In Love Forever: 1x09.
Kaekai: If being in a relationship feels like a competition it means that someone isn’t letting go.
This is the first time that we have seen an interaction between Kingkamol, Runch’s mother, and Kaekai, Neen’s mother, and the contrast between them and their perspectives on life in general and their daughters’ relationship reflects what exactly has gone wrong with Kingkamol. Their meeting at the coffee shop, Kingkamol openly aggressive, Kaekai polite but knowing just how to phrase her sentences to subtly undermine her world view, to make it clear what she really thinks about her, shows the difference in how they’ve both raised their daughters.
Kaekai: I think it’s nice. This way you’ll see different world views.
Kingkamol: Some views aren’t worth seeing.
Kaekai: If you don’t want to see it, then don’t. The world has changed. Even if you try to ignore it, the world won’t stop spinning.
If you divide the episode into two halves, two different stories, the contrast becomes even clearer: here’s Runch and Neen, once again united, as in love as we’ve seen them, showing care and love for each other, with their bond growing outside of the burden that Kingkamol has placed on them, finally free. In that freedom, that renewed relationship, they are now stronger than ever right at the moment when their divorce was meant to occur: Neen is opening her restaurant, but instead of that signifying the moment where they can drop the act, they have come out stronger than they were before, and not only that, but Runch, who has proven herself through her choice, is fully part of Neen’s family. Kaekai has said it before and she says it again explicitly in this episode: she has gained a daughter, she sees Runch as family, just as much as if they were related by blood. Her world has grown, her family has grown, and every time we see Neen’s family (now that the conflict between Neen and Runch has ended), they have seemed happy, loving, warm. Kingkamol is the opposite: the episode explores just how much, and how early, she considered Neen a threat to her relationship with her daughter. Instead of seeing Neen as another daughter, an addition to her family, she sees her as a threat to her existing daughter, and whenever we go home with her – to her empty home, her home devoid of joy and laughter – all that’s left to her is a husband who is getting increasingly more frustrated to the point where even this quiet, ineffectual man begins raising his voice, and threatening to leave her. The difference in their mindsets, in their acceptance and love, has led to opposite lives, and that difference has nothing to do with their social status, with Kaekai’s wealth: her love for Neen and for Runch is nurturing and supportive, and the outcome is togetherness and happiness, a growing family. Kingkamol’s love is conditional, limiting, demanding, and it has led to a life without love, filled with resentment and loneliness. At this stage, Kingkamol is spiralling into what a show more willing to embrace diagnoses would call psychosis, and there are no rational limits to what she is willing to do to destroy Neen, and Att – filled with his own hatred and desire to destroy Runch in whatever way he can – feeds into it with the mastery of a born manipulator, knowing just what to say and what to do to cause destruction.
After having told her mother that they should stop seeing each other except for the direst of emergencies, Runch appears freed from the expectations placed on her, and it’s significant that the outcome does look exactly like what Kingkamol would have feared the most. Neen has probed before what Runch’s dream life would look like if she could truly choose and I think this episode hints again that it would be quite different from what she has lived before: she drops everything to support her wife as she is opening the restaurant, she delivers flowers, she leaves work to show up to the opening. Runch, left to make decisions for herself, is less driven by ambitions for her career than love for her wife, and she is never happier than when she can prioritise their time together over any other obligations. One of the saddest things about Kingkamol’s upbringing and her insistence that she should be closest to Runch is that she doesn’t truly know her at all, because she has never bothered to get to know her daughter beyond the idea she had of her, the picture she formed of her in her mind. They are entangled in the messiest way, but it doesn’t come with any true intimate knowledge of each other – so much so that Runch, years ago, when she first started dating Neen, took her mother by her word when she said that she would love whoever Runch loved, and Runch didn’t even consider that this would exclude women. There’s something deeply naive in how Runch approaches the introduction (and Runch is so giddy, so happy, when she first shares the news, and from how she has spoken about her state of mind before she met Neen we can deduct that her mother would have rarely seen her like this before), like she doesn’t even consider that her mother might reject Neen, might reject her daughter’s queerness, might be homophobic – and the episode makes it clear that Kingkamol, in spite of her later protestations, is homophobic. She might have later changed her mind, or realised that opposing Neen based on gender would make her look back in the eyes of others, since the world has moved on (this maybe being the overly optimistic side of Thai GLs), so she found other excuses, but her initial gut-reaction to seeing her daughter bring home a woman is complete disbelief and denial. It’s clear from how it occurs: Kingkamol being visited by a friend who shows her picture of a grandchild, the kind of hope in her eyes when Runch tells her she has met someone – that she had a very clear picture of the future in her head, where her obsession with her daughter would probably seamlessly translate into an obsession with a grandchild, and Neen’s appearance messes with the picture, complicates it, and so she refuses to even consider that Runch is being genuine and serious about this relationship. This flashback – which is positioned in the middle of the episode like other unhappy ones have been, in contrast to the ones at the end that focus on just the happiness of Runch and Neen’s relationship – also shows how Kingkamol processed it. Years passed between Runch introducing Neen and their eventual wedding, and yet in Kingkamol’s mind, it happened quickly, it felt rushed, it destroyed her idea that this would just be a phase for her daughter that she would grow out of. The flashbacks leaves out what I’m certain would have been several more occasions at which Kingkamol treated Neen rudely, and leaves it to the audience to imagine just why they would have applied for their marriage licences without first telling her, and why Neen’s family bought them a house to move into after their wedding, making it clear that they knew first. As much as Runch insists in the flashback at the end of the episode that she is certain that her mother would come to love Neen as much as she does, deep down she must have realised that this could never happen, and that’s why she’s so late to tell her parents about it.
Everything in this episode works to showcase how much Runch loves and supports and Neen, and everything that happens feeds into Kingkamol’s spiral, because Att sets her up to witness it now that she’s been banished. Nothing bothers her more than seeing Runch being invited into the family pictures at the same restaurant opening that staff have prevented her from entering: here’s Runch, fully part of someone else’s family, embraced with love by Neen’s mother, and here’s Kingkamol, held back by the guards from crashing the party, clearly on the outside of it all, having lost control over her daughter and being kept out of her life forcefully. To Kingkamol, everything feels like a conspiracy now, and Att feeds into it by positioning himself as her only ally: Neen’s family is conspiring to steal her daughter, her husband has withdrawn his support from her and is instead cautioning her to be careful lest she end up all alone even if she gets sick and dies (including himself in that equation, for the first time), the public’s perception has changed since she gave her interview and is now admiring of Runch and Neen’s relationship. There is nothing keeping her in check anymore, nobody to restrain her: the showdown in the restaurant is inevitable, the moment where all of Runch and Neens’ happiness (they talk about how happy they are in that moment, relieved, not under pressure, free – a contrast to last time, when the table next to them was gossiping about them and they had to flee) collides violently with how miserable Kingkamol is. Just before it happens, Runch says “I used to think happiness always came at a price but now I’m starting to believe that as long as we choose each other, that’s all that matters.”
Kingkamol has shown how willing she is to use violence in the past, even if it was just a shove, a pull, or throwing the vase that cut Neen’s leg – she has always been close to crossing the boundary into outright violence, and it all comes out in this incredible scene. Att removes Runch from the picture by reporting to the restaurant staff that her car has been hit, leaving Neen alone and isolated, and Kingkamol shakes and slaps her right away, in front of all the other customers, unrestrained. It’s visceral, brutal, and comes as a complete shock to Neen, being assaulted in a public place with nobody to help her. Runch returns and immediately pushes her mother away from Neen, also disbelieving about what she has seen her do, and then she finally fully shouts at her, speaking her mind fully.
Runch: You did it for yourself, for your own satisfaction, and your own self-importance. This woman is the one I love. She’s my wife. So why do you treat her like your enemy?
Kingkamol: She took my daughter from me.
Runch: No one took me from you. I left you. […] Stop saying those things. I’m a grown up now. I have my own life. But you never accepted that.
Kingkamol: I did my best to raise you right. I sacrificed everything for you.
Runch: Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly right. You’ve sacrificed everything for me. And you’ve been using that fact to control me all my life. I’m supposed to listen to you, stay close to you, and never love anyone more than you. If I don’t, then suddenly I’m an ungrateful child. You know, what you did today just messed up my life.
Kingkamol slaps her daughter in the middle of the argument, and she realises immediately that she has crossed another line, but it’s not enough to stop her from trying to attack Neen again – and it’s Runch who tells Neen not to resort to violence, not because she is trying to protect her mother, but because Runch’s greatest fear from the start has been that Neen would change because of her mother, that the conflict between Kingkamol and her would turn her into someone she inherently isn’t. The heartbreaking thing is that this is the most definitive act against Kingkamol we’ve seen Runch take, voicing exactly how much her mother’s overbearing, conditional love has wrecked her life, telling her mother that she was the one who decided to leave to live her own life, and yet, Neen is left by herself in the restaurant sobbing, realising that in spite of Runch doing everything she was meant to do, everything she has ever asked of her, she can’t keep Neen safe from being assaulted like this. They’ve insisted again and again that it is enough to hold hands going through this ordeal, that choosing each other is enough, that love is enough, but Kingkamol has just proven to Neen that devotion and care and love aren’t enough if they still leave her vulnerable and hurt. It adds bitterness to the coda, a foreboding sense of doom: Runch saying she has changed her mind about getting married at 35 because she wants to start her life with Neen earlier, so that they have more time to grow old together. What if love alone isn’t enough?
Random notes:
I don’t even care if it’s naive but there’s something deeply lovable about Runch just bringing Neen home without bothering to come out first, like instinctively insisting that this is what the world should look like, that this should be entirely normal and possible. She’s not rebellious, but idealistic in this very quiet, gentle way, which seems like such an unlikely outcome from having a mother like Kingkamol.
It’s foreshadowing that Kingkamol’s husband warns her about Neen’s family: that what have kept her safe this whole time is that Runch has protected her, but if she crosses the boundary, one day their power could get her into trouble. She doesn’t hear it, and what she does after is the opposite of listening to his advice.
There is so much delicious acting in this episode, most of all in the showdown scene (Ling, Orm, Kik, all three of them owning that scene), but I also very much enjoyed Runch’s reaction to Att’s insincere attempts to pretend he is sorry for what he is done – she clearly knows he isn’t being genuine, she clearly resents him for everything he has done, she gives him the lift to the city that enables him to send the location of the restaurant to Kingkamol with the utmost reluctance. As naive as she can be, or was in the past, this is the most resentful we’ve seen her. I also want to give props to how Mae Koy conveys being politely disdainful so perfectly, in exactly the way that would enrage Kingkamol the most.
