The kind of show you'll forget about by the end of the week

This show starts out pretty fun. We've got a pretty classic premise: spoiled rich kid forced to live with a bodyguard he doesn't want, but overtime his heart softens and they learn to love each other. Sounds like a good show, right?

Well -- it really is fun in the beginning. Sun is trying his best to keep Sky out of danger, meanwhile Sky is trying his best to be a reckless, impulsive college student. Sky doesn't want it out to the world that his father is a mob boss, so Sun has to pretend to be his distant cousin and fellow college student, despite having no clue how to relate to other kids his age. It's a nice funny show for the first 5 or so episodes.

Around episode 6 is where the problems come in. I'm not going to give any plot spoilers, but as you'd expect from a show about the son of a mob boss, the stakes get pretty high in the last few episodes. There's a lot more drama. A lot more emotional scenes. And that's a problem because the lead actor just does not have the chops for those scenes. His acting in the last few episodes made me feel like I was watching _The Room._ I'm not trying to be mean here -- it was really _that bad._

So overall, if you are just looking for something fun to watch I'd still recommend this show. Most of the actors are pretty decent, the side couple is really cute, and the beginning is very fun. If you have high standards or if you just don't want to get invested in a show that will probably annoy you by the end -- then skip this one. Do yourself a favor and go watch Where Your Eyes Linger.

Note: I gave the acting 2.5 stars because bad acting is what killed this show. But that actor is fine in the humorous scenes and the rest of the cast were all decent. If it weren't for his problems with the emotional scenes, it'd be a solid 6 for me.

Also the soundtrack slaps. You can skip the show but don't sleep on this soundtrack.

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Loved the comedy, wasn't feeling the characters or the romance.

My feelings on this show are very mixed. I think if it hadn't followed 1000 Stars, and if it hadn't been from the same Author and Director as 2gether, I might have come in with lower expectations and enjoyed it more. If you're here for comedy, you're in the right place. This show surprised me with how funny it was. One of the funniest shows I've seen from GMMTV. If you're here to fall in love with the characters and the romance arc.... I might skip this one.

My biggest complaint is that I didn't like Pi at all. Phuwin is a great actor but this performance didn't do it for me. He was whiny and mean-spirited. I know we're supposed to sympathize with him because he's had a rough life, but it's hard because he's just not a pleasant person. I think this was done to add humor to the show, but Pi's whole character was just about the only part of the show I didn't find funny. Mork was ok in comparison, but a very standard, boring BL love interest. The actors have chemistry but there wasn't anything in the writing to make that shine.

Back to the comedy, though: I'm serious when I say that this show is worth watching for the comedy alone. The best part of this show, hands down, was The Story of the Fifth Year Student -- the portion of the show dedicated to Pi's older brother, Duean. Neo is hilarious (as always) and Louis plays really well off of him. Yeah sure they have chemistry -- more importantly, they're the perfect comedy duo.

My only other comment about this show is that someone at GMMTV needs to stop giving Janhae these awful roles. First Tonhon Chonlatee, now FUTS, they're casting her in roles that bring out some of the worst in poorly written female BL characters. At least Miriam was sometimes funny and likeable. Bam is awful. Thoroughly annoying character with a dumb plot twist. Janhae is a talented actress who deserves better roles!

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No seriously, just watch the Pete Kao cut.

I'm a bit of a purist. When I start a series, I like to watch the whole thing. I watched _Kiss_ and really liked it, despite some of its drawbacks. The plot dragged at times but at its heart, it was a simple story about two sisters with interesting conflicts and a solid cast of characters.

Then we get to _Kiss Me Again_ and oh man, people weren't kidding when they said to just skip the "straight drama." Now look -- I'm all for giving straight people their rights. Normally if there's a BL side couple in a show, I'm not one of the people who sill skip the straight drama. But oh man. The San-sisters need a lot of help.

This is one of those shows that follows many different storylines. In this case, each of Sandee's sisters (with the exception of Sanrak, whose story was told in _Kiss_) get a storyline, and then there's one for Pete/Kao. The sisters' stories are all varying degrees of chaotic and messy.

Sansuay is annoying and her storyline was the first I gave up on, simply out of boredom. I actually can't even remember what happened with her, I just remember her being a brat lol.

Sanson is terrible. She's a Y Girl who is so obsessed with gay men that she basically stalks a friend of hers who she thinks is gay, totally intrudes on his life and messes things up for him and his friend, then they FALL IN LOVE because I guess that's what you do after someone stalks you, asks invasive questions about your sexuality, and outs you to your mom when you're not even gay?!?!!?!?! Girls who treat gay men like their own personal toys are one of the worst tropes that I see all the time on GMMTV. Sanson might be the worst of those kinds of girls.

Then there's Sanwan. Sanwan is the only one of this season's main sisters who I actually liked. But that just made me more mad when her storyline was so absurd and did her so dirty. Essentially, her main love interest is toxic and my girl KNOWS THAT but EVERYONE IN HER LIFE gaslights her and pushes her toward him -- including Sandee, by the way. Completely inconsistent with her character. Sandee would NEVER let one of her sisters be involved with a guy who treats her like that! -- but anyway, the toxic guy ends up being "redeemed" after he saves her from a more toxic guy and has a change of heart. I stuck with Sanwan's story the longest because I liked her character a lot, but her storyline was so painful that I gave up on it too.

AND THEN there's Pete and Kao. It's bizarre to me that this storyline is part of the same show. In my opinion, this is the best Pete / Kao storyline we get. They're fine in _Kiss_ but their story is very much a side plot. I don't like Pete in DBK. He's bratty and petty and nothing like he is in the other shows. But Pete and Kao's story in Kiss Me Again is really good. Apparently GMMTV agrees with me because they took this show off of YouTube and only left the Pete Kao cut up lol.

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The final episode ruined an otherwise good show

Normally I like to keep reviews spoiler-free, but I can't review this show without talking about the ending.

The majority of this show is a fun, lighthearted BL that doesn't take itself too seriously. Not as good as the other installments of HIStory, but still pretty good as far as BL's are concerned. When I say "fun" I really mean it -- there was some dark subject matter but for the most part it was just silly and fun. The main character is an impulsive ball of chaos who you can't help but fall in love with, even if they start the show out with some dumb trope where he bullies the guy he's about to fall in love with.

The side couple in this one really isn't for me. It's a 17 year old and a whole grown adult. I'm not here for that -- especially when the 17 year old is so immature. He acted more like a toddler than a teenager.

But I really enjoyed this show for the first 8 episodes. It was fun, quick paced, with a little drama but never anything too serious or permanent. I also felt like they did a decent job of dealing with parental homophobia -- showing some harsh realities without making the story too much of a downer. (Because look -- we have enough downer movies and shows about gay men being rejected by their families. Ok?)

And then we get to Episode 9. Episode 9 is weird because the show feels like it should have ended, but it keeps rambling along. If you don't know ahead of time that there's a sad ending, it honestly feels like they've just shoved some fanservice in at the end or something. The plot has already ended. All of the conflict has been resolved. There's not possibly anywhere else they could take it -- is there?

Basically, they try to introduce new conflict at the end of Episode 9. Yu Xi Gu gets hit by a car (PRESUMABLY, because we NEVER ACTUALLY SEE THIS HAPPEN) then Episode 10 opens six years later on a depressed, lifeless Hao Ting clearly unrecovered from Yu Xi Gu's death. Or -- did he die? There's a character Hao Ting meets with who looks like Yu Xi Gu, but acts NOTHING alike and doesn't seem to remember having any history with Hao Ting. There's two theories here: either Yu Xi Gu is dead and Hao Ting met his lookalike, who he can't let go of despite being nothing like his dead lover, OR Yu Xi Gu is alive but lost his memory that day, and his aunt used that opportunity to fake his death rather than admitting to the world he was gay.

Let me be very clear here: either option is bad writing. This came out of nowhere, had no build up, and completely killed the mood of the rest of the show. I'm serious that if you haven't watched this yet, you should stop halfway through Episode 9. Don't bother with the rest. You don't need to -- the story is really over there, they just tried to stretch it out so they could make a sequel. Also -- throughout this show, Hao Ting insists that he's "straight, just in love with Yu Xi Gu." I assumed because this is HIStory that they were going to subvert that old trope and show that in the end, he's actually Bi or Pan or something. Or maybe he's gay but in denial. But no. After Yu Xi Gu dies (or loses his memory), Hao Ting ends up with a woman, with no further discussion about him actually not being straight. It's a sad day when HIStory reverts to one of the dumbest tropes in all of BL.

But why do they need a sequel? What made the other HIStory installments so good is that they're encapsulated little stories that don't drag on for any longer than the story needs. Why start doing sequels now, with the weakest installment in the series? Prior to this installment, I felt like HIStory was one of the few BL's that were actually trying to tell queer stories. Now it just feels like normal BL fodder. I like normal BLs, don't get me wrong, but HIStory really had some quality to it that it seems to have lost. Ah well. Life moves on.

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