Pit Babe (2023)

In the Pits

I wanted to like Pit Babe. The racing concept, in particular, was intriguing to me as was the action/mystery aspect of the story. The inclusion of several actors that I was familiar with and liked was equally appealing. However, the more I watched, I found the lack of explanation regarding the plot and characters' actions, the poorly developed relationships, and generally awful script to be a major turn off and by the end, I was more just happy that it was over than anything else.

Pit Babe suffers from a mess of a plot combined with terrible writing. It tried too hard to combine multiple genres and failed to do so in a coherent way. I also found the lack of any kind of explanation for things to be very frustrating. I was aware this was based off a novel, but had never read it or looked into it, so I went in blind. I was immediately slightly confused by the whole Alpha concept which was never explained and which became further confusing with the introduction of Pete and Way as Enigmas. The story is apparently part of what's called the Omegaverse which I had no knowledge of and had to go poking around the internet to even get a basic understanding of what it all meant. That was a major strike against this series. You cannot expect people to have necessarily read the source material so there needs to be some kind of explanation woven into the story to at least give a general idea of what's going on. As frustrating as it all was, I eventually just went with it as I had no intention of doing a lot of extra research that I shouldn't have to do in the first place. Aspects of the "senses" that some characters had was also either not properly explained or not explained at all. Why did some have it and others didn't? How exactly did they work? After Charlie's fake death, the fact that Babe's sense was apparently fluctuating between them was equally left unexplained. Again, there was a lack of explanation in general, and that, combined with a number of fairly glaring plot holes, really took away from the story. The first half or so of the series was plagued with a certain level of repetition with Babe finding out something about Charlie that made him question his feelings and kick Charlie out, go crying to Way who pretty clearly was trying to manipulate him, only to discover that it was either an overreaction on his part or Charlie had hidden some piece of information for a good reason and they would eventually reconcile. Some of Alan and Jeff's interactions also felt a bit repetitive at times towards the beginning though less gratingly. I found the ending to be unsatisfying. Tony's dead but what about all the kids and cleaning up the mess he made? What happens with Kenta and Pete? Instead of answering any plot related questions or attempting to wrap up the story, the last ten minutes or so are mainly NSFW scenes or cute scenes between the two main couples. It felt cheap. The pacing was inconsistent. There were a few moments where it got into a good flow, but those were generally pretty short lived. There were far more moments where it just dragged.

This is yet another Thai series that suffered from an overinflated cast. There were too many characters introduced at once and even by the end I still didn't have all of them straight. Because there were so many characters, there was a tendency at times for characters to disappear for a period of time and then suddenly pop back up. That also didn't help with keeping them straight. A number of those characters proved to be superfluous and could have very easily been cut or condensed into one character to make things more cohesive. Besides the two main relationships of Babe/Charlie and Alan/Jeff, there were several others that were toyed with but never went anywhere which was annoying. North and Sonic was a pairing that was teased and actually could have been made to work but was never confirmed. Pete and Way was a late addition that was somewhat interesting, but too little, too late for me compounded with the fact that given Way's feelings for Babe, I doubted he was ready to move on so quickly. There was also Pete and Kenta's history which could have been used to bring them together, but again, they completely disappeared after Tony's and Way's deaths.
- Babe was interesting initially with his playboy attitude and cockiness, but an underlying current of kindness and though he would deny it, love for his friends/family. All of that immediately gave him a certain depth of character, but his sudden change of character when it came to Charlie was odd. He went from being a playboy to a committed relationship essentially instantaneously. There was little to no reasoning given to what it was about Charlie that made him fall in love aside from the fact he didn't smell like other Alphas. It was instances like this that left characters feeling unrealistic. While his lack of trust was understandable, his back and forth with Charlie got old very quickly and even in the last couple of episodes, the way he said things, the wording he used, made me wonder if he really did love and care about Charlie. Certainly I never got the impression that his feelings were quite as deep as Charlie's.
- Charlie left me with a lot of questions regarding his past and how he got to where he was. There was a lot left unexplained about him in general, including why he didn't smell like other Alphas did and how his sense worked and how he found out how it worked. I didn't find him to be a particularly interesting character. Sure he was cute, he obviously cared about Babe and worked to take care of him, but as a character, he felt fairly shallow. His love and loyalty to Babe seemed to make up most of his personality. But similarly to Babe, it wasn't made clear why he fell in love with Babe aside from physical attraction. Time was not well delineated in this series, but I did find his improvement in racing to be improbable, particularly since it seemed that he was a complete novice and yet in a relatively short period of time he was somehow able to compete with Babe who'd been racing for years.
- Way was a disappointment of a character. He'd "loved" Babe for years, however, it's clear that his love was more an obsession than anything true. He didn't hesitate to use his sense on Babe on several occasions to nudge him in what he perceived as the right direction, namely breaking up with Charlie and remaining alone. Nor did he hesitate to attempt to force himself on Babe eventually and showed more remorse for having been caught than for what he actually did, at least initially. The fact that Pete was so easily able to turn him was implausible to me and it was clear that they were going for a redemption arc which conveniently concluded with his death. It felt shallow, cheap, and poorly executed. I have no issues with a redemption arc if it makes sense with the character and is properly done, but this was not it.
- Alan and Jeff were generically cute, not that that's a bad thing. I did enjoy their relationship and the build up of it. It felt better developed than Babe and Charlie's since they'd worked together and gotten to know each other before they got together, but there was still a bit of that element of what really drew them together. Separately, I appreciated Alan and his care for those under him. He was loyal to a fault and he truly treated the team and those who worked with them as family and my heart broke a little for him at Dean's betrayal and seeing how much that hurt him. While Jeff's sense and how it worked wasn't well explained, he made it sound like he had to actively use it when touching someone and yet there were times when it seemed like that wasn't the case, it did give him the excuse to be a loner and then have Alan be the one to help coax him out of his shell. While not an overly strong character, I did generally like him. He, and Charlie for that matter, could have just disappeared, but instead they stayed behind to fight Tony.
- Tony felt cartoonish as a villain. I never found him to be particularly threatening or scary. It seemed they were going for the kind of character who appears benevolent on the surface with a malicious streak under the surface, but I don't think they successfully brought that out. Certainly he was an absolutely horrible person, but there wasn't enough to him to make him a true threat. There was nothing regarding his history and how he came to power to help give him depth as a character and that was a major failing.

While the plot and writing were definite detractors from this series, the cast made the most of it and they were a highlight. Pavel's acting has improved since I last saw him and despite the inconsistencies of his character, he did quite well and I enjoyed his portrayal of Babe. Pooh was the baby of the cast, I believe, and this was his first role so I wasn't surprised when he didn't quite meet the standards the others. Not that he was bad, he actually did a decent job all things considered, but there were moments where it was obvious that he's quite green. His chemistry with Pavel fluctuated a bit. There were times where I really felt it and others where it seemed hollow. However, I'm chalking that up to the writing more than anything. While I was not a fan of his character arc, I do think Nut did a great job as Way and working with what he had.

There was one aspect of this series that I really liked and wanted to comment on and that was how Babe and Charlie did not conform to the norms when it came to who was top and who was bottom. With most BLs, the more traditionally masculine looking character, i.e. taller, more muscular, etc., is the top and the softer character, i.e. shorter, less muscular, cuter, etc., is the bottom. I liked that it was flipped with Charlie as the top and Babe as the bottom. It was refreshing, particularly the way that it was normalized, no questions asked, it was just the way things were. That is one aspect that more BLs should normalize, not pigeonholing characters' sex position based on appearance or even personality.

The production aspect was overall pretty decent. There were some odd camera angles at times and some awkward jumps, but overall, nothing too distracting or detracting. The action scenes felt amateurish at times and obviously choreographed rather than natural. The music was catchy, but forgettable.

Pit Babe could have been so much more than it was. The racing concept is not one that I've seen used frequently and it was refreshing to be outside the typical high school/college setting, but the poor writing combined with the messy plot and multiple plot holes just made it fall flat. The lack of realistic characters and well developed relationships was another detractor. There were parts of it that I enjoyed, but as a whole, I wouldn't have missed out on anything if I never saw it.

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