Rang Mai Hua Jai Derm (2016)

First things first, I loved the idea and the execution of the body-swap trope in this lakorn (or not exactly a 'swap' as we know it). The main character Pat witnesses her long-time sweetheart and husband on top of another woman in a hotel room, storms off for her car, gets into an accident, and dies. Meanwhile, Nalan, a weak-hearted woman who's been living a simple and sheltered life hitherto receives photos and a note telling her that her husband is cheating on her. She catches him in the act and faints on the spot. Nalan and Pat are brought into the ICU at the same time. While Pat dies, Nalan has a chance to survive only if she gets an immediate heart transplant. Nalan's father who's also chief physician and owner of the hospital, seizes the opportunity and transfers, without consent, Pat's heart into Nalan in a desperate attempt to save his own daughter. What he doesn't know is that he ends up saving Pat who wakes up in Nalan's body several hours after the surgery.
A reborn woman, Pat now goes on a quest for revenge against her husband by plotting to make him fall in love with her and then dumping him to give him a taste of the emotional trauma he put her through. In the process, however, she finds herself falling for him anew and with a different body and a new set of eyes she starts to see the true colours and intentions of those around her.

The story itself sounds promising and for the most part, it is. A thing worth noting is that Pat's revenge is more of an emotional revenge. In her own way, she gets back at her husband, but not in the literal sense that we're so used to seeing in revenge dramas. As a person who suddenly has to face life trapped inside someone else's body, she is first perplexed and stays indecisive for a long time before taking action. When she finally puts her decisions into action it doesn't take long before she has a change of heart (no pun intended), but as viewers, we completely follow and understand why.

View's acting was for me deserving of respect. I must admit I had my doubts and didn't expect she'd be able to go from portraying the sweet and meek Nalan to portraying the same woman (her body) inhabited by the soul of the fierce and strong-headed Pat (played by Jeab in the initial episodes). However, she pulled off both characters with flying colours. Even her make-up and way of dressing changed accordingly. Her chemistry with Tui is also worth mentioning. Despite the age gap, View and Tui looked good together and delivered some realistic chemistry and an ample amount of (real) kiss/hug scenes.

Now for the things that didn't work for me: The side characters.
Lakorns are notorious for their cardboard-like characters but this one probably tops them all. With the exception of Pat, her husband Win and her gay best friend Noojoon, all the characters sucked the soul out of me (again, no pun intended). Characters are often most cardboard-like when they exist only for some superficial purpose: making the protagonist look good or the villain look bad. The side characters in this lakorn (and even the villains) were poorly written, hard to take seriously and most of the time served no other purpose than to blatantly annoy the crap of out the viewer. You can't help but wonder why they'd even waste filming time and budget to bring such useless characters to live.

Overall, an enjoyable lakorn that could have been written more tightly and executed better had the characters been more layered and believable. Otherwise, if this still sounds like your cup of tea, I say go for it. A good thing is, the episodes aren't longer than 56 min each, making it a fairly easy watch.

Happy watching!

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This drama could have easily been a 9/9.5 drama. Easily. The plot's general concept was very alluring, something that grabbed my attention and kept it there enough to make me commit 17.3 hours of my life to this drama. For the most parts, I'll say that I enjoyed this drama very much. It's not a bad drama, definitely, and I'll recommend this to everyone! But it definitely has some faults that I could not overlook. I'll list the positives and negatives down below for easier reading.


>> SOME POINTS THAT I DID NOT LIKE:
1. The second female lead is obnoxiously irritating. One thing I really hate is when people do not know their social status. She was a snake that bit the same owner who took her in as her secretary and gave her a good life just because of her own insane jealousy and delusion that she could even compare to Pat. A good load of great things that gave her in the end. *rolls eyes*

2. I do not want to say that Pat/Lan (the female lead) was very dismissive of the body that she has acquired and the responsibilities and reality that comes with it. But she was.

Firstly, after she comes 'back to life' in Lan's body, she completely disregards that the body she is in has a family of her own and is actually married. She completely decides to give no face to Lan's father and refuses to live as Lan at first, which I felt was very sad for the actual Lan who was now dead.

Secondly, Pat/Lan totally ignored the fact that she had a husband, which could really bring up a lot of problems in the future. Of course, Pat/Lan did not like her 'husband' at all. Therefore, I do not see why a divorce was not something she seeked first and foremost after finding out that she's married in this new body.

Finally, When Pat/Lan realised how evil and high-reaching Kaew is, she still endured her 'feces' and let her pull and push her around until the almost end. A lot of things, I believe, would have been better if she had just revealed the truth about Kaew to Win (Especially since she had proof).

>> SOME GOOD POINTS:
1. This drama was not draggy. It was conscious in that it knew where it was going and went there swiftly.

2. Kawin's loyalty is precious. Even though he was a little slow in the beginning, he was still firm.

3. Noojoon is a treat to my heart. He really was a great best friend and comic relief.

4. I appreciated the variety and complexity of the characters in this drama. You could see that there are good people, and bad people, and good people that do bad things intentionally or unintentionally and repent. It was more close to real life. I liked that.

5. The plot is good for most parts. Because it's not draggy, not a lot of 'arguments' carry on for a lot of episodes unnecessarily. I liked that.

6. The bad guys really got their karma back.

>> CONCLUSION:
After watching the drama and sleeping on it, I really like this drama despite its shortcomings. It made me laugh and smile and cry and get really pissed off. But I liked it a lot, still.

8/10.

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