In Love Forever - You caused all this.

In Love Forever: 1x11.

There are some things that happen in this episode that make me want to write about the genre in general, beyond the scope of just In Love Forever: what it means to only have twelve episodes (still, better than just eight!) to tell a full story, the kind of pressure on pacing that brings, the inherent tendency of Thai GLs to pack new story-lines into the final few episodes that feel like an internal logic that is hard to follow for people not raised on Thai lakorns (or in my case, any kind of soap-operas). But first, I want to go back to what this episode does achieve, which I think gets a bit muddled and covered up by the 20-minute-kidnapping plot that feels like an awkwardly positioned line-break. There’s this bit of dialogue in the confrontation between Runch and her mother at the beginning of the episode, when Kingkamol has found out from her friend that there are rumours about her daughter’s divorce, but instead of returning home, Runch has stayed alone in the house, already making it clear that this will not be the outcome that Kingkamol desired from the beginning. Runch explains the emotional devastation of having lost Neen, and what it means to her that her mother has made her lose the most important person in her life. Kingkamol counters furiously that this should make Runch understand what it meant for her to lose her daughter. On the surface, it’s a cogent argument, but it falls apart as soon as anyone investigates it further: for one, there was no reason for Kingkamol to lose her daughter through the marriage. After all, Neen’s mother hasn’t lost anything – from her perspective, she’s gained a second daughter, not lost her only one. It was Kingkamol’s decision to turn this into a zero-sum game, to turn this into a conflict where Runch had to choose between Neen and her mother. The whole idea that the core conflict of the show is Runch having to choose between her mother and her wife is false and only enforced by Kingkamol, but the idea of it goes so deep that even Neen used it as an argument when she explained to Runch why she was asking for divorce. “You can go back to being a daughter now”, disregarding all the work that Runch has been doing to really understand the nature of her mother’s attachment to her and what it has done to her life. Runch understands now that the choice has never been between her mother and her wife, but between Kingkamol and being able to live her own life, find her own happiness, to be her own person. This is how what should be Kingkamol’s great moment of triumph - finding out that her daughter is getting divorced, with her friend surprised that Runch hasn’t moved back home already – turns so sour for her. Instead of leading to a reunion, it just enforces Runch’s determination to lead her own life, especially when Kingkamol continues to refuse to see what she had done to Neen and to Runch, continues not to take responsibility for her actions, even says she would have done more violence given the opportunity to punish Neen. Instead of bringing her daughter back to her, it makes her say the final, to Kingkamol incomprehensible words: “If you keep acting like this, you won’t get a single dime from me. We’ll go our separate ways. I don’t even want to know if you’re sick or on your deathbed.” It’s a threat that goes beyond what she’s said before, when she promised to continue to financially support Kingkamol as tribute to her devotion to her, when she said that they would only speak when things were truly serious. It’s a complete severing of their relationship. Functionally, Runch is saying that Kingkamol would cease being her mother.

I think the reason for the kidnapping plot is that this step to a complete separation between mother and daughter is culturally so taboo and unthinkable that it requires another unforgivable act from Kingkamol, one that is so irrational, so unfathomable, that it makes Runch’s decision culturally legible. It’s not enough that she insulted Neen, tried to find a new wife for her daughter while she was still married, attacked her in broad daylight, threatened more physical violence. Here she contacts Att, who has realised that the consequences of messing with Neen’s family are more severe than he thought – he’s basically been blacklisted and unable to find work – and contracts a kidnapping from him. It’s a reversal of their previous relationship, where Att fully manipulated and profited from Kingkamol’s break-down: here she is using the only pawn still in play for her to do something horrible to Neen, something that is sure to leave psychological scars, and something that, above all, could have gone fatally wrong if Att did anything competently. The episode doesn’t spell it out explicitly (I think the kidnapping plot would have more bite if it did) but if you think about it, from the moment that Neen recognises him (unfortunately this has been cut from the episode, but it’s clear she has when he takes off his mask, which has lost its use), there is no way that Att can allow her to leave the situation alive, because the 30 million will be of no use to him if she can identify him after. Additionally, the show has made it clear that Att is driven by completely irrational jealousy and wants revenge, two motives that, combined with the gun he brings along with him, hint that there was an outcome here that Runch only narrowly avoided when she hit him with the branch (Orm said: an appearance of p’tawan, not P’Tawan) just before the police arrived.

But, let’s go back to before the kidnapping plot, to the emotional centre of the episode. I think it’s interesting that Runch is, for the most part, alone in her processing of the divorce. She doesn’t have friends around to support her, her mother is obviously of no use, she doesn’t appear to be speaking to her own father about it. She is alone in the house they used to share and the ghosts of their relationship are everywhere to haunt her and torment her, all those shared memories that live in her bones. Still, Neen, surrounded by her family and friends, feels more alone and isolated in this episode than Runch. It’s not just the divorce itself that she is struggling with but it seems that her mind is caught up in a loop where she is questioning everything about their time together, voicing that she feels like Runch was never happy in the marriage, that she has always sacrificed herself, that she has suffered because of her, as if she’s internalised all the things that Kingkamol has said. When she goes to the beach – where so many of their happy memories happened – and remembers the past, it feels like she gets caught up in all those small hints of trouble that always coloured the coda scenes in a slightly different light: Runch talking about her struggles, asking her to be there for her difficult days. “Sometimes disappearing is the only way for the one you love to be truly happy”, her deeply concerning insta post, summarises it, but it is also the opposite of everything that Runch has ever verbalised about her feelings for Neen, it’s just that Neen in this mental state can no longer imagine how important she is to her. Runch comes to find her as she’s wading into the ocean fully clothed and draws her own conclusions.

Runch: Why are you hurting yourself?
What are you talking about. I’m not hurting myself. I just wanted to be in the water where it’s quiet. Neen: So my heart could take a break. I want to forget everything for a little while to quiet my mind.

Twice Runch shows up in this episode to save Neen, proving how much she cares, being the first to arrive at the scene. The second time, she puts herself between the gun and Neen. The sadness of the episode, and the show, is that the only thing she salvages through her actions are Neen’s feelings about the marriage: making it clear that she has no regret, that would marry her again, that she would still choose her, that she will always love her, none of which changes Neen’s decision about the divorce. It just means that they are divorcing with their happy shared memories intact, untouched by all that has happened, because they are theirs: it’s the one thing Kingkamol can’t take away from them.

Random notes:

A coda that provides a third time that Runch saves Neen, this time by patching up another cut with the precision and focus of a surgeon, saying “if something were to happen to you, I wouldn’t be able to go on”. The scene captures their dynamic, Neen’s played up whininess to get exactly the kind of loving care she wants from Runch, and how happy Runch is to give it, even if it is just a little cut. How long until they find their way back to one another?

How do we feel about Kingkamol’s punishment coming through karma, not the legal system? I think the greatest punishment for her is the certainty that her actions after Runch threatened to cut off contact completely mean that she’s lost her daughter – and even her husband is saying to her he’d like to see her go to jail to straighten her out. The immediacy of the scam phone call is very convenient (after all, I feel like we live in a world where there’s very little karma for the most destructive people, but sometimes it’s nice to live in a dream for a bit).

I hope this is the last we’ll see of the utter and complete loser that Att is. After all that, truly only good at gossiping.