Pang Sanaeha rant
Spoilery rant ahead. Read it to save yourself the trouble of actually watching the show.
Bah, to think I was banking on PS to help turn my opinion of Ch7 around. It started off well enough and I was glad that this lakorn did not focus solely on romance and introduced some variety with a mixture of supernatural, mystery and humour but it all fell apart in the second half with the horrendous writing and the poor production/editing sure did not help matters. The lakorn is based on a novel and since I don't read Thai, I'm not sure how much of the drama's plot should be blamed on the novelist or the scriptwriter.
First, poor resolution to the mysteries. The Ketsarina line was dragged on for soooo long, with Sak then Oi getting haunted endlessly, they getting freaked out endlessly, the witch doctor always failing to get rid of Ketsarina and it goes on and on and on. I thought Ketsarina wanted to approach Tae to tell him who killed her so they can be arrested and she can move on after justice is served. But because she has a green light perpetually shining on her face to make her look scary, Tae never sticks around long enough to hear her out. Later, when people at the farm finally figured to just freaking ask Ketsarina already what she wants, it somehow turned into Tae and co. having to find out by their own efforts who the real culprit is. Even after going in circles forever and Oi is finally found to be involved as well, the lakorn never properly explained what went on between Sak/Oi/Ket/Tot. Ket and Tot were a couple, Oi bullied Ket because she wanted to get Tot then somehow in between Ket breaks up with Tot and got together with Sak though she doesn't love Sak? Then Oi instigated Sak to beat Ket to death? WTH. And whose body was that that Oi led Tot to dig up? Ket said it wasn't hers but nothing ever came out of it.
The Siangwaan/Paul related mysteries at least got a decent answer and my complaints on them are related to the lousy characterisation and development of romance which I will rant on later. Oh yes, the bomb on Deun/Sumalee dropped by Jenjira at the end was explained by Kudalakorn in the yt vid comment that according to the novel, Sumalee = Deun and the house was put under the name of Sumalee so that Deun will have something in case Denis is arrested/dies and had all his possessions taken away. That makes sense but why you no tell me this in the lakorn??? How is the audience suppose to magically infer this from Deun's line that she had to sign a complicated marriage certificate with Dennis? *bangs head on wall*
Since we're on Dennis and Deun ... I actually like this pairing the most out of the lot (yea, and he's the villian. That says a lot on how much I'm into the main OTPs) and I was really disappointed by how Dennis was written. Ah, suddenly remembered another thing that wasn't explained. Who cut Praidao's brakes? It was implied by Paul and Deun that Dennis was behind it because Dao found out some of Dennis' secrets and even Dennis himself told the comatose Dao that he would have to kill her if she woke up but this plot point was never touched on later and the brakes thing was only used to make Deun misunderstand her sister and Paul. Back to Dennis. In the later half, he is often shown to be disrespectful to Deun, deriding her, constantly insinuating that she's got something going on with Paul and generally being even more of an ass than he was in the first half. How on earth can he supposedly love Deun and not care when he hurts her like this? On the other hand, he didn't actually force her to go for an abortion though I was half expecting him to and when she wanted to leave, he begged her to stay saying that she is the only women who meant anything to him and the Sumalee thing showed that he cares enough to provide for her. Even Paul was always reminding Deun that Dennis loves her a lot for some strange reason but Dennis' actions and attitude towards Deun flip flopped too much that his death scene turned out a lot less touching. If his love for Deun had been better written to be his one redeeming quality, it would have been more touching/ironic when Deun turned out to be the one to kill him. In the end he understood why Deun did what she did and still loved her but because his character wasn't properly moulded, his final scene simply wasn't convincing enough.
Regarding the two main couples, I still think it would have been good to have Tae/Sri and Paul/Dao as the end game! I've mentioned many times that Tae has way more chemistry with Sri and whenever he was supposed to be looking lovingly at Dao, his stares felt more lecherous/stalkerish than loving. Erm, I suppose I could fault this on Tle's poor acting and at the very least Tae/Dao had some kind of process of getting to know each other and falling in love (though it was weak as well) whereas for Paul/Sri, the lakorn did mostly telling instead of showing. We're told that Petch/Sri were a couple 10 years ago before he disappeared suddenly and now that Petch is back as Paul, they still love each other. Fine, we get such stuff in lakorns a lot but there's no further development of their romance. They argue 90% of the time they meet and they don't even spend that much time together in the show. I'm just supposed to accept that they lurvvvv each other and applaud when the obstacles are removed and they can be together. Sorry, I simply don't buy their love. Meh, or maybe I'm the odd one out 'cos from what I see on the forums/yt comments, Paul/Sri appear to be the most popular pairing and many don't like Deun because she was apparently too weak with Dennis. I'm neutral about Deun as a character but I suppose I like the angst prospect of Dennis/Deun which unfortunately was not realised.
Final thing to pick on, the later half suffered from sloppy production and choppy editing. In one painfully obvious oversight, Dao left the house in one dress and ended up in another by the time she got to her car. Scenes at the farm also alternate between day and night time depending on which part of the farm you are on though the events were supposed to be taking place at the same time.
If the show was that bad, why did I bother sitting through the whole thing? Sigh, the show drew me in with the mysteries and I stuck with it because I wanted to get some answers but sadly it fell short by a mile.
Bah, to think I was banking on PS to help turn my opinion of Ch7 around. It started off well enough and I was glad that this lakorn did not focus solely on romance and introduced some variety with a mixture of supernatural, mystery and humour but it all fell apart in the second half with the horrendous writing and the poor production/editing sure did not help matters. The lakorn is based on a novel and since I don't read Thai, I'm not sure how much of the drama's plot should be blamed on the novelist or the scriptwriter.
First, poor resolution to the mysteries. The Ketsarina line was dragged on for soooo long, with Sak then Oi getting haunted endlessly, they getting freaked out endlessly, the witch doctor always failing to get rid of Ketsarina and it goes on and on and on. I thought Ketsarina wanted to approach Tae to tell him who killed her so they can be arrested and she can move on after justice is served. But because she has a green light perpetually shining on her face to make her look scary, Tae never sticks around long enough to hear her out. Later, when people at the farm finally figured to just freaking ask Ketsarina already what she wants, it somehow turned into Tae and co. having to find out by their own efforts who the real culprit is. Even after going in circles forever and Oi is finally found to be involved as well, the lakorn never properly explained what went on between Sak/Oi/Ket/Tot. Ket and Tot were a couple, Oi bullied Ket because she wanted to get Tot then somehow in between Ket breaks up with Tot and got together with Sak though she doesn't love Sak? Then Oi instigated Sak to beat Ket to death? WTH. And whose body was that that Oi led Tot to dig up? Ket said it wasn't hers but nothing ever came out of it.
The Siangwaan/Paul related mysteries at least got a decent answer and my complaints on them are related to the lousy characterisation and development of romance which I will rant on later. Oh yes, the bomb on Deun/Sumalee dropped by Jenjira at the end was explained by Kudalakorn in the yt vid comment that according to the novel, Sumalee = Deun and the house was put under the name of Sumalee so that Deun will have something in case Denis is arrested/dies and had all his possessions taken away. That makes sense but why you no tell me this in the lakorn??? How is the audience suppose to magically infer this from Deun's line that she had to sign a complicated marriage certificate with Dennis? *bangs head on wall*
Since we're on Dennis and Deun ... I actually like this pairing the most out of the lot (yea, and he's the villian. That says a lot on how much I'm into the main OTPs) and I was really disappointed by how Dennis was written. Ah, suddenly remembered another thing that wasn't explained. Who cut Praidao's brakes? It was implied by Paul and Deun that Dennis was behind it because Dao found out some of Dennis' secrets and even Dennis himself told the comatose Dao that he would have to kill her if she woke up but this plot point was never touched on later and the brakes thing was only used to make Deun misunderstand her sister and Paul. Back to Dennis. In the later half, he is often shown to be disrespectful to Deun, deriding her, constantly insinuating that she's got something going on with Paul and generally being even more of an ass than he was in the first half. How on earth can he supposedly love Deun and not care when he hurts her like this? On the other hand, he didn't actually force her to go for an abortion though I was half expecting him to and when she wanted to leave, he begged her to stay saying that she is the only women who meant anything to him and the Sumalee thing showed that he cares enough to provide for her. Even Paul was always reminding Deun that Dennis loves her a lot for some strange reason but Dennis' actions and attitude towards Deun flip flopped too much that his death scene turned out a lot less touching. If his love for Deun had been better written to be his one redeeming quality, it would have been more touching/ironic when Deun turned out to be the one to kill him. In the end he understood why Deun did what she did and still loved her but because his character wasn't properly moulded, his final scene simply wasn't convincing enough.
Regarding the two main couples, I still think it would have been good to have Tae/Sri and Paul/Dao as the end game! I've mentioned many times that Tae has way more chemistry with Sri and whenever he was supposed to be looking lovingly at Dao, his stares felt more lecherous/stalkerish than loving. Erm, I suppose I could fault this on Tle's poor acting and at the very least Tae/Dao had some kind of process of getting to know each other and falling in love (though it was weak as well) whereas for Paul/Sri, the lakorn did mostly telling instead of showing. We're told that Petch/Sri were a couple 10 years ago before he disappeared suddenly and now that Petch is back as Paul, they still love each other. Fine, we get such stuff in lakorns a lot but there's no further development of their romance. They argue 90% of the time they meet and they don't even spend that much time together in the show. I'm just supposed to accept that they lurvvvv each other and applaud when the obstacles are removed and they can be together. Sorry, I simply don't buy their love. Meh, or maybe I'm the odd one out 'cos from what I see on the forums/yt comments, Paul/Sri appear to be the most popular pairing and many don't like Deun because she was apparently too weak with Dennis. I'm neutral about Deun as a character but I suppose I like the angst prospect of Dennis/Deun which unfortunately was not realised.
Final thing to pick on, the later half suffered from sloppy production and choppy editing. In one painfully obvious oversight, Dao left the house in one dress and ended up in another by the time she got to her car. Scenes at the farm also alternate between day and night time depending on which part of the farm you are on though the events were supposed to be taking place at the same time.
If the show was that bad, why did I bother sitting through the whole thing? Sigh, the show drew me in with the mysteries and I stuck with it because I wanted to get some answers but sadly it fell short by a mile.