Elisheva

Pin is a very young woman (is she still a teenager?) with little experience who has somehow managed to maintain a cheerful, optimistic outlook despite losing her real mae and being raised by a twat of a paa and his wife. There’s a whole side drama going on there, as Pin is the daughter of a servant twat Paa had a thing with and his wife takes out her resentment on Pin.

She lives in a time (1961) and place where women’s options were limited, *especially* in the upper classes. Her frame of reference was loveless arranged marriages, so Pin was delighted that her fiance was a good guy she cared about. At least she would love even if she wasn’t loved in return.

Think about what this would mean for her future - she had every reason to be optimistic.

But her fairytale prince turned out to be gay, She was left to discover it on her own, without fully understanding what it meant (it was 1961 after all, there really wasn’t much understanding back then, it is so unfair to hold her to modern expectations), and in a very cruel way. The day before their wedding. Think that through - the day before her wedding. Everyone else is caught up in their own messes and the only person in the world who loves her (Sasin) has betrayed her. It wasn’t intentional from him, but he did. Not by falling in love with her prince but by conspiring with the prince to prevent their marriage and keeping her in the dark about it.

This was her life they were messing with. They were deciding all of it for her, assuming she’d just go along with it without bothering to let her in on it (she would have been their *biggest* shipper if they’d been honest with her).

She acts out of her own pain, struggling to prioritise her own needs - because no one else will. By the time Rachawadee has caught on and tries, Pin isn't in a place where she can hear it - she is young, inexperienced and in more pain than she can grasp, how could it get worse? The older woman's words are there to guide her in understanding when she is.

And she does find her way through it, in no small part because she is still a kind, caring person who cares deeply for both Sasin and Saenkaew.

Still struggling with her own heartbreak, she joins Grandma in marrying the men. (Tying the white sacred threads around their wrists and blessing them, that’s one way Thai families marry their kids to each other. And Perth’s acting in that scene was brilliant, how she showed the many different emotions Pin was experiencing - happiness for the men but also grief for the loss of her own hopes and the future she thought she was stepping into.)

The emotional peak of the lakorn was the showdown with Bodin. Sasin wasn’t the brightest bulb to just kick the gun away twice but the repeated disarmings of Bodin made space to ratchet the emotional intensity up. And up. And up. Tension - B has a gun, S&S emotions, B disarmed - release, tension-emotion-release again, then B has the gun and Pin stands up to her father, holding his gun to her heart, refusing to let go, willing to die for the others, and then the carefully set-up surprise of Duangkamol to intensify the release. Boom. Boom. BOOM. WHAT?!? WOAH, shock, laughter. Brilliant story craft.

And Pin was at the centre of that. She held her father’s gun to her heart and refused to back down. Through it all, women were the ones who actually got things done while all of the men waffled around. Pin’s story is every bit as important as the men’s.

Someone asked me to tell her what she had missed in not recogising that this lakorn is also Pin's story. So I rewrote my review to fill in some blanks. Some of it is from memory and some from a look at the narrative structure of the lakorn I didn't post because I didn't feel up to the fallout from daring to see things differently while the majority were still in just finished airing raptures (and also angry about who wasn't suitably punished on screen per their not-Thai requirements).
It's long but I'll post it below as it will get lost in Comments.

Here you go. Some of it is from my review, some from unposted writing and some from memory, I'll have forgotten some details.

Pin is a very young woman (is she still a teenager?) with little experience who has somehow managed to maintain a cheerful, optimistic outlook despite losing her real mae and being raised by a twat of a paa and his wife. There’s a whole side drama going on there, as Pin is the daughter of a servant twat Paa had a thing with and his wife takes out her resentment on Pin.

She lives in a time (1961) and place where women’s options were limited, *especially* in the upper classes. Her frame of reference was loveless arranged marriages, so Pin was delighted that her fiance was a good guy she cared about. At least she would love even if she wasn’t loved in return.

Think about what this would mean for her future - she had every reason to be optimistic.

But her fairytale prince turned out to be gay, She was left to discover it on her own, without fully understanding what it meant (it was 1961 after all, there really wasn’t much understanding back then, it is so unfair to hold her to modern expectations), and in a very cruel way. The day before their wedding. Think that through - the day before her wedding. Everyone else is caught up in their own messes and the only person in the world who loves her (Sasin) has betrayed her. It wasn’t intentional from him, but he did. Not by falling in love with her prince but by conspiring with the prince to prevent their marriage and keeping her in the dark about it.

This was her life they were messing with. They were deciding all of it for her, assuming she’d just go along with it without bothering to let her in on it (she would have been their *biggest* shipper if they’d been honest with her).

She acts out of her own pain, struggling to prioritise her own needs - because no one else will. By the time Rachawadee has caught on and tries, Pin isn't in a place where she can hear it - she is young, inexperienced and in more pain than she can grasp, how could it get worse? The older woman's words are there to guide her in understanding when she is.

And she does find her way through it, in no small part because she is still a kind, caring person who cares deeply for both Sasin and Saenkaew.

Still struggling with her own heartbreak, she joins Grandma in marrying the men. (Tying the white sacred threads around their wrists and blessing them, that’s one way Thai families marry their kids to each other. And Perth’s acting in that scene was brilliant, how she showed the many different emotions Pin was experiencing - happiness for the men but also grief for the loss of her own hopes and the future she thought she was stepping into.)

The emotional peak of the lakorn was the showdown with Bodin. Sasin wasn’t the brightest bulb to just kick the gun away twice but the repeated disarmings of Bodin made space to ratchet the emotional intensity up. And up. And up. Tension - B has a gun, S&S emotions, B disarmed - release, tension-emotion-release again, then B has the gun and Pin stands up to her father, holding his gun to her heart, refusing to let go, willing to die for the others, and then the carefully set-up surprise of Duangkamol to intensify the release. Boom. Boom. BOOM. WHAT?!? WOAH, shock, laughter. Brilliant story craft.

And Pin was at the centre of that. She held her father’s gun to her heart and refused to back down. Through it all, women were the ones who actually got things done while all of the men waffled around. Pin’s story is every bit as important as the men’s.

The comment is making a joke about BL shippers' tendency to imagine romantic or sexual feelings into anything close between two men, especially if there is tension or peril.
It won't be a BL or bromance that's censored BL. It's historical fiction. The kings were real and I'm not reading further lest I spoil the ending for myself.
It reminds me of another one31 historical, also 10 episodes - if this follows a similar pattern, they might show very little of the princes' young fraternal friendship and focus instead on intrigue, rivalry and politics between kingdoms.

My working hypothesis is that while Thai movies may have sad or bittersweet endings, series and lakorns cannot - sometimes the stronger story in a lakorn by far will be the sadder one or end in growth rather than romance, but that will be relegated to 'second' and the first couple will always end up happily together.
The two different endings for the versions certainly support the hypothesis =D
The bittersweet ending of both movies felt like good coming of age, especially one based on a semi-autobiographical novel. Turning that into a happy ending while still respecting the original wasn't an easy task - IMO they nailed it, respecting the story and its themes without diluting them. Well done.

I watched the Taiwanese OG to see how much of the support role characters came from that and was surprised by how faithful the movie edit was to the OG. Including sections of dialogue. The boys' distinctive quirks too, and how they came from their fathers. The humour in the OG tends more towards sarcasm, but of course here it's translated into Thai exuberance.
Lin coming in confidence and secure in herself amidst the boy chaos, while remaining kind, was really great. I need to go back to compare that to the OG; every Thai movie remake I've seen with a smart FL has been more comfortable with her being smart than the original. In US originals especially, where the FL's intelligence is often downplayed for the sake of the ML.
The series is an expansion of course and I like (most) of what they did with it. While they were still playing to Nanon's smug side in the beginning I wasn't keen, Mai and Bank were never given personalities, and while some of the humour was great, some of it really wasn't. The world was more developed of course and with better balance.
(Oh this got long, maybe I should have written it as a review =D But then I couldn't spoiler the rest.)

You watch primarily BL when it comes to Thai titles, yes? If this were a BL series, Pin would just be a support role, defined entirely in terms of whether she supported the men's romance or was an obstacle. That's how you're used to seeing things, right?
What I'm pointing out is that there is more going on with this title, all in keeping with lakorn.
Lakorns don't limit their female characters in the way BL series do. Pin is very much a main role with her own backstory, present circumstances and complications - like everyone, including the men, deciding her future for her and expecting her to just go along with it. Including BL-orientated viewers apparently.
This lakorn gives her agency and her own story arc. It's every bit as much about her complicated situation and growth as it is about the men's. They are obstacles in her story. She doesn't have a sudden change of heart, you just missed everything in between.
What you interpreted as nonsense and wrote off as bad writing and a bad woman, those were moments when it would have been good to ask yourself what else was going on. You would have gotten more from this lakorn.

You've missed half of the story then. Her growth and development is there.

The synopsis sounds like this may be a good one for learning more about likay <3 The movies I've seen with it have (entirely understandably) assumed more familiarity than I have as an outsider.
Nha Harn was a big help for getting some grounding in the social context of mor lam, would be fantastic to get something similar for likay. Here's hoping.

It's the same house. Also the primary set for Home School and House of Dark Shadows, and at least one more lakorn I can't remember =D Something I saw it in showed more of the servants' quarters buildings in the back - the architecture is fascinating and everything I've seen which uses them films them differently.
Not going to try to recall all the times I've seen it as a minor location in other lakorns. Did it show up in Memoir of Rati too?

It's about social change. Also the emotional arc of the lakorn - the catharsis came earlier and the end was calmer, which is common in lakorns. Thai story-telling is driven primarily by emotions. It's a different way of doing things than the event-driven arcs of western fare. If you can embrace this, there's a lot of richness to their ways of working with emotions and crafting narratives.
Calls for social change are common in historical lakorns. An antagonistic character who comes to understand his mistakes and changes, that's a model for others to change as well and far more encouraging than retribution and punishment.
When I look at the social progress Thailand is making, especially compared to the state of the US, I'm inclined to favour their gentler, more forgiving and less retributive approach. It looks like it's working well for them.

Pin had the best character development. It helps to understand it as a 12 hour lakorn (rather than a BL series) where two of a lakorn's multiple storylines are so deeply intertwined they've become one narrative - which is pretty cool to pull off and also efficient storytelling. Pin is a main character in her own storyline, not just an obstacle in the men's. If you watch it again, look at it from that POV - it's every bit as much about her pain and her growth as it is about the men's romance.

It's a historical lakorn reflecting a historical practice, at least amongst wealthy men. Historical lakorns often criticise out-dated attitudes while also mining them for melodrama. Many of them also use that emotion to call for further social change and talk about social issues today, like discrimination, sexism, women's rights, gay rights, class issues. Parenting practices too.

They have plenty of screen time. It's a lakorn, of course it has multiple storylines and some of those are about women. That's part of the genre.

It's a lakorn so there are multiple story lines and women are central characters. One of the story lines is a romance between men. It's well developed, everything is in this.

I think my ratings break down on my review sum up my feelings about the movie better than words possibly can
Is it a "good" movie? Probably not. Zero regrets =D =D =D

Oh thank you <3 it's kind of you to say.

Ohm Pawat is easily one of GMMTV's most talented actors, especially his skill with showing quiet emotion through his voice and face. He's still a bit young for lakorn leads but I'd love to see him move into lakorns and movies.
I agree with you about fixed CPs and how that limits the growth of actors who get caught up in the system. CPs are just a way of turning young actors into more valuable products to sell to fans and other corporations. It's exploitative with many downsides. Like the shippers who can't move on from 2021 and punished Ohm (and Leng) because he and Nanon did their jobs well back then. It's really messed up.
As for Ohm and Leng's work here, the ONLY thing missing was years of fans building up fantasies about their boys. They did well, on a par with or better than work from established pairings fans are raving about.

My tags were accepted but not the genre change. If you're looking for a political drama as that's usually understood, this isn't it. The politics are backdrop & framework, they don't have much depth or screentime. Meanwhile it comes closer to western expectations for Investigation than Thailand tends to produce.

Also trying to get New (M Robert) recognised as a Main Role. He's on screen as much as Nadech. He's the calm, patient, understanding 2ML and a very necessary balance to the jealous, angry 1ML. It's like mismatched detective dramas except it's a trio.

I don't know. Royal Institute's is sparse, but it is Royal Institute so ::shrug:: Wiktionary includes older meanings, with some indication of degree of obsolescence ("somewhat dated" is the very low end of that). A lot of the pronouns have them.