BLISS RATING: ★★★★+
“Sometimes by taking responsibility, you just need to respect her decision.” – A Quote from The Warp Effect
This astonishing and brilliant series was so refreshing to watch and was one of the most thought-provoking series I have ever seen. It is a cacophony of every imaginable social ill, bias, and societal message one could think of. And all of it was dealt with a sense of maturity, honesty, and painful growing up stages to go through.
While the whole story is just too complex to get into the weeds explaining, the essence of the story centers around Alex (New Techa-apaikhun). He is the wheel from which other stories revolve like spokes. His story is core. Alex pledged to his mother that we would not have sex until he was ready. We do get to find out why his mother wanted him to make this pledge but not until the end of the series. Unfortunately for Alex, at a party in his last days from high school, he gets drunk and does indeed have sex with a girl named Jean (Fah Ngamkasem) just before he reached his 18th birthday.
However, the next thing he knows, the time is 10 years later, and he is now a gynecologist. Shocked and dismayed, he tries to recreate what happened and the only link-pin he has is the pictures he took of his classmates on the night of that party. The day of the party he received an old Polaroid camera from an unknown source. But when he takes the pictures, nothing shows up. But when he discovers these same pictures 10 years later, he finds that they are pictures of his classmates currently and all are in distress or pain.
He concludes the only way to correct all of this is to rectify the causes of these perturbations and then go back to make sure that the paths they all take are different. He now goes about trying to right the wrongs that the current painful pictures of his classmates are now in. This, then, becomes Alex’s journey. To try and correct the current mistakes and in so doing, will he then be able to go back to correct his mistake and therefore all of them can restart their own right path that they should be on? An interesting and most beautiful journey of righteousness and corrections.
One could write a whole book on this powerful story but let us just look at some of the issues that Alex needs to both face and correct:
1. His best friend, See-ew (Sing Cheewagaroon) has a kink fetch that begins to control his life and clouds his judgment with his girlfriend Liu (Cilze Saejung).
2. She herself is a subject of sexual harassment at work in a subtle form but nonetheless it is quite pervasive. Unfortunately, it gets to the point that it is not subtle anymore.
3. Jean now wants nothing to do with him and for good reason. You must experience her pain to understand why. Jean is unable to form attachments to other men for several reasons.
4. Alex accidently sees Army (FlukeDittapisit) and Joe (Thor Tantui) kissing at that party with both taking different paths to dealing with each being gay. One out and proud while the other one hidden. However, both perhaps never stopped wanting each other and wanting to be with the other.
5. Because of Alex’s action during the party, the Lesbian relationship between Nim (Jan Supasap) and Molly (Silvy Moriggi) sours with each going their separate ways. Nim is now in a relationship with another woman who convinces her to get pregnant to create a family. However, she values her own direction over that of the relationship and breaks up, leaving Nim alone and pregnant.
6. In the meantime, Molly is trying to become an actress and finally gets her big break, but not before she needs to overcome some real soul-searching realities.
7. Alex’s brother, Ice (Phuwin Tangsakyuen) goes off into a different direction and his long-term girlfriend, Kim (Charleeda Gilbert) becomes pregnant with his baby. The quote above is from Alex to his brother about her decision to have an abortion.
8. There is also a story about Jedi (Mark Kunaanuwit) and his long-term relationship with his trans girlfriend, Rose (Best Jira Jaronthamusuk).
9. Kat (Gigie Chanuphat) is a free-spirited woman who does not want or apparently need anyone loving her. She avoids commitment above all else. She is content with just having fun until she begins to realize that perhaps there is more to life. Not everyone is enthralled with her philosophy and one of her suitors beats her up for rejecting him.
10. Alex’s mother maintained a secret that is painfully real and is the focus of this journey for Alex.
The story intertwines among all these characters in thoughtful, provocative and provoking ways and is surprisingly sensitive to all of their individual needs. One cannot watch this series without feeling empathy for at least one or more of these characters. All these issues are real, contemporary, and are not hushed up, or made to feel uncomfortable to discuss. And that made this series so refreshing and different.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? This was a phenomenal and exceptional series for great acting. New Techa-apaikhun as Alex really is in a class all by himself and he delivered – outstandingly. But, for me, the role that defines a character the best was Silvy Moriggi as Molly. She is simply spectacular. Unapologetically Molly, she was consistent throughout and told her story through her pain and experiences. Not only through the eyes of a Lesbian but one who was marginalized by three strikes against her – she was a woman, overweight, and plain. That, if anyone who has been connected to becoming a performer, is almost the kiss of death. Yet, her gutsiness, her persistence and her being herself forced others to see her for who she was as well. That takes some powerful acting, and she did it! I was completely mesmerized by her acting skills and how she saw her character of Molly. She made Molly unique among all the characters and showed us courage through tenacity. She richly deserves this distinction. A great performance.
While I admire the acting and actually the storyline, three rather major flaws hit me hard with its inconsistency. If we define ‘rape’ as needing to stop as soon as one partner says ‘no’, did Alex rape her? This point may be argumentative, but it is still worthy of attention. In my mind, he did. And with no consequences except for the fantasy story itself. I know the consternation for Jean was for something else, but it should have been for both. That would have made this story way more powerful, meaningful, and could have shown a way different ending or outcome.
Two, how could Alex be a gynecologist? He seemed clueless to what needed to be done and a 10-minute tutorial on a Pap Smear is not going to do it. He continues to perform his duty even though his knowledge of what he is doing is even less than rudimentary; remember he does not recall anything from the past 10 years. A major logical flaw in this story that I could not get over as it seems to present the notion that what he is doing is rather elementary and that is definitely not the case. I disliked intensely how that was all handled.
But the third reason is the absolute disappointing and frankly predicable ‘happy ending’. Everyone, including all couples, have happy endings.
Utterly disappointing as the story, itself is so maudlin and sad. Suddenly, he could go back and change everything, and we have a Hollywood ending as I call it. Too easy of a fix and logically flawed. If he could not remember what happened in the past by what logic would he now retain all his experience from the present when he returns? How could he ‘know’ the outcomes if he, now that he is back in his current world, had not experienced them yet?
The story would have been better if he had gone back and on his own, without retention or remembering what is to come, perhaps sense, feel, or make even the smallest change to his behavior on his own volition. I love sweet endings too, but this story lent itself to having reality make changes; not wishful thinking. Worse yet, when the wishful thinking was helped by the knowing what the outcomes will be.
These glitches so brought down this otherwise unique and thought-provoking series. This series shifted from its usual Thai formulaic outline to one of an adult-themed series with real problems with real people. We got to see not necessarily sweetness but honest outcomes to what happens to individuals after high school. Some successful; some not. Some affluent; some not. That is what life is. It transported us to almost feeling like we were watching a docudrama. Then it crashed and burned with a completely unrealistic happy ending that just did not fit the storyline or the characters. Too bad. If it had just thrown the book away, and finished what it started to do, we might have been weeping at its end, wishing for a happy ending. Instead, we got a happy ending, knowing full well that in essence we should, at least for some, have been weeping.
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