My Sweetheart Jom (Thai Series)

‘My Sweetheart Jom’ is essentially a light comedy, featuring caricature-like villains and a slow-burn love story, with the community spirit and the silly shenanigans of its younger characters driving the plot forward. Despite its occasional charm and two very charming leads, the show tries to juggle too many plots all at once and letting some of the down. It feels like the show was supposed to be your classic love story, but some plots were introduced, some characters were forgotten, while the episodes duration kept getting stretched. The show has 12 episodes and each episode is like 75 to 90 minutes and a couple of them even longer. There is a lot going on here and s much of it could have been easily edited out.

City boy Yo, who is now 19, did not finish 12th grade because of some drama. His girlfriend was also being pursued by a politicians son and they have a fight, so his parents send him to a rural village as an ultimatum to finish his high school. If he doesn't do that, he does not get top go to US as per original plans. Here in the village he is out under the guidance of the calm and quietly magnetic village chief, Jom. The series opts for a quiet beginning, building the initial episodes on respect, slow-growing connection, and the kind of everyday rhythm that lets relationships unfold naturally. This just happens in the first episode itself, so you wonder what happens in remaining 12 episodes. The series is a very slow burn journey of Yo, from spoiled city menace to someone who finally gets that actions have consequences. During this time, we have a HUGE ensemble cast where there are three other students living in the same house who keep playing pranks but eventually make Yo realize importance of brotherhood and family. There is usual language grabbing from the old disgruntled village chief who wants his position back. How he is supported by politicians to bring down Jom. Once Yo joins the school. There are plenty romance sub-plots from the school students. There is quintessential Jom's 'Gil' fiend from college, who makes Yo jealous when he starts to realizes that he has feelings for Jom. There is another girl who has a huge crush on Jom. There is a whole lot of drama and romance appears late. But when it appeared, it was gentle and adorable. Yo’s effort to show how much he cared about Jom felt genuine and their little honeymoon phase was really cute. There was an underlying tenderness in how they navigated their connection. As if these plethora of characters and the drama was not enough, the last two episodes bring in Jom's ex-boyfriend from college , with his daughter who wants Jom back in his life. Some more drama happens and finally Jom and Yo confess they are a couple to everyone in the village. 

See the thing here is that having been seeing all these BL shows for many years now, I have certain expectations of more love, less drama and focus on leads. Here almost every character has some story going on , but none of them has any major payoff. Like the high school love stories that happen of the drug episodes etc, could have easily been edited out and the heart and core of the story would just not have changed. Sure, incident like these are what show us Yo's gradual journey of becoming a responsible human being but these incidents keep going on and on. Now if. This was a soap opera, all of this would have been great, but for. Limited series, packing in so much without any real consequence is just not cool. Now that we have this out of the way, let's talk of some positives - I enjoyed when Yo would go into this 1-2 min dreamland and imagine things based on what he has heard. They were few but hilarious. The three young teenagers in the house were a hoot and total fun. Yo'c character growth and arc is amazing. He grows from a immature, stubborn, impulsive character to a responsible, caring and thoughtful adult. As much as I feel the romance missing, here it happens organically. It wasn't pushed on characters. They beautifully portrayed Jom's maturity and Yo's spontaneous behavior and how they connected with each other regardless of their age, growth and goal differences. It was refreshing to see two people just bonding and building a relationship bit by bit from scratch. Of course, the green lush village setting was a huge plus. 

Acting wise, Jom plays this mature model citizen with a serious and responsible look quite well and the actor suits the part. Yo's actor grows from the naughty brat kid to a responsible adult but still jealous of all the girls and ex-bf giving attention to Jom. I liked that. The big chaos of many stories and the Lillian's spread out everywhere, just took away the focus of my already limited attention span, and in today's time I think it is important to make sure you don't lose your audience. Here, I feel that despite a great main plot, for whatever reason, it just goes on and on with little growth. A lot of stories happen in parallel and they end for the next one to start soon. Despite all of my complaints, there was still an inherent charm in the show and is still very much watchable. (7/10)