#but then they just avoided each other for months and jaab dated (?) someone called paint (?) who i have never seen and has since disappeare

[jjsanguine]

I've never had a white collar job and I'm also not a film analysis person so I've spent a lot of the time I've been watching Step By Step like, I don't know enough about offices to know some of the perplexing directions the plot/characters have gone in this show are what would naturally arise from working in such an environment, or if the writing + pacing are just frustrating.

I think the pacing especially is what's making the narrative just unspool in front of my eyes, because ferso I don't think you'd need to change any of the plot points to have a show that isn't frustrating.

I'm especially perplexed by how slow the slow burn was because Jeng didn't want to do a HR violation by dating Pat,,, only for Jeng to have been artistically engineering Pat's workplace success this while time so they would have more opportunities to hang out and Pat might like him back enough to want to date anyway. That seems like a a worse thing ethically them if they had just started secretly dating almost immediately like in A Boss And A Babe.

I'm not really surprised that Jeng control freak Kittipong would do such. But like what Jeng did to Pat by using his own money doesn't seem like a resolvable in one episode thing you get me. That feels like a ½ the runtime type of problem, it's literally the entire foundation of Jeng and Pat's relationship since Jeng knew Pat was going to be his employee.

Jeng + Pat's romantic relationship unspooled after only a few months 3 I think because Jeng refused to try to address or even talk about any of the exponentially growing number of obstacles to their relationship and Pat realised he's really not about that after briefly getting back with Put — which, controversial opinion, is totally fine actually !

Even Jeng + Pat's months long dating relationship being compressed into 2 episodes where basically all the audience sees is that they do a lot of unsubtle workplace flirting and have a lot of sex would be totally fine,,, if there were like 5ish episodes left for dealing with the fallout of that + how a second chance romance would even work when Pat's been burned by a controlling ex before. Twice.

Like *could* it take Jeng 2 years to really internalise that people get very upset when their agency is removed, given that it took him until he was in his 30s before trying to manipulate people like the wire stems in a bouquet of fake flowers ever blew up in his face quite so spectacularly? Yes. Is the audience going to see any of that journey? No.

*Could* it take 2 years of Pat working somewhere unaffiliated with Jian group, struggling with starting from square 1 as an intern, ignoring everyone's work advice again he's desperate to prove himself, especially ignoring Jeng's work advice because it's from Jeng specifically, taking Jeng's advice again because he's cooled down enough from the situation to not recoil from all things Jeng, to actually being open to have a relationship (not necessarily romantic one at first but just like, more than radio silence) with Jeng again? Probably. Will the audience see Pat's journey? No.

Therein lies the frustration. Premise good, execution eh.