Summaries (Spoilers, Obviously) and Comments

Note: I group summaries by story line, not in presentation order. If you want to know how the scenes actually played out in their official sequence, why not follow this link to the episode and watch for yourself?

Episode 12 Summary

On the morning after the live band competition tryout, Pete runs into Earn at a gift shop. Pete buys Earn a squid kabob and starts to pry into who he’s buying gifts for. Pete tells Earn that everyone knows he likes Noh and wants Earn to tell him. Earn tells him to butt out. Earn buys a gift for Noh. Later at lunch, Pete and Earn start arguing again and Pete threatens to tell everyone what they are fighting about. He calls over to Noh, which makes Earn even more upset. Earn leaves. In gym class the boys are taking fencing lessons. Earn and Pete are fighting about revealing Earn’s feelings for Noh again. Pete questions whether he is Earn’s friend. Earn says that they can end the friendship now. Even though they are only learning basic footwork and choreography for fencing, when it comes time to practice, Earn and Pete start actually fighting with their sabers. The teacher punishes them by making them stand in the corner holding up their swords. The teacher receives a call and releases them.

Earn and Noh make a plan to meet at the bleachers at 4:30. Phun walks by and ignores Noh. In class, Noh is cranky and harassed by Ohm, he starts scribbling in his textbook. The boys make enough noise that they are scolded by the teacher. Noh gets the idea to sneak out of class into the music club room to get some paperwork that the student council needs. Noh and Ohm deliver the forms to Phun, but he just wants them to put them on his desk and leave. At lunch Noh finally realizes what he said in the car the night before that made Phun upset. He leaves the lunchroom to buy a gift for Phun. He finds Fi and has Fi locate Phun for him. Noh goes to the gym where Phun is playing basketball. He tries to talk to Phun but Phun is still moody. Noh gives Phun the candy he bought for him.

The club members are hanging out, tallying competition results, and recounting the past night’s events with p’Oak. They make fun of Noh for having two guys interested in him. When the results are finally posted, both Earn and Phun’s band have made the cut into the competition. Noh leaves under the pretext of telling Phun the good news. Noh finds Phun napping on the bleachers. Noh apologizes for the comments he made in the car, but Phun isn’t bothered by that. He’s depressed that he didn’t sing a song for Noh like Earn had. He wants to know what Noh would say if Earn would ask him out. Noh tells Phun that he isn’t gay so he wouldn’t sleep with any boy who showed interest in him. He tells Phun that he’s the only guy Noh likes. When Noh runs away, Phun shouts after him that he likes Noh, too. Noh flips off Phun and heads back inside the college.

Earn has overheard everything. Saddened that he was too late again, he texts Pete that he’s always one step behind. Pete tries to call Earn, but he isn’t answering.

At the Convent, Aim senses that Yuri is giving her the cold shoulder. She discusses her feelings with Mo, who thinks it is probably nothing. In class, Yuri doesn’t want to be Aim’s partner for their lessons. At lunch, Yuri sits away from her friends to have lunch with Jeed who is sitting by herself in her exile from polite society. Mo gives Aim several reasons for this, but decides that Yuri is probably being naïve. Aim remembers calling Yuri naïve at Hua Hin. After school, while Yuri waits for her father, Aim brings her chocolate and brings up what she said at Hua Hin. Yuri lets Aim know she isn’t mad at her any longer.

In the music club room, Mick is waiting for Ohm to give him a horn lesson. Film offers to teach him other instruments and gives him a guitar. Ohm shows up and takes the guitar away. He lets Film know that Mick is his student only. He sits on the bench between Film and Mick and keeps moving over until Film has no place to sit. Film asks Ohm for a bite of his fishball kabob, but Ohm refuses as he hasn’t finished it yet. Frustrated, Film leaves. Once Film is gone, Ohm hands the fishball kabob to Mick since he has brought it for him.

Rambles

Sometimes the series use of themes works wonderfully and I feel the need to carefully sift through each scene to determine how it is related to the others. There are oppositions and contrasts involved and sometimes the links are so subtle that I have to rewatch the episode a few times to make certain that what I am writing about isn’t all in my head. It probably is in my head, but I at least feel the need to comb through it again just to reconfirm my biases. That wasn’t the case in Episode 12, and writing this one up feels a little dull. A lot of important things happened, of course. Noh declared out loud and clearly that he likes Phun and only Phun (at least as far as boys go), which was devastating for Earn to hear.

What should have been a triumphant moment was dampened a bit by the rest of the episode, which was all about best friends making each other upset and then apologizing. “I’m sorry” seemed to be a catch phrase and buying gifts to make an apology were the order of the day. I guess I’ll give the writers credit for sowing the seeds for these fights in previous episodes so the fact that best friends were suddenly at each other’s throats didn’t come as such a shock. But it was a “best friends” episode and we don’t watch the series for “best friends.” Everyone had the same problem, and that got a little tedious after a while. Plus we were missing three sets of best friends – Per and Mawin, Grace and Lieuw, and Pop and Shay- who would have served as good contrasts to these tiffs. I never thought I’d say it, but I missed Grace, at least to show us that sometimes its best to be rid of a best friend.

The rambles will be very short this episode – for what can I say? Best friends are good to have and it is a pity when you don’t trust them to hear your thoughts. And it’s not really a good idea to push them away, even when you are in love, because you are likely going to need them again when it doesn’t pan out. It’s good that most apologies were accepted, even though Yuri has more reasons to be angry with Aim than she is aware of. This is the first time we’ve seen Aim be friendly to Yuri. I had no idea that she considered Yuri her dear friend, because she often speaks with Yuri as if she is annoyed with her. It always seemed like “best friend” was another of many ideas that Yuri had in her head that wasn’t backed up by facts. But I guess those feelings of friendship are actually reciprocated.

Noh and Phun’s problems still set the theme for the show, 12 episodes in, as they always have, so we know that they have the same problems as the others. That’s always been comforting to think about as it situates the same sex pairing in the driver’s seat for a TV show– which is why I think this show is important. Everything seems to always refer back to them, even if it is the other pairings working out Phun and Noh’s problem. It shows them having the same problems as everyone else. The problem is right now, they boys need to have a more interesting set of problems. The fact that they get on each other’s nerves just like everyone else is their least endearing characteristic. More, better, problems soon, please!

Bad blow to Earn. I won’t dwell on it too much. If they follow the novel, there’s one more blow coming. Unfortunately, he always was a step behind Phun too often – and a few steps ahead of Noh as well. He diagnosed the problem. I think he is a romantic boy, and he tried so many of the things that should work, but in the end, he was little like Yuri – looking for bits and pieces of signs that Noh was responding. He was honest about how he felt, but wasn’t forthright, and that undid him. He should have given the gift in the morning when Noh was giving him the time to do so. Instead, he became caught up in another “love rite” (the most seamless product placement in the episode). In this case, he wanted Noh to feed him one more time. When a lover feeds you and you find that food especially delicious, it is a sign that there is a connection. But in this case, the junk food was probably good whether or not Noh fed it to him. It was a sign of nothing, and he shouldn’t have wasted his time on it.

When I was writing about Earn in the comments section to the novel at p’Kuda’s site, I referred to the deep “love magic” that Earn always tried to get working for him to win Noh’s heart. The serenade, the gift of a trinket to wear by his heart, the food rites. The series added the exchange of blood, which should have bound the two together. The love magic, those rituals, tropes and clichés which only ever actually work in fictional romances, was not working for him. Noh was never hungry around him. The magic works for Phun and Noh. Although we shall see that the magic has a rather short half-life. There are, after all, no magic pastries.

Up Next

Everyone’s secret is out, Ohm scares us by using the word “bro” way too often about his relationship with Mick, and strange confessions from Golf.

Fearless predictions

• Egad, PetexYuri. No. Please, No. (probability: 88%)
• A truly passionate kiss  between one of the same sex pairs kissing (probability: 5%)

Thinking about those two predictions has me down. Only two predictions this week.