The episode opens with a beautiful shot of Noh and Phun at the beach taking in the sun rise. It is in a very obvious blue palette. I will talk about this scene later in my analysis below.
Back at the all-gay school, I mean, all-boy school, we see the Angel’s gang sitting together and what I assume is another group of kathoey comes in and sits with them. They are reluctant at first. They finally decide to allow the other group to sit with them and like all girls, they just start playing with makeup together.
A person writes to the PerFilm morning show to ask if ladyboys should be cheerleaders. We never get a final answer from Film or Per. The guy who writes the letter signs it POOCHAI FRIDAY (literally, Friday Man). NOTE: I don’t hear the word kathoey when they are reading the letter even though my Netflix translation insist the letter says “ladyboy” and not any other term. I am not sure why….
The Angel’s gang worry about this letter. However, they agree they have done their best.
Phun drives Noh back to school. They kiss. The kissing scene is cut from the original series and without it the entire scene (and a couple of subsequent scenes) are very confusing. So watch the kiss scene here. It is a bitter sweet kiss as it may be their last. Phun wishes Noh luck on his test. Phun is worried that Noh didn’t have time to study. Noh is worried that Phun will get pulled over by cops. They say goodbye. Phun is visibly upset and depressed. Again, remember this could be the last time they kissed.
When Noh sees Om, he asks why did Phun drive him. Noh tries to get off easy and ask them why do they say that. They tell him because Phun drives a white car. They recite the model and even his license plate! LOL You got to love Noh’s friends. Noh relents. Fine, he drove me. Then he pauses and his face turns white (here you can see Captain showing his now more refined acting chops). It is hilarious. He realizes someone could have seen him in the car kissing Phun. “Did you see Phun in the car?”, he asks. “No his windows are heavily tinted”, his friends tell him and he breathes a sigh of relief. But his friends are on top of it: “Why are you scared we will see you and Phun having sex in the car?”. I am going to loose it. Om suggests that Noh traded his asshole for the money for the club. Noh chases them around to show he is offended, I guess. Me? I am laughing and wondering how Om knows.
Korn’s grades are dropping and his teacher tells him he needs to uphold the school reputation. He needs to do better. I say, all the teacher needs to do is yell at Korn to FORGET THAT SKANK JEED.
At the club room, Per hears from the other guys in the club that the ppl who he gave money in order to get this “magic” numbers to play in the lottery got arrested for scamming. Realizing his mistake, Per confesses. The boys are now totally lost. They had worked so hard! Noh and Om get to the club and see the guys just sitting there, completely lost. They tell him what happened and how they had gotten money for the club behind his back. “Scolding him won’t get us our money back.”, he admonishes. He then turns his attention to Per, “Your intentions were good. Cheer him up!”. This scene is effing sweet. I wanna cry.
Noh takes the test. Wait who else is that taking the test? It is BL’s best porn man, Best Kan. I love Best and his lovely tool. I honestly think he should just sign up for a porn company or do a BL or maybe, as a friend suggested, he could do a porn BL. I wanna see more of him, especially if it involves no clothing. Anyway, I digress.
After they are done with the test they play Jenga. This looks like a fun school. We get to see more Best Kan. Oh, the memories. Google his name and maybe you will know what I am talking about. Make sure you disable the safe search feature 😉
As the boys play Jenga, we hear the song Passed by Gunsmile. Soon enough Phun shows up. Noh’s face changes. While playing with his friends, he was all smiles, now he looks faded and down. Phun asks if Noh took the test and how it went. Noh says it went well. They part ways once more, with Phun looking dejected and Noh looking like he is hiding his pain. Oh, why do you do this to me Mrs. Indrytimes? ☹
Korn talks to his [very hot] swimming coach about life and his disappointment in it. Pretty much everyone and everything sucks for him. #Adultingsucks #WaitUntilYouAre40. Hot coach asks, why do you swim? Korn answers, “to improve”. The goal is not important, hot coach says, “You are in the middle of the race. Don’t quit. You have still a lot more swimming to do”. #Truth
Side note: I want to be in this school: playing Jenga during class time, everyone is gay (OK, to be fair that’s season 2), the student council secretary is banging, and the swimming coach is a hottie? Sign me in!
The kathoey are practicing for the soccer match. After dancing her butt off, one of them faints. Some sort of dramatic speech takes places. Fee is reluctant to have the Angel’s gang perform. Phun intervenes. After a long speech of his own, Phun gets to the point “Fee, you are old fashioned. No one cares about those stupid traditions anymore!” Give the school a chance to try something new, he adds. Fee is insulted, “I am not homophobic!” Well, if you are not then you are doing an awful job of showing it. Of course, Fee doesn’t know that both Ern and Phun are on the dark side. Ern, you say? Yes, Ern. If you haven’t gotten the hint yet, you will in season 2.
Fee claims that he wants “everyone to be happy”. Ern reminds Fee he is unhappy and the kathoey cheerleaders are not happy either. Important lesson here! More in the analysis section. One of the Kathoey says to the one who fainted, “You are a lady boy, you don’t need to be manly” WTF? Later another one says, “Replace us with real man” WTF F?
Pang’s gang spy on Chay. Bubu and Pop meet with Chay. Bubu had facial surgery. His face is all bandaged up. He invites Chay and Pop to the film set. Why is this scene important? Where is it going? Your guess is as good as mine.
The gang eats with Pop and Chay. A girl named Nim comes in and sits between Pop and Chay. The girls get jealous. They trick Nim into thinking the cake has cockroaches in it. She leaves. Outside Pang talks to Pop. Phun gets there. Pop reminds Pan to listen to a song he gave her. They say goodbye.
Pang asks Phun what happened between Noh and him last night (remember, she saw them leaving the house together and knows they spent the night). Phun thinks back about the night, the sadness, and all that. Phun asks “Pang will you be sad if Noh and I aren’t dating anymore?”.
At the mall, Pang and Phun eat. Phun tells Pang everything. So you dated Noh to make me happy? Pang doesn’t believe it. She says, “You know what I want P’Phun to do the most? I want you to be happy” Phun is sad. Side note: White’s eyes are mesmerizing here.
Quote end of episode:”NO matter how tightly you hold someone, you still need to let go when the time comes”
Analysis
This episode is about heartbreak, disappointment and healing. People say death and taxes are the only two sure things in this world. Well, your teen years heartbreak and disappointment are as common and expected as taxes and death later in life. Phun is heart broken that Noh wants to break things up. (I put the blame on Noh because I don’t recall Phun ever suggesting that they break up). The music club is heartbroken that Per lost the money for the club. The Angel’s gang can’t cheer because they are heartbroken and disappointed about the way the straight boys are fighting with each other. Korn is heartbroken over Jeed. We are disappointed in Korn for still liking Jeed, but that’s another story.
The episode opens with Phun and Noh looking at the ocean. The opening shot is overflowing with the color blue. The symbolism here is important. Thai people imbue certain attributes to colors. Light blue is associated with healing. The water itself probably represents tranquility and peace. The goal of Phun’s and Noh’s trip was to find a resolution to their dilemma. We know that they decided to break up so this scene tells us that they are now searching for inner peace and trying to heal their broken hearts.
This episode has a kiss scene that was cut out of the final version which aired in Thailand. I have provided a link above to a youtube video of this kiss scene, which was played at a fan meet. I have to say, of all the kisses that were cut out of season 1 (apparently, they filmed SEVERAL kiss scenes according to Captain and White), this was the most critical. When I first watched this episode, I couldn’t understand Noh’s paranoia about his friends seeing him in Phun’s car. Why did he asked if they could see Phun? What was the significance of the comment about the car having tinted windows? When I found the video, it made sense: Noh was worried his friends had seen him kiss Phun.
But this kiss also serves another important purpose as it provides a closure to their relationship. Phun and Noh have officially broken up, and this is Phun’s way of letting Noh knows that he still cares. There is one more reason I think this kiss is important: A friend of mine commented that the PhunNoh kisses were not that good and that it was mostly camera angle tricks. I showed him the clip of the cut scene and he was surprised at how genuine the kiss looked. I am a huge fan of White, as you can tell by all my comments about him, but I will say that one very fair critique of his acting is that he tends to be bad when being paired with women and much better when paired with guys. The rumor I have heard is that he had a girlfriend at the time Love sick was filmed and therefore he felt very uncomfortable filming scenes with Aim. It doesn’t help that the girl who plays Aim is a pretty bad actress, but in general you can always notice this difference. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because in this cut kiss scene, we can see one of the best bits of acting from White and Captain, as they kiss oh so gently and tenderly. Captain puts his hand behind White’s head and caresses his hair while White gently touches Captain’s face. I don’t know how they did it or how many takes it took but it looks genuine. I really feel Phun’s pain and Noh’s mixed feelings. For some reason, I also find the scene slightly erotic. Maybe it is the way they touch each other’s faces and hair or how their noses touch, but there is something really intimate about that kiss. Kudos to both actors and kudos to the director and acting coach. It took several years for a BL in Thailand to have a kiss that rivaled this one in terms of tenderness and eroticism.
Korn has a broken heart and his emotions are starting to get the better of him. He fights with a boy after swim practice but not much is made of this. He then has a heart to heart with his swim coach. Apparently, he wants to quit swimming and perhaps go back to the province. Bangkok life is proving too much for him. His coach tells him that he is still in the middle of the race and there is a lot more swimming left to do and that he should not quit. I think this analogy applies to a lot of us in life: we sometimes want to give up when we hit a road block and we forget that we have many years of life left to live. I really liked this scene. I have been very frustrated with Korn thus far because well, Jeed, but I am hoping that he finds a way out of his heart break and as Dori (from Finding Nemo) would say, I hope he keeps swimming!
The show constantly contrasts the kathoey with the masculine but clearly homosexual characters of Phun and Noh. Here, one of the kathoey says to the other, “You are a lady boy, you don’t need to be manly”. Even worst, we hear one say in response to Fee’s hard stance, “Replace us with real man”. Clearly, the kathoey are not men and don’t belong to the same gender as Noh and Phun. Noh is made fun of by his friend Om for having given his cherry to Phun so at least there is that, but in general the kathoey are used for comedic relief. However, one thing that sets Love Sick apart is that the kathoey are also given a storyline. They are still mostly comedic fodder but they are sort of fighting for their right to be cheerleaders. However, one thing that stood to me about this episode is how the “fighting” is exclusively done by their straight allies: it is Ngern who pushes Fee to accept the kathoey as cheerleaders and it is Phun who tells Fee that he is being “old-fashioned”. In the mean time, the kathoey lay on the background, and when they talked, it was in a dialect that the other, “straight” boys could not understand so they seemingly ignored their pleas and complains about potentially getting physically hurt if they performed. If you watched the Netflix version this is not stated but in the YouTube version, translated by the now famous Kuda Lakorn, she says that the kathoey are using a dialect, I think it is Isan, that the others can’t understand. If you listen closely you can tell it sounds different. I have seen Isan dialect used in Love Sick and other Thai shows to denote lower class status or ignorance. Isan is a dialect of Laos that in Thailand has what is termed a lower prestige. This means that if you speak Isan, people think you are stupid. Again, here Love Sick takes one step forward and two back. Is this a positive representation of kathoey? I will leave that to you to decided but in my opinion it is not positive at all but I can see that the aim is to promote tolerance and acceptance, so let’s give them that.
Pang and her gang are still in Lalaland. They can’t see that Pop and Chay are just friends. Pang particularly seems completely naïve about the fact that Pop likes her.
I think there are at least three memorable scenes in this episode, other than the cut kiss scene. The first one is the opening scene with its beautiful shot of Noh and Phun looking at the ocean, with a completely blue color palette. I discussed this scene already. The second memorable scene is the scene in which the boys realize that Per used the money the Music Club raised for the lottery. Noh looks at Per and tells him that he knows he didn’t mean bad and so he forgives him. He says that no matter what they do to Per, it is not going to bring back the money therefore they should not punish him. Instead, he tells the others to cheer him up. Thus, he not only forgives him but he acknowledges Per’s own pain and embarrassment from having let his friends down. It is a beautiful moment of true friendship. I think that the best attribute of directory Andy is his ability to portray moments of genuine friendship like this. It is a sweet scene that makes us fall in love with Noh even more. Noh is just a really good guy. The third and last memorable scene is when Pang and Phun are talking and Pang tells him he should stop thinking about others and do what is good for him. Pang loves Phun and I like seeing her showing this affection and admiration towards her big brother. It is cute.
The ending quote of this episode reminds us that it is hard to let go. Again, this episode is about heart break and healing so it makes sense to use this as the end-of-episode quote. The use of this quote and the use of the song Passed by Gunsmile is a clear foreshadowing of how this season will end.
Best quote of the episode: “You are in the middle of the race. Don’t quit. You have still a lot more swimming to do”—Swim Team Hot Coach
Best moment: The scene that was cut! That kiss is tender and beautiful!
Best funny line: “You know how it is. He traded the hole for the cash”-Om referring to Noh and Phun. I love Om.
Episode rating: 3/5. This episode has some great moments but some of the scenes feel like filler and the editing once more lets us down. Bubu showing up with his bandaged face is completely out of place here because we never follow up on him. Korn’s story development feels a bit out of character. I had always pictured him as a fighter. I am not sure what to make of the scene of Noh playing Jega. Is he hiding his sadness or does he not care about Phun? Would I have acted that way too?
The looking glass 