Pluto EP 3

We start with a flashback where Ai-oon apparently wanted to enter a writing competition of some kind, but feels discouraged once she hears her grandmother praising Ob-oom and bad-mothing her to a customer. She burns her writing then get talked to by a neighbour’s boy, who suggest to brown out the noise in her life – by riding a motorbike. They drive together at night on the streets of Bangkok and are joined by Pang and her friend. The police detects them, but they evade capture. So that where Ai-oon’s love for motorcycling come from. We move back to the end of last week, where Ai-oon and May fell onto the bed while evading a cockroach. Ai-oon’s inner monologue mentions how she could hear her own heartbeat, just like while motorcycling, then continues by scolding Ob-oom for ever trying to leave May. Then, they get attacked by the cockroach again. May apologizes not only for the commotion, but also for stopping Ai-oon what she was about to do. May explains her other senses got sharper after becoming blind, and she could hear and feel that Ai-Oon was breathing hard, swallowing and her heart beating very fast. She gives her permission to do whatever she wants. We flashback to Pang apologizing for putting May in danger in episode 2. Ai-oon says it was just misunderstanding, but Pang cautions her not to pay with May’s feelings. Ai-oon claims she doesn’t want to keep lying to her. In May’s bedroom she prepares to come clean – but May pleads with her not to leave her again, saying she happy whenever she’s with her – so she’ll make her happy, too. May is coming on to Ai-oon, who quickly claims to be hungry. May will then cook for her preparing an omelette all by herself, and despite several offers by Ai-oon to help, she manages to do almost everything herself. Ai-oon tastes it and is delighted; May teases that she should eat the omelette, then eat her, for she is even tastier. Before this conversation can go anywhere even more compromising, Ai-Onn gets a phone call from her grandma: The situation with Ob-oom has worsened. She excuses herself to May, claiming her grandma got sick, and she needs to leave. May lets her leave, but not before making Ai-oon promise to come back tomorrow if her grandma in better by then. We switch back to Phim, apparently returning from work that texting Pang, when she notices Jan having some trouble with her front door. Together, they manage to open the door, but with Jan falling onto the floor – almost, because Phim catches here. Jan is startled, and offers her a reading (because she is a fortune-teller) – but Phim doesn’t like tarot readings, so she leaves. (Does the show want to initiate a love triangle between Jan, Pang and Phim?) Ai-oon has arrived at the hospital, but Ob-oom’s condition has stabilized again after being treated with antibiotics. As soon as grandma hears that she practically ignores Ai-oon and thanks Buddha for protecting her beloved grandchild, and essentially send her other grandchild home. May proceed to the hospital garage and eats some of the dinner that May packed for, then breaks down crying, while we get another quick flashback to another time when Ai-oon was a distant second to Ob-oom in grandma’s preference. Back at home, May calls Ai-oon in a video call – because she wanted to be seen by Ai-oon. She quickly asks about grandma, then prompts Ai-oon to finish her dinner – now, while May can hear her eating it. Ai-oon complies and keeps the phone running (by May’s request) as she’s doing the dishes – and later when she’s showering. May says she wishes to be able to see now more that ever, making Ai-oon blush. The next day, Ai-oon visits grandma at the hospital, who hasn’t eaten. Ai-oon wants to get her to eat something, but she goes on and on about Ob-oom, who was always the good girl and does not deserve what has happened to her. Ai-oon the mentions again that it stood instead have happened to a bad girl like herself, to which grandma just replies “This isn’t the time for sarcasm. If you’re like this, just leave”. (Are all grandmas in Chao Planoy novels this toxic?) We flash back to the video call where May calls Ai-oon the only one she has when there’s no one else left. Ai-oon feels that May seems stiff. For example, her home Is perfectly furnished and luxurious, but feels empty and devoid of emotion, like an ice cave. May does not respond directly to this, but say she should be mad but cannot when hearing Ai-oon’s voice warms her heart. Ai-oon admits she feels the same. Then, grandma sits down by her side and starts to eat the lunch Ai-oon made for her, saying that it’s good, and wondering when she learned to cook. Ai-oon says she essentially just copied what something else (May) was doing. Then, the grandma starts to cry and tells Ai-oon not to say it again. What? That is should have been Ai-oon instead of Ob-oom. So, she does care about her other granddaughter, or does she – because she then cries for Ob-oom. Later, they offer merit at a shrine, and grandma mentions Ai-oon has to do that from now on, as she must go back to working again. Ai-oon gets a text confirming that she essentially copied May’s recipe. In the evening, Ai-oon covers up her grandma and lies with her for a bit, clearly caring for her, before leaving. But grandma wasn’t asleep (quelle surprise, not!) Ai-oon re-reads her recent entry into her diary, striking out the lines “I had been deceiving May as well, and I couldn’t keep doing it anymore.” The next day she brings merit to the shrine, then calls May – who tells her not to come, while a male voice is asking “Is that her?”. So apparently her dad has arrived. May rushes to her house, and arrives to her father scolds May for not being a good daughter. Ai-oon stays silent not revealing that she’s there – until May is about to step on a glass shard that her father produced with his temper tantrums. She warns her revealing her presence to May and her parents. Her father attributes her lifestyle choice to her blindness (wasn’t she gay before she turned blind?) and tells her to stop with that “same-sex thing” (so he’s apparently a close friend of Lada’s mom from “The Secret of Us”). This pretty much ends the conversation, the parents leave, and May goes moping to the pool. Ai-oon joins her there and offers her shoulder to lean on. May wonders whether Ai-oon family raised her to be so kind. Nah, she says ,they just raised me normally (we know that Ai-oon hasn’t had the easiest childhood). May said she feels she was born to sadden her mother and disappoint her father, for example by being a girl when the father desperately wanted o boy, and her mother becoming unable to bear more children once she was born. May has never felt what family feels like – and Ai-oon can relate, feeling like an outsider, like she’s in the wrong place. May wishes she could be deaf as well as blind, tuning out her parents – but as we know, Ai-oon has a solution for downing out the voices in their minds, though it might be scary more May. But she says as long as Ai-oon is with her, she can do anything. That’s a good closing statement, so we leave the motorbike ride to the next episode. 😊 ____ I feel nothing much happened in terms of the main plot. Once again, the connection between Ai-oon and May was deepened, raising the stakes for the eventual reveal that May has not been reconnecting with Ob-oom. But apparently Ai-oon has given up on telling the truth and dives head-first into the relationship now. May on the other hand must have caught up on at least some of the differences between Ob-oom and Ai-oon by now. Other than that, the episode took its time to portray the strained relationship between Ai-oon and grandma, giving that subplot at least equal attention to the May/Ai-oon storyline. Everything else played a distant second or third fiddle to these two storylines. At the end, we are still in the same place as at the end of episode two. I liked the May/Ai-oon scenes, but groaned a bit at yet another deficient grandma (even though this one is no match for the grandmas on “Blank” and “Gap”, and yet another father who does not understand or care for his daughter (as in “Affair” with Wan’s dad), though were no surprise. And I all a solid episode, but it felt like a little step down from the first two.

"Oon-Ai" means warmth in Tai, so, Ai-oon felt like May said her name when they were in the Phone. That's why she's asking what had May said. I learned it when I read the book. It was a cute detail I guess.

Namtan and Film are such good criers, I cried the most watching Pluto because my heart just breaks for Ai and May and Namtan and Film did so well acting out their characters that all the emotions just hit. Pluto is one of those shows that I have to watch multiple times because after you know what happens later on, rewatching the show lets me make sense of the details and hints they drop in the beginning.