Boys Before Friends Episode Two

Boys Before Friends Episode Two

Summary: Zoey is accepted into Ellison University, a college for the super rich, as a scholarship student. There she encounters the F4, a group of guys who use their power and money to intimidate other students.

Number of Episodes: 16

Stars: Joseph Almani, Trenton L. Culkin, Dawn Morrow

Language: English

Additional Info: Loosely based on Hana Yori Dango. It's available on Viki.com, Youtube, and the official website.

Check out my review of episode one.

In episode one, we were left with Zoey moments from being raped. Episode two starts with that scene and she's saved by Oliver. The F4 aren't down with what happened and make that known, but Zoey still blames Liam because he started it. Zoey's ability to last through everything that happened earns her the respect of Noah and Chase, the other F4 members, and the attention of Liam. Oliver, whose attention she wants, is strangely aloof. Liam tries in his own arrogant, selfish way to woo Zoey by kidnapping her, giving her a makeover and allowing her to be his secret girlfriend. She tells him off and her disinterest only makes him awkwardly try harder.

Zoey is "set up" by the F4 groupies to show up to a $2500 a person (which they paid for) benefit in casual clothes- a fact that no one actually noticed and I wasn't quite sure how that was supposed to be humiliating. They yell at each other some and Zoey and her friends leave. The end.

Surprisingly, I was a little disappointed that episode two was delayed a week. I was more than a little curious about the change in lead actresses and how that would work. It's a really weird move for this kind of show... but I watch soaps so it's not something I'm unfamiliar with.

It seemed, though, that they actually had more than just the first episode filmed with Claude Racine. She was in episode two for the first half. I really expected that they would re-film the locker room scene with Dawn Morrow and move from there but the switch happened during a makeover sequence. That's actually something a soap might do on purpose, but I feel like the timing wasn't necessarily intentional here.

Because Dawn Morrow was only in about half the episode, it's kind of hard to say how good she'll ultimately be... but, at this point, I'd say that they made a mistake recasting. In the episode, Dawn Morrow was definitely the weaker Zoey. I thought Claude Racine's Zoey was one of the better-acted characters in episode one and the first half of episode two and she made Zoey fiesty. Dawn just doesn't seem to have the same degree of attitude and she seemed like a kid trying to be tough.

The guys in the F4 seemed to have gotten into their characters a little more and weren't as stiff as before. Noah and Chase, the other two, had more screen time in this episode and they weren't half bad. Zoey's friends were also okay- Chloe being better than Piper. Those three groupie girls are just as hideously bad as they were in the first episode.

In episode one, the sound was an issue. It improved a little in episode two, but still had some of the same issues. The background music was pretty loud compared to the dialogue but it wasn't as hard to hear as the first episode. In the scene where Liam cuts his stupid wig hair off (yay!), the sound seemed to go in and out. I don't think it was supposed to be intentional. There were also issues with some sound distortion when they were on the boat where it sounded like they were talking too close to the mic.

On a more superficial note, they need to fire whoever is doing makeup for those girls. If the girls are doing it themselves, they need to have their makeup taken away from them. In the art benefit scenes on the boat, Zoey had purple raccoon eyes. The blonde groupie didn't fare much better with her clownish eyeshadow. The ones that weren't outlandish and were okay by everyday standards still were not great by TV standards.

And on a side note, I feel like they should redo their title logo. If you look at it, it looks like the 'i' in 'friends' was added afterwards... as if someone misspelled 'friends' and, instead of redoing it, just tried to shove the 'i' in. Maybe that's not what actually happened. Maybe that's the font or something. Regardless, it looks like a mistake.

I have to say, I'm not terribly impressed by episode two. While episode one had it's problems, there were more enjoyable moments. I'll probably continue to watch but I'm not holding out much hope for the future.

*Picture from BBF Facebook