jpny01

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 Except maybe Tian - to me it felt like he was still in 1,000 Stars, but everyone else had been replaced by shallow doppelgangers.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.

And no need to ask any questions or request clarification. Especially not from Phupha, who we've never known to be interested in knowing the full truth?

Mix was the only one actually playing his character this episode, so I would agree, he wins. Poor Earth had to step out of Phupha and play whoever that was this ep. We got to see Phupha again in the very last scene, and once again, Earth was sublime.

Well, Nam would have been an even better friend if he didn't commit a crime by divulging confidential medical info to Phupha and just walked over and asked Tian for an explanation himself.

It's not dislike of the drama, it's dislike of the drama they inserted, because it was driven entirely by plot points rather than the nature of the characters, which was abandoned. They needed X to happen, so the character did Y, even if it made no sense. It needed to be dark, so Longtae took 12 hours to get the flashlight - they were at the waterfall in the morning, then it was pitch-dark. It was lazy and inauthentic.

Drama is fine, but it has to make sense. This didn't.

What I hated wasn't the drama, it was the artificiality of the drama and it's dependence on people acting out of character and with a total lack of logic. Phupha would never confront Tian in front of the whole village, and he would demand the full facts, Tian wouldn't so casually put Longtae in danger, or be such an idiot to leave his flash on. Why woudn't Nam ask Tian himself instead of calling Phupha and giving him incomplete information? Why does a 12-year old girl ( need to ask what death is? Why did it take Longtae 12 hours to get the flashlight? (They were at the waterfall in the morning, then it was suffendly night)

The villagers didn't exactly overreact, they just didn't react in a logical way. "Excuse me Mr Tian, what do you mean when you say you're responsible for her death?" No, not one person was interested in finding out what happened.

I was moved 0% by the episode because it made no sense. Well, not true. The last scene where Pha asks Tian to stay with him left me totally breathless because Earth was perfection - playing Phupha, rather than whatever character that was in the rest of the episode. The village chief's butterfly speech was good too.

But the dramatic effect was artificial and ruined it for me. This show has so artfully handled drama so far that I don't understand why it had to abandon that and become something different and much lesser. This episode made me suffer, and not in a good way.