This turned out to be a drama that had an at least somewhat interesting sounding premise but was in fact just a total mess. So many plot holes, so much unnecessary drama, the acting was lacking, the OST was laughable, there just isn't much positive to say about it, unfortunately. I felt like this was yet another wannabe KinnPorsche, a severely watered down version without any of what made KinnPorsche such a hit. All in all, if you skip this drama, you won't be missing much.

The biggest issue of this drama was the plot. So much of it is just completely nonsensical. Why on earth does Palm need to act as Nueng's bodyguard when they could just hire bodyguards like Nueng does later on? What even qualifies Palm to be a bodyguard in the first place? He's a teenage fisherman, for crying out loud! How do all the "pranks" at school go on for as long as they do without some kind of intervention? And if it was that bad, why didn't Nueng just switch schools? It's not as if his family couldn't afford it. Or why not get a private tutor or something? I don't know. The fact that this was even set in high school just seemed weird to me, especially as the drama went on. Like yes, it makes complete sense that this kid is running a business empire and attending high school at the same time. Right.

Moving on from that, there's the lack of security that allows Nueng's mom to get shot thus requiring Nueng and Palm to go on the run in the first place. I mean, I would think that after her husband was killed in front of her that she would have a bodyguard and that security would have been significantly tightened, but maybe that's just me. Nueng and Palm run off to stay with Palm's mom who he hasn't seen since she left him and his father when he was a kid. There are only two purposes to this arc: to develop the romance between Nueng and Palm and for Nueng to "mature". The problem here is that we haven't seen Nueng and Palm really together for a romance to have developed. The class difference sets them apart and aside from staring into each other's eyes repeatedly, which we're apparently to take as how they fell in love, they don't interact a huge amount in a way where they would get to know each other on a personal level. But apparently they're madly in love. Okay, whatever. The second purpose is for Nueng to mature and essentially toughen up which amounts to him performing manual labor, learning how to ride a motorcycle, and paying off a loan shark. You know, super hard, transformative stuff there. The rest of the time is spent running around with Palm on the beach, apparently having the time of his life. Um, did you forget the mother that you claim to love was just shot and is in a coma? He even makes a comment at one point about it being the happiest time of his life. Your words and actions are not matching up.

In order to pay off the above mentioned loan shark, Nueng uses an ATM to withdraw the necessary money and rather than leaving town immediately, because that would be the logical thing to do, nope, he and Palm stick around, which inevitably leads to Palm's mother's death. Nueng then proceeds to break up with Palm essentially twice, the second time successfully by putting sleeping pills in his beer because nothing could go wrong with that and leaves him a note with the whole BS reasoning of go find someone who will make you happy, blah blah blah, I absolutely hate when they pull that kind of crap. It is the lamest excuse in the book and its supposed to be all noble because you're putting their happiness first but its really not. You're making a decision for them without their input and that's not fair to anyone.

Anyway, Nueng heads home and hires bodyguards for himself to follow him around which, again with this plot, what was the point of them running off when they could have just hired bodyguards in the first place? He takes over his family's business because, yes, an eighteen year old who up to this point has done nothing to help run any part of it is going to know what to do. Sure. And while I get that he's more than a little pissed at his uncle, I would be too if he tried to kill me and my mother, baiting and antagonizing him is probably not the smartest thing to do. There's also the slight matter that part of the reason that he goes back is to help Palm's father and throughout a good portion of the following events, he seems to completely forget about him. Palm and Nueng are, naturally, reunited. Turns out Palm has been following Nueng around which, I had to laugh at, because he honestly couldn't be more obvious if he tried. There's one shot where he's sitting on his motorcycle a grand total of maybe four feet from the car Nueng is in, staring at him. Nueng should probably find some better bodyguards.

Following more drama and after getting shot which led to what I assume was supposed to be an emotional scene but was more comedic, in my opinion, because, yes, when someone gets shot, the correct response is to shake them repeatedly, not put pressure on the wound, Palm breaks up with Nueng this time by leaving him a note telling him to not waste his time on him and not to look for him. I'm rolling my eyes at the stupidity of these two. At this point, I don't care what happens, I'm just ready for this drama to be over. Of course they eventually get their priorities figured out and end up together, but holy crap is it a ride and a half and not a worthwhile one.

Besides the plot, again, there's the absurdity of Palm as a bodyguard. Obviously he knows how to fight to some extent and use a gun, but its not like he has any special skills or training. And his fighting skills range from he can absolutely kick ass at times to he gets taken out with extreme ease depending how the plot needs to play out, so there's a total lack of consistency there. He's also a hot head, which is not a great character trait for a bodyguard. I admire the fact that he wants to protect the weak and his heart is absolutely in the right place, but also, honey, you need to use your head. He just reacts without a second thought and in several cases does more harm than good. In essence, the only thing that makes him a good bodyguard is his love and loyalty for Nueng.

There's also Nueng's uncle, the one responsible for all the murder and chaos going on. I like the actor, I thought he did a good job with the character, but I thought the character was lacking, especially the background. There was just enough there for me to understand the level of hatred he felt to want to kill his brother and his family. Not being the golden child doesn't quite cut it, at least not the way they did it. If that's the angle you're going with, you need to delve into it more to make it believable and make the audience understand why. Just making him jealous, greedy and deranged is boring and predictable. I want to know what makes him tick, what exactly pushed him over the edge. That's where things get interesting.

In general though, I didn't feel like any of the characters were particularly well developed or interesting. I found Chopper to be the most compelling, but frankly I think that's because of Perth's acting. There just didn't seem to be all that much to most of them. They felt fairly stereotypical without much to set them apart and make them unique. There wasn't anything there to make me care about them, again, aside from Chopper who I felt was the most sympathetic character.

The OST was weird. What is with the Christmas music in some of these dramas? I legitimately want to know what the reasoning is behind choosing these songs. Silent Night was one of them, I think, and there was at least one other. And then there was some random country song too. Do they just spin a wheel and whatever song it lands on is thrown in there? I don't know. There were some actually decent songs, but nothing spectacular, and the ones that didn't fit stuck out like a sore thumb.

The acting was very divided. On the one hand, you had Pond and Phuwin who I am sorry to say were the weakest links in this drama. Neither one was strong but it was especially conspicuous when they had any scenes with Perth who is an extremely talented actor. They were also outshone by Chimon and Nat who are also quite talented. I just didn't find their performances to be very compelling, their chemistry together was fairly lackluster, and neither one was great with the more intense or emotional scenes. Pond is just very wooden. His expressions seem very limited and he just overall lacks emotion. Phuwin, bless his heart, sometimes seemed like he was trying way too hard. I can appreciate that he was trying, but it just did not work. On the flip side, Perth, Chimon and Nat were all great and I wish they had more screen time, particularly Perth and Nat. I would have loved to have seen their characters' father/son relationship explored more. I also would have liked to have seen more of a build up of Chopper and Ben's relationship. It kind of went 0 to 60 there towards the end. I would have been far more interested and invested in their relationship if more time had been devoted to it.

I was tentatively hopeful going into this drama. It sounded like it was going to be way more high stakes, action oriented than it really was. Even with characters dying and getting injured, for some reason, it didn't feel high stakes. If the plot had been tighter, had fewer holes, and was better developed, it might have been a decent drama. And if the characters had been better developed with more background, more information as to who they were as people, I might have cared more about what was happening to them. But as it stands, I found this drama to be extremely underwhelming and it is not one that I would recommend.