Be My Player Two (Thai Series)

Somewhere inside this overlong series, there might have been a good six-episode mini series. What we got was 10 episodes running at least 70 minutes apiece, and by the end I resented the time I had spent on it. My interest shrank with each installment until a potentially fun, undemanding watch became a chore. For all that viewing time, I can’t say I enjoyed even a minute.

The frustrating part is that putting a BL in the gaming world is a fresh idea. The premise sounds promising, and there is some interest in how it begins. Thee, a gamer and streamer with a sharp tongue, loses to an unidentified player and takes the defeat personally. His wounded pride sends him looking for revenge, but tracking down his opponent produces a very different encounter from the one he expects. The player is Soh, a university student: instead of someone who despises him, Thee discovers a timid, unassuming geek and promptly falls for him.

From there, the main storyline follows Thee bringing Soh into his gaming team, encouraging him to believe in himself, and falling in love with him along the way. Unfortunately, I found the central pairing so dull that I had nothing to hold my attention. The actors are cute, but that only goes so far. We have already seen the actor playing Soh do this sort of part—the bashful nerd waiting for someone to save him, love him and wrap him in a hug—and I have had more than enough of it.

Nor does the material surrounding them give the series much life. It keeps shifting between esports, the team, Thee and Soh’s growing romance, Thee’s family relationships and the connections among the teammates. Another couple adds an even more tangled relationship, with an on-and-off antagonism that turns into romance. Their push and pull left me just as indifferent. Outside the central love story, there is little actual development in the relationships, while most of the supporting characters remain too sketchy for me to care about them.

That leaves a very thin story carrying far more running time than it can support. The production is excellent, and the show certainly looks polished, but neither its appearance nor the initial promise could make the premise appeal to me. Judging from the title, and even more so after watching, I think this really only works for viewers who are deeply into gaming. I wish I had known beforehand whether it would be worth such a large investment of time.

I’m not inclined to spend much longer writing about everything that failed to engage me. This simply wasn’t for me: an attractive production, an insubstantial story, a couple I couldn’t get interested in, and hours too much of it. (2/10)