the weird last-minute rushed conflict strikes once again

I actually....liked this despite its many....many, flaws idk. I think the characters really saved it for me.

the characters are likable/charming, the main leads had pretty good chemistry, I barely felt any awkwardness from them, and no dead fish kiss! congrats!

the two leads are also pretty cute together, so it's a shame that the rest of the movie is. all over the place. I saw a lot of people call the series "choppy" but I don't think it was that bad until the last 30 minutes or so. Not sure if that's just a personal taste thing or it flows better as a movie.

they really like leaving certain plot points just....dangling, probably because of time constraints, but it doesn't really work because they never give you enough hints to actually connect the dots yourself? there felt like a lot of those here but I think even those would've been more easily forgivable if not for that WEIRD last 20 minutes. I've been binging through a lot of korean BLs lately, and I've noticed that a lot of them have this weird, rushed conflict and then equally rushed resolution near the end ?? I think this happens with regular length kdramas too but it's noticeably worse since K BLs tend to have like...10-20 minute episodes....yeah.

but anyway, so the last minute conflict in itself isn't too weird for me, it just gets lumped in with the other common issues for me to expect when watching a K BL but it was REALLY incoherent here. Usually, I at least vaguely know what's going on even if I'm a little confused, but here, I went back to rewatch the last 20 minutes twice and was still confused. What the heck lol

It's a shame because if they stuck the landing, this could've been a weird but still really decent series, (a better ending wouldn't have fixed how the characters and the time itself sometimes seem to jump all over the place), and it had a promising start, but I guess that sentiment goes for a lot of K BLs tbh.

also this literally has nothing to do with the actual story or quality or whatever but I adored the fashion designer's outfits. he always looked quite cool and trendy and I loved it.

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palette cleanser

it's hard for me to really describe this series because nothing about it is that special? and the execution of it wasn't AWFUL but it sure wasn't that great either.

the plot is pretty much what you would expect if you've already watched a few university set thai BLs already. shrinking violet Lukchub meets the gentle older senior, Ram, who immediately gets endeared over the cute, shy junior cooking student. they're pretty much as cute and as soft as you would expect, (tbh maybe arguably TOO soft in some aspects but I'll get to that later.)

as with most gentle and soft couples, they fall into the pitfall of being a little dull and slow sometimes, as sweet as they are together. objectively it's quite cute, but that doesn't always necessarily mean it makes for great entertainment either....and Lukchub and Ram honestly aren't that suited to really hold up the show by themselves because of that. I imagine that's probably why the series took a TURN in the last few episodes to focus on the external conflict instead, (bullying).

the bullying conflict felt weird in the beginning since Ram is not a particularly proactive person and he still......isn't really by the end, although he still is a lot in comparison to Lukchub (a very low bar, bless his heart lol). i got left feeling like both of them were too soft for this show, but it's probably more accurate to say that the overall conflict was too serious/extreme for how it ended in the show. the tonal whiplash of it gets offset by the over the top acting Namning sometimes does in her scenes lol. and speaking of her....

the wannabe-jealous-gf got a LOT of focus by the end, to the point where it lowkey felt like she was the surprise third lead of the show? I wish they cut like at least half of her screentime and divided it up among some of Lukchub's friends, both to take the burden off the leads and so that the pairing up at the end felt a little less ridiculous LOL.

with all that said, I think the friend group in this series will always have a fond spot in my heart. i always love a good, supportive friendship group and I found theirs SO cute. I do wish they gave Lukchub more agency to show that he's okay with being taken care of to the extent that he is by everyone around him, but regardless, Phaitong's protectiveness over him in the earlier episodes was so sweet to me. really do wish they got more screentime instead of being shoved to the side near the end for Namning's backstory lol.

tl;dr: cute?, mostly fluff, not much substance

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give it a chance

i tried so hard, but i sincerely could not make myself finish this.

but with that said? really, seriously, give this a shot. try to stick with it at least through 3 episodes and maybe you'll start to see the appeal of it, like i did!

it didn't make me immune to feeling intense second hand embarrassment for the characters but...it's kinda a part of this show's weird charm. It's deliberately over the top, it's silly, it's CAMP. I still couldn't take it enough to finish it though lol,,, I hope I can someday.

the friendships in this are so heartwarming and 100% what convinced me to keep watching near the beginning. they're so silly but THERE for each other, they're each other's support systems, their ride or die, and it's so so so adorable and sweet to see. as a queer person, who doesn't want a silly queer group of friends who you Know will always be there for you through thick or thin? they made me feel emotional about as much as i cringed over the show, which is a feat.

i think it's too silly and camp to fully call a soft and sweet show, but that doesn't mean it's Not soft or sweet either. It's just soft, sweet, AND silly. maybe it's not for you, (it kinda wasn't for me, i'm just never gonna entirely vibe with this type of humor, personally), but it's genuinely a show worth giving a shot. there's a heart underneath all of that camp and cringe you might fall in love with.

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i tried so hard to find a nice part of this show to latch onto but . i tried

I usually try not to drop shows until I watched AT LEAST up to the third episode, even with short series but I finally just give up and admit that I'm never going to get around to watching the third episode, or ever finishing this series.

Nothing about this appealed to me. I've seen a lot of people call the story a 1000stars ripoff, and I've never really been interested in watching that in the first place, so watching an objectively lower quality ripoff of it? No chance.

This show's counterpart, Star In Your Mind, kept me engaged when the lead characters were lacking because their friends were amusing or likeable. Here, I hated Fah, Fah's friends, none of the side characters interested me at all, (most of which seem to be kids except for that village girl), Prince was fine but didn't seem interesting or endearing enough for me to continue the show solely for him either.

There's a lot of things about this show that I usually wouldn't mind (ex: characters with unlikable traits with a clear reason) but really bothered me here. Fah and the friends are just unlikeable, irresponsible, and yes, I got that Fah was dealing with the heartbreak of his life but I couldn't dredge up much sympathy for his DUI or trying to skirt his volunteer duties as a /doctor/. I get that was maybe the point since it gives a good reason for Prince to like him but the show didn't give me much insight to that hardworking caring brother that Dao sometimes mentions either, past all of his jerkish character now. Like, Fah and his friends are all grown men, which is why it annoys me even more to see them act so irresponsible and--these are more on his friends than Fah tbh--not to mention, immature and spoiled.

I disliked the acting, which usually I would mostly brush past if I liked the characters or story enough, but I didn't. I didn't see much (if any) chemistry either, but I've only seen up to two episodes where the main couple still mostly didn't like each other so I would take that part of my review with a grain of salt.

Sorry to the people that really seemed to like this series but I hated this lmao. If you liked it, good for you! But my personal opinion is that this was close to unbearable. Sure the story is less basic "why don't you guys just talk" plot of SIMM but personally I would that than me finding like 90% of the characters in the show so unlikeable and uninteresting that I don't want to stick around to see if they have any redeeming parts to their characters at all. If.

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don't go in with high expectations

I'm frankly surprised by the amount of negative reviews here. cutie pie is by no means a masterpiece but it's not an awful show? obviously we can all have our different opinions on it, it's not like life or death if we disagree on whether a series is good or not but imo it wasn't THAT bad.

Cutie Pie has an interesting premise, but don't mistake that with the show really attempting anything groundbreaking in a way that Bad Buddy might've done.

it DOES do some things differently, like Kuea calling out his friends for making him uncomfortable when they make leery jokes about his sex life, him being firm with a romantic suitor who he's not interested in, and Kuea isn't really a blushing maiden with sex. All of these are refreshing, and I do wish that the show pushed more on this aspect of Kuea since I think it made the show fall flat since the beginning made it seem like it would go an interesting direction instead of where it actually ended up. where did Kuea's fire go? it seems to come and go a bit randomly.

the very blatant messaging about marriage equality? a bit sappy and cheesy but still cute (and a good message) regardless. Zee's chemistry with his partners still remain top tier, and I probably would've been a lot more annoyed by Lian if he was played by a worse actor who doesn't know how to soften all of his edges and flaws with that eye smoulder he doles out lol. NuNew is a brand new rookie actor and he did great for his first time acting in general, and in a main role? He did a much better job than anyone could've expected from him.

I did regardless start to get very annoyed with both of their characters by the end because of how dragged out the conflict was getting. It makes sense but it's still frustrating to watch. Just Talk!

The other side couples did a great job too, even where the plot/script failed them. I know that they didn't have the rights for YiDiao's book yet so they worked with the author so they wouldn't really spoil the novel or whatever, but what we got in the show was still....Weird. They should've cut their screentime even more to focus on NueaSyn if they were just gonna give YiDiao's storyline this odd writing.

TL;DR: good chemistry between all of the couples, conspicuous marriage equality messaging wrapped up in cliche romance tropes, and very very very pretty production. don't watch for the plot, because it has about as much depth as a kiddie pool

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