Belle Mariano is AMAZING in this- she's such a good actor. Her character Max deserves SO MUCH BETTER.
Her so-called "friends", though they call themselves a family and claim to always protect each other, cower and flee the minute a chance arises to actually protect Max, because her bully is this popular, cute boy. So they're massive hypocrites. Not only do they not speak up for her, they don't tell a teacher what's happening. As friends, they suck.
The WORST of them is Naih, the most toxic friend I've ever seen. Maybe she's different in the books, but in the show, she's the absolute worst. She abandons Max in the halls when that's the bullies' place to corner her, is a huge pick-me for these boys that pick on her because ~her crush is one of them~, and ALL she cares about is pressuring Max to forgive this guy so she can be friends with his group and get near her crush. So selfish and insensitive. It doesn't matter how much of a "hopeless romantic" she is- it is completely inappropriate of her to make Max's suffering about herself, gloss over Max's hurt and brush it off as "romantic", and care only about how this affects her own romantic life.
The whole school is a bunch of pick-me's and display disgusting, cringe behavior for these boys. Lorde in particular's dialogue makes me so embarrassed for him. No high school boy, no matter how much of a simp he is, would say what he says. Ysay could have been portrayed as a socially awkward nerd without her doing something that no person with a working brain would think to do. Elle, the evil stepsister character, could have gotten more scenes with the parents being mad at her so that her dislike of Max could seem unwarranted because it seems unearned.
There are scenes that are done well. For example, I really liked the dream sequence where the main couple is on the basketball court.
With this show, there are some characters that are horrible but still well-written (Deib), and characters that are "good" but terribly written so their actions are despicable and/or annoyingly out of touch (Naih, the other two fake friends, Ysay) , and some are both (Lorde).
Her so-called "friends", though they call themselves a family and claim to always protect each other, cower and flee the minute a chance arises to actually protect Max, because her bully is this popular, cute boy. So they're massive hypocrites. Not only do they not speak up for her, they don't tell a teacher what's happening. As friends, they suck.
The WORST of them is Naih, the most toxic friend I've ever seen. Maybe she's different in the books, but in the show, she's the absolute worst. She abandons Max in the halls when that's the bullies' place to corner her, is a huge pick-me for these boys that pick on her because ~her crush is one of them~, and ALL she cares about is pressuring Max to forgive this guy so she can be friends with his group and get near her crush. So selfish and insensitive. It doesn't matter how much of a "hopeless romantic" she is- it is completely inappropriate of her to make Max's suffering about herself, gloss over Max's hurt and brush it off as "romantic", and care only about how this affects her own romantic life.
The whole school is a bunch of pick-me's and display disgusting, cringe behavior for these boys. Lorde in particular's dialogue makes me so embarrassed for him. No high school boy, no matter how much of a simp he is, would say what he says. Ysay could have been portrayed as a socially awkward nerd without her doing something that no person with a working brain would think to do. Elle, the evil stepsister character, could have gotten more scenes with the parents being mad at her so that her dislike of Max could seem unwarranted because it seems unearned.
There are scenes that are done well. For example, I really liked the dream sequence where the main couple is on the basketball court.
With this show, there are some characters that are horrible but still well-written (Deib), and characters that are "good" but terribly written so their actions are despicable and/or annoyingly out of touch (Naih, the other two fake friends, Ysay) , and some are both (Lorde).