SPOILER ALERT! This is a REWATCH podcast and we talk about each episode in the context of the whole show. Finish the show, then come back and hang out.

Beep and CC dive deep into episode two of Netflix kdrama worldwide hit Hometown Cha Cha Cha (starring Shin Min-a and Kim Seon-ho). Gongjin becomes a fully realized place teeming with three dimensional characters. A mistake previews series-long themes about regret and atonement. 

Streaming Banshees
Podcast Transcript

Podcast Episode 4

Episode title: The Flower and Fruit of the People 

Date: February 15, 2022

Show: Hometown Cha Cha Cha Ep 2

Beep: Hello, and welcome back to Streaming Banshees, your TV book club on the internet. This is Beep you can find me @beepsplain on Twitter, and I am joined as always by the lovely CC.

CC: Hey there, you can find me on Twitter @acapitalchick. 

Beep: You can also reach us on our website, streamingbanshees.com, where you will find all sorts of goodies, including episodes, transcripts, and articles from us, and some super smart people that write about different shows.

So today's podcast is about Hometown Cha Cha Cha episode two, just a reminder: we are a rewatch podcast. So spoilers abound. Please make sure that you have finished watching the series before you listen to these episodes, because we don't want to spoil you. It's great to see it all together the first time, but come back your second time around and we'd love to chat with you.

Beep:  So let's dive into episode two. 

CC: Oh, so before we dive into specific scenes, I wanted to talk about some big picture themes of the episode first. And the first time I watched episode two, it reminded me and we mentioned Jane Austen, the last podcast, but it specifically reminded me of Emma. And for those of you who have read Emma, if I just say the Miss Bates scene, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. But for those who have not, Emma, as a protagonist of Jane Austen's book, she is probably the most complex. And Jane Austen at one point said, it's something to the effect of maybe only I will like her. 

But she has a scene where Emma is, you know, sort of the upper-class person in the town. She is at a picnic with a bunch of other people from her village and the sort of older single lady whose life is sort of maybe not turned out what she wanted to be and, and has far less in income and is rather poor as, especially as compared to Emma who sort of the wealthiest person in town, Emma insults her in front of everyone in the village.

And it is sort of like a big turning point in her character arc and her future love interests, Mr. Knightley, who is at that point, her friend has sort of this famous dressing down of saying “badly done Emma, badly done.” And the remainder of the novel is Emma sort of coming out of that and realizing sort of what she needs to atone for and making amends with Miss Bates and sort of the turning point of her arc.

And in this one, obviously what I'm thinking of is Hye-jin’s unintentional insulting of Oh Yoon in front of the entire village, and then her later conversations with Chief Hong and sort of the turning point in her arc, where she starts to sort of make connections with her community after the sort of nadir of her relationship with the community.

So that was sort of my first watch. Impression of the episode. Beep, you haven't read Emma, right? Do you have anything to add?

Beep: No you are the master of period pieces or should I say in this case, I guess they weren't period pieces. It was literally just when it was written. But that is, that is not my specialty. So I shall defer to you on all matters Austen.

CC: Yeah. And I mean, particularly it is, it is a scene, the scene and Emma, the picnic scene with Miss Bates, just like Hye-jin being over the open mic are scenes that make you wince. And it's not just the public humiliation. It is kicking someone when they're down. Not only insulting someone, but somebody who thinks basically that, that what's built into that is that somebody thinks they're better than somebody else instead of having empathy and compassion.

And so that's sort of like this scene where you're, and it's still, you know, that's the heroine of the story who you still want to root for, but it's a real nadir in her character arc and it's kind of like that character at their worst. And so there's so much about the structure of that scene and sort of the public humiliation of Oh Yoon and how badly Hye-jin feels about it afterwards.

And her interactions with Chief Hong that anyone who is I, anyone who's reading Emma, I'm just in my head oh my god, this is like the Miss Bates scene. But all of that is still there and we will get into it. But on second watch now that we know everything that Chief Hong feels guilty about and we have sort of, the first line of this episode is “we all have moments that we regret in life” and that he is living his life essentially in a perpetual state of atonement. And it just brings this added layer and depth to every time Chief Hong is having a conversation with Hye-jin about making mistakes or how to atone for them, where he is speaking from a very deep place of personal experience. 

And so it's almost like on first watch, you think that this whole episode is just about Hye-jin and having to learn how to be a member of this community and sincerely apologize and connect with people. But then you realize that it's basically this almost little, for lack of a better word, like parable or preview for what is really going on long-term with Chief Hong and how he's living his life – how he is stuck in this state of perpetual atonement that he's going to eventually need to out loud ask Gam-ri for permission. Am I allowed to live my own life? Like basically is it enough? And there's a quote that is at the end of the episode, but I just want to bring it up now because I think it really frames everything that happens with many of the characters, not only in this episode, but throughout the series, talking about sort of things that you regret and how do you atone for things? How do you move on from these, these moments in life that you regret? The quote that Shin Ha-eun chooses from Walden that Chief Hong is reading on the rocks at the end. The snippet that we see on the screen is this line that's translated at least in the English subtitles as “the fruits and flowers of the people.” And it comes from Walden. The full quote is:

“I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind.” And then he goes on to say, “I want the flower and fruit of a man that some fragrance be wasted over from him to me. And some rightness flavor, our intercourse, his goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious.”

And so interpreting, interpreting sort of what Thoreau is trying to say about, you know, he's talking about philanthropy and he, so he's talking about people who you know, give away a lot of money. And whether that is in essence, you know, as good an act as those who can't. Writer Kristel Marie Pujanes wrote in the journal, The Quarter Life Experiment, she says, Thoreau quote only “asks that the intentions be pure and that the acts of charity be true. He believes that goodness should not be transitory or incomplete rather that the do gooder would also spend himself alongside his money and would persevere even after public or private discouragements.”

I find that quote, not only so applicable to the journey Hye-jin goes on in this episode, for example, the sort of emptiness of bringing the rice cakes by as opposed to later, her far more sincere sitting as sitting as an equal at a town meeting or listening to Oh Yoon's music and sincerely apologizing to him, but also how Chief Hong lives in a constant state of doing good acts and spending of himself for everyone in the town as sort of this atonement for what he feels guilty about with the security guards attempted suicide and his friend dying.

Beep: Yeah. Specifically what you're mentioning with the rice cakes. It's not that it's a bad gesture. It just goes along with what this says. It's disingenuous. She's doing it out of guilt and to promote her business, there's no genuine contrition there, it’s simply how do I get out of this situation? Whereas I feel like as it goes on, so initially she obviously, like, she feels bad for herself. Like I got busted. That was not a good thing, but as the episode goes on and she starts to see the interactions of other people, she starts to understand how she harmed them by her words, not just in the sense of oops, I'm ashamed and I got caught.

CC: Right, right. Yeah, exactly. And then I think there's a balance, right? I mean, she is very, she is punished by the town, quite publicly. It is a pretty brutal backlash. And just thinking forward to some of the, and some of the brutal and in some cases, unfair blame that will be laid at Chief Hong's feet, by both his friend's widow, the wife of the security guard. I just wanted to throw at another quote from Thoreau to have in the back of our mind, quote, “Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself that is that which determines, or rather indicates his fate.” End quote. And Hye-jin goes through a whole journey of sort of processing her own self-recrimination and the recriminations of others. And coming out on the other side of it and offering sincere contrition and making amends with, with Chief Hong's help. 

But I think that also is really interesting when we, when we think about the larger backdrop of this story, that this episode is previewing in sort of just, you know, a much smaller act that needs to be made that the amends need to be made. But what people thought about what Chief Hong did, what they understood about it, what was true or wasn't true that they blamed him for. What blames should he accept and make amends for? And what guilt does he need to let go of in order to determine in Thoreau's words, determine his own fate, which is the journey he's going on, right?

Like so many of the characters in Gongjin, and we can move sort of to the montage are struggling with how do I move on from the past, whether it's something I lost for many people it's, it's a dream that, that wasn't, that wasn't attained, whether that's a dream of a marriage or a dream of a music career or what you thought your life was going to be, it is as an investment banker and Seoul. And I, I think that's such an interesting way to think about balancing, you know, offering sincere contrition, but also that journey you need to go on for yourself to forgive yourself and also sort of say like, when is enough. 

Beep: And to speak. In fact, back to your point on Walden and his thoughts on philanthropy, that's something that I've gone through that I've witnessed in my life very specifically as my great grandmother came to a place in her life, as as many elderly people do, where she needed to live with someone else; she needed to be taken care of. And she had two children, my grandfather and my great aunt, one of them, my grandfather and my grandmother, they worked and they were relatively well off. So the way that they could contribute to her overall daily constant needs was to pay for things, to contribute to her medical bills, to split things, you know, that she needed purchased for herself versus my great aunt stayed at home.

And while they certainly got by just fine did not, did not necessarily have a whole lot of extra funds, but what she did have was time and she gave of herself, she cooked for my grandmother. She cleaned for her. She took care of her. And you look at those two things. And the issue is that they work together. Every portion is needed. And in my view, and even in my family's view, those things were equal. You gave money. I couldn't give money, but I gave time. And therefore this person is well taken care of. And I just always think about that. How there, you can't compare them directly. But sometimes one, you know, sometimes time is worth more than money and sometimes they just need to work together to make sure that that someone is well taken care 

CC: Right. And I was noticing, I was noticing in this episode, how much Chief Hong gives to other people and we should probably note it every time it comes up and not only, you know, and he's only doing it, sometimes he's doing it for free, such as taking the photos. Other times he's doing it purely for minimum wage, but he transforms Hye-jin's apartment and her place of business, like with his own hands and, and how much he, or whether it is going to talk to after he is upset or going out of his way to save Hye-jin's business by guiding her when she is really floundering every step of the way and how to make amends and what does she need to do to succeed in this community so that her business doesn't go under he's constantly offering of himself.

And so I find it that, that quote from Walden that Shin Ha-eun chooses –and she said that she intentionally chose to put the book explicitly in Chief Hong's hands. And it is the final image of this episode to give us a clue, not only to who he is, but why he does the things that he does.

Beep: Absolutely. What I find fascinating about him. And I'm not sure that this has ever been brought up specifically in this way. In fact, I just thought of it. He certainly gives of his time he gives of himself. He obviously, like you said, he works for minimum wage. That is by his own insistence, many ways as to himself, he's doing that atonement, but in that same way, he's actually giving money to people. If that makes sense, because he's saving the money for all of the professional work that he could be doing. So in, in his own way, he's actually giving both.

CC: Absolutely. I mean, when he offers to remodel Hye-jin’s business for minimum wage, I was like, are you kidding me?

Beep: What a joke that's not a thing. 

CC: Yeah. For $7 an hour to completely remodel. So he gives of himself in acts constantly and he is giving money. Right? Like, so I mean, every everything that he does in this episode from serving as a real estate agent, to, to remodeling, to being a photographer, to working in the cafe, anything that is above minimum wage, which almost all of those jobs would normally be paid above minimum wage, except for perhaps working at the cafe, although Oh Yoon has made clear, dude, I'd like to give you a raise and Du-sik is just like, I like things the way that they are. So all of that is literal acts that are gifts to people over and above their worth. That is above minimum wage. 

Beep: Yeah. So, I mean, my big picture thought on this episode is it's almost a story within a story because as you mentioned, we don't even know what we're watching necessarily from Chief Hong's perspective. We're getting the idea of kind of who he is, but we don't get the why, but I love with the obvious theme of regret in this episode that we meet so many of the other villagers because we have this expanse of not only who is involved in everything, but they're not just 
side players, that the characters start to be realized. We learn things about them. We learn about, you know, divorce and you can just tell you there's the loss of a child and it's not even discussed, but you can immediately tell. And I think every time a villager is added every time that the community grows from our perspective, it's just contributing to the full realization of the character that is going to in itself.

And they did just an amazing job in this episode is very efficient to show we're all a group. This is a community, but each and every person has a part to play in it. And they're all bringing with them a past and they're all bringing with them regrets and things they struggle with and lives and, you know, lives underneath that we don't necessarily know anything about.

CC: Yeah. So let's jump into that opening montage. Again, we have this contemplative line about regret. We all have moments in life that we regret and it's Hye-jin's voice in the narration, but it opens with another romanticist montage of, of the beauty of Gongjin, the water, the sunrise, again, firmly grounding us in this place. And then we see each of these characters in the village and succession, each of them holding an object. That represents their personal pastor grass. So it's almost like a teaser for every mystery that Shin Ha-eun is promising us. And I know that there's quote unquote, three mysteries of Gongjin, right? Who won the lottery? Why did they get divorced? And what happened to Chief Hong for those years? But each of these objects represents a past regret that in some future episode we are going to learn about, and I was thinking about it.

As you watch this montage, each of these objects like to borrow a phrase from Chief Hong, they go as deep as Lake Baikal right? Like the stories as you go through, you've got, Haw-jung holding the divorce decree that is supposedly by mutual consent. You have Nam-sook in her daughter's room, which doesn't look like she's changed a thing since her daughters died, holding the Sailor Moon wand, which her daughter held up into her last moments and was the object that she was left with in an empty hospital bed, Oh Yoon holding his second album demo tape. Which I think is so interestingly called “The End and The Beginning,” because I think a lot of not only in this episode, but this series as a whole. There are a lot of characters, you know, when you talk about moments of regret, some for some, it's also letting go of past dreams and embracing new ones. So I find that title the end in the beginning, right. Perhaps letting go of some things, embracing new things. So interesting. 

Beep: Well,it's also an indication. I mean, I look at, I specifically look at that title in context with this episode kind of like the idea of the end of one life and having to start over because specifically, and I'll, I'll leave chief hung out of this for a moment just because there's a little more complex things going on. But when you talk about Haw-jung, when you talk about Nam-sook, when you talk about, Oh Yoon, the endings were not their fault yeah. Or choice.  So they're holding onto kind of this regret of things that occurred, which they could not have foreseen nor changed. And in a way that is the hardest kind of starting over when you just have to.

And it's so difficult to watch them, you know, having everyone's punishing themselves in a way. And oftentimes that seems to be for things that they didn't even really do. 

CC: Yeah. Or they're stuck. And, and in some they're stuck in sort of you know, some not necessarily destructive or unhealthy patterns, but, you know, Oh Yoon really being stuck in the past. And as he says, you know, later on in the episode, like, I'm just, I can't live just constantly reminiscing. Or Nam-sook, you know, the healthy things that she does is reaching out to Ju-ri and cultivating that relationship with, you know,Nam-sook has lost a child and Ju-ri lost her mother.
And that's, that is a wonderful way to channel your grief and all of the charity work that she does to donate and her daughter's memory. Going around and gossiping and being obsessed about everybody else's business is maybe not so healthy aspects of becoming the town gossip, everyone. 

Beep: She's the antithesis to Hye-jin’s, you know, minding my own business and don't worry, but just focus on myself. Don't worry about anyone else. Nam- sook is like, no, no, I think I'll do the opposite. So I don't have to think about my own. 

CC: Right. Yeah. I mean, everyone has, but again, because even, even these secondary, like supporting characters are three dimensional human beings that have positive things that they do.

And also less constructive things, you know, like human beings, right? Like how Haw-jung is this pillar of her community and such a wonderful mother, but she buried this pain of what she overheard her husband's saying. And it often comes out, you know, speaking rather caustically or harshly to him, or as we'll get later on yelling about a pair of socks on the floor, instead of saying out loud, what's actually bothering her.

So there's just, I mean, everyone, I mean, to your point, everyone is just so fully realized, and it's just such masterful storytelling because this opening montage, every object is like a promise that Shin Ha-eun as a writer is making. Here, all of these stories and you're going to get to the end of my story and you're going to know all of it.

And it's like everything is paid off. And that, you know, you and I have been watching TV and talking about it for long enough to know that that is not always the case.

Beep: People are very good at set up. 

CC: Yeah. So it's so satisfying to watch this to be like, oh, I'm gonna know why every one of those objects is important. Of course, leading to the final one, which is the black suit hanging in Chief Hong's closet, which of course we now know is the suit that his hyung and his wife bought for him at, you know, sort of his first, his first trip to a department store first buying, you know, all, any of us who have sort of worked.

Beep: I mean, I still remember my first suit that I wore like to interviews, 

CC:  It's like such a rite of passage. And they became his new family. And it also, of course, is symbolic of when he had a very different career and a very different life and represents a life of, I mean, if he won't accept profit now and gives away the things that he does, his career as an investment banker was the exact opposite. It was all about taking risks and all about profit. And as we mentioned, last podcast, playing with other people's money to disastrous effect when that stock crashed and struggling with how much of that was his fault. How much fault is he to bear with respect to the risk that the security guard took and how he later attempted to take his own life, his own reaction to that, how he was almost going to drive and that is why his hyung got in the car. And he ended up being in the driver's seat for that accident. Right? It's this struggle he has with what are random acts, right? Like random things that happen in life. A grandfather having a heart attack, a stock market, crashing a truck, crashing into a car. How much does he bear the blame for that? And that is why he is stuck in this pattern.He does not live for himself.

Beep: It appears that is likely the only piece of his wardrobe that he kept. 

CC: Yeah. I mean, it's such storytelling to have a symbol of the past stuck in the back of your closet and struggle with whether or not to throw it away, what to do with it. Do I throw it away? Do I put it back in the closet to ultimately putting it back on to truly face your past.

Beep: My initial assumption, and I'm just thinking about now how this made no sense. My immediate assumption was that it was the suit he wore to his grandfather's funeral. And now I'm looking at it going, Nope, that's for an adult.
Like I forgot  how long ago that was. 

CC: Well, I mean, yeah, right, right. But I believe he wears it to his friend's funeral and he wears it to face his widow and it is quite, you know, it's quite a somber suit. And it is a contrast to the new, you know, the new suit that Hye-jin will buy for him. And that he will wear to take his wedding photos, which is the new that, you know, he puts on the old to ultimately face his past and then he will put on the new to begin his future.

And that will be the closing image of the series of Chief Hong in his new suit, hand in hand with Hye-jin running towards his future. And so it's just beautiful, beautiful symbolism and storytelling and how these objects represent the past old dreams, old pain and losses and regret and how the new objects, then, you know, what he puts on his body, what he takes off, what he puts back on. It’s just such wonderful storytelling.

Beep: The items in the show are not simply prompts. There's a purpose for each one that has shown being close to somebody. 

CC: Yeah. Yeah. So that takes us to this. This episode reminds me of all the old Katherine Hepburn movies where she's going back and forth with Cary Grant or Spencer Tracy, just this frenemies. They can't, you know, Hye-jin and Chief Hong are like in orbit around each other and they are constantly needling each other. And yet there is this like gravitational force. But this idea of magnets, polarity, opposites repelling each other, which is we're in, we're in full, like, I mean they play with a lot of romantic tropes in this episode while also peak frenemies, slow burn. And there's a lot of like little grabbing of arms and hands over hands where, where, you know, the show's signaling to the audience and winking and be like, yeah, yeah you know what this is about when they’re walking through the apartment. 

I don't know if being a real estate agent is Chief Hong's perhaps the best team at his jobs? And he, he, he absolutely knows how to try and sell the wallpaper. Isn't it a tropical appeal? It'll put you on a flowery path. I mean, he's, he's doing his best as a salesman, but, but I mean, he basically is just like, yeah, it's got this. It's got that. It's your only option. Next .

Beep. It is one of your favorite moments of the show. So please talk to me about Chief Hong's big flex moment.

Beep: Could not love this more, especially so early in a show, the way it's done the music playing behind it, it is just, it's not what you expect. You know, he's like, oh, I can do that for a minimum wage too. And it just seems like he's throwing out all these casual things, but the certifications that fall out of that man's wallet, by the way, I can do everything.

I mean, and it also shows how intelligent he is, but also how restless he is in his mind that he just has to keep acquiring these skills one for himself. I'm sure. You know, and it helps to keep your mind busy, but I'm sure that he also chooses the one. He chooses the ones that he does because they're going to help people the most in his area.

And it's what they need. I doubt he you know, that he's going off and getting web certifications on how to build a website. Like he's doing things that are practical for the area  which he's serving. 

CC: Yeah. I mean, those certifications, we will learn run not only from every aspect of. Of construction and plumbing, but it will, you know, in the future we will learn, it will include origami, plating fruit. He's a barista. I mean, he literally has basically the most well-rounded yet also eclectic collection of skills.

Beep: Now, if only he  had certified as a  midwife, we might be in a different position. 

CC: Well we have to let Hye-jin save the day sometimes too. But yeah, I mean you're right. Beep, there's so many layers to how this there's the really fun. He, when we say he's a Jack of all trades, we mean all trades and then he's a genius. And that he's good at many, many, many things. So why, if you're good at so many things and you have that flexibility, why would you want to limit yourself to doing one task your whole life? Like so many of us do, right? 

Beep: Especially if  the reason that you choose your path is money, but he's getting paid the same thing for everything. So why wouldn't he, you know, mix it up, 

CC: But also that restlessness is teased in this episode when he pulls an all-nighter to remodel Hagen's office and is exhausted and we will later learn it's because he's plagued by nightmares. And the only times that we see him get rest and wake up in the morning instead of a nightmare, or the two times that he wakes up by her side. And so that restlessness goes to this. Pattern that he is stuck in, of living in this perpetual state of atonement that we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, because he can't live for himself.

And so you're right. All of these skills that he picks up is so that he can be of service offering to go back to Thoreau, fruits, and flowers of himself to everyone else. But, you know, so that, so there's so many layers to it. Right. But just the comedic “I'll consider myself hired.” And then he just walks away with her mouth hanging open as he runs his hand through his hair.

I mean, it is such a ridiculous flax that you have to calibrate that so carefully. Right. Because it's because she's been talking down to him the whole episode that this doesn't seem that, that the audience is like fist pumping when he's basically like, yeah. I'll consider myself hired and it's, it is a little bit cocky, but it's because she's been talking down to the whole episode, right.

Like he said nothing when they were in the apartment, he's like, okay, well tell me your style. And she's like, oh, well you wouldn't know anything about it. Right. Spanish tile and Danish, light fixtures and picking the most sophisticated worldly, you know, everything's imported from abroad. Right. And she's acting like he couldn't possibly know what she's talking about because he's just some country bumpkin.

Meanwhile, later on, we're going. And he's actually probably even more warmly than Hye-jin. And he's certified in all of the things that she is talking about, but she's talking down to him, like he couldn't possibly know about it, which is what sets up this flax to be such a fist pumping moment. And you're like, yep tTat was cocky walking away. And I'm totally with you, Chief Hong, you showed her.

Beep: Hye-jin is making a lot of assumptions about people and especially him over and over and over. She won't seem to let herself accept his role in, in the community and all the things he can do. She just kind of sees him as, you know, a weirdo.

CC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And she's, she's making a lot of, as you said, sort of snap judgments about everyone in the town, including him. And he doesn't correct her. As she talks down to him, he kind of like waits and bides his time.

Beep:  A lot of her assumption would come from the fact that she assumes, if he were able to leave this  place, he would have.

CC: Oh yeah. And it also totally goes to class. She's assuming she's this. I mean, you know, Hye-jin is a very intelligent person. And so I think there's, there's all these things that are tied up together, right. About class and status. Right. So when she finds out that he's a graduate of the most prestigious university in the country, of course, that goes toward deepening the mystery. Okay. Then why the hell are you living here?

But also when he does all the math problems for her, it's also, oh my like we are, we are our ma she finds it intellectually stimulating and attractive that he's smart. Now that is because you want a partner that you can be, be your intellectual equal and you can spar with. And I don't think that that is necessarily like classist.
I think it's just wanting somebody that you find intellectually stimulating. Right. And that that's, that that's attractive. You know, the fact that he's doing all these math problems on the table is attractive to her, but there's also all of the class and societal expectations that Hye-jin is going to have to grapple with, with that are both the product of how she was treated at university. But also having to put aside, what will my friends think about this guy? Who's my boyfriend, or if I stay here in the small town, running a clinic, instead of returning to Seoul, as most of the people who went to my university or I graduated with would do so all of it's wrapped up and there's like, good things about it, about why she so attracted to him because he's so smart, but she's also going to unpack what are other people's expectations.

Beep: Well, since we know too, from the epilogue here that he's been drawn to her from the very beginning, and obviously there's some sort of an attraction there. I think that's part of why he's so standoffish from the very beginning. It is no matter what she would have done, he would have tended to be that way.

Beep: It's only amplified because of her actions, because he's living in this world, you know, we've already said of atonement. He doesn't believe he deserves to love, but she makes him feel something. So he's like, no, I better stay away from that with a 10 foot pole.

CC: But he can't. So the way he deals with it is by this in the beginning of doing things for her acts, helping her save her business or restoring her shoes or all of the things constantly, he can't help himself and he expresses how he feels through acts yet always trying to keep her at an emotional arms length. And it's, you know, until, until she finally pushes him to a breaking point mid confession scene where he literally just can't help it anymore, you know? He is as helpful as he is, if you just think about everything he does for Hye-jin and this episode from making her home beautiful and a place that she would like to live to transforming her office to a place that she walks in and she's like spell, you know, like, wow, he did a really great job. This is amazing, you know, to saving her business by not only guiding her through all of these acts of contrition, but also putting his credibility and his reputation with his community on the line, by recommending to them that they should go see her at her office.

All of those things are all of these things that he does for her while in his personal interactions with her being quite still standoffish. Like she hasn't chipped away at those walls yet. 

Beep: Sure.  His actions come in stark contrast to him, mocking her about the office being near the mountains. 

CC: Well, yeah, I mean, you know, he's just like he's like, wow, you're exhausting. She's like, no, I'm thorough. Right. And there's all these like, back and forth of, you know, right now they're in the magnets are turned upside down and they're bouncing off of each other until they flip she's thorough, but he's thorough.

All right. So that takes us to, when he shows up at her house at night and I love it because man Chief Hong has a lot of jobs that, you know, somehow lead him to Hye-jin's house at night. Yeah. But again, just like the last episode, you know, we're obviously going to get the epilogues that reveals that he's the little boy not only in the photograph that she sees and is drawn to, but is played a part in her most cherished photo with her family. Again, they cut from Hye-jin putting the frame on her desk to the doorbell then ringing. And again, the boy who made her smile is the one that's at the door. So again, there's all these like editing clues as they're building up that reveal.

This scene has so many callbacks that I, I mean, you know, we marvel a lot at what Shin Ha-eun has done sort of big picture thematically, but there's so many things that come back from this one kind of annoyed at each other scene. Where, you know, I think it's interesting that, you know, that line, you doth protest too much.

I mean, they're when they figure out that he's older than her. And so he's like, don't, you dare call me “oppa” which is, you know, a terminology that has a lot of different meetings. But basically don't show me affection and they have like goosebumps and they're like, you, and you're like, guys you're really are talking about it way too much.

But he's also going to go home on a whole journey with that term, because boy, is he going to be thrilled by when she calls him that in front of her city friends, but they will, they will circle back to it at the end of still being like, not, you just can't call me that. So but what I love about the passcode to her house is here is something where you have on like on one level, his birthday is the passcode to his house. He puts it in just kind of like, that's the first thing that comes to mind for hers. What we will learn later on and will be a clue for the audience as to how Hye-jin is feeling under the surface is she will never change the passcode. And when she's drunk, she will be yelling it out loud because she is still using his birthday as the passcode to her own door.  Like she never changes it even as like weirded out as she, as it is when he leaves, she never changes it. She could have immediately changed it.

Beep: She is so mortified by what that is. She tries to just give it back to him as if she could get in the door without it.

CC: Yeah. But then, but then you have this whole layer to it that later on in the show, Chief Hong is going to read this poem entitled “Doorkeeper.”

And we talked about two podcasts ago about how Chief Hong's house, his quote unquote cabin, is both a physical place and an emotional state of being for him. And he gives her the passcode. She is going to go on a whole journey when it comes to knocking on his door. She's going to go from trying to leave something at his door without knocking on it, to knocking on it when he is sick to someday using that passcode, to just walking into his house, to sit and be with him and hear his story.

And so Shin Ha-eun is just playing with all of this symbolism and all these metaphors about doors, about who has the passcode to doors, but also, you know, both literally physically and also emotionally and entering someone's sort of inner life and sitting there and being with them in their pain and sitting with them in their grief and somebody letting you do that.

And so there's so much meaning behind Hye-jin holding onto that passcode before she even really has the words or is conscious of how she's feeling to someday then using it to walk through the quote unquote doorkeeper and sit with Chief Hong. 

Beep: Stop. It's too much

CC: It's too much! I mean, the writing is just so brilliant. 

I think it's so interesting the way when Hye-jin walks through the town and notices the portrait at the photography store of little boy Du-shik and his grandfather, and she's drawn to what she calls sort of like a mischievous smile.

Not only after this flashback that we see at the end of this episode, but we know that she went back after that meeting on the beach and drew pictures of that day. And as a little girl was like oh, I'm the star princess. And then he's the prince of the sea. And she gives it this child's narrative almost as if it's like a fairy tale moment that she had.

Chief Hong will remember that when he sees the photograph and make that connection before she does. But I think it's interesting that sort of like in the recesses of her mind, there's something about that little boy in that picture of that little boy that draws her in.

Beep: Oh, absolutely. And it's just, like you said, the recess, she remembers him without remembering him, or really even acknowledging or, or blatantly realizing that she should. 

CC: Yeah. So that, I mean, that takes us to you know, she's complaining like how long is this job going to take? And he's basically like, whatever, how long it takes, but then he goes and pulls an all nighter which, you know, again, we know has many layers to it. He's hardworking, he's constantly giving of himself to her, but he also has nightmares and can't sleep and is seeing a therapist and taking medication for it. 

Beep: And realistically, even an all nighter is not long enough, but I'm going to give it to them because it's adorable. 

CC: But he is walking back to his house, like dead on his feet and yet the way he lights up when he sees Gam-ri and the grandmothers just makes my heart explode. Like he just basically goes from, oh my God, I'm going to fall over. I'm so tired too. Oh my God. You're here. And this is the best thing that's happened to me all day.

Beep:  Everyone has adopted him and the same in reverse. He has also adopted all of them. 

CC: And so basically, you know, they're drinking sort of this their day drinking this wine that he's this rice wine that he's made and he's like carving. You're like, oh my god, this guy also makes soap.

Beep: Of course he does. 

CC:  But I love that basically Gam-ri is bragging about him the way a mother or grandmother does about a son or grandson. She's like, of course he made the wine. Is there anything he can't do apart from finding a wife?

Beep: Listen, you haven't had to experience this because you, you were married earlier, but as someone, a little older, even than him, I will say that is very real even if they're doing it in an amusing way.

CC: And that's funny. That is not a fun conversation for people to just randomly bring up but it's such a mom or grandmother move. But I think there are actually layers to it though. Gam-ri is worried about him being alone and not living, you know, she, when they, the town busts them, when the town basically is like, yeah, we knew you were dating Gam-ri says basically that was my final wish. The final thing I have been hoping for has been granted. And you kind of have a sense that, I want to read too much into it, but I don't think it's a coincidence that Gam-ri leaves this world once she knows that her adopted son, grandson is going to be okay and not be alone.

Beep: Yeah. I mean, certainly from a writing standpoint, but there is that in real life too, where people, you know, are especially getting towards the end of their lives and they'd fight harder to stay alive. If there's something they, that, you know, they're still hanging on for.

CC: And there's going to be future callbacks to this, to this scene, Chief Hong one day will be in this yard cutting soap alone. No doubt remembering how he used to do this for Gam-ri. And then Hye-jin will come to his house and he will eventually read, you know, a few moments later Gam-ri's letter and finally grieve for her. But also when the town is celebrating Hye-jin and Chief Hong taking their wedding photos, her friends will shout up to the sky, “See Gam-ri, Chief Hong is getting married,” you know, like in celebration. So there's just, you know, I'm going to yell about the writing 80,000 times during this part, but this scene, Chief Hong was like so sweet in the last episode, but this, this scene, even though it seems sort of like just kind of a grandmother figure kind of ribbing the single person in their thirties, there's deeper layers to it.

This little boy that she used to feed has been alone since he was a teenager. And she is worried that when she's gone, he's going to be alone again. And you know, one of the things that I always wonder about is how much Chief Hong, when he came back to Gongjin, told Gam-ri. And I don't think it's a question that necessarily needed to be answered. It's just clear either they have had more conversations than he has with anyone else in the town. Or she simply knows him the best of everyone in town because when her friend picks up that suit, which Chief Hong has put to be thrown away  (just like Oh Yoon throws out his tape of his demo for his second album), the camera constantly shows Gam-ri’s face clocking Chief Hong's reactions to it. So her friends are oblivious and are like, why are you throwing away this suit? Gam-ri is watching him. 

This is the beginning of what I think is really an extraordinary performance by Kim Seon-ho. We start to notice the expressions on his face, sometimes being at odds with what he's saying. Or how he's reacting to a scene, letting us know that there's a lot of pathos involved in throwing that suit away. Even if he's not sort of saying it out loud. Gam-ri quickly tries to change the subject. She's like, oh, well, why would you give that? You know, when her friend is like, can I have the suit? Can I give it to my son a lot? Why would you want to do that? Let's get back to the soap, right?

Beep: Yeah. She's for sure clocking that's not an acceptable resolution to this for him. And he doesn't want anyone else to have it either and not out of selfishness, but just out of everything that it represents. 

CC: Right. So, you know, I will always be curious about how much Gam-ri knew from speaking with him or whether she just knew it intuitively and knew that something truly, you know, really traumatic happened to him and didn't push, but always kind of looked out for him, particularly when you think about their final conversation and she's like, you have to, at some point you have to live your life and stop thinking about yeah.

Beep: I would say that the amount that he expressed verbally would have been little to none. 

CC: Yeah. But she knows.

Beep: Of course she knows. 

CC:  Yeah. She knows something and she knows more than anybody else in the town. And, you know, with, you know, I think Haw-jung notices quite a lot about Chief Hong as well, but Gam-ri certainly seems to know him, if anybody in town clocks his emotions about things it's Gam-ri and this scene is sort of the first hint of that.

Of course it then moves into the hilarious old ladies clucking judgmentally at Hye-jin's running outfit, which, you know, if any of us live in a city, you know, I probably see people running in like 10 times a day. 

Beep: Or less clothing!

CC: What I love about the comedy of this scene, if we just talked about the somber micro-expressions that pass over Chief Hong’s face. When talking about the suit, whoa, does his face go on a journey as they're talking about Hye-jin showing her belly button and being able to see the outline of her body and the leggings. He's like both reacting to them being judgmental because now we know he's lived in Seoul and has probably seen people running in this, like all the time. Right. So he's trying, he's trying to gently push back in Hye-jin’s defense as sort of the younger generation would be like, no, this is just a people work out now. Right. But when they start talking about her belly button and stuff, he's just like, ah, he like drops the soap. The grandmas are like, I mean, Gam-ri knows what's up.  

Beep: One hundred percent. Yeah. He hasn't seen this.

CC:  No, his imagination's running wild, man.

Beep: It's like, oh, so is she running in that? Okay, well we'll just file that away.  

CC: Imagine what was going through his mind later on when he was on the bike and ran into her running.

So that brings us to the party for the elderly and wow Hye-jin you are not in Seoul any more. So you know obviously this is the bottoming out of Hye-jin's character arc. I think it's really interesting that the public gatherings in this place are the nadir of Hye-jin's arc, because now she's going to start to swing up, right. And increasingly become a more integral part of the community. But at the end of episode 14, this is also where Chief Hong is going to be publicly humiliated and outed in front of the entire village by another outsider — the security guard’s son who works with Director Ji. And so this is, again, there is a public humiliation, and then there are consequences that have to be dealt with in the community. And I just think it's interesting that we have these two bookends: it’s Hye-jin in episode two, and it's going to be Chief Hong in episode 14.

So again, if we can just be very appreciative of the writing and the directing, you have Chief Hong walk up and he's taking photographs with a camera. Well, he says that no, he is not taking money for this job. There are so many different ways that Chief Hong with the camera is going to be paid off. And the dialogue in the scene is going to be paid off later. So first we will find out at Gam-ri's funeral that all of these photographs that he's taking are basically a gift for Gam-ri because she saw somebody else's memorial photographs like that and wanted her life to be recorded in that way.

So he's here at the party for the elderly taking photographs, I think presumably for Gam-ri, just like he later is in the flower field, et cetera. 

Beep: Even if somebody else asked him to do it, I still think that yes, it would be for her. 

CC: Yeah. He's not taking money for it. So it's not like it's like for the town newspaper or something like that.

Second, you have this moment where Hye-jin is like, don't take my photo. I value my portrait. Right. And he's like, don't worry. I have high standards. 

Beep: She is trying to flex on him and a little bit, and he just smacks her down.

CC: Yeah. The final scenes of this show are of him in awe of her while taking photographs of them for their wedding. Like one of the final images of the show is that beautiful from a distance shot in silhouette of him bending down to set up the camera and she's standing there in her wedding dress and they're taking portraits together. And it's just like, if you were Shin Ha-eu writing that line, you must just be chuckling to yourself of how you're going to pay that off at the end.

And the director just nailed it. It's just one of those things where you're just like, oh, this is so good. The way you pay it off. 

Beep: Right. I would have to walk away like giggling profusely if I had written that. 

CC: Yeah. And then, but then the other thing too, is the camera. Well, I mean, one of, I mean, there's many, many, many things that I love about this show, but the show is my favorite love triangle in all of television. And I hate love triangles with a passion. The camera is how he's going to save Director Ji when he almost falls off the pier and it is what they first bond over  – is his old fashioned, you know, manual camera with film rather than digital. And that is the foundation for the friendship that Chief Hong eventually forms with Director Ji. Which again to Shin Ha-eun’s credit, has a life and substance of its own. 

And so you just have all of these layers, right? Like this is a place where we are going to have significant ruptures with the community for both Hye-jin and Chief Hong and  all of this symbolism and, and, and things that we don't know or Shin Ha-eun is going to pay off about Chief Hong with his camera.

And you just, I just sit there and I'm like, it's like a two minute scene Beep. It's like, it's crazy. 

Beep talk to me about the train wreck of Hye-jin sitting down with the villagers. 

Beep: This is so painful on every level from every point of view. I mean, after we were speaking about this, I just couldn't imagine. I kind of went back through a couple of times that stuck out to me in my life where I was thinking, oh my goodness, if either that person or that group of people heard  what I was saying in any given moment, I would just shrink into a hole and die.

CC: Yeah, she has no filter, no internal edit and no, I mean, we had, you know, we talked about this before the way for better or worse things fly out of Hye-jin's mouth. And sometimes it's brave and it's a good thing. And it busts things open emotionally here. You're like, it's not that it's not that most people haven't had those kinds of petty thoughts. Whatever they may be. It may not be specifically like the luxury brand of shampoo that you wanted at a grocery store or you're annoyed that the tile is cracked or there's a hole in the screen.

It's just this piling on of unbelievably petty complaints that also happened to hit people in their weak spots. You know what I mean? Like, you know, she's saying, you know, she's saying this to Haw-jung in front of her frenemy Nam-sook, you know. Like all of the way that it plays out, you know, sort of the way she recoils at the food in Gam-ri’s hand when the thing that Gam-ri prides herself on is her cooking and feeding people.

Beep:  It's just so a small town grandma's going to feed you. 

CC: Yeah. It's so unbelievably painful. And goes kind of right to the heart of, you know, the original montage and, and pokes right at people's pasts and the things that they're already aware of in their own lives and just piles on, you know, as you're watching it too on rewatch, you know, because for example, the grocery store owner is like you came to my store and you didn't buy anything. And instead of Hye-jin kind of fiinessing that it'd be like, oh, I was just looking around. She just flat out insults her basically like, well, I just couldn't find it in your podunk local store, you didn't have what I needed. So I just ordered it online in front of everybody.

And this is a woman who is already not feeling appreciated at home by her husband, is pregnant with her second child. Right. And, and you just like what flashes through my mind is the compassion that Hye-jin is going to have to stoop down and tie her shoe laces someday in that store. And, I mean, for goodness sake, deliver her baby, but you know, but it's just such a spectacular train wreck where you're just like, oh my god, stop talking.

It's like the kind of embarrassment you feel like while watching The Office. 

Beep: Michael to shut up, oh my God, stop talking. 

CC: And all of it is so steeped in, in, you know, class and, and the urbanite thinking they're better than the people who come from the smaller town. It's just exploiting all of these divisions that exist on the surface between all of these people.

Beep: The interesting thing about this too, is how she can't get away from this. She is not visiting. She is not, she is in a position now, especially having opened her business. It's not like she can leave. She is just so stuck and has, she's going to be forced to face this. She can't just run away and hide from it.

CC: Yeah. And it's not just social. It's her career. One of the things that I thought was like a kind of an interesting detail on, on rewatch was there's this moment where, when she first sits down with the grandmothers, Gam-ri talks about, you know, just kind of acknowledging like, wow, you know, women can be dentists now. If you think about somebody who is Gam-ri's age and sort of like, no matter what country you're in, the differences in the opportunities for women to be able to have their own careers in tech and to get that kind of advanced education. But when she has to deliver the baby, she's going to be depending on Gam-ri’s lived experience as a woman, when women used to have to do this for themselves, when they didn't have access to that kind of medical care.

And I thought that that was such an interesting, almost like circle of  mutual respect eventually, or just sort of that there was wisdom and value in all the different kinds of roles that women have served. Right. And so this medical professional, you know, obviously she's a dentist is someday going to have to lean on Gam-ri for her practical experience from exactly these times that Gam-ri is talking about this party.

Beep: Yeah. Which is in contrast to this sort of classism and elitism, and I'm better than you because there are many different types of education and that's where along the way she sees, oh, well, I didn't receive that kind. Yeah. That she's forced to listen to people who are, you know, much more informed.

CC: When Oh Yoon comes over…

Beep: God, it is so, so I mean, I honestly feel for both of them because it is a little bit uncomfortable how he just won't let him, he's so desperate for validation. He will not let her out of the conversation to the point that she finally has to be like, I just need to go to the bathroom. It's very uncomfortable.

CC: Yeah. But what I think is so interesting is he's complaining about how annoyed he is, that he came in second for top song of the year. If they could just cut through this discomfort, there's nobody who hates to be second more than Hye-jin. Again, the details in Shin Ha-eun’s writing and how the details are often hugely symbolic of where a character is at in their character arc. When Hye-jin pulls away from Oh-Yoon and bumps into it, as she always does inevitably, Chief Hong offers her a bowl of that soup and she, even more than she does with everybody else, truly says whatever she's thinking. And he gave her an out, what are you still on a diet? She's like, no, it's disgusting. ithas dust in it. And she turns it down .

In the final episode of the show at Gam-ri’s funeral, Chief Hong is going to offer her that same dish outside at a public gathering, probably cooked in the same way. And Hye-jin is going to pointedly say, fill it up to the brim. And that, I mean, first of all, what could be more beautiful in terms of honoring Gam-ri then?

Beep: Absolutely than her food. I mean, it very well may have been her recipe, even though she's not the one who made it. 

CC: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's sad that that is, I mean, we have just listed, we're probably like 35 minutes into this episode and from the scene with Chief Hong visiting her house at night, to all of the details in this elderly party scene, Shin Ha-eun is laying all this groundwork in the details that if you pay attention, she's going to pay off all of them and all of them have meaning and significance.  And they're going to let us know how characters have grown in these details, right? Like just the fact that she says, fill it up to the brim. When here at this party, at the beginning of the show, she's like, it's disgusting. It was cooked outside.

And he gave her an out. She could have just said, she could have just said, I'm still on that diet. And it's interesting the way she, even though he annoys her it's interesting how frank they are with one another and how he is her lifeline in this town. Even if she is uncomfortable, quote unquote with him crossing the line, she confides in him, things that even her lack of internal edit, you know, she goes even beyond that with him.

Beep: Yeah. And she's projected onto him this idea. Whereas she needs to distance herself from other people in what she says. She literally will say anything to him. 

CC: Yeah. And you, you know, it's so funny because he calls her a fussy Seoul-ite. And he, I mean, he's, you know, now we know that is not just somebody who has never lived there, projecting that onto somebody from the city. He has lived in Seoul. He knows what people in Seoul think about the kinds of places where he's from. 

CC: I think it's so interesting too, where he says, why can't you look the other way and see only the good things.

Beep: He does that for everyone else and not for himself. 

CC: Yeah. Yeah. All right. I think I gotta put my big girl pants on and we have to talk about this unbelievably, excruciating public humiliation of Oh Yoon, but also Hye-jin. 

Beep: This is so, I mean, what she says about him is obviously just leveling. I mean, if he could have fully disappeared in that moment, he would have.

But the interesting thing is because what she specifically says, at least in the English version, is, is that an excuse though, if he had the willpower or talent, he would have made it one way or another. And that is the most brutal thing to say to somebody, because one, it's just not true, especially in creative industries, but it's not true.

You know, of a lot of things, especially when we find out later he's widowed and trying to raise a daughter, like at what point did you want him to be fully invested in this? He made a difference. And theoretically a better choice for what he was going to do with his life when he was faced with, you know, impossible situations, but to her side and to her point, she, what they don't know about her is the hardships that she's endured what she had to go through with her own, you know, not having money or not having support or whatever.

And that, what she's saying right now is exactly what she did. Right. She had the willpower, she had the follow through, she did whatever, and she made it as a dentist. So she's simply projecting that path onto other people.

CC: And, you know, and not just financial hardship, but she, you know, raised herself essentially. It's just hitting me now. And of course the show makes this very textual in a later episode, but, you know, she essentially was Ju-ri, a motherless little girl being raised by her father who's just kind of doing the best that he can. So of course she doesn't know that right now.

But she worked her tail off and made it right. And, but you know that also, you know, your ability to like, of course you have to be smart and you work hard, but, you know being a dentist to being a professional is of course, very different. The fates are far more fickle when it comes to artistic and creative endeavors.

Beep: Absolutely. The odds are stacked against it.

CC: Hye-jin also has never been responsible for a child and there's all kinds of sacrifices and compromises that you have to make, whether you are a widowed parent or not, when it comes to your own hopes and dreams, once you're responsible for other human beings.

Beep: Absolutely. And unlike her father, and I think he actually, well, they both progressed throughout the series, but unlike her father as a child, Oh Yoon is taking better care of Ju-ri and her father took care of her. I mean, in a way she was almost orphaned too. She lost her mother to death and then she lost her father to that grief that he couldn't enter until he just moved on to another relationship. And yet they never kind of bonded or fixed.

CC: What I think is so interesting though, is how complex the series of events are. So for example, like in contrast to the famous Miss Bates scene in Emma, Emma says it to Miss Bates’ face, where she basically says that listening to Ms. Bates talk is boring. And she says it to like an elderly, poor person in her town, when she is rich and young and has everybody at her feet. And so it's really kicking somebody while they're down, but she says it to her face, it slips out.

It's like one of those things like Hye-jin does so many times here. It's like a no internal edit moment. This is not that. As many things as she said that were clueless, she never said anything to anyone's face as cruel as what she is saying now and that is something that Chief Hong will point out as mitigating the damage of what she did.

Basically her intent was never to say this to his face and was never to say it in front of the whole village. She's on the phone with her best friend. And when you're having a really crappy day and things aren't going well, that is who you unload to. That's who you say those things, as Chief Hong will later say, at some point, everybody talks trash about everybody else.

That is, that is just as much a part of living in a community as carrying people on your back. That's what humans do: we talk about each other, right?

Beep: We carry you home, and then we talk shit about you. 

CC: Right. So there's that complication, the camera work and the editing also, now that we know, I think we had a little bit of a clue when we saw that suit hanging and Chief Hong's closet. Obviously he had something happen in the past that, you know, a suit is very different than the life he's living now. 

So at first, when Hye-jin is saying with the quote that you just said, the camera's on Oh Yoon. Then the editing focuses on Chief Hong’s face. And at first on first watch, maybe you were wondering  what happened to him in the past, because we saw that suit as she says this. But now when you rewatch it, you know, part of his reaction of course, is for his friend and for his friend being humiliated in front of the community and his disappointment in Hye-jin, who he is (like it or not) emotionally investing in at this point.

But her words cut him too. She says, while the camera's on his face, “living in the past when one's present is in shambles, that's only what cowards do.” 

Beep: I mean, that's a brutal word. 

CC: It is a word that he will use to describe himself when he talks to Director Ji, I'm not brave and honest like her. He will stand in that very place, get punched in the face and be called a coward who hides in front of his entire village in his worst case scenario of all of the things that he thinks about himself being said out loud in front of his entire community. Because he's hiding here, he's hiding behind this name, Chief Hong, right?

I mean the whole mystery of his name when you hear his name in this place is what will trigger his past being, you know, dragged out in front of everybody. Right? 

Beep: Because this man has been around him for months by the time, you know, they reached this place. Yeah. And he had no idea what his actual name was and how he would be connected to that gentleman's past.

CC: Yeah. So I, it's just incredible the writing and the editing and the focusing in on Chief Hong's face, the foreshadowing of what Hye-jin says. And I also think it goes to explaining, I mean, as you know,, I think that on first glance you could understand Chief Hong's emotional reaction and extreme disappointment in her for all of the things that make sense, both in her and on behalf of his friend.

But what she says also cuts to the quick, because she's saying out loud, what he already thinks about himself. He was already earlier today or within the recent past  looking at that suit and trying to throw it away. And later on, he'll say, I couldn't even throw it away.

Beep: She's not just saying mean things mean things or about enough. She's actually saying things that people already think about themselves. Even if just in their own fears, she's expressing their worst fears about themselves in their  lives, out loud in front of the whole community because Oh Yoon will say everything she said is true.

CC: So there's two things that are, again, the series of events and people's emotional reactions are so complex. What the town doesn't see is that when Mi-seon says “Yeah, but unfulfilled dreams, like, I feel sorry for him because unfulfilled dreams can really take up space in your heart.” When she hears that, you see her face sort of soften as she thinks about that. But of course, nobody else sees that reaction 

Beep: And it's too late. The damage that she isn't even aware of is done. And it's interesting to see that conversation from both sides because Mi-seon is not, she's not really invested in any of this. She's listening to her friend just totally pop off, because like you said, she's had a bad day or she's just frustrated.

She doesn't understand, you know, what's going on. Doesn't want to be there to start with, doesn't really understand why she has to participate in all this. And so she is just, she's popping off in every which way, saying whatever she wants. And Mi-seon is like the voice of reason, which then it's interesting to see that she's absolutely willing to hear.

CC: Yeah. I think her shame when she walks out, she still has a journey to go on in processing what has happened in making amends for it. But she immediately feels shame. It's quite dramatic. Everybody's eyes on her. I mean, she is almost humiliated in a different way than Oh Yoon.

Everyone's just staring at her, shaking their heads at her. And most of all, Chief Hong  –like her one kind of begrudging lifeline in the town, but the acting by Shin Min Ah you see the shame she immediately feels. And that is so that is not necessarily  again, if I'm just going to contrast it to Emma, when she gets into a fight about it with Mr. Knightley, at first defends herself and tries to be like, oh, it wasn't that bad. It wasn't a big deal. No, like Hye-jin doesn't do that. She never gets defensive and tries to say that what she said was fine. 

Beep: She knows it’s bad. 

CC: And what I think is so like, if we can just shift quickly to the fallout where Oh Yoon, walks off and he's by himself, you know, Chief Hong has a lot of interesting, to varying degrees, close relationships with people in town.
You would say perhaps of course, I mean, you would say of course, Gam-ri is who he is closest to followed maybe  Haw-jung. But Oh Yoon – he calls him hyung. Although of course, you know, even when Oh Yoon is trying to get Chief Hong to open up, he shuts Oh Yoon down, but Oh Yoon is at least somebody who's close enough with him to try it later in later conversations.

But I don't think it is a coincidence that when it comes to being publicly humiliated about definitions of success and how you live your life, that Chief Hong is the one that seeks out Oh Yoon to come to talk to him about it. And when Oh Yoon is like, you know, everything she said is true, right? Like I'm pathetic and my career was a failure and I'm stuck in the past. It's Chief Hong who's like who's to say that's not success? You play music for people and they love to hear you. You're raising a beautiful daughter. And by the way,  Chief Hong is an orphan who lost his grandfather, who was a sole caretaker. He has lost three people in his life. So watching a father, raising a daughter who lost a mother, that means something to Chief Hong as something that he would never take for granted in seeing the beauty and importance of that, 

Beep: You know right. Oh Yoon has been putting his daughter first, essentially.

CC: Yeah. So, you know, that conversation is between two characters who, even though has no idea the depths to which these questions of regretting the past and success and how you live your life, go, how far, how far they go with Chief Hong, these are two characters sitting there talking about, at least on some level, what does it mean to live a successful life?

Beep: Yeah, and that's something I think that we all at some point have to grapple with and I think has spurred, you know, the pandemic has spurred so many people to do it at the same time, which I think is unprecedented in, you know, in technological culture, if you will, that we've all kind of reached that point of, okay, what's actually important to me.

What are the things I can let go of because we've been so kind of alienated from people in general that the opportunities we do get it's okay. Who do I want to spend time with and who can kind of go, and it's really fostering and acknowledging those close relationships. And I mean, and that's just something that she did in Shin Ha-eun the way she wrote it was just kind of to have everybody grapple with this in a certain way. And it's, it's so timely. 

CC: Yeah. I mean, this conversation between Oh Yoon and Chief Hong goes back to all of those big themes in Walden, back to all of these questions of the art of living well, like what does that mean? And to finding success and, yeah, I mean, to your point, Beep if you were going to use sort of the language of the show before the pandemic, many of us were like, Hye-jin in the opening scene of the show, running on our path, running on our predetermined path.

And now we've all been stuck in our cabins. And that is when, and nothing has worked out, whether it's like, you know, working at home or all of the plans you've canceled or the ways that you use to spend your time, because it's all been interrupted and we're in this huge time out, it's like forcing us to, in some ways it is traumatic.

And in other ways, it's good to think about it. Take that pause, but like, what do I want my life to be? Because our straightened determined path of constantly running has been interrupted. So it is a time when a show asking these questions could not have come at a better moment for anybody watching at home.

Beep: Absolutely. Because now it's forcing us, it's not forcing us to do this, but it's a good way to look at it that he is asked her, you know, why can't you just look the other way and only see the good, and so that's us having to grapple with, okay, what is good? What is not, what can I keep or what must I keep?

What must I get rid of in my life? And so it's just cool. The way that parallels, I mean, not that this is a cool time, but it's neat that, that parallels what we're all just absolutely forced to go through right now. 

CC: So if we can cut to what I call Chief Hong's Mr. Knightley “badly done Emma” speech before he arrives, before he rings the doorbell in what is it like his 10th job of the episode as a delivery man of packages. Just to pick up on what we were saying before, in terms of the shame that Hye-jin feels, she sitting there and what I find personally, a very relatable moment lamenting me and my big mouth 

Beep: And her shame initially is 100% about her, which I think is normal. I think that, you know, that that is normal and especially with what we know of, of her motto, but so much of her journey, just even specifically in this episode is about, okay, wait a second. How did I affect other people? And then do about that. 

CC: Yeah. I mean, because she, what she's doing is posting the employment ad for hygienists. So when she's like me and my big mouth and is like freaking out, she is understandably as somebody who's just moved to a new place and is opening a new business freaking out like I have just screwed myself.

CC: Yeah, yeah. 

Beep: Yeah. So societaly, financially. I mean, she basically just did everything that she had done in Seoul. I mean, she just blacklisted herself in every area. 

CC: But then when she comes to the door, what, what I find so interesting about this is Chief Hong has a lot of things to say in terms of giving her advice about how she should act or interacting with the community, but what I find so interesting about this and why it really sort of, particularly on rewatch kind of raises your antennas about how, what she said about being stuck in the past and being a coward really seemed to cut him to the quick, is this speech to her while absolutely has a lot of wisdom and is something that I think probably a lot of people in life need to hear then not everybody's road, you know, just because you're successful doesn't mean that everybody's road was like yours in achieving that success.

Beep: Sure. This is something a lot of people need to not only hear, but actually absorb. And reflect on and do something about it in their lives. 

CC: Yeah. But he delivers it in quite an impassioned manner. It also, even on the first watch it felt personal. 

Beep: Absolutely. And, and he does not let people in, I mean, that is the entire struggle of this series.

CC: And so I find it so interesting that what she said really struck him to the core that he feels the need to respond to it. And ostensibly on the surface. It's about Oh Yoon, but it's not just about Oh Yoon. But then when you rewatch it, there is this really interesting layer of how much. And we're going to unpack it line by line. How much of it, of course is all of the things that are the result of what Chief Hong has experienced in his life. But there are so many things that he says to her that doesn't know about her life and she initially it's like, I don't have to sit here and listen to this, but she does and she absorbs it. She could have defended herself and she doesn't, she just listens, takes it in and doesn't fight back. And I think it's really interesting the way she absorbs these recriminations from him. 

So, first thing he says to her, “you think you're better than everyone.” Beep, do you have any thoughts about that? Given the flashbacks that we saw of Hye-jin and college? 

Beep: I mean, this is so difficult because on one hand, I think by her current actions, that that's true. That's a fair assessment. She does act that way.

Even when you go back to her dismissal of her original boss. Now don't misunderstand me. She was doing right and had integrity and that boss was horrible, but kind of what gave her the right to speak in that way. She has an outward concern for either a person's position or where they might be coming from.

It looks like this is true, but, but to think, I mean that she was kind of nerdy and dismissed by so many people and her boyfriend, you know, throughout college was just an absolute piece of garbage. Not only mocking her, but speaking down to her as if he were better than her. So I feel like she's come up in the way that she pulled herself up by the bootstraps was not only to a level of success financially, but it does go back to this class system.

And so she's talking you know, and has already mentioned willpower and hard work. She kind of does think she's better than everybody at this point, because that’s the system she was working within. That's what she knows. 

And she's worked so hard to attain that absolutely generally in a place where she's not going to have a boyfriend like that to be in a place where the way people spoke to her in university, there's no way that she's going to receive that kind of treatment.

CC: And when I think it's so interesting, Beep, is that with respect to the boyfriend if you remember the scene that we'll see in flashback, when she walks into the club,, it plays out a little bit differently, but essentially. She was in Oh Yoon’s shoes. At one point, she overheard her boyfriend talking to a group of people, putting her down when he thought she wasn't listening.

Beep: And this isn't even that wasn't even who, that wasn't even essentially 
a stranger.  No. Is that with someone who is supposed to love her and she's hearing it. So she has to  know on some level how devastating this is. 

CC: Yeah. And so much of what he puts her down specifically for is just like he calls her pathetic that she only has a few pairs of clothes, like one pair of shoes.

Like he's really, it's really about class and money and how many things she has, which is so, yeah, it's so fascinating when you think about how important clothes and what she wears and how she looks is how important that is to Hye-jin, because it's like, you know, when she goes out and she buys that pair of high heels and wears them, no matter if they cut up her feet and give her blisters it's to prove too, like going back to that moment of humiliation.

And so I think it's so interesting that this, you think you're better than everyone is so complicated when it comes to Hye-jin, because she has been in that, in those shoes of humiliation, like Oh Yoon, at the hand of somebody else, like, as you said, that was supposed to love her. And so much of what she's done and continues to do is to prove him wrong.

Beep: 100%. It's all wrapped up in this idea in, in the concept of materialism and that that's how the things that you have because that's specifically what he was going after her for. And in contrast, you know, as to be such Chief Hong, who at this point is accepting nothing above just the bare minimum to get by.

CC: And it's like giving everything away because he lived the extreme version of materialism, which is like, you know, private equity or hedge fund, whatever he was working in that, that trading and that profit off of other people's money is like the most glaring example of capitalism, you know? So the next thing he says, you worked hard, got good grades, became a dentist, simple speed bumps.

Okay. So much to unpack for both of them. So on the surface, this polar bear and this penguin, he's assuming – he doesn't know anything about her. So he assumes, okay you know, it's hard to be a dentist and yeah, you have to study hard, but you know, she appears to be wealthy. She's looking down on everybody else.

So he, I think he is assuming that she has somehow had a different experience of how to get there and to university than he did when in actuality, both of them were either on scholarship or scraping by working tons of jobs, just to be able to afford it. He describes it as simple speed bumps. We know that Chief Hong, even as a teenager had already experienced losing both of his parents and then his grandfather before he even gets to college. And has experienced like we'll hold off and everything that happens later when he describes going off a cliff. Okay. Hye-jin was orphaned by her mother and then had a father who she used to, after packing her lunch for school, cover with a blanket because he was passed out on the floor before she got herself to school alone and then had to put herself through university working countless jobs and, you know, literally eating sausages in her backpack. It's the central memories with Director Ji is he was watching her from afar at how hard she worked and how much she overcame. So I think it's so interesting how every line of this speech has so many meanings of everything the audience doesn't know both about Chief Hong and about Hye-jin.

Beep: Yeah. And now we've got two unreliable narrators. 

CC: Yes. Yeah. I'm realizing one is listening and one is like talking, but there's so much to unpack about, about all of these lines, because there are things that are both true and untrue because from Hye-jin's experience, she's like, yeah, and I overcame all that and look, and look who I became. I am quote a top level elite by purely my hard work. Nobody gave it to me. Nobody helped me. I did it on my own. And you know, was such an example, such a role model and inspiring that Director Ji is emotional talking about how much he admired her.

Beep: You know just one of the many ways for this love triangle is like honestly, the best one ever done on television because his relationship with her really reveals so much to us about what she went through. It’s interesting that Shin Ha-eun actually decided to bring into the story someone specifically tied to her.

It was really interesting to get, not only kind of the face value story, you know, and flashbacks of what happened to her during college or whatever, but to have someone there to explain how she was seen through non garbage eyes, if you will, it's complete contrast to her boyfriend.

CC: Ugh. Yeah. Well, I mean, what's really interesting is, you know Shin Ha-eun gives the audience quite a hill to climb up in terms of, I mean, I think she does a wonderful job showing how multidimensional Hye-jin is, but Hye-jin begins the story with the audience at the bottom of her arc. This is where she is at her most judgmental and her most condescending. And we're on episode two. Mi-seon is invaluable in humanizing Hye-jin because if somebody like Mi-seon can be this lovely and silly and loving and just relatable in terms of watching two women be friends, then Hye-jin can't be that bad. 

Beep: Because she so clearly loves her and respects her and wants her around. And it's not just that, you know, we've been for instance, middle school. 

CC: Like I know she's in a bad position, but she picks up and just comes. They're she's the person that when you just found out that your boyfriend was cheating on you and you're going to get in a cab and go what four hours or whatever, and pay $166 for a cab Hye-jin is the friend that you're going to go see with mascara running down your face and just say, I'm moving in with you. And I'm working with you because my life is in a shambles. So that tells us a lot about Hye-jin even while Hye-jin has just been at her worst with all the other characters.

Beep: No joke. In that sense it made me think, cause just how you said she comes in with like her mascara running and another version of this, I can see Hye-jin, like railing her for that, you know, you looked like this in public, you came that, you know, and it's not about that.

CC: Okay. So the next thing he says, she's basically, I don't have to listen to you. Right. Which is like, uh, yeah, I wouldn't enjoy this speech either. Right, right. Although I think it's, to her credit the way she absorbs it, rather than lashing out or defending, or trying to defend herself is really to her credit.

And these words are going to stick with her. At the end of the episode, she is going to be still thinking about what he said. He basically like, oh, so you freely judge other people's lives. And so then she sits there and she takes it.

Then this is the part where you are just like, now that, you know, Chief Hong's whole story is just crushing: Life isn't so easy for all of us. Some spend their whole lives on unpaved roads while some run at full speed only to reach the edge of a cliff. 

Beep: That hit in the real world. So far outside of this story, that's just one of those lines. Or even this whole thing is one of those scenes where that cuts to my core. 

CC: Yeah I think one way or another most people have had can point to something in their life. Where do you are on an unpaved road or you reached  the edge of a cliff?

Beep: Sure. And every time we have things that hint towards this judgment and, and empathy and things like that, I can, I can never get the conversation from Ted Lasso out of my mind where he's talking about, you know, and it was in that moment that I decided, you know, I, you don't know what other people are going through. So the, I would always be kind, that's what I can give. 

CC: Right. Which is, you know, the reason why we're talking about these two shows hand in hand, because this is the entire structure of all of the mysteries in this show that Shin Ha-eun has constructed and hinted at in the beginning of this episode, from all of the villagers through Chief Hong is we don't know what is going on in their lives.

And so casual cruelty, not being empathetic, not, you know, not trying to put yourself in other people's shoes, even the audience during this scene doesn't know the true meaning of these words for either Hye-jin or Chief Hong. The narrative structure in and of itself puts it at the center. We don't know what has happened to these characters.

And that is all she's going to write about, because what she's telling us is that is what is so important in your everyday life is to think about before you interact with people, maybe what they went through that day, or what they've gone through in their life, and to choose empathy and to choose kindness.

And it's just remarkable to me. It's not only the subject that she's writing about, it is how she chose to write. Because how many, you know, there's so many shows that put mystery right at the center of it, right? Whether it's like a crime procedural or sci fi or, you know, Lost you name it, right. That makes the big reveal, the mystery, the puzzle box show.

This is a puzzle box show where the puzzle is only what happened to these everyday people in their lives that we, that they don't know about each other. And therefore is driving them to say things or act in a certain way, and also for the audience watching them. So you may think things about Hye-jin and Chief Hong, and the way the things that they say, or the way that they act on first watching this episode.

But when you go back and rewatch it and know their full biographies, you will understand why they react in a certain ways or their motivations for the things that they're doing in a different way, because of the way she structured the  narrative.

Beep: Oh, absolutely. And the way that it happens, you can tell as we go along, you find out the basis by which everyone's actions are formed, and the things that have been so crucial in that development. But you can also see when they start to take these things into consideration for themselves and how that informs who they can become. 

CC: Yeah. So it's just truly… I mean, his speech, I always just the way it was delivered, you knew that it was intensely personal and impassioned, But the writing of it, it's just this, like, it is both so specific to these characters and yet universal in its wisdom.

So then we move into Hye-jin is like basically walking around with a scarlet letter. Publicly, no one will engage with her. People won't talk to her, they run the other way. Nam Sook is pointedly asking, running towards the store, asking for shampoo, right. They remember everything she said, and they are going to punish her for all of it.

And what I think is so interesting in parallel to the flashback that we'll get at the end of the episode, Chief Hong again, notices how sad Hye-jin is. So she's crying with her friend and he is distracted from what he is supposed to be doing and watching her. And he can't help but try and do something about it, which is exactly what he did as a little boy.

It's exactly what he did as a teenager. You know, and as we talked about last time, all of these flashbacks, all of their past interactions have these two core core attributes in common. One of them is in a bad place and the other chooses to do something about it. 

Beep: I've found it very interesting that when she is walking around on her own, obviously like everyone is either trying to ignore her, even if she kind of wants to just say hi, but like you said, Nam sook ran right by her.

I found it very interesting that the thing she said was that she wanted shampoo, but not that cheap country stuff essentially. And it was like, huh, I just, I kind of clocked it in my mind of like, are you still trying are you still trying to win Hye-jin’s approval? In some way, not only indicating that I am high class, but also that you can get these things from this grocery store or this place that you've rejected is as just having nothing worthwhile. 

CC: Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think so if we want to move to the bike conversation uh, Chief Hong finally gets to see Hye-jin and her running outfit for himself. Um, and he maybe internally is having a biological crisis about it, but he has, you know, again, a pretty good poker face. But what I love about the way that he opens up this conversation and just this continuing, you know, the polar opposites, the magnets are flipped up and keep bouncing off of each other at this point.

He's like, yeah. So I was thinking you probably, you're probably mad at me for what I said the other day is, do you know how I'm going to start this conversation? I'm going to tell you how to dress. Dude, it's just like, all right. You're probably still mad at me. So I guess I'm just going to double down. He rides such an interesting line with this, right?

Because every time whether he is with the grandmothers or he's with Hye-jin, he's acting as a mediator and representing the other party's point of view. Right. So to the grandmothers, he's like, look, that's what people, my age, you know, and like Seoul, that's what they wear now to exercise. Like, you know, and the grandmothers, like, you know, are not pleased with him when they don't take his side, but with Hye-jin and you can understand, like, I'm like a 44 year old woman.
If I were running and somebody in their seventies had something to say about me wearing leggings, I would not appreciate them telling me how I should dress. But he makes the point be like, look, yeah, totally. But you're the one who chose to move here. So now you're in their community. 

Beep: You have come to my home turf. Yeah. So you just run a little differently.

CC: So he's like, so meet him halfway and what is so interesting and why the show is so subtle. She doesn't say anything, but the next time we see Hye-jin running, she's running in a baggy t-shirt. Yeah. So she's still wearing leggings, like, right. It's like a compromise.

She's still wearing leggings because she's going to wear leggings to run, but she's going to wear a baggy t-shirt over it as kind of what Chief Hong said, meet them halfway. And the show never forgets these details. They're not going to hit us over the head with it. It's just going to be something that happens organically that you can, you can either note or not as, as the audience, but the show's keeping track of it. As these signs of Hye-jin becoming a part of the community and, and being changed by it, you know, not completely, but she's becoming a member of the community and compromising, 

Beep: And I love to see the way that this episode is subtly showing kind of the different ways that he acts with her versus other people. Cause we've already talked about, she will say anything to him. I feel like she would have said all of the stuff that she said on the speaker directly to him were anybody else not, you know, not watching. But the interesting thing I found about these two exchanges was he did not give anything whenever he was talking to the grannies, he just defended her.

That's how it is. It's not, you know, a big deal. She's not doing it against you. It's fine. But when he comes to her, he has a more nuanced approach of, Hey, maybe there's a little bit to give here. 

CC: Yeah. And he, I mean, all of that. All of it is he's a member of that community, all of the choices that he makes to help her from giving her advice on solicited or not about how she runs, what she wears, which, you know, maybe on first watch, if you're a feminist, you're like, dude, you don't have to listen to him about what you wear.

But when, but the perspective he's coming from is you're the one who you're trying to win these people over as your clients. And I'm as a member of the community and telling you, you're going to have to meet them halfway on this, whether we agree with it or not. 

Beep: And though everything that he does is basically to help guide her as a member of the community, because he knows them best because it 
treats this entire, it treats Gongjin again as a character, because what it's doing is the story builds it as a complete ecosystem.

And so yes, you might have, you know, initially be like, I cannot believe they said that to her, but when you later think it of it in the context of this community, as almost like, like a place of business, you know, or school, like there are dress codes, there are rules. And here I feel like it, you know, that's demonstrative of just the culture.

Like, Hey, that's fine. And it's fine in general. And I'm not even, you know, coming at you for it or saying that you're wrong. It's just, it's really not going to work.

CC: Yeah, like it is about when you join a community and when you choose to, there's going to be part of living in a community is that you have to live with other 
people and that requires compromise. And that requires compromise.

What I also think is interesting is there, there is this poignancy now to Chief Hong advising Hye-jin and saying things like we all make mistakes because he is guiding her on this very kind of small stake. I mean, not big stakes for her business, but no, in terms of the harm, she hurt. She really hurt people's feelings.
But, but it's, you know, and not to say that they're not justified in feeling that way, but when he's talking about, we all make mistakes. His mistakes, people almost die, life and death. 

Beep: This is life and death. Right. His miscommunication or, or the gap in communication in terms of what he advised the security officer to do with his investments and then with the security officer, the risks he chose to assume and run with and, or not picking up the phone when he was calling him the day the market crashed or getting into the car and letting his hyung drive which of course all has to do with many, many forces and factors out of his control as Hye-jin will point out.

But the mistakes he is still grappling with are, are high stakes, but he also has been judged and spoken to and blamed for things that are not fair. So the advice that he gives her, even with the small stakes within the world overall, that Hye-jin has to grapple with in this episode really has this kind of wisdom and poignancy to it now that we know the journey Chief Hong has been on up until this point, especially when the place he came back to hide has also heaped all of this conspiracy and controversy and gossip on top of him. 

Beep: Yeah, he knows. 

CC: I mean, when he's like, you know, they're all talking about us anyway, later on episodes from now, when Hye-jin is like, sir, are you aware of all the rumors? He knows all of them. 

Beep: Of course he does. 

CC: So, you know, nobody knows more about receiving blame, trying to atone for mistakes and the things that people say behind your back or to your face that are not fair than Chief Hong. And so it's really kind of, I mean, I always was found it moving all of the ways both with her and to her, but the things he's doing behind the scenes to help her, I always found them really moving and kind of like, oh god, I'm really loving this character.

Beep: Which she doesn't know it all the time.

CC: Right? I mean, not in me, he does so many things to not receive credit, whether it's emotional credit or being paid. But there's just this real poignancy to the way he advises her through this small crisis that now we know is born of very, very high stakes life and death mistakes. 

Beep: And what I love about the way that he approaches her, whether she knows it or not, you know?

And when I say approach, I mean, what he, how he approaches, what he's doing for her in the background is that no matter what it seems that he might think about her, you know, that she's shallow or that she thinks she's better than people or whatever, even without knowing everything that she's been through, because of all the things he's been through, he thinks that she's worth saving.

And the way that he wants to do that is not by running. You know, he doesn't want to run her off. He wants to assist her and help her integrate into this community because he sees that she could be an asset. 

CC: Right. And that's so lovely beat because honestly, who would understand more that somebody deserves a second chance than him?

Beep: No. I mean, even though he's not really truly willing to give it to himself fully. He, he grants to other people with, you know, 

CC: Yeah. But he also does it, one of the things, and this just occurred to me that the way that he does it is so that the person that he is helping is not indebted to him, meaning whether it's the groceries that he buys to bring to the town meeting for Hye-jin, he's like, you're going to pay for it. I mean, he's like, yeah, your, your wealthier, it's, it's your thing that you're making up for. Why shouldn't you pay for it? Right. But also it's, if she pays for it, it keeps her at an emotional distance because she's not indebted to him for it. 

Beep: We're square.

CC: We're square. Same with the shoe. I found it on the street. What she, you know, if she knew that he rescued from the ocean, what on YouTube did it yourself? And, you know, spend freaking days rehabilitating her shoe, she would be indebted to him, right? So he, oh, he is helping her, but always in a way so that they are square. And to keep that, keep her at an emotional distance, because at some level he is uncomfortable with how uncomfortable she is making him.

And he's trying to shut it down because his life is, is not, it is not about the future. It is not about opening up yourself to people. It is not about having relationships. It is about keeping people at a distance and atoning for the mistakes in his past. And that is what his life is. 

If we want to talk about sort of like, just to pick up again on Chief Hong, throwing this, trying to throw the symbol of his past in the garbage, what he finds is Oh Yoon’s cassette tape in the trash.

And there's a beautiful parallel that we actually won't know until many, many episodes from now is Chief Hong rescues the tape from the trash so that he can turn it into a digital file and Oh Yoon can then go on his own journey of reconciling the past with the present and the future Chief Hong also doesn't throw away that suit.

And so there's just this, like he's clearly processing his own relationship with the object that represents his past as he is doing this for Oh Yoon. Like, I think he's going to regret this. So I'm going to do something for him. I'm going to do something he didn't know how to do and digitize it and give it to him.

And then he can, you know, it's also sort of like this lovely, subtle way of appreciating his artistic work, Chief Hong preserving it and giving it back to him. 

Beep: Yeah. And the way that he does this for people, I like the way that this is used. He needs to some extent Hye-jin’s support later with this, but it's cool that they have shown along the way by the time, you know, he's having to really reckon with himself that he's learning to do or learning to accept for himself, the things that we've already seen him do for others.

Yeah. He doesn't run and give that, you know, file to Oh Yoon right away, he kind of sits on it. He mulls it over and he waits for the right time. And it's, it's interesting to see. And, you know, from my perspective that we've seen these little actions from him all the way through, and they're, they're simply demonstrative of the things that he needs to learn to do for himself and to allow himself to express.

Beep: So that brings us to Chief Hong showing up to point out specifically that this rice cake business was no good. That's not how you, how you make amends to people. It was, it seemed fake. It didn't, you know, appease or convince anybody.

CC: Yeah. And I mean, granted, there's two sides to this. Nobody offers her any grace. Nobody gives an inch, but it is correct his assessment. I can picture it in my mind how insincere it was. She does just kind of like sheepishly go in and be like, okay, thanks. Like support my business. Yeah. She didn't say sorry to anybody. Right? Like it, his assessment without having seen what happened is dead on. 

Beep: Yeah. She tries to just gloss over it by doing a thing. I feel like she might've done. Even if this didn't happen, you know, to give out things for just kind of a general marketing of it yourself.

CC: But so he calls her to a much higher cause, which is as a member, especially a member, you know, a business owner in the community. She needs to go sit down at their monthly community meeting. Um, and she will have to face a room full of people that she has disrespected in public. 

The way he puts it is so simple. And yet it's so hard. You can't pick up spilt milk, apologize for spilling it. This phrase is look, and it goes to the opening line of this episode.

There are moments in life that you will regret, right? The last person that we saw was Hye-jin staring out the window at the ocean of an empty office with no clients. So what she has to do is apologize. Meaningfully, face them. It is excruciating and he brings her there and then he's, and then it seems like he's just going to leave her on her own, which is also kind of, I love the sort of the way this show balances, how much they do for one another. While these characters also have to stand on their own two feet.

So whether in the first half of this drama, as we talked about in the last podcast, it's Chief Hong guiding Hye-jin through becoming a member of the community. There are still many things that she has to do on her own. He is helping her, but he is not saving her. And in the second half, when it comes to Chief Hong emotionally opening up and facing his past and reckoning with what has happened and moving on, she is there for him, but she is not saving him.

He has to do it. He has to have this difficult conversations with his, with his friends, widow and, and the, and the security officer’s son. 

Beep: They, they offer to each other support, not salvation. 

CC: Exactly. So well put. Yeah. But what she doesn't know is he sneaking off to go buy a hundred dollars worth of snacks?

I mean, this guy, this guy made her dissect squids to pay for a $4 coffee. And he just goes and buys a hundred dollars worth of snacks without asking her, it's incredible. The audacity it's so amazing. It's like, I don't know if he just got like, he's like I got carried away and I don't know if he just got, you know, it's also kind of sweet cause it's like, he's just trying to make it better.

Beep: Right. Anything he can do to prop her up.

CC: Yeah. I mean, it is kind of, it's kind of adorable that this guy who counts change out of his purse down to the cent is just went on a hundred dollar shopping spree at the grocery for like chips. I mean, that's a lot of snacks also is it's also so savvy and tie to the community because he, he buys at a local business, the business, she insulted all of the snacks for the community meeting, where she is going to have to sit down around a table as an equal with everybody else and face them.

If there were any series of acts that would address head on when everybody is thinking about her in terms of not being sorry, in terms of thinking that she's better than, than everybody else. Symbolically what she has to do at this meeting. It's like, it addresses all of it head on because she's sitting down as an equal with all of them and offering these snacks and food as an apology for what she did at the last gathering.

Beep: And he does, I mean, he makes a pretty suave move by saying, Hey, uh, she, I asked me to go get these.

CC: So amazing. And he, and he, and he basically kind of guides her. He's like, you know, she was nervous. She was in a new place and she made a mistake and he is here publicly. But what happens, off-camera also that we know based on when Eun-chol calls him later, ihe is lending her his credibility in the community because he's standing up in front of the whole meeting and saying, look, she made a mistake. So he's singling to everybody: It's time to move on guys. And I'm backing her and standing next to her shoulder to shoulder. And I am the one that is helping her apologize to all of you.

Beep: And he's doing that as a leader in the community.

CC: Exactly. And then he's going to fill her office behind the scenes with all of her first patients again, because he's a leader in the community and it's so beautiful, right?

Because this community and that leadership in the community is the result of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours that he has spent clawing back his own self-worth and all of the things that he's done for them in atonement for the mistakes he's trying to make up for.

There's a lot of things. There's a lot of things that they play with the way she grabs his. Instead of a lot of times, I feel like it's the guy who grabs the girl's arm, she's grabbing him and he's, and he's kind of like, it's so playful. I think you can tell that he's kind of delighted by it, even while he's calling her out on it.

Like what, you're not leaning on me or, you know, and like not showing weakness, are you, Hey, and then the way he does, I mean, they're playing with so many tropes, right? Like the music gets all twinkly and a kind of a slow motion. And you think when he's going to tan over the receipt, you think that he's perhaps nervous because you're like, oh, are there maybe like feelings here?

And there are, but what he's nervous about is he's about to hand her a tab for a hundred bucks or I'm sorry, the equivalent of one, but like a hundred equivalent of a hundred dollars would basically be like, oh yeah. And you have to pay for it. 

Beep: He’s basically like, I did everything that I knew you couldn't do, but I know you have money. So I have given up on myself so that you will be forgiven. Now I need to charge you. 

CC: Oh my God. But like, but also, I mean, it picks up on so many things because she's basically like, she initially says, thank you. But then she basically takes back the, thank you. And it's like, don't invite me to things ever.

Beep: They go right back to bickering. 

CC: Right. I mean, of course they're bickering is so entertaining that when they propose to each other, while descending into bickering over who's doing the proposing, I was like, god, it is so them. And all of it is like bill now. Right? He's like, yeah. So you owe me the money and she's like, don't buy me anything ever again. And I'm not grateful. And he's like, okay, cool. Noted. And he's like snickering as he like walks away. And it's so like, they're not obviously like drawn to each other and definitely not always getting along. And yet you can tell how much from the acting they are showing that both characters are like enjoying it is probably not the right word, but there is, there are like reactions to all of this that are not, it is definitely signaling that there's like a slow burn feelings percolating under the surface. And the show does such a masterful job at the slow burn where they kind of are like, it's almost like a pot of boiling water.

And it's like, they turn up, the heat starts to bubble over, turn it down, turn it up a little bit more, turn it down. But they don't, they don't drag it along for too long. Right. It kind of reaches I'm going to mix my metaphors, but it reaches this like fever pitch and then they finally go for it in episode 10.

And then after that, they're not going to mess with, in terms of the feelings, the feelings and how these characters feel about each other is sacrosanct. There may be things that are real life obstacles and things that they have to work through, but once they're hand in hand, that's it. So it's just really like a big picture wise it's like a masterful, like this is like the step along the way where it's like, Ugh, their paths keep crossing and they seem to kind of enjoy it. Even when they really don't. Well, it's going on.

I can't believe how much Hometown Cha Cha Cha makes me feel nostalgic about people picking up trash in yellow, like safety, traffic, reflecting suits. 

Beep: Whereas we mostly see people in the United States doing this when it's a forced community service. They are choosing to keep their own town clean. Yeah. You know, to keep it up so that that's something they can be proud of.

CC: So can I tell you though, I so feel for Hye-jin in the scene because I live, even though I live in a city, we have neighborhood organized, like weed pulling and trash picked up in our like alleys. And it's always on like a Saturday morning at like 8:30 AM.

Beep: And you're like, and when you finally  don't  have anything to do. 

CC: When you finally have the opportunity to sleep in and then, and then it's like, you get all the reminder emails and you're like, oh, I have to do it because they're your neighbors. So you have to face them, right. This is this push and pull that I think the show does so well about celebrating everything that is wonderful about community. While also acknowledging that people in your community can often annoy the heck out of you. And sometimes there's things that you don't feel like doing, but you have to get up and do.

And Chief Hong is so annoying in ringing her doorbell and being like, I know you're in there and pulls out a thermometer to prove that she's not sick, which I love. Cause she's going to totally like, they're going to totally flip that on its head. He's using the thermometer to force her out of her house to go do this thing.

She's later going to use a thermometer to force her way into his house, to take care of him when he's sick, but prove that he is sick versus right into force her weight in to his life where his, he is forcing her out into the community, but he's doing it as annoying as it is to her. And as much as I empathize with her when she's stamping her feet and being like, but I want to sleep, he's doing it because he knows because as a member of the community, he knows how important it is for her to show her face at this event, given what she's trying to do with her.

Beep: Yeah. I mean, this is, this is essentially the make or break because it's the follow-up opportunity. It's the place where you put your money, where your mouth is. She apologized, she did her thing, but okay. Now are you going to come out here and be equals with us? Or are you still thinking you're better than everybody, right?

CC: Yeah, absolutely. She has to like shoulder to shoulder sweeping with everybody. It's so hilarious how annoyed she is with him. He's like, are you sweeping? Can you just see that I'm sweeping? Like it's such it's not enemies, it's not, the trope is not enemies to love her. It's like frenemies to lovers this show.

And it's just so entertaining all of the ways that Shin Min Ah and Kim Seon Ho just seem to be able to nail every stage of this relationship of acting it, like the chemistry from being annoyed and the banter back and forth to everything that we're going to see later on. But it's kind of fun to take us back to like when Chief Hong and Ms. Dentist really annoyed the heck out of each other. 

Beep do you have any thoughts about this wrap-up conversation between Chief Hong and Oh Yoon kind of finding his new balance of how he's going to grapple with the present?

Beep: I mean, I, I love this because I think this is something in a way that we all have to do. I don't know anybody that hasn't had a certain dream or a certain set of things that they would want to happen in their life and that thing or those things didn't happen. And I don't mean, you know, everybody to like nobody achieves their dreams. I just mean there's, there's always something that you didn't get to do.

Even if you find yourself successful by your definition in  99% of ways. There's something. And obviously to him, it's, it's bigger. I mean, it was a dream of his entire, how he thought his life would play out. But it's interesting to me that he, the balance that he has to find is acknowledging that all of that has happened and it's led him to where he is right now.

And he can't change anything that's happened before this. He can't pick up his spilled milk. So the issue that everybody runs into with this kind of thing is you are now in the present and whatever you would like your future to look like, you cannot start from the past. You have to start from wherever you are, and you might not like that place, but that is the only place from which you can function.

And so it's good to see him start to realize like, okay, I have been stuck in the past. I am not only reminiscing over this moment when I was, you know, when I almost made it and, and trying to push that on, you know, Hye-jin and here, look, here's a new somebody. I must get this acceptance of how I was like once famous or almost famous or whatever it is.

He realizes that he's been stuck in a place where what he's been reminiscing on more than anything is how it all fell apart. 

CC: Yeah. What I love about the way that is the director frames it. You have the digital file of his past dream on the laptop. And the desktop background is this beautiful picture of Ju-ri as a little girl. So it's the old dream. Side-by-side with the new dream. And then, Oh Yoon is talking about, and I have to focus on her dream, which is to become a fashion designer and send her to school for that. And how part of being a father is reconciling your own dreams represented by that file that his friend has created for him alongside the people that you're responsible for and their dreams.

And one of the ways that he's going to do that is he's going to roll his sleeves up and barista, Chief Hong is going to teach him how to frickin make coffee because he owns a cafe and he doesn't know how to do it.

CC: That brings us to Chief Hong fishing, like a 21st century, Henry David Thoreau on the top of the rocks alone in the wind, on the ocean, literally holding Walden in his hands. If you listen to our first podcast, I'm like, ah, this is the moment I've been waiting for us. Like a total nerd. 

Beep: Come on. It's near impossible to see the connection.

CC: What I think is lovely and what ties with the flashback at the end is he is fishing, which was his grandfather's profession. And so not only is it, of course you know, as we talked about something that Thoreau wrote about and did a lot during his time on Walden, but it has you know, and it's out being in nature and he's obviously being contemplative.

It has a biographical tie to his beloved grandfather. And I think it's, you know, the way the director frames that he seems so solitary, doesn't it seem just so lonely to sitting there on the top of those rocks. 

Beep:  Yeah and interesting that he's shown specifically outside here, because from what we've seen, the little town is like kind of jumping and yet he's found this space to essentially accent and just show even more how really alone he is.

CC: Right. And when Hye-jin asks where he is, Oh Yoon is like, oh, it's like the mudflats like, do you know where that is? It is removed, right? Like, it's like the boat on the hill or these mudflats on the ocean. He seeks out being completely solitary or like on his day of surfing.

I'm not going to interact with anyone. Right. It's like, this is what he carves out for himself. We mentioned before all of the reasons why holding that book, said, it's, you know, it is both a biographical and thematic clue to Chief Hong and his story. What I love is that director Yu Je-won shows after quoting the line, Chief Hong looks into the camera at the audience then looks away and is obviously deep in thought.

And who knows all the things that, you know, what has happened with Hye-jin and the things that she has talked about in the conversations they've had and how reckoning with the past and deciding not to throw out his suit, you can think about all the kinds of things that are going through his head. But you know, in addition to the book in his hand, Shin Ha-eun has seeded some questions.

So we should be thinking about, oh, you, why don't you accept a raise? What is your deal? Right. So there's all these little clues that, that all are tied up in with the book that he's holding in his hands.

We cut to, Hye-jin looking out at the same ocean and thinking about what Chief Hong said to her about people's lives, going over a cliff. And when Mi-seon you know, they're so adorable and how excited they are and how well the clinic has been doing. But when Mi-seon asks, Hye-jin why she thinks their luck has changed, she immediately knows that the person that she owes a debt of gratitude is gratitude to his Chief Hong. 

And the thing, what I think is so interesting is in their first meeting, what he gave her a hard time about was the fact that she didn't say, thank you. So we, we already have, we're about to have two huge scenes for Hye-jin that show the growth that is already happening with her, like how she's already being brought out of her shell and being changed for the better by this place.

And the first is when she bumps into Oh Yoon and she could have just, you know, he clearly doesn't want to have a conversation, so, but she chooses to face him. 

Beep: Big change from earlier in the episode when she was like, basically trying to disappear under Mi-seon when they were walking through the town and everybody was ignoring her.

CC: Yeah. And what she did is she listened to the CD that he gave her. What could mean more to him? Even if she had said, oh yeah, I remember you from Seoul back then. She listened to his music. She's talking about his art now. Like it still matters. And she doesn't take the easy way out. She actually is very honest and it's like, I don't really like your big hit that much. But I listened to this song, which sounds – Blue Scar On My Heart – which if we think about Hye-jin and sort of all the sorrow in her life, we can kind of imagine maybe what that song is about. She actually listened to the words that he wrote and the melody and comments on it substantively and chooses another song out as the one that struck a chord with her.

And you just see the way he lights up because what's more meaningful than being remembered in the past for something you did? It's a song that you wrote touching somebody now. 

Beep: Yeah, it has a legacy. Yeah. That's burning on and she's approaching him through his language, which is our, I mean, I want to say really like his love language when, when he receives any sort of affirmation about his music, that means more to him than anything.

And so for her to make that connection on her own this time. Chief Hong didn't say, Hey, maybe you want to listen to that album and then go, actually talk to him. In fact, he didn't address oh, unit all, when it comes to, you know, trying to give her advice, he's given her this life advice to hopefully be able to apply on her own and she does. And that's awesome. 

CC: Yeah. And, and what she gives to Oh Yoon is he, then he, at the end of the concert, after she walks away, he puts the cigarettes away because he says a singer truly shouldn't smoke because he's still a singer in the present. He, his music, somebody still listens to it. Somebody still appreciates it, thinks about it and talks to him about it.

And so when she gives him in the end, honestly is way more meaningful than had she remembered him in the past. Absolutely. And then what is really what she needed to say and kind of goes toward everything that we talked about at the beginning of the podcast about meaningful acts. I am truly sorry for what I said that day.

That is a heartfelt, simple apology. 

Beep: Yeah. She doesn't try to explain it away. She doesn't try to excuse it. She doesn't try to defend herself. She knows she's wrong. She's approached him in an authentic way and she just owns up to it. 

CC: Right? So this episode ends with Hye-jin once again at the bottom, this time, the last episode is the bottom of the hill. Now she's at the bottom of the rocks. Both of them are symbolic of her journey toward, I think, toward not only her future, but specifically her relationship with Chief Hong. He is aloof and remote and at the top of a very rocky path, and she's pretty determined here.

Like she seeks him out. She says what he has been waiting to hear sincerely from her from the first time that they met as adults to say, thank you. He will later say when her father kind of acts similarly that one of her character traits is that even when she's wrong, she's quick to admit it. And she apologizes in here.

She marches right out to the person that she knows that she needs to think. And he is. So she, like, I feel like she's so speaking from her heart here and he's so aloof, right?

Beep: I'm going to feels bomb you. 

CC: Oh no, I'm ready. I'm not ready.

Beep:  So at the end of the last episode, she's walking uphill toward him. Unbeknownst to her. In this episode, she's walking uphill toward him knowing full well what she has to do. And in the last episode, she's walking uphill with him. 

CC: Right.So everything is so intentional and it's so symbolic of the way they have the way that at the beginning of the story, how they're apart or how they have to deal with their path in front of them to each other. And now they have somebody to walk uphill with, together. I know, ah, I mean, yeah, this is what Beep does.

Everybody went nuts when this scene aired and it's like, so you know, this swoon and him catching her on the rocks is like now such like an iconic image from the show. But I feel like the symbolism is very intentional. So all of the parallels that we have just talked about, but also she is, she is on rocky footing. She is brave and is going to attempt it, even though she's wearing heels. And she's going to attempt it anyway, because even though he is not making this easy for her, she has things that she needs to say, right? And, he is aloof in his words, he is going to be just beyond her reach, but he is eventually going to, not with words, but he is going to reach out his hand and she's going to take it, and she's going to lose her footing and he's going to catch her.

And there's a quote from Thoreau that I think ties up with a lot of the symbolism that Shin Ha-eun is playing with as well. The quote is quote, “the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such as the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand one items to be allowed for that a man has to live if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all.” Endquote. So Thoreau is kind of playing with this language of not only the sea being symbolic of life and all of the challenges that it can present –which is some symbolism that Shin Ha-eun obviously plays with as well. But here on this rocky shore it's windy and you've got the ocean, and she's like losing her footing.

And Chief Hong is the one that catches her. But what I love is that there are three of those in this love triangle. So he catches her, he's next going to catch Dorector Ji  from falling into the ocean. And then Hye-jin and Director Ji  together are going to save Chief Hong from falling off the pier on the night of the fireworks.

And it is symbolic of what all three of these people who are inextricably tied in ways that we could never have imagined at the beginning of this story are all going to play such important roles in each other's life. And they are helping to save — ultimately all these characters have free will and make a lot of choices for themselves – but they all in supportive ways you could describe as saving each other, right?

Hye-jin is going to be there for Chief Hong emotionally. And in the beginning of the story Chief Hong helped save Hye-jin's business and helped kind of establish her in the community when she really messed up. And at the end of the day, Chief Hong is going to help Director Ji kind of navigate whether he's going to go for it and pursue his best friend and work colleague romantically.

And they're all going to be sounding board and supportive for one another. And I love that the director plays with this kind of classic romantic trope, but he uses it interchangeably for both romantic relationships and friendships and purposefully with a love triangle, which is the last place where you expect everybody to be saving one another.

Beep: Yeah. And to be doing it without a lot of bitterness and ulterior motives.

CC: Yeah. But I mean, you know, also all of that symbolism aside, it is a classic, it is a classic romantic moment. I mean, I grinned when she falls into his arms and they are staring at each other completely awestruck while “Romantic Sunday” kicks in.

We've been talking a lot about old dreams. This is the beginning of the new dream. 

Beep: Well, you know, that's because of all those slow-mo and cuts from different angles.

CC: Yeah. I mean, they just go for it, you know? 

That brings us to the flashback. We've talked about the flashback and a lot of different ways, how it plays with point of view and how you know that, what all of these meetings have in common.

One of the details that I love is that the camera focuses on little boy Du-sik holding so firmly onto his grandfather's hand, which is later when he tells Hye-jin one of the few concrete memories that he still has of his grandfather. 

Beep: That's so real to have someone go on. Either when you're young or just the longer, or just when it becomes so many years since they've been gone, they start to feel kind of like a weird phantom limb, just a memory that you can't quite access.

CC: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, I think he mentioned, he says like, I don't know if I can remember his voice, which is so real. There's so much we learned, right? You know, that his grandfather was a fisherman, so you're like, oh, maybe now I understand the boat. You understand what he's doing in his spare time, perhaps as an act of remembrance of being out in nature to feel close to his grandfather and fish like he did.

And then he does in this flashback, what he did throughout this whole episode, she was upset and he makes it better through acts. As a little boy, it was being silly and dancing and making her smile. Throughout this episode, it was countless acts either with her or behind the scenes to make things better for her.

Beep: Yeah. To smooth over essentially her entire life in this little village. 

CC: Yeah. You know, and we talked about sort of the, in the last podcast about, this is the only time they have their entire biological family in one place. And they both have a photograph of the very important people that they lost in their childhood because of their interactions with one another. His grandfather is the one that took that photograph.

And then that experience then prompts his grandfather to say, let's go take a picture right now in the studio. And one of the things that at the end of episode 11, where we see the flashback of Hye-jin as a little girl coloring. Her memory of all of them on the beach, which she didn't know she was drawing was a picture of her future husband and his grandfather with her mother and father, she wrote “the princess was crying, but the prince made her laugh. I hope she returns to the beach and meets him once again.”

Beep: Yeah. So that happened. 

CC: I know it's a lot! It's a lot, it's the way a child would summarize beautifully, such a simple act. You know, she was sad. He made me laugh. I hope I see him again someday. And yet so much meaning and a significance that she couldn't possibly understand, but it's expressed so beautifully. And simply like, as children do express such things like what a simple act to like, make somebody laugh when they're sad. 

Beep: So that brings us to the end of episode two. Next up, we're doing episode three, which is a trip to Seoul and the return of the shoe. That sounds like it could be a Star Wars movie. 

CC: Yeah. “Return of the Shoe.” Cinderella is going to get her shoe back and it's going to be one of the many times that a Chief Hong literally lights things up.

Beep: We'll be back in two weeks. And in the meantime, we hope you offer and receive the fruits and flower of people in your own communities. We'll see you soon.