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 13 Summary

Phun texts Noh in the morning. They exchange notes about their morning routines and are so wrapped up in texting that they almost bump into each other when they arrive at Friday College.

Noh and Ohm play soccer and having lost, go to the bleachers for some refreshments. Yuri phones Noh and he doesn’t answer. She then phones Ohm who makes Noh speak with Yuri. Yuri invites Noh out after school and he accepts. Phun shows up and calls Noh “Babe” which Noh doesn’t like. Ohm mocks them a little and leaves with two underclassmen so that the boys can be alone on the bleachers. Phun and Noh discuss what terms of endearment Phun can use for Noh. Phun asks Noh if he’s free that evening. Noh says that he has plans and jokes that Phun will need to schedule with him if he wants to see him. Phun says that he will make an appointment that will last as long as Noh lives and into the next life. Noh jokes that he’d prefer that Phun let him rest in the next life.

After school, Yuri and Noh eat a meal together at the A&W. Yuri makes a mess and Noh reaches over with a napkin to clean her lips. She complains that he needs to be gentler as he is wiping like he would scratch a lottery ticket. Nong Pang and Phun are in the mall and happen upon this scene. Pang is upset that Noh looks to be on a date and takes Phun into the A&W to confront the couple. Phun is a little upset that Noh is on a date and didn’t tell him that Yuri was the reason he was busy. After making a speech about running around behind one’s lover’s back, he leaves. Noh and Phun are both depressed and worried. Pang tells Phun that even though she doesn’t know exactly what is going on between the two boys, Phun and Noh’s reaction tells her that they mean something to one another and goads Phun into finding Noh. Phun runs around the mall looking for Noh but can’t find him.

After he’s finished shopping with Yuri, Noh returns home to find that band club members and 11^th grade classmates have taken over his house for a party he didn’t know about. P’Im let Ohm know that Noh’s parents were out of town and everyone is preparing food. The hot pot isn’t ready yet as everyone expected Noh to be home late from his date with Yuri and they begin to tease him about not being in the mood. Film chimes in that Ohm shouldn’t be teasing anyone and begins to tell everyone about Ohm’s “crush” on Mick. Ohm denies that the boys are anything more than “brothers.” When Noh joins in, the conversation shifts back to Noh and Phun, so Noh excuses himself to put beer away in the kitchen to avoid talking.

In the kitchen, Noh finishes the beer duties and then decides to pass more time slicing limes. He squirts juice into his eyes and is rubbing them as Phun appears in the kitchen.

Per arrives home and lays in bed thinking about Mawin and his father. He throws a few pebbles at Win’s window but Win isn’t home. Concerned, Per goes to the park and finds Win on a bench crying. He asks Win if his father beat him again, and Win responds that he had but that he deserved that punishment this time. Win wants to know if Per meant what he said when he promised Win’s father that he wouldn’t see Per any longer. Per responds that since his father broke his part of the promise, Per will break his.

At the Convent, the teacher has a copy of “Girly Pink” magazine with Jeed on the cover. She tells Jeed that she may be expelled for ruining her reputation and that of the school. She wants to speak with Jeed’s parents. Jeed asks for permission to tell her parents herself. In the cafeteria, the convent girls are viewing snapshots of the revealing pictures and decide that if she shows that much cleavage, she’s probably having sex already. Grace lets Jeed know that she has no place in the school and is clearly enjoying this development. Aim is worried about what may happen to her if those online videos ever hit the convent.

Jeed tries calling Bee to see if he’ll play her father. Insulted that Jeed wants her to play a man, Bee refuses and declares that she isn’t responsible for any of the trouble. Jeed tries calling Neung, but he isn’t answering. Jeed calls her father and gets in an argument with him, which Grace and the convent busy bodies can overhear.  Grace films a video to go online letting everyone know how “sorry” she is for Jeed, revealing Jeed’s father’s money and business problems.

Rambles

Pretty much immediately after the “Girly Pink” lecture started, I wanted to jump into my iPad and start shouting at that $&$#&! Convent teacher who has a way of giving lectures to her students that make her students feel worse than they ought to. Heck, I’d demand to see the headmaster and give him or her a piece of my mind, too. That school’s reputation, which apparently relies on the chastity of its students and perceptions their family wealth to maintain itself, might be improved immensely if they were to actually hire more than one teacher and pretend that they were preparing their charges for successful careers. I don’t think I’d be very effective, however, and nothing says “needs to take medication” more than angry lectures delivered by a man you’ve never met before who is butting in where he doesn’t belong. Maybe I’d be better off sending them a written proposal for a whitepaper on reputation management the conclusion to which would be “don’t dwell on the things whose impact will soon be forgotten.” Unfortunately, reputation doesn’t work that way as a mechanism of social control. It must be assumed to be permanently at risk or the whole social structure starts to collapse.

The themes of episode 13 were promises and reputation, and it is in these two areas where I feel the need to step back from the rambles a bit as I’m heading into territory that is difficult to translate into my own culture and experience of it. I mean, reputation and status are of course very important, but they function very differently here and aren’t ever assumed to be irreparably harmed except by the most notorious of scandals or legal convictions, and higher on the social pyramid you are, the less likely even those legal convictions will follow you around long. At least that’s what we’re taught about ourselves. (Not that it actually works out that way, but that is a different story).

We do actually value credibility more than reputation and like to think that we can just reinvent ourselves someplace else if push comes to shove. Not that we can, but we think we can, and are taught that we can, and that kind of optimism, plus a seemingly infinite capacity for self-forgiveness keeps us chugging along against any kind of moral outrage we might encounter. (We have a seemingly infinite capacity for moral outrage, too! We get the best of both worlds).  We also tend to be taught that “guilt by association” is wrong and believe that anything that goes wrong with our own favored groups is the result of a “few bad apples”. (“Out groups” are fundamentally flawed and only have bad apples in them. We aren’t really all that generous when it comes to distributing our belief in where a few bad apples can be found).

That’s all a long winded way of saying, I think I can kind of empathize with Jeed at the moment, but there are limits to my comprehension, since I tend to follow my own culture in believing everything will get better if people would just “take a chill pill.”  She has been completely socially destroyed through her own actions, (although someone snitched), the callous selfishness of Bee and her own father, as well as social conventions that tie her reputation to that of everyone she knows. I am not certain where the writers go from here. Has she hit bottom yet or is there more? If she has hit bottom, what next? I mean, the normal cures for reputation damage are time, money, power, beauty and talent. We don’t have much time and I don’t think leveraging her beauty is going to solve the problem. She’s been blocked from using her dancing. Power and money aren’t readily handy. So does she claw her way back? Or use the advantages of being a social pariah to drag down everyone else. Outcasts may be miserable, but they can be remarkably dangerous, too. The whole “what the hell, I’ve got nothing to lose, so I might as well go ahead and ______” line of action is available to her. As is the “My fate is irrevocably sealed” line, in which case her story is effectively over. You either feel sorry for her or you don’t, but her development is done if she stays where she is.

Let’s see if that encounter with Neung in the car a few episodes ago comes back to haunt her more.

Enough about Jeed, though. I understand that very few of my readers actually care about that story. But she is now the standard bearer of the reputation theme which is weaving its way through the Love Sick universe, as discussions of who is doing what with whom are making their way through the rumor mill at Friday College, which is making Ohm and Noh a little defensive at the party. Since the Friday College drunken party was only getting started, we’ll have to wait for the next episode to see how that plays out.

And reputation is also the reason why Per and Win showed up again this episode. Reputation is the excuse Win’s father gave for those beatings. Per still doesn’t know why he was asked to stay away from Win and what hanging out with Win will do to his reputation when that truth comes out. I haven’t watched ahead, but it is very likely that defending his friend or maintaining his reputation is going to be his conflict. At least I hope it is. Inserting “jealously” and romantic love into that relationship at this stage still feels like a bit of a stretch.  I know people want Per and Win together romantically, but gosh, Win now feels that he deserves his beatings and that is the problem I want him to resolve. I don’t know if a romantic love will solve that. Win’s father is doing everything to drive Win away, and by accepting that he deserves it, Win is trying to hold on. Win is very different from a few episodes back when he said he didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t think a romance with Per, even if it offers an emotional escape from his unhappy home life, is going to heal him right now.

As for promises, well, they have a lot to do with reputation and social expectations in this episode. The obvious one was Per’s promise to Win, which he made without full knowledge of what was going on. But also the implicit promise that Phun thought Noh made last episode when he admitted that he liked Phun. Since Noh has slept with Phun and now said that he likes him (a little out of the normal sequence of events, but both items are now checked off), Phun is expecting a much stronger commitment than Noh is ready to give at this point. He’s already jumping to those “be mine until death” statements that got him into trouble with Aim. His reaction to finding Noh and Yuri on a date is a bit too precious, and yeah, hypocritical (although typically male).  He’s really no different from Yuri, rushing Noh to the wedding magazine section of the bookstore on their first date.

If I were Noh, I’d just exit this whole dating game as quickly as possible and go back to studying. It really is a loser’s game. It’s as if in order to keep everyone happy and keep their reputations intact, no one should ever agree to go out on a date, since the first hint that you like someone, someone presumes that a lifetime commitment is right around the corner, if that promise hasn’t already been made. Once you start dating, you can’t stop until the logical conclusion, lest someone think you’re a playboy who doesn’t care about the harm you’re causing to your partner’s reputation by dumping her. By wiping away those crumbs from Yuri’s mouth, he gave off the impression that they were closer than they really were, which Phun jumped on right away. My guess is that after interlocking hands, crump wiping is about as much PDA as is socially tolerable in this setting without triggering someone from the Convent jumping in to accuse Yuri of being easy and some father waving his arms and asking Noh, “Are you prepared to accept your responsibility?!.” How someone is supposed to figure out whether or not they like someone under that kind of pressure is beyond me.

Goodness, Phun. Take a chill pill. Try getting to know Noh a little first.

Up Next

Truth or dare with the dare option removed, a cell phone moves the story along, we start a drinking game for every product placement, and there is a sale on wheels – buy two, get a third for free.

Fearless Predictions

• Bee will be mysteriously found at the bottom of a lake, stuffed with wholesale cosmetics (probaility: 89%)
• Jeed is carrying Neung’s baby, since of course it will get worse for her(probability: 44%)
• Those of you who were calling for Jeed’s head on a platter earlier this season are now feeling a little guilty (probability: 13%)