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 19 Summary

It’s Christmas Day! And everyone is at Friday College and the Convent for a Christmas carnival. It must be school day, even though both the Convent and College are run by Christian religious orders. It is nice that at least they allow the kids to have a day of fun by themselves.

Mick wraps a present for Ohm, but spends the day feeling too shy to give it to him and waits in vain for an opportunity for some time alone with him. He joins a group of boys, including Ohm, Film and Poom who are visiting all of the stalls at the fair. They drop by a booth selling phone and SIM cards staffed by an attractive saleslady. The boys try to score her number. Ohm tries to impress her by telling her that he’s the president of the Music Club, but Film lets her know that he’s just a guy who pushes a broom cleaning up after everyone. Film declares that he is the President of the Marching Band. While everyone is trying to impress, Win leaves to go put a card with a Christmas wish on the College tree. He wants to place his wish high up on the tree, but falls from the step ladder. Mr. Arm, the gym teacher last seen punishing Earn and Pete for unauthorized sword fighting, is there to catch Mick. The two make eye contact before Mick scurries off, embarrassed. Mr. Arm reads Mick’s secret Christmas wish: “To be braver.” Later, Mick is waiting for Ohm to give him his gift, but is forestalled by James, who gives Ohm a noise reduction headset.

Mick leaves the college to head home, only to find that Mr. Arm is at his house having tea with his mother. Mr. Arm is the son of an old family friend. He stayed with Mick’s family when Mick was seven and used to play with Mick, but Mick doesn’t remember. Mr. Arm tells Mick’s mom about how he had met Mick earlier in the day. She invites him to stay to help Mick with his homework. Mick resists his mother’s suggestion that they study up in his room. He says his room is too messy, which makes Mr. Arm more curious about seeing the room. While Mick is eventually happy that Mr. Arm helps him with his math and listens to his advice about judging people by their looks, some of us in the audience are a little creeped out by what appears to be a teacher trying to flirt a little with a student.

Noh and Phun meet up at the fair. Phun has been busy taking care of security of the event. He has just hauled in a bunch of junior high students to the administration building for fighting. Noh jokes that he should put the Angels gang on his security detail as they would chase all the gangs away. Phun threatens to tell the Angels that Noh was making jokes about them so that they’ll force him into their dunk tank. Later, the Angels are in need of more victims for their game, and try to nab Phun, who hands over Noh to their clutches instead. The Angels also collect Earn. They excuse him from Pete by joking that they are borrowing Pete’s husband.  A boy (whose face we don’t actually see so your guess is as good as mine who he is) asks if there is anything going on between Earn and Pete. Pete says, it’s not true that Earn is Pete’s husband – Pete is the husband, not Earn. Then he tells the shocked mystery boy that he’s only joking.

At the dunk tanks, Khom and Neung are in adjoining tanks. When they are finished, Noh and Earn are loaded in. Earn exchanges glances with Noh. Phun notices and throws the ball, hits the target and dunks Earn. Ohm arrives and despite Noh’s pleas, sends him to a watery doom. Later, Noh and Phun are together in a locker room while Noh’s shirt dries out. Noh complains that the water was cold and the shirt will take a long time to dry. He’s also uncomfortable in his wet underwear. Phun offers to change underwear with him, which Noh refuses. Phun jokes that he didn’t mean exchange underwear – he was just offering to take Noh’s off. They grapple each other while Phun tries to remove Noh’s shorts. They stumble to the ground like they did so many episodes ago. Noh thanks Phun for breaking his fall and asks why he did that. Phun admits that he did it to keep Noh from hurting himself, unlike the last time when Phun denied helping Noh when Noh fell on him while washing Noh’s scooter. Phun asks Noh if he is thinking dirty thoughts. Even though Noh is looking into Phun’s eyes, he denies thinking about anything. Since that is the case, Phun asks him to get off him.

At the convent, Jeed is looking to avenge herself on Christmas Day. She enters the chemistry lab and removes chloroform or ether or something. While she walks down the Convent hallways, looking tough and chewing gum, the snooty girls state that she is wearing too much makeup for a Christmas fair and looks like a…but Jeed confronts them before they can call her a slut. First up, is Grace, who is in a bathroom applying copious amounts of makeup and looks like a…girl who is wearing too much makeup and is about to be a victim. As she prepares to leave, Jeed jumps out from the toilet stall and drags Grace inside where she knocks her out. While sedated, Jeed cuts off clumps of Grace’s hair, then leaves after Grace wakes up and starts screaming in horror.

Next, Jeed calls forth Lok and her gang to make them own up to their attack on Grace. She has them sit on a bench while she explains that she knows who is to blame. The girls find that Jeed has applied glue to the bench where they are seated so they can’t get up. She demands that the trio apologize on camera, but when they don’t sound sincere in their apologies, she cuts off locks of her hair and makes them apologize again. They heckle Jeed for not having any friends. Jeed watches the video on the Convent Wars web site of Grace talking about how much she feels sorry for Jeed. Then Jeed watches a video of Yuri who says that what is going on with Jeed’s family is no one’s business and that it’s not Jeed’s fault that there are hard times at home. Jeed is convinced that Yuri feels false pity for her She then leaves, telling the girls that they can remove their skirts if they want to be free.  Aim has overheard the whole scene.

Later, Noh, Yuri, Nan, Mo and others (a list so long, not even Yuri knows all their names) are ice skating. Noh is falling all over the place and Yuri offers to give him lessons in exchange for a favor. They play around in the rink. Aim is watching from the rink viewing area when Jeed shows up. Aim has invited Jeed skating, but starts to talk about how Yuri has been too busy to Noh to care about her friends. Jeed remembers that Yuri promised to invite her out, and is jealous that so many of Yuri’s friends are skating and she wasn’t invited. After the skate, Yuri and Noh leave together. Yuri needs to use the bathroom. Jeed corners her in the bathroom and begins to accuse her of showing false pity. Yuri is trying to explain herself. She had heard that Jeed couldn’t afford to go out and had other things to do at home…which makes Jeed angrier. Yuri excuses herself to meet Noh and tells Jeed that they’ll have to talk about this later.

Outside the bathroom, Noh is waiting for Yuri when Aim approaches. She wants to know if Phun is with Noh. She tells him that she isn’t over him so easily since they went out a long time and is upset that Phun wouldn’t tell her who he’s been cheating on her with. She is reminded of how she saw the boys hugging in the lobby of Golf’s building after Aim and Phun broke up. Noh remembers their conversations and the attempted seduction at Hua Hin. I don’t think she knows yet that Noh is the “other woman.” She may be suspicious, but I think she only blames Noh for snitching and/or helping Phun cheat. Yuri finds Aim and Noh outside the bathroom and asks her if she’s completed her errand. She says that she has. As Noh and Yuri leave, Jeed meets Aim and they discuss how Noh means everything to Yuri and how she would be devastated to lose him. Jeed comes across Noh and Yuri having a snack and stares at them, contemplating her next move.

The episode ends with a flashback from earlier in the day. Yuri had invited Aim and intended to invite Jeed to the skating trip. Aim lied and said that she had errands to run and made up a story about Jeed’s plans so that Yuri wouldn’t invite her. She’s trying to manipulate the vengeful Jeed into destroying Yuri’s relationship with Noh.

Rambles

Jeeeeeeeed!!!! Aimmmmmm!!! Grace!!!! Merry Christmas, everyone! The spirit of the season seems lost on the inmates at the Convent in this episode, as the cycle of vengeance and punishment that started with Jeed and Grace has been extended to Aim and Lok and threatens to ensnare Yuri, who is probably the character least able to cope in the battle royale. Once again, we have a reminder Of the contrast between the schools: the boys experience their teenage years and loss of innocence that comes with adolescence as a time of new love and learning about sexuality. The girls – well, they just are trying to ruin their friendships. Hopefully some adult will step forward to put an end to the dealings at the Convent. I’m not sure how they could avoid the situation, since I can’t imagine how Jeed could get away with assaulting and vandalizing Grace. Oh wait. It’s the Convent, where teachers are more likely to guide their students in the proper uses of knock-out-drugs than to guide them down a moral and spiritually harmonious pathway in life. I never went to Catholic School, but I always thought nuns were supposed to be a bit strict and concerned with their students’ total well-being than your average prison guards are with their wards. Who knew? Whatever. The environment at the Convent has turned very toxic and somebody is to blame. We might as well blame the teachers.

The theme episode 19, at least at the Convent, was “Vengance!” Yes, I know, Phun got a bit of revenge against Earn at the dunk tank, as did Ohm, too. But really, the Friday College Christmas was all about love, with Phun hanging out with Noh in the locker room, hoping that Noh would let even more things hang out than Noh was ready for. And of course we had Mick pursuing his dreams of being with Ohm, only to find himself in Mr. Arm’s arms instead. The love stories were all tied together with acts of falling and dunking, Heck, I think Noh fell down a half dozen times this episode.

But Mick fell into the wrong arms! He really did have a very bad day, and for that, I guess we need to blame Ohm, who seems to have forgotten that maybe he likes Mick. Mick needed some time alone to give his gift privately, but he never got that time. He is correct. He needs to be braver, but Ohm does need to help him out a little. I mean, he’s holding Poom’s hand when Mick is standing right behind him, tries to be a big man to impress a woman he has no shot at winning, then goes off to dunk Noh when he should be trying to win a prize for poor Mick. I don’t think that’s the Christmas Day Mick had in mind.

Whether Mr. Arm is something OhmMick shippers need to worry about is a bit up in the air at the moment. I hope it isn’t because regardless of the actual ages of the actors involved, there isn’t much positive one can say about a student-teacher relationship. Parents don’t send their children to school to find dates among the staff (well, maybe Jeed’s father would, if they came from families with solid business ties), so there isn’t much worth supporting, especially if it turns out Mr. Arm has been carrying the torch for Mick since Mick was seven when they spent a summer together. Ughhh. That’s kind of squicky. Even though this series is based on a yaoi, a genre that often produces love stories in which the underlying circumstances of the relationship dull my romantic senses when the couple finally gets together, I don’t think the series needs a storyline like that. I hope that Mr. Arm just turns out to be a harmless friend, who read Mick’s Christmas wish and wants to help him, and not some creep who followed Mick around the Christmas Fair, or took a job at Friday College hoping to meet Mick again. Ohm needs to step up his game or Mick might just follow someone else. Whatever happened to Ben? I wouldn’t mind if it were Ben.

Enough about Mick. Time to get down and dirty. Finally the two main Convent story threads that started when Mo came to school with a hickey and Grace insulted Jeed at Aim’s birthday party have woven themselves together and will be resolved through Jeed’s deep animosity for everyone around her. Aim is manipulating Jeed to break up Noh and Yuri. If anyone at the Convent is still standing when Jeed is through, I’ll be surprised, but who knows? She may finally release enough ash and lava during this eruption that she’ll go back to being the nice girl we met in the opening episode and will be suitable for Khom to date again. Volcanoes are dangerous though, so I hope Khom stays away until things cool down. Sadly, propitiating active volcanoes sometimes requires virgin sacrifices…which is why poor Yuri may be doomed.

You see, Anthropologists tell us that in archaic times, when the social order started to crumble, it was a common practice to conduct elaborate rituals to place social guilt on a scapegoat and then either run that goat out of town or off a cliff to help restore order. The Convent is a mess right now and it looks like all of the attempts to stop the collapse have led nowhere. Grace tried to blame it on Jeed, someone new who “doesn’t belong” – kind of xenophobia and classism rolled into one. The only thing that did was unleash the wrath of Jeed, which certainly hasn’t made things any better. Blaming strangers never works out as intended. Grace started the school down this path long ago with her own vulgar behavior, so of course her preferred solution wouldn’t work. The guilty aren’t allowed to select the goat if the ritual is going to work. They need a different scapegoat. One technically blameless for the troubles, and it looks like Yuri will serve that purpose.

They should, of course, sacrifice Grace, Jeed and Aim and their troubles would probably go away. Or blame Mo. A lot of times in revenge stories, the triggering event seems so minor at the time, almost forgotten, an inadvertent misstep. It’s really not that different at the school, so if they’re searching for a scapegoat, Mo is as good as any. For she came to school with a hickey, which led Yuri to question whether Noh was straight, which caused her to go on a mission to find out for herself, which made her see all the love-birds at Friday College, which convinced her that all that same sex affection was just normal and that Noh was straight, which led her to invite Noh along to Hua Hin to take their relationship to the next level, which in the name of protecting her honor allowed Noh and Phun spend more intimate time with each other despite their desire to remain separated, which led to them getting back together, but also led Aim to discover that Noh knew about her video, which is why Aim now thinks that Noh was involved with her breakup and wants revenge.  I think Aim has it in for Yuri as well as Noh. She probably blames Yuri for bringing Noh into their circle, which is why she’s directed the ire at the couple. I don’t really think that’s fair.

If Aim wants to blame somebody, blame Moan for his overzealous kissing and Mo for not applying foundation to cover up her hickey. That’s what started us down this path, 14 episodes ago. But I guess that’s always been problem of scapegoating; it often fails to identify the true cause of the problem.

Up Next

Boys! Boys! Boys! At the Convent! And a bit of sneaky sexy time. And we take a long break where we hope we can catch up to the broadcast episodes of Love Sick without being drawn into School.

Fearless Predictions

• Jeed will actually turn out to be wealthier than her classmates. Her father is just very stingy and those “water filters” are actually industrial sized filtration systems that he operates as the owner of the largest water utility in Asia (Probability: 25%)
• Pete wasn’t “just kidding” (probability 2%)
• Pete was “just kidding” (probability 79%)
• Pete was kidding but there is some truth to what he said so the “Will they or won’t they” Pete/Earn marketing ploy can continue. We will neither confirm nor deny said joke. Define “kidding.” (probability: 19%)
• Arm is a very, very, naughty teacher (your guess is as good as mine)