Dong Dok Mai (2022)

Rape ignored - Script Writer's shame.

The story is oppressive in its execution, storyboard, and editing. It isn't a romance; it is a reaffirmation of the stereotyping of women and the financially disadvantaged of any gender in society. Meant as provocative entertainment, and not as social commentary. Note: Production missed that mark, too.

By episode six social stereotyping begins to irritate and becomes maddening because the story fails to acknowledge rape, assault, and kidnapping in a criminal way (Two of the main leads, are lawyers). Every gender is a target and women are getting the brunt of it. Men's brutality is portrayed as a given. While women are always jealous and the enemies of other females.

This repetitive; out-dated; poorly scripted; decades-old morality play has no purpose and no entertainment value. Even subject matter, couldn't keep the boredom away. The finale, a karmic joke. I blame the writer. I don't recommend it.

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Had started pretty well but turned very disappointing. All characters, including the female lead, are dislikeable and nonsensical. They do and say one thing and the next day, they say and do something else that is totally the opposite. For example, the female lead who is presented as a virtuous woman compared to the dramas’s other women and yet somehow ends up sleeping with the married male leadof the story. Weirdly enough, the character who’s the most consistent is Phong, the worst jerk of the story and main cause of the problems as although he changed women like shirt, he is logic and consistent in his deceitful, manipulative, tyrannical nature (preach to the actor Put : it’s easy to play a manipulative playboy but to play it with enough charisma and sincerity to make the viewer feel like we WANT to believe in his lies isn’t easy ; we totally understand why so many women would fall under Phong’s charm and deceit, and that’s hard to pull off for an actor)
Also the drama tries to present itself as denouncing the sexual harassment and inequalities that women suffer, (for example by using the sexual harassment that the female lead pulls off) but they totally fail at it at every single female character is a whore/bitch/easy/stupid woman. There was also the matter of one of the nang rai sleeping with her foster father : obviously, she was forced to, had probably been sexually abused for a long time but the show let it slide, like it was something not out of life or extremely shocking for a foster father to sleep with his daughter, somehow seemed to imply that it proves how low and promiscuous the girl was, lost an opportunity to denounce another kind of sexual harassment.
There’s another rape happening in the story (won’t reveal ‘cause it’s a huge spoil) that was totally mishandled compared to the reality. It didn’t show how traumatic this is.
And whenever the matter of rape and sexual harassment is brought upon, women of the drama show no compassion to victims, and are even willing to use it at their advantage.
The female lead is the most annoying : always talking about how she has dignity, that she wouldn’t mess up with a married man, but she still ends up believing up the male lead’s lies, and sleeping with him even though he was still married, and even though IT WAS SO CLEAR that he was trouble (had a wife, had at least 2 mistresses and a child out of wedlock on the way ; not to mention his crazy family and the even crazier women of his harem). So not only she’s not much better than the other women of his harem, despite pretending otherwise, but she’s DAMN STUPID ! (I know, I said the male lead has enough charm to make anyone fall ; but there still HUGE FLAGS, that his charm could not hide). And she acts like she’s a strong woman who wants to work but at some point, seems to be okay with being Phong’s housewife. Also, you just don’t get what’s about her that makes the two brothers of the drama so crazy but that’s another thing. She gets manipulated by everyone, takes every possible bad decision, whether it is morally or rationally, and yet they try to present her as a strong and virtuous woman, different from the other female characters
The other male lead, Boonpharet, was also annoying : one minute, he loves his brother’s (almost) ex-wife, two minutes later, it’s the female lead. And yet, when she wasn’t the male lead’s mistress yet, the man wouldn´t believe her. He would blame her for being a mistress but wouldn´t stand that she insults his mom, who´s also a mistress, and i didn´t hear him say anything about his brother´s wife who apparently had also stolen him from his first wife. Pretty hypocrite. Moreover, he kept saying he didn’t want to involve in the inheritance fight and but would do otherwise and even provoke his brother. Also, he pretended he wasn’t like his brother who would treat women like toys yet would also involve the female lead in their fights. Finally, you just don’t get how and when he fell in love with the female lead since they didn’t have so much screen time and their scenes didn’t seem to imply that they were getting really closer (moreover, not long ago, he was still in love with his wife’s brother). So he was as nonsensical as the other characters, maybe even more. No blame on the actor though, he was great !
So this show is one of the most badly written I’ve ever seen and is a waste of good actors, of an original script that could have been good, was an opportunity to denounce and stand up on subjects such as inequality and sexual harassment but it was a whole waste and ended up being an insult to women.
I seriously think the screenwriter must have been a man because he so obviously mishandled matters of sexual harassment and women and had obviously a very skewed view about this
And to not get better : the ending and the way they solved everything is incredibly predictable. Whether it is the male lead Phong’s mom who understands her mistakes because of her child attempting suicide (done and re-done), the nang rai who suddenly do a 180degrees turn on themselves and suddenly changes with no logic, and the punishment that Phong, male lead and main villain, received (being shot and left paralyzed : OMG, DONE, REDOND, AND INFINITELY REDONE ! SO CLICHE !).
Moreover, most of the characters suddenly had a big, totally in illogical change of character which made no sense because it was wayyyyyyyy too sudden. It was like they absolutely wanted to give us a happy ending that we get in every dramas but didn’t realize that they absolutely didn’t have the materials for making a GOOD/LOGICAL happy ending (because actually, if they had followed a logical road of events through the whole drama, the ending might have been okay).
But then, the whole drama was nonsensical so it’s kinda logic that the ending would be as nonsensical and cliche as the rest

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