Kamin's slow descent into madness (ie. falling for Jade)
So I know the series is already over and we're all feeling a bit disgruntled with how things turned out. But I found this in my drafts and for all that I wish the show was better, I still want to celebrate something the show, and Dunk in particular, did really well in the early part of the series: the development of Kamin's feelings for Jade in a way that felt very real and authentic.
From their first meeting, Jade was instantly, visibly and vicerally, attracted to Kamin, but Kamin was a much harder read and seemed to have little interest in anything for at least the first two episodes.
In the ending credits scene of Episode 3, Jade actually asks if they can be something more than superior and subordinate and Kamin offers two alternatives: "friends with benefits" and "situationship", both a dismissal of anything real developing between them. Jade is quick to reject those suggestions, and asks if Kamin would ever end up genuinely liking him to which Kamin firmly replies in the negative. This scene shows us that Kamin is very straightforward and isn't going to beat around the bush, even if his words may be kind of hurtful (ie. a vehement denial of the possibility of him catching feelings for Jade).
Now if we pay attention to what Jade is wearing, this scene actually happens chronologically at the start of Episode 3, when they were having breakfast before going to police station and continuing their investigation. But later in the day/episode, something happens which has a visible impact on Kamin:
I'm obsessed with this moment because so much is going on with Kamin and Dunk is managing to portray it all with just his eyes and expression. His gaze lingers on Jade as he frantically fusses over Kamin's knife wound. Kamin blinks slowly as if he's dazed, as if he's half expecting Jade to disappear. He stares and stays silent for the entire scene, and it's like he's seeing Jade for the first time, or maybe seeing a side of Jade that he'd never clocked before: someone who cares fiercely and who would throw themselves into a fray, even when outnumbered, all to protect Kamin. Being on the receiving end of this kind of devotion seems to catch Kamin by surprise - it's almost like Kamin hasn't experienced someone caring for him in a very long time, and I think this was the first time Kamin became aware of his slowly burgeoning feelings for Jade.
Part of this seems to be that Kamin is very used to relying only on himself. Jade even points out that he rarely delegates things to his subordinates and prefers to do all the work himself. It's not a huge leap to conclude that he probably is used to working alone, having to fight battles on his own, not relying on anyone else, but taking both the glory and the hits on himself.
We see this aspect of Kamin's character in aftermath of the attack. When they return home, Kamin is quick to downplay the importance of figuring out who attacked him, arguing that Ken should focus on the Truth or Dare case instead of finding out who sent people after him. Later in the bedroom, he tries to insist that he can administer first aid on himself.
But Jade refuses to accept this. To Jade, Kamin's safety is paramount; neither will he allow Kamin to deal with his own wounds on his own. Jade is so vehemently determined that Kamin is helpless to resist. Perhaps deep down, he doesn't really want to resist either, because no matter who you are, it's nice to be cared for. The final blow is when Jade, in a moment of vulnerability, makes it clear that Kamin is special to him:
"I don't care about my own wounds. You're the first person I've treated and gotten so worked up over a small cut." - Jade, episode 3.
Kamin may be used to taking care of himself, but in the face of Jade's earnest care, in the face of Jade's honest confession, he finds his resolve crumbling helplessly.
This is the first substantial crack in the wall that was Kamin's stoic exterior, the first time in the series that he seems to give in to his heart rather than following his head. I love this kiss so much, not just because Kamin was the one to make the first move, but also because it's a clear overflow of emotion, one which Kamin couldn't contain in the moment. For a character so in control, it's beautiful to see him lose the tight grip he had on his own emotions. As he gets lost in the kiss, Kamin is even the first one to reach for Jade, and its only when Jade's hands begins to wander down towards Kamin's pants that he seems to recover a semblance of control, enough to stop things from going further.
And the thing is, Jade keeps surprising Kamin by how astute he is, seeing into the heart of Kamin's worries (that something bad will happen when if he clocks out), and finding a way to relieve him of the burden of carrying them alone. Kamin is a workaholic, and struggles to disconnect from his job, and Jade has transformed from an annoyance to someone who is actively making Kamin's life better, sometimes in spite of Kamin's own resistance. It's not just that he's providing cheaper accomodation and taking care of Kamin's basic needs - food, laundry, etc - but he's actively becoming a partner who helps Kamin not only do his job, but also disconnect from it when it's appropriate.
We see Kamin slowly starting to give in to the reality of his own feelings. In the aftermath of Jade being hurt, Kamin finds the courage to admit how much he cares about Jade and kisses Jade again. Again, I like how we can see a clear cause and effect here: Kamin's acknowledgement of his feelings and the sudden ability to be vulnerable is because he had to face losing Jade.
The first half of the series did a good job of developing the romance between Jade and Kamin in such a way that Kamin's change in attitude through the series felt earned and ultimately I think we can put that down to the character choices Dunk made when it came to portraying Kamin. Do I wish we'd gotten more? Yes, absolutely. But also, I really think its important to acknowledge that Dunk did an amazing job with what he was given and I think that should be celebrated and appreciated. <3
Once you consider that Joong is a fangirl, fudanshi, and probably his own biggest shipper it starts to make a lot more sense why he proposed dytd to gmmtv. Because on paper it is perfect; objectively, the show fits really well into the progression of the genres jd have tackled and plays wonderfully into the things that fans loved from thk (guns, annoyed/annoying flirting, mature romance, intense plot, etc). Dytd hits some major fanfic tropes and does kinda read like a JoongDunk rpf au inspired by the previous shows they have done (mainly ha and thk). It just suck that the production and execution was absolute ass.
This. And also I think what made DYTD have so much potential but not live up to it is that they never really allowed us to get to know the characters in any deep/meaningful way. I was waiting to find out about Jade's backstory - looks like him and Jay are orphans, he was kicked out of the Special Investigation Unit, but beyond these things we don't really get to know him.
Jade says this in episode 10, but we never really see it happen. How has loving Kamin changed his life? How has being in love/being loved changed his perspective on things?
Like no shade on Joong's delivery because it feels like Jade is in earnest here, but we never saw Jade wrestling with his future before this point so this line feels unearned and unfounded.
And a similar thing happened with Kamin. I'm so curious about the things the show never fleshed out: How does he actually feel about moving from the US to Thailand? Was the move purely precipitated by his family's situation or did something happen at work? Why isn't he living with his mom if they both moved back to Thailand together? I think we get one flashback of him on a case in America, but its not clear what that was even about... why was he given the role of Investigator in this precinct?
And just on the romance side of things: Is this his first relationship? It feels like the answer is no, because Kamin seems very sure about himself when it came to how he felt/what he wanted out of a relationship with Jade. He was so good at setting boundaries early on when his primary focus was the case, but then seeing Jade hurt changed that for him, but WHY did it change things so drastically? We don't get enough insight into his character to really get a sense of his motivations, and that was such a miss.
I think even with the sloppy editing/writing for the mystery/thriller aspect, if they'd given us enough sustenance in our main characters so we could care about them, the show wouldn't have felt so hallow.
I agree with everything @secriden is saying, however, not to be that person buuuut @clemelntine you've got some wrong infos there 🫣🫣🫣
Joong did NOT propose Dare You to Death to GMMTV. It was offered to them by GMMTV last second.
@joongarchens and me have been through this like a month ago, neither of us could find a single source of Joong saying he was the one proposing DYTD, but we do have at least two sources of Joong (and Dunk) talking about how they almost didn't have a series until staff presented DYTD to them last second
(sources and translations under the cut)
Joong talked about it in his twitter space (time stamp: 17:49) from a year ago on Jan 21st, 2025:
[Disclaimer: I didn't check this with a native speaker, mistakes may have been made. Corrections welcome 🙏]
Joong:
“We talked… I talked to P’Tha… Actually, every year there’ll be, like, castings about who will act in which series this year or something, right? To see who will act in which series, something like this. And this year, I felt like the roles… The roles they gave us… Actually, before Dare You to Death, there was another series. Before it came to be Dare You to Death, there was another series first. And so I talked to my friend, Dunk Natachai, like ‘Hey dude, this script isn’t like… this script isn’t so good. It’s…’ How do you call it? The plot wasn’t all that interesting to me. I felt like it was still something… something rather light. There you go. Fairly lighthearted. And when they told us, we already had to shoot the pilot within about two to three weeks.” (laughs) “So, like, I talked to my friend, saying ‘Or how about maybe we don’t do a series together this year? Come. Maybe not having a series for one year might be okay? Right?’” [unintelligible] “So we decided we might not act together, right? So at first we weren’t gonna have a series. At first we weren’t gonna have a series, and we talked, but once we’d finished talking it turned into ‘It’s okay. You still don’t like it, right? Okay, we’ll go see if there’s a different script’, like this year or something. Because there aren’t a lot of series, you know? If it… Because there aren’t a lot, or something, it was like… like last minute, a golden moment, perhaps, before… before, like… ah, before everything completely disappeared. This year we might not have a series together, it’s fine. Just a concert is already enough and so on. No couple series, right? And… And it was like we were waiting for a good script or something and at the last second, there was… There was, like… a series came or something and so we went to check it out, we sat down to read the script, right? So… So we really clicked. This is it. ‘This is it, phi.’ And there was only one single page.” (laughs)
Fan:
“Oh, so you chose from only a single page.”
Joong:
“What really clicked was… Because when I saw the script and saw– actually, I didn't see it. What’s it called? I read just the long character descriptions and, like, the plot summary. And I felt… And then I looked it up on the internet, what it was like or something. So I felt like, yeah, this one. And so… So I wanted this series.”
Fan:
“Awesome.” (laughs)
Joong:
(laughs) “Are you confused? Are you confused?”
Fan:
“I’m not, I’m not.”
Joong:
“Are you confused? Before there can be a series, it has to pass through many steps first. Yeah. So the last second that made us have… have a project for the next year– guys, you almost wouldn’t have gotten… would… might not have gotten to watch a project this year, actually. But to be honest, I… My fandom will live, because they, like… they… they’re really buzzing. And they’ll imagine this and imagine that. So they can live for a year. Oho. They won’t die.”
Fan:
“Even if we won’t die, it would be like we’re dead, Joong.”
Joong:
“Huh?”
Fan:
“Even if we won’t die, it would be like we’re dead.”
Joong:
“No, but actually the role is very important. For me, until now, how I see it, what I’ve played has still been rather light. Compared with The Heart Killers, that’s still light-hearted. And when I found… And with the role next year or something, and like, it was still light, something like this. And so I thought maybe we could wait for an interesting story and then we come back to it or something. And I talked to my friend and Dunk… And Dunk went along with me. Yeah. My friend… also thought… My friend also thought ‘Mhm... You’re right... If everything isn’t perfect yet, we better don’t do it.’ Get it? Yeah. That’s more or less it. Actually, there are many more details than this, but I can’t tell you.”
Fan:
(laughs) “Okay. I understand.”
Joong:
“Yes. It’s a secret, right?”
And then both Joong and Dunk discussed this some more only last month on Feb 18th during the GMMTV Live for the DYTD Final EP Event. Unfortunately tumblr won't let me add a video to a reblog, so the YouTube link with a time stamp plus an audio file for back-up will have to do, but bear with me:
[Live] “จุง-ดัง” มาพูดคุยรีแคปซีรีส์โค้งสุดท้าย ก่อนไปเจอกันที่งาน “Dare You To Death: Final EP. FAN MEETING” #DareYouToDeathLIVE“Dare You T
[Disclaimer: I didn't check this with a native speaker, mistakes may have been made. Corrections welcome 🙏]
Leo:
“Let’s talk about your work. You’ve been with Dare You to Death since, oh, the start. From the workshops to filming to airing, along those lines. How has it been? You’ve been with this series for a very long time.”
Joong:
“Krub”
Leo:
“Both of you.”
Dunk:
“Oh. Oh, we’re reviving it.”
Joong:
“Reviving.”
Dunk:
“We can call it reviving. Because it’s been some time.”
Leo:
“Krub”
Dunk:
“And…” (clears throat) “What’s it called… We enjoy each process, since… we accepted this series. When we first talked we might not even have had one, right?”
Leo:
“Yeah.”
Dunk:
“But…”
Leo:
“You might not even have had one…”
Dunk:
“A series, that is.”
Joong:
“As in we might not even have had this series.”
Dunk:
“We might not have had a series, like, if this series hadn’t happened to come up, like… we… accept roles that we both genuinely like. That we both genuinely want to play. It’s like this.”
Leo:
“Roles you both genuinely like, you mean in the story, right?” [T/N: see below]
Dunk:
“I mean…”
Joong:
“He means, before…”
Dunk:
“I mean…”
Leo:
“You said it like ‘Oh, roles we both genuinely like!’” [T/N: see below]
Dunk:
“If we read the script and we don’t like it, we, like… will…”
Leo:
“Will not do it.”
Dunk:
“Won’t do it.”
Leo:
“Oh, okay, meaning when, yeah, every year when they have series or other projects, they have to bring in the actors...”
Joong & Dunk:
“Yes.”
Leo:
“To see if ‘Hey! Do you like this? Do you wanna play this?’ And it has to match, too”
Dunk:
“That’s right.”
Joong:
“Yes. The staff, they came with an offer. They said they had a series and… I… I read it and I didn’t like it all that much, something like this.”
Dunk:
“Correct.”
Joong:
“So we consulted each other and said ‘Okay, if the series isn’t very good… then we don’t have to act in one for this one year?’”
Leo:
“Uh-huh, meaning you talked…”
Joong:
“Yeah, we… We talked and we ended up agreeing that ‘Okay, we don’t need to have a series for this one year, dude.’ Something along those lines. To the point where they were like ‘In that case, just keep calm. JoongDunk, stay calm.’”
Dunk:
“Maybe not yet.”
Joong:
“‘Stay calm, maybe not yet.’”
Dunk:
(laughs) “Maybe not yet.”
Joong:
“‘Then, we’ll… We’ll go find you another series.’” [unintelligible stuttering] “And we’ll do another story. Get it?”
Leo:
“You mean maybe you didn’t like this one series right away, so they went to find you a different series that you might like, something like this.”
Dunk:
“Yes.”
Joong:
“Yes. A different series. And when they came with a different series, they it showed to us, we liked it.”
Dunk:
(in English) “Oh my god, I love it”
Leo:
“When you read it, this story, for the first time, you liked it a lot.”
Dunk:
“That’s right.”
Leo:
“Why did you like it?”
Dunk:
“It’s a role that’s more mature and more challenging, because it’s very different from us. We get to be an inspector and a police captain and the story is about solving a case which is something we’ve never played before.”
Joong:
(leaning over to Leo, whispering) “It’s cool”
Leo:
(to Joong) “Oh, it’s cool?”
Joong:
(whispering to Leo) “It’s cool, it’s cool.”
Dunk:
“All in all, it’s also cool.”
Leo:
“Yeah.”
Joong:
(whispering to Leo) “It’s cool.”
Dunk:
“Yes.”
Joong:
(whispering to Leo) “‘Ui, I wanna be a police officer, dude.’” (laughs)
Dunk:
“It’s true, it’s…”
Joong:
(whispering to Leo) “‘I wanna be police!’”
Dunk:
“True, I wanted to be a police officer. Because… We’ve never thought and never dreamed before that we would be police officers.”
T/N: while translating I was really confused what Leo meant by "You mean in the series?" and "You said it like 'ect'", but I think I've figured it out: When Dunk talks about taking roles they genuinely like, he phrases it like "ชอบกันจริงๆ" [châwp gan jing jing]. In the context of what he's talking about it's clear that he means "[roles] we really/genuinely like" but in a different context this word choice can also be used to mean "like each other for real". What's more, when Dunk says these exact words he also gestures between himself and Joong, so I think what is happening is that Leo notes Dunk's gesture, notes the double meaning of the word choice and asks "You mean [roles where you like each other] in the series [as opposed to real life]?" And then afterwards when Leo complains about Dunk's confusing word choice all "Well, you said it like 'bòt tîi rao châwp gan jing jing'" and Leo actually mimics Dunk gesturing between the two of them (JoongDunk) which also has me think that for a moment Leo did take the sentence as "We accept roles where we both like each other for real" instead of "We accept roles that we genuinely like".
It really sucks that the series turned out to be such an incohesive, shallow mess especially seeing how excited they were about it initially and how they turned the other series down (which now raises the question: would it have been better or worse than what DYTD ended up being?) but yeah, it wasn't Joong who found DYTD for them
Thank you for the clarification @airenyah. And also the translation!!
Seeing that they accepted the roles based on only the long character descriptions and plot outline makes a ton of sense. Like @clemelntine said, on paper the roles seem to have a ton of potential and ticked a lot of boxes. The pilot was also SO good (and better than the official trailer, imo) it's a shame that the series didn't live up to what it promised.
I'm finally watching the episode 10 reaction and Joong's response to some of the scenes is so telling. He has his head in his hand for such a long time, it really shows he was struggling to hide what ever he was feeling, and that strongly suggests he wasn't feeling anything positive.
It also makes me curious about the process of these shows being filmed. It seems very clear from Joong's reaction that he hadn't realised Champ was such a horrible character until now, and then seeing Champ be the only one Jade and Kamin saved actually made Joong kind of mad. But given that he's there for the scene when Champ kills Fai, why is Joong so confused?
Even Dunk seems kind of shellshocked, and he was there for more of Fai's final scene then Joong was. He hid it better than Joong, but the incredulous tone of his laughter really suggests he wasn't too happy with the way the series turned out too.
The director of Dare You To Death had no idea what tone the series should have and you can really tell. It's all over the place. Especially at inappropriate moments. Because why are we having jealousy comedic banter in front of the corpse of a guy who they just saw getting stabbed in the throat? Sure he was a horrible person but..time and place. Like what is this series trying to be.
I really enjoyed the show overall. While I am sad that it was such a low priority for the production company, because I think it could have been absolutely phenomenal, I am very proud of the cast. They did such a good job.
JadeKamin were a very cute and funny couple to follow, the side characters brought interesting dynamics and interactions. If anything dytd has made me look forward to everyone's future projects.
Also, the OST for this show was amazing. Love the songs, love the use of Dare you to Love throughout the series.
There were several weaknesses in both the writing and the production, but it only really bothered me a couple times (mostly in the final episodes).
There are definitely a few episodes and more than a few scenes I'll rewatch, even if idk if I'm going to rewatch the whole thing.
I give it a 7/10 cos it was really fun to watch and bcos the cast 100% ran with "the cops are in love; the kids are doomed". Nothing better than the actors making fun of their own characters
Dare You to Death's fatal flaw was that they made all of the murder victims irredeemable so a lot of people were actually rooting for the murderer. And then the people that should have been punished the most weren't punished in a way the audience needed to see.
And poor Pufai. She should have had a better ending. She was a tragic character from start to finish but the show didn't do a good enough job at setting that up for it to feel satisfying as an ending for her.
And Jade and Kamin? Love you boys but you're both terrible cops. But you were right. Everyone lost in that ending. Which is annoying specifically because that is not what the show promised it's audience.
I'm not going to say that Dare You to Death is bad or unenjoyable. I did like it. It had some very good moments but I do think it fell off at the end. It made choices and it relied to heavily on trying to shock the audience to tell the story instead of letting the story they were telling shock the audience. Especially because I was not shocked by any revelation.
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