Every Thursday I have a routine that I always look forward to. I will pick my mother up and then head over to Kovan for breakfast. I would get my porridge and she would order carrot cake in black sauce. We are so frequently there that we don’t even need to physically order at the stalls. One look at me, the porridge seller knows I want #2 and likewise with the carrot cake. In fact, the carrot cake gets served to my mom at where we are seated. Nobody else has that privilege. Then we would catch up – she will talk about the interesting stuff that happened at the elder care in the past week and the shenanigans with her grandson, my nephew and I will talk about what cool stuff happened in my classes and some good shows I have watched. At one point she will take out some Math assessment books and ask me how to do some P6 questions and I will teach her. The thing is my mom is no longer as spry as before. Sometimes she would mutter apologies that she couldn’t be faster and it always feels like someone poke my heart with a needle. It has reached a point where I sometimes can only picture her younger self vaguely but still her ebullient spirit will put anyone to shame. The notion that time flies really hits home. I am prefacing my musing on Netflix’s Forget You Not (记得忘记我) by sharing something personal because the show has a way of massaging your heart and show you the rites of passage of growing old and how the child becomes the care-giver for the aged parent.
Rene Liu’s Forget You Not, co-written by Ho Shing-Ming and Tsai Pao-Chang, tells the story of Cheng Le-Le (Hsieh Ying-Xuan), who works at a convenience store in the day and as a stand-up comedian at night. She is not very good at both jobs. She is married to Cheng Kai (Wallace Huo), who is a lawyer. Her best friends are Lin Chia-Yun (Tracy Chou), a homemaker and Huang Su-Fei (Esther Lin), a tour guide. Le-le has a father, Cheng Kuang-Chi (Chin Han), who is highly-spirited, like a boy trapped in the body of an old man. All is well at first but as her father gradually succumbs to dementia, Le-Le will flounder in the eye of the storm as everything falls apart.
The story is very slice-of-life and centres on the vagaries of life – how as a child we get taken care of by our parents and how the roles get reversed when our parents become old. Time can be so cruel as we look at our frail body but taking a step back time allows you to see the fruits of your labour and how the seeds you have sowed have grown into tremendous beings. There is levity in the storytelling especially in the first half and having Le-Le be an accidental stand-up comedian at a pub is a brilliant touch. To be a good stand-up comedian, one needs to see the funny in the mundane and the mire of pain. I enjoy seeing Le-Le’s character arc as a stand-up and how there comes a time when she has a hard time seeing the funny in taking care of her dad. She struggles not to be cynical in her comedy, she tries too hard and the jokes don’t land. She is finally being tested to the limits of her ability and it was so cathartic to eventually see her jokes land to uproarious laughter.
The core of the story is the father and daughter relationship and this is the heartbeat of the show. This is where the show hits, hard. The acting by Hsieh Ying-Xuan and Chin Han is what saved this show from being just a run-of-the-mill melodrama. Hsieh puts on a heart-on-the-sleeve performance and Chin Han is a legend. I grew up watching him in romantic dramas in the 80s and even in his 80s he still commands a huge presence on screen. Watching him become a shell of a man is one of the most painful performances you will probably see this year. Their chemistry is undeniable and it is the type of chemistry that gradually becomes palpable. Abandoned by her mother when Le-Le was a teenager and her father being a hugely absentee father because he was a sailor, Le-Le grew up on her own, so the father and daughter relationship starts off as being more a Confucian duty but eventually becoming love.
If the show had centred on the above-mentioned aspects and developed it more, I think it would have been something exceptional. But with 8 episodes, the storytellers padded the story with sub-plots of the husband and the two friends which didn’t go anywhere interesting. Of these two aspects I like Le-Le and her husband Cheng Kai’s story. In fact, ep3 features the quarrel between the two and it is heartbreaking to watch. I have seen many couples quarrelling on screen and they are always devastating, but this show doesn’t let them do a hue and cry, screaming at each other. There is such resignation in the way they do it and the silences scream louder than words. You get a feeling they have been existing but the spheres of their lives don’t merge. You see the meet-cute, the cutesy wooing, the funny wedding, but you never once get to see their interaction after marriage. Does Le-Le sound Cheng Kai out with her ideas for her comedy show? Does Cheng Kai share about his struggles in his lawyer job? No and no, so the quarrel feels a little hollow which should have been a gut-punch.
Then there is running sub-plot with the three friends all at different stations in their lives. There is enough stuff here for a separate show but running in tandem with the core story, it drags the flow of the story, undermining the narrative. But I must say Tracy Chou and Esther Liu are immensely watchable and say what you will, you will be lucky to have friends like them in your life, someone who will throw down whatever they are doing just to be by your side.
I finished this show in two evenings and my wifey and I were in a mess when it ended. Sometimes you need to good cry to see the world differently. I wanted to love this, but as it turns out, I only liked it but it still earns an easy recommendation from me because of the stellar cast. Any show that makes you want to be a better person deserves a watch.
3.5 / 5
