#age gap dirama

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you put two stupidly attractive women in a television show and basically said “Make this show as disgustingly cute as humanly possible?”

No? Well then you clearly haven’t seen Blank The Series. Now, if you’ve been into GL (Girls Love/ Lesbian) dramas for a while now then maybe you’ve seen GAP The Series. If not, then it’s time to come out from the comfort of the rock you’ve been living under.

These two stories intersect due to the two sisters, Neung and Sam. After Song, the middle sister, tragically passes away following an argument with their grandmother over her sexuality, Song vows to never return to their family home and gets into a car accident on her way back to her girlfriend. Of course their grandmother, who has spent all this time raising them, rejects the relationship and then blames Song’s girlfriend for her death. The family is then divided with Neung blaming her grandmother for her sister’s death and Sam trying to just keep her remaining family together. Things come to a head, however, when Sam falls in love with a woman and their grandmother, set in her homophobic ways, tries to get Sam to marry a ‘nice boy’ she chose and deems worthy instead.

This backfires…greatly!

Sam, still wanting to keep the peace but also wanting to love who she loves, becomes a shell of herself before her grandmother’s eyes – unable to eat and incapable of engaging on any meaningful level with either her grandmother or her betrothed. This is when Nana realizes she’s gone too far and is at risk of losing her remaining granddaughter – because Neung booked it the minute she got her bearings and promised that she, too, would only ever return when her Nan was cold and due for a meeting with her maker.

Neung upon finding out that Sam was about to choose Granmama over the love of her life – they’re sisters, they still tell each other just about everything – decides it’s time to intervene and sticks her neck out for Sam in order to show her that her grandmother was the only person in the family getting anything out of the rules she was making and she expected everyone else to pretend to be happy with said rules – I’m paraphrasing, obvi. Well, fate or destiny or common freaking sense intervenes and gran takes her foot off Sam’s neck and ‘allows’ her to follow her heart – which leads Sam right back to Mon (her girlfriend).  Happy endings all around, right?

Not quite.

See, as Sam’s story has a happy ending we come to realise that the gran still has huge expectations of Neung… like the fact the she too was expected to marry a ‘nice boy’ that granmama deemed fit for her. That went over like a cinder block in a lake. Neung ran from the wedding!! She was already in her dress, at the venue, on the day and she decided “yeah, this isn’t for me.” So, she ran. Which is how she declared her excommunication. Her Nan was not pleased with this turn of events because it embarrassed the family, made them indebted to the nice boy’s family and all that jazz.

The boy (Chet), who so happens to be Neung’s high school best friend’s baby daddy, had had a crush on Neung since the beginning of time – why he then went and slept with her best friend is still beyond me. Ooooh, and let’s not forget the fact that Neung’s high school bestie – Piengfah – was also in love with her. Honestly, at this point we should just have NA (Neung Anonymous) meetings because she’s starting to seem like an addictive substance.

Now, you may be thinking ‘there is no way in hell this gets crazier!’ You would be WRONG! Not only are the baby daddy and her bestie in love with her, but so is the child of those two! Yes, a cool twenty years (I’m working off of the show, not the books – don’t come for me) after the baby was born, she too falls in love with Neung! And where her mother and father both failed, she succeeds in climbing over Neung's walls and military crawling her way into her heart. And babe, that’s just the beginning because, you see, Daddy Chet and ABSENT MOTHER Piengfah, are absolutely not going to allow their 21-year-old daughter to fall in love with someone sixteen years her senior and they are going to pull all the stops… but that will be in season 2 which is dropping in May, 2024.

Now, let’s talk about how these two stories compare to one another.

Before we continue though, please remember that this is in no way intended to downgrade any one of these shows and, honestly, I loved both iterations of the siblings so we are not going to put anybody down here!

GAP the series, which aired in the second half of 2023, follows the story of Sam and Mon. Sam is depicted as an emotionally stunted individual who is completely uncertain of her own feelings – so much so that her friend circle has to second guess all her decisions in order to figure out what it is she actually wants. Why is she like this? Because of her grandmother, obviously.

Sam’s grandmother, after Song died and Neung ran, put immense amounts of pressure on Sam and essentially stripped her down to “yes, granmama” and “no, granmama”. Being from one of the royal families in Thailand, there are expectations of this family that Neung will no longer live up to and so they have fallen onto Sam.

So, gran did the sensible thing the moment the eldest sister left and doubled down on her control of Sam’s life because she was the only person who knew what would create a fruitful and successful life not just for Sam but for the family image.

How does dear granmama accomplish this? By giving Sam an ultimatum.

When Sam was of age she asked her gran if she could open her own business and she was told that she could have her own business until she was a certain age then she would have to completely give up that dream and get married to the man that was chosen for her.

Sam is business minded and has grown her company into something she is quite proud of. The kicker? Her betrothed is her business partner and keeps sticking his nose in her business – not always in the worst ways but he definitely thinks her knows what is best for here without consulting her.

Enter Mon.

Mon comes into the company as an intern. Her area of focus being social media marketing. She excels at this, gets the company numbers up and is fitting in well. Mon has a secret though… she’s been in love with Sam since their school days but Sam doesn’t remember her. Mon has crafted her entire life around the idea of being “good enough” for Sam and she feels like she’s finally on the right path. Sam starts to notice Mon and they start a secret affair because Sam made a rule that dating in the workplace is prohibited so if anyone catches on that they are fornicating in the office, Sam is going to be forced to fire her girlfriend.

But, of course, things must be better before they get worse so Kirk, grandmama’s lapdog and Sam’s betrothed, finds out about Sam and Mon and immediately runs to tell granny that she needs to get the little miss back under control before she destroys the family image by being publically gay? Look, I don’t know what this idiot thought he was doing but gran finds out.

Cue confrontation!

Sam yells, gran yells, Kirk – for whatever reason – is also yelling. Then Neung appears, as if out of thin air, dragging Mon along to also yell. Now we have a full house! Back and forth, yell yell yell and then Sam decides Mon is more important than all that noise and she starts to make her exit when gran falls back onto the chair behind her gripping her chest and you’ll never guess what was going on there…

If you guessed that she was performing open heart surgery on herself, you would be sorely mistaken. No, she’s apparently having a heart attack! Neung isn’t buying it and Sam decides to believe her sister so her and Mon leave… only for Sam to abandon Mon once gran is admitted to the hospital.

Sam then goes about planning her wedding and Mon plans on flying halfway around the world to avoid her now ex but Sam is struggling and gran is suddenly feeling a little guilty about caging her barely free bird.

All that aside, Mon and Sam end up married and Kirk ends up in a ditch… or at least I wish he did 😒.

Now, onto Neung’s story.

Neung has always felt pressured to be perfect. Her grandmother groomed her to be the perfect lady after all. Not a hair, nor a thread out of place. Neung’s entire life had been planned out like a well written story and all she had to do was jump from page to page quietly and allow all the things that were intended for her to come her way. She goes through the motions set before her like a good little doll and allows her gran to have full control of her life. That is, until her sister comes home one day and tells the family that she has fallen in love.

You'd think this is good news but from the looks on grans face it would probably be closer to the look you'd give someone if their dog urinated on your custom polar bear white fleece rug.

She turned her nose up at the very thought that her granddaughter would be ‘defective’ and immediately told Song to end that useless relationship so she could focus on more realistic things… like marrying the man that dear ol’ gran had already chosen for her. When Song refused, all hell broke loose and gran kicked her out.

So Song left, Neung raged and the grandmother stood on her sanctimoniously high horse thinking she had saved her bloodline from embarrassment or whatever. Then the news came that Song was deceased and still the grandmother refused to take accountability, choosing instead to blame Song’s girlfriend.

This is where I think Neung drew the line. Blaming the person that Song chose to love for her dying was the final straw and she decided she wanted no part of this ruse any longer. She left the family home and decided to live the life of a struggling artist. Her grandmother cut her off so her finances were up in the air most of the time but Sam was always there to be safety net.

Neung had resigned herself to never finding love, never being happy, never having anyone to call her own because she had been taught that no one was worthy of her. No one that her gran didn’t say was worthy, anyway. So she went on living like that… until the sun came out from behind the clouds and we all know what they say about dynamite coming in small packages.

This new force of nature was a pint-sized, 20-year-old beauty with an innocence that could make cherubs sing. She came by Neung’s store one day and asked to have her portrait done – Neung is actually an artist, but she’s ‘struggling’ by choice at this point – and Neung wasn’t going to turn a paying customer away. So they sat, for hours, while Neung got every detail of this girl’s face down on paper. The girl, coincidentally named Aneung, had been planning this meeting for ages and once she had her in she was not planning on being shut out again. And, boy, does this little nugget wear Neung down.

Eventually Neung admits that Aneung has become an integral part of herself and she doesn’t want to extricate herself from Aneung. That’s all well and good, until Neung finds out who Aneung’s mother is.

She is now confronted with her best friend from high school who she told to abort her baby because she felt it would possibly ruin her life to go through with the pregnancy. Piengfah – Aneung’s mother – also admits that she named her baby that, out of spite, as a reminder to herself that the person she loved the most told her to get rid of her baby before it was even born. And now Neung is in a guilt spiral because the person she has come to love might not have been born if her mother had listened to her best friend.

Anyway, not to give too much more of the story away, the gran dies. We should all be very sad about this… Neung is beside herself because she realizes she will never have the opportunity to make up with her gran. Again, guilt spiral!

Maybe if she had listened… maybe if she had married the guy gran chose… or if she spoke to her kindly the last time they were together…

All these possibilities are running through Neung’s mind and then Aneung comes to her, wanting to help her in any way she can. And, for a time, Neung allows this. Neung then wakes up the morning after her grans wake with the bright idea the Aneung is too good for her and she needs to push her away. Which she does, spectacularly. Aneung is besides herself while also trying to reason with her lover but nothing seems to be working so she leaves. And once again, Neung is all on her own…

This show has me wanting to call my gran just let her know how grateful I am that she isn’t a controlling crazy person. All this heartache, this strife, could have been avoided if the gran had loosened up a little sooner.

She raised women who were intellectuals, strong in their own rights, brilliant and business minded and she refused to trust that without the presences of the Y-chromosome in their lives they would be fulfilled and happy.

They all missed out on some of these best years of each other’s lives because of all of them being stubborn to some degree. Only the two sisters remain and in May we will see how Neung and Aneung’s story closes off with season 2.

There are a lot of unresolved feelings, a lot of hurt and a lot of misunderstandings going around but only time will tell if everyone will find their way back to their soulmate.