MY BROMANCE THE SERIES - REVIEW OF EPISODES 01-04

I'm basically watching this BL lakorn almost entirely because of Cooper Patpasit (he plays the lead role Golf). He isn't classically handsome, in fact, there's something simian about his features, but what an extremely sexy young man! And the fact that he can act actually makes the four episodes watchable; His acting holds up large swathes of this somewhat plodding drama, and his presence and charm make him a budding star.

Cooper with his lovely long, lean torso

This 20 year old isn't pretty-pretty but he makes up for it with a 20 year old's nubile, athletic build, an asset that was quickly showcased in the diving scene way up in the debut episode - and then again and again - which makes My Bromance captivating and exciting to watch - and yes, a bit more adult (than let's say Make It Right), if only marginally so.
I think this series treads the middle ground between Grey Rainbow, which was thoughtful and thought-provoking, and the pure tooth-rotting fluff of Make It Right. My Bromance doesn't have the depth of the former, no philosophical or religious basis, nor is it entirely devoid of realistic detail like the latter. What it has is plenty of family drama that at times feels totally unnecessary, and diffuses the buildup of the love between its leads.
I think the makers have mistaken a convoluted family structure for depth - it's not profound or complex, merely tedious and confusing. For instance to have Golf's mother have a twin sister who lives with Golf. Why twin? Why not just a sister who could be played by some other actress, not the same actress that doubles up as Golf's mother? Then Golf's mother is a manic depressive, who commits suicide, after fighting with her husband over a non-existent mistress. The father is also sick - there are scenes of him being attended to in hospital - overall there's a heavy sense of illness hanging in the air that forebodes tragedy - so no fluff here.
Now, the aunt also has a rather shrill daughter who lives under the same roof as Golf and acts like a sister, but isn't, She doesn't have a father. There's drama over the house which has to be sold, etc and so forth and it goes on and on. It certainly doesn't help that even the flashbacks aren't told chronologically but flash back and forth, with repeats.

Does one need to watch a tapir fall in love?

The casting of Kaii is also hugely problematic for me - firstly, Kaii is physically not as attractive as he should be. I'm trying to reach for a polite way to say that he looks like a baby tapir but I can only go so far as to say Kaii is not slim. The face isn't even agreeable, and the beaky nose and sly eyes make him look devious and scheming when he needs to look vulnerable. I don't know what he has done to deserve this plum role - but it certainly isn't his acting ability. The role cries out for Oat or Min Thitipat of Love Sick, someone with a bit of fragility and innocence.

His looks and appeal are cruelly brought into focus by having his character be a magnet to no less than three suitors - the series opens with one American suitor proposing marriage to him; Jaguar plays the student council that courts him in school; then there's Golf. All three are very attractive alpha types, making it unlikely that any of them, not to mention all of them, falling for Kaii.
And all this could be overlooked if there was even one jot of chemistry between Cooper and Kaii - alas not a quiver of chemistry. Zero. Zilch.
Cooper might as well be making love to a particularly lumpen body pillow for the total lack of electricity.

MAKE IT RIGHT THE SERIES - REVIEW

I hadn't planned on being hooked to Make It Right The Series (MIR), because its trailers had promised a formulaic follow-up to the hugely successful (and iconic) Love Sick The Series (LS) which ended last year (also by Thailand's Mcot Station). As predicted, MIR has hewed lazily to the boys' love genre conventions, casting a few extremely pretty boys to enact what is less of a plot than a trail of tropes: Confused Uke (Fuse) ensnaring Passionate Seme (Tee); Nerd (Book) falling for Younger Flirt (Frame); Out&Proud converting Straight-for-Now, and in these combos, throw in some third parties (in Thai, these are called "third wheels"); and then stir in a few disposable girls into a sweetly fluffy meringue of a story (MIR, like LS is adapted from a Thai online novel). 

After watching the first four episodes (subtitled in English by fans), I can assure you that the story is just as twig-thin as any of the cast's scrawny arms. It's hard not to compare MIR with LS, as the two are almost identical - I would go so far as to say that MIR is the production team's attempt at getting LS right, ironing out some of its wrinkles and creases and smoothing out the edges (for instance, they made MIR a lot more racy, with sex in Ep 1, and lots of skin - whereas LS muddled along and it wasn't till towards the end of Season 1 before Noh and Phun actually got down to business). However, because of its similar territory, MIR suffers in comparison, possibly because it comes later, and thus carries the weight of having few/no surprises/ novelties. It's obviously mining a formula (as many are doing - even the recent Chinese webseries Addiction was inspired by LS) that had proven successful - I hope that I will be proven wrong in due course with a compelling twist or two - but I'm not holding my breath.

Of course what's really working, and credit should be given where it's due, is the excellent casting as usual. The four main leads (plus quite a few more in the supporting cast) are spot-on heartbreakers (but then Thailand is like a factory that keeps churning impossibly cute boys out - I need to take out all my savings and move there pronto!) that give MIR its sparkle and life. Again, this is like LS - you don't really watch it for the plot, but for those coyly seductive moments and intense looks of longing that only the really young can carry off - that's the heavy lifting there. The rest is merely working out the various moments/situations where Peak, 16 (as Fuse), Boom, 15 (as Tee), Ohm 15 (as Frame) and Toey, 20 (as Book) these looks can dart those deadly stares into the camera or wrap their nubile limbs fetchingly around each other. For now, Tee has emerged the real star - he's like the new Captain isn't he? Tee represents a new type, very Chinese-looking with the most sculpted of noses and full juicy lips. 

I think fans are watching because MIR fills the void that LS left - it's a pale shadow of LS, but it's a familiar shadow. MIR has to make it on its own merits to matter, and to prevent any more comparisons to LS. 

MIN THITIPAT POOKBOONCHERD (Part 2)

In which H shares a few choice TIDBITS ABOUT MIN

1. 

    Kimmon: Min unfollowed Kimmon on social media around May 2015, after their Sing For Nepal concert. There was a long text post on Twitter (I don’t understand Thai), which I’m guessing ended things, not in a pretty way.

I don’t know what happened between them, but after this “breakup”, Min never attended any event with Kim alone again. Just think how close they were back in those early Freshy Camp days.

2.   Min only agreed to go on the Lovesick On Tour gig to Udon (with Buff4) with Na’s company.

3.   Around November, Min also unfollowed Alone (on social media). Alone was this guy that took care of Min and Oat, and drove them to the set, took them home, basically a chaperone. I consider this surprising, since they pretty much went everywhere together for months.

4.   So after the MinOat fanmeet, after the end of Lovesick, the only person from that whole thing Min kept in touch with is Na. And Oat. Min still seemed OK with Oat, replying to each other’s Tweets, and they hung out together at Christmas eve. 

THE STRANGENESS OF MIN THITIPAT POOKBOONCHERD

MinOat, the ship that sunk, isn't going anywhere

Notes on MinOat, Namin, and the strange ongoing discussion with H on this mysterious boy actor.

Born June 19, 2000, Min is quite a strange young man. 

Unlike his peers in the world of Thai lakorn, he keeps his distance on social media. There are very few clues as to what he’s really like in real life.

D: I first fell in love with Mick, the character Min plays in Lovesick The Series Season 2. Three of four episodes in, Mick came to supersede every other character in the series for me. It made me want to see him in real life – and so I went to the fanmeet in Bangkok, my first ever. This was the MinOat fanmeet, where they gave out the MinOat 2016 calendar. 
Oat is another teen actor from the series.

I was very disappointed at seeing Min. He seemed aloof, cold and distant, so much so that his personal beauty, unaided by the terrible styling, couldn’t hold me in the too-cold theatrette, and I made off halfway through the strained performance.

In December, I went back to Bangkok for the Lovesick final concert Lovesick Love Actually. This time round, I found Min to be much improved. But he seems nice and cheerful only with Nanoob Napian Permsombat (November 14 1995), who plays Mick’s sweetheart (for lack of a better word) Ohm in the series. They seemed close, in body language and verbally, with fans after the concert ended.

Min is rather special in many ways; Sometimes he seems troubled even.

H: From what I saw online, Min looked more vibrant than Oat at MinOat, and he took the lead and was proactive throughout the concert and fanmeet.  Oat seemed sheepish, less confident.

To be honest, I’m glad to hear that Min is only cheerful around Na. I didn’t really ship NaMin until their “secret” date in October. That was way after Lovesick ended its run and after the MinOat Fanmeet, which by the way was a huge discouragement to OhmMick shippers.

Min hung around with Na more and more, and he’s changed quite a bit since then. Min and Na didn’t start out this close, not even when the series was airing. I don’t know what happened, but something must have happened right then, around October.

WIN'S THOUGHTS ON THE CHRISTMAS EVE PARTY

From Win's Point Of View

I can’t remember all the reasons why I agreed to go to Phun's party on Christmas Eve. Mark hadn't wanted to go, and said that I always let Mick arm-twist me into doing things that made me uncomfortable. 

I didn't want to tell Mark that it hurt me even more to see Mick so sad that he wasn't talking to Ohm anymore. I had hoped that seeing Ohm at the party would break that wall of silence –maybe they could sort things out after that. It's been a year at least!  

It wasn’t even a fun party, just the usual Friday faces but all grown up now – most of them have become people I used to know, not people I actually know. The first person I saw as we entered the hall was Noh, grinning and dancing, making a fool of himself, as usual. 

Then Per was suddenly and silently before me. (Mark had left my side to get us drinks from the bar.) Had I not initiated “hello”, Per would just have slid by without even acknowledging me. I froze up at once with upset; Per's further tepid attempt to make lame banter made it impossible for me to detain him any longer, so obvious and strong was his impulse to just bolt from me. 

“Where’s Ohm?” he asked, not looking at me, but scanning over the heads of the crowd. “Did you see Ohm?” he asked, almost rhetorically. 

I felt his indifference keenly; It was like I wasn’t even his friend, someone I had known since childhood, a neighbour as close as family. It was like he wasn't someone I spoke to every other day for years and years, and studied with, and confided in.

It’s really hard to bear, as if a huge chunk of myself was being ripped out and obliterated.

I whispered to Mark to just get me out of there; I will never go to another of these Friday parties again. 

Mick’s First/Last Kiss

Mick’s First/Last Kiss

I knew Ohm would be there at Phun and Noh’s Christmas eve party. Phun and Noh threw their party every year since Phun turned 21, and Phun’s dad had given Phun the old teak house which was set well back from Sathorn Road, hidden in a knot of mango trees. Noh had moved in with him a Christmas after – that was a major event – and then the parties started. It had become a tradition for all the old boys of Friday College to catch up at this party.

This Christmas eve, when I arrived with Win and Mark at around 11 pm, Ohm was already there. I hadn’t seen him in two years, but I spotted him right away, from across doorway, the center of an adulating circle, as he always was. Standing propped up next to the makeshift bar, Ohm was laughing raucously at some convoluted joke he had told, drink in hand and surrounded by the other members in is band, and some other guys I couldn’t recognize. He looked well – being in a hit band suited him  – or maybe he was very well be high on something; One really couldn’t tell with Ohm, even I couldn’t tell. Anyway, he didn’t think see us come in.

Just after midnight, we decided to leave. Mark was dying to go to a club to get away from what he thought was a pretentious party, to go and really celebrate with his other friends in Soi 4. So we said our long, drunken goodbyes to Phun and Noh and the others making a huge detour of the lovely old house. And just before we stepped into the velvety darkness of the trees in the garden, Ohm pushed up to us, ignoring Mark and Win, he took my face in his hands and kissed me on the mouth: “Merry Christmas, stranger,” he said softly, against my cheek.

Ohm tasted of wine and gum.

I half thought he might be wanting to pass on an E to me, as he used to do, but there was no pill in my mouth. I saw Win register this (his eyebrows went up the slight fraction his politeness allowed) but pretended he didn’t notice. Mark already had quite a few drinks and really didn’t notice.

On Christmas Day, quite hungover still at 3 pm, Win, Mark and I went to watch a movie at Quartier Cine-Art. I’d been thinking all night and all day about Ohm’s kiss: What could it have meant? Was he even conscious? Why didn’t he say anything else to me? Did he think I wouldn’t mind? I was thinking so hard about Ohm that I couldn’t follow the plot of the interminably long sci-fi blockbuster. Was it just the drinks, or drugs, or the sense that the year had ended, that things have ended, that our youth had ended that made him do that? Because Ohm was one of those that could drive perfectly straight even when stoned (he just gripped the wheel a little bit too tight, and leaned stiffly forward). And I’ve witnessed him order a three course- French dinner when he was completely off his face (that was when that year when we came back from our holiday in Paris and fell in love with everything French for a year). He didn’t eat any of it, but he ordered it, a little insistently, perhaps, and sat through the meal, drinking the wine automatically, chattering brightly as usual.

Imagine my surprise when we actually bumped into Ohm in the supermarket right after the movie, when Mark was having a coffee and Win was eating a burger, and I was sucking and chewing on a bubble tea. It was like I had conjured Ohm up by thinking about him non-stop.
Ohm was with Keng, an old friend of ours from Friday, and they were buying beer for yet another party; it was all a bit awkward. I know I wasn’t looking my best. I was aware that Win was studying me, and only Mark seemed blissfully unaware. Keng asked me to join them for that night’s party. “But Win and Mark are making me dinner, and I’ve got to work on my recording tomorrow,” I said. I didn’t want to go because Keng didn’t ask Win or Mark, just me; but mostly because Ohm didn’t ask me. He was talking to Mark intently, in his usual bluster.

The next day afternoon, when I went back to working on my recording at Studio 28, Keng texted.

He said that Ohm gave him my number, and that Ohm told him that we hadn’t been talking for a while.

Me: “It’s been years. Why rake this up now?”
Keng: “You should ask him out for coffee.”
Me: Ohm can call me if he wants to talk, or have coffee or whatever. He knows how to text.”

When what I really wanted to say to Keng was that the Christmas Eve kiss reminded me of Ohm’s first kiss so many years ago. It brought back the smell of his leather sofa where we sat for hours, learning the finer points of the French horn; It brought back the sound of the fountain in his garden when the birds had all gone to sleep; It brought back the sound of his dad's creaking Mercedes Benz (and the day he got his driving license and drove us straight to Rayong); It brought back the always too-sweet chocolate he made me, and which I had drunk anyway, for years; Our first fight at Block F, near the third floor toilet. The very first Christmas, the one which I didn’t manage to give him the Supreme hoodie I had saved up to buy for him.

Ohm had made me who I am today, dry eyed, looking back, unable now to read any of my feelings at all clearly, even when I tried.