This review may contain spoilers
Many Subplots, Too Much Pain, and Not Enough Real Revenge
This review is gonna be a long one so brace yourselves because there is a lot to talk about this series. I won't give spoilers much and rather talking about the story, I'll talk about some of the aspects of the story.
As you can see from this show title, Payback, this show is about taking revenge. Or at least thats how it starts to represents itself in the beginning but we see that it's actually about what grief and self-hatred does to someone and wee see the journey of this person's growth along this story. I binge-watched this series after it finished airing, but I must say I regretted it because some of the dialogues and symbolism needed to be thought about thoroughly. I wish I would take a day or two after watcing 2-3 episodes in a row. That would be better to just let the story sink in. This show doesn't treat grief and phobia lightly. It delves into it and talks about it rather openly and painfully. These two themes are spread throughout the entire story.
After Episode 1, everything becomes more complicated and complex. Sun, our protagonist, realizes its not that easy to take revenge on someone. He makes connections, friendships, relationships along the way and his actions not only affects himself but others too. He finds out being an actor is actually not easy and not something you can do quickly at all. He wants to take his revenge on Bank by being better than him and take whatever he has and wants but he can't because it is not that simple. At all. normally, in BLs we would see this journey as "he's shit at being an actor but after a couple ep later, he improves a lot and achieves his goals" or some shit (like Top Form) but its not like this here. It's realistic. Instead, he tries to improve himself to achieve his goal but everything becomes more chaotic when people around him starts to get hurt. First my baby Sky, then our lovely Manager feels the effects of being with Sun. And Sun can't do anything other than to endure because he knows he doesn't have any power against Bank and just holds on. And while all these things happening, we see that the entertainment industry is not a clean and perfect and pure industry as it seems. They didn't hold back showing that brutality, filth and gore.
Our second protagonist, Jay helps Sun in the shadows while plotting his own agenda. They form a rather "special" bond and drift from there. I gotta be honest I'm not a fan of "abusing a broken man into loving yourself" kinda thing. I admit the chemistry between our two leads was on fire and the sex scenes itself were done perfectly. And these help soften things and kind of leads the viewers to turn a blind eye about the actual situation which is "is it a sexual abuse or not ?". But also, I think, you can't call it a sexual abuse too because Sun responds to Jay's actions too, but whether he responds because he is genuinely into him or because he is simply too broken to resist is a very thin line to walk. Jay's actions were, to put it mildly, questionable for me. Yes we see the reasons behind his actions after but in his case, this sets a weird tone on story-telling.
One of the things this show makes me think about is how overcrowded its story is. This doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing by the way. While Sun and Jay tries to achieve their goals, so many other things are happening. and Our protagonists, especially Sun, drifts apart from his goals. I thought a lot about whether this hurts the continuity of the story or not and I think the writers actually intended this. It reminds the viewers how life is I think. You set on a path, things happen, situations becomes more complicated, and you rise up from a different side than you inted to. Of course this story-telling aspect would be more effective if they didn't rush the last two episodes. So many bad decisions in the last two episodes is made for the sake of dramatic effect and to finish off the series. So many. This harms the show quite severly. Because up until these episodes, everything were going on solid ground and within both accurate emotions and reason. But damn, they had to finish the series so this is the result. Quite disappointing. I had to cut out 1/1.5 points from story just because of those damn two last episodes. Because the main issue for me was what this story wants to tell becomes inconsistent with itself. From this point onward, heavy spoilers watch out: Sun wants to take revenge on his Ex; he tries, he grows, he opens up and in the end he accepts that revenge doesn't actually feel good. But on the other hand, Jay wants to take revenge from who harmed his mother; he tries, he works, he fells in love along the way, he plots, he schemes and he actually gets his revenge and damn that is satisfying to watch and I think wasn't unhealthy at all. Our sweet little Sky wants to take revenge on Sunny because what he did to his career and he achieves this by overcoming his own phobia. Pakin, famous photographer tells his own satisying revenge story. Two-O wants to take revenge on who harms him and he brutally finds out he's in over his head and realizes revenge is not a good way to move on. so many subplots clashes with what this show is trying to prove. After seeing those successful revenge stories, you feel its unfair to Sun who couldn't get what he wanted in the first place. This inconsistency eats me up fills me with frustration because damn what a wasted opportunity.
I really appreciate how brave the writers/scriptwriters were in this series. They weren't shy from talking about heavy stuff and they also didn't do it lightly. Kudos to Sammon; my girl makes her pen known with her own unique storytelling and her symbolism. Even some of the camera angles were like "Aha! my girl wanted this secene to be taken this way specifically".
Props to production team, the quality was on top notch. I only wish Thai entertainment industry would stop using stock places/musics in so many shows. Main theme was actually very good, even some music written for this series were okay but I'm sick of hearing the "we are solving a mystery" theme in every goddamn show. Actors were also very good even though this project were their first. Overall, such a good production.
There were some specific scenes that I wanted to talk about and how good they were (when Bank finds out Sun for example) but I've decided not to make this review heavy on spoilers. Maybe I will if you guys wanna talk about it in the comments. I think thats all I wanna say for now. I'm writing this review one day later I finished the series. So my thoughts may not change much but I'd love to talk about it more with you all. thanks for reading.
As you can see from this show title, Payback, this show is about taking revenge. Or at least thats how it starts to represents itself in the beginning but we see that it's actually about what grief and self-hatred does to someone and wee see the journey of this person's growth along this story. I binge-watched this series after it finished airing, but I must say I regretted it because some of the dialogues and symbolism needed to be thought about thoroughly. I wish I would take a day or two after watcing 2-3 episodes in a row. That would be better to just let the story sink in. This show doesn't treat grief and phobia lightly. It delves into it and talks about it rather openly and painfully. These two themes are spread throughout the entire story.
After Episode 1, everything becomes more complicated and complex. Sun, our protagonist, realizes its not that easy to take revenge on someone. He makes connections, friendships, relationships along the way and his actions not only affects himself but others too. He finds out being an actor is actually not easy and not something you can do quickly at all. He wants to take his revenge on Bank by being better than him and take whatever he has and wants but he can't because it is not that simple. At all. normally, in BLs we would see this journey as "he's shit at being an actor but after a couple ep later, he improves a lot and achieves his goals" or some shit (like Top Form) but its not like this here. It's realistic. Instead, he tries to improve himself to achieve his goal but everything becomes more chaotic when people around him starts to get hurt. First my baby Sky, then our lovely Manager feels the effects of being with Sun. And Sun can't do anything other than to endure because he knows he doesn't have any power against Bank and just holds on. And while all these things happening, we see that the entertainment industry is not a clean and perfect and pure industry as it seems. They didn't hold back showing that brutality, filth and gore.
Our second protagonist, Jay helps Sun in the shadows while plotting his own agenda. They form a rather "special" bond and drift from there. I gotta be honest I'm not a fan of "abusing a broken man into loving yourself" kinda thing. I admit the chemistry between our two leads was on fire and the sex scenes itself were done perfectly. And these help soften things and kind of leads the viewers to turn a blind eye about the actual situation which is "is it a sexual abuse or not ?". But also, I think, you can't call it a sexual abuse too because Sun responds to Jay's actions too, but whether he responds because he is genuinely into him or because he is simply too broken to resist is a very thin line to walk. Jay's actions were, to put it mildly, questionable for me. Yes we see the reasons behind his actions after but in his case, this sets a weird tone on story-telling.
One of the things this show makes me think about is how overcrowded its story is. This doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing by the way. While Sun and Jay tries to achieve their goals, so many other things are happening. and Our protagonists, especially Sun, drifts apart from his goals. I thought a lot about whether this hurts the continuity of the story or not and I think the writers actually intended this. It reminds the viewers how life is I think. You set on a path, things happen, situations becomes more complicated, and you rise up from a different side than you inted to. Of course this story-telling aspect would be more effective if they didn't rush the last two episodes. So many bad decisions in the last two episodes is made for the sake of dramatic effect and to finish off the series. So many. This harms the show quite severly. Because up until these episodes, everything were going on solid ground and within both accurate emotions and reason. But damn, they had to finish the series so this is the result. Quite disappointing. I had to cut out 1/1.5 points from story just because of those damn two last episodes. Because the main issue for me was what this story wants to tell becomes inconsistent with itself. From this point onward, heavy spoilers watch out: Sun wants to take revenge on his Ex; he tries, he grows, he opens up and in the end he accepts that revenge doesn't actually feel good. But on the other hand, Jay wants to take revenge from who harmed his mother; he tries, he works, he fells in love along the way, he plots, he schemes and he actually gets his revenge and damn that is satisfying to watch and I think wasn't unhealthy at all. Our sweet little Sky wants to take revenge on Sunny because what he did to his career and he achieves this by overcoming his own phobia. Pakin, famous photographer tells his own satisying revenge story. Two-O wants to take revenge on who harms him and he brutally finds out he's in over his head and realizes revenge is not a good way to move on. so many subplots clashes with what this show is trying to prove. After seeing those successful revenge stories, you feel its unfair to Sun who couldn't get what he wanted in the first place. This inconsistency eats me up fills me with frustration because damn what a wasted opportunity.
I really appreciate how brave the writers/scriptwriters were in this series. They weren't shy from talking about heavy stuff and they also didn't do it lightly. Kudos to Sammon; my girl makes her pen known with her own unique storytelling and her symbolism. Even some of the camera angles were like "Aha! my girl wanted this secene to be taken this way specifically".
Props to production team, the quality was on top notch. I only wish Thai entertainment industry would stop using stock places/musics in so many shows. Main theme was actually very good, even some music written for this series were okay but I'm sick of hearing the "we are solving a mystery" theme in every goddamn show. Actors were also very good even though this project were their first. Overall, such a good production.
There were some specific scenes that I wanted to talk about and how good they were (when Bank finds out Sun for example) but I've decided not to make this review heavy on spoilers. Maybe I will if you guys wanna talk about it in the comments. I think thats all I wanna say for now. I'm writing this review one day later I finished the series. So my thoughts may not change much but I'd love to talk about it more with you all. thanks for reading.
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