BLISS RATING: ★★★+
“Revenge is best served cold.” – Eugene Sue
Obviously, the theme of this series is revenge with a side order of justifiable karma. I, perhaps alone, found this series exceptionally dark with very little socially redeeming value to it. Honestly, the two protagonists are certainly not compasses of morality. The story is replete with immorality and cut-throat business practices. Although the story likely contains some truths, it centers on the entertainment industry’s more salacious aspects. Because of its concentration and focus on the depraved part of the entertainment industry, the end result makes it look like there is nothing socially redeeming about any of it. Yet, the lure and enticement of fame and fortune is, and always will be, its addiction.
Sun (Min Thanakorn) is a 25-year-old street thug doing what he can to make money which is nefarious at best. His actions eventually caused the death of his younger brother and indirectly leads to hastening his mother’s demise. Eventually, the police catch up with Sun, and he is sent to prison for a number of years. In addition, Sun’s boyfriend named Bank (Fuaiz Thanwat) manipulated him into thinking they had a loving relationship while plotting to set him up as a fall guy and abscond his savings. Bank eventually works his way up the entertainment industry by whatever means he can and becomes a successful celebrity and takes the name, ironically, Sunny. Yet his reputation is and remains one that he will destroy by whatever means possible any and all competition or even perceived competition.
When Sun gets out, he takes on menial jobs to try and work his way back into society and also slowly plot his revenge. His payback for those who wronged him and his family. By accident, he bumps into a talent manager named Kajorn (Khunnote Jirapat) who thinks that Sun could be a future actor. He sees ‘something’ in Sun that is hypnotic and enticing. He obviously has the looks as Sun is quite handsome, and he is a low-keyed but brutally honest young man. With his straight-forwardness, he knows what he wants and is clearly street smart. One day while smoking a cigarette on top of the building where Kajorn works, he meets Jay (Toptap Jarakut) who is astonishingly handsome but cold, calculating, and cutthroat. He seems to know more about Sun than he should and begins to actively pursue him. In a sense, he scrutinizes him not just because he is attracted to him, but he also wants to use him as well. Sun, in turn, becomes interested in Jay because he soon finds out how influential Jay is and deduces quickly, he might be able to use him as well to get at Sunny.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? This series has a lot of enigmatic characters (if not odd) and none more so than the character Sky, played masterfully by Shogun Paramee. Outwardly, he seems well-adjusted and wants desperately to be a performer but has one major caveat. He is terrified and thus irrational at the sight of cameras, and therefore completely falls apart when trying to be filmed. Kajorn, also his manager, is aware of his fear and tries to steer him into stage productions. Sky is surprisingly and exceptionally good at acting; if he could just get over his fear, he could have an expanding career. The story does do a good job of retracing and identifying his fear. His dread is quite legitimate and is based on a real-life trauma of unspeakable pain and humiliation. With some help from an unlikely source in Pakin (Boss Chaikamon) who is considered the best photographer in the business. He helps Sky work through his trauma and gets him camera ready. A tease of a relationship between the two of them is also hinted. What makes all this so special is that Sky is one of the few in this series who does have integrity and a moral compass to him. And for those who have had similar experiences to what he had, this was treated with regard and a sense of a worthy conclusion. What Sky experienced is not something that can or should be easily dismissed or cavalierly dealt with and this series handled that with sensitivity and compassion. Shogun’s dramatization of the various aspects of his different personalities was superbly woven into multiple levels of complexities. We see how a nice decent honest young man became a shell of a human because of abuse. He presented the characters traumas as real issues that we could see and feel. He made it authentic.
The way this series is presented is so disconcerting. No doubt, there are elements that are presented as fiction here, but are representatively true. There are disguising financial backers and supporters of performers who will take advantage of their vulnerabilities and use them sexually. And a lot of them are disgusting, ugly old men who know they can get away with it. That indeed is the power of the rich and the elite. However, what was glossed over a bit too much for me was the fact that others in this same industry were just as ruthless and evil. Producers, directors, powerful costars, even sponsors tried to get in on the advantage. What shocked me was the ease in which one was so willing to sell themselves for fame and fortune. I understand the allure and the enticement of being rich, famous, and desirable. However, what is unfathomable is the selling of one’s soul to the devil to get that. So, I have little to no sympathy for those who do. They know exactly what they are getting themselves into. Call me callous, but I do not believe they deserve our sympathy, unless they made or make a concerted effort to fight back and not give in or at the minimum expose what is happening. How can you fight the system unless you really want to expose it? I saw none of that occurring here. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie and were willing to keep their mouths shut to get it.
The entire premise of this series begins with a creepy segue, and it ends the same way. Both Sun and Jay are both protagonists as well as antagonists. For me, they are way more evil than good, however. Sun is plain weird with almost a sociopath tendency: an opportunist, toxically impulsive causing pain and torture for others and not having much empathy for doing so, incapable of love, but using his physicality to get what he wants.
Meanwhile, Jay lost contact with humanity a long time ago. Ruthless, life is one business transaction after another, sex is on his terms, and is abusive and demanding. He too is truly incapable of love. These two inflicted untold pain and torture and death on others and lived in a world that they knew is sleazy, disgusting, full of vermin and corrupt and continue to chose to be silent. Neither have any moral integrity. I am not sure I will ever see a loving relationship between the two when quite literally when Sun and Jay have kinky sex, Sun cries and has a look of pain and dissatisfaction on his face; yet he knows it is something he must endure to get what he wants.
Each missed the true meaning of this series. It is named specifically for a reason. Payback also means repayment, reimbursement, and recompense. Three other meanings to stoic Sun and calculating Jay which apparently mean nothing and that is glossed over while for others who do see it, pay a heavier and very steep price.
In the end, however, they both got what they wanted by each using the other with others merely being collateral damage. Their dealings with one another now have been concluded, they giddily plan their trip to Lithuania and other parts of the world unknown. Feeling nothing for what they did. Oh, how I just love me a Pollyanna ending!
This was a story guised as character development with a hint of some sort of redemptive arc for everyone to feel sorry for these two. I am calling all of this gaslighting and simply am not falling for it. These two do not deserve their ‘payback’ while others who did were rewarded with barely being able to live or not at all.
I would agree that this series is a dark romance – very dark. And that is all acceptable. What concerns me is when it tries to be morally correct or present the moral arc as somehow bending towards the antagonists being seen as protagonists because they have been favored with astonishing and exceptional good looks while the real champions are mapped out as expendable, superfluous, or irrelevant. That is so plain wrong.
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