BLISS RATING: ★★★★
“My life belongs to you. Our lives belong to each other.” – Quote from That Summer
This is a series where you must believe that everything that could go right, does. It is filled with fairy-tale Edenic bliss. Surprisingly, a lot of it works and if they had tightened up the story and made it more plausible, it would have been a great melodrama. Instead, it simply ended up just another good drama, but merely becoming an addition to a long-line of throw-away BLs that have a cookie-cutter premise having a wildly Pollyanna ending. It is not bad; just disappointing. One must really suspend one’s perspectives with this story.
Davin (Satang Kittiphop) is a Prince of Arantha. He holds a dark secret – actually two. He lacks the fortitude to want to be future king, and two, he is attracted to men, which will not be a good image or role-model for his country. While running away for an unsupervised vacation to Thailand with his ‘best’ friend Victor (Tee Teeradech), Davin is unaware that Victor is really planning on killing him so that Victor’s family can take over the kingdom. Hitting Davin over the head with an oar while out canoeing near an island, Davin falls overboard but is rescued by Lava (Winny Tiwakorn), who himself has been transplanted to this small island by his mother for always being in trouble. Lava’s mother asked her brother, Pheng (Mond Tanutchai) to provide Lava with more controlled structure and also give him duties to perform to try and have him stay out of trouble. Although Lava does save Davin, it becomes clear that Davin does not remember anything about who he is or how he got to the island. He has lost his memory, apparently from the blow to his head. Having lost his identity, Lava decides to nickname him ‘Wave’. The doctor on the island, Dr. Wut (Ryu Phudtripart), who is a very handsome young man, determines that Wave needs time to heal to regain his memory and since nothing is known about him, Lava becomes his caretaker.
Unbeknownst to the islanders, however, is the fact that Wut and Pheng are in a serious relationship but are unsure about how to go about making it more public. Pheng is way more hesitant to announce publicly their connection to one another.
The supposition of the relationship between Lava and Wave is cute and told surprisingly well, based upon the strength of the acting of the two main protagonists. While Lava comes across as distant and uncaring, he is far from that. A lot of the storylines are devoted to how he got to be so introspective. He is in a world of hurt internally and does not know how to express himself adequately. He easily becomes flippant. We can see him fall deeply in love with Wave as each day passes but he also knows that without a clear history of who Wave is, this all could be very fleeting. Hence, it could all be just a summer fling. What Wave does teach him is to become more aware of how his impertinent behavior negatively affects others. Meanwhile, Wave’s memory only comes back in sporadic nebulous ways, but he too begins to sense he is somehow different and what he does know, comes out instinctually. He too begins to fall deeply in love with Lava. He also senses that without knowing who he is, all of this might have to change. Yet, what he does sense with complete certainty is that while on this island, he knows he has never been happier in his life.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? There is an exceptionally small role in this series but one with giant implications. Davin has a sister named Anya, adroitly played by Namtan Tipnaree. Smart, beautiful and exceptionally supportive of her brother in many ways, she becomes a central character. She knows her brother is gay and becomes a quiet advocate for him. When her family is overthrown, she sends someone to look for and provide security for her brother. When finally rescued, she realizes that Davin has a strong bond with Lava. She encourages him to follow his heart. She advises him that if ‘he can’t come up to you, then you come down to him. Make the most of your time you have left.” She speaks with genuine emotion and a profound understanding born of her sisterly love, making it clear to Davin that she alone has the capability to lead the kingdom. Though it may seem trite, her performance gives her a regal quality and makes it clear why he would consider relinquishing the throne for his sister.
The production has so much going for it. The island’s setting was highly appealing. The wedding ceremony between Wut and Pheng is just idyllic, and I am a complete push-over for nuptial ceremonies from different cultures. I find them so stunningly sublime, touching, and moving. There were also some remarkable romantic ambiences and lovely affectionate dialogues between both couples.
But the production is not without its flaws, which unfortunately diminished the impact of this series a bit. The most glaring was the storytelling itself. Some greater detail about what took place in Armana would have been helpful and would have added much to the flow of the story. The story felt disjointed and disconnected. While we did not need all the gory details, we needed something to help us tie into what happened for perspective purposes. In addition, the whole amnesia concept took just a little too long to unravel and needed to be hastened a bit. It simply dragged on too long, especially after getting amnesia twice. How do I know this? By the endless flashbacks. Every time you have an overuse of flashbacks, you have a weakness in the story.
Most glaring, however, was the inability of both couples to be convincing enough to accept them as couples in a serious relationship. This schizophrenic mindset of Thai BLs is driving me crazy. While EVERY MALE is seemingly in a gay relationship, if any one of them REMOTELY publicly express that they are in one, they shrivel up like wilted flowers and hide in the shadows; yet everyone knows that they are gay and are ‘okay’ with it. Of course, I understand the need to be discreet, but can we now be adults about this? This ridiculous and continuous and almost compulsive need to hide gay relationships is so disconcerting. Neither relationship showed any real depth to them and frankly both were only in adolescent stages of development. To be sure they were a bit more adult-like than most Thai Bls, they but still treat gay relationships with superficiality and make-believe.
The story itself was surprisingly strong most of the time. It is hard to sustain an ‘amnesia’ theme, and this tended to get a bit long-in-the-tooth, as the expression goes. Yet, it was effective in the sense that it had a great deal of nuances that would have been overlooked. While I cannot tell as my ear and language skills are quite limited, Lava’s demeanor and expressions become more formal with Wave when he finds out who he is. He also begins to realize that he is in a class all by himself for which he will not fit in. All of that signified a change in the way the relationship was heading. I wish they would not have been so diminutive about all of that and had been a bit more realistic about an ongoing relationship. Sometimes, relationships ought not to be so positive – circumstances and life’s expectations do not allow for utopian endings all the time.
Is there an intense screen chemistry? Well, no because it was deliberately played that way. My assessment is if they had explored the relationship more within their own serious boundaries, the distance between each would have been profoundly important to the story’s development. Each had been in a different realm. Each were in two different worlds. No matter how much spending a few weeks in paradise would seem like heaven, the reality is, both are in vastly different plains of existence. While the secondary couple was augmented with a bit more of an effort, that relationship was still maddingly slow and cliché driven. Both couples seemed too contrived and bromidic. Yes, there is also a ‘straight’ couple relationship that is teased from the beginning that is banal and remains cringy throughout the series. Both performers looked uncomfortable in their roles. Honestly, if you are going to do this cursory nonsense between a male and female, make it at least entertaining and at the very least quasi-serious. Or better yet, not at all if you insist on doing it half-heartedly.
Overall, Winny Tiwakorn as Lava is the highlight of the series. He is the series. He is a charming, but aloof, yet principled young man who struggles with finding ways to accept himself. He is flawed but in a way that is not egocentric with his inability is trying to point out that not every ill or negative woe is of his doing. Sometimes his defensiveness is justified. We honestly did not get to ‘know’ Wave because underneath he was Navid. When Navid slowly emerges, we find out how different he is from Wave. That honestly needed to be explored more as in reality they were two different individuals. Wave fell in love with Lava; did Navid fall in love with Lava is the question. That needed way more intensity and time than was given, as Lava himself even said.
This story was presented way too simplistically and hurriedly to be fully believable or acceptable. Yet, it did make for a cute story. It is an entertaining series to be sure with a stronger than usual BL component than your run-of-the-mill trite Thai BL story.
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