In Love Forever: 1x06.
Six episodes in, this might be the happiest and most stable that we’ve seen Runch and Neen in their marriage. Runch is happiest when her little acts of service – bringing flowers, tea and cake to her wife in the office, for example – make Neen (and Neen’s assistant, who voices that Runch’s setting of standards makes it hard to find a partner of her own who measures up) smile. They’ve decided not to divorce, they are giving their marriage a second chance, and for now, they look like they’re living through a honeymoon period that showcases what they would be like without the malicious outside influence that has been haunting their marriage before it even began. Under the surface though, something much darker is happening: they are living in completely different realities, where Runch exists in the happy delusion that her mother has truly changed and is attempting to make up for her past transgressions, while Neen is convinced that Kingkamol is only pretending and is in fact executing a plan to drive a wedge between them yet again. Something about the happiness of their scenes together, when they are alone, co-existing with the loneliness of Neen being convinced that she is right but being unable to bring Runch along into this realisation, makes it even more heartbreaking: because Kingkamol has invaded their private sphere, lives in their house, is always there, meaning there’s nowhere to escape to anymore.
What makes the situation worse is that the viewers know that Neen is completely correct in her assessment of Kingkamol, even before she openly reveals that this is part of a devious plan, that she is still pursuing her ultimate goal of destroying the marriage. Neen knows that she can’t just tell Runch what is happening, that Runch won’t believe it until she has irrefutable proof – in the beginning of the episode, she gently probes her for suspicions and there are none. You could blame Runch for that naivete, but it must be such a seductive dream for her to have everything she wanted, to have the central conflict of her life seemingly resolved with Kingkamol finally apologising to Neen and, apparently, treating her with respect for the first time ever. Runch is not a character who will go into any interaction or personal relationship assuming the worst, in spite of all of her bad experiences with both her mother and with Att. Runch’s natural position is always seeking balance (to a fault), even when she should be making a firm decision, and so it is no wonder that she is enjoying what she thinks is a detente between her wife and her mother. At the same time, there’s something undeniably comical about her essentially turning into the “this is fine” dog in the meme while her house is burning down around her (but it’s very, very tragic for Neen). And what can Neen do, when Runch’s perception of her reality means that any retribution, any fighting back, would look like pettiness against someone who is trying to redeem herself? For someone whose nagging and insults started off as being fairly ineffective because they never hit where Neen could really hurt (the pain came from not being defended by her wife), this particular plan seems immaculately conceived to truly destroy Neen (and, because Neen is Runch’s happiness, Kingkamol’s daughter as well).
Neen’s family is so happy when they finally reveal that they have decided to stay married, it’s like an alternative universe in terms of what their marriage could be like if it was fully supported. This time, when Runch drinks with Neen’s dad and brother, it isn’t an act of small revenge on her, but a genuine celebration of them finally “being a real family” (but even then, Neen can’t join in because she knows she will have to drive them home because of Kingkamol). When they return home to find Kingkamol waiting up for them who blocks their way with so much fervour that her daughter not only finally speaks her mind a little bit (because she does speak up when she’s drunk) – “I’m all grown up now, I’m not a child” but also vomits on her. It leads to the most direct conversation that Neen and Kingkamol have had about their warring ideas about what Runch needs and should do: Neen says she doesn’t want to constrain Runch, that she is giving her the freedom to make her own choices. Kingkamol complains that Runch never used to get drunk when she lived with her and Neen says “Maybe she didn’t have the courage to live life the way she wanted yet.” It’s such a mature way to stand up against Kingkamol because ultimately this isn’t a fight about possessing Runch for Neen, but a struggle to give Runch the option to choose her own happiness, her own life, over an overbearing mother who insists that she still knows what’s good for her daughter and should have the right to choose for her. It’s freedom vs control, which makes it very clear who genuinely cares and who doesn’t really value her happiness – because to Kingkamol, her identity is so caught up in her daughter’s that she doesn’t see her as her own person, with her own thoughts and wishes. Neen even acknowledges in that conversation that she knows how much Kingkamol loves Runch (even if it is a deeply twisted love), but that she is the one who lives with her every day, because Runch has already chosen to share her life with her.
Nothing that Neen will ever say to Kingkamol will change her mind though, and so she continues to terrorise their life together in every way possible. She vacuums the house in the morning to wake them up. She bullies her daughter into calling off a date night so she can cook for her, which leads to a hilarious competition between her and Neen that ends with two inedible overly salted dishes that Runch still has to bear with a smile because she’s trying to keep the peace. After Neen directly confronts Kingkamol over her intentions and gets confirmation that her suspicion was correct (“I’ll do whatever it takes to get you out of Runch’s life”), her behaviour escalates even more: she gossips with a neighbour about Neen not taking care of her wife, even inviting her into the house that isn’t hers. She buys trees to “ward off evil” (she’s still there, so clearly it’s not working), permanently changing a home that isn’t hers, literally planting her own roots in her daughter’s marriage, without asking anyone for permission. She records a fight she has with Neen to play it back to her daughter, making herself appear as the victim, the reasonable demure one, Neen as the aggressive and unforgiving daughter-in-law (and Runch never questions why her mother would be recording the conversation in the first place, it’s her friend overseas who points out to her how insane that is). And throughout, when Neen pleads with Runch to see through her mother, to at least question her motives, Runch remains steadfast in her conviction that her mother is being sincere. What breaks the camel’s back in the end is Neen overhearing the neighbours gossiping about her marriage when they go on an early-morning run – and it’s no wonder that this is what makes her snap in the end, because we know that Runch delights in the very acts of service that are being twisted into something ugly here, that this is how Runch expresses her love and that Neen lets her do it because she knows that it makes her happy. It’s malicious because it questions the very basis of their love for each other, while disregarding all the ways that Neen looks after Runch (and it’s perfect that it happens in an episode where Neen does so much to accommodate her). When Neen confronts Kingkamol at home, she doesn’t hold back, but in the scuffle that ensues, Runch ends up protecting her mother, raising her voice at Neen, and comforting her mother when Neen runs out of the house, exasperated. It’s the natural outcome of them existing in different realities, with Runch’s inability to see her mother for who she really is, even after what she tried to do with Meilin – and it’s bad enough that Neen moves back with her parents for now.
Natee, in France, talks some sense into her after the fact, and maybe part of Runch’s problem is that there are so few outside voices of reason in her life, that she is so isolated, that even this one person who seems to have a grasp of the situation is so far and so many time zones away. “Would my mum really go that far”, she still asks about a person who set up a whole other woman for her to marry instead of Neen while they were still married. Runch goes over to Neen’s house to apologise to the whole family, promising again that she is choosing Neen, but Neen, knowing she would probably give in the moment she opens the door, refuses to come back until Kingkamol has left (“I don’t want to hear your apologies. They’re nothing but words.”) And Runch, being who she is, still thinks she can walk the line somehow.
The flashback is still of a happy moment: this time, their wedding day, Runch happily saying, “And from this day forward, we’ll be each other’s wives forever.” Considering where we are at in the present time, it seems like a dark omen of what’s to come, in spite of their happiness that day.
Random notes:
In another show, maybe it would be addressed how Runch unfailingly drinks until she’s drunk every time she touches alcohol, but I don’t think it’s going to happen here, it just coincidentally fits in well with the sense that she has depression and should, as said before, see a therapist.
It’s also interesting that Neen’s mum is the one refuting the idea of Runch ever cutting her mother off completely, because I thought that in Runch’s conversation with her dad in the previous episode, that’s exactly the option she deep-down knew she would eventually have to choose before Kingkamol’s miraculous and fake change of mind later on. It doesn’t seem to be unthinkable to her, just deeply uncomfortable and clearly a very last resort.
Kingkamol bringing a picture of herself and Runch and placing it in front of a wedding picture is next-level outrageous, such a clear symbolic act of disrespecting Neen, that it’s hard not to feel some kind of way about Runch not reprimanding her for it.
Director P’Jaew writing perfectly romantic ad copy for Whoop watches with this: “They’re watches. But they’re not meant to tell how much time has passed. Instead they’ll remind me that with every step I take, you’ll always be there with me.”
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