#the best parts of ifylita for me was the queer found family

[twig-tea]

Gonna add 2 cents on to this because Ben's questions about "why" resonated with me, and they're ones I asked myself (because my brain works this way too lol) so here was my answer that satisfied me, for what it's worth, with no expectation that @bengiyo you hadn't already thought of this or that it'll resonate with you:

Any time this kind of supernatural event happens to a character I assume it's for their development. In this case, I saw throwing Jom into the river and through the past as a kindness rather than a cruelty, because it gave him the space he clearly needed and otherwise wouldn't have had to process and then get over the betrayal of his lover, and to find a new love. I can't speak to the book, but in the show, Jom's passivity towards his situation changing into him participating in turning the household upside-down and getting not-his-sister out from her abuser's influence was something that I think was done a little imperfectly--if you think about it, he added the dramatic aspect but not actually any of the evidence that was needed to get Robert convicted--but it did show that he was more willing to take risks and participate actively rather than passively waiting for things like he had been doing with Ohm. And we see the change in his face, too, when he's contemplating being left behind by Yai to study abroad. I got the sense from Jom that if he didn't already suspect he was disappearing, he would have not put up with that plan.

And once he gets back, he reconnects with his sister and is decisive on establishing closure with Ohm. I liked those scenes because it helped me understand what had changed for him and how he was carrying the parts of himself that had changed during his time in the past into the future.

I'll also say that one of the key pieces of Jom's development in the past is the community that builds around him. At the beginning of the show he was isolated by choice but he'd been there waiting for Ohm for 2 years. That's all part of why it was so important to me to see Jom re-establish connections in the present, because we know he didn't just lose Yai when he came to the present, and it's important to me that he's not alone in the present and able to (re)build community for himself now.

I won't defend the very ending because it's muddled. The book version, where he goes from 1928 to the further past and then to the future makes more sense with what we saw at the end, and I still kind of hope that they slightly cheat and retcon the very end of s1 by showing that happening in s2, so the ending we got at the end of s1 is actually the end of s2 (if it ever happens).

It's compelling to me to think that Jom and Yai would never have fallen in love in the present if they had not had dreams of their past lives to make them interested. Jom meets the version of Yai who he would fall in love with--the one who is young, a little naive, kind, earnest, trusting, and fascinated by him--and then once Jom has gotten more self-confident he gets sent to the past, so that Yai meets the version of Jom he could fall in love with (and Jom falls for this version of Yai all over again, but this version of Yai is much more wary and has higher personal walls, he needed someone who already had a vested interest or else there was no way Jom would have seen enough of him to fall, and no way Jom would have caught his interest). And then Jom is sent back to the present and Yai is given visions of their past lives because the present is the only time in which they have a chance at happiness. So, all that being said, it was important for me to see Jom settled in the future/present so that I could believe that Yai and Jom have a chance at making it work between them in this time period. [This paragraph is reliant on book-end order of events, which is why I'm emotionally invested in them revealing in s2 that actually in s1 he didn't go straight back to the present]

Swoon: The I Feel You Linger in the Air Episode

And we're back!

NiNi and Ben bring Ginny back to the recording booth to discuss Tee Bundit's final offering of the year. We discuss our differing responses to historical romance, the difficulties with articulating big emotions from shows, and the balancing of political messaging with romance.

Come and join us for probably the most distant NiNi and Ben have found themselves as we discuss I Feel You Linger in the Air.

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

00:00:00 - Introduction 00:01:20 - I Feel You Linger in the Air: Big Damn Romance 00:21:35 - Depictions of Intimacy 00:30:21 - Head vs. Heart 00:37:37 - Beyond the Romance and Story Integration 00:49:15 - Anticipating the Special (Or Not) 00:54:08 - Final Thoughts

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @ginnymoonbeam as transcriber, and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes (Coming soon thanks to @wen-kexing-apologist). When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

00:00:00 - Introduction

NiNi

Welcome to The Conversation About BL, aka The Brown Liquor Podcast.

Ben

And there it is. I’m Ben.

NiNi

I’m NiNi.

Ben

And we’re you’re drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie here sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.

NiNi

Four times a year we pop in to talk about what’s going on in the BL world.

Ben

We shoot the shit about stories and all the drama going into them. I review from a queer media lens.

NiNi

And I review from a romance and drama lens.

Ben

So if you like cracked-out takes and really intense emotional analysis…

NiNi

If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the discourse…

Ben

And if you generally just love simping…

NiNi

There is a lot of simping on this podcast…

Ben

We are the show for you!

00:01:20 I Feel You Linger in the Air: Big Damn Romance

NiNi

We are back. Welcome to our Swoon episode of the podcast, and on Swoon we are going to be talking about a big damn romance which is not something that we get to talk about a lot in BL. To help us do that, Ben and I have a special guest and our special guest is, duh-duh-duh-duh, Ginny! Say “hi,” Ginny. 

Ginny

Hello!

NiNi

Ginny is here with us because Ginny is also into the big damn romance. So, we’re here to talk I Feel You Linger in the Air. 

Ben, break it down for us. What is I Feel You Linger in the Air about?

Ben

I Feel You Linger in the Air is a historical romance set in 1928 Chiang Mai, where a young man from our timeframe ends up in the past, and ends up working for a very rich family that seems to have some sort of lordship over the region at the time. Our protagonist’s name is Jom. He is an interior designer who's been living in Chiang Mai waiting for his boyfriend to come back from England for a couple of years, and then his boyfriend comes back with some girl and its like, “Yeah, she's pregnant. We're over. Sorry, bro.” Jom has a no good, very bad day and then goes off a bridge into the river. And then a hot guy with a bunch of tattoos kisses him, and then he somehow wakes up in the past? Uh, didn't really wake up and past, he exits a river in the past, and then drama ensues. 

He ends up stuck, makes a couple of friends, catches the eye of the young son of the lord of this area, and ends up becoming close to him, and finds something very meaningful in this time period, which is also strange for him because of reincarnation. Lots of people that are important to him are in this time period, but as very different people who do not know him. This ends up being used for a lot of social and political commentary, some of it very subtle, some of it not so subtle, and I guess that's mostly the show.

NiNi

So, Ginny, how’d you feel about this show?

Ginny

I had a great time with this show. It was so beautiful from beginning to end. The settings were gorgeous, the music was gorgeous. Even when it was from The Nutcracker—

[NiNi laughs]

—it was one of the most—[Ginny laughs]—sorry. It was one of the most lush feeling dramas we've gotten in BL. The whole historical setting just felt very rich and detailed. Really felt like you were soaking in it. It's kind of a slow pace, but I didn't mind that and I felt like it worked with the setting and with the big romance historical story that they were trying to tell. 

In the first five or so episodes, I did feel like the romance was the weakest part, but as soon as those boys got together and we were in more of an established relationship situation, it was gorgeous. The intimacy was incredible. They got to me deep in the heart parts; really enjoyed it.

NiNi

I had a great time with it. I love a big damn romance. I've been reading big damn historical romance basically my whole life, and this captured the feeling that you get reading a big damn historical romance. There was a hint of the epic to it in certain parts. There were quiet moments in there that were really, in some ways, very romantically profound that kind of got me, like Ginny said, deep in the heart parts. I had a fabulous time. 

Ben, how about you?

Ben

So, I don't like historical romance in general. I do not romanticize the past, particularly the not-so-distant past, and it makes it often very hard for me to enjoy historical romance. I'm Black, and I'm from the US, and I grew up in the South. And so it is really difficult for me to really enjoy historical romance because these large gaps in power, often, between the characters, do not work for me. It often makes me extremely uncomfortable. I understand that the context of this caste system in Thailand are different than what Black Americans experienced in my home country, but Jom's arc to me can be blandly described as him landing in the past and being upgraded to preferred house slave, and that is something I struggle with even as there's a lot of stuff in the show that I really like. The undercurrent of that really bothers me. 

I also end up struggling with the end of this show when I reflect on Jom's journey because it's a very tragic story for me in a way that isn't cathartic. Like, I am still left with an intense melancholy coming out of this show that I have not been able to shake. And the parts of it that were really beautiful and enjoyable I don't think have unstuck me from how kind of sad for Jom and Yai I feel.

NiNi

It's interesting that the feeling that you're left with is sort of a melancholy, sort of a sadness, because that's not where I landed on it at all. Why the feeling of melancholy in particular?

Ben

Jom is yanked into the situation for reasons we don't understand, and then he is yanked out of this situation for reasons we don't understand. And so Yai has the unfortunate queer experience of deeply loving someone and having them ripped away from him. And he never really gets over that? Judging by his own letter to Jom that has passed down. And then for Jom, he's 25, he blew two years waiting on an ain’t shit motherfucker in Ohm, crashes his car, ends up in the past, has a very bad time, and then has a less bad time because of Yai. And then Yai is taken from him. And at least in the show, Jom gets back to our time frame. 

The show remembers that Ueangphueng was his sister. He gets to eat some crepes, he gets to tell Ohm, “I don't care anymore. I just spent eight months as a slave. Whatever. You can go marry that girl.” Then he gets yanked even further back to the past? 

I don't need the show to tell me why things should happen, per se…but this is a very familiar experience, having grown up in queer cinema, where a bunch of sad shit happens, and then the fucking thing is over and you're like, “Oh. Well, that was something.”

Ginny

So I did go into the show wary because I knew it was a time travel romance and the trailers looked real melancholy. They had this ode to eternal parting about them. It definitely tells you what it's gonna do from the beginning. I do feel you, especially with Yai. I'm not entirely satisfied with where they leave that Yai in the past. 

I feel like Jom has a whole journey ahead of him, and he did get some healing from his own trauma, but I didn't love that they left us with this heavy sadness and pining. It didn't have to be a romantic happy ending. They did give some pointers towards maybe what he did politically that also pointed to some real Thai figures that apparently were historically influential. But I would have liked to see a little more hope and uplift in Yai’s side after Jom leaves him, because we're meant to believe that Jom changed everybody's life. He inspired Yai to sit up and take notice of the world, to pay attention to some of the injustices around him. And I would have liked to see at least more of the positive side of that from where we leave him in the past. I didn't expect that they were going to get to live their lives out forever; that was kind of never in the cards. But they did leave Yai, in particular, in a pretty melancholy place, and I'm not sure how intentional that was, that that was the full impression we were left with.

NiNi

Given that it's Tee, I'm feeling like that was pretty intentional. Tee…the ending’s always bittersweet. It's never 100% one thing or another when it comes to Tee. He's always going to leave you somewhere that's just kind of like, “Yeah, there's good here, but also life is what it is.” I feel like I just generally probably have more tolerance for that when it comes to these kinds of stories. 

Like Ginny said, you know from the beginning that they're not gonna live out their whole lives together in 1928. The way the story is set up, it's just not possible that that's a thing that's gonna happen. So for me, thinking about the life that Yai lives after Jom leaves, it's not necessarily melancholy for me? He was definitely lonely and I wonder what that must have been like for him. It's more of a curiosity for me than a melancholy. 

I am a person who is very into loneliness and stories about loneliness. And so, leaving 1928 Yai alone in 1928, and having him have to deal with his loneliness for the rest of his life, that actually does not bother me. It doesn't make me feel sad necessarily, because I don't necessarily see loneliness as an inherently sad thing. I think loneliness is loneliness, and it can be sad, and it can be other things. 

The idea of Yai having had this great love and deciding that he doesn't want another one, basically because he's chosen at that point, “I don't want to do this again,” and devoting his life to other things from what we understand from what we get at the end of this story. Him having basically his memories of Jom for the rest of his life, but no other great love. This is something that my mind actually enjoys conceiving of and considering, but then I have some very different feelings about loneliness as somebody who spent a lot of time alone in romantic and non-romantic situations.

Ben

I would be probably less bothered about it if it was more like Brokeback Mountain. If the tragedy that separated them was mundane and contemporary, I would probably be less annoyed than this supernatural phenomenon, that we still have no real handle on, being the reason that they come together and are torn apart. That component of it is bothersome for me because I don't know why these things have to happen to Jom. 

It's fine to choose not to be bothered about it or not care about it, but I really hate speculative fiction stories where the supernatural component only matters in so much as it generates drama to get big moments, and doesn't feel like it's as much of a player in the story as the people there. I'm very frustrated with I Feel You Linger in the Air, because I don't know why Jom has to suffer like this. I can enjoy Jom and Yai's romance, but I don't know why this story wants Jom to suffer this way, and for the people Jom loves to suffer.

NiNi

Ginny, do you have a conception or a narrative in your head about the why, or does a conception of the why matter to you in the story? For Ben, it's incredibly important, and him not having a conception of the why is sort of a barrier between him and the story.

Ben

If you're gonna send my Black ass to the past to become a slave, there better be a goddamn fucking reason for it.

NiNi

[laughs] I hear you, I hear you.

Ginny

As far as the mechanic, I don't need that, and I don't want that, because the story was set up with this very kind of spooky vibe, which immediately put me in a place of like, bigger than human stuff happens in this story, and we're not gonna make that make sense. That's not the kind of story we're in. But the narrative that I do see is the reincarnations and the fact that this is a love happening over three versions of Yai that have loved Jom, and the Yai that we experience for almost all of this story is the second of those, so he has already some immediate instinctive connection to this strange man who's shown up, and he kind of just goes, “Oh, this person is important to me. I've already had dreams about him. I'm gonna see what this is about.” 

Why does he have to suffer like this? Because that's the story. I get what you're saying, but this is very baked into the genre and it's baked into the fundamental setup that this is gonna be a story about separation and about yearning across centuries. Those are the emotions that the story wants to deal with.

NiNi

It's fascinating for me because, as somebody who's been very steeped, as I said, in historical romance in the way that I've been steeped in historical romance and the type of historical romance that I've read across my life, you're right. It didn't even occur to me to question the why. This is the ticket for the ride. This is the price of admission. You just accept that this is the premise and you go from there. So, the idea of there being a conception of the why, it didn't even really come to my thinking on this show until Ben pointed it out. 

In a story like this, the mechanics of the time travel are by nature a McGuffin, because they're not actually important to the thematic underpinnings of the story. The thematic underpinnings of the story in this case come from the characters and who they are, and Jom being from the future is part of that. Jom being this person who has lived this life in this particular time and being thrown into another time. That's where the thematic underpinning comes from. Not because of the “Why is this happening to him?” and all that kind of stuff. Even though maybe some of that stuff may come out if they get to continue the story—maybe, maybe not—because I don't see that as being something that Tee would be particularly interested in. I don't necessarily see it as something that's, for me, critical to the telling of the story.

Ben

It's because they sent him to the future. I don't think I would have cared about it if Jom had just vanished, and then he had just woken up even further in the past, and been like, “Oh, fuck,” looks at the camera, and then they end. I would have been okay then. I would have been like, “Well, we still don't understand why Jom is hopping. Perhaps the reset in another time frame will help us see that.” 

By sending him back to the future, letting him eat crepes and hang out with Jeed, who was Ueangphueng in the past, it made me think, “Well, what the fuck was the point of all that?” You sent him to the past, he made some friends, they got the gang together and unmasked the villain, they had some great sex, they had some sad sex, and now he's back in the future. And Not!Yai walks in, confusing the absolute fuck out of us, and then they roll credits. And then they throw on a tag, because they might get a second season. 

A huge knock for the show for me was being fully-reliant on novel spoilers, which were posted by the distributor of the novel, as well as given by the cast to audiences. That's not great! A good ending makes me go back to the beginning and then I want to reflect on the whole journey. I got stuck in the ending of all of this going, “Well, what the fuck was the point of everything I just watched? Why did any of this have to happen?” I don't like getting stuck at the end. I don't know what they want to say about everything that's going on. The whole for me is not greater than the sum of its parts, and it has some really good parts. 

I think Nonkul and Bright do a great job playing the romance between Jom and Yai. I thought it was interesting to see a male gay couple and a female gay couple next to each other, and how that presents in this particular time frame. I really liked Ming and the other servants because most of them are honestly not that homophobic, which reflects a lot of historical context. Poor people did not care about what other poor people were doing. I liked the whole notion of a bunch of homos and their friends get together and they can take on fucking anybody! 

I think episode 11, where Jom realizes he's disappearing and tells Yai, and there's this somberness that grips the show as they have to grapple with Jom's functionally-terminal illness, and they go through the process of saying goodbye to the people who mattered to them reflects an AIDS experience that I am unfortunately familiar with. That was really well done. 

There's all of this great stuff all over this show that I don't feel like really spins together into something transcendent. I just have a show with a lot of pieces that I think are really spectacular. But I don't think the show itself is.

00:21:35 Depictions of Intimacy

NiNi 

Let's talk about some of those pieces. Ginny, let's talk about the intimacy—let's start there. Let's talk about the intimacy through the story, the intimacy within the relationships, and then the particular scenes that you and I have been trying to sink our teeth into. 

Ginny 

I think I said already that initially the romance between Jom and I did not grab me. I didn't feel like their courtship had a lot of juice to it, but once they reached that point of really being in each other's orbit and being close to each other, every scene was just giving so much intensity. Mutual desire, mutual interest. So much tenderness. The way that they look at each other and touch each other is beautiful—some of the best chemistry and intimacy we've seen in a long time, I think. 

Ben 

The oil scene in, what, episode 6? 

Ginny 

They've definitely not had sex yet, but the attraction is clear and understood on both sides. There's this scene where Yai is rubbing himself with oil as just, like, skin care, and Jom starts helping him. And then you cut, and you see Jom in his room looking so worked up, and then he starts to rub the oil on himself, and you see that what's happened is Jom and Yai had this moment where he's doing this massage and it was interrupted because Yai was like, “This is too much.” 

And so Jom is processing this, and very clearly implied is jerking off to this experience. And the music is so intense, and the framing is so intense, and you're intercutting between the scene with the two of them and the massage and Jom by himself. It's one of the most intensely sensual scenes that we've gotten ever, and it's done so artistically. They thought about “How are we going to frame this?” and “How do we want to tell the story of what just happened between these two men and how they both feel about it?” It's so creatively gorgeous and intense in a way that I don't see applied to intimacy scenes, and I just wanted to smooch everybody involved in it, because it was beautiful and wonderful, and I want to see more like that always. 

NiNi 

The way that this show filmed sex and intimacy. Ben always talks about being tasteful, but also being explicit enough for there to be an understanding that what is happening here is sex between men, and it is different from other kinds of sex. I was just kind of blown away by the creativity of it: the way that it was shot, the way that it was scored, the way that it is choreographed, the way that the emotion is built between the actors. 

Ginny’s right, I haven't seen anything like this. 

Ben 

The only other creator who consistently gets here when it comes to sex…probably MAME? Maybe? Like, it's kind of goofy when she does it. 

Ginny

MAME is different, and I am a bit of a MAME apologist, and I love her intimacy scenes, but there's something about the creative layers that are put on top of this that really speak to me. This show did so much without being very visually explicit; being so deeply sensual, without showing you very much at all. You're seeing skin and you're seeing touching, but that's not what's driving the emotion. It's the music and it's the filming choices that are making this experience so sensual, rather than just the sight of bodies and the way they're touching each other. And it was really striking. 

Ben 

The intimate moments themselves are not here for pure titillation. There is a strong dramatic component to each scene, which is helping the characters and the audience cope with the current struggle happening between the boys. The first scene with the oil, that was the first time that Yai was close to honest about his physical desire for Jom. 

Ginny 

They definitely both know at that point. I don't remember what specifically has been said, but it's been made clear between them that Yai is interested in Jom, because Jom goes into that scene kind of expecting, “Oh, is this going to lead to sex?” He thinks that's what's gonna happen, and maybe Yai did, too, but kind of got overwhelmed, or we're not sure exactly what happened that he stopped it. 

Ben 

I'm sure! Don't worry!

Ginny

[Ginny laughs]

Ben’s sure. What happened, Ben? 

Ben 

I'm just gonna get edited. [NiNi laughs] I'm glad you're here. That boy made a mess of his damn pants because he busted unexpectedly—[Ginny laughs]—and got embarrassed, and didn't know what to do, because he definitely spent too much time thinking about it because all he does is read trashy romance novels. 

[Ginny laughs]

NiNi 

I've forgotten about the romance novel that he made Jom read to him. 

Ben 

Which Jom hated!

[everyone laughs]

NiNi 

But you know what it is with the intimacy scenes? They somehow managed to be incredibly sensual, but not earthy?

Ben 

They got sensual without being as erotic as maybe they felt. I like when the actors get to give the audience what they want and need without you basically making the actors shoot porn. Bright and Nonkul are extremely professional. We don't always get too deep into the behind the scenes stuff, but we can see in the BTS we got that these two guys understood what they needed to accomplish in their scenes, which are very well choreographed ahead of time. And that's, I think, what really goes here is they're not just relying on actors being willing to just do shit. There's a specific intent that they're going for. So we get all of the effect we need, and it doesn't feel clumsy. 

NiNi 

Another thing I really loved about the intimacy in the show is how it builds from scene to scene. The other thing I like watching when I'm talking about sex in stories is tracking the emotional journey through the sexual journey. This show, I think, was really good at that, because every time we got an intimate scene between Jom and Yai, it was at a different stage of the relationship. The intimacy wanted to show us something different. It reveals something different about where the characters are, where their relationship is. When the dam finally breaks and Jom and Yai just start making out in the rain.

I talk about the show being a big damn romance. That moment is probably the most big damn romance moment in the entire show. It is epic. There's no other word to describe this moment. How it happens, how it’s shot, everything about it makes it even feel epic. There's this sense of inevitability. There's a sense of desperation. And then that carries through into the sex scene. 

You come out to that scene and you're going into other scenes where things are quieter once they become more established, you can chart the emotions that you're supposed to be feeling about both the characters and the relationship through these scenes. And there aren't that many of them. They do a great job of building the intimacy and you understanding that they have this incredibly intense physical relationship without spending a lot of time on intimate scenes. As much as I enjoy seeing those scenes and parsing those scenes through the lens of the story, the fact that they don't have that many of them to me is also an accomplishment because they're able to tell that story without necessarily making their actors take their clothes off and make out all the time. 

00:30:21 Head v. Heart 

NiNi 

The way that I feel about this show is so visceral. Ben talks a lot about rarely having heart shows, about being very analytical about the things that he watches. For me, this show…I'm not as deep into the analyzing of it as maybe Ben is. And Ginny, I don't know which side of that line that you land on. 

Ginny 

I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I try to sit wherever a show is gonna give me its best, so I'll love to analyze the show if it seems to really be inviting that. But this one, like you said, it's a big damn romance, and so much of what it's doing is just creating those moments. So I was enjoying sitting in those. 

That kissing in the rain scene that you talked about, that was incredible. What happens immediately before that is the dance that Yai has to do with this very eligible girl, and the fantasy dance that Yai and Jom have—which is just a gutting scene. I think I did cry. Everybody is surrounding them and admiring the way that they are doing in real life for Yai and this girl, and it's the agony of what they should be able to have and can't. 

This is a show that wants to dig into those pain points and I can see where for some of us who have lived that pain, it's not something that you want to sign on to. For others of us, it's like, “Yes, make me feel this thing. Take me through this in this fictional space.” We get that excruciating contrast of the publicly-affirmed love that Jom and Yai aren't allowed to have, and then we go from that right to this private, powerfully intimate moment between them. 

NiNi 

We talk a lot on this show about lenses and reads; who you are and where you sit being an integral part of how you look at the shows, how you take them in, what you get from them, and what you put back out. I think this is a show that for each of us, because we're coming at it from a different lens and with a different read, we had three kind of distinct almost experiences of it. 

I don't have a head response to this show, so Ben talking about the why of the time travel—I just wasn't thinking about it like that. My head wasn't in it to that extent in terms of analyzing. This was strictly my feels, and I had a lot of feels from the minute that Jom sat down behind the market and stress-ate that sausage. I had a lot of feels! [laughs]

Ben 

This is always going to be the struggle I have. I don't swoon. So while I do appreciate how good Bright and Nonkul are, particularly Nonkul—I had very positive responses to what he was doing. I don't ever get heart shows where I just sigh at them and like, that's it. 

The first 43 minutes of this final episode are fine. I think they accomplished that part really well. I don't have a lot of complaints about that chunk of the finale. If we end there, and then go straight to the tag, I'm probably fine with this show and having a different conversation. But Jom ending up back in the water, getting snatched by a scuba diver, and I'm like, “How the fuck did he get out there so fast?” If we're jumping right back to that moment, it's the middle of the fucking night.

[NiNi laughs]

I didn't have to care this much about the specifics until suddenly I was thrown off, and now I'm having to ask fucking questions. So Jom gets rescued and then we have all this shit in the present. And we don't spend a great deal of time there with Jom grappling with what the fuck happened to him. It's just: jumps back. “Oh, right! Jeed was Ueangphueng! We haven't talked about that in 11 episodes!” Okay, sure. Ohm is here? Why? Okay, right, right. In the actual world they're from, Ohm showed up, broke up with Jom, and within six hours he drove into the fucking river. I get it. Okay, right. That's what happened. Sure. Let's deal with that. Yeah, okay. I don't care. Go home. All right. Goodbye, Ohm. BYE!

Jom is sad because he misses Yai—valid—and then he finds the box. We have a really cool moment around the box. I really love the letter, but then there's Future!Yai and I'm like, “What the fuck is he?” [Ben sighs] I hate all of this shit at the end. It feels distracting. Why does he have to go back to the future to tie up shit from his present, to then suddenly be thrown back to the fucking past? 

NiNi 

If I am putting my head bits on, which I am very reluctant to do with this show to be quite honest with you, because I enjoyed it so much… The only thing that maybe doesn't entirely fit is the third version of Yai at the end. ‘Cause I can see why they bring Jom back to the future. There's all this stuff that happens there that for me emotionally resonates, both the stuff with Ohm and then him opening the chest and finding the letter, and getting to see his despair and his loneliness without Yai. And then a version of Yai turning up without explanation? Okay. Yeah. Okay, fine, doesn't bother me, but I was literally deep in my feelings at that point. 

I can understand also why at that moment happens and why it's not explained. Who wants to end their story on an exposition dump? Nobody. 

Ben 

You got the catharsis you needed at the 43 minute mark and you were able to just walk away with that. When they kept talking after that for another 45 minutes, it caused problems for me. When we talked about other shows we've had on this podcast, we can talk about how, like, there's a lot of good shit but for you, it didn’t hit you in the chest? 

This is where I sit with this show. It's good. I don't feel it. 

NiNi 

I got you. 

00:37:37 Beyond the Romance and Story Integration

Ben 

All right, now that we have covered the main stuff, and all of the oil scenes, and the sad sex, let's talk about the rest of the cast. According to book readers, much of the cast of characters around them was greatly expanded for this production. Since Tee and them clearly cared a lot about them, let's talk about them. 

Let's start with Ohm/Khamsaen, Fongkaew and…Preggers… [laughs] I don't remember what her name is. She got on my damn nerves. 

[Ginny laughs]

NiNi 

Did we ever get her name? 

Ben 

According to MDL, it's Khaimuk, but I don't remember it being said. 

Ginny 

Yeah, I'm not sure they ever said it, which says somethin’. 

NiNi 

Ginny said, “Whoop there it is.”

[NiNi and Ginny laugh] 

Ben 

I will say that I liked the bits with Khamsaen in the past where he doesn't actually know who Jom is. He's just pissed at Jom for having no sense of class solidarity at all, and gets in his face about this. He's like, “You're fuckin’ up my bag, bro.” And Jom, who is going through his shit, beats the fuck out of this man. But then they, like, reconcile later? I actually kind of liked this. 

Ginny 

Yeah, I mean, I was with Jom and so in favor of him beating up that man, even though that man did not know what he had done, really, to deserve this. I was just still so mad at present-day Ohm so I was very ready to have Jom take it out on the past version of him, who had done nothing basically except be a little whiny about a girl. 

Ben 

I like Khamsaen’s perspective because you've got the rich people and all their bullshit-ass games, and I like how Khamsaen is just kind of a pampered mama's boy who's losing his shit because something horrible happened to the girl he cared about, and now she's in this really shitty situation, and he's just floundering and feeling super powerless because he doesn't feel like there's much he can do about that at this point. 

Ginny 

What they set up with Robert and the way that he wields power over his whole household and his two wives and everybody who gives a shit about them really leaves everybody feeling powerless and just kind of scrabbling around the edges for what they can get. Those early episodes really set up how under the thumb of this powerful rich man most of the people in their orbit are. That's just a giant boulder in the stream that they all have to flow around and figure out how to live their lives around. 

Ben 

The way that eventually unravels was kind of interesting for me, because there's this little mystery in this show about, how does Robert even get involved with this family in the first place? Why are they so intent on Robert? ‘Cause he kind of sucks and he seems like he's also bad at his job, which is to manage the forestry shit. He would much rather spend his time whipping Ming's ass, and Mings mom’s ass, or abusing his wives, than doing his fucking job. There's this whole bit with Fongkaew where we learn that while they were trying to cover up other awful things, they brutally murder Fongkaew’s father and injured her mom permanently? And that's how Fongkaew ended up in this household in the first place. 

Ginny 

Yeah, and it seems like she kind of knows that, and just has to live with it and live with being at this man's side who did that to her family, until she teams up with the other wife for the grand comeuppance. 

Ben 

We eventually learned that Ueangphueng and Mei conspired to bring Fongkaew into the house in the hopes that she would distract Robert. And they own that that was really fucked up, and they apologized for it. 

Ginny 

The way that his power makes everybody underneath him turn on each other and use each other as shields, and recognizing that that's not okay to do, but also you understand why they did that in that position. 

Ben 

You get the sense because all these characters had to be built out for the show. They were concerned about how these characters were interrelated to each other. I like the Robert character even though I despise him because I feel like they considered his role really well in the 1920s part. 

NiNi 

One of the things that came up to me while the show was airing was how it's kind of important, given Thailand's position in this era, that Robert is French and James is English, Thailand is never colonized, but the French were to the east in Vietnam and the English to the West. It's pincered between colonial powers, but it was never colonized itself. It was kind of like a buffer zone. Some of that feeling does come through in the way that the era is portrayed. There's clearly a lot of influence that they're getting from these colonial powers without actually being colonized themselves, and that comes through particularly in the character of the dad. 

He feels like somebody who is important, not in the sense of “I am important because these powers say I am important, but I have a sense of importance in myself.” I don't know how to explain it to people who are not from places that were colonized, but it gave it verisimilitude for me anyway. 

Ginny 

Clearly, so much of what he wanted to do with this project was bring in some of those historical perspectives and the sociological and political stuff. And I thought he did a really good job overall of putting that in the story in a way that felt natural and felt like it fit. 

NiNi 

There is a fair amount of political inside the story, which is very Tee. I also feel like, in a way, he almost didn't go far enough in terms of the way he normally likes to operate, because Tee, when it comes to this stuff, he's very in your face, and it felt oddly restrained. 

Ben 

One of the things that I remember seeing from Tee while we were watching this was that when they were trying to do research about this period, they did not have a lot of great primary sources of what life was like for not-the-ruling class at the time and so they were building out the world kind of based upon anthropological presumptions about the era. The one bit of this ‘happened during the era’ stuff we get is the piece of news delivered at the breakfast table about two women who were living together. It ends completely in tragedy. One of them is killed and the other maybe doesn't survive the grief. I don't remember exactly what happened to the other one, and it feels significant for me that Tee wanted to make sure he put living lesbians in this world, too, by building out this relationship between Ueangphueng and Mei, and then giving them the opportunity to leave and go do their own thing. 

NiNi 

That brings me to an interesting question. Tee was trying to accomplish a number of different things, I think, with this story. How do you feel the romance fit inside of the wider story that Tee was trying to tell? 

Ben 

Honestly, poorly. 

Ginny 

They did not feel super well integrated. The grace that it got for me was a lot due to how well the side characters that ended up involved in a, more political stories—Robert’s whole household. All those side characters were so nicely developed early in the series and I was so invested in them that I gave the story a lot of space to develop its different themes alongside each other, rather than having a ton of overlap. But from a story crafting perspective, they were not super well integrated. I would agree with that. 

Ben 

The big problem was their choice to make Jom so passive for most of the show. Part of why the episode 10 stuff doesn't exactly land for me is it didn't feel like Jom was as… active of a character I would have expected, given his obeisance to this system had felt like something he was affecting for survival, and not just something he just sort of slid into because he had been hurt, and then assaulted, and then hurt again right before all of this. I feel like him teaming up with James and everybody else would have landed because it would have felt like he was a mover in that world, and that his modern perspective would have mattered more. 

NiNi 

I feel like this is a consistent critique of Tee. This is something we talked about when we talked about Step by Step as well. The things that he actually cares about versus the vehicle that he's using to tell his story. There is always a tension there. I feel when it comes to Tee, you kind of have to choose your adventure. You have to choose which side of the story, I guess, you're gonna pay attention to. And because I always gravitate towards the romance, I think I have a different-slash-better time with a lot of Tee’s stories than others might. 

Ben 

I don't like that he does that, sincerely. I don't like when BL feels like three pitches fighting for relevance because somebody with money who liked all the pitches wanted to see them play out together. I really don't like the side quest feeling of this constant theme in Tee's work. I don't like the things being loosely connected via setting or… underlying theme he thinks he's building towards? It consistently irritates me in his work. 

NiNi 

I feel like, Ginny, you and I are more closely aligned sometimes when it comes to some of this stuff that Tee is coming out of, partly because we get the swoonies and Ben does not. 

Ben 

Y'all give me shit about New Siwaj. Y’all gonna eat this shit over Tee Bundit. 

NiNi 

[laughs] Ginny, how do you feel about that? Do you feel that underlying tension in Tee’s work, and how do you reconcile it? 

Ginny 

As much as I love the romance and the swoonies, I would love someone to give Tee a bucket of money to make the sociopolitical drama that it feels like he desperately wants to make. What it feels to me like is he has to put things through this BL lens because there is money there as a creator and there's an audience there. There could have been a stronger, more cohesive drama, but I liked both halves of what we got and I didn't feel like they were actively in conflict, and I'm easily pleased. So I was okay with it. 

Ben 

I think he gets away with it here, but I don't think it's good, not as a unified piece.

00:49:15 Anticipating the Special (Or Not)

NiNi

So, there's gonna be a special! The special is not part of the timeline of the show, it's a non-canon kind of AU, not quite AU thing. Are you guys going to be watching this special?

Ginny

Probably. Yeah. 

NiNi

Ginny's like, who am I kidding? Yes, I'm watching it. [laughs]

Ginny

Yeah.

NiNi

Ben? 

Ben

I am genuinely uncertain. 

NiNi

I think I’m not going to watch it. I'm so emotionally immersed in this story? I don't think I'm interested in a time-out-of-time, non-canon AU. 

Ginny

Well, I'll tell you both how it is. 

NiNi

Please do. 

Ben

[laughs] I just don't know that I care! I like Nonkul and Bright well enough, so I'm not opposed to seeing them bro it out, I guess. 

NiNi

To me, the story between these two got so emotionally deep, I don't want to watch them have hijinks. 

[Ginny laughs]

Ben

It feels unearned. The story’s not complete. I would be okay with a “present Yai and Jom get to go to the fair and have a good time,” if this was coming after the second section with the Commander. 

Ginny

I do kind of agree with that. I will still watch it.

[Ben and NiNi laugh]

Ben

Even though I did not like this show as much as NiNi, I am not saying that this show is bad and people shouldn't watch it or enjoy it. But… I don't really want to return to this show. That's the real thing here. We got the tag about the Commander and I was like, “ehhh… do I want them to get a second season?” I kind of don't. I don't know that I want to go back to this. I don't think I care enough. 

NiNi

I am curious about two things. One, this is a period of Thai history that we haven't seen in BL. We're now getting into Thai history and BL, period, and as a person who is kind of a history junkie, I want to see what that looks like. Then the other part of it is, they can't go back to the same dynamic, right? So it's not gonna be a retread of the 1928 story. This has to be a different story because… Mustache Yai is a different character from 1928 Yai. And Jom, having been through the experience of meeting and falling in love with Yai and being separated from Yai, is also going to be a bit of a different character going into this? 

So this is not the exact two same people having the exact same story, if they do this. This is two different people figuring out a different dynamic, a different story. And I am actually interested to see that, because I am impressed with the acting. And because I have been impressed with the writing. So for me, that's where I'm landing. I want the second season because I want to see that. 

Ben

Well, I hope the Quantum Leap BL does a better job closing itself out next time. 

NiNi

[laughs] So mad at you for calling it Quantum Leap. What about you, Ginny, you gonna watch season 2? If there is a season 2?

Ginny

Oh, definitely. I don't think the story is complete as it is. I think they tied it up enough, and that's where—I needed us to see modern Yai, because that tells us if we never get a season 2, there is a Yai and a Jom that can live out their life in the same timeline, and I need that for my peace of mind. There's a happy ending out there sometime—and hopefully we'll get to see the story take them there. But I did want to at least know that it's there for them. 

But I don't think it's complete as it stands. So for that reason alone, I want the second season. I don't… know that I have a lot of faith in how good it will be? So I'm also nervous? But I'm also not afraid of bad television, so I do want there to be a second season, and I will watch it. 

00:54:08 Final Thoughts

NiNi 

Ginny, what did you score I Feel you Linger in the Air, and why? 

Ginny 

Why did I give it a 9? I agree with Ben that the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. That's a really fair and accurate way to sum it up. The ending, I think, failed in execution? I don't disagree with any of the choices that it made about what happened, but I think it could have done better with the timing. I think a little bit more explanation would have been good. 

So there were some misses. But I liked so many of the parts so much, so I gave it a 9. 

NiNi 

And what about you? Where do you sit? 

Ben 

I gave this show a 9. My ranking system is almost always about whether or not a show can be recommended to viewers, and so it becomes a 9 because it's the kind of show that BL viewers can have a very good time with, and it's the kind of show that recent converts might have a good time with? But the failures in execution from episode 10 and 12 hamper this show getting a higher score from me. It's a 9 because the parts of the show that are good are some of the best we've seen this year, but the parts that are not are frustrating in ways that also feel fair, and I kind of hate that, too. 

They hedged on the finale because they hadn't gotten really greenlit for a second season. Okay, I understand the awkward place you were in. But modern Yai is probably the biggest mistake I think they made. I think they were afraid the audience would be like me and would be really put off by how unhappy that finale is, and so they threw modern Yai at us to make people feel better—but I didn't like it. 

But I think the show is really, really watchable. I think it's really beautiful. I think it's a great example of what Thai production teams are capable of. I think it's also a really good showcase of what Thai talent is capable of. I think across the board the entire cast is really solid, even with my issues with the lack of conviction at the end of this series, I think this was an excellent show. 

NiNi

I gave this show a 9.5. This show is incredibly expansive. There's so much that's happening in this story that I really found resonant. I feel like I felt all of the emotions that the show wanted me to feel. I followed that emotional throughline and it was an incredibly easy emotional throughline for me to follow. I didn't feel like I had to qualify my emotions when I was watching the show. If something on the screen was meant to be making me happy, it was making me happy. If something on the screen was meant to be making me feel sad it made me feel sad. There wasn't a tension between what I was feeling and what I felt like the show wanted me to feel. As a person who is very much into the fields and the vibes, it was a 9.75. 

I feel like in terms of shows that we scored really highly and say that we actively like this is probably the most critical we've been of something that we have scored highly? 

Ben 

There are times when a show is genuinely good but doesn't hit every note that well, and you're going to hear it and you're going to go, “Oof. We definitely downloaded this from Limewire.” And—

NiNi 

[laughs] Benjamin!

Ben 

And—Look, I can never hear a very specific song from Third Eye Blind correctly because the track I had was a fucked up clip [laughs] from Limewire for years that had two different skips in it. 

NiNi

Oh my God. You can’t say Limewire! The children don't know what that is. 

Ben 

I do not care about these fucking kids. [laughs] And so…

NiNi 

[laughs] Ginny, Ben said “Fuck them kids.” 

Ben 

So, the thing can be good and still be criticized. Criticism is not inherently negative. This show took multiple huge swings and missed some of them, and I think it's totally fine to acknowledge that the show did not hit every swing it took, even if we can applaud the swings that it went for. I think it's still good to take big swings even if you don't hit them. 

Ginny 

Yeah, I would rather watch a dozen shows that swing big and don't hit the mark than a dozen shows that are kind of boring and self-contained, and do fine at executing an easy thing. 

NiNi 

Okay, so the average of 9, 9, and 9.75 is some kind of messy number between 9 and 9.75 closer to the 9 side of things, because that's how maths works. I'm not going to try to actually calculate that number. It can get a 9 from The Conversation. 

Ben 

It's 9.25. 

NiNi 

9.2—look at, look at Ben!

Ginny 

Ben's like, “The math is simple actually, Madam.”

NiNi

So I Feel You Linger in the Air gets a 9.25 from The Conversation, and hopefully a commitment from Ginny that if they do come up with the second season, you're gonna be right back here on the pod talking with us about it. 

Ginny

Absolutely.

NiNi

There we go. That's gonna wrap us up on our Swoon episode, our I Feel You Linger in the Air episode. We out. Say “bye,” Ginny. 

Ginny

Bye! 

NiNi

Say “bye” to the people, Ben. 

Ben

Peace.