Tang Parn Kammathep (2001)

What a riveting and faboulus love-story!I always love some slap-kiss,and this one definitely delivered!"Tang Parn Kammathep" (which means "Cupid's Pathway") is a romantic drama very loyal to its title,since our main-leads first time met on the road,and the story also finishes with them declaring their love for the first time on that road.I decided to watch original version from 2001 starring the veterans Andrew Gregson as the hot-tempered Traipope who kidnaps the wrong bride in "Pat" Pattaralada played by Janie Tienphosuwan. This is a tale of betrayal,revenge,abandonement,greed,stubborness and pride.Traipope lives life for his loved ones and becomes furious when he knows his father has abandoned his mistress who he has a daughter with to marry a much younger and rich woman who is Pimonpa (played by Sakaojai Poonsawatd).He plans to kidnap her to punish his father,but ends up kidnapping her carefree young sister Pattaralada instead.He holds her captive on his private island and becomes frustrated when she defies him at every turn.They despise each other with every cell of their being,but find themselves falling for each other against their wills.

Both Traipope and Pat are stubborn people who work so well together as a couple.I love their journey of love,misery,passion and heartbreak.Pat are fiercely loyal to her family,especially her evil sister Pimonpa who Traipope desperately hates.Pat makes some bad decisions in helping her sister when she should not-in turn that made Traipope so heartbroken with her bold betrayal when he clearly showed her all along how he felt about her.But in turn of punishment Traipope decides to blackmail her into marrying him.That showed however much Pat hurts him,he is still unwilling to let her go.Just love how possessive and madly in love with her Traipope is!He loves her so much he couldn`t live without her.Andrew portrayed the complexity of Traipope`s character so well.This is my first lakhorn watching him on-screen and i was so blown away that i have become a bit obsessed by him!Ah,what a devilish charm he has as Traipope who fought in every means to win Pat`s love.I love every episode of this lakhorn,and it always got more and more intense and exciting!I now already want more and wish it never ended!Traipope`s and Pat`s love-story are so sweet,charming,funny,angsty and romantic!

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This is a slap-kiss lakorn, so if you were wondering if there's:
-An arrogant, hypocritical ML with anger and communication issues (and likes to slut-shame the FL)
-A nice, but somewhat doormat FL who somehow forgives her sister no matter what 
-A narcissistic sister from hell who only cares about herself and blames others for her problems
-An overly nice 2nd ML
-Forced marriage and divorce
-r*pe 
Then yeah there is. The plot is more or less what you'd imagine from a classic slap kiss and the ending is what you'd expect, although not without some surprising character development on the way (unfortunately not from our ML).
 
Watching this was pretty much like reading one of those trashy mom romance novels; the plot was ridiculous, most of the characters were rage-inducing and unlikable and the romance for the most part is toxic. But like those novels, you're not really going into it expecting an amazing storyline and fleshed out characters - you're reading them exactly for the hot mess they are, and bc they're a guilty pleasure. With that in mind, I have to say I was thoroughly entertained throughout this entire lakorn (tho not without having my handy FF button beside me - then I really would've gone crazy).

When I first read the synopsis for this, it gave me war flashbacks to Jam Loey Rak, which I hated. However, I'm happy to report that this and that are not the same; they surprisingly didn't spend too long on the island and I would even argue that there was no point in having that part, because it didn't add much to the story other than developing the relationship between the leads. My immense dislike for the ML however, was pretty much on the same level as JLR where I'd have to add that I'm more disappointed too mainly because of the events leading up to the r.

As Pat succinctly said, Pop is someone with a huge desire to win. Him kidnapping Pat was to win over his dad (and he didn't even do it right, this clown). Forcing marriage on Pat was a punishment he doled out for 'losing'. Him doing the r to Pat was to win over Arthorn. I was disappointed because before that, he didn't touch her because he wanted them both to understand each other and I really believed he wouldn't do the thing. But for him to do it bc of a stupid misunderstanding was disappointing. A lot of the misunderstandings he has of Pat is his own doing, consistently accusing her of being a ho, never listens to her, and doesn't trust or believe her. Although he apologizes, I don't believe he feels complete remorse for what he's done and there's very little character development from him. Overall, I don't think he's a person deserving of Pat.

Pat surprisingly had a backbone, and stood up for herself a lot in front of Pop which I appreciated a lot. Unfortunately this backbone ceased to exist in front of her sister, which I couldn't understand. Her sister not only slut shamed her, used her to do her dirty work, told her parents that she ran off with a guy when she knew it wasn't true and was overall a huge snake to her. There were multiple times her true nature was exposed which upset Pat but Pat still chose to believe in her. The worst thing was when she went against her morals (I was very disappointed here) and stole money for Pim, with Pat promising she'd pay her back, only for Pim to later on be like "I owe you $? What are you talking about" like WTF. Pat still blindly sides with her sister for whatever stupid reason. I guess she gets rewarded for it later on but it was pretty rage-inducing to watch.

Leading up to the last two episodes, the storyline and characters are pretty predictable and I was thinking it would end predictably with Pat + Pop having their HEA and the sister gets exposed and goes insane/to jail. But surprisingly, it's not the case. There is nice character development from the sister who realizes she's a horrible person and her and Unnop agree to divorce; they both become better because of it. She also pays back Pat and tries to make things right. It wasn't all of a sudden. Things aren't easy between Pop and Pat - there's no, "Ok I forgive and forget everything" but rather "We're better off not together, I can't trust you" (my respect for Pat leveled up here) and time was taken apart to figure out the relationship. Although I don't really see why Pat would ever like Pop and the resolve between the two was kinda one-note, I can appreciate the effort taken by both parties to resolve the issues between them instead of ignoring them and going for the HEA.

Now for some appreciation. The MVP of this lakorn was for sure Pat's dad, who always had Pat's back and was the most reasonable character in the show. Another thing I appreciated was the character development for Unnop; we see him go from self-centered a-hole to someone with more appreciation of his family. I also really liked Arthorn for being the nice guy (it got annoying at times, but I also felt sorry for him cuz Pop pretty much played him) and basically calling out all the bad things about Pop (he was pretty much saying all the things I was thinking, which was super cathartic).

Music was alright and appropriately played. For the purpose of watching this as a guilty pleasure, it did succeed in that aspect so I'd only recommend this if you're bored and like slap/kiss lakorns. I don't think I'd rewatch cuz the ML is so toxic and I don't support the romance, however there are two things that I will always remember from watching this lakorn:
1. The rip-off Pokemon t-shirts. I'll never look at Pikachu the same way.
2. The part where Pop asks Pat if she is Pim (they're returning from the island) and she replies with "I'll be whoever you want me to be." At first I thought this was pretty deep, but thinking about it later made me realize that it made no sense, and is the kind of line that trashy romance authors would put to make things deep when it's really not. I just had to laugh at myself for that lol. 

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