Sleepless Society: Two Pillows & A Lost Soul Review

Two Pillows & A Lost Soul (2020) was the third one of the Sleepless Society: The Series miniseries I watched, but it was the fourth to be released. The quality decline was noticeable, but there were still things to like, and everything came together in an explosive finale. This is a clear case of diminishing returns. Needless to say: there will be SPOILERS.

Kate is an actress turned motivational speaker trapped in an abusive marriage to an up-and-coming politician, Chad. She has a recurring dream of killing him that’s becoming more and more intense. She’s getting closer to finally filing for divorce, when a friend, Ploy, throws her a party and hires two male prostitutes. Kate sleeps with one, Top, and wakes up next to the other’s dead body. The victim was killed exactly the same way she’d been dreaming of killing her husband, but Top confesses to the murder. His younger brother, Tew, doesn’t believe he’s guilty and goes to work for Kate in the hopes of finding enough evidence to get his brother out of jail. Two police officers, Harn and So, also think there's something off about the case and keep investigating the murder. Meanwhile, Kate's therapist is becoming increasingly worried about her patient's mental state. However, not only are Chad’s political allies invested in protecting his reputation, but he also starts spending time with the party’s main fixer, Rat. It’s a dangerous game and few will come out alive.

This one isn’t going to be easy. I like the story of Two Pillows & A Lost Soul and I like the characters, but the miniseries itself has issues. I think the problem lies with the How and not the What. There’s not enough story for thirteen episodes, and the writers couldn’t come up with some good filler. This created a very uneven pacing and at one point, it felt as if they had lost the plot before pulling everything together in the final episode. I could’ve done without the more soap opera elements, like the pregnancy loss storyline. The fake-out with Rat’s death was so dumb. Did anyone watching this believed Chad’s vengeful boyfriend was going to just randomly die off-screen? The fake-out with So’s death worked better. In any other series, I would’ve expected her to have lived, but after all the emphasis on the omnipotence of Chad’s party and Insomnia’s corruption always wins theme, I really thought she was dead. I loved seeing her show up again and save Kate’s therapist.

And how ironic is it that Insomnia, which had an exchange about how not every story needs love, was followed by a show that is so dependent on romantic relationships? Two Pillows & A Lost Soul may have the same anticorruption theme as Insomnia. It may even make it more front and centre due to Chad’s direct connection to politics and Tew being an activist and part of a greater movement trying to challenge the ruling party. It may be a more damning critique of Thai politics, showing a country where it's scarily easy to have evidence destroyed, honest police officers and innocent people murdered, and the most heinous acts swept under the rug. However, unlike in Insomnia, it’s not these greater forces that move the plot, rather they are dragged along by an abusive marriage and a trio of messy relationships – Kate/Tew, Chad/Rat, and Chad/Ploy.

I wrote in my review of Sleepless Society: The Series that Two Pillows & A Lost Soul had the best characters, and I stand by it. Most of the main characters are some degree of bad. Even naive, idealistic Tew is willing to abandon his principles for love. At least So never wavered.

The show keeps reminding us that Kate is a victim, both of Chad and of her controlling, judgemental mother. However, it also keeps giving us glimpses of a darker side, a not very nice and troubled personality underneath the layer of victimhood. This side is betrayed by her sleeping disorder – all that bottled up anger that ends up pushing her to kill someone in her sleep. Kate is a very imperfect victim. Tew’s professor even tells him that both she and Chad can be bad people, but he refuses to listen.

Tew never becomes as frustrating as Karn from Nyctophobia because he’s much younger and in the end actually tries to do the right thing. I get that he’s naive and can’t see Kate as anything other than a victim, but it was still annoying to see him ignoring his friends’ warnings and almost throwing away his principles for her. I liked that he eventually changed his mind, even if it didn’t turn out well for him. Kate slowly pushing the knife into his heart... Yikes!

Chad is just irredeemably bad. He horribly abuses Kate, uses and later kills Ploy, beats up Harn, and is of course in league with his extremely corrupt political party. Even after he becomes a victim himself, he still doesn’t stop abusing his wife. At least the killing of Tew’s law professor was an accident. And yet, the series allows him to show a little humanity in his relationship with Rat. I like it when villains aren’t one hundred percent evil – people are complex beings – as long as that isn’t used to excuse their actions.

Rat is also an objectively bad person. After all, his job as “consultant” to the biggest political party includes kidnapping, murder, and corpse disposal. However, he actually comes across as less awful than Chad, whose acts of violence are a lot more intimate and personal. It’s also interesting to compare his relationship with his verbally abusive bedridden father with Kate’s relationship with her terrible mother. Only one of them smirked as their parent accidentally – or maybe not – fell down the stairs...

Not everything about the relationships between the characters works, either because of the writing or the acting.

I was glad when Kate confessed that she’d been using Tew and only realized she loved him when he was dying. The beginning of their relationship felt so forced. It makes more sense that she’d share so much so quickly if her goal was to push him to get rid of Chad for her. I still don’t quite believe that she’d really fall for him, but then again, judging by the ending that wasn’t real love, so... I don’t get how Kate isn't able to see that Ploy is working against her. Must be a case of plot-induced stupidity.

I also couldn’t see this incredibly charming side of Chad that Kate mentioned and thought the actor managed to be more menacing when acting less crazy. As for his ability to make not one but two people so attached to him that they’d go to such extremes, I’m going to chalk Rat and Ploy’s behaviour to individual circumstances rather than Chad’s non-existent personal charm. A killer who lives with his father probably doesn’t have many chances to form romantic relationships, and some people are just naturally obsessive. There, I guess that explains it.

I wrote in my review of Insomnia that it was sometimes preachy, but Two Pillows & A Lost Soul tops it all with the speech by Tew’s professor. That was just too much. Especially since there's also Harn speech about honest cops doing the right thing. The party leader was also too much, but since I’m guessing the dog is a reference to the current Thai king, it probably fits.

So, about that drawing Kate made under hypnosis. I watched the show on a laptop and even paused the image, but I couldn’t make anything out. I guess I just  have to take Kate’s therapist at her word that it shows the exact scenario that played out in the apartment. The video of the murder was also confusing. For a while I thought we were going to find out Kate had been set up because it shows her leaving the frame before she stabs him. The final confrontation wasn’t well shot – the action should’ve flown better. It was still far superior to that mess in Bedtime Wishes, though. And of course, followed by a depressing message about how corruption will never stop even when there are glimmers of hope. I was shocked that Kate’s therapist managed to enter the building with the evidence – I expected her to be run over, shot, or stabbed the moment she stepped out of the car.

Despite its many flaws, I still found things to like in Two Pillows & A Lost Soul. The same cannot be said of the next, and last, Sleepless Society miniseries I’ll review... Oh, and I should probably have mentioned this in my Insomnia review, too: anyone who has problems with depictions of sexual abuse should steer clear of this show.

By Wilcox