Good lord. I really wanted to like this new series featuring Fort and Peat, but Love Sea ended up being a kind of painful experience.
The first two episodes were pretty good, but from there it was nothing but rehashing the same plot point for eight hours. Peat played Tongrak, an uber popular BL novelist. In order to find inspiration, he heads to a beachside resort where he quickly clocks handsome, jack of all trades, Mahasamut. He is equally smitten with Tongrak, so he doesn’t really question too closely when their encounters end up being transactional in nature. Let me tell you what, those first few scenes are steamy! And then that’s pretty much all we get by way of sexy intimacy. As Tongrak gets ready to head back to Bangkok, he proposes that Mahasamut comes with him, as long as he follows the detailed contract he lays out.
Mahasamut is so in love and so convinced that he will get Tongrak to fall in love with him right back that he agrees to the terms and dotes on him hand and foot for the rest of the season. Perhaps the only bright spot in the acting comes between Mahasamut and Tongrk’s niece. She’s a real talent and I hope to see her pop up in more series moving forward! All while Tongrak is busy writing his latest novel, he can’t help but compare his arrangement with Mahasamut to the arrangements his mother used to make with the men in her life, including his father. He pops back up as the money-hungry bad guy, but Mahasamut dispatches him pretty quickly.
Annoyingly, it takes almost until the last scene for there to be true piece between Tongrak and Mahasamut, and I blame that entirely on Tongrak. He’s sulky and needy, and pretty damn selfish. The fact that the plot just went in circles because he couldn’t make sense of his life was rather annoying. Equally as annoying was the side couple, Tongrak’s assistant, Khaimuk, and his best friend, Vivi. They basically accomplished nothing as a pair for the whole ten episode season. In fact, whatever little rift existed between the two of them seemed to have been completely dropped by the final episode, yet nothing was made concretely clear about where they stand.
I guess there is at least one special episode in the future, which I will reluctantly watch. I’m hoping the side couple makes some more progress, and at this point I want no more drama between Tongrak and Mahasamut. Just give me the smut! Their chemistry is too good to waste! I sure hope they get something a lot better for their next project together.