Stupid Genius

Stupid Genius, in Vietnamese Thiên Tài Hạng Bét, is a six-episode boys' love web series from RL Studio, released on YouTube between 9 June and 14 July 2023 with English subtitles on every episode. Nguyen Thi Thu Ha directed, her third credited series for the studio. Episodes run fifteen to twenty-five minutes, with the finale stretching to twenty-seven.

Khoa, played by Pham The Bang, is a secondary school student failing his subjects. Vinh, played by Nguyen Tien Hai, is the classmate assigned to tutor him. The sessions are supposed to cover coursework and six short episodes follow what they cover instead. Nguyen Thai Khang plays Hoang, Nguyen Quoc Nam plays Kha, Cindy Diem Mii plays Thao and Truong Minh Thao appears as Mr. Tuan.

That last name is worth pausing over. Truong Minh Thao had played the lead in O2 Production's Mr. Cinderella and would reprise it in the sequel three months after this series ended, so a performer identified with one of Vietnam's two boys' love studios turns up in a supporting part for the other. In a scene with perhaps a dozen active titles, the pool of performers is small enough that the two houses draw on the same people.

RL Studio gave the series its full apparatus: an official trailer posted ahead of the première announcing a release date, an original soundtrack video, a behind-the-scenes clip, a cast reaction video, and the whole run collected into one upload of about an hour and forty minutes under the alternative English name Great Genius. That is more supporting material than most productions at this scale bother with, and it is a large part of why RL Studio's titles are the easiest Vietnamese BL to find from outside the country, and why this record can cite a second independent review where most of its neighbours cannot.