sake of keeping my review current. General spoilers only.

Not mentally or emotionally engaging or satisfying as either porn-with-plot OR porn-without-plot. It's mostly quick cuts to and away from 10-60 sec vignettes of "action" with not much to string them together. Akin to scrolling through porn search results; it's mini previews of scenes I might be interested in watching more of without actually getting to see them. Many of the snippets are at the point of highest shock value and then they are over or the story jumps away. There's rarely any build of anticipation or sexual tension and the BDSM scenes get more campy as the series goes on, especially when gear is involved.

The story also has a tendency to cut away right after the pinnacle of non-sexual, emotional confrontations, which comes across as lazy writing not putting in the effort to comple scenes. It's also frusterating because it keeps the audience at a distance from character's experiences leaving huge gaps between scenes/events, which makes it hard to connect with and invest in the characters emotionally.

I was looking forward to a grittier BL story with intrigue that explored sex and kinks more freely but this is so far disappointing. The characters are written 2-dimensionally (simple & shallow) and acted flatly, and the sex/kinks often feel forced/fake. Like the series is trying to sell a showy shell of a vaneer without a fundamental understanding of the dynamics that would drive the more extreme types of desires and scenes in real life. Like BOTH the writer and director looked up kinks on Wikipedia and the actors are poorly playing dress-up; interactions are poorly faked simulations that no one seems to enjoy convincingly.

I can't believe it's the Only Friends screenwriter (which had it's weaknesses but was overall enjoyably chaotic while the characters were understandable and many were easy to empathize with and root for). The quality of storytelling in this is so disjointed and weak. There are too many characters that don't get introduced or followed properly and the mess of thin plotlines are shallow and often confusing.

I continued to watch in the hopes that it would get better, since I thought the screenwriter was capable of it. Ep 4 actually made me laugh out loud twice at how bad it was with poor and overly dramatic writing, acting, and music.

Ep 7/14 update: This episode showed a couple improvements after the holiday hiatus but it had a different feel to it, which I think would be even more noticeable if someone was binge-watching. It was weird how 'in love' many of the characters became suddenly.

There was still confusion about what exactly was going on in some scenes, the way multiple relationships are progressing don't quite make sense, multiple character choices are illogical, and Zouey still feels like a different character than how he was presented at the start of the series. He seems to have somehow moved past the physical/sexual/psychological eccentricities that originally made him so different and interesting.

What I thought was improved: Power dynamics were the focus in the various types of relationships. The themes of the episode and their execution were more clear. There was a better rhythm to scenes because the editing didn't interrupt and bounce back and forth in the middle of scenes as much. The editing between scenes was less choppy, the interactions between characters were more focused, and the music was well suited to each scene. This allowed some tension to build over the course of the episode leading to a more intense cliffhanger.

I watched the Uncut version on GagaOOlala in the USA.

General Spoilers for Ep 1-3 below.

There's some tension/anticipation built with Zouey and Teena but then Ep3 breaks it. Zouey uncharacteristically feels "in the mood" (to go all the way no less) and they start a slow exploration then SNAP, the camera briefly switches to the middle of a sex scene with a different pair! and SNAP, we're back to Zouey and Teena and they are about to try 'the main event'. And it quickly doesn't go well.

Wait. First, you deliberately don't show us the interesting part of seducing a body with pleasure (especially Zouey because we're not even clear in what way he does/doesn't experience pleasure or arousal) then second, tell us a sex worker doesn't know how to adequately prepare someone for bottoming?!?!? Really?

How in the world did they even get that far- what was Zouey's reaction to anything leading up to that point? That's what made that scene/relationship interesting and they didn't bother to write it in. *Facepalm. And where was the Japanese overvoice that was present before? (And why weren't subtitles included for that by the way?) It feels like Zouey and Teena were written out of character just so their plotline dilemma could line up with one of Zouey's friends for this episode.

I somewhat appreciated that safe words were a topic in Ep 3, but it was very rudimentary in its explanations and kind of put blame on Zouey for not remembering to use a safe word instead of "wait/no" for his first time. The discussion by the group of friends compells me to add:
FYI you can incorporate "What's your color?" or "Say your color" to check in with your partner using the traffic light system (green = go, yellow = slow down or reduce, red = stop). Prompting a response in this way is especially helpful when trying something new or with those that have a hard time thinking and/or verbalizing while exploring (like those in subspace).

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vague title

so, yeah. this show did a thing.

tbis show made me realize i have a fetish for blonde twinks with mustaches so i think thats an automatic 10/10. I also love the addition of schizophrenic representation. love to see it, i feel seen and heard.

Not only did this show diagnose me with schizophrenia and possibly HIV, it also diagnosed me with very serious homophobia and i never wanna see a gay person ever again after this. It will be on sight. If i see fucking korn outside on the hood streets of bangkok i will not hesitate to whip out a glock and pop his ass straight back into his mamas womb.

9.0 cause i would love to see the entite cast have one giant orgy but whatever. a man could dram.

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The humour is in the cringe

The overall story is interesting, the mystery behind Nant's disappearance really keeps your attention but outside of that the story is a bit lacking. There's barely any character exposition or growth, I couldn't quite grasp the motivations behind the actions of most of the characters. Once I started to slightly understand the characters, more characters were added who just stole screentime from other characters. My favourite characters are Nont, Zouey, First, Keen, and Peun. And that's only because I felt like their characters were flushed out properly. I understood the conflicted emotions, motivations, etc.

The acting was a hit and miss honestly. The actors who played Nont and Prom really did a great job, they had good chemistry and really did a great job at evoking emotions from me, really enjoyed seeing them on screen, they were the MVPs of the show. This doesn't mean the other actor's were bad, they tried but some scenes just felt too awkward, I struggled to get immersed in their world at some times.

The sound design was boring, barely noticeable, they only really utilised it during the intimate scenes. The choice in sound is supposed to give me an indication of what mood to feel but I constantly found myself staring at the screen confused.

I don't think I'll miss this series at all. I got to a point where I was just sort of hate watching because everything just felt prolonged. It didn't need 14 episodes and a possible 2nd season, everything could have been resolved in this one season. I don't think there's mouch rewatch value but I'll probably watch the 2nd season just so I can have some conclusion to the series.

This review is not meant to discourage anyone from watching the series. If you're looking for great storytelling and production, this is not the series for you but if you're looking for something cringe and funny (unintentionally) then this is the series for you. I spent most of my time just laughing at how cringe things were and oogling Prom. So have fun with it.

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Don't watch if you want a cohesive story

CW: HEAVY PLOT SPOILERS, sa, abuse, r*pe, harrasement, violence in general

I finished this like over a month ago so my bad if i get some details wrong.

As the title says, don't watch this if you want an interesting story about a twin dissapearing and the different aspects of sex and the sex industry. The show did have all those elements, but the end result was a mess, there were so many characters that by the last episode there were still people whose names I didn't know (eg the 2 football guys).

If you're interested in a lot of badly shot and awkward nc scenes, maybe give it a shot.

I understand that most people watched this for the nc scenes and to those people I ask: why? There were a lot of nc scenes but that doesn't mean they were good. The acting in those scenes was fine but the way it was shot left much to be desired, how am i supposed to believe two people are getting it on when i can see their bright pink "RICH" underwear in every shot. Comfort for the actors is always the most important part with nc scenes, and i hope they felt safe and protected during, but that doesn't mean you can't make it look real with some clever camera angles.

the story starts of interesting with the storyline of Zoey and Teena but by the time they get together in the middle of the show they get sidelined and forgotten until the last 10 minutes. Their conflicts were interesting with their dynamic of virgin x former-sex worker but they did have some strange out of character moments (eg Teena going through with sex when Zoey clearly stated he wasn't ready, this didn't feel like Teena at all). Zoey's character twist at the end could've been great, a r*pe victim taking back his sexuality on his own terms with someone he loves, but the fact it gets reveals in the last 5 seconds in a voice-over and that's it is really underwhelming, especially since we don't know if he told Teena or not.

Nont was definitely my favorite character since he was so passionate about finding his brother, which made his story extra sad when we find out what happened, but even that wasn't handled well. The perpetrator of what happened to his brother being revealed after the credits with no motive and no one who knows makes it obvious they were hoping for a season 2, but with the mid reception I don't know if that's possible. Nont deserved to know what happened to his brother, and the audience being the only one who knows is a bit depressing. Sadly I was really invested in this plot, but they had to make way for more nonsense plot with characters I don't care about.

Honestly I don't really have much to say about the other characters except 2 things: 1. it was extremely out of character the way the friends kept switching up on each other, first being mad at Zoey and then at Nont. This is an extremely toxic friend group but I had hope that Nont and Zoey would've stuck by each other. 2. It took me so much willpower to not skip through every scene with First and Soong because they were done so dirty with their dialogue and it was extremely hard to watch. all their random english lines and then some conversations being in english with the worst Thai dubbing i've ever seen was rough, but their story was at least kinda interesting.

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Hard work, slow progression in story.

The whole thing is quite jumbled. I think it's trying to be edgy, but it doesn't quite work. There are so many characters and each have their own sub-plots, so to make all the time and effort worthwhile, the ending needs to bring it all together in a dynamic exciting way - which it doesn't. The ending is lacklustre at best and bloody annoying. There is a lot of sex in this series, but zero eroticism or sensuality. Everything feels dark and dingy. You know the feeling you get if you ever walk through a dirty, rough part of town where there are lots of druggies and dodgy people - that is how most of the cinematography of this series feels. I thought it would feel a bit like KinnPorsche, or maybe Not Me, but it is miles from that because none of the characters have any chemistry in this series. Its hard to know if this is what it was meant to be like, or if this is just the best they could manage. I often wonder if different actors could have improved it, I think probably they could but if would still never me an outstanding series.

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