Leap Day 1×01 Review: Episode 1

The first episode of Leap Day dropped today. And as I predicted in my GMMTV 2024 round-up post, this is absolutely a show that I’m going to have to watch through my fingers. Already we’re starting out tense and suspenseful, waiting for the terrible things that we know are going to happen.

Leap Day is the story of Day (Pond Naravit) and Night (Dew Jirawat), who both share the uncommon birthday of February 29. Both of them are plagued with a terrible curse where every four years, on their birthday, someone they love dies. This has led to them being isolated, with few friends and little family. At least, family who will associate with them.

This was a great first episode. I loved how they introduced the concept of the show by using Day’s film class project. It ramps up the tension almost immediately, because from the graphics at the beginning of the scene, we know that it’s only a few days before his birthday. So you spend the entire episode on pins and needles, knowing that someone is about to die.

And thus we’re introduced to the two likeliest victims, Day’s cousin Ozone (Gun Attaphan) and Night’s girlfriend Dream (Pahn Pathitta). We find out that Night has been trying to distance himself from Dream for a while, likely because he hopes that if he pretends not to love her, the curse will not take her. Ozone makes a similar observation to Day, that if he didn’t love him, Ozone wouldn’t be in danger.

If the idea of a curse isn’t supernatural enough, whatever happened at Day and Ozone’s house is. I can maybe buy the water dripping into the power strip causes the fan to literally blow apart (although that struck me as very Final Destination). But what happened with all the light bulbs bursting was just freaky. Clearly some supernatural forces are at play there. So maybe this will have a little bit of Final Destination, at least in the sense of very odd and freakish accidents.

There are also supernatural elements in the characterization of Ozone. Ozone has autism; noise sensitivity and a hyperfixation on space. As such, he spends much of the episode telling Day that the stars are talking to him. He keeps repeating that “Day and Night must meet”, so I’m wondering if the incident with the light bulbs was the universe trying to get Ozone out of the house, so that Day would chase him, and Ozone would end up being hit by Night’s car. Thus Day and Night meet. It’s clear that whatever is necessary to end the curse, it will require both of them.

I was pretty surprised that this episode opens just a few days from their birthday; however, it’s February 2020. This to me implies that they’ll “get through” their birthday and then spend the next four years trying to break the curse. Even with the cliffhanger ending – both Ozone and Dream are rushed to the hospital in the closing moments – and the potentially misleading trailer for next week’s episode, I suspect we’re getting faked out.

Yes, I do believe we’re being misdirected at this point. Gun and Pahn are both listed as main characters, so they wouldn’t be killed off in the first episode. The promo for next week makes it look like Day is at Ozone’s funeral, but I stopped believing what trailers tell me years ago. And given that we’ve been specifically told that this episode is set in 2020, I think it’s highly likely that they survive the accident.

Plus, you know, they’re consistently in the trailer. So it’s not that much of a stretch or a brilliant deduction that the accident is a bit of a fake-out. It’s not Ozone and Dream that will die; it’s just the catalyst for Day and Night to meet.

However, someone clearly does die, because that’s part of the curse. Day is at a funeral in the promo, and one of his family members flat-out tells him that everyone else is uncomfortable around him. Someone’s heart monitor flatlines. Doctors update Day and Night on the conditions of their loved ones and the ends of their sentences are cut off. It’s not going to be Ozone and Dream, but it has to be somebody. I think for Night it may be his housekeeper, but I’m not sure who it might be for Day – one of his groupmates, perhaps?

Also, I’m pretty sure that a lot of the next episode may be flashback, just based on what we’re being shown. I think next week we’ll find out both how Night and Dream met and how Day ended up as Ozone’s caretaker. (I had always assumed that Ozone was Day’s brother, but if so, I’m sure the curse would have taken him already. According to MyDramaList, Ozone is the son of a distant relative who dies; I think that’s the auntie Day is talking to in the promo. I also assumed Ozone was younger, but I’m pretty sure I heard Day call him “phi”.)

Anyway, tl;dr, despite all evidence to the contrary, Ozone and Dream do not die. At least in this episode. But this is the kind of show where no one is safe.

After this episode, I’m much more excited for this show than I was before. Yes, it’ll wreak havoc with my anxiety, but I can’t wait to try and solve the mystery. I really hope that we get hints and clues about what’s going on. I love trying to piece together the story before having the answer revealed. Something like this may be a little difficult – after all, how do you solve “curse”? – but I think it’s possible as long as they tell us something.

For example, I’m already pretty suspicious of Night’s professor who also has a February 29 birthday. The fact that he asked a student to cover his class while he ran home implies he also needed to make sure his family was safe from a curse. But then, if something like that happened to you every time it was your actual birthday, wouldn’t you remember it?

There’s also the random woman who accosted Day and Ozone when they were at the planetarium. Will we see her again? Or was she just a plot device to emphasize the supreme bad luck that follows Day around?

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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