Admittedly, this series is perfectly named. It did seem to continue to go on and on endlessly. It was like being adrift in a rudderless boat floating in an ocean of tropes, cliches, banalities, stereotypes, and platitudes. Sooner or later, you would bump into one of them on your way to wherever it was you were supposed to be going. Unfortunately, this series went nowhere because it had nowhere to go to.

Honestly, you have seen this story hundreds of times if you are an avid BL watcher. If not, you will no doubt run across its plot again because it is standard. It is another high school love story between two best friends. Ji (Fluke Pongspat) and Achi (Junior Kajbhunbitt). Both are handsome with each focused on wanting to be successful in different ways. Ji is obviously in love with Achi as he is a bit more overt about it. Achi senses it. Although he likes it, Achi is understandably terrified of reciprocating. This is all such a confusing time for teenage boys.

Eventually, close to when they are going to graduate and not being able to contain the growing sexual tension between them any longer, it erupts into a night of carnal pleasures and sensual passion. However, each was unprepared for the consequences of that night. Both did not want to or know how to deal with the aftermath. Individually, in their own way, each decided to pretend that it did not happen.

Regrettably, that lasted for 10 years, and they remained apart from one another. But not forgotten. Ji became an orthopedic surgeon and Achi rose to become a famous superstar. While they physically kept their distance from one another, the feelings they had for each other remained intact and perhaps got stuck in the cerebral fantasy world of ‘what-might-have-been’. It never went away for either one of them.

So much had happened, of course, in between. Ji devoted his life to study and work. He isolated himself and remained detached and alone. Ji’s mother had passed away while he was studying medicine which left a deep hole in his heart and an almost insurmountable gap in his father’s life. Since then, his father had become a shell of a man. Meanwhile, Achi played the role of a superstar with constant rumors about dating several women but being serious with one as of late. Yet, it all seemed like a charade.

Ji and Achi finally reconnect and while Ji is bitter over being rejected by Achi, he is still in love with him. Achi has never stopped loving him. Yet neither one is able to work up the courage as adults to convey to one other how they honestly feel.

This is obviously a rom-com and is not meant to go deep and it sure does not. The supporting characters are right out of a trope play book. Some of Ji’s doctor associates are more child-like than the children they were taking care of. However, for me the only real character here is, ironically, Ji’s father (Lerwith Sangsith). Not only is he an astonishingly handsome man (almost breathtakingly so) he conveyed the loss of his wife with such deep conviction that it moved me to tears. I could feel how much he loved her that when she died, he died with her. His depression was palpable. It is unfortunate that they did not do more with that as he, while not much on screen, showed such intense emotional sadness. He only comes alive again when he tries to warn his sons not to make the same mistake he did in terms of appreciating and enjoying the connections with the individual they love before time passes by them; no matter who they are in love with. It really was a powerful and pivotal role.

There are just so many issues that continue to plague Thai BLs like this one which befuddles me as to why they persist in repeating them. For nearly 6 episodes, there is this constant bantering between Ji and Achi that circumvents their real feelings that just got to be too much even for a rom-com. Frankly it was tedious to watch. While I understand two people not wanting to talk to each other in high school because of a lack of maturity but waiting 10 years to resume communication seems ludicrous. Why?

By the time they did reconnect, there was honestly no real screen chemistry between the two main leads because they were too busy with all the negative bantering that needed to be done for nearly 7 of the 8 episodes. All of that is simply wasted time. When they finally build up to a love scene, it felt anti-climactic and too little, too late. It felt contrived and yet again silly. And honestly, who makes love with pants on? There simply was no passion. And for Achi to not have known Ji’s mother passed away is a level of disinterest that is beyond the pale, especially from someone who was supposed to be madly in love with him for the past 10 years.

And even if you did wait 10 years, why do you not sit down and TALK immediately? I just do not understand why this fixation to go through every troupe and cliché scene between two people feigning to be upset with one another when we know, and they know, it is all fake. The constant ping-ponging between scenes when they were young to the present was so overused that it got to be more of an annoyance than an enhancement to the story line. This for me was a production weakness that made the whole story overwrought.

I was totally confused by a secondary relationship between Ji’s brother, Ki (Franky Weerapat) and Gumbie (Baan Nakhun). It seemed like Ki had an unrequited attraction to Gumbie but other than a few longing stares at each other, it was like wishful thinking. I am reluctant to even call it a bromance. Frankly, I am not sure what it was, if anything other than a close friendship. As quickly as it developed, that is as quickly as it disappeared. This side story seemed to have no point to it.

You could have had a real story, even a humorous one, if they had TALKED to each other in episode 2 when they first reconnected again, without all the redundant triviality in between. All that did was minimize the underlying issue that these guys struggled with for 10 years. Ji and perhaps more so Achi, but unquestionably both grappled with accepting their gayness and the concept that they loved a guy. Those are the real fundamental issues here. There were certainly references throughout this series to this, sometimes overtly, about how they struggled to try to deal with these issues. Had they dealt with these inclinations earlier, maybe they would not have been so hurt, morose, and maybe less likely to have shut themselves off from the rest of the world for so long. That to me is not something that is ‘funny’. It is sad and should have been treated with the respect it deserves.

To be fair, humor should be and must always be fair-game and allowable. But for me, Ji and Achi had way more anguish than humor in their lives over the 10 years that they both elected to stay away from each other. That time is irretrievable. That is a painful reality which for me is not funny and if Ji and Achi were real, I think they would agree with me. I just do not want that point lost in the enjoyment of this series. And for me personally, I found it hard to appreciate this series for its humor. Perhaps that is why I think the father’s role was so impactful. He made it feel real.

I know that many will no doubt like this series, but I found this series wantoned for its shallowness, use of endlessly tropey and cliché storylines, supporting characters that were superfluously infantile and not funny, the main characters never got to be a couple until the last episode and by that point it was too late, and a supposed secondary couple that was never fully developed into anything meaningful. I also found it quite sad that these two guys, who are otherwise solid and successful, could not bring themselves to communicate with each other. That for me is simply not a subject matter I can find funny.

I wish I had skipped this series.

Rating- 3.0 out of 5

Streaming on- Netflix