The Spirit of the Ruler (2017)

I wanted to watch this because the synopsis sounded interesting and I have a soft spot for male-lead-falls-in-love-first, and for a spell of unrequited love angst (a lot of my favourite dramas have this trope, lol).

STORY (No spoilers)
The synopsis is a good summary of the overarching plot-line of the show. However, it is best to adjust your expectations accordingly if you were expecting a realistic depiction of military manoeuvres or setting, or of proper medical procedures or protocol. I mean, I won't say I'm an expert of both but even I could see how contrived, artificial and 'convenient' certain actions and scenes are played out. Logic or sense or the natural laws of physics, hygiene or danger should be conveniently shelved if you want to enjoy this drama.

Having established that this is a show that likes to bend its settings and circumstances for its own convenience to the plot or to the development of the relationship between characters, you can make lemonade out of lemons by inferring that common sense notwithstanding, everything that later happens on-screen is there to drive the story in a particular direction i.e. to add to the main leads' relationship building. This may cause some loss of tension during some dramatic scenes but I don't think this show is trying to sell itself as a slick military show, but instead is a romance that happens to be in a military and medical setting.

The pacing of the show is not bad, really. There is a lot of forward movement in plot and in action. The romance is actually rather cute for the first half of the show when the main male lead is on a mission to rescue the main female lead. However, once the rescue mission is over, probably in order to create some conflict so that there is some drama over the second half of the show, the romance starts entering the territory of misunderstandings, missteps, anger, unforgiveness and grovelling. Throw in some additional issues such as terrorist groups, weapons brokering, resistance movements, other love-interests plotting to separate the two, and you have quite an interesting recipe of a show (perhaps to your taste, or perhaps not?).

I personally felt that some of the charm from the initial romance fizzled out towards the second half. And that unrequited love angst and internal conflict which I was so looking forward to from the main male lead was... pretty short-lived and stunted.

I liked the panoramic pans of the mountain scenes and the jungles though! Lovely scenery in this show, where you have them.


ACTING/ CAST
WEIR SUKOLLAWAT - first time seeing him act in a lakorn for me and it took me a while to warm up to him because I'm a little bit of a superficial person and moustaches are not really my thing so that took some adjusting and getting used to. He is not a stiff actor though, and has a knack for carrying off cocky and cheeky personalities. I'm not quite convinced of his ability to carry the internal conflict and angst scenes though, so it was probably just as well that they were not too prolonged. He was a good enough leading man for me in this show, but not really a standout performance.

PEAK PATTARASAYA - was also serviceable enough as our main female lead. Perhaps it is the character script but I quite liked her for the first half of the show as a rather assertive but kind volunteer doctor out in the jungle but once the romance hit the rocks after the rescue mission, her character sort of went into a bit of a tailspin, which was a pity.

I quite like the supporting casts though! The Krating team members, the various key people in the resistance groups, especially Chayin, were nice additions to the drama. I also liked seeing how the second female doctor evolved through the series.


RE-WATCH-VALUE
On the whole, this lakorn was not sticky or absorbing enough for me to consider re-watching it again.
However, overall, it is not a bad romance drama placed within a military and medical setting. Don't expect any 'Descendents of the Sun' production slickness or any proper realism from a military or medical perspective and you're good to go!

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This one has the 'Diary of Tootsies' girl in the lead, which makes her most interesting of all 4. This time, she's not paired with Porche, they put her together with Weir... Yes, the pra'ek I never praise, lol:) Poor guy is so ugly, also he doesn't shave that gross moist moustache off his heavily-sweating face:) Eye candy he's not, but at least he can do nice expressions with his eyes. And if he always USED TO be uglier than his second male, it's not the case anymore, not with Louis Hesse. Now, technically speaking, in the jungle they both pretty much treat nang'ek the same. There are practically identical scenes following closely that feature her cleaning their wound with him looking deeply into her eyes, first with one then with the other:) We know one is supposed to be the good guy and one the bad guy, but it's funny:)

This also offers classical misinterpretation of almost any profession (be it soldier or doctor, everyone acts like a moron) but that comes with the territory of thai lakorns: they SHOULD concentrate on romance and NOTHING else. Any other genre that's put into the mix reveals the underdeveloped cinematography unflatteringly. I'm surprised again and again with the number of lakorns that are trying to be "serious" themed, unavoidably resulting only - of course - in ridicule. This is no different, you need to ignore anything else but romance to keep watching it:) The romance NEEDS to be good, then.

There is 1 kiss with the nang'ek after 4 hours of screentime and it's a bad kiss (she stares with her eyes wide open:), but after the jungle part, I enjoyed the personal line of this. It was portrayed well when the pra'ek lost his fellow soldier he both liked and respected, and in the same time thought his nang'ek had another of his friends for a boyfriend. He was heartbroken twice. Weir handled this with his acting well. He had a good scene with nang'ek, too. She actually brought him flowers:) I liked that. Maybe first time I enjoyed romance line with Weir in the lead:) Even Mik Thongraya was cute here, as a part of this misunderstanding (way more so than in his own 'Paragit Ruk Story').

There's yet another guy coming for the nang'ek: her ex (counting him in, she's got 1 man after her in business to eliminate her + 3 men who are into her:D). And even he's no competitor for Weir, so this is really the first time I'm willing to accept him as a pra'ek of a story. They didn't hire anyone to outshine him and made him wear good clothes and colors to bring out his height and his eyes (his ONLY assets, lol). I say that Weir never looked this good:) He's cute with his nang'ek... He needs to try for her even more, after he's unfortunatelly rejected her:)

Even the side-character of Ice Athichanan (this is an actress who is usually cast as nang'rai/frenemy, but actually is more beautiful than the nang'ek each time... ironically, she's like the opposite phenomenon from Weir:) was an good enough watch and her small side-romance received more fan appreciation than the one of lead couple's, which is... understandable.

So, this one is 5 stars. It's still better than the other 'Paragit Ruk Stories', which are way more boring and involve lading ladies even more "convincing" than Peak Pattarasaya as "doctor": like squawking Kwan Usamanee in the role of a "reporter", or blow-up doll looking actress who cannot act in the role of a "scientist" who has a microchip in her head, LOL. Therefore, understandably I still need to reserve even lower ratings for those.

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