Dislikes Remakes.

Dislikes remakes. ✔️

Wonders why people don't just watch the original. ✔️

Will absolutely watch GMMTV's Cherry Magic. Wishes they could wait and binge all episodes at once. Will definitely not be able to wait and is doomed to tune in week after week until the finale. ✔️

🤷🏾‍♀️

—CHERRY MAGIC 🍒 30 ยังซิง 🪄 Official Pilot

I completely forgot about the sister!

I'm not sure if she was the oldest, but she should be older than Jaab. Maybe she is interested in taking over ...

We've always been confused about the Step by Step timeline but this episode really took the cake for me hsdlskfsfj apologies for the nitpicking but it really is because I saw SO much potential in it and I love the characters and the acting so much🥺

We FINALLY got an official explicit "2 years later", couldn't you add a few more of these? 😭

So in the first episode or so Pat mentions he's 25, then a couple of episodes ago he had his bday which I assumed was his 26th. Then this episode, 2 years later he celebrated his birthday (I assumed 28th) and on what I thought was a few days later he told Jeng's mom he's gonna "turn 26 this October" which is an odd thing to say right after your (28) birthday ksjfsfsd

The morning after the embarrassing singing Pat doesn't remember their chat in the kitchen? but they're being so normal around each other? Then how much time passes in the relationship it's so unclear!! We get both their bdays ig?

Did they have them break up just so we'll get another honeymoon phase? Because really, they could have just let them stay happy instead of doing that without showing us anything changed that would allow this relationship to work this time around,.,

The back and forth in Pat and Jeng 's relationship was jarring af but ahh well they WERE cute at the end and I did like their playfulness..

Jeng's dad's evil refusal to let him quit... yeah let's ignore that and not mention it ever again after that meaningful trash throwing : )

OH and with all the discussions about Jeng being the eldest and expectations.. are we all just ignoring their older sister??? There was a whole episode about how sweet Jeng is with his niece but I guess she stopped existing?

Put being pat's in ex who? let's involve him in all the discussions about his relationship with jeng.

Jen and Jaab???? I don't even have anything to say, except maybe I'm kinda glad we didn't get a whole arc of them this episode bc idc 😬

Ae and Chot- iconic as ever I love them, them eating the nuggets is something that can be so personal.

Pat and Jeng's outfits this episode? also iconic.

Can anyone confirm that episode 12 is over one hour forty minutes???

Ready to see Tai and Lomfon unfuck it!

La Pluie and the Aftermath 

There’s something so satisfying about a story that pays off every beat it has set up, isn’t there? I am going to have comparably less to say about this episode than the last one, and it’s not because it’s any less masterful. It’s because I already said it last week, because this show’s writing is so damn consistent that after watching that episode I knew exactly what needed to happen to continue the characters’ emotional arcs. 

Shoutout to @wen-kexing-apologist, @neuroticbookworm, @bengiyo, and @fadelikeclouds, all of whom wrote relevant essays I’ve linked to here. 

So in this episode, we continue the arcs for our core four as expected:

Tien is sad, delivering truths Tai needs, and generally continuing to be an emotional rock even as he nurses his own broken heart

Lomfon has realized that he kissed the wrong brother, and is beginning to clean up his mess with a much needed apology to Tai

Patts is going through it (and lord does Pee continue to kill it in this final arc) and still upset with Tai, but because he’s Patts he still tries to compromise and reach out one more time (which the show smartly blocks with a well-timed misunderstanding) before he decides to pack up and try a change of scenery to nurse his broken heart

Tai stubbornly continues to passively wait for Patts to be the one to make amends, forgives Lomfon easily (because that boy never mattered to him enough to bother holding a grudge), and then goes and pitches a fit at his mother’s wedding because he continues to be entirely self-absorbed 

The grace Tai received from his family is perhaps more than he deserved given his extremely childish behavior in the context of those scenes, but we know how much he needed to finally understand what happened with his parents so that he could begin to heal and get his shit together about Patts. I really loved the direction the show took with this. As it usually does (episode 10's big explosion excepted), the show steered away from high drama and revealed that their breakup was entirely mundane - they realized their romantic relationship wasn’t working, and decided to split up even though they still love each other.

@sliceduplife and @neuroticbookworm pointed out to me that this episode is the first time we actually learn Tai’s parents names - Yadfah and Warun - and I think it’s because this is the first time we are seeing them as actual people instead of stand-ins for Tai’s hang-ups. And as we learned, contra to Tai's long held belief, it was Tai’s dad who ultimately decided to release them from this obligatory soulmate marriage, giving them the freedom they needed to live happier lives while keeping their platonic connection intact and sticking together through the rain. 

That’s fucking beautiful, and you could see how moved and shaken Tai was as he realized he’d gotten it all wrong. And his dad did us one better by making the point explicit: Tai done fucked up by dumping Patts, and needed a reminder that when you find a good love, you have to take care of it.

Tai needed to hear that so desperately. He did so much damage to his relationships, and for no damn good reason. Tien already made sure he knew that it was his lying that caused all the drama, and now he can see from the way his parents treat each other that his approach to his relationship with Patts has been wrong-headed from the start. And so we head into the finale where we’ll get to see him finally be the one to reach out to Patts, to use his words, and to make amends for the things he got wrong.

I want to end by just mentioning how incredible it is that this show managed to wind up to such a high drama emotional climax and then pivot immediately to such a quiet, calm release of tension while keeping everything emotionally consistent. This is only possible when the writing, acting, directing, and editing all come together perfectly. I have every confidence that La Pluie will stick the landing.

"Something about dressing a person up feels more intimate than dressing them down."

The hardest part, for me, of the Step By Step finale was the emptiness. None of it felt like they had earned back their ending or their happiness or solved their interpersonal issues or the problems that lead to their break up in the first place.

Pat meets Jeng two years later after his own success and still instantly assumes he's a master manipulator despite two years of silence and nothing, apparently. It makes him feel less mature than he has in every other episode, honestly.

And Jeng is just... Jeng. He doesn't change and then he just quits and nothing happens? Nothing? Then why make it seem like a big deal? Why make it this huge thing if it's just going to be so little but even more... why is he approaching Pat at all after two years of nothing? Now, I am down for him still being in love but this feels like a 'stay away from him' kind of situation just all over and in general.

And then having Put, apparently, be Pat's best friend again after the fight they had and Ae and Chot encouraging him to be the one to to give Pat romantic advice?! Again. The two year time skip did them such a disservice. Because I would have liked to see that friendship rebuilt, to see Put finally mature enough to actually talk to Pat about his issues. But nope!

Two years is a long time but it feels like no one grew or changed or even started to move on in that period. Where is Pat's confidence? He's been leading a company with Chot and won multiple awards! Where is Jeng's change? We barely see him at all and there's nothing there that indicates any change in understanding since the last moment we saw him supposedly two years ago.

We got nothing with Jaab and Jane so I can't even begin to talk about them except to ask when did they get back in contact, why and what does it mean? Like... what happened?

I frankly think Chot had the most fulfilling storyline in the entire show, in which he was about to come out with his husband and then run a successful business and that's more than I can say for just about any one else because the whole thing felt very much complete.

I still enjoyed the show... or at least most of it... but I'm one of the people where the honeymoon stuff was cute but empty and I did not care half as much as I should have if I'd felt like they could actually make this work and weren't just gonna fall apart again.