#they managed to put everything i hate of a romcom male lead/ship dynamics into djs how the heck did they do it.

[rinbylin]

on jutathep nostalgia - and unfortunately, somewhat of a h8r - mode here...

the way this first episode was a complete trainwreck, for me, with only the impact temporarily cushioned at the end by the rare gathering of the gen 1 and 2 boys in the same picture..tragic 😔😔 whoever said saruj turned into a red flag should apologise to poncheewan bc why does asira jutathep look like a flashing red alarm here - to me... chai yai and prang take your son back...

he may be chai yai's son but if anyone in gen 1 came closest to petch's behaviour in ep 1, it would probably be chai pat. for the same reasons, I couldn't quite stand chai pat as a romcom ml too (lovable as a brother though) - but he's also so beloved by the fandom. whenever I recall that jutathep catered to so many different flavours and you get to see how wildly diverse people's tastes are (no matter the objective ranking of each instalment, there will always be a pairing that someone claim favourites over)... I'm constantly humbled... this might be something some people are into but it's just so extremely super not for me.

on the more objective front - it might just be me being unrealistic, but I do go into tewaprom expecting there to be some sense of continuity thematically or even just trope-wise from jutathep - well, as sequels should (hah!)... especially knowing full well it was possible with poncheewan. while i think it's relatively hard to fuck up chai ruj and rasa's child bc their characters are distinctive but relatively normative, I can still see parts in saruj that is only possible owing to him being chai ruj and rasa's son. like, saruj's character was substantially shaped by chai ruj and rasa's absence at home, unlike his cousins who are always seen at home spending time with their parents. and we know that played a part in his love story later on too. not only did saruj follow after his dad's footstep in his career, he inherited his mum's courage in holding onto the person he loves. chai ruj and rasa's love story started as childhood playmates reunited in a foreign country many years later and then torn apart by social class difference - which is similarly also reflected in poncheewan. it's an instalment heavily couched in the big family context that the entire series is premised on. I appreciated poncheewan for calling back to some of the essence of the original series even if it wasn't fully done well.

I haven't seen the other 4 instalments in their entirety but -- on the contrary, when chai lek and soifah's domestic life with their children look indistinguishable from chai yai and prang's domestic life with their children... you know it's just not gonna hit home. we don't talk about soifah's "domestication" by the end of the jutathep series, but the alienating effects have caught up in tewaprom. and -- a lot of these are my personal judgement of each instalment -- the impact of taratorn being a writing mishap also leaked into its sequel. chai yai's character being entirely centred on his role and identity as the eldest with the heaviest responsibilities was hardly incorporated and developed into his love story with prang - so that left me with nothing at all to work on petch's character. but I guess I'm asking too much... or am I??