True Love
Episode 2 of Girl From Nowhere season 2 begins with a look at an elite girls’ school called Tipnaree Wittaya. Ambitious plans are underway to merge the boys and girls together, but Miss Naruemol is not happy. She believes the boys will tarnish the school’s reputation. Miss Naruemol has collected up a number of notes thrown over the fence too but the principal simply chuckles her concerns away and tasks her with an important job. He wants Miss Naruemol to lead the charge to enact rules for this transition to take place. First up is the rule that girls must not laugh at boys’ lame jokes… and to appear ladylike. This immediately sees us cut to Nanno introducing the girls and boys together. They immediately ignore the first rule, as the girls start laughing out in the corridors. Nanno notices a teacher spying and recording, offering a wry smile as she glances over. Miss Naruemol decides to immediately instill a new rule – social distancing. With different classes underway, the girls and boys are separated – along with chocolate being banned. This extends to milk too, with the kids forced to ask for UHT drinks. With “Hall Of The Mountain King” mischievously playing in the background, Nanno continues to stir up trouble. She invites the kids into a group chatroom, with the boys and girls both messaging each other freely. Miss Naruemol however, hilariously mistakes one of the boys asking for milk as an invitation to get physical with Nanno. Well, with texting now banned too, Nanno leads the charge and starts the girls on a mission to download the True Love app. It’s all the rage in school, and of course Miss Naruemol catches wind of this. Eventually Nanno convinces her to use the app as well, where she gets talking to someone called Daffodil. However, things take a turn for the worst when Miss Naruemol heads into a classroom and sees Punjan and Namnueng together. The angle looks pretty provocative but actually the girl was just bending down to pick up an eraser. Naruemol suspects the worst and beats the boy with a stick. As they both scarper away, the boy holds his head as a thin trickle of blood runs down. During flashbacks we see Naruemol’s friend Ruethai passing away back in school after a loss of blood. She was getting an abortion after going back to her boyfriend and this has left a huge scar on Naruemol’s perception of men. This is why she’s so paranoid that the worst thing could happen. Unfortunately Naruemol is fired for her efforts, as the school is turned back into a straightforward unisex school. Just before she goes, Naruemol tells the other students that they need to remain virtuous and pure. Nanno presses a button on her phone, allowing all the students to be matched. And Naruemol is too – to Daffodil. Her match happens to be her fellow teacher, who claims she’s in love with her. As she leans forward and hugs Naruemol, she professes her love to the stiff teacher and claims she’d do anything for her. Remembering how she felt in school, the camera rotates as we see Naruemol give in to her feelings. As the episode closes out, Nanno has a match too – with that strange red-ribboned girl we saw before. She barges past Nanno and walks away.
The Episode Review
This satirical episode has a wonderfully comic and mischievous tone that blends nicely against the ideas of discipline and obedience. There’s an underlying theme here about not being able to express one’s emotion and that works beautifully across the episode. Unlike episode 1, there’s a vibrancy with the colours this time, with an abundance of greens and yellows bleeding through in every scene. There’s also a really unique style of editing, with the camera oftentimes smoothly progressing forward and zooming into the back of a character. It’s a nice way of shooting and one that leans into that aforementioned style differences in this episode. Much like the first, episode 2 does a wonderful job with its run-time, allowing larger themes to bleed through while naturally progressing the overarching story about this strange girl out for revenge. The ending certainly leaves the door open for more, and it’ll be interesting to see what direction this one goes next.
