Hometown Cha Cha Cha Ep 6 - A Biological Crisis [Podcast]

Streaming Banshees
Podcast Transcript

Podcast Episode 8

Episode title: A Biological Crisis

Date Released: April 11, 2022

Show: Hometown Cha Cha Cha Ep 6

Beep: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Streaming Banshees, your home for TV Book Club on the internet. This is Beep and today's podcast is going to be about Hometown Cha Cha Cha episode six. Just a reminder, we are a rewatch podcast. So, spoilers from the entire series will be baked into this so that we can understand the connections throughout. 

You can reach me on Twitter @beepsplain. You can find the podcast on our website, streaming banshees.com, as well as on Twitter @TVBanshees, come and talk with us. We're loving to hear people's theories and kind of how they're connecting things. It's really interesting to see [00:01:00] what other people might have viewed.

So with that, I am joined as always by the lovely CC. 

CC: Hey guys, good to be back. You can find me @acapitalchick. Hey Beep. Are you ready to have a biological crisis? 

Beep: I love that term. It's ridiculous. And it makes me so happy. 

CC: It's like such a catch phrase. And I use it all the time now, like when I'm watching something else, I'm like, uh-oh someone's having a biological crisis.

Beep: It's just such that idea right? Of being driven by that kind of subconscious, like, you just can't help what you're about to do. And then you don't really know how to feel about it. So we're just kind of like taking that roller coaster ride with not necessarily much choice involved. Uh, you just got to see where, where it spins out at the end.

CC: Yeah. But also trying to put it in a box to be like, no, no, no, that's all, that's all that it is.

Beep: Definitely not happening. [00:02:00] 

CC: I like to think of this episode as the denial episode. 

Beep: And honestly, in some ways it's way worse than the morning after one. 

CC: Yeah. Oh yeah. 

Beep: Cause everyone gets oof, prickly and defensive and oh man. They know that they know. And the other one knows that they know and it is ugly. 

CC: Yeah. There's some, there's some hedgehogs with spikes colliding if we just want to take that metaphor.

Beep: Hey, I think we've got some porcupines in this episode. 

CC: What I think is so hilarious about it is the quote at the end of the episode, when Chief Hong says to Hye-jin, "is being inconsistent, your motto? Your words don't match your actions." It's like the theme of the episode for both of them.

The lack of self-awareness put on display in an interrogation room with [00:03:00] warm lights. Nice try guy. I know. I can just picture like deposing both of them and be like, so when you said you didn't want to get involved in the community Hye-jin, and then you got on stage to perform a K-pop dance, what did you mean by that?

Beep: Don't forget, you're under oath. 

CC: Yeah, but it's the other thing is so, so that's, that was always there. And that was, that's always the like really fun part of a well executed, slow burn is that stage of, I don't have feelings. What, no, I'm not catching feelings. It's fine. It's fine. But of course, as always with rewatching Hometown Cha Cha Cha, there is a much deeper and really moving story that we watch unfold now that we know why Chief Hong is denying his feelings. Even as he still doggedly tries to stay connected to her in some way. Like he can't, he's like stuck in not [00:04:00] being able to admit that this is romantic. While also cannot handle being cut off. Which is how Hye-Jin Hye-Jin, doesn't like gray areas, right?

She says later on the show, I like things black and white. So it's really interesting now that we know why, you know, it's not just a typical romcom, the guy just doesn't understand what he's feeling like it, maybe seemed on first watch, the scenes when he is sitting with obviously thinking about things and feeling things just like she is, but just not able to act-- feel like he can act on it, is really, you know, I know I use this word, like every podcast, but poignant.

Big picture, big picture. I wanted to talk about two things, before we dive into scene by scene later in the podcast, we're going to talk a lot about Shin Haeun's reference to Leo Tolstoy's, collection of short stories, What Men Live [00:05:00] By and the importance of love and community to Tolstoy's sort of philosophical musings.

But so this episode is a study in conflict and estrangement between people who also still really care about one another. And if you think about it like a series of dominoes or having sort of ripple effects, you have do Du-sik and Hye-jin and they have this conflict between them about what they are and what happened and what that means going forward.

But then they also have this proxy battle on behalf of this conflict between a father and daughter between Ju-ri and Oh Yoon which in turn, then highlights the estrangement between another father and daughter Hye-jin and her dad. And as they sort of battle it out in this kind of circular pattern and then [00:06:00] reach resolution and understanding and have these moments of reconciliation, if you were to think about it, sort of like be arrows going around in a circle, it's like one conflict leads into another conflict, which leads to another conflict, which then leads to reconciliation, then reconciliation, reconciliation, and yeah, it's just this beautiful microcosm of a community and how reaching out to others and helping others can then have this wonderful ripple effect of that then spurring on more reconciliation and more people helping one another.

Beep: Yeah. Especially when you have a perspective or a life experience that they clearly. 

CC: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's a lot of which we'll get into, but particularly with Hye-jin as this remembering when she was the teenage girl standing in Ju-ri shoes, but then also getting a front seat to what must, what it must have been like for her father as a single dad.

Yeah. [00:07:00] Yeah. But I mean, all of it is, is this proxy battle also for the, you know, the main relationship in the show between Du-sik and Hye-jin and it's just, you know, basically the two of them being nosy is what breaks past this, this impasse about what they are to one another, and then how they deal with that in their own idiosyncratic ways.

Beep: It's funny because it's almost like in those arguments, they both choose a side. So that from a standpoint, like they're vicariously able to fight out their own battle because they can't actually address it. But they're like, well, I'm on this side and I'm on that side. So let's, let's smack down, but just not about the thing that we actually need to talk about.

CC: That's a great point.

And that brings us to the other big picture theme that as Shin Haeun always does bringing deeper meaning to life through dental metaphors [00:08:00] in this episode Ju-ri talks about what I'm going to call the snaggletooth, the snaggletooth metaphor, which is what Ju-ri says at the end of the episode is there is this boy I like, but I can't smile in front of him.

Oh yeah. It's a wonderful metaphor about being afraid of showing the parts of yourself that you don't like to somebody else. 

Beep: Sure. And also reaching deeper because there's only so much about that, that you can hide. Cause it's, it's external. Right. But there are parts of us internally that we get much better at making sure that nobody sees.

CC: Yeah. And, but the thing is, is that all of those parts is what makes us us. And you can't participate in life fully [00:09:00] in an emotional way. If you keep it buried and hidden. What I think is I want to, I want to take what that, I think that means for Hye-jin first. And I, think that if we're going to apply the snaggletooth metaphor to Hye-jin in this episode, she feels like she's already showed her snaggletooth.

Beep: Oh yeah. And been rejected for it. Yeah. 

CC: She acted on her feelings which is not, as we will learn through Mi-seon, typical for her at all. Now she feels rejected, embarrassed, and also jealous because she's watching Chief Hong walk around with this other woman while he is consistently saying the word friend to her, like repeatedly over the head, which is so painful.

If you think about that, you just kissed this guy the other night and he, then he pretended that it didn't happen. And then once he couldn't do that, he was like, oh no, that was just a drunken mistake. Right? [00:10:00] So she falls back on being prickly, on cutting off connection and trying to fall back on her initial motto of my, my own business and take care of myself.

That's how she's gonna deal with it. On the other hand, while Hye-jin 's approach to this conflict is putting up this prickly, exterior and cutting off connection. Chief Hong has the opposite impulse, which is to, with his Chief Hong mask firmly in place to act cheerful and push the friend angle and be like, everything's fine, right?

Like it was just a misunderstanding. We're still friends. We're still friends because his snaggletooth is obviously all of the things that he feels responsible for and deep shame for, and truly questions. What Oh-Yoon says to him is you later in the episode, that you're one of the most decent people that I know, and, and he's [00:11:00] stuck in that.

And he, that is going to be sort of his hangup for, for most of this series is showing that snaggletooth and he's not going to truly do it until the end of episode 15. 

Beep: Yeah. And, and he's interesting because I think you can establish at this point, and I know a Shin Haeun even said before, you know, he, he kind of was already in it from minute one, but by this point, dudes caught feelings.

Okay. And he knows that he's aware of it, but his entire life right now is based on pushing down his past his guilt and his shame. And yet those are the things that he lives out of constantly. That's why he's trying to make sure nobody sees, but it's also, it always informs his decision-making. So I think that he actually may have gone on that journey with her and been honest about it.

Were it not for the fact, he just doesn't think he [00:12:00] deserves. And he's been on this journey himself for so long and can't get past these things. I mean, the way he rejects in his own thought process, what Oh-Yoon says about him being the was decent person. I mean, you could just like feel the cringe because he is, it's weird.

Cause I want to say he's acting as a decent person, which is not true, but that, I think that is what he thinks. Right. We always go back to that idea of a tone mint and what he's trying to do. But unfortunately he has come as far in this process of healing as he can on his own. And he has not been able to make the leap yet and doesn't know how to make the leap of letting someone else into that process so that he can actually heal from it.

The only input that he ever gets besides, you know, therapy sometimes, but there's only so much you can do in a room it's different when you get back out into the real world and you have to deal with it. He has not let [00:13:00] a single other person understand his past and how it informs his current thought process and every action that he takes.

CC: Yeah. And, and, you know, it's compounded by the fact, I mean, I think anybody. Would struggle with that, but it's compounded by the fact which we, we are reminded of in that same conversation with Oh-Yoon that he's been alone since he was a teenager. And the next person that he opened up to, he lost him too, and was blamed for his death too.

And so it's, it's not, I think it's both being stuck in how to move on in opening up to others about his trauma, but that is also compounded by the fact that he has tragically been alone. And so it's not something that he even has sort of the muscle memory for. 

Beep: Right. And a lot of ways, I'm not sure he thinks he's capable of moving [00:14:00] on.

And then for sure he doesn't deserve to move on. 

CC: Right. Because he'll ask Gam-ri permission. The last conversation we'll ever have with her is asking permission if it is okay to do that. So let's jump into picking back up on the beach scene and how this, then what kicks off this conflict of how are we going to deal with what we are and their sort of car crash point of views and, and different sort of interpersonal styles about how they're going to deal with it.

 extreme, extreme, silent treatment versus extreme forced cheerfulness. Hye-Jin gives them. So if we add it all up, she has basically given him three chances to come clean about what he remembers and he denies it again. 

Beep: Because she finally did remember initially she didn't, but at the end or, you know, the, kind of the epilogue of the last episode, she finally did remember.

[00:15:00] So now it's less of a question and more of a test. 

CC: Yeah. And he denies it and he is left. Beautiful symbolism. He's talked all about, you talked a big game about what an umbrella symbolizes, right? Trying to manage risk, trying to hedge your bets. And when he does that by denying what happened between them for the third time, he is left alone, standing under the symbol of not taking risk, which then leads us to our next car crash of points of view.

Beep talk to me about if you were in Hye-jin shoes. 

Beep: Oh my goodness. I mean the rejection would destroy me and knowing that it's not like a ghosting situation that you're going to have to continue to see this person. I mean, I think I'd [00:16:00] be a lot like her. I would be infuriated. Yeah. You're we're down to the point where your.

Uh, I mean, I don't want to say line that feels a little strong, but I'm going to say it you're lying about this because I have now remembered. You're not saying you don't remember, you're literally saying nothing happened and I know it did. And you know, I know it did, you know, like the circle of we're all fully aware of what's going on here.

And you're still telling me that like, Ooh, and you know, she's caught feelings too, to some degree. I don't really think she knows what to do with them. It's her situation is different than his, but oh man. I mean the level right there of rejection is, oh, it's cringe. 

CC: Yeah, because it's, it's re she has so many, she goes through, it's like, it's like a hundred tiny deaths because it's like, first, first she has the, I don't know what happened, [00:17:00] sort of blackout terror that we talked about in the last podcast. Then she has, why is he pretending that it didn't happen? She has to go through that before she gets to being told it was a drunken mistake and let's just be friends. So it's just like, she has to go through multiple waves of rejection and, and like it just, when you see her sitting there alone in the dark, in her room, And her best friend comes in and says, why do you look like your whole world burned down?

And then if you want to see, you know, again, if we want to like, sort of just pull back in life experience, Hey, we learn, we learn a lot. Mi-seon does a lot of emotional work and filling us in on how we should be contextualizing how Hye-jin is reacting to this. Right? She, she hasn't dated a lot of guys. [00:18:00] We, we know from the previous episode that she had a very painful and formative rejection and humiliation by a boyfriend in college and that this, I think anybody would feel embarrassed and rejected.

But for, for Hye-jin that hasn't dated. It sounds like a lot, if at all, really in her adult life and that it is very Mi-seon is like, you do what? You kissed, what, like you got drunk at this guy's house and kissed him? That doesn't sound like you. So it's not just that. I think the typical humiliation that aren't in rejection, that everybody would feel, but this is very out of character for her, which tells us two things.

Even if she doesn't fully realize it, her feelings for him are pretty darn intense. 

Beep: Yeah, because where is he [00:19:00] is like, just what you said with the umbrella. He, even though he said you should risk, he is now mitigating it. Whereas she spent her whole life mitigating risk and she took the chance and now it's blowing up in her face.

CC: Yeah. Like if you think about that, that metaphor that she used about holding her hand in a fist for control, right? She went out on a limb with that liquid courage of alcohol, but also fueled by intense feelings that her inhibitions went down and she acted on them. And then the guy who just gave her the speech about taking risks to shut it down.

And so she behaves, I think pretty, you know, not surprisingly, she says, I am letting myself get too comfortable here. Like I got to shut this down. And what is so wonderful about it? Because Hye-jin's journey is not just about Chief Hong. It's also about joining a community. She says here, right? I got a cut off.

I have to [00:20:00] shut this down. I am not ever getting involved with Chief Hong, but she's also saying I'm getting too comfortable here. Meaning I gotta, I gotta shut this down. This is temporary for me. I'm here to earn a lot of money and then I'm going back to Seoul. Like, right. I'm getting way too. It's not just about him.

And then you have Mi-seon talk to me about Mi-seon's reaction. She is absolutely hilarious. Like I just, I can't with her. She is. So she sees Hye-jin in the way that I feel like only a friend who's seen every portion of your life can, she's like, sure, girl, whatever. Like she knows that to some extent, there's no point in really trying to talk her out of this.

And she, I feel like she's just giggling internally, like, okay, we'll see. Yeah. I see. It's like the equivalent of that Jennifer Lawrence GIF of being like, yeah. Okay. Sure. You know, and they play, you know, it's, it's, it's telling it's, it's both comedic, right? Hye-jin is like, I'm shutting this [00:21:00] down and I need the drink from this water bottle and shoot, I forgot to take the cap off.

Right. Like, there's like all that her friend is just sitting there, like, ah, like watching her storm around and being like, okay. Right. And, and these stone is kind of like this Greek chorus for us through the entire episode of commenting on her friend. Words versus her actions. Right. Because you're clearly not flustered.

So everything you're saying is totally true. Yeah. But this is all again, bringing us back. This is the denial episode. So Hye-jin is basically standing up and talking about, I'm going to shut this down the way, like somebody talks about like a new year's resolution. And if you want to talk about like the great like symbolism of the denial is when she gets up the next morning, she opens up her closet.

She's face-to-face with her favorite pair of shoes that she has been wearing a lot, because it reminds her of somebody [00:22:00] she grabs them and stuffs them to the top of the closet. Oh yes. 

Beep: We can't even see the tangible results of what this relationship has been bringing to her life because he's the one for both shoes that was able to return them to her.

So even though, you know, that was her hope for a better future and all these things, it's been inextricably tied to him. I feel like in this episode, she literally goes through every stage of grief. Acceptance. She's just rotating through the other ones. You know, she's got that denial, but then she's going to get angry and then she's like bargaining with maybe if I just do it this way and depression of just, I'm going to sit here in my room, in the dark.

I mean, she's just going through the spiral and, and we're going to get everything here except the acceptance. 

CC: Yeah. Although she she will, she will accept the olive branch of what he's offering for now, at the end of the episode, but let's let's take a walk down the road, Beep to the [00:23:00] other Casa- -denial over Chief Hong's house. Beep, don't you hate it when you're just sitting there and you're reading a book of poetry and you come across the poem named the kiss, right. As you're trying to deny your feelings and not think about a kiss. 

Beep: Yeah. And it definitely seems like he didn't purposely go to that. So it literally just beats him over the head.

He's just kind of going through this book, like, okay. I'm I'm, I'm being in denial as well. And then it's like, here's your neon sign, bro. Nice try.

CC: I'm not gonna think about a cast. I'm not gonna think about a kiss. First kiss tastes like mud sunlight and roses

I would throw the book across the room.

But what, what I love about this, and it is a device that Shin Haeon [00:24:00] uses consistently throughout the first half of, of Hometown Cha Cha Cha because, because Chief Hong's inner inner character life is the mystery that she is slowly unfolding for us. She often uses books to give us a window into what he's thinking about. even as she sort of her narrative devices, that she's going to sort of delay telling us that explicitly, until much later in the story. So he's reading about a first kiss and what he does is he puts the book down. He's clearly thinking about it. He gets up, he paces, he's running his hands through his hair.

He goes outside. He takes care of the umbrella- Hye-jin's umbrella lays it out to dry carefully, right. He's like tending to it. And then you just sits there and he stares. And all of that is to let us know that while he may be denying his feelings [00:25:00] outwardly, and he's later going to be calling this a biological crisis, drunken mistake, Chief Hong is sitting there pacing over a first kiss and angsty because he's reading poetry about it.

So it's letting us know that for the rest of the episode, this is a front, you know, that was always there. And it was always meant to clue into the audience like, look, this is not one sided on Hye-jin's part, right? This is both of them have caught feelings and they're both denying it in different ways.

Right? So it was always meant to give us a window into how he was feeling about it, despite his jovial, let's just not make it a big deal. And let's be friends front to her. But on rewatch now that we know the root of what is bothering him about why he can't act on romantic feelings with her, [00:26:00] it's really painful.

Absolutely. Now that we have the gatekeeper poem and, and shin Hutchins commentary about it in the hometown Shaw script back, just to remind folks, the doorkeeper poem, which is from a collection of poetry called Portrait of Echoes by Kim Haengsook. The poem is you can't be here saying that is my job. It is my job to deny your purpose.

It is also my job to deny you the next day again, and waiting for you the next day, in order to deny you is also my job. It is my job to fall in love with you while waiting for you the next day. Thus denying my love. Yes. 

Beep: I feel like he wishes. This is the one he would've picked up right now, instead of an episode nine, because this is absolutely contrary.

In some ways to the kiss, this would reinforce what he [00:27:00] wants to think right now. Right? I have to deny this because that is my purpose because I don't deserve these things. Everyone, I love dies. There are so many reasons. It's my fault, the shame that guilt, it has to be this way. This is kind of written in the stars, if you will. My whole purpose is to deny you, but also like, I super love you. 

CC: Yeah, because I'm right. I'm this line of poetry about a first kiss is making me pacer around my apartment. like a beautiful disaster pining mess. And so what should Shin Haeun said about the gatekeeper poem and how it is supposed to inform the audience regarding chief Hong's journey throughout the entire show?

And again, we're relying on the generous translation of the Twitter account @_____ ah, she said. When he reads the poem, the gatekeeper, he pauses at the line. That's why it's my job to deny my love. It was his heart that he could neither [00:28:00] confess nor deny his love. Later. She says that he even was going to reject Hye-Jin because he held on to his string of reasons.

And while he loves her, he quote, didn't dare hope for them to be connected. And so this, this episode is our first sort of painful front row seat to Chief Hong denying his feelings for Hasian because of his own inner turmoil and inability to be able to move on from the past and, and even think that he deserves it.

And so deny he's going to deny that the kiss happened. And then when he can't do that anymore, he's going to deny what it meant. And yet the feelings it's like, he needs to put them somewhere else until she is so basically rude and says, you, you, you are even my friend, you right. Until she [00:29:00] closes that off, he cannot handle being cut off.

Beep: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're like, he wants to. Be a, what he feels comfortable with, even if they're interacting is kind of keeping that distance from her and be able to yearn from afar, if you will. And I hadn't thought about it this way before really, but when you boil down everything that he thinks he doesn't deserve in this life, the best word for it is hope he doesn't have the right to hope that he's ever going to be in a different position than he is right now, which is still that atonement and being disconnected from people and only being in the community on a surface level.

He doesn't deserve to hope for more than that. 

CC: Yeah. And even on first watch, I also thought that as we talked about in the last podcast, there's a shallow surface level conversation that we're having, that she has said quite rude things to him [00:30:00] that he's not worthy of her. Right. Because of their different social positions, all of those conversations in the last episode does not help anybody go out on a limb to say, absolutely not.

No, none of that helped, but you know, it, it is also complicated by the fact key sitting here, remembering this kiss and having to sit with the fact that he lied, he lied to her and said that it didn't happen. Yeah. So there's all these layers of complications. Not only because of his inner turmoil because of his trauma, but also is then compounded by the fact of how he deals with it.

So his denial makes it worse and makes it harder to deal with. So, I mean, Shin Haeun asks us, right. She invited us in the excerpt of the interview that we read in the last episode, interpret his journey, right? Like I have put all of this out here and I was purposefully sort of laying it out for the audience to interpret.

And so you've got, I'm not worthy [00:31:00] of her because I have to hide all of the horrible things that I did. And I'm responsible for that. People died. She already doesn't think I'm good enough for her. And now I lied about it to her. You've got all of that swirling around in. On top of the fact that he is thinking about this kiss, which takes us to the coffee shop.

Beep: This is brutal. It's so it's so painful. Oh my God. I mean, even though she has to address him directly, I feel like she's just acting like he's not even there. No, it's such a car wreck of, of how they both, they both woke up, right. They both woke up and they decided, okay, this is how I'm going to deal with it.

Hye-jin is like, I'm shutting this down. Those shoes went to the top of the closet. I'm cutting up all connection. No, you don't know what I'm going to order for coffee, because that is familiarity. And that you know me and you don't know me and I'm shutting this [00:32:00] down. Whereas Chief Hong had got up in the morning was like, okay, okay.

CC: Be cool. We're friends, we're friends, I'm acting \super-friendly and then we'll just be friends and then I'll have to deal with all of these other feelings that are swirling around and then that boom crashes into each other. 

Beep: Yeah. Because based on the choices that have already been made him just defaulting back to that is way too simple.

CC: Ah, the thing is, is that what is so wonderful and I'm using wonderful in an extremely painful way to watch that Shin Min-a, both her performance and the editing is very careful in showing us her regrets and discomfort when he's not looking about the way that she said. Because she is acting, you know, this is a childish, silent treatment, not dealing with it.

Head-on right. It's not like she's, I, I, I'm not saying that any, you know, I think most people probably wouldn't have the courage to walk in there and [00:33:00] be like, yeah. So by the way, I actually did remember it. So what's your deal. So, but she is quite dealing with this, like a silent treatment is, is both understandable and relatable, but also not really like mature or dealing with it, like in a way that's going to resolve anything.

Right. But, but they're, they're careful in showing us that she, it's not like she's enjoying less. If that makes sense. Kim Seon- ho and his face is like a journey of being hurt and noting every single way that she is cutting off connection with him. I don't want you to make my coffee. I don't want you to ask me about how I'm feeling.

It makes me uncomfortable. It's annoying. And he flat out is like, even though it's kind of in a kind of joking way, he's flat out. Like that hurts my feelings. 

Beep: I mean, wouldn't it [00:34:00] to anybody though. And this obviously only compounded by what they've just gone through, but that that's ouch coming from anybody that you've been spending time with.

Yeah, and I mean, don't make my coffee. Oh, whoa. That is like, that's almost the one that's worse.

CC: Yeah. And then with like the icing on the cake is she turns to Ooh, and then orders exactly what he predicted that she wanted. Oh, of course. It's just peak pettiness. And in trying to right. It's like, they both have a lot of challenges and how they deal with this in Hye-jin is just, the spikes are up man.

And it is painful to watch. And when he walks, he's all like, you know, his face kind of goes on this journey, noting all of it. And you see how much it's like, he's kind of reeling from the way that [00:35:00] she is treating him. And then he walks outside to the bicycle and says, so she remembers, Ooh. And it's like, at this point, I now is when the chess game really starts.

Yeah. Ah, so your move buddy, and to his credit he's, he's not going to just let it sit there and fester, but he's not going to make it better. 

Beep: So no, we're going to get some more teeth metaphors now.

CC: No, well, well we all, particularly, if you are a Veronica Mars fan, a trip to the dentist is not usually something that is enjoyable and his trip to the dentist is not going to be productive.

 So Hye-jin her the first sort of sign of that, the show is playing with fate or destiny, but, you know, always in a way that emphasizes choice,[00:36:00] she says Hye-jin says all because Chief Hong gave you my slippers to wear, I guess it was meant to be who walks in next Beep? 

Oh, my Chief Hong just busted in on everything, right.

Again, so casually. Right. And they gather around the next symbol of fate or destiny, which is the fortune plant. Sure. That only blooms every seven years. 

Beep: And yet we've still got the snark going on. You don't like, why do you even have a plant? You don't know the name of absolutely. Yeah. 

CC: But, but the thing that, the layer to that, that I sort of struck me rewatching it. First of all, Chief Hong and her father are gonna connect with one another over their love of plants. Right. Bringing it back to sort of the bigger theme that we talked about, about conflict and estrangement, between, you know, between people who love, you know, love each other is Hye-jin

[00:37:00] doesn't know what this plant means. She doesn't know what it's called. She doesn't know as her stepmother will share with her in episode nine, that her father goes to great lengths to pick out plants that, that have meaning for his daughter. Like this is his love language, but they don't talk to each other in the same, even though they're both similar, it's like she doesn't understand her father's love language.

He sent her something that he took great time and care to choose and is so excited at the end of this episode, when it's bloomed and his daughter doesn't know what it means. And so the plant is just this like lovely symbol of this estrangement. That is a thread running between all kinds of pairs of people in this episode who care about one another, but are talking past each other and not using the same ways to communicate.

And that in and of itself is causing [00:38:00] a conflict. In addition to obviously the symbolism of the every seven years of the fortune plant that we'll get to in the flashback. Beep don't you hate it. You've kissed a guy and you feel really embarrassed about it and rejected, and you're trying to avoid him. And then he comes to work and you have to stare at his lips.

Beep: Okay. Listen, praise God up and down that this is never happened to me because I would die. I love that. She tries to just cover his face. Like she can just act like it's this obscure pair of lips that are just, you know, exist. It's it's just this mouth that she has to deal with in her job. And he's like, oh, I don't like having my face covered.

It's just also casually terrible.

CC: I died. I just, I feel like my face is getting hot even now. Like that is horrible. [00:39:00] He's trying to be right. Overly casual, like, oh my God, look at you being all professional. Right. And she cuts everything off. Let's keep this professional. Right. She tries to cover his face so that his mouth is just detached from this person that she's tried to avoid.

And then she asks, I just need a bit, it has something been bothering you,

relationship. You mean the one we don't have? Oh my God. Eat is such a, we think to be, thank God she had a mask on for the scene. Right. Because. It is such a disaster of him trying to paper over this and find a path forward without meaningfully dealing with it. And all it's doing is making it worse. So imagine that you are Asian and put yourself in her point of view, [00:40:00] her friend is like, dude, you don't act like this.

She kissed a guy. It is not normal for her to kiss a guy. She says, she feels like embarrassed and rejected. And he says, is it because of that kiss because of a drunken mistake, things are awkward. Now for two people of the opposite sex to be friends, we must be able to move past a biological crisis. And don't forget, this is the first time he's even acknowledging that it happened.

Beep: And he just throws it out. Like it's some casual thing they've been alluding to. She's asked him three times. He's like, no, it's not even a thing. And now he's like, oh, it's because it's like, whoa, wait a minute.

CC: Right. Not I'm sorry. No, no. Just purely like, well, this is why I didn't want to bring it up because it's going to be awkward between us, which in and of itself is him cutting off that that kiss would lead.[00:41:00] 

Right. Because, because what he's saying is it was a drunken mistake. That's a, if you, on some level, like a guy and went out on a limb and he denied it and now he's acknowledging it, but he's calling it a drunken mistake. I just, what, I just like curl up in the fetal position for her because it's, it it's like call it.

It's just also like, you know, he's trying to make it not a big deal because he's trying, he thinks that the impasse is that she's embarrassed about this guess. And he's trying to find a way forward to, as he says, when you leave, like, I hope that resolve the tension between don't worry. It made it much worse, buddy, but by negating any meaning, he's making it so much worse.

Beep: Yeah. The, the way that he chooses to handle this at every turn is just, we are digging a hole, man. [00:42:00] Uh, so that again, like while her responses, her response is great, like your mouth is, you know, I checked your mouth, it's free of a biological crisis burn. And afterwards what she does when she's uncomfortable is she lashes out right.

CC: And often says things that she shouldn't or come out quite pointed and harsh, but after he leaves like, you know, she's so kind of like down about this, that she keep. And then her friend shows her like team gossip, girl Gunjan is now tracking his movements. He's just, he's just camp. He's just come from her office being like, dude, we're just friends.

And now he's galvanizing all about town with some random woman and everybody in town is gossiping about it. And he seems just so casual with her. You don't see any sort of conflict. It's just, they're just strolling around being [00:43:00] chill while he's sitting there telling Hye-jin oh, we should just be friends.

So it obviously looks like to her perspective and to anybody's over just he's moving on. That's why he didn't want this to happen because there's somebody else. Yeah. And then you also feel, you feel even stupider because you're sitting there like down about it. Right. And you know, again, Mi-seon is sort of the vehicle, you know, we see it with our own eyes, but Mi-seon and also is like, dude, I can't even like, enjoy my lunch.

Like what is your deal? But obviously we know that it is directors, use colleagues, the writer. And I, I love the way that this episode, both with directors, she meeting up with chief Hong and how they enjoy Gam-ri food together and tucking the napkin in his shirt and just, they, the show, you know, purposefully spent time establishing that these two men actually have a lot in common and really like each.

Even though the episode is going to [00:44:00] end with officially kicking off our love triangle 

Beep: and what is possibly the funniest way a love triangle has ever been started. 

CC: Right. But again, in a way that, so much of the, sort of what I think kind of lovely first love that doesn't work out, story between Directors Ji and Hye-jin it's about timing and Director Ji's timing is off the whole episode until the end. So when he walks off and what chief honk thinks is the wrong direction. It's because he's caught out of the corner of his eye, Hye-jin walking, but he misses her when she turns the corner. The next time Hye-jin feels really jealous. When she sees Chief Hong walking around with this mysterious women, she, she woman, she decides she's going to go eat her feelings and buys out all of the sausages at the grocery store just before Director's Ji after seeing her went there to go buy one for her.[00:45:00] 

And so, you know, and he is, he is the one staging this whole concert at the end and then sees her up on stage. But isn't able to talk to her because she's up on stage and he's running it. And so there's all this kind of like lovely kind of. Sad for Director J’s foreshadowing of, of how his timing is always off.

When it comes to Hye-jin which is hit the journey he's going to have to go on and going out on a limb with, with his writer colleague. So that brings us to two simultaneous fights. Juiri shows up at Hye-jin house late at night, and she's run away from home. She's stolen money from her dad. Like I have a daughter, I have a daughter exactly Juri’s age. I was like, oh wow. Wow, you stole, you cleared out your dad's safe and ran away. Although, you know, in contrast to what [00:46:00] we learned about Hye-jin, she basically just ran away to the dentist house in town. Right. But what I love that sets up this whole seat is the woman who at the beginning of this episode said that I'm getting too comfortable.

Here is feeding a runaway teenager fried chicken while she's sitting next to the hedgehog that she's keeping for two kids. 

Beep: Oops. 

CC: Beep, Chief Hong shows up and we have the really interesting conflict between not only the person who is sort of longstanding in the community, Chief Hong, versus the outsider.

And maybe that's what. Even on a, like more basic level, easier for Hye-jin to side with Ju-ri, but you have the daughter who also grew up without a mother taking jury side. And meanwhile, you have [00:47:00] the orphan taking the father's side. Talk to me about the tension in this scene between Hye-jin and Du-sik.

Beep: This is so hard because there, there are so many things going on in the sense that it really is not cool that he busts into her house. We're we're not, I mean, I feel like they're not in a place for that period, and they're definitely not in a place for that right now. and he just has automatically, you know, chosen his side for the father because that's the way I feel like he kind of looks at it.

He wants to protect people. He wants to, you know, make sure they're okay. He's doing that both for and jury trying to, you know, keep them together. He's obviously got an issue with families and separating and all that, but Hye-jin is like, um, I've been a teenage girl and I'm going to need you to calm down right now.

CC:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I see both their points because. Uh, you know, if my daughter ran away to somebodies [00:48:00] house and I knew, and, and they went to an adult's house and that adult didn't call me to let me know where the hell my kid was like, you know, Chief Hong has a point like you can't just like, let this girl stay at your house and not let her father know where she is.

Right? There's this proxy fight where Hye-jin is fighting on behalf of Ju-ri and do Du-shik is fighting on behalf of Oh Yoon and they both have points, but, but also obviously the tension that is underlying this whole fight, which is quite palpable between the two of them, they are really annoyed at each other.

And he is clearly not just about this teenage girl running away. The moment when Ju-ri pushes Hye-jin into Chief Hong is a lot, Beep. 

Beep: Yes. Everyone sees their connection except, them, and, and we have acknowledged that this point, they [00:49:00] kind of see it, but everyone else is on board for it. And they are in the worst possible point.

I feel like that they'll get to before they start acting, you know, actually acknowledge a relationship. I mean, Hye-jin is, I mean, they're, they both, but particularly shook after that happened, she just went, she just hit a wall, which is Chief Hong's chest. And she just kind of like needs a minute at the counter before he can get back into this.

It's hard to watch because he is so unwilling to deal with what is really the impasse between them. And yet is so upset about their estrangement, because the way he walks out of there, like, sorry for the intrusion, none of that is about jury. 

Beep: No, it's about the place that they're at [00:50:00] and the, which is why essentially she's trying to kick him out and he's being extremely pushy and he, you know, is trying to act like it's for another reason.

But I mean, talk about their always discussing crossing lines. I mean, he's literally crossed the threshold of her home. 

CC: Yeah. The way he just like, kind of picks up that backpack and drags it out there, he looks so like defeated and it's like, he's so I just, there's just all these layers. It's like, he's so stuck.And he is so unable to deal with the consequences of, of cutting off romantic connection between them because she's, she's like. She's dealing with her own feelings about it, and the way that Hye-jin is going to deal with it as cutting off connection, he can't handle it. It's really painful to watch. 

So then we have these two parallel heart to hearts.You have this, and it's something I [00:51:00] relate to a lot watching a parent sort of, and I'm not, you know, watching a parents struggle with raising a teenager, let alone doing it on your own as a single parent. that's really lovely in how you have on the one hand, the two daughters, the two daughters who are growing up or grew up without their mothers.

And on the other hand, the orphan talking to the father. So let's take Hye-jin and Ju-ri asks her, why did you let me stay beat? Talk to me about Hye-jin response. It reminded me of the past. 

Beep: Oh yeah. It seems like in a way she understands, obviously she understands the tension between a daughter and the father who doesn't get her.

So it's almost like she's kind of giving, not only giving Ju-ri a break, but also kind of [00:52:00] treating, if you will, her kids self in what she may have wanted instead of being immediately returned, she may have wanted some space to deal with the situation that they were going through. 

CC: Which actually this sort of lovely piece that we'll learn her father gave to her, her father handled this very differently than Oh Yoon. and not, not that there's wrong or right way.

Right. But I mean, she, when she comes home from running away, her father doesn't yell at her. He gives her his jacket and he says, let's go home. And it's a really lovely, just filled with a father, giving a daughter grace, and the room to have screwed up. The other piece that I think is really interesting is the reason why she ran away is because his father had gotten a girlfriend who we presume is now the stepmother, right.

Which may [00:53:00] give us a hint. There's a lot, there's a lot to Hye-jin’s relationship with her father, right. She basically had to raise herself while her father was reeling from losing his wife. But also the stepmother, even though it turns out is a lovely woman— and there will be a sort of forging of a new intimacy between the two of them by the end of this story— perhaps contributed to her estrangement with her father. 

Beep: Absolutely. And we've talked about before, how, in this case, you know, it's not the evil stepmother, but Hye-jin, doesn't know how to. Another mother figure into her life because she's never in so many ways gotten over the loss of her own mother.

And I'm not saying that she should, it's just, there's such a tension there and a push and pull for how you allow, you know, another person and especially another woman and mother figure to exist in your world when it's just been you and your father for a while. And that relationship has already strained.

So not only is [00:54:00] this woman coming in as a stranger, but she's also to some degree taking away your father, which you kind of didn't even have to start with. Yeah. 

CC: And you feel like it's replacing your mother I'm sure. And Hye-jin, you know, what she had told Chief Hong is like, I feel, you know, like my mother's memory, like she's disappearing.

And so I think all of it is really poignant and so understandable that a teenage girl would really grapple with their father dating somebody else, you know, presumably seriously. because we assumed that that that girlfriend then became the stepmother and, and, and the way she reacted to that is what she did at the beginning of the show.

She went to Gongjin and she went to the place where she feels like she can hold on to her mother's memory on that beach. This show is so rare in the way that it shows that like [00:55:00] an adult and a teenager can have such a meaningful conversation, which I find in real life is very much true. Not only with my daughter, but with her, her teenage friends.

Like they're very smart, very insightful. And in some ways, a lot more emotionally mature than I think I, or my friends were. Yeah, for sure. And it's just beautiful. All the different ways that they connect in some really painful ways. Right. Like Ju-ri asks are, do you remember your mother? And Hye-jin is like, I mostly remember her being sick and Ju-ri' like, I don't remember her at all.

Beep: And it's horrible. And you understand why? And then, oh my gosh, the blame that the grandmother places on her, I mean, oh yeah. What a way to live your life.

BCC: Yeah. And what, what is so masterful about the storyteller? Once you not only get to the end of the [00:56:00] episode and you realize how the fully, this is all going to connect with Hye-jin, then reaching out to her father and calling him for no reason at all, right? And then he's going to say, please do that again, is the way that they're opening up to one another about what they have in common, that they both lost their mothers when they were young. It just has all of these ripple effects, right? Like, so they're forging, you know, initially they had this really fun connection about K-pop and about a band and an idol that they both share in common, which was really fun.

But now we're getting to much deeper emotional intimacy and connection between these two women— who are, one is in their thirties and the other is 14. And it's really a beautiful example of forging bonds that all of those bonds all built together in this little web that is community. And then the way it then [00:57:00] tees up the next conversation.

Ju-ri reacts to Hye-jin, you know, not being happy about the fact that her dad had a girlfriend. And what Ju-ri says is I'd be thrilled if my dad had a girlfriend, because, 

Beep: Because it would get him off her back because instead of like Hye-jin father, where he became, you know, very withdrawn, Oh Yoon is so over-protective of her. Understandably. I'm not, you know, railing on him, but it's still true. Just like Hye-jin has to tell him, you got to give the kid a little space. She's not as young and as immature and as small as you're treating her. 

CC: Yeah. And what Ju’ri says is it's sad to let him live for forever missing a dead person.

We then cut to Chief Hong walking in to talk to you. And that what Ju-ri is saying about how sad it is to watch somebody [00:58:00] perpetually living in a state where they're in the shadow of this loss of somebody that they loved. And then we go right to Chief Hong. And so the, the way they sort of unfold, what people are talking about, and later what people are reading.

It is all this really careful, meticulous masterful way of letting us know the deeper issues of what's going on with Chief Hong, even if they're not coming right out and seeing it. And I think it also, what Ju-ri says is really another kind of beautifully restating what we've talked about a lot, the quote from Thoreau that Shin Haeun included in the script, the only remedy for love is to love more like you can't live your life, just missing people who are gone.

Beep: This is so hard because this whole episode, and I mean, really this whole show, as in [00:59:00] real life, people are coming at a singular event with so many different perspectives and it really shows through, I think to the audience, how much he misses his family. And he tells, Oh Yoon, you know, Ju-ri is such a lucky kid to have a dad like you, those without parents feel sorry for themselves.

And it goes back to show that his entire life has been about trauma. He would have plenty to be pent up about and closed off without ever having gone through the things he went through in Seoul. And so those things already, you know, that his parents and his grandfather, all those things were not his fault.

And yet there's a thing called survivor's guilt, which he had already probably piled on himself. And then of course the loneliness and the difficulty of having to take care of himself always be alone. As you had mentioned earlier, and it's, it's so hard and yet you have a [01:00:00] human on the other side, you know, you grew up well on your own and no one in this world is as decent as you.

And it just, that goes in the face of everything that Du-sik believes about himself, especially after you know, the, the added on traumas that he thinks are his fault. And he's like, um, yeah, we're not having this conversation. So he jokes as he always does subject changes and let's move on from that. And then obviously Oh Yoon, like every other person in this, in this town, they want him to have someone.

And so they're, they're pushing him because they see what's going on with him and, you know, Ms. Dentist. So, hey, try to make something happen. Let's, let's do this. And. It is imperative, of course, that the response be stop. It's a, it, it's not like that for us. Sorry. I'm putting in, you know, the stuttering, because I feel like that's, what's going on in [01:01:00] someone's head.

CC: Yeah. It's, it's the rule of television that when it is like that, you gotta say, it's not like that a hundred percent. 

Beep: And we do know shows who have been very cruel and done that in properly, but this is not the one. So, you know, he's still pushes him. Okay. Then date, like somebody you've got to have somebody in your life to help carry your own baggage.

You can't always carry not only your own, but everyone else's. So who is helping you to bear your burdens? 

CC: Yeah. 

Beep: And the answer right now is nobody, but Lord knows we're not having that conversation. 

CC: Yeah. I mean, this conversation on rewatch, you, I always thought that this was one of the best early character moments for understanding that Chief Hong's reticence to open up and connect with Hye-jin is a universal problem with him.[01:02:00] 

It is not just something that he is unable to do with her. And in fact, as we watch him incrementally be able to do so. Is actually should be assigned to us of what she's going to come to mean to him. Because somebody that he calls Hung and who he has known for his whole life, he can't talk about anything personal to himself.

So when Oh Yoon says, you're, you know, you spend your whole life dealing with people's baggage. When do you ever get to less than yours? His face is like a portrait of denial. He immediately shuts it down. I don't have any the idea that Du-sik, that Hong Du-sik doesn’t have baggage is like the biggest denial of the series.

And he can't even talk about it with somebody that he's known his whole life. And then if you go back to the beginning of the conversation, as you [01:03:00] sit deep, even before we get to all of the baggage that that con that is associated with what happened in Seoul, you have this conversation where an orphan who grew up without any family from the time that he was a teenager on, is sitting there and listening to a father, worry about what's going to happen to his child when he's gone.

Beep: Hm. Yeah. Which is the complete opposite of his situation and having to live with every day that his entire family has gone. And it's not, you know, it's just not supposed to happen in that order. That's not what happens if people are able to just live out their lives. And it’s— the thing that I think is interesting about him is, cause we always mentioned that there's kind of this division between what's already happened and what happened in soul, everyone in the community already knows enough to know that he has that baggage.

They were there, they were there when he lost his [01:04:00] entire family. And he denies that as well. 

CC: Yeah. I mean, he's, he's, he's not even able, it's all it's and it's also tied up, right. Because some members of their community, when he was a teenager at his father's memorial were, were quite damaging in a glib way.

And in the way that you see sort of in a later episode, the women in the foreground talking about like, basically, well, he just brings bad luck to everybody around him. Right. Which is this, like, he he's literally like a bringer of death to the people that he loves. And so part of it came from that, but yeah, he can't, it's all tied up.

Like even the people who admire him and appreciate him and love him when they, when someone like, Oh Yoon who's known him for so long, says, no one is as decent as you. He can't accept that. [01:05:00] Which takes us to it is the perfect setup for then when he walks. Because Shin Haeun is going to, again, clue us in to a lot of things about what is going on internally with Chief Hong, even though it's a scene where he's by himself and doesn't have, like, he basically has one line of dialogue to himself.

So even though he shut down everything that Oh Yoon said, it obviously struck a nerve because when he comes home and he stares at Hye-jin’s umbrella, he remembers the moment on the beach between the two of them. And again, it's a clue to us that no matter how much he has tried to pretend like this, isn't a big deal.

You don't sit there and think about this moment with that kind of intensity, if somebody is just your friend. 

Beep: Oh, for sure. And it [01:06:00] is interesting that we get led into some of this because there's so often that he doesn't say anything and in, in lesser shows, there's also those times when a character is stuck in their head and we don't get to see what that means.

So it can really take away from the complexity of that character, because you're always having to kind of read into or make your own, you know, kind of head candidate of, okay, well, what were they really thinking about? Shin Haeun does a really good job of not only showing that do she has this incredibly complex inner life, but also pieces along the way of what that means, what he's actually focusing on.

CC: Yeah, I don't. And we're going to get to the way she does that with her literary references in a moment. But I was just thinking, I, I don't know if this, the way this story is structured and how, how many [01:07:00] walls this character has between himself and the other fictional characters, but also with the audience where we are just being led in piecemeal, into what's going on with them.

And, and they do it. If you didn't have this sort of meticulous care in the writing and the editing to show us all these little reactions that led us into what he's, what is he saying versus how was he actually like reacting to things, but also just Kim Seon-ho performance? I, I, I think that in the hands of a different actor, this character could have been more off putting or difficult to understand, because we don't know what's wrong with him. And the only, like we don't know what's at the center of what's holding him back and all we can assume right now is we think there's something deeper. There's been some clues. But other than that, like on the surface, it just seems like a guy who, who can't admit that he likes somebody, you [01:08:00] know, and it's way deeper than that.

This central point about whether Chief Hong is the most decent person that Oh Yoon knows and what his baggage is, takes us to him walking inside his house and pulling out “What Men Live By,” by Leo Tolstoy and inside of it, he pulls out a photo. The face is obscured of his friend that he lost, but there's another parent and child who lost a parent and his deepest shame and loss is hidden inside of a book that is all about what is life actually about.

And he's almost crying as he looks at that photograph.

Beep: I think there are parts of him, especially with all this stuff that he reads that he [01:09:00] already knows. It's just when he looks at those people, be it as parents is his grandfather and then certainly his young and his family, they didn't get to have that.

So, uh, I don't either. 

CC: Yeah. It is particularly painful given that Chief Hong lost his parents that on top of losing his friends, he feels like the consequences for his actions left another boy without a parent. 

Beep: Yes. From orphan to orphaner, if you will. I don't think that's a word, but yeah.

CC: I mean, and you know, even the security guard is a father who was, you know, taking these risks because he wanted to provide for his son and his family.

And now that father is lying in a coma unable to do so. And so it is so painful that it's not [01:10:00] only that he feels like he caused the paralysis of someone or the death of somebody, but those two people were fathers and there are children left in the wake of the damage that he feels like he cost it's really, really painful.

Yeah. It was. 

Beep: That's just another layer to his childhood drama. Well, like as if the poor guy doesn't have enough. Woof, honestly, I'm glad that she actually works through, you know, that Shin Haeun and works through that in this story, because so often, I mean, it's just like masochistic in so many ways. If there weren't an outlet in there, weren't a resolution because this guy's life is just defined by tragedy.

CC:  It's really painful. Like sometimes I'm, we're talking about it. It makes me want to cry. It's really painful. 

So that brings us to, and we're going to, we're going to take a moment and we're going to dig into, as our listeners are probably now familiar with, we love a literary reference and we're going to [01:11:00] dig into a little bit about this collection of short stories by Leo Tolstoy, What Men Live By.

And first what I found so interesting and didn't know, until we dug into this, preparing for the podcast is that Tolstoy was influenced in part by thorough, particularly regarding Henry David Thoreau's writings about conscientious objection and civil disobedience. And I found an article in the New England Quarterly by Columbia University, professor of Russian studies, Dr.

Charles Manning. And he actually wrote a piece called thorough and Tolstoy comparing and contrasting the two writers. And I'm not going to spend a ton of time on it, but I just want to point out what they have in common. And the key difference that Dr. Manning argues that they are. Contrast to one another, because I think that it is very important for the character journey that Shin Haeun is taking Chief Hong [01:12:00] on in Hometown Cha Cha Cha.

So Dr. Manning writes quote, a comparison between Henry David Thoreau and count. Leo Tolstoy is very easy and many critics at various times have noticed similarities in the ideas of the two men, both objected to the conventional life of the day, both sought to free themselves from the limitations of society, both seriously disagreed with the attitude of the governments under which they had to live and sought a freer and more independent life.

Okay. So that's, that's what they have in common. So rejection of what society expects, finding peace and meaning and a simpler life, you know, for Thoreau that was. Obviously at Walden Pond for Tolstoy that was living out in the, in the country with his family and, and finding sort of this meaning, like deeper meaning to [01:13:00] life in, in, instead of, you know, obviously who's a member of the aristocracy because he was counted Leo Tolstoy, but he found deeper meaning and sort of the labor of peasants and working in the fields than he did in sort of the, the life of the wealthy in the city.

So you have all of those very obvious, um, things in common between thrown Tolstoy. Here's what Dr. Manning our uses the difference between the two of them. And this is what I think is so interesting for the direction that Shanghai is taking chief home. He writes quote Thoreau was brother to nature and in his diaries and his published works, it was his observations of nature that served as the text for his social and human observations here lies the great difference between him and Tolstoy.

The Russian author perhaps started from his belief in the value of all human beings in the virtues of the [01:14:00] simple life of the peasant, his enforced simplification and unsatisfied needs, and with the new Testament and sermon on the Mount as his guide, he worked out his philosophy of. And this is very much an, an oversimplification, but if you could summarize the difference between the two of them, despite everything that they have in common, in what they're trying to distill is important about life and cutting away, all of the, what they think is not what people should be spending their time thinking about, which is in large part, what society expects and is dictating to them, that they should is that Thoreau believed in nature having these answers and Tolstoy believed in men. And what I think is so interesting about that is that Shin Haeun has built up Chief Hong at the beginning of the story [01:15:00] as the Henry David Thoreau, who sought refuge in nature after loss and is living in his both literal and figurative, lovely emotional cabin in isolation.

But her thesis for Hometown Cha Cha Cha is the importance of community. And so she is signaling to the audience that Chief Hong cannot stay isolated in his house. In the words of Gam-ri at the end of the show, people belong with. So that brings us to this particular volume that Chief Hong is holding in his hands.

And as we know, it's very important when Shin Haeun and the Director Yi Je-won put a bucket in chief Hong's hands, what men lift by as a collection of short stories. And as we were researching, there's two particular stories that [01:16:00] we want to focus on. And the first is the, the title of which is what the volume is named for what men live by.

Beep talk to me about that. 

Beep: Sure. And I think we should, because this is open source at this point, obviously, we'll post the link to this on our website as well. If, if people would like to read it. Cause I know a lot of people dove into throw after they kind of saw what was going on in the story. This one is interesting to me because if I'm correct, they don't show any thing from it.

CC: Right. I'll make a title. I mean, there's pages. We see the pages of the book, but at least for. Viewers that don't, that are not fluent in Korean. We, we can't tell what particular page, what story the—

Beep: Okay, so we didn't on some of these other books, we receive a S a small collection of subtitles that give us an idea, like the kiss and those sorts of things that actually shows up on our screens.

But all we see from, from [01:17:00] Tolstoy is just, you know, what men live by. And, and it's fascinating because it's actually a story about an angel who is punished by God for refusing to take a life. So his punishment is to, to go and essentially become not necessarily mortal, but to become a man himself and to live a bung among men, because he needs to learn three lessons.

And it takes them definitely some time to do that. He has to have some very, both unfortunate and also poignant some hopeful and very sweet experiences, but he comes to a lot of the same conclusions that Shin Haeun has used in this story. And what he determines first is what dwells in man is love. That's essentially what makes the characters happy.

And not only the idea of, you know, oh, we love something, but sacrificing for that love and performing acts. And that, that is [01:18:00] actually the greatest of what humanity has to offer. If you sacrifice for. 

CC: So so much of Hometown Cha Cha Chais about acts of service for one another, from leaving corn on somebody's doorstep, to making porridge for them when they're sick or tea for them when their neck hurts.

Right. But it also, you know, the angel is left naked and cold and starving on the side of the road. That's how the story begins. And a man takes them home into his house and his wife feeds him the last scrap of bread that they have left. And, you know, it's the first lesson that the angel learns, which it just reminds me of, including all of the flashbacks between Chief Hong and Hye-jin including the one where to get the end of this episode is as much as we're tied up in, in, in destiny and how their, how their fates crossed paths every about seven [01:19:00] years, what makes those interactions significant is every single time they were a bystander who chose to help just like the, the man and the wife that the angel comes to live with and Tolstoy story. 

Beep: who initially because of how the gentleman was dressed and how he looked the, the angel had kind of written him off because he assumed he would not be able to help him. He's not in a position to, and yet the man does so anyway, and that's what shows him about love being soccer. I love.

And the, and this story, it's very interesting because each time he learns a lesson about man, he smiles, which is sweet to me. Yeah. So he, he learns less than two. This is talking about self-awareness. Men don't know their own needs.

And if you can unpack this from this story oof, I don't know, [01:20:00] Because we can all see, especially with Du-sik and Hye-jin exactly what they need part of, which is each other. They need someone to lean on. They need to be able to get out of their heads. He specifically has so much to deal with in his past, but needs someone else to that width so that he can actually integrate himself into this community.

And it's interesting to me that in a way it's so obvious because we often as humans, we know what we want, but we can lack a great deal of self-awareness when it comes to what we need, especially emotions. 

CC: Yeah, that picks up on what we were talking in the last podcast about how good Chief Hong is at giving advice as opposed to taking it.

Beep: Yes. No one else struggles with that except him.

CC: Yeah. Very unique to his experience. Yeah, absolutely. He's totally on [01:21:00] his own on that one. 

Beep: And again, for the second time, the angel smiles, which again, I don't, I don't know what I find. So kind of heartening about that, but I like it that he thought men, you know, in, in so many ways were just kind of like he didn't understand them and didn't want kind of anything to do with this and his punishment.

Is it really a punishment when he comes in, he learns all these things and has much more of a appreciation for humanity. Um, so anyways though, his, his third lesson, I understood that God does not wish men to live apart. And therefore he does not reveal to them what each one needs for himself, but he wishes them to live united and therefore reveals to each of them.

What is necessary for all. I have now understood that though. It seems to men that they live by care for themselves in truth. It is love alone by which they live. And I, this is cool because I feel like it's a compilation almost of the first two. So we figured out, you know, there's love and sacrifice and there's all these things that [01:22:00] man has to offer, but he can't really do it to himself.

And, and the idea that God has created different people essentially to serve other people and the idea that that we're missing here is especially in Du-sik’s case, he's the one doing all the serving. And so he understands what other people need and he's providing that to them, but he is not allowing this community to then in turn, complete the circle and provide for him what he doesn't know he needs.

CC: Yeah. Which, you know, Oh Yoon. And describes that as carrying baggage, Gam-ri describes that as carrying someone on your back and your right Du-sik does that for everybody else, but he doesn't, he doesn't allow anybody to do that for him. And, you know, I love, I love the message of the conclusion of this story on both a micro level for this episode and on a macro level [01:23:00] for the show, because on the micro level, you have all of these characters that are in conflict and they can't understand, they can't get past it and they can't understand what themselves or what each other need, unless they're all in a series of different relationships, working together as a community.

And that's how we get past every impasse or stranger by the end of the episode, right. It is how Hye-jin and Du-sik find a way forward. It is how Oh Yoon and Ju-ri get past this conflict about how she's doing in school and her braces. And it is why Hye-jin picks up the phone and calls her father and starts a pattern of, of, you know, maybe just call me, not just when there's a reason, but just to talk, but then obviously, um, on the macro level, the symbol of Chief Hong's trauma and everything that he is stuck living with is inside [01:24:00] the pages of a book that have the answer of how he's going to be able to move forward.

And that is by opening up to others and allowing himself to be loved not only by Hye-jin, but his whole community is by the end of this series is going to learn everything that happened to him and love him. Anyway, they're going to find out about his baggage and Hye-jin is going to help him carry it. And so I just think it's beautiful storytelling that at the point in Chief Hong's arc, where he is being peak Thoreau and Walden, and remember Thoreau in spent his whole life right in that cabin, he eventually went back to his community.

Although he lived quite a different life than Tolstoy. He was single his whole life. Whereas Tolstor lived in, in a village surrounded by a huge family, but Shin Haeun is saying, I am not going to leave this. [01:25:00] Surfer Thoreau, cutting off connection with his community and sitting here, stewing alone, and almost in tears in his house.

This is where he needs to go because the answer is community. It is people belong with other people like Gam-ri says. The other short story in this collection, what men live by is called The Three Questions. And the three questions is a parable about a king asking his court the answers to three philosophical questions.

The story starts out with the, and we're going to quote Tolstoy here, it once occurred to a certain king that if he always knew the right time to begin everything, if he knew who were the right people to listen to and whom to avoid and above all, if he always knew what was the most important thing to do, he would never fail in anything he might undertake.

And so the [01:26:00] king calls all of the smartest people in this country to his core, and he asks them three questions for which the story is named. Number one, how can I learn to do the right thing at the right time? Number two, who are the people I most need and to whom should I therefore pay more attention than to the rest?

And number three, what affairs are the most important and need my first. So the king listens to all these very smart people who have all these very strong opinions. And he gets to the end of all of this talking in a room and he is unsatisfied with all of their answers. He leaves the castle and he goes out into the countryside and he seeks out the wisdom of an old hermit who lives alone.

And through his sort of time out in the countryside, he ends up helping the hermit, dig a hole. He helps a wounded man who turns out to have been on his way to kill him. And by helping the man, they ended up reconciling and achieving [01:27:00] peace at the end of the story, the king is like, yeah, but all this stuff happened and I still don't have the answers to my question.

And the hermit tells him, yes, you do. And here's, Tolstoy's answer speaking through the hermit “Remember them. There is only one time that is important. Now it is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary person is the one with whom you are for. No man knows whether he will ever have dealings with anyone else.

And the most important affair is to do that person good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life.” Beep. Do you see any similarities between the king and our Chief Hong?

Beep: Literally got chills when you were reading that, first of all, so many of these characters, but specifically Du-sik live in the past. [01:28:00] And I think a lot of us can at one time or another, actually relate to that when things get cluttered up because of things that have happened to us previously, so that now we're kind of also missing what's going on. And then that becomes part of that past.

And it just becomes a weird cycle or you're looking forward to the future. And so the idea of this is literally living in the moment, but he is stuck. He's worried about, you know, what happened to his parents, what happened to his grandfather? The things that he did in his life that could have been undone.

He lives in a, in a world of what ifs. And ultimately, unfortunately, those get us nowhere. You cannot undo the past. Not only that the necessary person is the one with whom you are. It's also the one who you are. You can only be in the moment, the exact person that you are, and that may not line up with the person that you [01:29:00] used to be.

And that's okay. That's what learning and growing looks like. But if he stays there in that point in the past, he's never going to make progress. 

CC: Yeah. And we're like, it's, it reminds me of, of many different conversations that he'll ultimately have. But right now, this, in this episode of denial and, and denying how he's feeling about Hye-jin, it is, it is being stuck in the past.

That is the barrier to who he wants to be with in the present. And this story particularly reminds me of their conversation in episode 10, when he starts to open up to Hasian and talks about when his grandfather died. And he's like, if I hadn't gone to watch the world cup games, I could have been home. I could have been home in time or later on.

If I had only picked up my phone when the market was crashing, maybe the security card wouldn't have done that. If I [01:30:00] hadn't, if I hadn't been upset from that and gotten in the car and allowed my friend to drive, then he wouldn't have been the one that died. What if, what if, what if, what if, and, and Shin Haeun, and through Hye-jin is basically echoing what Tolstoy is saying here.

You can't sit there and say, what could I have done in the past, or worry about what am I going to do 10 steps from now, all you can control is. But he's paralyzed in the now because of all of those, what if's, and he's going to ask permission from Gam-ri at the end of, towards the end of the story. Like, can I, can I do that like live in the now and enjoy it because of all of the things in the past.

And so the other thing that I think is so interesting about both of these stories, when you take them together, whether it's the angel seeking wisdom or the king seeking wisdom, neither of them can gain it in a vacuum by just talking about it. They both go into [01:31:00] the countryside, living with people and engaged in acts of service for people.

And that is how they gain wisdom and how they conclude the story happier and satisfied and ready to sort of move on with the next step. There, whether it's the angel returning to God or it's the king ruling his kingdom. And so it's this very, you know, I feel like it, it, it ties so well and it's, as we like break it all down, it's just sort of like mind blowing, how Shin Haeun even has this book and cChief Hong's hands— and it's like, she's like, yeah, this is what I'm telling you guys. He can't just sit alone in this house alone, wondering what he should have done differently. The only way that Chief Hong is going to be able to live his life, like the title of the book wet men live by is by interacting with other people, opening himself to other people, truly emotionally, not just, not just the acts of service that he does sort of in this like [01:32:00] perpetual state of atonement, but connecting with people in a real and deep way.

Beep: And to some degree, allowing them to return those acts of service to you, it's cooperative in this is, you know, the story becomes all about sharing burden and the angel and the king are trying to sit up on their, you know, proverbial Thrones, if you will, and simply observe what is going on around them, but until they actually get in there and experience and get to be part not only of their lives, but of the collective life going on around them, then they're never going to understand those things.

CC: Yeah. So, I mean, I feel like it's just such a wonderful. Place to have inserted this reference, because if you, if we, if we sort of take the through line of these literary references and how they are sort of are signposts of  [01:33:00] Du-sik’s journey, it's like Shin haeun is saying, okay, Thoreau, it's time to come out of your cabin and you're going to have to go out.

And, and even though, you know, it's funny because when we talk about Chief Hong, he is always out in the community. 

Beep: Right. But it's about opening himself back up to allow it to be reciprocal. Yeah. And I feel like in many cases, this is why people just sigh and kind of roll their eyes. When someone says, they're a philosopher, you cannot learn this thing from books.

You cannot learn it, you know, from, from some source, the problem is it's, it's not intellectual, it's experiential. And there's only so much you can get from looking at the behavior and looking at the patterns of other human beings. You have to experience it to, to really get that inside knowledge. You're not going to find it in a textbook and you're not going to find it on a throne.

CC: Yeah, I like that. So speaking of ripple [01:34:00] effects of people reaching out and doing things for one another, that takes us to this conversation between Hye-jin and Du-sik

Beep: Specifically doing very uncomfortable things for one another. 

CC: Yeah. Yes. And, and it's so, I mean, gosh, when you think about how their relationship kicked off, so painfully, their conversation as this sort of father raising a daughter that is Hye-jin’s window into what it must've been like for her dad.

And now Hye-jin’s is this adult and has the wisdom to be able to say to him, you need to give her more space and she's not a little kid anymore, but there are so many there's lions that just give you, like when Oh Yoon says raising a daughter. Sure. Isn't easy. It's almost like she's getting to talk to a version of her father in the past.

And that's not something obviously that her dad ever would have said to her when she was 

Beep: sure they're both kind of playing standard roles for the other, during this conversation, they're having a [01:35:00] conversation that, that neither would be able to have with, you know, she can't really have that conversation with her father and he can't really have, or hear that conversation from his daughter.

But when you have that outside perspective due to again, lived experiences, then it comes off with more authority. 

CC: Yeah. And, and they both learn things that they wouldn't have otherwise known. So, Oh Yoon his daughter's drawings and sort of this tangible symbol of what her dreams are right, to be a fashion designer.

And even though she lives under his roof every day, he had no idea about that until this other adults showed it to him. So he learns more about his daughter and in turn Hye-jin as able to sort of think about how it must've been really hard for my dad being on his own. And maybe introducing me to his step-mom thinking about the things that Ju-ri to her, but what, what I, the [01:36:00] only reason why this is all possible is because Hye-jin says for herself, I may be overstepping my boundaries.

Beep: You know, how she loves when people cross lines 

CC: And she's, I mean, so it's, it's like she's crossing lines like this woman that at the beginning of the episode, with emphatically stating her resolution, that she was getting into deep in this community and she needed to shut it down has spent this episode taking in a runaway teen and is now talking to her father to try and sort of bridge this gap between them.

Beep: Yeah. And I think that this for the two of them is a really transformative experience because I think there's something indescribable about the day, the specific time, the process of a parent and a child, both learning. That the other one is just a person. [01:37:00] Hm. Or is a person, you know, it's not just your daughter, it's not just a role.

She's a person with her own dreams and expectations. And then on the other side, Hye-jin sees, you know, someone trying to be a father and she then becomes to understand, wow. You know, I may have wanted all these things from him from my own father, but he was dealing with a lot too. He's just a person. Yeah.

CC: Yeah. That's one of the, so one of the lessons of growing up at your parents or just people, it didn't always have all the answers. 

Beep: It's a hard one too. 

CC: So if all of that is sort of a wonderful example of how community can be a good thing and also is never remiss in, in depicting when community can also be really annoying, which takes us to the next town meeting.

Beep: And these people and their [01:38:00] gossip, like they kill me. It's it would be horrific if you were experiencing it, but just watching it and kind of a show. It's hilarious. And it's also unfortunately scary, realistic. 

CC: Oh my God. It's so painful. There's so many great parallels too. So like, if we are tracking the conflict and the proxy conflict, Oh Yoon says that Ju-ri is giving him the silent treatment and not speaking to him.

Well guess who else is giving somebody the silent treatment? Hye-jin walks into the meeting. This scene is such a masterfully edited scene in all of the who's looking at who and when, and who's looking away. And you get that, that like feeling of when you eat. The energy that it is taking up to avoid looking at somebody is like sucking up all the oxygen in the room.

But even though you're avoiding, trying to look at somebody, it's actually, that person is all that you can concentrate on. [01:39:00] 

Beep: For sure. And part of that is to see if they've made the same decision, right. Or wonder if he's not looking at me and then they're both doing that. So you're just constantly looking at each other and it's uncomfortable as always though I love Mi-seon just like comes in and plops down wherever she feels like, oh my God.

CC: But like when they first walk in Eun-chul and Chief Hong are basically like a pair of heart-eye emojis. Like, ah, those are the girls we have crushes on. And then they behave very differently. Beep, talk to me about how you would feel if you have been pissed off and feeling rejected and embarrassed and you sit down in the same room with that guy and everybody in town is openly talking about whether or not there's still something going on between you.

Beep: So I feel like this is a conversation you don't want to have in a town meeting in front of everybody.[01:40:00] 

CC:Oh, mean, how painful to have everybody speculating? The something was going on when you were told by that person that there's nothing going on. Yeah, it piles on top of the, we're getting rejection upon rejection.

Yeah. And, and she just, what I think is interesting is like, with all of this talk, I mean, obviously there, they're a huge theme of Hometown Cha Cha Cha is community, but I think, I think it's understandable why Hye-jin is also drawing- that doesn't mean that you don't draw lines about what you're personally comfortable with.

And she's just like, I'm done. Like I'm not going to sit here and be the butt of everybody's speculation for fun. And I'm out of here. And what is fascinating is that justice he has throughout the entire episode, Chief Hong cannot let it go. And he is the one that runs out after her. And if anybody [01:41:00] was going to talk about your actions are consistent with what you're saying, you know, she had a lot of friends in that room.

It's not like Mi-seon is the one that like ran after her. And what he says to her is let it slide “as long as it's not true, there is no reason to overact. Let's not be sharp around the edges. That's my advice as a friend”

Beep: You know, you know, it's actually interesting about dis that kind of entire situation is the way she started off.

When she originally came into it, doing all those same things, as far as saying stuff about people and it was public. And yet she also wasn't. Because those are the things that she meant to say that people would not hear. And now everybody else has turned around, speculating right in front of her. Like, you're supposed to say that stuff behind my back.

CC: Oh my God. You're right. It's the inverse. It's like her turn to be [01:42:00] humiliated out, but now everyone's just happy to do it to her face. Yeah. But again, I think it's so interesting. First of all, when he says, as long as it's not true. Well, the problem is it is true, right. There was something bubbling up between them that has now been put to a stop by him.

Right? Talk to me about her reaction to the word “friend”. When she says, who says, we're friends unpack that for me. 

Beep: So at this point, that word is, is loaded because he hasn't even been that throughout this experience. So tossing that word out as if it means something it's just here we go more rejection.

Even when he says it, I feel like, so then she's going to respond in kind with this, like just lashing, you know, she I feel like she needs to do it in return. Now you're going to keep, you're going to keep [01:43:00] pushing me away. You're going to keep, you know, disrespecting me. You're going to keep lying, keep acting like this is nothing.

Well, you know what? Like we're just done. I don't, I don't even want whatever it is you're trying to offer me right now is some sort of constellation. 

CC: Well, and I think there's so many layers to unpack about it. Yeah. Like he's offering friendship as a bridge and she's hearing it as a barrier. Right. Um, 

Beep: But is he? I mean, yes, but in this very instance, it's more like, I don't even know how to say it, 

CC: I mean, he's out there, he's out there because he cannot help him self right.

Over and over and over. There was no way that he wasn't going to go run after her. Yeah. 

Beep: But there are some situations, unfortunately, where once you've hit a certain point, it's kind of either all or nothing. [01:44:00] So you have to stop giving me these mixed signals. You have to stop, you know, going the other way with it and just dismissing me.

And I don't really know that we're in this middle place right now. 

CC: Well, and friend also means something. I mean, if you think about a Chief Hong is somebody who's on a very surface, like surface level friends with everybody. Right? Like he goes around town and he's like the unofficial mayor of the town.

Right. Hye-jin has one friend Mi-seon and friendship to her while not. Common is something that runs very deep, right? Like it is somebody who knows her better than anybody else and somebody that she will do anything for. I mean, it's the core relationship in her life. Yeah. But it is rare and it runs deep.

And this guy who is cutting off connection, who didn't come clean with her when she asked him three times about a kiss, she's like, I mean, is that what you [01:45:00] are? Because that's like friends, don't hold things back from each other like that. Right? Like, what are you.

Beep: Exactly. 

CC: This conversation is, is really like the biggest breaking point between them at this stage of the show and is really like kind of bottoming out.

And what I think is so tragic about it is like what people are hearing from what the other one is saying. And like what's being perceived. So she perceives the word friend as again, like rejection. And he hears when she says I don't be friend, just anyone. He focuses on the. Anyone because that echoes her snobbery from the past episode.

Right. You're not good enough. Right? You have, we have a different social position and he's basically just like, are you kidding me? Like you haven't changed at all. And like the like tragic thing is they're like talking past one another, he's hearing you're not good [01:46:00] enough to be my friend. And she, what she's saying, his friend means something really significant to me.

And I don't really know if you're like acting like that. Right, right. 

Beep: He's being very flippant about it as if given that we're not together, obviously we're friends as if that, you know, doesn't necessarily mean much. 

CC: Yeah. And then she just brings the hammer down. You exhaust me. I don't care for rumors.And I prefer not to be considered a pair. 

Beep: Burn. 

CC: So the guy who's been sitting in his house alone, staring at an umbrella and thinking about a first kiss, not knowing what to do about it and is suppressing these feelings just hears from her that she like hates the idea, but also who can blame her. 

Beep: I mean, like you said, they're talking past each other, so they both have their they're coming at it from their own angles.

And when we step back objectively, it's so easy to understand why the other one is acting [01:47:00] the exact way that. Yeah. 

CC: And also, so, uh, ironic is not the right word, but talk about like, she's like, I, I, I would prefer not to be considered a pair. And yet what has been pissing her off for the last week is that everybody in town is speculating that he is paired up with somebody else.

Beep: Yeah. Cause they're just so casual. And so I'm kind of carefree if you will, you know, he's just strolling around this with this other person as if it's nothing it's so, so easy and nothing that they do is easy. 

CC: Yeah. And she, she's sitting at home in the room in the dark depressed about this and she can't possibly know that he's been at home just as tortured about it.

But, but he just always seems, you know, fine. He always seems fine. Chief Hong mask is firmly in place and she must feel like she's the only one, like feeling anything that is like disconcerting or upsetting about this. And so her [01:48:00] reaction is to bring down the hammer and cut off connection. Like we are not even friends.

And so he does the same and the object that he's been holding onto that he's been looking at while he's been thinking about her, he takes the umbrella out of his bag and he gives it back to her and walks away. Yeah. 

Beep: As if that's the last thing, tying them together.

CC:  Yeah. And the next time he's going to see it, she’s going to be under that umbrella with Director. You had your chance, buddy, at least for the right now in the story. Yeah. So Beep, do you want to go to a K-pop concert? 

Beep: You know, I've never been to one. I could be talked into it now.

CC: I can't believe that we're about to segue from talking about Tolstoy to a fictional K-pop like, 

Beep: why not? I mean, that's life, it just goes from one thing to another and they've established. It's kind of the difference in, in these people, if you will. I mean, he's so [01:49:00] reflective. He's in there, he's reading the books, he's doing, you know, all the philosophical stuff and ask himself these questions.

And yet these girls meaning jury, and then, you know, the woman Hye-jin, they are just outward and just want to have fun. And they love this group. And of course they don't know they're coming yet, but I mean, just the idea of the whole thing. This is a completely different element of fun than someone who likes to read really deep literature.

CC: It's also just like this. Uh, it's just such a perfect example of this show. Like we had a scene where he's like reading Tolstoy and almost crying over this photo of his friend who died, but we're also gonna get like a fictional K-pop band with a fictional song written for this show with its own choreography.

And they had like great videos of this fictional band, like rehearsing as if it was for like a real K-Pop video, this show can do it all. What I love about this as before, it's about two weeks that passed in time in the world of the show we get to this [01:50:00] concert. And so fortune plant has bloomed. We're going to get to the symbolism about that happening every seven years and what it means at the end with the flashback.

But what I love about it is that- this plan as like, just any plan, like as a metaphor of something blooming, we're about to move into a community event, which will serve as the catalyst of reconciliation, both between Ju-ri and Oh Yoon, and also between Hye-jin and Chief Hong. And so two weeks past people have been giving each other the silent treatment, but we're going to throw everybody together and that's, what's going to heal these refs beep talk to me about the scene where Chief Hong talks to me son, and then walks right past Hye-jin giving her the silent treatment. 

Beep: Listen, I've done that. And I've had it done to me. And no matter which side of it, you're on, [01:51:00] it's kind of excruciating to know that you have to be paying attention to that person in order to even do that well. 

CC: Yeah. And then there's that moment, you know, when you're the one who's mad first and you've gone full silent treatment.

And then the person that you're giving the silent treatment to then dishes it right back and you're like, oh shit. Yeah. 

Beep: Any amount of control or power you thought you had over that dynamic dissipates immediately. Yeah. And what I think is so interesting here, beep is, especially with this moment, he says later on, I came really close to hating you again and hate, cannot exist without strong feelings.

CC: And so I think it's really interesting that even when they are this broken, that he is going to walk by her [01:52:00] and not say anything to her, even though he is just had a conversation with her best friend, the fact that it is that bad is also indicative of how intense the feelings are going on here. Because if you didn't feel that strongly, you wouldn't act like that.

Beep: No. And, and, um, I don't remember exactly where it comes from. I'm sure there are 800 derivations of this, but the, the opposite of love is not hate it's indifference. 

CC: That's what that was Ted lasso, right? 

Beep: Oh, I mean, it comes from way before that. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, there's nothing worse if you, if you, if you hate or if you love, you have to feel strongly enough to access those emotions.

It's when you become indifferent that you're no longer a party to the situation and sorry, kids, neither of you are there. 

CC: Talk to me about some of your highlights of this incredible display of. [01:53:00] The talents and maybe not so much talent in this singing contest. 

Beep: Good Lord Nam-sook is terrible. To me, that’s so funny because she's the one who's always talking about everything. And yet she had the audacity just because of there being a certain, you know, prize, if you will, to get up there and make an absolute fool of herself and not in a good way, 

CC: but not in fashion because she killed it with her outfit.

And if it had been up to me, she would have worn that for the rest of the show. 

Beep: Go ahead. 

CC: No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. 

Beep: The grannies were a hot mess to have him up there, especially the one with like the wig. It just kills me. I mean, they're, they're so funny and how basically they're always explaining to other people and especially younger people, how they should behave, but when you lead them out of that, like they are disaster.

CC: They're dressed in like [01:54:00] traditional clothing and they're like dropping expletives other we're forgetting the lyrics. I am not going to take. time on the podcast with dissecting all of the lyrics, because I swear every song that they choose or fictional song that they write from Exercising in the Moonlight are all of these kinds of like Exercising in the Moonlight is like all about missing somebody now that they're gone and nothing can help you because you're still thinking about them, which I don't know what was going on, what was going through a Hye-jin’s head.

She was listening to it. But one key translated lyric that happens with very intentional editing is that Cho-hee looks at Hwa-jung and the lyrics are, I only parted ways for your sake. I love you.

Beep: a direct, um, visual representation [01:55:00] of the complexity of this particular love triangle and, 

CC: you know, Gam-ri’s. Oh, it hurts. It, it like it's so bittersweet because she will remember this moment, like when she's lying there on that last night of her life with her friends, she will remember this moment that she's saying to her whole community on stage. And the words of her song are about people embracing one another and offering comfort to one another., it's really bittersweet moment when you watch it because it's, you know, so much of what Gam-ri says at the end of her life ties back to the story with Tolstoy and now, and, and all that matters is now with who you're with, because she's going to remember this moment, right? Like being in the moment and singing to her community.

That takes us to [01:56:00] the great irony of these two people who are not currently not speaking is that Hye-jin’s and Du-sik are going to come back together and reconcile because they are both being incredibly nosy when it comes to Ju-ri. 

Beep: They're so bad. Like for somebody, especially Hye-jin’s, who's constantly talking about not crossing lines.

I mean, they just do it every five seconds with everyone. 

CC: There are like team crosslines pretty much. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the thing that is so wonderful about like Chief Hong is constantly crossing the line with Hye-jin’s and Hye-jin’s, despite her stalwart resolution, every episode is crossing lines with somebody in Gongjin.

And that is how she's building all of her connections. Right? Whether it was Gam-ri and the dental implants, or it's here helping right. Like she's constantly crossing the lines. What if we [01:57:00] also just want to, again, the meticulous editing that is conveying meaning when Ju-ri re-explained why she is so hell bent on trying to win this prize money to get the braces.

The editing goes from one person to the other very intentionally. When's your recess. There is this boy. I like, but I can't smile in front of him. The editing focuses on chief Hong face. Then when Ju-ri says, what if he falls for some other girl?— Camera's on Hye-jin’s. Cause she, what has she been worried about this whole episode?

Beep: So the proverbial snaggle tooth in this case, we're going internal now. Yeah. 

CC: Yeah. So the woman who said she was getting into deep and doesn't like gossip and attention walks on stage in like slow motion, hero moment to dance to a K-pop [01:58:00] song, not only in front of the entire town, but this thing is being like eventually live streamed for like a very famous K-pop and she's going to dance in front of the entire village.

And then the guy who handed her back her umbrella and was basically like I'm done with you comes on stage, not knowing a single step to this song, just to share in the embarrassment. ‘

Beep: Because his, his love for the first, you know, early on in the show, his love comes from his actions and decidedly taught from his words many times.

So they get up there and I mean, they just look like fools, especially him, because he's just like totally improv in this disaster of these steps. I mean, not only is he, you know, not necessarily like a dancer in general, but. [01:59:00] Dude, you don't know what you're doing. 

CC: I love my favorite quote is who knew that Chief Hong was bad at..

Beep: 'cause they're all just like blatantly ready to call out, dude.

That was, I mean, that was rough.

Oh, good. Or a bad deal, you know, sometimes, 

Beep: especially when you're not part of a certain subset of culture or whatever, you're just looking around going. I don't like, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to think about this. 

CC: I love, what I love is that when Hye-jin was talking to jury about, about DOS and I might be like, oh, you, and right now that might not be the way that you say the name of the band, but I'm just going to say DOS, like BTS. 

 what I love about it is, is Ju-ri was like, are you a ——? And he's just like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not like, you know, like an official member of the fan girl group. Okay. Yeah. But you know, all of the steps to this [02:00:00] song and the only way, listen, I have tried to learn with my kids, like the choreography to Butter and it's really hard.

And so the only way that she knows the steps, all this song is because Hye-jin is like dancing alone to this music video in her apartment. 

Beep: Oh, absolutely. It's so reminds me of, you know, throughout my childhood and teens. Any of the videos from new kids on the block or insane. We're just going to replay that. Cause you're going to get down Bye, Bye, Bye like it's of

the wonderful thing is it's like such like everybody has these like emotional reactions, like Mi-seon is like, oh girl, you are in so deep. 

CC: And what I love is that this show is so playful in the way that it foreshadows things and the hardware store owner, even though he's quite an obtuse man, when it comes to emotions and his wife is [02:01:00] usually right.

So the guy who was like in a couple episodes ago being like, I don't know, I heard Chief Hong might've killed somebody and he's like wrong, but also like a little bit still like what the story is. He was the one sitting in the, in the community meeting be like, oh, our Chief Hong and Hye-jin going to get on stage, maybe they could do a duet and guess what? He's right. That's exactly what happened. Everybody is like, I don't know if this is actually good, except for Gam-ri who is just a long with Oh Yoon— the two parents in the crowd. Beaming at the stage. And she's like, oh my Du-sik is good at absolutely everything I could have watched that thought that Chief Hong nailed it.

Beep: Yes. She's looking through a mother's eyes for sure. 

CC: Yeah. I mean, although I will say the finger, the finger gun, it will live rent [02:02:00] free in my head forever.

Before we get to sort of the way this all shakes out, even though Hye-jin hates to be in second place, Bo-Ra is so lovely and Hye-jin is so absolutely thunderstruck 

Beep: that little boy. I mean, he is at least in, you know, through more of a child's eyes. I mean, that is a hard, I emoji all day long. 

CC: Oh my God. Oh my God. I guess when we get the extended home Shaw universe, I'm looking forward to the flashback to this moment where he will, as an adult someday say Bo Ra. That is the moment I fell in love with you because his face is like Chief Hong looking at Hyre-jin during the fireworks at the end, it is so pure and it is absolute hard eyes.

And it's amazing. Talk to me [02:03:00] about when it turns out they win second place. Hye-jin seems like she's being, even when she's going to express something nice. She basically just seems like she's going to steal money from a teenager.

She is, and she is like, dude, are you for real? Like, you can have my money. Like, are you permitted? 

Beep: There are times when she is just absolutely shameless. 

CC: She's so awkward that even though she's about to offer something lovely and is, as you have consistently pointed out, Beep— not the behavior of a dentist, who's just there to make a buck and move on.

Beep: Not at all and never was. I mean, she was even like that in Seoul, you know, from the very beginning, she was not going to gouge anybody for either things they did not need or, you know, for things that she didn't feel like were fair.

CC: Right, but she's [02:04:00] willing to get to do juries braces for a fraction of the cost.If you want to talk about heart. I emoji when chief Hong realizes, you know what I was wrong about thinking that she quote unquote hadn't changed. It's like his face is just like, oh, and that. I think that that's the moment where he basically decides like, all right, I'm going to try again because it's, I mean, which is like, it's when he says, like you haven't changed.

I mean, I do think that Hye-jin opens up, but I think it's also clear that this is always inherently who she is. She's somebody that helps people. 

Beep: Sure. She's just been closed off to a lot of the expression of that, especially in a group setting. She does these things in secret most of the time. 

CC: So you and I are both fan girls.[02:05:00] Talk to me about this moment. When jury is sitting in the audience, waiting for the live stream of a gorilla concert of her favorite band. And they walk on stage in front of her, but 

Beep: she's looking at the phone. Like, she's just like, can't wait right there. Oh, I can't wait to see this video. And she looks up and they're actually standing there.

I mean, I thought she was going to have a heart attack and fall out. 

CC: I mean, she absolutely looses her mind. And it's so amazing that you have this like 34 year old woman and 14 year old girl, both absolutely losing their minds over this band, suddenly appearing on stage, doing the dance that they just did.

I'll be better, slightly better. and they had seated all these little clues, right? Like throughout the episode that this, that this was happening from like getting the [02:06:00] network letter of asking for permits and what the grocery store owner was like watching on TV. Right. They see it at all of this, that this was going to happen.

But my personal favorite other moment that will also live in my head rent-free is that while Hye-jin is losing her mind over DOS being onstage. Chief Hong is in the background, still trying to learn the choreography. 

Beep: He's going to get it right next time. 

CC: He's going to get a damn certificate in this particular dance.

Beep: Oh yes. We're putting that in the foldout wallet, foreshore. 

CC: I was laughing so hard at the audience, the varied audience reactions to this band, because I I'm often sitting, for example, like a Thanksgiving or Christmas with multiple generations of family. And my kids will be showing us music videos and you'll have the older generation, like the grantees be like, wait, who are they [02:07:00] to the younger people?Or, you know, 34 year old fan girls be like, oh my God, it's DOS. What do you mean? Who are they? And then you have, and then you have sort of the like middle generation that's like, wow, are, extremely attractive. 

Beep: I don't know who they are either, but I can certainly appreciate what's going on in front of me.

CC: Absolutely. The Thanksgiving. It's the way it throws down watching BTS videos in my household across three to four generations. It was amazing. What I think is so. It's such an interesting layer to Oh Yoon and Ju-ri’s conflict. Oh Yoon is obviously has been he's sober, protective. He's so worried about what is going to happen to her. When he is gone as a single parent, he was so incredibly judgmental of her, what he views his like obsession with this K-pop band, which he himself [02:08:00] was a pop star. And that's the dream, right? That he laments, you know, slipping past him. But the way they reconnect is this hero dad moment where it's one of the many examples in this show of somebody literally carrying somebody on their back.

And he runs screaming to chase down June— his daughter's idol, the posters that he tore down from her wall, which is why she is not speaking to him. And he runs screaming and makes it happen. It is such a hero dad moment. And their reconciliation happens because he meets her at her interests. Right, right.

Beep: Because I feel like a lot of his feelings about music, like you said, with the dream, he's just kind of got this bitterness in him. And so I don't think he has up till this point, the wherewithal or the perspective to be able to see what she's enjoying [02:09:00] because his, his own perception is so. With that whole kind of industry and those dreams.

CC: Yeah. What I also love about this is that the interests of teenage girls and women is often something that is derided, in popular culture. And what I love about this moment with Ju-ri and June is that I can think of many, many, many, many other television shows or movies where the storyline, the way this would have unfolded is like never meet your heroes, right?

Instead the teenage girls passion for this pop star, her fan girl-passion is validated because he remembers her because of the snaggletooth. The thing that she doesn't like about herself, the thing that is unique, he remembers it. [02:10:00] And basically it's like, oh, that's why I remembered you. I remember you because of what made you unique.

And he's kind, and he acts in a way that is like, if I, and I absolutely would run down the street with my kid on my back, if it was their chance to meet somebody from BTS, you would hope that they would write, like it validates that passion. And they feel like that is a woman writer basically being like, don't undermine what teenage girls are passionate about because maybe, maybe they're right.

And it also is particularly. Even on like a very small, detailed level. We'll find out later that June is under a lot of pressure about eating and about his weight. And so him taking the time to point out that thing about Ju-ri, that she doesn't like about herself and that in turn making her realize, Hey, you know what, maybe I liked myself the way that I am.It's just really lovely. 

Beep: It [02:11:00] is. And especially at that age, because you know, we all have that. We all get to a certain point, especially whether there's something as you age that you especially don't like about yourself, something that's changed in you. But for her to get that perception early on of, you know, being different doesn't mean it's bad is awesome.

And I also love that he kind of has this. He thinks it's funny, you know that before she was like, oh, he's like, oh, you thought I was an imposter. Like that was you. Like, he thinks that's just funny because he always has that kind of, fame treatment, you know? And just to be able to be normal for a few minutes was a real treat to him.

CC: Yeah. It is the opposite of never meet your heroes. It's, you know, I feel like Shin Haeun’s like, you know what, actually, teenage girls are usually right about who they see. Hye-jin is sitting there rubbing her feet, which is something that we'll see again in a flashback, when Director Ji came and sat down with her, but this [02:12:00] time it's the new, it's the new suitor in our future love triangle and Chief Hong sits down and reaches out again.

And what I think is so interesting is it is clear that everything that she has said to him over the last few weeks is like seared into his brain because he's going to in this conversation. And then later on the doc, repeat it like word for word back to her. Somebody said being nosy is incurable and annoying and uncomfortable is being inconsistent.

Your motto, your words, don't match your actions.

Beep: That's a self burn. If ever I've heard guy, you are being so external right now, 

CC: Pot meet kettle. He jokes about the pole dancing. And I think he does it [02:13:00] because it's to diffuse that night. Like, look, can this just be something that take around about right? And then he says, don't be childish and draw imaginary lines.

I'm telling you to cross the line comfortably, like I do. Beep unpack for me what he's offering versus what he actually feels. 

Beep: Oh man. So he, he's kind of saying we can be at ease with each other so long as it's in a friendly way, but I'm going to be honest if I were Hye-jin  I didn't, I wouldn't have heard anything after the word childish.

I'm sorry. Are you so speaking right now? Because ridiculous. But he's basically trying to, in this particular context, create a relationship that they don't really have because it's always uncomfortable and it's going to [02:14:00] be until they kind of are able to be honest about their feelings. 

CC: Yes. But I think, but I agree.

And what's, what's interesting is that it is hypocritical is not the right word. He's drawing lines, right? He's drawing lines by, by saying this is friendship and this is not romantic. This was a biological crisis. That was a drunken mistake. He's drawing the line in the sand to say we're just friends.

Right? On the other hand, he is correct that the line she was drawing between them is unnatural and childish and arbitrary and is actually making both of them miserable because it's not like she was happy or in a good place when she is like cutting off connection with him right afterwards, the camera would show her face and she'd be like, oh, she's, she's mad that he's walking around other woman.

Right. They've shown her multiple times sad. Right. That it, where every time she feels like she doesn't mean [02:15:00] something to him. Right. And he, to the point that they were like ignoring each other, which as we talked about is the absence of indifference. Right. So it's, it's interesting how many layers there are to what he's offering, where it's basically like, can we just be in each other's lives, even though he is still drawing a line between them that is going to absolutely get blown up by the end of this episode when Directors Ji’s, this is where, I mean, 

Beep: He's already realized his feelings too.You know? I mean, we realize that a long time ago, I think he's acknowledged it to himself, which is why it's so uncomfortable. But Director Ji represents a, Hey buddy, you don't have all the time in the world. She's not just going to be here forever, having this back and forth with you. 

CC: You can't just. Try and tread water, right?

It's like, he's trying to tread water [02:16:00] with her. Stay, be able to be in her life. Be able to be more than just like a casual acquaintances. You know, as we've said, many times he stuck and he can't move forward and he, and he refuses to move backwards and he's just like stuck treading water. What I love is that his invitation for her to cross lines is what she is going to do over and over and over caring for him when he's sick, asking him about his past, telling him how she feels about him, right. Being the first one to be like, I want to get married and have children with you over and over and over. She's the one who's going to keep pushing the line of intimacy. And he's the one that's going to have to deal with it.And that is what's going to get him out of his house. And, and basically like, take that picture out of that book and live the words on that page. So I it's, there's so many layers to [02:17:00] it. What people are feeling, what people are offering, what people are actually going to do with those words. And it's just, I love the like setting up lines and who's gonna be, 

Beep: Yeah, his, his cabin at this point is basically a prison and she's just going to keep busting down the bars until he can't even stay in there anymore because there's no strict.

CC: Yeah, until she, you know, pulls a thermometer to his head and pushes the doorkeeper to the side literally and walks in. Yeah. So in talking about sort of the ripple effects, right? This conversation is only possible because the two of them came to Ju-ri’s aid, Hye-jin watches and jury from afar and watching them reconcile then has her thinking about her dad and what is so lovely about that flashback is I'm trying to imagine as a parent, if my 14 year old [02:18:00] skipped school got on a bus and went to a different city, like that is not okay.

Beep: Yeah. That's kind of a thing it's like, right. 

CC: And that, but when she comes back, her father just puts his jacket around her shoulders and brings her home. And I think perhaps she can now view that with sort of a different lens, right? Like what she was saying to Oh Yoon, you need to give her space. That's exactly what her father did.

And maybe now she has a deeper appreciation for how hard that must have been for him. Now that she's had a front row seat to how. Emotionally difficult. This conflict was between Oh Yoon and and Ju-ri. And she picks up the phone and she calls her father. And something that has been consistent with them is that eat is apparently really unusual for her to do, [02:19:00] because he's basically like what's wrong, you know?

And she's like, do I need a reason to call? And they end the conversation with him, you know, like happy and basically telling her, call me more often. You don't always need a reason to do that. And so it's just this like cascading effect of reconciliation. He is so excited when the fortune plant has bloomed, when he tells her the meaning of the fortune plant, that it's actually very special thing that it blooms.

And whoever sees this flower, it's supposed to bring them the greatest luck in life to anybody who sees it whenever it blooms every seven years. What's so lovely about that is Hye-jin realizing two things. She didn't appreciate the full expression of love that this gift from her father intended for her.

And she never would have known it if she hadn't picked up the phone and called him. And second who walks in and [02:20:00] slow motion,

right? As her father says that as the second annoying sign of fate of this episode, but Chief Hong, 

Beep: every time, every time.

CC: What I love about it is he's literally walking in the opposite direction and is like, oh no, no, no, no. I was going this way. It's fine, sir. You were not walking that way, but he'd so it's like, so he cannot help, but just follow her.

Like he it's like he, the way he couldn't help, but go to the dentist's office the same day that he knew that she was mad at him, the way he had to run out. After that meeting the way he has to go ask for her help, when Ju-ri is injured, it it's like this. It's like watching this painful battle between like his head and his heart.

And then [02:21:00] he basically confides in her that he came close to Haiti or again, and then he uses his, her words and turns what was meant as an insult and offers it as an olive branch, a compliment. I don't befriend just anyone, you know? And the thing is it's actually. Because she's going to look back on all of these moments when they're estranged and realize that he was opening up to her in all of these small ways in that he doesn't do with anybody.

Beep: Yeah. Because in most ways it's not that he, I mean, you can cut off the, you know, it's I don't, I don't befriend anyone, unfortunately, truly. Right, right. That's where he is right now. Yeah. 

CC: Ah, so, and then in the words of Shin Haeun, I guess someone got the romance going and I'm like, yeah, [02:22:00] you and director Shin Ha-Eun  wanted because they're just like drawn to watching these fireworks.

And then most of my most favorite things in TV is when somebody is looking at something beautiful and the other character is looking at them. That poor bastard.

Beep: yeah, my dude, like you don't have a choice anymore. I am so sorry for whatever you think you're dragging to do in this situation to, to stop it, but you're done,

CC: Dude. The fireworks are that way. Like what are you looking at? And then obviously it goes, what, what their show often does is it, it gives you those romantic moments.

They give you the kind of like, oh, this is happening. And then it pivots to comedy because he almost falls off the dock. And then he's saved in slow motion by Hye-jin and Director Ji and we, you know, we have [02:23:00] talked a lot in past podcasts about the way this saving one another and the two of them saving him, symbolically what that means.

But it's just also hilarious the way they use all of these like slow motion and close up on the hands on his back, except it's two people saving him and it is officially kicking off our love triangle. Beep, one thing I wanted before we moved to the flashback that I want us to contextualize the way Chief Hong was acting in this episode. Now that we can take sort of all of the scenes from the episodes that lie before us and take flashbacks and put everything into order.

I want us to think about during this day, Chief Hong was ignoring her. Right. Then he reaches out to her and kind of reaffirms this. Like, let's be friends, let's borrow each other's eraser. Let's let each other see. 

Beep: Yeah, let me, [02:24:00] let me copy your homework sometimes. Yeah. 

CC: There's there's zero chance Hye-jin ever let anybody copy her homework.

So, so right. That's that is that we have had this peak Chief Hong mask, right? This entire episode, we have gotten glimpses of how torn up he is about this when he, when he's at home. But this, this day started with him, ignoring her, ends up with, you know, now we're in a place where they are reconciled, right this very night.

In the next episode, he's going to be so jealous of this past connection between Director Ji and Hye-jin that he's going to go tag along and follow them. When Direction Ji is going to walk her home in certain himself and invite Direction Ji over his house to stop him from walking Hye-jin home, he's going to sit there [02:25:00] annoyed every time that they have this connection in the past.

And then when he gets drunk, the mask is going to slip off and he's going to be so upset that he's crying. And beg her. Don't go, don't leave me behind. It's all the same day it's terrible. 

Beep: And I made it's just so symbolic of his entire character, because everyone, he loves through choice or usually not in their control, leaves him.

And he's always alone and beyond the atonement and the guilt and all those things. That's just another fear that he carries. He can't get too involved with someone because you know, he, he's a death sentence in some ways in his mind, whether he has anything to do with it or not. If he loves you, you're going to be gone well.

CC: And he tells the psychiatrist, [02:26:00] it's my fault. Everybody, everybody dies, everybody, quote unquote leaves. And it's my fault. So to love is to lose. And yet when the mask is off the person that he cries in front of his, her, the person he grabs onto and asks to stay is her. And it's just remarkable when you, and it's very interesting too, right?

Because when he's sitting alone drunk, Hye-jin talks about. You know, she's kind of like spout, you know, she's drunk and she's like, if you stay there stuck with your face like that, you're going to have facial paralysis. And it's funny, but it's also so interesting when you think about the Chief Hong mask.

And, and it is so striking now that we can put all of the pieces of this timeline of this single day to know what the way he was acting on the surface with her [02:27:00] and what is going on deep down. And that only comes out when the alcohol lowers his inhibitions and his true feelings come up to the surface.

And it's really painful. Yeah. 

Beep: Because his facial paralysis is dictated by his emotional paralysis. 

CC:So that takes us to the flashback. And it's really lovely how every memory of a really, really hard time that one of them was having is somehow connected to the other. So this time that Hye-jin ran away because she felt like her mother was being replaced and she went back to Gongjin to be at the beach where she remembers her last vacation with her mother.

We now have this. Seven years luck theory that her father has told her. And [02:28:00] I think we can approximately say that Hye-jin and Chief Hong's meetings were about every seven years. What all of those meetings have in common is that yes, it's fate, right? Or chance. That you were on the same beach when you were children.

What's interesting is they all involve a choice and they all involve a choice. Like Tolstoy's stories to stop and help someone to get involved. When you technically don't have to exactly whether it's the man helping the angel or the king helping the wounded man or, or the hermit dig the hole, it's making a choice.

You could have kept walking and you stop and you help someone. And in this case, it is a older teenager Du-sik, who at this point is alone in the world because he's older than he is in the flashback. Then when his grandfather died and he sees this [02:29:00] girl not have enough money to buy milk. And the thing that's so lovely is what Oh Yoon said was you're so decent.

You know, he's an orphan. And he you know, went to school on scholarship. Right? I think his, you know, his grandfather owned like an oil shop. It's not like he has a lot of money to spare and he counts out the change and gives her the exact change. Well, you're just like that's so him, you know what I mean, to like, offer the exact words to pay for something, but also also, so like deliciously ironic since their fourth meeting will be when he is unwilling to lend her the money for a cup of coffee, do you know what I mean?

But, so, so their reaction, like, so he sees somebody who needs help and he reaches out and he gives her that change. And it is so significant to her on that really hard day that it's [02:30:00] something that she always remembered that act of random kindness. And I think Hye-jin’s reaction is also really interesting because teenage Hye-jin is like, you don't have to, her first reaction is like, why, like, why are you doing this?

Beep: Which is, cause she was almost offended. Very similar. 

CC: Yeah. Or just like, it's so surprising to her. And so like, you don't have to, like, you know, his teenage do chic is nosy the way Du-sik is nosy. And he reached out to like help someone. And her initial reaction was like, wait, why are you doing that? And the way the episode ends, even before we knew all of the things that they had in common.

The way, the episode ends is how the episode began. It's two people who have so much in common and are so lonely. They're on that beach that has so much meaning for the two of them and they are together, but they're alone. [02:31:00] And it's just this really beautiful imagery about what their journey is going to be for the rest of the story.

If they can just get past grappling with everything about their life experiences and just break through that, they don't have to be alone. 

Beep: Yeah. And they have to choose that though. That's part of the choices that they make. You can stay on the sideline, not get involved and you will always be alone. But if you just stand up, reach out to each other in a way that's not passive aggressive, then you can't even imagine what you will have together.

CC: Yeah. And the thing is they have all of these barriers between them, despite everything they have in common, right? The polar bear and the penguin are both from a cold climate, right. They have both experienced so much loss. That is why those two teenagers are sitting there on that beach. That is a douche-y who has lost his parents and his [02:32:00] grandfather.

And that has a Hye-jin who's thinking about her mother who's gone and about to be replaced and they have so much in common, but they're both there alone looking at the same. And it's just really, it's really beautiful. And you know, it's seven years from now, he's going to be on a bridge and she's going to be the bystander who calls to ask for help.

It's just the seven year meeting is so lovely in how it is both fates and choice. You know, they're, they're not, they're not fated lovers. The reason why they end up together is because of all of these choices that they have made, right. 

Beep: They keep choosing each other in this. Now that they're learning about they do it over and over and over.

It's not a one-time choice, even half the time  they don't realize it. They're choosing the other person 

CC: And they're choosing others, which is why they were able to even reconcile [02:33:00] despite this impasse between them was because they both wanted to help jury. Ugh, Hye-jin — Chief Hong, you guys gotta get your stuff together.

Beep: Well, that's, it takes us to the end of episode six. So next time we will be back with episode seven, where the love triangle we have literally seen in this episode is in full swing, a little less physically, a little more emotionally. So don't forget till then to go to our website, streaming, banshees.com.

You can find us there. And also on Twitter at TV, Banshees com say all the things to us. We're very interested in other people's thoughts and theories. So as we leave. Please remember the words of June and go ahead and let that snaggle tooth show because it might just be what makes you special! Til then?

We'll see you soon.