Rushed, but super interesting

Wednesday Club was one of my favorite shows this year. It's a story of a group of young people who came together in hopes of becoming friends. That didn’t exactly work out. Each of them came with their own problems and challenges, family conflicts that spilled into political and societal issues, and while their stories interlocked, the friendship promised in the official synopsis never really materialized.
The show was super interesting and had some of the most talented actors in GMMTV. Unfortunately, it had one major flaw: the plot could easily be stretched into 14, 16, or even 20 episodes. There were so many characters and so many stories, 12 episodes were not enough to do any of them justice. As a result, it felt rushed. Very rushed.
Other reviews talk enough about plot and writing, so let me just summarize my feelings.

Kong – Ohm Pawat was the best actor in the show, and Kong was the purest and most wholesome character. It’s a shame then, that he’d been relegated to mostly a background character. His family story was kinda in the center of everything that happened, but even that was very shallow.
I’d love to see more scenes of Kong interacting with his siblings and know more about how he felt about the whole situation. In the end, even the family scandal was swept under the rug and forgotten.

Palee – was the kind of character you could replace with a coat rack with no loss to the series. The acting was also like that of a coat rack. Given that, he and his love escapades were given entirely too much screen time.

Kanya – if Palee was a coat rack, she was a coat.

May – I can see why she was the favorite character of so many people. She started as very toxic, (which was later explained), and gradually changed to be a better person. Even when she manipulated Tam to get together with Palee, she gave her some genuinely good advice about makeup and protection.
In the beginning, she was interested in Kong and it bugged me how many people shipped them. What did my boy ever do to you that you wish him so ill? Somebody said they would end up like Mink and Karn, but I doubt that—May would eat Kong alive.

Tam – an innocent girl, the complete opposite of May. I felt like she could be on an autism spectrum, given her constant spinning, her avoidance of eye contact, and her strange custom of giving names to everything. Or Film just picked up some of Pennhung’s behaviors from Home School.
Her story was one of the most developed in the show, but I still don’t like how it ended. Spoilers ahead.
We don’t know how was her biological mother’s situation 20 years ago, but she said she worked like an ox to be ready for her younger daughter. It must have been hard for her to have an unplanned child earlier, and giving Tam up was the best of the terrible options she had. Is that a surprise that she didn’t want to talk about it with a virtual stranger? Especially in front of her very young daughter? Tam should go back to her and have a proper talk—not starting with stupid questions.
On the other hand, her adoptive grandma was abusive as hell. Every time we saw her, she was berating Tam, yelling at her, or beating her with a cane. And all of that is supposed to disappear because of one sappy message she wrote twenty years ago? I’m not buying it. I know for some people family is family, and they can treat you like dirt, but they love you, and it’s supposed to make their abusive behavior fine. It doesn’t. I’m glad the old hag is dead and I think Tam is too, even if she wouldn’t admit it.
Now she just needs to go talk to her biological mother.

Kul – look, I’m old and cynical, I don’t give a damn about young people’s love polygon. But a story of a male escort? Hell, yeah. Gimme full 12 episodes of that!
Unfortunately, for most of the show Kul only got one scene per episode and his story was criminally underdeveloped. I'm especially curious about his relationship with his siblings and friends outside the club. Even at the end, a lot of threads were left loose. Did he pay off P’Dream? How did he deal with P’Yam?

Pheem – the character was meant to be played by Joong and I won’t lie, I was initially drawn to this show by the promise of seeing my favorite himbo. However, Satang did very well in this role. There were just a few scenes where he lacked Joong’s physicality: when Baby Satang says he’d protect the ladies, it’s hard to take him seriously, but if the same lines came from Joong, across Bangkok, Karn would wet his pants. On the bright side, Satang can play guitar.
As for Pheem, I feel like his character was also underdeveloped. Even most of his screen time was about Mink or May. I’d love to see more of his interactions with his family, know what drove him, and what his goal in life was.

Max – yeah, you guessed it, another underdeveloped character. To the point, where I don’t even know what to say about him. He was important to the plot and Kay did a great job portraying him (I saw him previously in Home School, where he played a totally different character), I just… don’t feel anything about him.

But even without the full development, the slices of lives we glimpsed grabbed me. The ending left me feeling melancholic. I wish it was longer. I wish we could see all characters getting their happy endings. Who knows, maybe in five years they will meet again and become friends they failed to become now?

And yes, the irony of GMMTV making shows about how people get different opportunities in life while giving main roles to the same chosen few, and keeping other, genuinely talented actors as eternal supports, is not lost on me.

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