Pin Phak (2024)

It pains me to say this...

As a fan of women in period costume, and a big fan of Gap, who has been looking forward to this series ever since it was first announced, it pains me to say that The Loyal Pin royally sucks :(

Don’t get me wrong, it looks much better than Gap did, with the ravishing sets and dresses you would expect of a big-budget period piece, and a cinematographer who knows how to compose a shot...and can even hold the camera straight! Freen and Becky do their best with the material, and skillfully showcase a wider range of emotions than in their previous work.

But you know what Gap never was, for all its flaws? Boring. It had personality! Quirks! Camp! A dumb sense of humor! And as pointless and silly as the conflict often was, there were at least characters you cared about involved in it.

The Loyal Pin gives us zero reason to care about Pin and Anin except that they are gay and in love. And hey. Sometimes that's enough. If this were a film, or a short miniseries, I wouldn't need much more reason than that. But this is a 16-episode drama. There is ample time for character development. The first few episodes at least gesture at some personality types: Lady Pin is the straight-laced obedient one, and Princess Anin is the headstrong hellraiser who knows what she wants and will do anything to get it. That’s fun! The best moments in the series come during Anin’s increasingly over-the-top seduction attempts, when there’s something approaching tension between the two of them.

Then they confess their love—in quite a lovely scene, actually, probably the high point of the series for me—and it’s all downhill from there. Any semblance of personality these characters once had is obliterated. Who is Anin? She’s a girl who really loves Pin. And is also the princess, I guess. Who is Pin? She’s a girl who really loves Anin, but then is forced to marry someone else, and is sad about it.

That’s it. That’s the story. There isn’t enough substance here to sustain eight episodes, let alone twice that many.

Even in the early episodes there are warning signs of the snoozefest to come. When Anin is scheming to make a laughingstock of her rival Master Kuea, it’s a perfect opportunity for some conflict: What if her plotting backfires? What if Pin thinks she’s going too far, and they fight about it? The screenplay blissfully swoops past this possibility. It’s as if the creative team heard some criticism of the relationship in Gap, and responded by surgically removing not only the faintest trace of toxicity, but any source of friction between the leads altogether. Sure, the yuri is wholesome, but at what cost?

It’s not just the leads who are lifeless archetypes. The screenwriter is perversely determined to make each character into the blandest possible version of themselves. Master Kuea could be a fantastic “nice guy” villain, if we ever had any idea what was going on in his head. Instead he comes across as kind of a hapless dork with no clue what he wants. (Which, admittedly, is a real type of guy, just not an especially riveting figure in a drama when he’s supposed to be driving the conflict.) Aunt Patt’s tragic backstory is squandered, and makes her behavior in the present day more confusing than compelling. The elder brother has his edges so thoroughly sanded down he might as well be sawdust, while the playboy brother threatens to have some interesting flaws (for a moment I almost thought a member of this fictional royal family might be portrayed in a less-than-flattering light!!) but is revealed of course to have a heart of gold in the end. I’m not even sure why the mom exists tbf. And don’t get me started on the servant characters, whose lives apparently revolve entirely around helping these two noblewomen get laid. Nam played a similar comic relief role in Gap, yes, but her character in Gap had a life of her own. Here she is wholly subservient to the princess, and to the plot. I can’t say I was expecting searing class critique from a drama sponsored by the Thai government, but still.

The only side characters of any interest are Lady Uangfah, who provides a scene or two of classic sadgirl longing, and the other girl who is thirsty for the princess whose name I forgot. Both characters are tragically underutilized, and if you think the script is ever going to deal with or acknowledge the fact that the princess gets assaulted, prepare for disappointment. That might introduce some complexity to the story, and we can’t have that.

Look, I’m not anti-fluff, or anti-spice. In 2024 we were blessed with the very fluffy 23.5 and the very spicy Affair, both of which I enjoyed. On the surface TLP might seem like the best of both worlds: it’s got fluff and spice in spades! But what’s missing is the spark that makes you actually want to watch the characters interact with each other. When Wan and Pleng finally take the speed train to Boinksville, you cheer because a series of soap opera circumstances have conspired to keep them apart for their entire lives despite how absurdly horny they are for each other. When Ongsa and Sun are cute together, it’s satisfying because we love to see a walking anxiety attack snag a baddie. When Mon and Lady Sam hook up, we are reminded of how much Sam has opened up, and how much confidence Mon has gained. Why am I supposed to be rooting for Pin and Anin, when all I really know about them is that they are two attractive rich ladies who grew up in neighboring mansions?

The answer, of course, is that they are played by Freen and Becky. And therein lies the problem. Gap wasn’t made to satisfy an existing fanbase. The creators may not have been artistic geniuses, but they knew they had to lay the groundwork to make you care about Sam and Mon. The Loyal Pin was created for legions of FreenBecky fans who will watch anything with FreenBecky in it. (I don’t mean that disparagingly: I’m one of those fans!) And it was created, let’s be real, for two reasons: to sell merchandise and promote tourism. It’s a 16-episode advertisement, starring the world’s first GL superstars as mascots. And while exporting photogenic lesbianism to stimulate the economy is a unique strategy for sure, and might work out great for the economy, I’m not convinced it’s great for art, or for lesbians. I only hope that Cranium, Freen and Becky’s next project, is more than another cynical marketing ploy.

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