I honestly loved this little show.

As the title states, the greatest thing about this show is that there are great moments where the characters break some BL stereotypes, such as not giving the bottom much of a backbone and having them agree to everything their top says. Now, I would give the story a 10/10, but I didn't because there are times where the writers did falter and add in unnecessary, unhealthy BL tropes. My theory is that unfortunately some people love these tropes, so maybe they felt like they had to add them to make the show more appealing.

But anyway, lets get to it.

(spoilers)
STORY/CHARACTERS

This is a very simple, lighthearted story. There are bits of angst here and there, but overall, it's very easy to watch.
Both main couples are in an enemies-to-lovers situation, but even though the trope is the same, each plot is handled differently and that was honestly great to see! It didn't feel redundant or boring to have to switch between the couples.

As I mentioned earlier, one aspect I really liked was that Teng and Poon (the bottoms of the relationships) stood their ground a lot of the time. See, it's common in BLs to have the bottoms, or "ukes" if you're used to yaoi, give up and do whatever the top says. Maybe they fight a little bit, but then they go along with it anyway. Teng and Poon were refreshing to watch because neither does that with their eventual love interest. In Teng's case, we see that he does do it with his current boyfriend, but the show does a fantastic job showing us that he current boyfriend, Tan, is a piece of shit and that we're supposed to see this couple as unhealthy. Hell, there's even a point when Teng refers to their relationship as toxic, which is rare to do in BLs.

So a lot of the times, the dialogue and actions are FANTASTIC. There's even a moment when Mayom tells Teng that he doesn't have to tell him anything and that he's fine with him meeting up with Tan because he trusts him. This may seem small, but once again, in BLs we'd have moments where the bottom is speaking too much to try and convince the top. It's a trope I'm so very tired of seeing. But hearing this conversation and seeing Mayom being the one to simply state that was so very nice to see.


I also loved most of the characters and their relationships with one another. In BLs, it's common to not see strong friendships between the main character and his friend(s). Usually, the friend(s) disappears from the story and so does the importance of the friendship. In real life, having a good friend help you with your relationship problems is important. And I loved that they kept that in this show. We got a lot of good moments between Mayom and Poon, who have been friends since high school. We even see the three comic relief chefs have cute, wholesome moments with Mayom and Poon.

And about Tan and Teng's relationship: I thought it was handled pretty well and realistically. I've ALWAYS wanted a BL story where the person (it's almost always the bottom) finally breaks up with their toxic boyfriend and ends up with someone much better. I did like that they spent a lot of time with Tan's behavior, because some of the stuff he did was similar to stuff you'd see the top (or "seme") do in just about any other BL out there. They really honed in the idea that his actions are not okay and how manipulative that person can be to the point where they have someone wrapped around their little finger for *FIVE YEARS*.

Now, aspects of the story I did not like:

I was fine with Athip's and Poon's plot and I felt like they had a good start. However, Athip, who's this annoying guy that seems to have some control problems (hinted that it has to do with having to raise his niece), never really gets reprimanded for some of his actions. When they do start dating, Athip changes. But then half way through, he goes back to his old ways. Which is fine. So long as when they do get back together, he apologizes, sees what he did wrong, and actually change.

Except that doesn't really happen. When he says sorry, for some reason Poon is also apologizing? For what?? Poon did what he had to do which was break off the relationship and get another job else where. I thought having Poon apology was gross.

I also was not crazy about how Amy's character was represented. I don't mind the Evil Female Character trope where the girl tries to break up the gay relationship. At the same time however, I can see how it can be misogynistic. And, once again, I didn't mind her character at first. But then they kept up with the "bumbling, annoying" girl schtick for way too long. I would be even more peeved if she was the only female character or if there weren't other great female characters like Pirada and Ping.

Also, as I mentioned before: there are some really strong moments, but then there are some weak, trope-y as hell moments. For instance, we had the great conversation about trust with Mayom and Teng, and soon afterwards, we get that adorable video from Teng. But then soon afterwards, without Teng's permission, Mayom takes Teng's phone and starts a live stream on Teng's YT channel where he announces that they're dating. It's so out of the blue because for a good chunk of the story, Mayom respectfully maintains some distance between him and Teng. So for him to suddenly do that felt very off and pretty much out of character. It is something a top would do in a stereotypical BL though, and I feel like it was the production just trying to add some dumb tropes in there.

There's also the part when Athip was trying to win Poon back. That felt out of place and cheese-y as hell with the whole colored sugar idea that his niece very randomly came up with. The issue with Athip is that he was constantly in his niece's business. He learned not to do that anymore early on and it seemed like he learned his lesson. So it honestly made no sense for Athip to now hunt Poon down the way he did. They had him revert back to his old self. At this point, I didn't really care for their relationship anymore.

But they did have this great moment where even after getting back together, Poon maintains his independence and decides not to go back to work at Athip's. Because of how BLs/yaoi works, I totally expected Poon to go back. But he didn't! And that was a great writing choice. But their relationship writing-wise was pretty much all over the place in the last 2-3 episodes.

MUSIC

Nothing to write home about. It was good enough for the show, especially for a small production show.
As you can probably tell, Mayom and Teng were my favorite character- hell, their actors are my favorite too. So unsurprisingly, I really like their theme song.

However, the use of piano and/or guitar renditions of Christmas songs in some BLs lately is so very weird to me. And there's one guitar song they played during the more woeful moments in the show that was so very obviously a Christmas song. As a westerner in a very Christian based culture (USA), I thought that was a weird choice lol.

ACTING

Once again, for a small production, I thought the acting was great! Some of them I could totally see being in bigger, more costly productions, like Tay's actor for example.

Now, I watched Gen Y 1 and 2 before watching this show. That director clearly loved stunting some of the actor's talents, because I thought Bonus's (who plays Teng here and Tong in Gen Y) acting in Gen Y was pretty stiff at times. Same with Tora, who plays Mayom here and Pok in Gen Y. I think they did great with Gen Y being their first acting gig and having to work with that director, but like I said, I thought they could've used more work.

But then seeing Bonus and Tora in this show made me realize they were better at acting than I thought, especially Bonus. Mind you, this show was filmed *before* Gen Y 2.

There are a lot of actors I'd love to see in BLs again. Or just about any show period. I loved Boss (Athip's actor) and Pete (Poon's actor) as well as Pirada's actress.

SUMMARY

I highly recommend checking this show out! Especially since it's short and easy to watch. There are some bumpy moments, but the great and cute moments are totally worth it.