2gether is best when it's the soft self-parody that it wants to be
Make no mistake about it, this is a very simple show. Boy A (Tine) asks the popular Boy B (Sarawat) to pretend to be his boyfriend to throw off the advances of Boy C (Green) and hijinks ensue. That is 2gether in what is a little more than just a nutshell, but boy does it make for a fun time. There is a woke part of me that found fault with the way that Green pursued Tine even after he's continuously rejected (that predatory gay trope isn't helpful but if we were to judge BL on its wokeness, well...) but beyond that, I found myself having a great time with 2gether.
2gether doesn't waste much time exploring any type of angst or drama, which is surprising considering that Tine is very much a stereotypically straight college guy with stereotypically straight college guy friends. Tine and his friends talk about girls, they go out and get drunk, and they're idiots through and through. It's lighthearted, it's fun, it's silly. When Tine's fake relationship inevitably leads to real gayness, for lack of a better word, Tine and his friends mostly just roll with it. In fact, more hijinks ensue. 2gether doesn't care about conflict past a surface layer, for better or worse. At one point, the series even lampshades the fact that what seemed like something that would play across multiple episodes only ends up lasting for one day.
Sarawat's friends are no different from Tine's, being a pack of dweebs themselves. Sarawat though, is a bit more aloof and laissez-faire despite his popular boy on campus status being played to the extreme. Sarawat is known to everyone, he has Facebook groups devoted to him, his seniors and contemporaries alike fawn and scream through windows for him and he's showered with more gifts than he can carry. It's all very over the top while Sarawat himself couldn't be bothered by any of it. Sarawat only cares about his small group of friends, his guitar and Tine.
But who are these friends that I'm talking about? Honestly, I couldn't remember their names up until I looked them up for this review. Seriously, the show barely acknowledges them. It's a shame too, since I know and love Gun (who plays Boss here) from SOTUS and SOTUS S. Here he plays a similar role, brightening up the screen whenever he's on, but that's it. He rarely gets lines. Man and Fong are the only two of the main couple's friends that get a fair amount of lines. Man himself is actually part of a romance subplot, but 2gether doesn't really care too much about that. There's another romance plot too. The other romance involves Sarawat's own brother being smitten with one of Sarawat's rivals (Mil), and said rival is himself smitten with Tine. But again, 2gether doesn't really care about this, and the show plays up the rivalry between Mil and Sarawat without laying out much of a foundation for it. As a result, the love triangle feels lukewarm throughout the entire show.
The series straight up not caring about some aspects of itself almost makes it feel like it wants to be a self-parody or straight-up comedy at times. If you see or notice something odd like a character suddenly showing up out of nowhere, the show is going to mention it. 2gether is a very funny show when it goes all in on the self-parody aspects, but it's not very good when it does anything else. It's odd too, because Tine and Sarawat are quite cute and all their lovey-doveyness and almost maybes feel very sincere at the height of their fake dating. It's when the fake dating is over that their chemistry somehow takes a dive.
Like SOTUS if you're familiar with it, 2gether is quite a chaste show. There's shirtless scenes here and there of the very fit actors but when it comes to kisses, you can count those off on one hand. I'm new to Thai BL, so maybe this is just to be expected for the genre. Anyway, had 2gether cut some of the fluff around Sarawat and Tine and limit the focus to the clearly preferred friends *and* dropped the less interesting romance involving Man and Type to focus on the potential that could have been the love triangle (love square?), the show would have been better for it. I know that the series is based on a novel though, so perhaps being so bold with its changes would have turned people off.
Though the show is about two guys fake dating, it also has a music theme to it. I was worried that it would disappoint in the audio department, but it actually exceeds expectations here. 2gether has a lovely soundtrack. The background pieces are all catchy and evoke the right moods. Wacky, gentle, tender. It's all there. The ending theme is fantastic, and there's vocal pieces performed by the Thai band Scrubb (that I'm now a fan of) that are all a joy to listen to.
Something that I noticed about the direction (or editing?) is that the show has a problem with scene transitions. At first I thought that maybe the show was just trying to be fast-paced, but the sudden cuts are disorienting. There are sometimes very sudden scene transitions. A change in location, a change in time, a change in characters. It just happens and you have to reorient yourself a bit to know what's going on. It's something that you'll get accustomed to, but it makes some scenes jarring for a couple of seconds before you reorient yourself. The acting is nothing to write home about, everyone portrays their character well enough. With the show glossing over so many of its details, no one really gets an effort to display much range but they're believable and clearly have fun with their characters.
Even though 2gether has some faults, I still recommend it if you want a light comedy that happens to have like a tablespoon of BL added to it. The main couple is cute. The music is nice. The show is fun when that's all it's focusing on. Don't expect more from it and you'll have a good time.
2gether doesn't waste much time exploring any type of angst or drama, which is surprising considering that Tine is very much a stereotypically straight college guy with stereotypically straight college guy friends. Tine and his friends talk about girls, they go out and get drunk, and they're idiots through and through. It's lighthearted, it's fun, it's silly. When Tine's fake relationship inevitably leads to real gayness, for lack of a better word, Tine and his friends mostly just roll with it. In fact, more hijinks ensue. 2gether doesn't care about conflict past a surface layer, for better or worse. At one point, the series even lampshades the fact that what seemed like something that would play across multiple episodes only ends up lasting for one day.
Sarawat's friends are no different from Tine's, being a pack of dweebs themselves. Sarawat though, is a bit more aloof and laissez-faire despite his popular boy on campus status being played to the extreme. Sarawat is known to everyone, he has Facebook groups devoted to him, his seniors and contemporaries alike fawn and scream through windows for him and he's showered with more gifts than he can carry. It's all very over the top while Sarawat himself couldn't be bothered by any of it. Sarawat only cares about his small group of friends, his guitar and Tine.
But who are these friends that I'm talking about? Honestly, I couldn't remember their names up until I looked them up for this review. Seriously, the show barely acknowledges them. It's a shame too, since I know and love Gun (who plays Boss here) from SOTUS and SOTUS S. Here he plays a similar role, brightening up the screen whenever he's on, but that's it. He rarely gets lines. Man and Fong are the only two of the main couple's friends that get a fair amount of lines. Man himself is actually part of a romance subplot, but 2gether doesn't really care too much about that. There's another romance plot too. The other romance involves Sarawat's own brother being smitten with one of Sarawat's rivals (Mil), and said rival is himself smitten with Tine. But again, 2gether doesn't really care about this, and the show plays up the rivalry between Mil and Sarawat without laying out much of a foundation for it. As a result, the love triangle feels lukewarm throughout the entire show.
The series straight up not caring about some aspects of itself almost makes it feel like it wants to be a self-parody or straight-up comedy at times. If you see or notice something odd like a character suddenly showing up out of nowhere, the show is going to mention it. 2gether is a very funny show when it goes all in on the self-parody aspects, but it's not very good when it does anything else. It's odd too, because Tine and Sarawat are quite cute and all their lovey-doveyness and almost maybes feel very sincere at the height of their fake dating. It's when the fake dating is over that their chemistry somehow takes a dive.
Like SOTUS if you're familiar with it, 2gether is quite a chaste show. There's shirtless scenes here and there of the very fit actors but when it comes to kisses, you can count those off on one hand. I'm new to Thai BL, so maybe this is just to be expected for the genre. Anyway, had 2gether cut some of the fluff around Sarawat and Tine and limit the focus to the clearly preferred friends *and* dropped the less interesting romance involving Man and Type to focus on the potential that could have been the love triangle (love square?), the show would have been better for it. I know that the series is based on a novel though, so perhaps being so bold with its changes would have turned people off.
Though the show is about two guys fake dating, it also has a music theme to it. I was worried that it would disappoint in the audio department, but it actually exceeds expectations here. 2gether has a lovely soundtrack. The background pieces are all catchy and evoke the right moods. Wacky, gentle, tender. It's all there. The ending theme is fantastic, and there's vocal pieces performed by the Thai band Scrubb (that I'm now a fan of) that are all a joy to listen to.
Something that I noticed about the direction (or editing?) is that the show has a problem with scene transitions. At first I thought that maybe the show was just trying to be fast-paced, but the sudden cuts are disorienting. There are sometimes very sudden scene transitions. A change in location, a change in time, a change in characters. It just happens and you have to reorient yourself a bit to know what's going on. It's something that you'll get accustomed to, but it makes some scenes jarring for a couple of seconds before you reorient yourself. The acting is nothing to write home about, everyone portrays their character well enough. With the show glossing over so many of its details, no one really gets an effort to display much range but they're believable and clearly have fun with their characters.
Even though 2gether has some faults, I still recommend it if you want a light comedy that happens to have like a tablespoon of BL added to it. The main couple is cute. The music is nice. The show is fun when that's all it's focusing on. Don't expect more from it and you'll have a good time.
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