jpny01

Well, I'm sure he did - if it took Longtae 12 hours to find the flashlight, he must have spent some of that time where his father could see him. :)

There have been time jumps, but never ones that were plot problems. Tian went to the waterfall in the morning, and then it was night. Previous jumps skip over irrelevant details - I don't need to see Tian shave and eat breakfast and lunch every day, it isn't important. Here it was illogical and jarrring.

I would and have applauded them showing faults in characters - but I would like the faults to be consistent with who people are, and not manufactured to serve a plot point. Do think it's possible that out of 100 or so villagers, not a single one would be interested in an explanation about what happened? Not even the village chief? How about the rangers, who concealed the truth of Torfun's death? Would they want to know what happened? And not Phupha? He can be hurt and angry and still need to know the full truth.

Writing is poor when it squeezes characters into predetermined plot points rather than writing the drama to be driven by the characters. Instead of what we got, what if Phupha acted in character and privately confronted Tian? That would have been amazing. But they wanted to end with what happened and that meant nothing was character-driven - people had to take actions that would lead to that point. Tian had to take a photo with his flash on. Tian had to be causally willing to put Longtae in danger. It had to be dark, so it suddenly became night. The rangers had to be able to teleport to the right place at exactly the right moment. It was all plot, no character.

I hadn't thought of that, but this is yet another writing flaw.

I think you answered your own question - because it was done to elicit emotions from the audience, regardless of character. This episode was driven by plot rather than character. The characters just did what the plot required, rather than behaving consistently with their characters, if that makes sense. In other words, they wanted Tian to be totally isolated, so nobody had any interest in clarification - they just shunned Tian. Phupha would certainly be hurt by being lied to, but he wouldn't confront Tian in front of the whole village and he would want an explanation. But the plot required implausible miscommunication, so everybody implausibly miscommunicated.

There needed to be dramatic gunplay, and that required Tian to be discovered, and so his IQ had 100 points sawed off it so he could use his flash. The whole episode was like this.

Imagine now an episode that concentrated on Phupha's reaction and an emotional confrontation with Tian - how amazing an epsisode could that have been?

I agree that Phupha would have been deeply hurt, but that doesn't make his reaction consistent with his character. I don't think he would confront Tian in front of the whole village, especially without all the facts, and I think he would want an explanation. We would also see his pain more than the anger - I'm not sure Earth even knew how to play these scenes they were so alien to the character. That scene when he's in his office, he's literally just huffing.

This ep could have been a powerful and intimate dramatic conflict between the two mains as they processed these revelations - instead we were sledgehammered with manufactured drama when they already had everything they needed to be compelling.

I'm normally half in tears all the way through each episode of this series, but for this ep I felt nothing at all except frustration except for the very last scene, which was pure gold with Earth able to show us a huge range of emotion with incredible economy of force.

I'd almost hate to see Earth wasted on action when he's got such subtle power - anyone with a nice body and a handsome face can be an action star, but Earth can be world-class dramatic actor. But I would watch every action movie he's in 20 times, of course. His ability to harmonize strength and vulnerability is a killer and would make him a spectacular action character.

I'm harsher on this series because I'm holding it to a higher standard, and because I care about it so much. Something that makes no sense in Brothers or The Cupid Coach I let go with a shrug - here, everything out of place is intensely jarring and disappointing given the level of quality this series has proven it's capable of.

OMG, I laughed about the swim team too - that one guy's dive was so bad !

I'm not expecting a kiss either, and I'm OK with it. It bothers me when there's no kiss and it's college students or post-college age people, but here it's just fine. They can save it for S2. :)

I agree with you 100%. The only scene that made me feel anything was at the very end of the episode when Phupha was behaving in character again. (When he was asking Tian to stay with him.

I felt the same way, and I watched a lot of it on 2X as well. None of the reactions felt in character to me.

I think it was because instead of being character-driven, it was plot driven. The characters did whatever they need to do to get from plot point to plot point rather than behaving consistently with their characters. Phupha would have been hurt that Tian lied to him, but he would not confront Tian in front of the whole village, and he would want to know everything about what happened. Likewise, the villagers aren't going to just assume Tian is a murderer - they would want to know what he means by "responsible for her death".

When you look at the final scene where Pha is asking Tian to stay with him, it underscores what was wrong with the episode. Here we were back to normal - Pha being Pha, and Earth playing him sublimely with subtlety and understatement, packing every gesture an minute expression with emotional power. The episode abandoned the nuance and complexity we've seen so far with sledgehammered drama that depended too much on a lack of logic and implausible failure of communication. Even the passage of time made no sense. Tian went to the waterfall in the morning, where Longtae spoke to him for a few minutes, then said he was going to get a flashlight. How long did that take, exactly? It was nighttime the next scene. So it took 12 hours? The plot wanted it to be dark, so it was dark.

The whole episode was like that. Lazy writing and disrespect for the characters. Except maybe Tian - to me it felt like he was still in 1,000 Stars, but everyone else had been replaced by shallow doppelgangers.

In any case, if they had just let Phupha be Phupha, this episode could have been painful in a good way as we saw his hurt and the drama could have been organic to the characters.

Tian's dad is the minister in charge of forestry, so we can presume he has probably known where Tian has been this entire time. Most likely he's inserted someone to watch Tian and report back to him. I'm going to guess it's Yod.

He had already jumped to that conclusion before he got there. I'm not angry at Phupha, I'm angry at whatever writer made him behave out of character. Phupha would have wanted to know the full story.

I would be OK with drama - even somewhat unnecessary drama, it it made sense and was consistent with the characters. None of this was. The writers inserted plot points, and the characters had to do whatever was needed to get from A to B. So if it meant Phupha suddenly doesn't care about having the facts and jumping to a very negative conclusion about the man he loves and accusing him in front of the entire village, then he does. If it needs to take Longtae 12 hours to get a flashlight, it does. If Tian's IQ needs to plummet a 100 points or so to talk really loud and use a flash when 20 meters from a band of armed killers, he does. If Pha needs to teleport to Bangkok to me at Torfun's grave just after Tian leaves, he does.

This is pure GMMTV. None of this is in the source material. I don't know why they always need to destroy a perfectly good series like this - and this was about as close to perfectly good as you could get until this ep.

I don't. But I think the characters should be 100% the character, and not suddenly whatever is necessary to move an inserted plot point. Phupha has lots of flaws, and they're perfectly played by Earth - but jumping to a wild conclusion and confronting Tian with it in front of the whole village is totally out of character - in other words, he's not 100% perfect by any means, but he's not imperfect in the way this episode painted him.

The writing abandoned the emotional complexity and nuance the series has shown so far in favor of a sledgehammer approach to drama that cheapens the story and is unfair to the beautiful character an immensely talented actor has brought to us.

Tian I thought behaved like Tian, it's just he was dropped in a sea of nonsense. Mix shined this ep as a result of being the only actor playing a character behaving like his character.

Phupha isn't a person, he's a character. We forget that because Earth has inhabited that character with perfection. When suddenly Phupha is not longer Phupha and is instead whatever the plot needs him to be to move from A to B, it's disappointing and upsetting. The character Phupha would want an explanation and to know the facts, not jump to an unsupported conclusion about someone he's in love with. That's the problem.

Actually, I'm not approaching it passionately, because I was totally unmoved by the episode, which I thought was so bad I had to divide watching it over a period of hours. My analysis is quite dispassionate, and I think this episode destroyed the series, and I'm not sure there's enough run-time left to fix it.

My issue was the episode had characters behave out of character to drive plot points rather than have the plot follow the characters, if that makes sense. It was out of character for Pha to confront Tian in front of the entire village, and it was also out of character for him to not want all the facts. There were too many things like that in this ep - Tian uses the flash to take the photo. It takes Longtae 12 hours to grab a flashlight - not one person was interested in knowing the full story of what happened to Torfun (except Longtae). The rangers were all judgy when they had lied and hidden the truth too. Nothing made sense - it was all manufactured drama, lazily written. It would not have been hard to write it in a way that made sense for the characters.

This ep should have been about Phupha being hurt that Tian had lied to him - it should have been an intimate conflict between the two main characters in a way that was faithful to those characters. If GMMTV had trusted Earth and Mix, we could have had a spectacular drama spectacularly acted, instead of what this was.

That is definitely progress

If you loved someone, and they told you they were responsible for someone's death, would you:

a) Say "You're dead to me now!" and turn your back on him, or
b) Say "OMG, tell me what happened! Come here and let me hug you!"

Tian isn't a random person, he's the person Phupha is in love with. That nobody asked for more information and just decided Tian was a murderer made no sense and was not consistent with the characters. That's the issue. This series has been wonderfully, spectacularly character-driven, and this episode that was all thrown away to have people do whatever was needed to serve a plot point, which is bad writing - and that GMMTV inserted all of this when it wasn't in the source material just shows they don't trust their actors and instead think their awful writers are better. That Earth isn't in every drama they make tells me they don't appreciate the treasure they have.