mahiba

First of all, this drama is really, really good and well rounded. It's also a bit of a cautionary tale against lakorn culture. In other lakorns, we would have resolution around ep10, when they admit their love to each other, and the bad girl leaves them alone. But here, it goes on and you can see that the ML's macho attitude is actually a problem in their married life. He's super jealous and impulsive, basically the normal P'ek. Then you realize that P'ek make okay boyfriends but really bad husbands.

What I like about the show:
+The themes: I like when a show has a lesson to teach me and does so in fun and somewhat suprising ways. Of course the main theme here is anger and its consequences. But there's also the lesson that you "you reap what you sow"... From the very beginning, we see that the ML is in a messy situation partly because of his longtime behavior that made it easy to believe that he could snap and hurt people. But the most important lesson might be about the power of forgiveness: EVERY character does something messed up and has to ask for forgiveness at one point or another.
+The romance:There's not a lot of skinship at all, only a few artfully angled kisses. Yet you absolutely can feel the love and the attraction, especially on the guy's part. And this ML is great, he leaves no doubt as to whom he likes.
+The ML is human and opens up about his feelings and insecurities.
+The bad people were compelling and had their (bad) reasons. And there's no over the top evil craziness, everything is pretty normal behavior. Amazingly not too many shrieks!!
+The mystery. Till the end you really wonder what happened to Siri.

What I didn't like:
-One unnecessary death in this show. But that's a common trait of lakorns.
-The ML messes up till the last episode. I like my last episode to be more of an epilogue type, but I never get it with lakorns anyway.
-The actress who plays the FL is a bit weak, almost tired. Another commenter said "detached". She's like the female version of Andrew Gregson. Fine, except if your character is supposed to be a hard living party girl!

All in all, you can tell by watching this lakorn that whoever made it doesn't hate women. Here women are people, not monsters. Sex doesn't define them, some are having it and others aren't, and that's life. Also they are all rational people, even the big meanie is a normal person.

So... I just finished it by skipping 8 full episodes to get to the point. I thought if I watched the end, it would give me an idea of whether or not I should invest my time in this. The answer is yes, but not now.
In the grand scheme of things, this is a pretty standard slap/kiss lakorn with a very stupid ML. But there are many redeeming qualities to the lakorn:
+There's a great sismance between the FL, her sister and their friend Pink. I was happy to see this rare (in thai dramas) female friendship.
+Really good representation for women: the ML's mom is probably THE best mom I've seen in lakorns so far, and his sister is also great; she's not the usual spoiled little sister. Or maybe she's spoiled but also remarkably smart. There are two bad women in the drama (the FL's love rivals) but I felt that they were pretty compelling, especially the final meanie.
+The FL is actually not as weak as people here say. From the beginning I was really surprised to see how clever and discerning she was. Yes she was conned by the ML, but he was so charming (in the beginning) that I bet I would've been conned too! After that I saw her give as well as she got, she slapped and insulted a lot and it was pretty funny to see the shock on the ML's face time and time again.

The problem I have with this lakorn though is that the chemistry wasn't enough to me. I think Slap/Kiss often comes with a certain level of passion and skinship (even without real kisses) that make it kind of worthwhile, unfortunately in here we don't have this. So I was left with a bland feeling.

Currently watch Sanaeha Sunya Kaen and wondering why I've never seen such a great actress before. Turns out she got married and I guess focused on family. I hope she's able to come back to acting one day if she ever wants to because she's a great actress.

Lakorns don't have the best story telling or production value, especially compared to Korean or Chinese dramas. What lakorns have that others don't are: (1) the best settings/scenery, (2) the most delicious looking food and (3) the prettiest eye candy.
Unfortunately this drama is set in Vienna, meaning that we have to forgoe the first two strong points of lakorns from the get go. As for the eye candy, all the leads are okay looking in my humble opinion, but when you try to pass off a 42 year old man for a 20 year old student, there's a little bit of a problem.

The drama had to rely heavily on story telling, unfortunately this was a pretty boring tale. I counted that the main leads are not seen together for 4 whole episodes (!). The ML is weak, and all the secondary characters are super boring, except for one of the women chasing the ML, who is unfortunately not fleshed out enough to make a compelling character.
All in all, the story might have been a good read back in the days it was written. But put in contemporary era, and with a small budget, this wasn't a pleasurable watch at all. I gave it a 5.5.

What do you mean?

5 episodes in, this show looks so old (older 2008) and feels very boring. Ken is phoning it in (he also looks bored) and the FL never brows never unknotted. I would watch for the doc, but his fate is so obvious, I don't need to be told.

She's such an impressive person! Anytime I see an actor who's also a medical doctor, I'm blown away. Add to that Beauty Queen! How can one person have so many talents!? And she's a pretty good actress too, as seen in Club Friday.

Ok, this show made me understand something about the second lead syndrome: I actually think it's a lesson in life that drama writers have been trying to give us for a long time now.

In this drama, we have on one hand the ML, typical rich guy type; and on the other hand the 2nd ML, who is basically an upgraded, better version of the ML. It's even funny that all three leads get to live together for a little while, so that you can really see how much better of a man the second ML is. And yet we all knew who she was gonna choose in the end. At the end though I got it. I don't wanna spoil but let's just stay that anytime the FL needs help, she asks the 2d ML and he always kindly help without asking for anything in return. Then, just once, she goes to the ML for help, after they had a big fight; and he agrees to help her only under condition that she acts as if they never had a fight. AND THAT'S WHEN I UNDERSTOOD!!!

Basically P'writer is trying to let us know that in love, a little bit of selfishness is necessary if you want to be happy. Not too much selfishness like Khun NEE , or you'll lose everything, just so much as to get what you think you deserve, which is a happy relationship with the person you love.

I do NOT recommend this drama at all. It starts well enough but really was never gonna be extraordinary anyway. Then everything good goes to the trash and the drama becomes weird and sad and mysoginist. I wish I had never started it...

No Tawan was not raped by the ML. She was assaulted by the bad guy and people think he raped her too but he actually didn't.

I really liked this lakorn. The start is very controversial but then it deals very well with its premise. People who have done bad repent or else they are punished. As for all lakorns, there are unnecessary deaths, but I also feel like the "right people died", meaning characters who had run the course of their stories and weren't anymore useful to the show.
Mostly I liked:
-the chemisty and skinship. I wonder if there is something going on between these two because I've never seen so much skinship in thai lakorn. It was comparable to a taiwanese drama! The ML really sold how much in love he was with the FL.
-how the show dealt with sexuality. The gay relationship was never mocked or trivialized, even by the characters. The women were not supposed to be pure, there was no judgement towards sexual activity and no talk of "sullying the family's name".
-the women are given A LOT of power in this show. I could talk more about it but I don't want to spoil.
-the show doesn't take rape lightly and you can see the ML reckon with the notion of what he has done, come to terms with it and find redemption.
It's not the perfect show but it's such a big step ahead of the classsic lakorn with similar themes. Also, never a boring episode. Why such a low rating?

I didn't like the hairstyle either but I think it's meant to represent how controlled and tight wound she's become. Because in the beginning (before the rape) her hair looks great, and the same for the end of the show, when she has moved forward.

I agree about the over worn labels. I just finished the show and OMG, some of the items she would wear were so obnoxious! It was weird because it didn't really vibe with their personalities, especially the tomboy best friend. But I liked the show overall

I hope that Vincenzo is a good anti-hero and doesn't end up being more bark than bite. I like myself a bad guy (with bondaries) from time to time .

It's fine and good usually, where I cringe is when the character is supposedly born and raised in the US/France and then they speak with the most awful pronunciation. It's funny and cringy at the same time haha. I mean, it's better than my korean haha but still...

LOL thanks for the head's up. I'll get mentally prepared.

I really want to watch this. Who else is worried of the Italian we might get to hear in the first episode though? Please someone tell the PD that we really don't need to hear Vincenzo speak italian, thank you very much. LOL

I bet it's because he's dark skinned. I feel like the main requirement to lead a lakorn nowadays is to be light skinned, or better yet, mixed with chinese or european.

Yep! I want to say you're wrong but you're actually pretty on point about it. Women can and do move on after rape, some get married and have families, but there's still the stigma. Whereas most rapists are never even reported, or even if they are, some people are always gonna give him the benefit of the doubt, if he only says that she wanted it. And shows like this one makes it seem that it's fine.

Exactly!! I didn't even think of Ai Banleng before you said it. So true! When things get hard, all women become trash but men get redemption, basically. I think maybe they changed the writer? Because it feels like watching a very different show all of a sudden. Even Yadfah seems like another person. She was not a good girl, but she seemed pretty smart to me, she just let her boyfriend get away with stuff, but she was also funny. Now she just became stupid. That's it, I'm dropping this drama LOL