Best Ch3 lakorn I've seen in a while. However, it could have cut two or three episodes out and still be meaningful. Some things kind of dragged on longer than it needed to be. The big reveal could have been handled a bit better as well since it took too long to get to the point. I get that they wanted to be thorough but I was starting to lose attention.
This lakorn was a good redeeming lakorn for Alex and Nycha’s pairing. They were stuck in boring roles in Sanae Nang Ngiew and had very little skinship. But yowza they had plenty of that here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lakorn on ch3 with this much sex before. So amusing to see how ready the n’ek was for sex compared to the p’ek here. Also the sex scene at the very end was very surprising, the leads were so close to just doing it out in the open LOL. Alek and Nycha’s chemistry is sizzling and they had a well developed romance to go with it. I like how they took their time to develop the leads relationship rather than putting them together early only to create misunderstandings. I also liked how mature the leads were with one another regarding their relationship and they understood each other and talked things over with one another before jumping to conclusions, even before they fell in love. It was really cute how the n’ek was crushing on the p’ek since they were kids but she was completely in denial for the longest time. The way the p’ek treated the n’ek like a kid sister was cute too, I love how he was always touching and stroking her head. They were always super physical with one another as well since the beginning which I loved, they were always grabbing each other or the p’ek was totally comfortable with touching her. I loved their body language.
I especially loved the character Anawin. He was very rational and smart, maybe a little too smart at times. Some of the things he did made me think it was a bit of a stretch how much he was able to figure out. Alek was sexy here too, I like the way he was dressed and he looks good in a suit. Alek’s acting was great here, I think he’s made some large strides. He is a way better emotional actor here than he was a couple of years ago in The Cupids.
Nycha is probably the weakest link in this lakorn. In the first couple of episodes her acting was horrible and she was especially overacting in the scenes where she would have to argue with people or act fierce. Homegirl needed to settle down her eyebrows, I was exhausted watching them go up and down whenever she was mad or emotional. Luckily her acting improved throughout the lakorn. She’s fairly good with emotional scenes but it was hard for her to keep up with the veteran actors, even actors in her own generation like Alek and Prim were way ahead of Nycha. Milin was a pretty well written character, they kept her fierce but it never came across as bitchy, plus she was fair and rational like the p’ek.
I didn’t expect that they’d make Tevis such a dark character. He is definitely one of those grey characters that you don’t quite hate but don’t quite like either, yet you root for him. You always suspect that he was up to something and the big reveal was a big pay off. He is one of those few lakorn characters that look for revenge, get it, pay the price for it but does not regret the decision. Couldn’t help but feel for his bittersweet end with Lisa. Poor Lisa can’t catch a break in the love department. First she falls in love with a guy that doesn’t love her and then she falls for an emotionally unavailable guy. Kind of wish she and Tevis had more time together before his downfall. Well, at least they got a good bed scene out of these two. Pop and Prim were really good in these roles, especially Pop who plays these dark roles well. I really liked him in Piang Chai Non Nee Mai Chai Pu Wised as well.
I was really interested in the Khin character and wish they spent more time on him. He was the more interesting brother than Pete, who really had nothing going on for him other than the fact that he was gay. Pete pretty much had it easy, everyone accepted his sexuality and he was always happy. I would have liked to see how Khin came to be married to Jannis (rather than them just tell us) and how he actually felt about her. I started feeling bad for her when seeing that she actually seemed to love her husband but I think she was a little inconsistently written considering how bitchy she was with him in the beginning and then she suddenly became all lovey dovey towards him (I think there were a bunch of inconsistencies with a lot of the characters in this lakorn and they made some decisions that didn’t quite fit, like for instance when Milin helped Anna and became all emotional when she was telling her story about her stepfather). I didn’t like the twist that they had with Khin’s character and wished it was something else, I was expecting a little bit more of a payoff after all that mystery.
Sam Yuranant is still such a great actor after all these years and taking a break. He plays these tough characters so well (so horrible that they have an actor of his calibre such a crappy role in that Karat Rak). Donut however seemed out of her element here, I haven’t watched her in a lakorn in years but I remember her being a fairly good actress but she was kind of dead here.
The editing was a little choppy at times and some scenes were a little jumpy. I also wasn’t fond of the 1 hour previously thing they kept on doing. It was fine the first couple of times but I really didn’t need to see the aftermath of a scene only for them to explain what happened 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, etc ago all the fricken time. Again, some characters did things that seemed out of character and it felt weird as well. Then the overall length of the lakorn was a little long, as much as I like seeing the leads together, I think their time on that island could have been cut in half, as well as the time after the n’ek was free from imprisionment since it took so long for characters to reveal things and figure things out. But yeah, still the best thing ch3 has released recently as it had it’s modernity fitting to the new ch3 format but it still had a ‘lakorn’ feeling to it as well. I appreciate that almost each of characters had a story to tell and for the most part they were fleshed out quite well.