The Last Happy New Year (2022)

Cast
Such a great cast here. They all did a great job including the supporting actors. I’ve dropped a fair number of dramas where they will do a great job casting the main actors but then drop the ball on the rest of the cast. It’s even worse when the main actors can’t act. So when the entire cast are on point like in Happy New Year, I really appreciate it and will point it out.

Pace and execution
Great direction and execution. Well paced. One of Club Friday’s strengths is that they have less episodes than the typical full length Thai drama. So the important points of the story are told without things being dragged out and eventually losing the viewers' attention.

Story
Club Friday consistently establishes the foundations of telling a story well. The storylines are what’s hit or miss with them, and Happy New Year is somewhere in between depending on what’s important to you in a story. For me, it’s whether I enjoy watching it, am I invested in the characters and what’s going to happen to them and most importantly, the messages the story tells. Happy New Year easily meets all my criteria but the last one.

The story is about different people’s beliefs about love and how their beliefs shape how they approach their relationships. While the two couples are there to contrast each other, many people may notice Winit’s nanny but also pay attention to View’s dad. This may be why although View and Winit are kind and forgiving people, one knows how to set boundaries while the other doesn’t. View can love someone while not accepting their bad behavior towards her. She cares about Ploy but also consistently calls her out on her bad behavior. She loves Ek but doesn’t allow him to continue down that slippery slope of using drugs as a coping mechanism.

There are really good messages to take from the story like the one just mentioned, but I also can’t overlook the problematic messages the story romanticizes and idealizes as well which is why I’m dinging this to a 7.5.

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