Nam Pueng Kom (2009)

Disappointing, Bitter honey

MY FAILED FIRST ATTEMPT
This was my second attempt at watching this show. The last attempt was 4 years ago and my young vain self could not get past the barrier that the tired and 60 years old looking actor in the spot of the male lead, created.


A TIRED OLD MAN & THE ML’s MISMATCHED VISUALS
Before I decided to give this a shot the second time around, I told myself that it was only natural for the male lead to look old and grandfatherly because that is what his age was supposed to be set around. I told myself this over and over again until the moment when it was revealed that all the older characters were supposed to be in their 40s. Enduring the ML became harder once that fact became known to me. I simply couldn’t rationalise why a 40 something-year-old hunk who apparently every girl saw favourably would look like a tired old man.

Nonetheless, I persevered and completed the lakorn. Which... now that I look back at it, is a big feat.


MY ISSUES WITH THE LAKORN
My biggest gripe besides the visuals of the main male lead were how the male and female lead were written. In fact, every other character had a form of relatability within them. Even though I could not identify with their actions, I could understand what had caused it and why they did it. The main leads, on the other hand, were not relatable.


THE MALE LEAD
With the male lead, the writers filled this drama with him doing awful things to the female lead. Such as overworking her, not letting her eat, constantly verbally slandering her and her mother, making her act as a slave in the house while embarrassing her in front of other people. Then to top it all — even coercing her to let him have sex with her by threatening her to call the cops on her mother. Even though he knew exactly how Juang’s son felt for the female lead, and that they were dating.

While it would be acceptable by lakorn standards that they make the male lead do all these things, the writers failed to add any points where we see the male lead’s struggle between revenge and the girl’s goodness. The writers also failed to show me how the male lead fell for the female lead, except for the fact that she was young and beautiful.

Did he ever see her goodness and try to treat her better or like her a little? No. Instead, we were shown him verbally abusing her, her firing back, and then him smiling afterward as if enjoying this little situation.

In fact, even though he stopped being mean to her in the last 3-to 2 episodes, till the ending few minutes the male lead continued to manipulate the female lead by playing games.

In fact, by the very end, the male lead thought that the only thing that would really make the female lead forgive him was him giving her and their child his entire property. He thought till the end that the way to win her over was giving her his money…


THE FEMALE LEAD
I don’t see a lot of people talking about her or bringing up what a bad person she was as well.

Well yes, she was tricked and sold to pay for her mother’s debt. She has really abused you Juang and the male lead. However, my point of contention with how the female lead was written is her stupidity, the lack of scenes where we see the female lead falling for the male lead, as well as how she treats Gai, her boyfriend of 7 years.

The writers really tried to sell to me that the reason why the female lead fell for the male lead is probably that they had sex. As if sex under coercion or sex, in general, can make someone forget a 7-year-old relationship and fall for the sex partner.

That reason might have been good enough for the screenwriters but not good enough for me. Actually, I would have liked to see scenes where the female lead also saw a bit of goodness in the male lead (which would also need to be added to the drama) — anything enough to make me understand why she would hold even a gram of affection for the male lead.

In addition to that, the female lead was absolutely not okay with her boyfriend of 7 years, Gai. She strung him along till the very last episode. Even after she had sex with the male lead, and actually visibly began to be affected by his actions with other women, she still allowed Gai to have his beautiful dream of them being together. In fact, she didn’t say anything to him until he himself figured out that she was pregnant.

I felt like it was not okay for the female to do that since Gai also has integrity and deserves loyalty.

In fact, I don’t know and couldn’t relate to what the female lead was thinking when she continued to play girlfriend to Gai while being pregnant with her “husband”‘s child. The least he deserved was for her to come clean.


IN CONCLUSION
The lakorn did a good job at showing us the most disgusting of ways to take revenge on a lover who left you for someone richer — and then by extension, her daughter (since she’s younger and pretty)

However, it failed to show me how the two leads could fall in love with each other despite this situation, and how they too deserve a little bit of understanding and redemption.

I think that this drama had very good acting chops, the OST was very on point, and the plot had a lot of potential, but that was lost in bad character writing and casting choices.


5.5/10

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