Knock Knock, Boys! (2024)

Sex ed & comedy?

As someone said in another review, this was quirky fun. But that quirkiness wore thin pretty quickly for me with the plot going from fun to boring to quirky to serious, all the while dragging on.

Knock Knock Boys is a comedy. The title is the indication but the opening credits just confirm that it should not be taken seriously. The story about four men sharing a house is nothing new. The comedy comes from the four of them being completely different characters. But if it were only that, it would have been a really fun watch. Unfortunately they decided to do what The Warp Effect did better: turn a comedy drama into a sex education video. While I support the idea of educating young people on internet and sex, it was badly presented here. Practically in every episode, they'd suddenly stop the plot and give us a lesson. And even though they tried to fit them neatly within the plot, they failed: the lessons broke the natural flow and the mood of the drama.

The four main characters are all stereotypes: a naive young Almond (extremely cringy in his behaviour at the beginning but every teen behaves like that, trying to figure things out by trial and error!), an experienced pansexual Latte who cares about nothing, and two older characters: Thanwa on the rebound from a failed long-term relationship trying to figure what to do with his life both private and professional and Peak (styled like he was stuck in the 80's!) who is trying to hide from his father's expectations. The friendship chemistry between the four of them is something else: the bromances are bromancing big time. Romances as well just not as much!

The acting was solid, the production values ordinary, music made for dancinng. Every episode starts with a flash forward scene before the opening credits: about the only original feature of this series.

Eventually, I was just bored. I smiled a few times, was charmed by Thanwa's grin, annoyed with Peak's glasses, enyoyed Almond's and Latte's childish bickering. What was supposed to be a light summer watch was weighed down by a preachy tone.

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mostly quirky fun

Overall: though I enjoyed the funny/sweet parts, they needed to reduce the episode count to really make it quirky awesomeness. 12 episodes about 45 minutes each. Aired on WeTV https://wetv.vip/en/album/89w1vvkv6zpo6wf and GagaOOLala everywhere except Japan, https://www.gagaoolala.com/en/videos/4297/knock-knock-boys-2024-e01

Content Warnings: non con touching/voyeurism, dub/non con kiss, non con video taking/sharing, unwanted public outing, beginning/attempted sexual assault, punches, past death/grief

What I Liked
- finally we had a character who was inexperienced and also very interested in romance/sex
- supportive friends
- showing instead of telling i.e. they showed a character was rich and naive instead of just saying it right away
- laughed several times
- characters established as queer, pansexuality was explained
- good dreams
- sweet moments
- glad they talked about consent but not sure why they needed actual toys at the club meeting (and fyi petroleum jelly degrades toys)
- calling out invasion of privacy/posting pictures online and there were actual consequences
- Thanwa's friend/boss had great advice
- good apologies
- good consent with Latte stopping on 2 different occasions
- Almond's mom
- lack of episode 11 curse
- well done final episode
- 2 characters from Monster Next Door had cameos in ep 12
- production value (some nice camera shots like with the wall in episode 6)

Room For Improvement
- need to reduce the episode count as things felt dragged out, I was tempted to write out to skip episode 11 but this does really explain a character's previous actions (or inactions)
- how they started the episodes with a flash forward and then moved to the present so the episode didn't pick up where it left off from the previous week
- a character told his female friend something that he had no right to tell her
- I couldn't root for a character to be in a romantic relationship until they cleared up what happened in the past, they mostly cleared it up but wanted this information sooner
- Peak and Jane could have easily explained things to Thanwa much earlier, definitely 'because the writer said so' stuff
- not a fan of what Almond did at the end of episode 2 and then again later
- too many near kisses
- toilet humor
- drunk driving after a party
- that the playboy character who was pansexual didn't believe in love due to his past, this played into stereotypes
- didn't make sense that neither Almond or Latte suggested trying something different, waiting until the final episode definitely felt like 'because the writer said so'

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