Ruk Tong Oom (2014)

Yea! Ruk Tong Oom or Carried with love was my first lakorn (I do not count Thai full house), so as my first one I may be biased/ or may not understand what lakorns are about.
The good: This drama had lots of twists and turns, handsome male lead (Sipadun) pretty female lead (Lanta) and wonderful integration and stories for the supporting characters. I loved seeing the relationship between the two leads grow and blossom and to me they had epic chemistry. Lanta’s character was an interesting mix of the strong female characters I love and the “oblivious to the people around them” characters that I hate; however I loved the realness of her character (she even pulled a dutch oven!). The supporting female characters were girls I would want as friends and always had their girl’s back (loved that!). I also really liked their scenery and their movement to different places in the country, it was really cool to see! Not to mention the eye candy and fanservice from the male cast.
The bad: While I am here for great cinematography, I am not down with the numerous flashbacks and long stares that made the drama ridiculously long! This drama literally had each and every drama cliché that I could fathom and seemingly added new ones! If you think the main idea behind this lakorn is ridiculous just wait until you find the reasoning behind it. Loose ends and stupid evil characters annoyed me, and the writers just throwing concepts in angered me. I think I yelled back at every episode.
The bottom line: As my first foray into lakorns I found the drama to be long, clichéd and lacking serious depth. Most of the cast had great chemistry and decent acting skills, but the story line was ridiculous and the writers should be slapped. Surprisingly I enjoyed the parts I didn’t skip over so I didn’t feel like it was a waste of time, but I can not, in good conscious, recommend it.

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*sniff*... This one had SO MUCH potential. SO MUCH!!!! And it completely ruined it! Don't get me wrong, the first ten episodes were EXEMPLARY for a lakorn. Interesting premise, awesome chemistry between the main leads, fun side characters, great directing. But then came episode 11.
STORY: Epsiode 11 made the entire lakorn go down the drain for me. I would rather gouge my own eye out with a spoon than watch those last four episodes again. The first ten were great, with a smoothly developing plot line and everything. But then episodes 11-14 came along, and it was as though the first ten episodes never happened. The show started acting out every romantic cliche ever (I've seen the balloon with the ring attached to the end of it in about a hundred different rom-coms), and I don't remember anyone even mentioning Ta Nu in the last two episodes. They created a whole new plotline for the story in the span of one episode, and went off of that for the remainder of the drama. It wouldn't have been so bad if the new plot had 1) been relevant to the first ten episodes, and 2) not played off of every lakorn cliche there is. That whole line with the nang rai came completely out of the blue and was downright frustrating. Then the last episode... ugh. They literally wrote in Great getting injured in the most random way possible so we could have a scene of Matt crying over his hospital bed, then he recovered in less than ten minutes, and we rushed into a random pregnancy montage in the span of five minutes. It felt like the show had a complete personality transplant, and was trying to cram in every sweet scene possible with minimal plot development (if any). It made me so angry because the first ten episodes were SO GOOD. Then the drama just threw it all away.
ACTING/CAST: The cast did a really good job in their respective roles. The couples were well-developed and believable, and each of the characters was flawed in small ways, just like the rest of us. Great/Matt chemistry was on point, and Ta Nu was absolutely adorable.
MUSIC: Good, but nothing too remarkable.
REWATCH VALUE: 9 for the first ten episodes, 2 for the last four comes out to about 5. I have rewatched the first part, but the second is just too painful.
All in all, this lakorn had a lot of potential until it threw it all away in the most horrific ways possible.

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