Welcome to the first Safe House of 2022, advertised as Couples’ Getaway, because unlike previous seasons where GMMTV had one or two shipped couples and a handful of others, this season had 5 pairs – OffGun, EarthMix, JimmySea, NeoLouis and JoongDunk. It was also a season where the gimmick was called ‘Best Bro Secret’: each member had a best bro looking out for them, sending messages through the producers, making their bros or others do tasks, and so on.

Another notable thing this season is that not all the members were around for all days, with poor Mix missing out on most of the week, joining only on the evening of the fifth of seven days because of the internship for his vet degree. Off and Earth were also gone for a couple of days, meaning there were technically only two days where the whole cast was present in the house. All the members, when they left the house, were replaced by full-sized pillows of them, which led to some hilarious conspiracy theories online.

https://twitter.com/Yoonglesru/status/1506479555439394823?s=20&t=dony5UK0cTxmxhDpASLeaA

Another fun fact, the filming location this time is a familiar one if you’ve watched A Tale of A Thousand Stars (Tian’s House), Tonhon Chonlatee (Ton’s house) or Don’t Say No (Fiat’s House).

On to the Highlights!

Ghost Ships are Back!

We didn’t get as many ghost shipping opportunities last time around thanks to the frat house energy of SS2, but this season we found ghost ships in unexpected places. For example, most of us spent the whole season thinking that Sea would be Earth’s best bro, because Sea was often hanging around with him, and the two seemed to be bonding a lot over the week. Viewers assumed that either Sea was his best bro… or he had a crush, so when it was revealed that Sea was not Earth’s best bro, well, there’s a potential ghostship right there.

Mix being the cuddly person that he is wasted no time in snuggling up with Gun on multiple occasions, which is the cutest thing in the world. It’s not quite ghost-shippy, because fans already see OffGun as Mix’s parents (GMM family trees are hilarious and fascinating), but it’s worth mentioning all the same.

I will also mention Mix x Earth’s Pillow as a ghost ship.

https://twitter.com/btsEMx/status/1507366216331059203?s=20&t=VWWs5iXSt5yo2DfVs_XT9Q

And then there’s whatever was happening between Jimmy and Neo, but that deserves a whole section of its own.

JimmyNeo (aka that Meme of A Person Walking Away from Someone with A Trumpet)

Jimmy will probably never be the same again after these seven days of Safe House when Neo Trai decided to make him his own personal encyclopaedia. There was probably not a single day when Neo wouldn’t ask Jimmy something completely inane, or find some new way to bother him like a kid in a playground pulling a girl’s pigtails. Jimmy even tweeted that he dreamt of Neo’s ‘khun mor’ (“doctor”).

You Can Do It!

There was no ‘song’ of this season, no Lonely Mode or Too Cute to Handle, but Joong and Louis have golden voices and every time they’d start impromptu singing sessions was an absolute blessing.

But if Season One gave us the infamous ‘te te te te’ chant, Season 3 has given us the ‘Khun Tam Dai’ (you can do it!) chant, which even got a tiktok remix, so there’s that.

And with the chant, of course comes… the dancing.

Or, in the case of this season, the twerking.

I can only blame Earth for this too, because it’s a move we had to see him pull many times on Season One and many times after, but by the end of the week, everyone in the house was twerking. It became their signature move. Neo literally taught poor Sea Tawinan, the quietest member of the house this season, to do it over the course of the week. In a recent event, Off Jumpol was twerking. There’s no escaping it.

Complete Chaos

This season was so packed full of fun and memorably chaotic moments that I can’t begin to describe them all, but here are some of my favourites in no particular order:

The fact that Off ended up being Gun’s best bro (destiny, anyone) and how his tasks for others included one of them being required to call Gun cute the entire day.

This game where they played a cushion version of Musical Chairs but they were all dancing around the floor:

https://twitter.com/kayiluiz/status/1506914426162536450?s=20&t=VWWs5iXSt5yo2DfVs_XT9Q

Joong being scared half to death by the musical sting played in the house to indicate a ‘Best Bro’ message or task is comedy gold, sorry Joong!

https://twitter.com/JUMPOLITTOLS/status/1508126189004615680?s=20&t=RQkmnuE1RsvgEUfapam8eQ

This ghost story telling session that just got weird

https://twitter.com/justababii/status/1511122782066659328?s=20&t=o0q52EA_l5nqpuk8sCXuug

But as always, at the end of the day…

The best thing about any season of SafeHouse is watching the boys grow closer over the course of the week. With some of them who are already close, it’s seeing the ways they operate together, whether as simple and cute as JoongDunk posing for the camera any chance they got, or as heavy as Off giving Earth some wise advice about the pressures of the industry they were part of (this being after Earth had to face toxicity from ‘fans’ who didn’t like him being close or cuddly with other people in the house), or heartwarming like the whole house gathering around to cheer up a teary Louis during the last live. It was great to watch how they all developed very real connections.

The last live of SafeHouse, like all seasons, included the customary costume party, their last dinner together, and ended with a performance of a song that Louis and Joong wrote together, and of course when it was over, none of us were ready for it to end.