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would have been so much more if they had tried to do less
The early episodes held such promise - bouncing from one crime lakorn trope to another, then swerving (because Thailand, and I love this) into comedy series and developing a beautiful care and trauma focus with Q’s sleepwalking, anchored by Ohm’s ability to show quiet emotion through his face and voice.
But the crime lakorn never became more than a string of tropes, ungrounded and unintegrated, lazily thrown together in pursuit of plot, motivations and filling time. Enough to carry an entire side plot of a 30 hour lakorn but merely surface level tension here. Veteran actors Lift Supoj and Pym Pympan gave competent but generic performances, they could have done them in their sleep. Tae Pitisak was at least given a decent monologue to work with and he is excellent with a good monologue.
This is the first time I've felt my familiarity with lakorn tropes and actors got in the way of watching either a lakorn or series. Their characters were stock roles so I was watching actors go through well-known motions. Papang though, he’s not cut out for a tough guy. Give him more roles please, but not this.
I wish I had seen this earlier, before I got the hang of lakorns and their tropes. It might have worked better for me as I wouldn't have realised how paint by numbers it was. Or maybe I would have just been casting about for an explanation within my experience. The series support characters were generic too.
The BL was also trope-heavy, though on a par for recent GMMTV fare and Ohm can elevate anything through the strength of his acting and facial expressions. Much praise for him. No criticism of Leng, his delivery suited his character. And certainly none for the two of them together or their chemistry. The only thing lacking there was years of fans building up fantasies about their boys, the kind which lets shippers bypass everything else and fill in the gaps with their own emotions.
But all of those tropes, that was a lot of weight for the BL to labour under, and through the middle it was more cliches than unique characters. That’s on the writers, Ohm and Leng did their best to try to make them more. (How often am I writing something like this these days? GMMTV, get it back together. Please.)
This had one excellent idea which it developed and then set aside - the sleepwalking, with its mix of care and trauma. Anchored of course by the quality of Ohm’s performance. It seemed a promising start, especially with the kindness and humour it mixed in, the perfect recipe for Thailand’s fantastic way of tempering trauma and difficult subject matter.
They did revisit it in the last two episodes, with the characters having matured. They got the emotions right in that, although it felt somewhat discconected and …. Still trying to figure out what was missing there for me. It might come back to integration of the story lines and their many elements.
The series also had what should have been solid ideas around sacrifice, except they chopped it all into too many pieces and scattered it about, dissipating its emotion. That’s my primary criticism, this series couldn’t be bothered to truly develop and explore any of its ideas. I have to mentally recompile it to appreciate what they were trying to do, it just kept bouncing from one bit to another.
It’s like the many writers (too many cooks perhaps?) didn’t have the courage to properly develop and explore any of their story-lines, or understand which ones were its strengths - everything was resolved too quickly and easily. This would have been so much more if they had tried to do less.
So this is yet another What might have been, with this premise and these actors, if only the creators had done their part better. I very much want that tender care/trauma laced with comedy series the beginning seemed to promise. Choose a few lakorn tropes carefully to develop the themes of sacrifice and the questions it asks around that. And above all, have the courage to stay with those emotions. Thailand does that so well.
What this might have been, with Ohm and Leng and that potential.
But the crime lakorn never became more than a string of tropes, ungrounded and unintegrated, lazily thrown together in pursuit of plot, motivations and filling time. Enough to carry an entire side plot of a 30 hour lakorn but merely surface level tension here. Veteran actors Lift Supoj and Pym Pympan gave competent but generic performances, they could have done them in their sleep. Tae Pitisak was at least given a decent monologue to work with and he is excellent with a good monologue.
This is the first time I've felt my familiarity with lakorn tropes and actors got in the way of watching either a lakorn or series. Their characters were stock roles so I was watching actors go through well-known motions. Papang though, he’s not cut out for a tough guy. Give him more roles please, but not this.
I wish I had seen this earlier, before I got the hang of lakorns and their tropes. It might have worked better for me as I wouldn't have realised how paint by numbers it was. Or maybe I would have just been casting about for an explanation within my experience. The series support characters were generic too.
The BL was also trope-heavy, though on a par for recent GMMTV fare and Ohm can elevate anything through the strength of his acting and facial expressions. Much praise for him. No criticism of Leng, his delivery suited his character. And certainly none for the two of them together or their chemistry. The only thing lacking there was years of fans building up fantasies about their boys, the kind which lets shippers bypass everything else and fill in the gaps with their own emotions.
But all of those tropes, that was a lot of weight for the BL to labour under, and through the middle it was more cliches than unique characters. That’s on the writers, Ohm and Leng did their best to try to make them more. (How often am I writing something like this these days? GMMTV, get it back together. Please.)
This had one excellent idea which it developed and then set aside - the sleepwalking, with its mix of care and trauma. Anchored of course by the quality of Ohm’s performance. It seemed a promising start, especially with the kindness and humour it mixed in, the perfect recipe for Thailand’s fantastic way of tempering trauma and difficult subject matter.
They did revisit it in the last two episodes, with the characters having matured. They got the emotions right in that, although it felt somewhat discconected and …. Still trying to figure out what was missing there for me. It might come back to integration of the story lines and their many elements.
The series also had what should have been solid ideas around sacrifice, except they chopped it all into too many pieces and scattered it about, dissipating its emotion. That’s my primary criticism, this series couldn’t be bothered to truly develop and explore any of its ideas. I have to mentally recompile it to appreciate what they were trying to do, it just kept bouncing from one bit to another.
It’s like the many writers (too many cooks perhaps?) didn’t have the courage to properly develop and explore any of their story-lines, or understand which ones were its strengths - everything was resolved too quickly and easily. This would have been so much more if they had tried to do less.
So this is yet another What might have been, with this premise and these actors, if only the creators had done their part better. I very much want that tender care/trauma laced with comedy series the beginning seemed to promise. Choose a few lakorn tropes carefully to develop the themes of sacrifice and the questions it asks around that. And above all, have the courage to stay with those emotions. Thailand does that so well.
What this might have been, with Ohm and Leng and that potential.
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