BAD BUDDY – WHO ARE YOU REALLY, NONG NAO?
I had never thought much about Nong Nao in Bad Buddy, dismissing Pat's favorite comfort object – a puppet of undefined genealogy and gender – as just another prop/device to highlight Pat's kid-at-heart nature.
But now I think there's just a tiny bit more to Nong Nao than meets the eye, if you look a little closer. What we learn also tells us more about Nong Nao's owner Pat (and it's not all light-hearted fun when it comes to the fore).
The Thai words for Nong Nao (I got this from the GMMTV online shop, linked here) are น้องเน่า, and running this through the online dictionaries turns up some interesting information.
The word nong (น้อง), as everybody knows now, is a term of address for someone younger than you (that also carries connotations of familiarity and informality). Most often employed for younger siblings, it can also be used in relationships where there is an older + younger sibling dynamic (e.g., between friends, seniors and juniors in school and university, sometimes at work too). And of course it can also be used as a term of endearment between two romantic partners, especially when the nong is younger and gives off babygirl energy.
The word nao (เน่า) actually means rotten or decayed. So one way to read Nong Nao is Rotten Little One, which helps to explain the doll's jumbled, Frankensteinishly patchworked appearance. But remembering that nong is also used for friends – another way to read Nong Nao is Rotten Little Pal. And tell me now, doesn't that sound more than just a little coincidentally like… Bad Buddy?
What this seems to be telling us is that Nong Nao must be the doll-pillow counterpart for the real bad buddy in Pat's life – Pran Parakul Siridechawat. Although you wouldn't really have needed to know this to have worked out that Nong Nao can easily be seen as a Pran-substitute in BBS.
Pat refers to Pran as the Nong to his Phi or Hia a couple of times in Bad Buddy (e.g., at Ep.10 [3I4] 18.50 and 19.56) and they themselves joke about Pran being Nong Nao/Nong Noo at Ep.8 [3I4] 6.30. Also, when Pran manages to fend off Pat's romantic thrusts during their Ep.7 courtship competition with gigil/geram-inducing parries, Pat's instinctive reaction is to vent his frustrations out on none other than poor little Nong Nao, his stand-in for Pran (see Ep.7 [1I4] 17.11).
But I think Nong Nao's significance goes deeper than just reminding Pat of Pran. We're also allowed a look into Pat's psychological interior, especially when we contrast his relationship to Nong Nao against what we know about Pran.
If I'm reading this right, I think Pat's comfort object Nong Nao is also the parallel to Pran's comfort object – his PP hobo bag.
The double P on Pran's faithful tote can be seen as a single P hiding a smaller one at its center, just the way Pran was nursing an unseen, unspoken crush on Pat in his heart for years (written up here).
And we saw how Pran, when out and about, would rarely be seen without this emotional crutch that he would clasp to his person as some sort of psychological armor against the external world.
This makes sense, especially when we see how introverted Pran put in so much effort to build up walls against the outside, much preferring the solitude and psychological stillness of his own inner world, desolate as it might have been (see this write-up here for more analysis).
But Pat in many ways is the opposite of Pran, and nowhere is this more immediately visible than in his extroversion. Pat's energy is directed outward and (after Ep.1 and Pran's return) he is often, if not always, full of sunshine and jovial smiles in the company of others (not when the situation is sad or threatening of course, but definitely when it is at least neutral, if not happy).
A clear example of this would be the scene at the Jae Si Curry House starting at Ep.2 [2/4] 0.18 – Pran's demeanor at the Archi boys' table is so serious and buttoned-up, compared to Pat's hearty laughs and unguarded body language at the Engine boys' table (and BBS also takes a highlighter pen to this with Pran inside under shelter while Pat is outside in the open). 🤩
So for extrovert Pat, being out in the world is his comfort zone, and is also why in Ep.8 he couldn't stop himself from posting little photos on Instagram hinting at their love affair with the hashtag #JustFriends (see Ep.8 [4/4] 0.56), much to secretive Pran's chagrin.
However, what BBS only quietly suggests (without showing it to us directly) is that Pat doesn't seem to do so well when it's just him alone. He says at Ep.7 [2/4] 5.46 "I can’t sleep if I don’t have Nong Nao in my arms", which at first I took to be solely a ruse to get Pran over to his apartment. But now I think it hints of more, that extrovert Pat's inner world is not really a place he likes to inhabit, unlike introvert Pran who takes refuge in his internal sanctuary.
With regard to Nong Nao's age, Pran refers to the doll-pillow as neither new nor old, but "oldish" (see Ep.7 [2/4] 5.43). So it's not a relic from Pat's early childhood, which would be about a decade and a half prior (and Nong Nao's appearance also aligns with this).
I'm only guessing, but it would seem that Pat took to needing Nong Nao to help him fall asleep maybe in his early teens or just before? This would be around the time when an individual starts questioning their identity and how it relates to their sense of self.
I think what BBS shows us is that Pran has a pretty strong grip on his own mindset and identity. His inner world can't have been the most comfortable, but it was comfortable enough for him because it was the single source of truth about himself and reassuring in its unchanging nature (see this write-up here).
On the other hand Pat's innermost self, at least before he coupled up with Pran, must have been quite a different environment. From childhood Ming had pushed his son to be a proxy in his battle with the Siridechawats, and the naturally-open and loving Pat was taught, maybe even forced against his better instincts, to "hate" Pran next door (using own word from Ep.10 [4/4] 10.32).
So when in the world outside, Pat was fully sure of himself and his role there. But when it was just him alone, his outside self wouldn't have gelled with his internal reality and must have caused him all sorts of unease and uncertainty.
For how can you be comfortable and secure in your own company, when you are in some ways a stranger to yourself, and you don't truly recognize who you are? Within his inner confines, Pat would have been seeing diverse versions of himself juxtaposed and jostling for centerstage, and to have had these different, seemingly-familiar faces haunting your (sub- or semi-) consciousness would likely have been a scarily disorientating scenario in one so young.
And when Pran was sent away, teen Pat no longer had Pran's company and counsel, and no more tin-can phone calls right before bedtime to comfort him and keep him safe from whatever demons lurked in the darkness whenever it was just him alone in his world.
It's not surprising that Nong Nao would have been a tremendous comfort to Pat, because this reminder of his unadulterated friendship with Pran, borne from his true self and unpolluted by Ming's influence, was also a reminder of his true nature and identity in his head, where other renderings of Pat planted by Ming also had to co-exist like various ghostly beings, animated but not true to life.
What terrors must plague your night-time dreams, that you have to clutch a little stand-in babyghoul, appropriately monsterish as a shield against the monsters haunting your loneliest moments – and the horror only multiplies when you realize that the monsters are various versions of you?
How tragic is that, not to know your own heart, or to feel safe alone with it?
Maybe this is why for most of BBS, Pat is shown to us as being out of touch with his inner self (e.g., he could not tell that his incipient romantic feelings were for Pran and not Ink). I can see him escaping into the day as much as he could, fleeing from the darkness within – and when he had no choice at night, he had to have Nong Nao/Bad Buddy/Pran clutched to his front as armor. (But it appears that he could not escape things entirely, and the darkly-frowning Pat of Ep.1 [1I4] 1.08, devoid of Pran and beset by demons, is our first view of him before Pran comes back into his life.)
Pran was the original savior in BBS, when he saved Pa from drowning in Ep.1. He may not have known it, but I think he saved Pat too – from himself and the monster he had become. For it was Pran who helped Pat to see who he really was inside – someone open-hearted and capable of loving truly, not just some ghostly shell programmed only to hate the boy next door.
But just as Pran remained loyal to his PP bag throughout BBS, Pat never abandoned Nong Nao either, even when the little stitched-up imp no longer had to understudy for Pran in Pat's life after they became a couple, and even after Pat settled into knowing himself for who he truly was.
And I think this is because – even with Pran in his life as partner, soulmate and protector of his heart – our big-hearted boy with so much love to give isn't ever going to forsake any reminder of Pran Parakul Siridechawat, and will hold him tightly to his heart physically and figuratively, for all the rest of his life. 💖
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