SPARE ME YOUR MERCY – 2024 – Thailand

BLISS RATING: ★+

“Your hands are stained with blood like mine. You’re just another murderous doctor.” –  Quote from Spare Me Your Mercy

Perhaps the best way to identify this series is to use the word – indescribable. But I am not using this word to imply in any way that this series is either good or has any socially redeeming values. It does not. This series is awful in every way I can think of.

Summarily, it is about a sociopathic doctor named Dr. Kan (Tor Thanapob) and an inept Police Lieutenant named ‘Thiu’ Wasan (JJ Krissanapoom).  Kan is a coy, cunning, and convincing individual who uses all the right buzz words to influence everyone around him and himself that all his actions are morally correct, right, and in accordance with the wishes of his patients. He is a palliative care doctor who works in a rural medical clinic. He also strongly believes in and practices euthanasia. A rather oxymoronic precept. Discretely and stealthily, along with his insanely zealot nurse On (Fresh Arisara), they plot and scheme in and out of situations of accusations of murder.

Yes, by any standards of decency, morality, medical code, as well as legal laws, they are indeed and in fact murdering individuals. This series tries its hardest to convince itself otherwise; but it cannot. What they did, without question, was murder; not euthanasia or certainly not mercy killing.

To add a layer to try and make this story feel even right in a moral sense, they created a copycat murderer who also fancies himself as some chosen savior of humanity. Since he admires Dr. Kan so much, he takes it upon himself to murder near-end-of-life individuals. Boss (Aelm Bhumibhat), the pharmacist, while using a different method from Kan, is nonetheless achieving the same end result, although Dr. Kan does not see it that way, of course. Boss is a troubled soul and is supposedly in love with the director (Gandhi Wasuwitchchayagit) of the clinic where he and Dr. Kan are employed. In an almost laughable twist of logic, the series wanted the viewers to believe that because he admires Dr. Kan so much more than he loves the director, he is willing and does kill the director to silence him for wanting to inform the police that he thinks Dr. Kan is committing euthanasia. Sometimes even these stories cross a bridge too far.

Anyway, this series is replete with these implausible twists of logic to try and bend our wills into thinking that this story somehow has some moral value to it. It does not. Kan ends up murdering Boss, justifying it, I guess, as a mercy-killing.  In essence, Dr. Kan is no different than Boss.

Police lieutenant Thiu transfers back up to his hometown to be closer to his mother who has stage four cancer and does not have long to live. However, she dies literally just hours before Thiu arrives home. Here is when he meets this god-like figure of a doctor that the community seemingly worships. Dr.Kan does indeed treat and provide services to a number of deserving individuals and his work in palliative care, other than killing his patients, is indeed a noble one. While Thiu is suspicious that his mother died so suddenly, and upon investigating, realizes that a lot of other palliative care patients also seem to be dying a bit too prematurely, begin to investigate. The police, including Thiu finally start to suspect foul play and perhaps even murder has been committed. The pathologist/coroner, Dr. Rin (Prim Atchareeya), does prove that several of these deaths are suspicious and are likely murder cases. However. the police do not seem to have the skills to put all the pieces of an obvious puzzle together and get too self-absorbed in red herring schemes. Dr. Rin in essence ends up really becoming the figure of Cassandra in the Greek Tragedy of Troy. Perhaps a bit obscure, but if you know that story, you will get and understand the reference. The police basically pay little to no attention to her, including Thiu. In fact, she pays little to no attention even to herself.

Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series?  Who really steals this series are the hapless actors and actresses who had to prematurely ‘die’ of some incurable or insufferable condition. They had to pretend they were dying while still looking fairly healthy and good. Kudos to them. Honestly, they were the healthiest looking near dead people I have even seen. I never bought for one second that any of them were that sick or ill. You need to do better. However, some of these character performers were quite believable in the sense that I was convinced that they were locals and had difficult and hard lives. Kudos to all of them though.

To say I hated this series would be an understatement. Here are the reasons I disliked this series so intensely:

1. This series mysteriously considers and labels itself a BL, which confounded me and left my head spinning. While Dr. Kan professed to ‘liking’ Thiu early on after meeting him, he used that as a ploy, which sociopaths often do. If someone out of nowhere professes to like you and wants to be with you, and you barely met him, would you not want to ‘get’ to know him better before falling in love with him? Perhaps lusting I might understand, but love? Yet, Thiu seems to have fallen in love with Kan immediately with no real understanding as to why or even how. To the point that he really does not see what is really right in front of him and refuses to accept the obvious. Thiu put blinders on from the beginning of the series and quite literally never took them off. He became spellbound by Kan’s  beauty, words and influence, which is typical of a sociopathic personality that Kan obviously had. Incredulously in the end, Thiu says he loves the doctor, knowing full well that he is a murderer?! You fell in love with the individual who murdered your mother, just hours before you were going to see her?! That left me completely flummoxed.
2. The acting is mediocre. There is zero chemistry between the two protagonists with one kiss in the last episode of the series. They were so busy mistrusting each other yet somehow continued to love one another. I just did not get it and could not accept it. They had absolutely no screen chemistry between them. I mean ZERO chemistry. Almost laughably bad. Lust and/or sex seemed insignificant or unimportant in this entire series. Neither honestly seemed attracted to each other in a physical sense and certainly there was no sexual tension or sexual chemistry at all between them. And neither one looked like they were even interested in wanting to get near each other. This ship sank.
3. The plot was pedantic and overworked. There was no logic to it, and they portrayed the police as inept and as dumb as a box of rocks. Thiu and the other police missed so many opportunities to catch Dr. Kan along with his insane nurse in clandestine acts. But they were befuddled or bullied into believing their nonsense excuses or reasons because they were medical professionals. For example, out of an abundance of caution, why would you not have monitored Boss in the hospital? Thiu knew or suspected, as Dr. Rin established, Boss was suspiciously shot by Dr. Kan. Then why was no guard placed on him to see if another attempt on his life might be made again? Or at least a camera in his room? It was because Thiu did not want to believe that the person he ‘loved’ could commit such acts. He was so convinced of Kan’s twisted truths that he refused to see what was literally right in front of him or even considered that perhaps Kan might have accomplices.  Talk about ineptness and lack of integrity.
4. There is a HUGE difference between euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. I could have accepted their belief system, if they had learned the distinction and had protocols in place to ensure proper procedures were being taken. Instead, their overall approach was so cavalier with little to no forethought from a legal, moral, ethical, religious, let alone other medical standpoint.  Everyone was treated the same. Throw in a few moralistic terms that make what they are doing seem ‘ok’ and justifiable, and it all feels acceptable. Frankly, this series sickened me when Kan was administering his lethal injection. NONE of those individuals even came close to being in the ‘dying-stages’. They were lucid, able to move, coherent, and in some cases, active. At least make them look, act, and be DYING! It was mentioned that the patient CAN refuse treatment and methods to keep them alive. That is very different than a doctor encouraging them to die and administering the lethal drugs. The primary responsibility of a doctor, any doctor, is to ‘do no harm’. There were other options for all these patients to consider such as refusal of any treatment, or eating, or medications, etc. I would and could even see physician-assisted suicide as an option but that is a whole other topic of discussion. Anything rather than a doctor doing harm. (Here in California, for example, we have Comfort Care in which a patient can refuse all treatment and at their request be put on a morphine drip).
5. This is ‘entertainment’ but the underlying message behind this series is inherently unsound and can so simplistically be misunderstood. I continue to wonder and be mystified by how BL series are still incapable and unwilling to show even a modicum of two men making love or showing love without reservations but have no problem or issue with someone being murdered so cavalierly or treat killing someone so matter-of-factly with what seems like moral reasons with acceptability. I am astonished how oxymoronic all that is. 

This series sickened me to my core. Not everything can be turned into a BL story and certainly not one with extreme moral repercussions.  Wake up.  Some things need to be seen for what they really are. Quit making cheesy productions with premises that are not well-thought out and throw a label on it called BL and pass it off as an acceptable story!