This review may contain spoilers
Interesting spots but lacks romantic chemistry
Thiu the mafia guy and Guy the college students have interesting storylines separately, but the romance as written just doesn't click and the acting is not strong enough to override the lack of romantic chemistry either. It's more fun to see them with the gaming squad than it is just the two of them, which being the core of the story is pretty detrimental.
Thiu's story going from an happy go-lucky engineering major gamer living in a loving household with his sickly father who straight up shoots a guy who shot him and joins the mafia after his dad dies and is good at it, is very intriguing. As soon as he starts being into Guy though, he no longer thinks with his big brain and making really dumb decisions including not coming up with a plausible reason to placate his boss who he JUST told that he bought the restaurant for to claim more mafia territory and now is saying he wants to quit the mafia to run. The actor who plays the mafia boss has good gravitas to be believably menacing and the 5 bullet Russian roulette is also plausible exit as is the beatdown, even though the beatdown was way too light, but I'll take it as he was a pretty good guy to them so they took it easier on him. I also really enjoyed Thiu's friendship with his underling Tul, who is really his only friend. Thiu talking about his relationship woes with Tul was so funny and cute and it was a badass moment when Tul showed up injured to the restaurant. He went through the roulette and beatdown to quit and run the restaurant with Thiu. I think he probably had just one bullet, but that's still pretty horrific to experience. Thiu should have let Tul nap behind the register, especially if his comfy napping chair is still there instead of cleaning the graffitied and trashed store. Kinda silly they didn't destroy those giant glass doors, but I guess the production didn't want to spend on that lol. It would have been nice to see at least one more scene of their friendship at the end.
Guy's toxic friendship with his best friend Wal and guy who he was obsessed with for years was frustrating but interesting to see where it led. Wal want Guy's full attention all to himself even while he has a whole girlfriend and gets jealous when Guy branches out to pursue his own interests and friends of his own, which good for Guy. It's revealed that Wal had been attracted to Guy from the beginning but never made a move, taking Guy for granted to be mooning after him forever. He still doesn't make a move toward the end of the story when he had TWO chances to kiss Guy and Guy was ready for it, only trying to kiss Guy when they've both drank and Guy is not into it. He failed hard at every step of the way. Guy was already learning to distance himself from this bad situation. His game friends are pretty fun, equal game and shabuholics. It's too bad they didn't get more development individually with Guy and basically just used to move certain plot points along.
Kenji really brought the soap opera energy to drama and unfortunately not in a fun way. Thiu never taking him out properly when he had the chance over and over and over again was ridiculous when Thiu has gunned down a guy before and probably taken a lot of people out in his years as a higher up in the mafia. Kenji not so surprisingly keeps going after Guy over and over again. It was so dumb when in the final battle Guy just walks up into the enemy's clutches without even a weapon. He didn't even have a plan as to how he was going to help Thiu except get in Thiu's way and distract him from survival. He called Phai over, but she didn't show up with the rest of the cops until everything was long over. It was so unnecessarily useless. He ends up being a whiny child when he's with Thiu, their maturity/serious levels never matches up at any point to match what is necessary to make their pairing cohesive.
I think Meen was the better actor of the two leads in this drama, but even he's missing a lot of pathos as a mafia guy. This drama is another in the billionth examples of how I wish Thai bl dramas were cast based on who fits and can actually act the roles rather than ship pairings. Just because they had chemistry and ability to portray certain characters in one production does not mean it will come across for every character and productions.
Thiu's story going from an happy go-lucky engineering major gamer living in a loving household with his sickly father who straight up shoots a guy who shot him and joins the mafia after his dad dies and is good at it, is very intriguing. As soon as he starts being into Guy though, he no longer thinks with his big brain and making really dumb decisions including not coming up with a plausible reason to placate his boss who he JUST told that he bought the restaurant for to claim more mafia territory and now is saying he wants to quit the mafia to run. The actor who plays the mafia boss has good gravitas to be believably menacing and the 5 bullet Russian roulette is also plausible exit as is the beatdown, even though the beatdown was way too light, but I'll take it as he was a pretty good guy to them so they took it easier on him. I also really enjoyed Thiu's friendship with his underling Tul, who is really his only friend. Thiu talking about his relationship woes with Tul was so funny and cute and it was a badass moment when Tul showed up injured to the restaurant. He went through the roulette and beatdown to quit and run the restaurant with Thiu. I think he probably had just one bullet, but that's still pretty horrific to experience. Thiu should have let Tul nap behind the register, especially if his comfy napping chair is still there instead of cleaning the graffitied and trashed store. Kinda silly they didn't destroy those giant glass doors, but I guess the production didn't want to spend on that lol. It would have been nice to see at least one more scene of their friendship at the end.
Guy's toxic friendship with his best friend Wal and guy who he was obsessed with for years was frustrating but interesting to see where it led. Wal want Guy's full attention all to himself even while he has a whole girlfriend and gets jealous when Guy branches out to pursue his own interests and friends of his own, which good for Guy. It's revealed that Wal had been attracted to Guy from the beginning but never made a move, taking Guy for granted to be mooning after him forever. He still doesn't make a move toward the end of the story when he had TWO chances to kiss Guy and Guy was ready for it, only trying to kiss Guy when they've both drank and Guy is not into it. He failed hard at every step of the way. Guy was already learning to distance himself from this bad situation. His game friends are pretty fun, equal game and shabuholics. It's too bad they didn't get more development individually with Guy and basically just used to move certain plot points along.
Kenji really brought the soap opera energy to drama and unfortunately not in a fun way. Thiu never taking him out properly when he had the chance over and over and over again was ridiculous when Thiu has gunned down a guy before and probably taken a lot of people out in his years as a higher up in the mafia. Kenji not so surprisingly keeps going after Guy over and over again. It was so dumb when in the final battle Guy just walks up into the enemy's clutches without even a weapon. He didn't even have a plan as to how he was going to help Thiu except get in Thiu's way and distract him from survival. He called Phai over, but she didn't show up with the rest of the cops until everything was long over. It was so unnecessarily useless. He ends up being a whiny child when he's with Thiu, their maturity/serious levels never matches up at any point to match what is necessary to make their pairing cohesive.
I think Meen was the better actor of the two leads in this drama, but even he's missing a lot of pathos as a mafia guy. This drama is another in the billionth examples of how I wish Thai bl dramas were cast based on who fits and can actually act the roles rather than ship pairings. Just because they had chemistry and ability to portray certain characters in one production does not mean it will come across for every character and productions.
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