Welcome to my Saturday blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching, whether at the beginning, middle, or end. Whatever I want, because I’m petty that way.
This week I finished up Knock Knock, Boys! with recaps of episodes 11-12. This show delighted me with its combination of sweet romance, flawed characters, and frank humor. You can read my final review below.
I also returned to Love for Love’s Sake with a recap of episode 6, where the cute high school BL starts to unravel and the existential dread grows. I love it!
What did I watch this week? My Thai BL cup continues to runneth over, so that’s what you’re getting. Let’s start with a just-past-half-way-point-review of:
The Trainee – ฝึกงานเทอมนี้ รักพี่ได้มั้ย – 2024
Currently airing Thai workplace BL, I’ve watched 7 of 12 episodes.
An aimless young man accidentally becomes an assistant director intern under a short-tempered mentor and falls for him.
Do you like a helpless/competent pairing? Turns out I do
Our trainee is comedically clueless, responding to questions with blank stares or blank nods. He’s the kind of hapless character whose passivity leads him from one adventure to the next, stumbling through tasks he is not equipped to handle.
His mentor is understandably frustrated. The poor guy is in charge of seemingly everything, and now he has a non-communicative intern to babysit.
Our trainee has an unexpected kink for getting scolded. Or more likely for rarely bestowed praise. These heart-fluttering feelings of love and the scolding give our aimless intern a direction to go in. He’s inspired to try harder and do better to get more of that sweet, sweet praise.
The story is mainly our intern’s story so far, so we don’t have a lot of insights into the mentor. This is a Thai BL though, so he either likes him and doesn’t know it/hasn’t shown it, or he’s going to fall hard soon with any luck.
The romance is a slow burn, which goes into the “pro” column for me. If we start with characters who don’t see each other romantically and by the end they’re completely in love, then I’m in love too.
Supporting our blank-eyed trainee are four other interns working in different departments. They have their own personality quirks, competency levels, and character growth. They’re a great support group for our blank-eyed intern, and their efforts to lead each other make good comedy.
I’m most familiar with our lead actors, Off and Gun, from Not Me
(Which I will get back to recapping someday I swear.)
The plot couldn’t be more different, this is an office romance while Not Me was a thriller, and the characters seem very different too. In their essentials, however, we still have Gun as the naive one doing his best and Off as the jaded, world-weary one irritated with him.
They are good at playing these characters, and I like seeing them in a different setting with a different tone.
But at no point in Not Me did Gun wander around in a short jean jumper. His clothing reminds me of the odd styling choices of many a cdrama heroine and I love it. He’s much weirder than most BL leads, occasionally speaking with a strange high-pitched voice and struggling to do basic tasks. I like a good weirdo and am happy to see such a shameless one here.
Off is closer to his Not Me character, though thankfully less violent. He’s serious, stern, hard-working, and independent. That’s fine because a relationship can only handle so much weird. But I’m interested to see what we’ll learn about him in the show’s second half.
But there are reasons this may not be your cup of weird
The tone of this show is different from most Thai comedies I’ve watched, not over-the-top silly but more absurd and deadpan. A lot of the humor comes from our trainees facing problems they either can’t understand or are out of their skill set. That or people trying to handle unreasonable situations and people reasonably.
Because of that and the focus on the characters at work, they sometimes feel more like caricatures than characters. Neither of our leads would make appealing real-life partners, but they also don’t exist in real life. Real people are more complicated and layered. But you may find them frustrating, and it’s better not to take them seriously.
I’m thankful for not hearing the Fred Flinstone scrambling sound effect, but you may get tired of the computer error noise that gets plenty of use. There’s no winning with Thai BL sometimes.
If you’re okay with these things, I recommend you give it a try! Right now this is probably my favorite airing show.
As I mentioned, I finished:
Knock Knock, Boys! – Knock Knock, Boys! บ้านหนุ่มโสด โหมดพร้อมเลิฟ – 2024
Recently aired Thai sharehouse BL with 12 episodes.
A young rich virgin offers a deal to his three housemates, if one of them gets him together with his crush he’ll pay their rent for the year.
This show had heart, humor, and sex education
I gave the set-up in my initial review, but as a quick recap, we’ve got one house and four guys who moved in for various reasons. One was escaping a mysterious situation with a maybe girlfriend, another had just moved out of his ex-boyfriend’s place, another needed to be closer to school so that he’d maybe attend, and the last was trying to escape a smothering mother.
Just as I hoped, the show focused on all their reasons for moving in and how they helped each other grow. They become a lovely little supportive family. There’s also a nice supporting cast there to help them along, offer good advice, and even have little character arcs.
Our characters went through some unpleasant things, but the show never lingered on them or got too dark. Instead, it showed how people can get through these things with love and support. Even when characters were upset with each other, the show took the characters’ feelings seriously while not taking the situation seriously. It was more fun than heart-wrenching to watch them go through it.
The show also continued to be about sex and acceptance. I’ve never seen a show talk more about sex, while not showing much sexual activity (more on that later). The message was that everyone’s sexuality and journey are their own, and no one else gets to decide for them.
Also, despite not being explicit, this show has one of the most realistic sex scenes I’ve seen. IFYNYN.
I’m not kidding about the found family
We’ve got the two “daddies”, Thanwa and Peak. Thanwa is a born nurturer, cooking breakfast every morning and offering emotional support. He’s struggling to support himself financially, facing the very adult problem of following his unpaying passion or settling for a stable job that interests him less. Peak has work figured out, but he’s emotionally dense, conflict-avoidant, and struggling to stand up for himself.
Our “sons” are Latte and Almond. Latte is charming and carefree, too carefree because he sleeps through his alarm and misses school. Almond has lived the opposite of a carefree life, coddled by a strong, rich, well-intentioned mother. Moving out is his chance to finally live life how he wants, despite his nervous fears.
The couples were adorable. The four of them were adorable. And the show focused nearly as much on this family and their friends as it did on the couples.
The reason you might not love this show the way I did
As mentioned, the characters talk about sex and their sexuality openly and even go to sex shops, but it isn’t ultimately that raunchy. The romances are more on the sweet side. If you want something with more edge and more skinship, this may not be for you.
Peak’s journey was long and hard. I appreciated seeing a flawed character deal with something difficult. In real life, I’ve seen people deal with similar situations, and it sucks. If you don’t want that level of frustrating realism, this might not be for you.
I loved the show and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to most people. You can always read my recaps to decide if it’s your thing too.
I also finished:
Love Sea – ต้องรักมหาสมุทร – 2024
Recently aired Thai BL with 10 episodes.
A rich author is sent to an island for rest and relaxation but gets busy in bed with a local.
I’ve said a lot about the above two shows but here I’ve got less to say and some of it I already covered in my initial review.
To recap, we’ve got a cold rich guy who has been through a lot of trauma and doesn’t trust love.
He meets a cheeky, responsible, kind man in the countryside and they start an intense sexual relationship. So intense they decide to continue it when our rich guy needs to return to the city.
Once in the city, we lose the beautiful scenery of the countryside and the spicy scenes. I don’t demand explicit scenes in dramas but since it was the initial basis of their connection, it felt weird they were gone. The focus turns instead to the country guy rescuing Prince Bratty from his privileged but unhappy and unhealthy life. It follows all the tropes, and the plot doesn’t do anything too unique.
Despite that, it has confusing moments. The writing is weak and sometimes moves from one trope to the next without showing any character motivation for getting there. Important things seemed to be decided or happen out of nowhere. I also cannot describe the secondary GL couple’s love story to you because I missed it. It was either not shown or I zoned out because it was just a lot of talking. It’s not the actors’ fault, it’s the writing.
Speaking of actors, our lead actor’s abilities are still uneven. Our country guy shows a nice range, but our city guy can’t quite pull off the deeper, harder emotions. If that frustrated you in Love in the Air, you will likely still be frustrated here.
Of course, I didn’t hate it
I’m a sucker for one person getting rescued by another. I’m good for a combination of cold-bratty and warm-responsible. The countryside was beautiful. The rich guy’s relationship with his best gal-pal was sweet.
I also like the music, but I don’t trust my taste in music.
But realistically speaking, I’m only going to recommend this to people who loved these actors in LITA or love these tropes. Otherwise, Thailand is rich with BL and there are other things you can watch.
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