As a major fan of It Started with a Kiss and Fated to Love You, I was immediately drawn to the premise of My Husband in Law. Muey (Mew Nittha Jirangyurn), a girl who has been in love with her childhood friend Tian (Mark Prin Suparat) for years, gets the chance to marry him when he gets in trouble after he engages in an affair with a woman married to a gangster. They agree to divorce once the dust settles, but they end up working together when Muey’s company gets absorbed by the firm Tien works for.

Let me just manage your expectations from the get go. My Husband in Law is riddled with plotholes, inconsistencies and problematic scriptwriting that it will be a challenge to sit through 15 episodes of an hour and half length episodes. Half of the time, I was still questioning what the heck was happening before another ridiculous element was introduced. By the first two episodes, I was already confused as to which characters knew that Tian and Muey were married, how many knew her as his sister and which group knew that Muey was married and who her husband was.

There were a lot of confusing things, I kid you not. Throughout the drama, My Husband in Law showed a penchant for stacking up scenes that seemed to make no sense and make it go for as long as it could before revealing the “twist.” then, they expect everyone to get on board.

Everyone in the story seemed to be keeping secrets from each other for one altruistic reason or another. Everyone seemed to have different motivations, only to find out in the end that they wanted the same thing but all they managed to do was make matters worse than it was before. There were also problematic concepts about how lightly they looked at harassment and potential marital rape (good thing they didn’t actually go there both times).

Given these complaints, you may ask what drove me to finish it until the end. And its quite simple. The great chemistry between Mark and Mew (even though their characters really took turns in being unreasonable jerks). This couple was just so cute you can’t help but root for them.

But there were also ones who were not so adorable. Kang and Khoefang were so annoyingly over the top that I just wanted them to disappear.

Tian’s mother, Mrs. Jee, bless her heart, was no better. Half of the trouble in Muey and Tian’s relationship was caused by her high handed meddling that made Tian wary of Muey and resist his mother’s machinations. And what the heck kind of family were the Nawanawakuns? For supposed hotel owners, they seem to have a army of thugs at their disposal, an even bigger one than Pondech, an actual gangster.

In contrast, I loved Muey and Tian’s friend groups, especially the trio of Beer, Not, and Toon. They were loyal to Tian but they embraced Muey as their own. They never abandoned the couple even though they were always got caught in the middle of their marital woes. They were loyal from beginning to end. Plus, their antics, especially when they were trying to “seduce” women were hilarious.

Now for the glaring plotholes. For a supposed interior decorator, Muey never once designed anything. At work, she dabbled at administrative work and excelled in IT, which made no sense even if the series wanted to portray her as a strong and capable professional. Why was she written as an interior decorator in the first place? The hacker arc was so random.

It also made no sense that most of the major issues like Muey’s betrayal was simply brushed aside because she distracted Tian with her “unwanted” romantic pursuit although I must admit the Dawei arc was much better in terms of setting up the relationship between Tian and Muey. I just didn’t like the lack of consistency in the scenes.

The series crafted some powerful poignant moments like Muey’s confession of how much she loved Tian and why she wanted to leave him. After Tian’s great romantic gesture in going after Muey, he negated the gravity of his actions by holding Muey captive in his tent and making light of every serious thing they shared instead of just confessing that he didn’t want her to go. They did this so many times wherein strong emotional moments were completely ruined by the next scene where the characters would do something stupid or unreasonable. The reactions were all over the place. It’s confusing.

Another issue? There were just too much filler scenes, beauty shots and gratuity shots of Mark taking his shirt off and bathing. Got into an accident? Let him take is shirt off. Got stuck in the middle of nowhere? Shower scene. Dealing with a life threatening issue? Take a bath and cry. This happened multiple times! There was even a ridiculous scene of Muey daydreaming Tian was a god who descended from the heavens bathing in the river of mere mortals. Guess what? He was shirtless as well. Male objectification was very real in this drama.

And the medical emergencies in this drama were so ridiculous. The reactions did not commensurate the injuries sustained. Everything was treated like a life and death situation even though they were obviously not critical.

Now, this was not to say that the series did not have any merits. The poems exchanged by Muey and Tian were pretty nice and depicted their feelings at specific points in the drama.

There was also a message of self love and how your happiness should not depend on others. I liked that by its end, everyone was served their proper karma, good and bad. The manner in which characters received their due with flashbacks of what happened before was quite satisfying. What’s nice about My Husband in Law was that while it invested in the happy ending of its lead characters, it also delivered happy endings in different forms like for Chet and Not.

And while the general level of substance in this series was flimsy, I loved how they evolved Tian’s character over the course of the series from a petulant brat to a mature man who will stop at nothing to protect the ones he loved.

The key to liking this drama, actually is to manage your expectations. Expect the ridiculous because it will happen. Expect the cringey scenes because there is a lot. At some point, you may want to question your sanity over your decision to soldier on but once you let your guard down and turn your brain off completely, it won’t be so bad. Once you accept it, it actually grows on you.