Likit Fah Cha Ta Din (2012)

Worth Watching for Just One Role

As much as I enjoyed the drama, it was mostly for just the Din character played by Mike Angelo. It's not unusual for a teenager to go through many emotional turmoils but Mike made this boy real and nuanced.

The storyline was captivating, and I noticed Thai dramas often strive for more original scenarios. However, it was unusual that I cared for only one character, while the rest were annoying.

***My general reflections. Spoilers galore so don't read if you don't want to know***

Before Darakan marries she has an illegitimate son Jang by another man. She leaves him in a shrine, where she visits him frequently, while her legitimate son Din is left behind. Although by the end of the series it's said that she tried to love them both (because it's a rule in Asian dramas to forgive your parents no matter how bad they are) throughout the series we see she really didn't love Din, and whenever she showed any concern for him it was either out of duty or guilt. Esp. when we compare her behaviour towards Jang when he comes to live with them. We can see that the things she does for him, like personally cooking, decorating his room, throwing a party for his friends etc. etc. she never did for Din. And she does it in front of him not even once stopping to think how indelicate it is. Even when she does something for Din, like when trying to separate Jang from his girlfriend, it's not to make Din really happy, but because she worries Din's relationship with Jang could worsen. She's very happy seeing her husband accepting Jang as his own son and giving him a major position in the company, and not even once she worries how her other son will take it. Whats more, she didn't see it fit to find 5 minutes to talk to her other son and explain that he has a brother who will be joining them. Din learnt about it in the most awful way, and since he loved her he didn't even want to believe it was true because he didn't want to think about her as an easy woman. By the end, we see how she worries that Jang is in grave danger but doesn't try to stop Din when he's going to put himself in the same danger to save his brother for his mother. So every time Darakan says she loves Din or loves both her sons equally it comes off as hypocrisy, and I'm not surprised Din doesn't even want to listen to it.

Din takes it all really badly and grows up as a messed teenager. However, under the violent surface there's a loving, caring and loyal boy ready to do anything for the people he loves. Whenever it really matters he's selfless towards his father, mother, and Dongyiwa. At the same time his "better" brother is very quick to turn against anyone, including his girlfriend, over the smallest misunderstandings.

It's ironic that Din is again and again accused of being inconsiderate, while he's always the first to stop and think how others must feel. Even when standing in front of the dilemma of getting rid of Jang his biggest concern is it'd make his mother sad because she loves Jang so much. Neither Jang nor his mother ever do something like that for him unless pointed out by others, and often not even then.

Thus said, I wasn't crazy about Jang character even though it was the main role. He was nice to everybody because it's how he was raised but he wasn't that much better than Din. We can see it when he turns as violent as Din messing up the company's contract, or when he defends his friends who beat up Din, even though one of them was kicking a bleeding person on the ground. All he had to say was that his friends didn't know Din was his brother. Unlike Din, however, he's given many chances. And whenever he fails he can try again with the support of others. Din never gets a chance to do anything, no matter how hard he tries.

Then there is Dongyiwa, a girl both brother fall for. First Din, and it seems for a moment like they might hit it off, but then she meets Jang and it's clear which brother she prefers. I mostly found her annoying. Din liked her because it seemed like they could be honest with each other, to which she pays him with such an amount of dishonesty, leading him on and misusing for her father's or Jang's benefit that it's really sorry to watch. To top it off she considers herself a martyr who has to spend time with Din against her will, as if she couldn't just tell him that she doesn't care for him 20 episodes earlier. In the end she just accuses Din of not really loving her but only wanting her to win a rivalry with his brother, which is neither true nor fair considering he told her he liked her long before he even knew he had a brother and how respectful he was towards her feelings once he knew them.

As much as Dongyiwa and Din had some chemistry, I found her romance with Jang lukewarm, so I didn't care about their ending. I wish for a better ending for Din though, because Teresa is just a random leftover from his brother while Din is a character who deserves real love.

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