I'm Jessica and this is Teba K Rambles, where a couple of
friends review Korean dramas and we've done it.
We have come to the final episode of season 5 and I wanted
to go out on a banger, so I brought with me my friend Mina
from the K Pop Bookshelf podcast.
How are you, Mina? I'm well, how are you, I?
Am doing so well. I told you that I had a crazy
week. I had a crazy day and I did not
have enough time to watch this show.
But we are here. I have finished Sky Castle and
we are going to talk at length about it.
I wanted to watch the show for a really long time.
As a matter of fact, I had been on the docket for a while and I
it kind of fell through on a previous season, but I had told
you about it already in admi was like, I'm going to do Sky
Castle. And you were thrilled.
You were super excited about Sky Castle.
And then I felt awful, but it kind of fell through.
And so I was like, you know what?
I have to bring Mina on for Sky Castle because Mina was like
110% on top of this, like she had watched Sky Castle.
I have to do this with Mina like there's nobody else.
So here we are. Mina, it's been several months
since I asked you to do this episode.
God, I am stressed. I have to be honest with you,
that show, this show is very stressful.
Mm. Hmm.
Mm hmm. It is not an easy watch.
Not an easy watch, not for the faint of heart.
But before we get into it, if this is your first time
listening, thank you. Go ahead and subscribe on your
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So, Mina, Are you ready for this?
I'm ready. OK, so I'm going to get us
kicked off here with the Wikipedia synopsis.
This is the better synopsis that I read that was a lot more
general. But I think I wanted to go more
general than specific on this one because when people hear
maybe the title Sky Castle, I'm not sure people necessarily get
what it's about. And if you go with like the
names of like so and so's a neurosurgeon and so and so's the
wife of the neurosurgeon, like it just doesn't.
I don't know if it necessarily hits like just giving you the
broad strokes here. It is a satirical series that
closely looks at the materialistic desires of upper
class parents in South Korea and how they ruthlessly secure the
successes of their families at the cost of destroying others
lives. The drama revolves around the
lives of housewives residing in a luxurious residential area
called Sky Castle, which is a reference to the elite
universities in suburban Seoul. And those universities are Seoul
National University, SNU for short, Korea University and
Yonsei University. So those 3 universities make up
the acronym SKY. And so Sky Castle is where
wealthy doctors and professors live.
The wives are determined to make their husbands more successful
and to raise their children to be top students who will be
accepted at the best universities.
So they use every possible way to get that and we they do me in
every possible way. This show aired from November
2018 to January 2019. It is a winter show.
So I guess it's appropriate that we're doing this kind of on the
cusp of fall and winter. We're heading into the cooler
months. This show is 20 episodes long
and it is directed by Johan Pak and he's directed things like
The Atypical Family from this year 2024, Snowdrop from
2021-2022, and Secret Healer More Than a Maid.
Who are you? Have you seen some of these
shows from this director Mina? Actually, I don't think so, no.
All right. You watched Snowdrop though?
I did watch Snowdrop. Boy did I watch Snowdrop.
There is a whole episode on Snowdrop that we did.
If you want to scroll back in your podcast feed and listen to
that, you can. It was a ride, not a good one it
was, but it was a ride. And then Sky Castle was written
by Yu Hyung NI. She also wrote Snowdrop, so they
are frequent collaborators. She also wrote Golden Cross
Bridal mask Home Sweet Homes Scales of Providence Want to
love Again Green Rose. Basically she's been writing
since the mid 2000s and then this show stars.
This is a. So many people, particularly
large cast so. I'm not going to go through
every single person in this cast.
I'm just going to go through the mothers and the coordinator, if
that makes any sense. OK, yes, yes, yes.
I won't talk at length about what else they've been in, but I
will say like who they are and who their character name is.
So Yun Seiya plays no Sunghei and she has like the Bob haircut
and she's she's married to the lawyer or the law professor.
And then we have Yum Zhonga. She plays Han Sojin.
She's like the main mom with the Pixie cut.
And she's married to, like, an orthopedic surgeon.
And then we have Iteran, who plays Issuim, and she's a
children's book writer. And she moves into the Sky
Castle neighbourhood with her husband, Tae Wyong, who plays
the character Huang Teeong or Doctor Huang.
And then we have on that, who plays Jenny.
And she's also married to a doctor.
She kind of has her hair swept to the side.
She has long, flowing locks. Yeah, she's great.
And then we have Kim so Hyung, who plays Kim Joo Hyung, who is
the college entrance coordinator.
She has, like, the severe look about her.
I mean, they all look pretty severe and fierce.
No nonsense. But she has like a short haircut
that sort of swept back in the show.
She kind of has a bun. Yeah, in the show, it's a bun.
But in all the promos, she doesn't have the bun.
So I think it was a good choice not to sell it with the bun, to
be quite honest with you. So those are all of the, this is
a female fronted female lead show for the most part, You
know, you have their husbands, you have their sons in there and
of course, their daughters, their children.
But for the most part, it is, you know, the mothers that are
taking center stage in this story, and that's our cast.
I'm not going to go through everybody.
There's just so many people in this show.
So Mina, what what draws you to Sky Castle?
Why do you love Sky Castle so much that you've rewatched it
multiple times? Yeah, well, I like that.
It's not heavy on like romance stuff, which is OK, but like,
sometimes I don't want to watch that anymore.
You know, you can only watch that for so long.
And although it's about wealthy families and there's like a
class thing, which a lot of dramas has, it's presented in a
really different way. I think with a lot going on with
the back story, some of the characters and the introduction
of new characters and family dynamics, power dynamics, what's
going on at work, the this air of prestige, this, this
appearances of success and how that drives people basically
almost crazy, if not actually crazy.
So I just thought it had so many layers.
And also my family is from Bangladesh.
I'm I was born here. But so the whole like do well in
school thing really rested. But to me, I mean, not to this
extent, thankfully, but you know, yeah, I really like the
show. Yeah, As a former academic
overachiever, there was something really visceral about
this show that I connected with. And I think that we're on the
same wavelength about having, you know, an ethnic fan coming
from an ethnic background. Like you're not necessarily
driven to such extremes hopefully, but you know you are
expected to do well in school. It's also the expectation of
upward mobility. It's like you gotta do better
than your parents or, you know, you gotta do better than the kid
next door or whatever. Like there's a lot of
competition built into some immigrant experiences, I think,
or families of immigrants experiences.
Absolutely, Absolutely. At least in the US.
Well, yeah, at least in the US. Exactly.
Yeah. So this is my first time
watching Sky Castle. And what did you think?
Lord have mercy. I so I didn't expect anything.
Like, I didn't know really anything about it.
I love walking into shows blind, especially when they're podcast
watches. And I have heard good things
like through the Grapevine that it's, you know, it's a very
highly rated show and highly recommended.
And I love that the poster was like all women.
And for some reason, I was like, yeah, I need another like,
search www.show where I can like, sink my teeth into it.
And I had no idea about what it was about, that it was about the
education system in Korea and how flawed it is and how crazy
it makes the families, especially in this pressure
cooker situation of these elite families.
So Stan, this was a good joke. I fucking loved it.
It was amazing. I was worried you might not.
No good. No, it was so good.
It was very heavy, is very intense, very angsty.
I think what was cool about it was that you kind of at least
me, how I watch a show is you kind of start rooting for
characters from the get go. You start reading characters,
you're watching their every move and you're analyzing them, and
you're like, OK, I'm totally on their side because XYZ and the
other. But in this case, by the end of
episode 1, the only thing that I knew was that there was going to
be more feral murder happening. Like that was my, my, my
prediction was they're going to start killing each other.
Like it's going to get worse, way worse than it already is,
and that's not really. Much ugly it's gonna get so.
Fucking ugly was my assumption, and my assumption was absolutely
correct, and that wasn't much of an assumption.
This is very much in a mock Jong esque.
Style. I know that's not your favorite
style. But it's not my favorite style.
But I fucking ate this shit up. It was so good.
I. That's what I mean, yeah.
Like it has Mok Jung, yes, kind of vibes.
But then there's it's more intellectual, Yeah.
It's more like cerebral, yes. Exactly.
So it wasn't kind of look lower
class or like baser, low brow, low brow, kind of like Mok Jung.
There wasn't a lot of like food slinging and stuff.
But it was good. Like it was juicy.
It was intense. And I loved the energy of it.
And I love the steaks that they just kept getting higher.
And I loved that the characters that I thought were that I was
rooting for and that I thought had a lot of grit.
And I was like, OK, I understand where they're coming from.
I totally want them to succeed. They turned out to be totally
unhinged. Like I was like, is there
increasingly it gets increasingly more unhinged.
But not in a way that you're like, I can't watch this
anymore. No no no definitely not.
I was like actually I need a press plate right now and it's
3:00 AM. All in all, really solid show,
one that I would wholeheartedly recommend to people, even if
you're more of a romance girly. I think that there's a lot of
social commentary. As I said in the Wikipedia
synopsis, it's satirical. So it's going to make a comment,
it's going to say something. I love that about it.
I I thought it, I thought it nailed everything that it was
trying to do. Yes, I think the acting was
crazy, incredible, So good. Everybody acted their asses off.
The kids, everybody, everybody. Everybody.
The kids, the adults, everybody, and there was quite a lot of
comedic relief, especially like a certain family in particular
was very funny and there was a lot of comedic relief.
Moments are out, which sort of broke the tension.
Yeah. That helped you kind of get
through some of those heavier episodes.
I mean, even if they weren't there, I think it would have
still been a really compelling watch.
Yeah, I mean, it would have been like a really straight drama
without so many Comic Relief moments.
You'd still be really good and solid drama.
Yeah, this is straight crazy though.
Like this is crazy through the vein.
So if that's not your, if that's not your bag, don't watch it if.
You don't want to be stressed out if you don't want your blood
pressure raised, maybe. Don't.
Yeah, because it's going to infuriate you.
Honestly, if it will infuriate you, it will make you really
angry in a lot of instances. If you're not into that, if you
want all the warm and fuzzies, babes, this is not the show for
you. This is not the show for you at
all, I think. This show at the time of airing,
became the highest rated series in Korean cable television
history. It received positive reviews
across the board, won multiple awards, including four Pick Song
Awards, the Director One of X Song Award, and currently, Sky
Castle is the fourth highest Korean drama in cable television
history. And I think you might be
wondering, like, what are the what's the top ten?
Maybe what's the top five? I have them here for you.
So the top five, I'll give you the top 10 #10 is extraordinary
Attorney Wu #9 is Mr. Sunshine. Coincidentally, Mina is on both
of those episodes. Yeah, I don't know how that has.
Nothing but the best. Mina is on both of those podcast
reviews for Extraordinary, Tony Wu and Mr. Sunshine.
So if you want to hear my thoughts and Mina's thoughts on
those two top rated K dramas, scroll back in your podcast feed
#8 Doctor cha #7, Guardian, The Lonely and Grey God also got an
episode on that 6. Reply 1988 Five crash landing on
you. Of course we covered that on
season 1 of Tabak #4 just said with Sky castle #3 Queen of
Tears just happened this year, unseated Sky Castle this year #2
is reborn rich and then number one is the world of the married
I. Still need to watch?
Yeah, so do I. So do I.
Maybe we'll reunite for World of the Married.
Top rated K drama on cable. Yes, the top rated K drama.
All right, so I have here. Culture critic Dong Da Kyung
says the drama has received attention from viewers because
it successfully strikes an uneasy chord while heightening
viewers as curiosity over the lengths to which rich elite
families obsess over education. He also says, and I quote, in
terms of education, the drama satisfies people's desire to
peek into what those closed rich family circles do for their
children. But at the same time, viewers
feel uneasiness when watching their stories.
Those two conflicting emotions, wanting to know but feeling
uncomfortable makes for some interesting chemistry in the
minds of drama fans and puts it on the must see drama list.
So there is some truth to the fiction is what we're trying to
say here, that a lot of people see this hyper competitive
education system in the pressure to enter a prestigious
university as being part and parcel of the real Korean
society experience. They're actually making a
Japanese version of this show, I don't know if.
You saw, yes, they're making a remake in Japanese, and I think
there's a sequel, actually. And I can't remember what the
sequel to Sky Castle is called. Really.
Yeah, there's this. I saw it on my drama list that
it was like labeled as a sequel and I was like, the hell.
Anyway, So this, this definitely triggered a lot of people.
I think it tapped into something that was already in the
zeitgeist, already in people's minds, because whoever has a
child in Korea, whoever has a high school student in Korea is
going through this process and trying to, you know, forge a
path here because everybody is pretty much excellent.
And that's the problem. How do you distinguish yourself
from everybody else who's excellent?
And that's when this hyper competitive nature really rears
its ugly head. And not that the US system isn't
competitive, but geez, not not like this.
Thankfully. Thankfully, and we've had
scandals of our own. Geez, do you remember that
scandal with the Full House lady?
Aunt Becky? Oh my God, when Aunt Becky, she
went. To jail she oh.
No, you're right. She went to jail for did she?
Buy her sleep buying a Yeah, like her child's place at I
think USC. Yeah, Southern California, if
I'm not mistaken. Yeah, but there was like this
whole thing of at least in Southern California of rich
people staging like that. My kids on the water polo team,
though, they don't even know how to swim and like lying and
basically on applications, paying someone like a
coordinator to fix basically an application such that they'd be
more likely to get chosen to go. And what was interesting, not
that University of Southern California is a bad school or
anything, but it was like just kind of random schools that the
people who went to jail for it wasn't necessarily like Harvard
or something it. Wasn't even the Ivy.
Yeah, it was sort of weird that like, oh, is it that serious to
go to USC? But yeah, I guess it is.
So yeah, Becky went to jail from Full House.
Yeah, and I think her daughter's an influencer.
So it all worked out. I guess It all worked out.
Her destiny came true. We don't mean to laugh, but like
you have to laugh to keep from crying sometimes.
I guess because it's just wild. It's wild out here, so it's not
like it doesn't happen over here.
The craziness and the pressure to do well.
That there's funnel schools for the Ivy's.
I think that this show reminded me heavily of Dead Poets
Society, which is one of my favorite movies.
How? Dead poets.
Society. Well I just I'm thinking of the
teacher student. Relationship.
No, no. I was like, that's not it.
No, no, no. It's really.
My captain? No.
It's really Neil's relationship with his father that is the crux
of the whole movie in the third act that reminded me heavily of,
you know, this, this show and also the broader message of
don't conform, forge your own path and all all of that good
stuff that, oh, captain, my captain, Mr. Keating taught us
in Dead Poets Society, these sort of values.
And as a matter of fact, the show Sky Castle invokes, it
invokes Dead Poets Society. That's right.
At the end, we had like one of the final episodes.
They're like, do you remember when we were kids and we watched
Dead Poets Society and we said all this stuff and we weren't
going to do this? And I was like, oh, so I wasn't
crazy. Like they were actually calling
attention to it. Yeah.
So anyway, I and I like that about the show, that it's almost
like media is reconciling with these ills in society in a
delayed way because this isn't new.
Like this problem that they've had.
It has been covered in other K dramas.
It's been covered in other movies and obviously in the
news, different craziness happening, but this show was
simply addicting to watch. And it's like watching like Real
Housewives at the same time, like, there's a lot of like
cattiness happening between the the moms.
Oh, but the cattiness of the dads, oh, that was, that was
crazy. That too.
Like it's like a medical drama. Real Housewives.
Dead Poets Society, a school drama, like all mixed in one.
Then it becomes kind of like a murder mystery like in the last
half of the show. It is honestly a lot of things.
It touches on a lot of genres, micro genres as well, and that
is pretty fun and unique about it.
That keeps you interested in coming back for more.
Obviously. I think the way that it was shot
as well was particularly good. I think it the cinematography of
it, they would have shots of the camera would be inside the car
and then someone would get out of the car and they would follow
the person, but they would pull the camera through the car
window and like keep walking with the person.
And I'm like, Oh my God, I can't.
These sort of things are technically cool to do.
And so they were doing a lot of that, a lot of close up shots of
hands and feet of characters, so many showing hesitation,
resolve, anguish, nervousness, restraint, control, characters
straightening objects like in their vicinity, like a towel on
a rack or a phone on a table. And these things just playing up
their characterization and parts of themselves which they want to
display, right? They want to show, oh, this
person is in control of their surroundings.
They're a controlling person. They want to have everything
their way. So I love those close up shots.
I love those cool handhelds that they were chewing from the car
through the window and like onward walking with the subject.
It was cool and a lot of shaky Cam that they were doing, like a
lot of shaky Cam. I really like to the wardrobe
and sets because you kind of got and we get we'll get into more
later. But like going from a place like
people's mansions in this like Stony neighborhood.
You know, very Or Tony not Yeah. Mediterranean.
Kind of. Looking and yeah, yeah, it was
just which by the way, there is really, I mean, this is at the
time the drama came out, there were articles about how there
really is a sky castle. Ask a neighborhood in Seoul
somewhere or like in a suburb of and yeah, I'm literally not
surprised. No, right.
It's not surprising. The juxtaposition, though, of
like going from a Tony neighborhood in these mansions
and whatever to kids going to the like below their Kuman
Khagwan Academy convenience store, you know, and like
mingling with the people. Yeah.
For like, it was very interesting that in like these,
the decor of like the very stringent households and the
very kind of stark design, interior design.
And then the ones that are a little more homey and the
because lady had like house, other lady had house plans.
And then the wardrobe too, Like I was saying the the clothes,
the elegant wives wear and then the doctors, you know, walking
around in their lab coats and stuff.
And but then, you know, sometimes kids are just wanting
to be kids, but some of the kids are wearing super kind of stuffy
pitch looking pajamas and like you can tell these are like rich
people. So I found the wardrobe too to
be and setting to be very interesting as well.
Yeah, yeah, all of it just made for a very elite not to use
Elite again, but like it wasn't an Elite drama.
I I felt that it totally deserved that number four spot
or the top ten spot. It was, it was great.
I thought, I thought everybody hype it up, hype it up as much
as you want. It's amazing.
Yes. Is there a character that you
really connected with? Oh, yeah.
OK. Wait.
So many because you had. Hold on.
I'm going to make sure I get the names right.
So first of all, would have to be the mom who moves in New mom
in town, East Suim. She's a children's book author,
and she kind of does not belong there, really.
But she's there because her husband's a doctor and he
basically takes a position over because someone else becomes
indisposed, actually and. Yeah, we can't spoil that much,
but yeah. Yeah, they have to leave the
neighborhood is all I'm saying. And so anyways, so they can move
in, new family moves in. And then she's basically like
kind of our eyes and ears in a way, like us, the viewer, unless
you are a Sky Castle resident in real life, because she is the
one seeing it as an outsider at first.
And then she kind of though, you know, gets involved in some of
this a little bit. And then henna, the child henna,
the student henna. I really was, I, I don't know
why I felt like I identified with her.
I think because she as a student had this sense of like justice
or like self righteousness, both, I guess.
And I don't know, I think when you were some of us when we were
teenagers, especially if you weren't super rich, like a
little bit like have those moments or whatever where like
this whole system sucks. Like, you know, So yeah, how
about you? I really loved Hannah because
she was really bombastic and fierce.
She was not afraid of the grown-ups.
She was not afraid to face off against the adults.
There were many points that she would be threatening or
condescending or rude to them, and rightfully so, you know,
rightfully so. You're kind of like, yeah, stick
it to them. She never backed down and she
always just wanted what was best for her.
Within the confines of what is righteous, you know, what is
right for and fair for everybody in this school, for every
student. I liked that she was kind of
this a little. Bit of well, she wasn't above a
little bit of blackmail. Exactly.
I was like, she was playing dirty and I was, I was about to
say that she was like playing dirty.
And The thing is, she was beating them at their own game.
Yeah, she's one upping them like in every turn, and it's kind of
awesome to see that. Exactly.
So I loved her. I loved her so much.
And then I got to be honest, I loved our Bob cut girl, Sunghe,
who was married to the lawyer. So she was also one of my
favorites because I thought that she had a resilience that some
of the other moms didn't express.
And you could tell that she was very intelligent and she was
very educated, and she felt deeply for the struggle of her
children. And she was fighting the
patriarchy. It was almost like she was
fighting the patriarchy within her own home before fighting the
larger system that were at play in like the society at large,
because she was basically living with the tyrant.
Pyramid Dad. Yeah, Yeah, My, my cousins, I
watch this together. We called him Pyramid Dad.
It is. We still call him that.
He's in other dramas. And you're like Pyramid Dad.
It's pyramid drama. No, no, no, I agree completely.
He's pyramid dad and he's utterly ridiculous.
Like you can't take him seriously, but he is very
intimidating at at a lot of junctures in the story and and
in their family story in particular.
And I felt incredibly, you know, sympathetic and empathetic Tour
Tung Hei as a mother, you know, because she's trying to do right
by her kid. She's not trying to break up the
family. She's trying to play the
peacemaker, humble herself all the time.
But she is clearly smarter than her husband.
So, like, she's trying to play within his arbitrary patriarchal
rules. And he demands respect.
He wants this. He wants to be the breadwinner,
He has control of the family finances, and she's like working
within all of this shit. That's like working against her.
And so I just thought that she had a great story, a great arc,
and I love how she handles her biz by the end of the show.
She's such an advocate for her kids, which some of the other
moms are not in the same way that she is.
Yeah. Yeah, and I thought that she had
a better relationship with her children from jump like from day
one, her and her children were on the same page.
They, you know, understood each other.
There was a, a bond there that they didn't share with their
father because he was constantly cracking the whip and constantly
telling them to study. And and it was a a very
fractured relationship or one that was never built between him
and his children. So she put in the I don't want
to say work because it's I don't want to consider it work.
But she loved on her kids and they loved her back.
Like it was very simple and it always was that simple, you
know, like he didn't get it, Like the dad just didn't get it.
So anyway. Well, he just like commanded and
demanded respect and she and like saw it as a more reciprocal
relationship, like the one with her kids.
I mean, that relationship is reciprocal.
It's not like I gave birth to you, so you must respect me or I
gave birth to you and you must, you know, do this.
On the other, she was more like, oh, they're humans, yeah.
And they have feelings and rights and this and that too.
So, you know, I, I think she was just more humanistic.
I don't know if that's right. The word like compared to some
of the other, the way some of their moms ran their households
or, you know, the she definitely had a more built a rapport, saw
them as people consider their feelings and not only status,
grades, tests, you know, exactly what people think.
So. I loved her, loved her
character. I was going to refer to
Snowdrop, but you haven't watched the Snowdrop yet because
Kim Hei Yin plays Yeso, who is one of the students.
She is our Pixie cut lady's daughter and she is like at the
centre of everything, right Yeso?
I was convinced I wasn't going to like forgive Yeso by the end
of the show. I know.
Because I got to be honest, this actress in Snowdrop, I have not
forgiven her for what she did in Snowdrop.
OK. This is a lot of like the energy
and the shit she was giving in Snowdrop.
So I was like, yeah, I know who you really are, Kim.
Hey, Yoon. Everybody knows her from Lovely
Runner this year and they have fallen head over heels for her
this year if they hadn't watched her in anything else.
Honestly, she's a 2 faced bitch. I I'm sorry, like I know that
she's an actress but it, it was too real.
It was too, too good. She did too good of a job and
Snowdrop too good of a job in Sky Castle.
But she's a little more redeemable towards the end of
Sky. Castle exactly.
By the end of Sky Castle I was like, oh thank God.
I thought her the girl who played her little sister EG one
who played Kanye. Ben was incredible as an
actress. So good and like giving major
little sister vibes, neglected child vibes, not the favorite
vibes so well. And then her bond with Henna
also believable compared to like, you know, the way she's
really into the other characters was so good, I thought.
And even like with the book mom and like showing moments of
vulnerability with some people or like whatever.
I just thought she was so good and I wish she would get give
her something, give her an award.
Give her an award, yeah. Is there anything else you want
to say about Sky Castle that isn't spoiler?
We have literally not really spoiled.
I know there are some like major things that we're just
sidestepping. Well, I wanna just mention just
for the listeners in case anyone doesn't know like a little bit
as far as what I know from what I've read, which take it with a
grain of salt because I don't know everything, I'm not Korean,
but like it. Korea is one of the countries
where it's like if you don't do well in the CSATS, as they call
it there and similar to our Sats, but their Csats college
scholastic aptitude test or whatever, it's so it's so
serious that like they can't fly planes overhead during the exam.
Like they reroute planes so that they won't fly over schools.
They are there's like certain songs that are like banned or
something. And I don't really understand
that, but I think it's because like become like ear worms.
So when you're in the test and you're freaking out and you're
like, what is, you know, this math, like what's the quadratic
formula? And in your head you're like
ring Ding Dong, ring Ding Dong. That was that was a bad song.
So, so anyway, but it's so serious 'cause it's 1 of this
country. Yeah, no, I could see myself
doing that in that situation. Like I'd be like, I have to do
something important. But your head is doing like, you
know, some song. Anyways, they it, it's one of
those countries where if you this is a make it or break it
test. So if you don't do well, your
life is kind of over. And actually, especially during
the economic Asian economic crisis in like the late 90s,
from what I've read and heard, not an expert, a lot of people
became like idols because they're like either like,
listen, I'm not not super scholarly, I'm not super
academic, but I'm pretty. It's not really my thing.
Yeah. Or like I can become pretty.
Plastic surgery is a big thing in South Korea.
You know, you can become, yeah, you can become pretty.
You can learn how to dance a little and sing a little.
And so a lot of people just went to, you know, if they weren't
from Seoul, maybe went up there to like audition, try to become
famous instead, because this is such a because if you don't do
on the CSAT, from what I understand, your, you won't get
into a sky school, the Seoul University, Korean National
University and Yonsei, which is kind of the goal.
Everyone like here, it's nice to get into Ivy League, but like
your life goes on if you don't. But there it's like no like to
for some people. No, it doesn't like not enough
because there's a status association.
And then not only that, you have to become either like a doctor
or dentist or lawyer or something.
I think are, and again, my family's from Bangladesh, so
they're saying same kind of thing where like certain
professions are seen as way more prestigious and other
professions are not worth it. And so like even my parents were
like, no, you can't major in music because that's ridiculous.
So, but I didn't become one of those things, the doctor lawyer
thing. But yeah, so so that's kind of
kind of the background or back story to the premise of this
drama. And so because of that, there is
a lot of lengths people will go to to succeed.
And we have that a little bit here, the Kuman, aforementioned
Kuman that we also have in the US or like whatever kind of
types of schools or SAT prep books and classes and MCAT,
LSAT, all that stuff that standardized tests, we have to
get into higher education and higher fields of study.
There's a lot of people who if you can afford that, you have a
one up up, right. So if you magnify that by like a
gajillion, that's what sky Castle is.
These people have the means to like pay for someone to
basically like almost guarantee that your their kid is going to
get into Seoul National University Medical school in
this case, so. Yeah, SNU Med School is what you
would read on the subtitles, but that's Seoul National University
Med School. And absolutely they are paying
for a coach to come in and not only one-on-one teach their
child and tutor their child, but they have a whole team of people
behind them that are specializing in different
subjects and are also helping them and coaching them, teaching
them their subjects. You know, I think there was a
big emphasis in the show of teaching to the tests.
Well, because the end goal here is not like you're because think
of the schools used are sorry, subjects you study in high
school in this like we study English, in their case Korean,
or they may also study English as like a foreign language.
So it's like how we may study whatever language and those are
like important skills. But if you're going to go to Med
school, how much are you really going to need, let's say, Latin,
German, whatever you may not, you're right.
So, so even though you need, but you need to do well on the test,
if that's part of your, of the Csats or whatever.
So then you need to hire a tutor to like.
So you just nail that part of the test so that you go to Seoul
National University medical School, become a famous surgeon.
Your family can like, you know, live, bask in your glory and
you've honored them and all those kind of yeah.
So I think that's why like the the goals goal is not like
academic aptitude actually. It's just like nail this test
and get a gleaming application. And applications even for jobs
in Korea, there's a lot of personal information.
It's like a whole packet. And so as far as I know.
So like, like for example, people's photos go on their job
application. I have done episodes in my
podcast in the past where I talked about how mental health
and psychology and counseling, These are things that some
people in Korea up until recently or even maybe still now
are reticent to seek that kind of medical care because they
feel like it will end up on their record somewhere that
their future employers could go into or potential employers can
go into and see like, oh, you've been in therapy, so I'm not
going to hire you, that kind of thing.
So there's like a lot riding, like everything rides on all
this stuff. And then the rest of your life
is shaped and formed by your high school experience.
And so that's why in these, for these elite families, it's like
maintaining the status because you don't want like that one day
that's big in this story is like 3 generations of doctors who
went to Seoul National University or my child was the
number one student in all of Korea when his graduating class.
These are big deals and you don't want your child to fall
behind now because now precedence has been set by that
your ancestors or your, your relatives, whatever.
And so it's like you have to keep up the whole for your whole
family. So you're bearing the burden for
your whole family. And that's a little difficult
for, I think some people who didn't grow up anywhere near
that level of competition and pressure and family prestige.
I I mean, it was difficult for me to even understand.
I was like, I don't get it. Like half the time they're like,
we need a third generation, third generation of doctors,
like that third generation of doctors.
And I was like, what the fuck you talking about?
Like you have two generations. Like that's amazing as it is.
Like, can't you just like take it and leave?
Like you, you need a third generation for real.
Like it's crazy. It all reflects back on the mob,
like it's at least from when you watch Sky Castle, you get this
idea of like whatever success your child has is a reflection
of you. And that's why the moms are so
kind of bat shit crazy about everything because they they're
like, it's a competition about how good of a mom are you not
good enough? If your, if your child fails,
it's on you, even though you're not the one who went and took
the test. And but that's why they bend
over backwards to make them succeed at like any cost.
Almost so. Right.
You touched on something that about the moms is that the
husbands and the even the pro coach that they hire in the show
expect all of the mothers to be stay at home moms and be a slave
to their children's education and success, not work.
Oregon have a career and if they do have a job it's seen as a
faux pas. Like it's the child's success
will be in jeopardy because they don't have this slave labor
picking them up, taking them to school or to the Hawk 1,
advocating for them, researching how best to achieve their goals,
making nutritious food for them, constantly being on their ass
about studying. And that whole concept of this
gender norm was very intriguing to me.
I think I will say this just based on how much Korean news I
watch, I think the reality for most Korean people is that both
parents work. But the issue here is they're
they're living in Sky Castle. So this is like an added layer
of like this is maybe not every Korean person's experience or
like your mom stays at home. It makes you, you know,
nutritionally adequate all the time.
Whatever it's it's more and like the correct humidity of your
room for studying and ample lighting, blah, blah.
But that is what's happening in Sky Castle because it's a very
exaggerated version of it's a pressure that many Koreans.
Yeah, it's satirical exactly. But there is really AI mean.
Who knows what goes on there. There really is.
Or our neighborhoods that are similar to this, where it's like
successful people all living together in this compound.
It is a. Compound it is, but the point of
it, I think here is like, this is such an exaggerated version.
And that's why maybe some people who are Korean probably did
identify with it because they maybe had some level of like of
this intensity, but not to this extent.
This is just like, crazy over the top version because they're
trying to also maintain their status.
We live. If you live in Sky Castle and
your kid doesn't go to a sky school, then what's the point?
You know? So yeah.
Exactly. So I really thought that that
was interesting about the moms and how it might be a little
outmoded like by today's standards to have to expect a
woman to quit her job when she gets married or when she's
pregnant to stay home with the child.
Especially because of the cost of living in Korea and how you
need a dual income to just subsist and all this stuff.
And even to raise a child, how expensive it is, you need the
dual income. But I mean, I think the gender
norm is changing out of necess, out of economic necessity.
I think it is and it isn't because a lot of the articles I
read both about Japan, there were a lot of articles a few
years ago. So I'm an elder millennial.
And if I had talked about the book Kim Jong born 1982.
And so that's about a kind of generic Korean elder millennial
who was sold this thing. This is the first generation of
girls and boys, but girls and kids that were told like, if
you're a girl, you can do anything.
And like, you know, this in America, like women couldn't
open credit cards till like 1960, whatever, whatever.
It was like kind of recently, you can do this and that without
your husband or your father's permission, even in America.
So in Korea, they're, they were also sold this idea of like, you
know, you're not like your mom's or your grandmother's.
You can like earn a living and be just like a man and go to
school and become a doctor, go to Seoul National University.
And when we were younger elder millennials, like it wasn't as
coming to have as many women in the career of medicine and
doctors, but now, you know, afterwards it was and lawyers
and everything. And but the problem in these
articles, there's a series of that were in the New York Times.
Again, this was about Japan, but it's very similar to Korea where
and also even America, you can extrapolate, which is that the
men still don't do for whatever reason, the gender norms kind of
just happen anyway. Like who's doing the bulk of the
laundry? Who's doing the bulk of the
childcare? Who knows their kids teacher's
name? Who knows their kids?
Pediatrician's. Name.
It's usually. The mothers, even though they're
working just as many hours and in Korea and Japan they work way
more than our like a standard kind of 40 hours a week.
They're working like 56. One politician want to make
raised to like 60 hours a week in Korea or something, the work
week. So it's very crazy and hectic,
yeah. But mom still does everything is
what you're saying. Moms, I mean, I'm just saying
like the gender norms in theory or on paper are it's becoming
more equitable, but it's really kind of still there because also
in Korea, there's still a lot of expectations about women this
women that they're still working on their me too movement,
feminism. There is still like a whole big
prickly subject. So it's not quite and even here
because again, if you look at like they don't do surveys for
like the OECD, the economic something economic, whatever and
of development. And they look at developed
countries, developing countries and what is going on and who's
doing what and how much money do they make?
How much time off do they get for like maternity and this and
that. They look at all these things.
And when you look at the surveys for people who are from that
elder millennial generation, again, who in theory they're
raised to believe like men can do housework and women can be,
you know, Wall Street brokers, whatever, that's great.
They can, they do. But what actually happens is the
amount of laundry done by husbands not the same.
It's not actually equal for any of those three countries.
I mentioned the US, Korea and Japan.
It's still mostly women doing like who's making who's packing
lunches, who's cooking dinner, who's dealing with I got to get
picked up from school and The Who needs to meet with the
teacher over bad grades? Who needs to buy a gift for
someone's birthday, friend's birthday party?
Like the dads have no clue still in all these countries, right?
In a lot of case, obviously not every, not on men, not every
dad. But I'm just saying, like from
these surveys, economic surveys and things, that's what was has
been found, including through this generation of people.
Yep, Breach. So anyway, this show covers
gender norms and gender roles very heavily, and you just got a
lot of bad parents. Like everybody's pretty much
rotten in the show. Like at one point or another,
you're kind of sold that maybe they're not so bad and then they
prove you wrong. So I love that.
I love that you get proven wrong like that.
Your assumptions about some characters and their, the way
that they act, it changes and it flows and they're making really
stupid decisions and they're just foul, like everybody's
foul. So I enjoy that.
I enjoy seeing some foul people get together and live in this
giant, beautiful compound exclusive community and all
their houses are like set up on a hill.
It's got like the good Feng shui, like, you know what I'm
saying? Like the back of the house is
like facing the mountain and then the front.
Facing Windows. Yes, yeah.
Like it's all like you kind of get this feeling that it's
literally all intentional. Long story short, I love
watching stupid, selfish rich people have a crack at each
other and drive their kids to madness and that's what this
show is. So with that with that being
said, I think we're going to get into the spoiler section.
But before we do, Nina, what would you rate this show out of
five soju bottles? I think I have to give it 5 out
of five soju bottles. I've watched it like about that
many times almost. I think I watched it four times.
So. And I really like find something
new each time that I, you know, I'm like, oh, yeah, this now
what? Makes sense why that happened
last time. I didn't quite grasp it then,
but now I do. So I think you get a lot out of
it with multiple viewings. That's always a sign of a good
show, I would say. So, yeah.
I think I'd give it 5 out of five soju bottles.
Yeah, I'm feeling really generous tonight, so I'm going
to give it 5 out of five, but honestly, I can't see my score
really coming down. Maybe just because it's not that
rewatchable. It's very, it's like a lot.
It's so much so. I mean, I watched it maybe like
once a year, OK, like OK or one and like 1 1/2 years went by and
then I watched it. It's not like I I binge watch it
every weekend. No it.
Is way too heavy. But I feel like this sting might
wear off a little bit over time because especially because you
know what's happening when you don't know what's happening, you
don't know what's coming next, you're kind of like, what the
fuck? Like this isn't.
Crazy. And you feel sort of trapped
like the characters do. And I think that that trapped
feeling, you won't get that on rewatch because you know, it's
coming down the Pike. But 5 soldier bottles out of
five, so excellent. Just an excellent all rounder of
a show. A lot of drama, so much drama.
So we're going to get into it. I got to be honest, I don't have
no notes. I have no notes for this.
We're just winging it. But we'll get into the spoiler
section and we'll do our best right after this.
Excuse me, I can't. You know I have.
Oh, sorry. What?
All right, we're on the other side of spoilers.
So we are going to spoil exactly what happens in Sky Castle with
no notes. So without any notes, we're
going to talk about episode one first.
Episode 1, you get introduced to all of the families and there is
a party happening in celebration of one of the kids getting
accepted into SNU Med school, and there's like a foxtrot
happening. After Ndas are signed, there's a
force. What is it?
There's a quartet there. Yes, they're serving lobster.
They're serving lobster and it's extremely fancy.
The one of the fathers is staging a protest because he
doesn't want to go to the party. He's kind of being petulant, but
you're kind of on his side. You're like, I kind of get it.
I don't want to go to parties either.
I don't want to dress up fancy. Yeah, but this is also the key
point here is Yeso's mom is throwing this party for young
Jake. Exactly, not for young Jay.
And the point of it is to get her hands on young Jay's
portfolio, AKA his college application.
The whole packet we were talking about.
Yeah. And that's why her dad doesn't
want to be there because he's like, I'm not sucking up to this
lady. Yeah, I think.
Yeah, that's pretty sure that's. That should we call him like
Goatee? We'll call him Goatee.
And then Pixie cut is Yeso's mom Sojin.
And then Yeso is Snowdrop Heijun's.
Lovely runner. Lovely runner.
Girl, we will call her lovely runner because I think everybody
will. And Young Jay is the guy also
from Lovely Runner. Young Jay's the guy who gets to
just Seoul National University. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
He's like barely in the hill. Place he's barely in this show
he kind of comes back later way later after a while, but in the
first episode he's there cuz the party he's the one who got into
Seoul National University Med school.
He's a lovely runner as her like other dude that's like in her
high school. So little reunion happened
during lovely. Runner.
Nice, nice. So this is this family and
Goatee is staging a little protest.
He shows up wearing hiking clothes, athleisure, and
everyone else is wearing gowns and suits and you know, he's
just being a little nasty. But I liked him.
Like in episode 1 I liked the dad, the Goatee dad.
Yep. Oh.
Shit like that goes sideways, like so fast in this show.
But anyway, the mom whose son got into SNU Med school does not
want to give up the portfolio. They try to schmooze her, they
try to booze her, and like, nothing's working.
She won't. She says explicitly she's not
going to give up her son's portfolio, but she'll help one
of them, whoever banks with Hanam Bank get an invitation to
this. And this was crazy.
Like this is when I was like, whoa, got to suspend disbelief
here because I hope to God this doesn't happen, that a bank in
Korea under the guise of an investment meeting hosted this
big mixer for mothers of like students to.
It was like an auction, like for these specialized coordinators,
college entrance coordinators. And I was like, whoa, we are off
to a fine start here because. Now in this show, they say there
are similar events like this in the US.
The characters say this. Is this true?
I do not know. I try to look for that.
I couldn't find it, but I don't think people would put that on
the Internet. Like that?
Exactly like that would never. Take that with what you will,
right? Like Full House, Laurie Mclaw.
Laurie, what's her favorite? Laurie Law would never put that
on the Internet if that existed. Yeah, Yeah.
And that's how Pixie cut gets paired with our coordinator,
which I don't know how. The bun lady.
Bun lady. All right.
We'll call it the coordinator. The coordinator.
We'll call her the coordinator. All right, Yeah, this
coordinator has a perfect record.
She gets two students into SNU every year and she only takes 2
clients every year. She's the one who got this kid
from the neighbourhood in to SNU Med school.
So here we go. Like this is it.
This is our meet queue with the two ladies who end up going head
to head in the rest of the show. The coordinator's going to be
teaching and handling. Yeah, so for three years.
So Sky Castle, the show takes place over the course of three
years. The end of episode 1 ends with
this mom who was being congratulated and given.
Wait, before we get to the mom. Oh, I will say young Jay hides
an iPad. Yes, he done.
Jay hides an iPad and there's something secret, the secret
iPad, hidden in this random part of his house.
Yeah, he hides it in like a top drawer of his of his desk in his
room, 'cause he's going on a trip and his mom was gifted a
big cruise as well to go on with her mother as a reward for doing
such a stand up job of getting her son into SNU.
From his dad. From his dad.
So the dad gave this gift to the mom, which I had like issues
with that in and of itself because it was very this sets up
like these rewards for the mothers and how they are only
given like value and affection if their children are
successful, otherwise they are, you know.
Well, I think it's like the husbands have the pressure of
maintaining whatever prestigious job they have, surgeons and
whatever they are professors. The wives have this pressure of
their turning out perfect kids, however that happens, and then
the kids have the pressure of being perfect themselves.
So it's not equally distributed pressure, I don't think
necessarily or I don't know, I guess it's just very different
for each of them. But yeah, it's true.
It's sort of icky. It's like, OK, you get these
cruise tickets and this party's actually for the mom, not even
for the kid who got into school, this school.
Yeah. It's all very weird.
Very weird. Yeah, it's bizarre.
And you can see all the other moms watching as she gets this
gift at the party and. It's not just like a subtle
gift. It's like presented to her at
this ball with like this string quartet in the background,
lobsters and and on platters and whatever.
So it's like a whole thing. It's a whole thing.
Yeah, it's very performative. Almost everything that they do
in the show is performative. And so this was one of those
moments, and you get that immediately from episode one
that they're performing for each other.
Definitely. And then, you know, all hell
breaks loose at the end of the episode, you get the iPad hiding
thing, and the mom shoots herself in the head.
Yeah, and commits suicide. Trigger whining.
Oh yeah, Trigger. Yeah, trigger.
The only two trigger warnings in the whole show were for suicide
and I think violence. Death or something in the upper
left corner. Netflix was like suicide and
violence. That's all you got.
Like no, no sexual anything. Like really no profanity or
anything in the show. But Oh yeah, suicide definitely.
Because at the end of episode 1, this suicide colours like the
next set of episodes. As this community grapples with
her loss, the family completely falls apart.
What the hell does the coordinator have to do with
anything? And also like before that, we
get to the coordinator too. It's like, why would a mom who
just was basically given mom of the year award by these people
because her kid got into, you know, it's Med school.
Why would she kill herself? Like that's the other thing.
This is a perfect community with perfect people and perfect
children and perfect scores and perfect everything.
And she's the epitome of the perfection.
But she kills herself. So now that's why it's such a
like mind blown moment because you're like, wait, what
happened? Why did it happen exactly?
But yes, then they are still chasing that portfolio even kind
of after she dies and she they have that appointment with the
coordinator. Unbelievable.
Like the audacity on these people.
Like it just gets worse. Like they have more and more
moments where you're like, they're shameless.
They have no shame whatsoever because they still, especially
Pixie cut, only cares about yes all getting into SNU Med school.
Yep. And it's interesting because
it's like such as tight knit community.
They see each other every single day.
They have their little book club and whatever going on and like
so it's not like they're cold and distantly like distant
neighbors. They're like all up on each
other. It's like business or kids or
friends, etcetera. And they know each other's
business. So they kind of do mourn her
when she dies. And then they're kind of like,
OK, well, but anyways, back to getting my kid into school, into
Med school or whatever school, like that's they really do just
pivot to that. They're like, OK, well anyway.
Yeah, their priorities are so out of whack.
From then on, I think we're I think we should just talk about
like the families as units and what the hell happens to each
one of them. Not necessarily going episode by
episode because we'd just be here for four hours, but.
I I think, I don't know, do you want to work backwards and talk
about like maybe the smallest family, maybe Ginny's family?
So side swept. Oh gosh, I love her.
She's such a like trophy wife and like the best way.
She is a trophy wife. And her husband's a dodo bird.
Like, he is a surgeon, but he's also like, not the sharpest of
the surgical tools. You're totally right.
Like he's such a freaking dodo. It's so funny because this is
this when this first aired the big news, because I watched it
as aired, by the way, and there was a big talk of the town, this
now defunct K pop girl group AOA.
One of the girls in AOA was going to make a cameo
appearance. And so he she does.
And he's like, he's like Bengal, Bengal, like that or whatever.
And he's like so excited, his character so excited for her.
And it just was so perfect. It was so ridiculous, but sets
the scene and the tone of that family so well because they're
definitely like the least on the most unserious ones of this
crew. Yeah.
And they're kind of like the most demonstrative of anyone
because they kind of don't care about anything as much as they
do. They're not, it's not that
serious for them. But they then, but they look
around, they're like, oh, I need to also be serious about this.
Like I should also like want this.
Yeah, like they're followers. They're not leaders.
They're reading the room and they're constantly adjusting
themselves to kind of meet what everybody else is demanding.
And if everybody else is concerned about their kids
getting into an IV essentially, then they're going to pressure
their kid as well to get in. And they're taking their cues
from from everybody else in the sky Castle rather than making up
their own minds. And I think the husband at one
point says to the wife, you had you're perfect except for one
thing. You're so wishy washy.
And she is. She's absolutely switching sides
like all the time between plant lady and Pixie cut essentially.
She's such a suck up to the Pixie cut for the longest time
just 'cause she thinks like that'll get her whatever she
needs to get in order for everyone else to think she's
like, cool. Yeah, yeah.
Because the Pixie cut has her kid is older, like is going
through the process now. And her child Suan is like in
middle school. So he does She's doesn't she
doesn't have as much pressure as the other mothers who have their
kids on the cusp of just about to enter high school and go
through this process and need to keep their grades up.
So she wants to basically benefit from their experience
and you know, get all this Intel from the the mom, the Pixie cut
mom. And that's why she's sucking U
to her because she's like, well, she'll pass along all of this
stuff. She'll give me the coordinators
name and she'll put in a good word for me and yadda yadda
yadda so on and so forth. But it gets totally it's so
annoying but also so entertaining to watch because of
the personality on this Ginny character like this.
Memory, memory. She's always like.
That's what I'm saying. But like, she's not so elegant,
like she's not so refined like the other mothers.
She is very kind of crude and very open.
She's very extroverted. She's boisterous and.
She doesn't have, like, quiet dignity, yes.
Exactly, which makes her so much fun to watch.
I mean, she gets syrup poured all over her, She gets her hair
pulled, She's in like 50 cuffs, 7 point.
Like she's like honestly, like so much fun.
She has this buffoon of a husband.
She has this idiot for a son who like does not want to study,
does not like to study and is actually, you know, he's not
that smart, like unfortunately. So she's like trying to instill
all of the same values and work ethic into her son when it's
just not sticking. This all comes to a head with
her family when the kid like kind of just runs away.
Like he tries to run away at one point.
Well, I think that was brilliant on the part of the writers
because it could have made this whole family just be the goofy
ass family on the block. But then they had like an actual
real problem, which is the fact that the pressure was acutely
felt by their kid. And he's he was like, I don't
even want to be. I'd rather because she's very
into porcelain and into her little porcelain.
That was hysterical too, that she she had like.
This one stuff, yeah. Like hobby that she had was was
collecting porcelain, Yes. Yep, And she and he wrote that
little school poem that's like, I'd rather be a, a my mom's
coffee cup because she loves that better or teacup that she
loves it better than me or whatever.
It's like so dumb, like some dumb thing a kid was like so
sad. It's so true.
It's yeah, it's sad because it was just true feelings.
He genuinely felt like kind of like, you guys don't value me.
And he was the best of the kids at expressing it.
She was the best of the moms, I would say at like receiving that
information as after some, you know, some time, obviously.
And then the dad, even the dad was just wanting like peace and
harmony in his house. He was like, OK, go to school or
don't go to school. He's just like, but make your
don't upset your mom. You know, they're like, you
know, he's like do whatever, but sort yourselves out.
But they were kind of the most like in a way affectionate with
each other. They seemed into each other.
And then they were into their kid and nobody else was really
as much like. Yeah, I I agree that this mom,
she would have been my favorite if it wasn't for Bob Cut because
she felt conflicted. I think those moments where they
had her struggling with what to do.
How do how do you reconcile these two halves of like, I want
you to do well, I want to pressure you.
I want to push you to succeed and excel at academics, but I
don't want to. I don't want to torture you like
I don't want to make you suffer through all of these years of
schooling and going to the academies and going to bed past
midnight and staying up late and constantly being on your ass.
That is not a way to live. And she understood that.
And so I respected her for she loved her son.
Like she actually I believed her when she wanted her son to do
well academically, but she also deeply loved her son and like
was so affectionate with him and would like lay in the bed with
him and like hug him and cuddle with him and stuff.
And I'm like, Oh my God, like that is so cute.
None of the other moms did that. And like, he's an only child, so
this could be why. And she's a loudmouth, but he,
there's also this thing, like he knew his mom.
They know each other. They see each other, they know
each other. Cuz he's like, you didn't do
well in school. Why are you on my ass?
So like, like they have, like they, he knows that about his
mom. And you know, his dad's a
surgeon and, you know, so did, you know, somewhat well, but
he's like, why are you being like this when you did?
And she kind of takes a heart. She's like, yeah, I wasn't that
good in school. I mean, you could see her, like,
grappling with that with like, yeah, her inadequacy making my
kid do. Yeah.
I mean, and I'm trying to force my kid to do stuff I couldn't
even do or didn't do, you know? So I really liked her.
I thought she was fun and I I just loved seeing her
relationship with her son and how after that moment where she
almost loses him, like he almost does get away and run away, she
rethinks her tact. I love her hair.
And her hair is fabulous. Like, honestly, her hair is
honest, a character in and of itself.
It's beautiful. She can do no wrong.
She is the best dressed of the whole of.
All the best clothes. Yeah, the like spangled jacket
that she's wearing on like a cold November morning in her
neighborhood for no reason. Yeah, she's fabulous.
A+, no notes. I, I love that family and I, I
love their dynamic. I love how they end up a plus
plus. So we're moving on to Sunghez
family, which is our Bobcat family.
OK, that's why I and Pyramid. Dad so it's Bob Cut and Pyramid
Dad. They're the parents of three
children and this was a whole last mess.
Like we could be an hour just on them but.
They should get a spin off they. Should they should have gone off
well. They kind of did because they're
on, they're on What's that show they're on right now.
The two husband and the wife are on a K drama right now.
Yes, Normal family or something. Something like that.
And I heard it wasn't that good, but Oh yeah, OK, sorry.
This isn't their spin off I. Guess this Yeah, but they got
reunited in a 2424 show as husband and wife again.
But it's because they were here as husband and wife very
successfully in Sky Castle. I think they had a really juicy
storyline because, you know, you come to find out that she kind
of signed up for this marriage sight unseen because she didn't
ask him important questions about his values and what he
wanted out of his children, what were his goals in life, yadda,
yadda, yadda. Because she was so desperate to
get away from her own patriarchal family, her own
patriarchal father. And so she escaped right into
another patriarchal, severely patriarchal man.
OK, I wanna say something real quick about this Marriage 1 is
that, and I don't know if they didn't say this in the show, but
through the 1990s arranged marriage in Korea where your
parents get together with another set of parents and like
yeah, our kids are getting married and he'll be perfect.
That was a thing. I don't know if that's the case
with them, but the other thing I wanted to mention, so I'm saying
it could be The other thing I wanna mention is that Pyramid
dad chose her or was willing to marry her 'cause again, I don't
know if they were arranged by their.
Parents, I don't think they were because he came from a poor
upbringing. True.
And he was not of the same, he was not of the same status that
she was. You're right, You're right.
He kind of worked up to where he could marry her because he
basically excelled academically and worked his way up, went to
law school and, you know, did it the old fashioned like, like
very, very American of him actually to do it this way.
Pulled himself by his boots. Yeah, OK, well, also American
way is the Aunt Becky methods, so don't forget that part
either. But anyway, that is also
American. But no, he he picked her because
her her dad, Yeah, Congressman, congressman or senator or
something. So it was like advantageous to
him. And that kind of is his whole MO
pyramid dad. Like everything has to be like
something about him, like reflect well on him at the end
of the day. Yeah, whatever it is, whatever
his kids do, whatever his wife does, if it doesn't come back to
like reflect him as a in a positive manner, he kind of
isn't here for it. Yeah, and I thought it bit him
in the ass and it was wonderful. I love to see it.
So the mom, again, we kind of covered her a little bit in the
non spoiler section, but she was a wonderful, astute mother
because she understood, saw that her children were suffering
under the thumb of their father and how he who was torturing
them like he would literally have AI think it was a torture
chamber. Their study room that was within
the house was like this soundproof room.
No doors, no windows. Jail cell vibes.
Very dark.
He would make them compete against each other.
He had it was it was a older daughter and twins.
They're twins boys, but fraternal twins.
They look nothing alike and he would make the twins compete
against each other all the time and trying to foster this
unhealthy level of competition between the brothers like their
brothers. It kind of made no sense, but
also I could understand why he was trying to.
It's almost like iron sharpens iron.
He was trying to get them to improve each.
Other it's like a dog fight kind of guy.
Exactly. Exactly.
That's not good, he. Was like a fight to the death
kind of guy. Was very like gladiator style of
teaching and tutoring. He would have a metronome.
Them, they didn't go to hog one. No they didn't go to Hog 1.
He did it himself like a crazy person.
Oh, the metronome. The fucking metronome bro.
And he anyway, Long story short, he was in the wrong 100% of the
time in the show. Like there was never a point
where I was like, you know what? He's got a point.
Never. Never.
Like he was always. Wrong.
And I will say this actor did a good job of conveying this
character's insecurities, being like, probably the leading
factor to why he was the way he was.
Yeah, because he came, like you said, from kind of humble
origins now living in this Tony neighborhood with all these
fancy people. And he wasn't even the fanciest
of the fancy people cuz he wasn't a surgeon.
He was just just in quotes a law professor.
And that was like the lower of the, of the rankings of things
to be when you're living as Sky Castle resident.
And he kind of made-up for it or overcompensated for it.
But being like, you know what, I'll do you all a favor.
I will hold these book clubs and I will enlighten your children
on the humanities so you can teach them about math, science,
medicine. I'll handle like, you know,
critical thinking and the great literature.
He was thinking he could be a bastion of liberal the arts and
he he didn't even get it. Like he didn't even get the
liberal art like the the book club.
You want to talk about the book club?
So that was painful as shit. That was in the early episodes
where they were taking the kids to these book clubs and the
parents also were going to this book club in Sky Castle.
It was only for the Sky Castle residence.
Well, it was in there. It was in there a little like
rec center slash. They had a clubhouse.
Yeah, yeah, they had a clubhouse.
I love, I love that they had that and I was obsessed with
that. Like the sets of.
Yeah, he's done. It was awesome.
And that was, yeah, that was one place I wanna hang out in the
clubhouse. The me too, because that's a
nice ass club. I had like a library in it.
It was great. It was like 10 stories high
anyway, it had bedrooms in it. It had bedrooms and it had like
a whole last anyway. He was picking extremely
difficult books to read, dense books to read, novels that
nobody could understand or digest.
And he was doing it on purpose to beef up their reading list.
But also I think to make himself seem like good or like smart
because again, he's so like weirdly, so weirdly insecure.
And I think he wanted to get these books where he knew like
no one. And they were mostly books that
were originally written in not Korean, right?
Usually in English or some other language.
And then there he yes, So it gives her whole little like book
report starts it in English and then it's like, never mind, I'll
switch to English. She does.
She starts it as fluent English and everyone's like I, I what
the look on everyone's faces. But yeah, he's just this
egotistical, proud, selfish, pretentious, but.
Small small man like you know yes you could do.
His ego is big but his self worth is small.
Yes. And so he was doing too much.
Like he was literally just doing too much.
He needed to do nothing at all. Like he would just help by doing
nothing. And the book club, I mean, you
see a lot of like how each character approaches academia,
like other personalities in the group.
The beauty of the book club is the parents participate too.
It's not exactly. Exactly.
So you have Little Miss Hair, the beautiful side hair reading
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche and it's like she's
like what the fuck is this? And honestly, it's like a former
English major. This is hysterical to me.
Like this level of like, my God, it's just so annoying.
Like to see these, to see this man pretentious.
It's so pretentious. Like it's on another level.
We all knew that guy. And we all know this guy like
you've seen this guy like, you know, a person like this.
So anyway, he is complimenting yes.
Or for her take on one of the books.
I can't even remember what book it was.
I think it was the selfishness gene.
Or it was the selfishness 1 And she was like, I learned that it
was good to be selfish, good to place myself 1st and to your.
Own self-interest. Yeah.
And he was like, yes, yes, yes, that's exactly I think.
Sorry. I'm doing like a little
impression of him too, like with the arms.
Yeah, it's getting me now. So it's embarrassing.
Like he's embarrassing. And yes, all is also
embarrassing because you can see how conceited, cringy and cringy
she is. Oh my God.
Like. She has that conceit, that
special conceit that only a 1617 year old girl can have Honestly
so amazing, yes, amazing like you're like a job You're you
hate her still from like you're like oh.
My God, get her a paper bag. She needs to hide her face.
It's that bad. Like you're like, Oh my God, but
he's eating it up. And his kids, the twins, I hate
him. They hate the book club.
They don't want anything to do with him.
And one of his kids had like a beautiful take on one of the
books about how I can't even remember what the take was
honestly. But it doesn't matter.
The fact that like he had a very nuanced take and it was a very
personalized thing and how he felt about studying, basically
being forced to study. And the dad was like your
opinions wrong. Like he basically it was a
dictatorship and it was not a book discussion at all.
The book club eventually gets disbanded.
It comes to not because of his tyranny and plant mom comes in
to save the day and she's like, what is this book club?
Actually? You guys are unhinged.
And she puts a stop to it in the course of the show.
It's a drop in the ocean. Like the book club is not even a
thing really. But it shows it, it's so good in
the early episodes because it shows you how everyone kind of
operates. And also in us in this show full
of overbearing women and mothers, he's the overbearing
dad. He is just oppressive about all
this. If he's just as obsessed as the
ladies are, he's the one who forces the Bob lady to go to the
bank and he gets somehow gets her a bank card to show up the
same meeting and bid for the coordinator the same way ESO's
mom bids for her. And it's because of his analness
about it. He's so uptight.
Yeah. And I think that the moment that
you find out his daughter never went to Harvard and she.
Was doing. This like huge fraud and con
Harvard was suing her. She like fled the states.
I was like, oh. Her American aunt just being
like freaking out in Korean and then being like, Oh my God.
Yeah, yeah, the the terrible English.
Exclamations in the middle of her like, freak out.
Makes sense, though. No, I mean, it was such a payoff
like this. This family story is has such
payoff cuz he's so obnoxious. And then they basically like,
they pull the rug out, call him out.
Yeah, yeah. They do everything so that he is
super humbled. And that is the fun part about
them. Yeah.
But it takes a while to get there.
It does. It does.
Take a lot. Again, long painful ride.
Yeah, I do like the moment when the daughter comes back home
after he finally he, she, she texts him that she lied she
never got into Harvard. It's been this whole elaborate
lie. She's been just staying at
Harvard dorms without. Hanging it.
It's been this entire. And this stuff she tells her
parents that like she's, you know, volunteering with Malia
Obama, who at the time was a Harvard student and she's like
going to intern at the White House or whatever the hell she's
telling her dad was all perfect stuff for she knew how to feed
her dad these lines that he would, you know, eat up with a
spoon. And that's kind of where some of
his ego did come from because that's this was the one area
where they did feel confident. And they were like the second
family in a way. Like if young Jay's mom and dad
were the like the first most like prestigious because of
their son's success and they were like the second most
because she was just at Harvard, not necessarily at like a Med
school, but still she. Went to an Ivy in the space,
yeah. Yeah, yeah, still pretty, pretty
damn good. So yeah.
And then to have all that be fake and false.
And it was crazy. And the way, like her, the way
her mom comes to find out about it and how they, like portrayed
in the show where she's having these secret like closet
conversations with her sister in the in the literal closet being
like, what are you saying right now?
Like, what are you telling me? And her sister's like, I'm
saying I now owe Harvard University $60,000.
I don't. Because Harvard's suing my ass.
Yeah. What is wrong with your
daughter? Yeah.
The conversation that the daughter has where she's
basically saying you didn't love me unless I was doing well in
school. You didn't see me unless I was a
Harvard student. And why can't I just be your
daughter? And you know, you're such,
you're so small. She kind of like starts calling
him on his shit and saying that she's not a failure the way that
she was raised was wrong and that he the dad is a failure
because none of the family respects him.
Yeah, she says it's you're a failure if your family doesn't
respect you or something like that.
I don't know where she got that from, if that was a quote.
Do you remember where that came from or that just something she
said. No, I.
Think that's just something she said.
OK, so she's like, you're the failure, not me.
Yeah, because no one here respects you.
Yeah. And then he starts turning to
the twins, turns to his wife. He's like, do you respect me?
And they're like, no, it's fantastic, but it's absolutely
true. And it's heartbreaking in the
moment when she's like, he slapped her and she's on the
floor, you know? He's pretty violent.
He's violent like he disappoints of twins all the time.
The twins are trying to like save their Nuna and all this
stuff and their mom all the time.
We don't really see him do much with the wife like as far as
physical violence is concerned. But it's the underpinnings of
all that is there like underlying.
Yeah, he's certainly abusive, and at one point she's at the
end of the show, she threatens divorce, which I think she
should have done 20 years ago, but it's okay.
I will say, I, I, I pretty sure that still to this day, like
it's obviously not uncommon, I don't think anymore.
But in Korea there was this, this, and we had this too in the
US, like when again, as an elder millennial child in the 80s and
my my parents would ask me like, is your new friend from school?
Are their parents divorced? I don't know why that was the
question, but they would check they were like, are they
divorced? Because that's a little shady.
Yeah, I don't know. It was just some weird thing of
like, it's not considered good, quote UN quote.
I don't know why in in a societal level to be divorced.
And in Korea, I think it may still be the case to some
extent, maybe more so than here. And I'm just venturing guests
here, so don't take my word for it.
But they're definitely. And a family like that, it would
probably be also like considered a flaw.
And we were trying to maintain this level of perfection or this
appearance of perfection that you get a divorce because that's
a failure of a marriage and any failure is an L, basically.
So so. Certainly for this very small
pyramid man who was obsessed with being at the top of the
pyramid. Yes.
She threatens divorce though, at the end of the show.
She gives him like an ultimatum of like, if, if you don't want
me to divorce, you're going to have to like basically change
how you behave and interact with the kids and you're going to
start respecting them. You're gonna let them do a
little bit of what they wanna do.
What killed me though, was how Sarah, their daughter, went from
a fake Harvard student to party promoter and the mom, like going
to bat for the party promoter and like, it is like, it's a
valid job. But it was just funny how 'cause
that you would think like she's like, I'll go to nursing school
or something. Kind of placate her, you know,
that whole like need for their parents to like maintain these
appearances or prestige or whatever perceived prestige.
But she's like, no, I'm gonna be a nightclub promoter.
Yeah, she was like, I'm not going to college at all.
Who needs college? Yeah, that was so funny to me.
And I, I just found it so hilarious.
And then he's like party promoter and he's like just
sputtering with like, rage. He's like, what are you talking
about? Like, no daughter of mine.
Yeah, it's so funny. Yeah, in my translation it said
like marketing director and I was like, OK, all right.
So I think that's enough of that family.
I really enjoyed seeing their story and how the mom took
matters into her own hands and he like fell from the apple
tree. Like it was a whole reckoning
for him truly. I mean he wanted her labor.
Like he could not exist without her.
Like he couldn't feed himself, he couldn't take care of
himself. He was a mess without her.
She made his life. Work.
All the husbands really were like, get me my suit, get me my
golf clubs, get me my whatever. And the wives go scurrying to
get them even though they're like, they have like a, for lack
of a better word, servant, domestic.
It's a servant. I thought it was a servant as
well. I'm like, oh, it's a maid that
has weekends. Off.
She's a servant. It's a servant, but Despite
that, it's still the on the wife right to do this then the other
so we're. Going to move on to.
I don't know, do you want to move on?
To I think we should save, yes. So it's family for last.
OK, all right, so let's do swim. Which is the mother, the plant
lady, and she's married to Doctor Huang.
Yes, she's also children's book author.
Yes, the children's book author Mom slash Plant lady and their
son is Uju. Yeah.
Damn. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
So this, this poor lady, I mean, this whole family, they just,
they put them through the wringer.
They try to destroy this family. I think the the fun part about
them coming into the neighborhood, like basically
rising from the ashes of Yongjie's family, the mom.
Who can move into that house? They move into that house.
They move into the that original house where like the young Jay
the SNU kid, he like goes missing and.
His dad quits. His job, quits the job in the
hospital, the moms committed suicide.
The whole family was toe up from the flow up.
And so they move into that house.
They're like free thinkers. They are, you know, very hands
off when it comes to Uju's education.
He just studies on his own. He doesn't have any private
tutors. He doesn't go to the Hagwan.
She's a stay at home mom but she also the husband helps out at
home. He's seen folding towels and
clothes. And he's a surgeon or whatever
too. Or not a.
Surgeon. And he, yeah, he's a surgeon as
well, A different kind. Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a neurosurgeon.
Even though he's a highly educated professional, he's
doing domestic duties along with her.
At home, he's washing dishes. He's helping set up the table.
It's a wonderful sort of utopia like existence that none of the
other families see, of almost closer division of household
labor between the husband and wife.
They have a wonderful angelic child who is smart and is eager
to learn, eager to study. Doesn't require coaxing or
beating him over the head with a textbook to try and get him to
study and he does extremely well in school.
He was like #1 to enter high school ranked the same as Yeso.
Upon entering this Sheena High School, this poor lady has the
heart of a journalist because she starts digging deep into the
mess of the family that was living in the house before them.
She catches Yebin, yes, his younger sister and her petty
thievery at the 711 or whatever her type of convenience store
and tries to intervene, tries to help her, tries to be a parental
guidance figure, someone adult she going to trust.
At least she is. Also, I need to shut it out
because right now I have adoption, Korean adoption
season, my podcast, but she's an adoptive mother to who I keep
calling. His name's Ujib.
I keep calling him Chani because he's Chani from SF9.
Yes, he is. So he's Chani's adoptive mother
because Chani's biological mother passed away, got ill and
passed away. And that's his trauma that he
has and part probably partially why they're so easy on him in a
way. But yeah, so it's a stepmother,
which is rare to have, like, again, such a wonderful
relationship. Like, he really treats her as a
mother. She really treats him as her own
son. They truly love each other.
No one could guess that she was the stepmom until it was, you
know, brought up as gossip in the Sky Castle community.
This is highly unusual. Like, to see this family be so
successful was an outlier because, you know, she didn't
come from money. The doctor husband also didn't
come from money. He's an orphan.
She's the daughter of an orphanage.
She's the daughter of like an orphanage director, and she says
that growing up she didn't even realize that she had parents
because of the way she was treated in the OR.
I wish I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Like you didn't know she had parents, so she was just kind.
Of one of the orphanage kids, she thought she was one.
Of the orphanage kids, she thought she was an orphan
growing up because her parents, I guess like, did not treat her
as a child of theirs. At all.
So not specially not any more special.
Than not any more special than any of the other orphanage kids.
I guess all of these things taken together they are like a
gorilla in the desert. They are like a totally out of
place. I thought that them being
disruptors in this little community was brilliant.
By being normal, they're just normal.
Yeah. And then being just normal and
wonderfully mundane in this community was great.
You always, I always like those stories of like the poor girl
and the rich guy. This is like the poor family
suddenly elevated to this different status in this
different community and all of a sudden they are.
Their values do not align with everybody else's values.
Well, it's interesting and we're going to talk about this family
later, but the way she is from the pretty much similar
background to Yesso's mom's family, but they're being from
and same with even like the pyramid dad, they're from these
like more humble beginnings compared to everybody else in
Sky Castle. But the dad, yes, sorry, this
pyramid dad, Yesso's mom approach it with like this
ferociousness like we need to be, we have to be.
It's an imperative that everybody gets pulled as high as
they can on up the pyramid ladder to the very top.
Yeah. So if that means like cheating
or whatever, like almost to that point of almost, they actually
don't condone cheating, but they're almost to that point of
like, OK, get me the best coordinator.
If I have to open a bank account, if I have to spend my
mother in You think you're so righteous
with your humility and your like common man story, but like
actually you also live here with the elite so don't pat yourself
in the back too hard. Exactly.
So you're you're in this like zoo with the rest of us.
So I don't understand why you're like thinking that you're out in
the wild and you're above us. In some ways.
I understood their animosity toward her because at first when
they meet her and they're wondering how her son does so
well in school, and she's like, yeah, he just says, well, like,
he just studies. It's nothing.
It's not a big deal. And they realize that she looks
down on people who send their kids to the Hagwan, who are
super concerned with the grades and who have this, their
mentality, the sky castle mentality, right?
They immediately shun her. And I was like, you know what?
If I was there, I would shun her too because that was bullshit.
Like how can she look down on them?
Like because if I I feel like if I had the means I would do the
same thing. Not to their level, obviously.
I yeah. And I think it's also like.
Within my like US western centric way, I would get tutors
for my kids if they were struggling in math.
I would like you know, do you hire people if they needed it
and not just struggle, just hit your head against the wall
because you know, you're bad at me, you suck at math, OK,
whatever. Like you know what I'm saying?
Well, because she's privileged in a different way.
She is still the wife of a surgeon, which is what the rest
of them are too. So it's not like she is just
like a little Bo Peep over here or somebody.
And then also she, her son is just naturally gifted, naturally
actively kind. He doesn't.
He's number one and #2 neck and neck with henna and yes.
So without having to resort to like Hagwan or coordinators or
whatever, he's extremely charming and affable.
He's like about to be, He could be student council president.
He'd be a shoo in the twins, tell him, and he's like, I don't
even care. And then he's like, actually,
no, I do, because he's like, crush is gonna run.
So he's like very like, he's just one of those people.
Yeah, you have a perfect son and.
This guys gonna walking down. At us because we don't have a
perfect son. Like a perfect.
It was annoying. She was immediately annoying in
that respect, Yeah. And I wondered if you felt the
same or if you felt some type of.
Way I thought a couple things that I think redeemed her in a
way for me because she was annoying a lot of these things
were annoying about her and the fact that she's kind of
self-righteous and kind of pretentious in a different way
and she thought she's such a great mom, which she was but
they thought they were great moms by being like this.
It was just different perspectives in a way.
Like even if like they're like, yeah, my kids going to suffer
because I'm going to be a little tyrant for like however long,
but then they're going to go to wherever and.
That's it'll all be worse in their mind, it was all.
Worth it in their mind, which I don't agree with it because then
you have to suffer through four or however many years of Med
school and then you know, then you're a surgeon for rest your
life and that's not an easy life.
So but whatever that was their outlook and hers was like this
other one. But the things that redeemed, it
was like they kind of show us Chani's family, the plant family
after they've overcome and healed a lot of their familial
wounds where like Chani says, there's time when I didn't like
my mom and I was missing my real mom.
And like there was Chandy used to act out as a younger person
and then they now he like calls her mom and they like, she's
like, Oh my God, my son. And like they have this super
different dynamic. So we meet them here at this
place where they're at now. So they've overcome their own
obstacles and hurdles. So I was like, OK, I don't like
kind of, I'm not so annoyed with her now because she definitely
did struggle and didn't just have this like magically gifted
perfect son, Although she herself is like, I do feel like
this was just a gift from God I got for like no reason.
This is perfect son. But they they do have these like
issues. And then the dad is also like, I
don't know, he's principled and things like that, but he's not
about throwing a punch. You know, they're they're
everything here is like, so like I'm dignified and I'm this and
I'm not going to torture my kids and blah, blah.
But then like he can be petty too, a little bit.
And they have like the kind of their own little like hang ups
that's different. So, and she's nosy as hell.
Like why is she all up in their business?
She. Is all up in their business like
for many, many of their little things.
I was like, OK, she should just like get away from yebin get in
the car and drive away. I don't understand like that's
not her child. Yeah, get away from.
Young Jay's dad. Get away from young Jay, stop
stalking the coordinator, get away from yebin.
Like it's all like it gets to like the point such as you're
like, that's weird, like. She's doing too much.
And and she was self-serving in her in her own way because she
wanted to write a book about all the happenings in Sky Castle.
And she was doing this maybe to make money, to make a name for
herself as an author. She hadn't written a book in
like over a decade. And so all of these things taken
together, I'm like, she's not this perfect Angel who's like
doing this out of the goodness of her heart either.
There's a lot of things that play here that, you know, she's
doing this out of pride, out of stubbornness.
She has her own complexes and trauma.
Even from this fact that she married an orphan, like there's
nothing wrong with that, but it was interesting she married a
kid, I mean a man at that point because.
She didn't marry Kitch. She did not marry another.
Kid, but that guy was in her or her parents orphanage or her
whoever ran it orphanage that and then she was like also like
trying to convey herself as like I'm this former educator
children's book author who writes about these metaphorical
stories about childhood trauma or some kind of trauma because
her books were kind of harrowing and then she was like my my
husband is a is someone who was orphaned and and also a widower
and my son I'm not. OK, Mother Teresa, like, you
know, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and then she's like, I'm
gonna be in touch. I'm gonna like hold you Evan's
hand and find out what's really wrong with her 'cause no one's
bothering to check with her. And she had a point, but she
didn't have to be the one to make that point.
You know, it's just very self-serving.
Like she's like, I will be the one.
And then when she went to write the book, people were like,
seeing this book is like potentially tawdry, which I and
tacky, but she's like, no, it's gonna be a search for justice.
I was like, OK. I could understand, I could
understand both viewpoints absolutely that she wanted to.
It changed society and everyone was like, first of all, this is
the hot Goss and #2 this is not going to change nothing.
And I was like, yes, and yes, so like what everyone is saying,
but also this is a witch hunt. So I understand why she feels
threatened and cornered and why she would be.
She feels she's stubborn and so she's going to do it anyway.
So her writing the book, I, I mean, it was, she was very
complex. Every character was complex, but
she was very particularly complex because you could easily
write her off as just being a good character.
But I think she has a hero. Complex.
The writing here is easy and because of that student who
committed suicide, unfortunately or not because suicide, whatever
got hit like whatever both happened, I guess she's trying
to quit suicide and got hit by a truck and.
She had her own trauma. On the scene, Yeah.
And so she's trying to constantly save kids.
It's like her whole thing. And yeah, so there's a lot
definitely going on with her, Like, a lot, a lot.
But it's interesting that she has besties with the Bob Gurley.
Like they were tight. Yeah, they were tight.
Yeah, for sure. So, Oh, did we want to talk
about Tani, like, at all or or would you?
Because he goes through, like, an epiphany at the end of the
show after he gets in prison, which is, like, I realize, like,
school is not anything. Yeah.
He's like just done. Yeah, Oh my God, he did.
He does time and it's not funny, but it's like he's just sent it
to juvenile detention and like has a like hard think.
We're kind of glancing over like the mock Jong of it because
we're saving it for the last family.
But yeah, like he does time a little bit for a few months.
Yeah, he does a little bit of time actually, Channing and his
other roles too. So he's like always, like
wrongly accused, stuck in jail. Kuwait.
Recent kid yeah, yeah. So anyway, but he.
It was interesting he in jail was even more of an Angel than
him at not in jail because he was like telling the other Ajima
is like, oh, you didn't have to worry about me or like, hey,
yeah. So like, chin up.
And I was like, what is going on?
Like here You're so almost ruined.
You kind. Very kind to everyone who was
ready to put him in jail for the rest of his life.
Yeah. And make him take the blame for
this murder. Anyway, that's that family.
Anybody else that you want to talk about?
Before we get to. Oh, hey, hey, and that should.
We should we do that after or no?
Well, we can do her with her family.
OK. Oh gosh, oh gosh, it's all
right. So this is the final family and
I guess we'll just sit on this family for a a few minutes here.
So Sojin is the mom Pixie Cup mom.
This is the the main inciting family of the whole Sky Castle
show. Yeah, she loses her marbles,
basically. I mean, what do you have to say
for this? Lady, so I wish sure, I wish
there was way more to her back story.
Maybe there was originally and they just they were like these
episodes are getting longer and we don't have time and there's
so many people. But she is the daughter
originally of a blood and tripe seller butcher guy.
And that's I guess extremely low class in crazy idea.
I know much about it dirty job and she gets to know as a child
E soem, which is plant lady because they are childhood
schoolmates and something went down in their childhood where
their friendship gets ruined because a rumor gets spread on
school. Or maybe the rumor is the fact
that she is the daughter of, I don't know what happened,
daughter of a butcher, but something happens and she ends
up hating her but the plant lady denies to this her adulthood
years of like I know I wasn't the one who spread the rumor
about you 'cause I was. Yeah, she didn't tell the truth
about where her she lived and what her father did as right.
And that and then somehow she ends up like even though he has
this other girlfriend for a while and his station in life is
way above hers. I don't know if it's like a
surprise pregnancy and the surprise pregnancy was yes, so
but somehow the Pixie Hut lady ends up marrying the surgeon guy
and the her mother-in-law hates her guts.
Oh yes, regards. And so she's like in repentance
or something. You need to you need to make
sure this daughter, yes, becomes third generation of doctors in
our family that goes to stole National University medical
school specifically. So you need to make that happen
and then I might forgive you. Maybe.
So that's like the big grudge against her that the
mother-in-law has. And I just wish we had way more
information on like the friendship, her childhood.
Why was her dad was alcohol. We found her dad was an
alcoholic and that abusive and she had lied.
I didn't said Oh my my parents live in Australia and blah blah
blah whatever. And like all these lies and she
has a fake name. Like that's not even her real
name. The name she has is one that's
like I guess maybe easily recognizable as like lower
status, lower class or poor or rural or I didn't know what it
was. They were all laughing at her a
real name once they find out what it is.
And so it must be something recognizable in Korean of like
oh, this is like people from maybe this kind of rural area.
I don't know. I was just guessing, but yeah,
like, I was like, would she be named like, you know, if you saw
someone named like Billy Sue or something, like, I don't know,
in the US you'd be like, oh, that's the one from the sticks,
OK. You know, so or like, whatever.
But. But yeah, so she has this giant
chip on her shoulder of like, she has been down this path of
like, or maybe not a path, but she was born into circumstances
that was like kind of the lowest of the low.
And she will never, ever get down to that level again.
So she's going to do anything almost to get yes, so and her
kids and and to stay in this station of life where she's
achieved through marriage and whatever else.
And I don't know how she got there.
Did did did they say even though I've watched this like 4 times
they did they really say? No, no, they never say how she
meets her husband, how she bagged the husband, or how she
got rid of the first love of her husband.
I really think she just was the first one to be like, surprised
I'm having your kid. Yeah, I think she just beat her
to the punch. Yeah, I think she was just like,
yeah, I'm pregnant and then. And maybe she saw it as like a
yeah, take it in. Whereas like the other his other
girlfriend either didn't tell him in time or like kept it from
him intentionally or something to save him.
Whereas This is why I was thinking like the other
girlfriend that he had right before her didn't tell him on
purpose. Maybe because she was like, he's
the third or whatever generation, second generation
doctor. I'm gonna interfere in his life.
Let me just keep me in our. I mean, it was a matter of
child, right? Like right, 2-3 months between
their pregnancies when the ladies got pregnant with his
children because. And maybe Yeso and Hannah are in
the same. Year right, right and so then,
but whereas yeso's mom, I think I'm just guessing cuz we don't
get this in back story. It was saw this as like her way
in. I'm gonna worm my way into the
status and maybe hen asthma was like let me not bother him in
his status and like disrupt his whole life and blah blah.
Blah right? I I just want to pause here and
say like if this drama was made 20 years ago, the drama would
not be about Sojin. Like the Pixie cut mom, the
protagonist or the mom would be the dying angelic mom who like
left to save the goatee dad from the embarrassment of having a
child out of wedlock and not being accepted into this rich
family. And like that would be the K
drama. That would be the story.
I agree. I agree.
I think it's funny that they centered it on this lady who's
like a villain. But she is out of necessity.
Like that's kind of why I loved her.
I mean, I definitely loved her too.
She didn't pick her as my top babe mom, but she she's kind of
incredible because she really overcomes all this stuff and
she's very conniving and she's very like, you know,
manipulative or whatever. She'll do whatever because she
has to. It's like survival skills go
into effect and she does not care like she will.
She'll humiliate herself in front of her mother-in-law as
many times as needed because but at least she has to keep her
station in life. She has to secure her children's
station in life. She secures the legitimacy of
her children and herself, her new fake identity, etcetera.
And she, you know, just does all the self protecting things.
But it's like there was a there was a reason for all that.
It wasn't just superficial, like the way pyramid dads felt very
like self-serving a dumb way Dad.
Yeah, yeah. So I loved her and her conniving
ways. Yeah, she's she's cool to watch.
I mean, she's compelling to watch because she makes terrible
decisions. You question whether she loves
her children. You get that she loves her
children, but you're like, does she really?
She definitely has a favorite that was.
The OH clearly has a favorite child, like Yeso is for sure her
favorite child. The fact that she didn't have a
son was a blow to her legitimacy as a daughter-in-law in that
family because sons are so obviously favored.
The mother-in-law clearly wanted a grandson, not a granddaughter.
She's automatically trying to make up lost ground for not
providing an heir. She is trying to foster her
daughter into this third generation doctor that the the
mother-in-law wanted. So she's she's like, OK, if you
can't have the son who's a doctor, I'll give you the
granddaughter who's a dog. Like instead of a grandson, a
granddaughter who's a doctor, the third generation doctor that
you so desperately want. This objective does not leave
her body for 20 episodes. I mean.
She's so intense. She's so intense.
Honestly, all of these Sky Castle families are looking for
lawyers, Wall Street, elite Ivy League schools.
That's that's the level to which they aspire.
A successful child will elevate the mother's status and she's
looking for that acceptance from the mother-in-law.
But not only the mother-in-law, because she's lying to her kids
and she's going to keep up that life for life.
She does not care and she doesn't have any qualms about
it. And she's not even like she's
nothing. It's just like she's very like
this is an imperative, which is. Why?
I thought she might be like, a psychopath because she so coolly
lies to her children about her own identity for so long their
entire lives. She's lying.
She has fake parents that she sends them to see in Sydney,
Australia. Someone like, yeah, like she
hires people. And what kind of a person
devotes themselves to the lie? I think a person like her, she
has lived such a difficult life at the lowest status you can be
in Korean society. I'm assuming short of maybe
being unhoused or something, I don't know, but I think.
It's also in her head. No.
Yeah, is what I'm trying to get at.
Is that like she's not well, she's built, she has this drive.
Yeah, she's built the. Drive and ambition and the like,
whatever that is, it is true. It's true because again, even
though the orphanage dad, the guy who was in orphanage and
married the plant lady, the pyramid dad, they also had
difficult, so easy lives in their younger years.
They they're not like that. Like they're all kind of, I
mean, not the plant dad, but they're all kind of crazy, but
not to her level. Like she's got another different
fire and the way she gets pissed off, the way she grabs the
beautiful hair lady with by the hair and it was like, I will
kill you. I don't even care.
No. No, no, she's threatening to
kill people left and right like she's playing a game.
She plays a game of chicken with the plant lady where she runs
her off the road and threatens to kill her.
Like she is aggressive, crazy, like she's crazy.
So I think that's why it's so like the writers making Henna
like her match her counterpart. They see each other in each
other. It's themselves in each other.
I should say so, cuz like they can match each other's crazy cuz
Henna too. She is.
She has no other fucks left to give.
Her mom is dead. Yeah.
She's like, she's got nothing. She's got to survive for real.
Like she's got to do something. Like I have nothing left to
lose. Yeah, she's nothing to lose.
She has No Fear. She has no nothing.
And when she leaves her tries to leave her in the forest, she
turns around and gets her gets her because I think she realizes
like Hannah doesn't even like on some level, Hannah doesn't care.
You can leave her in the forest. Hannah doesn't even care or cry
or anything. She's like and what?
So she turns around and gets her because she's like, why?
May as well just go get her because it's they both are kind
of a match for each other in a way, because they're both lived
the most desperate circumstances.
I think either of them can imagine like being in and then
they're like here in this like sky Castle and as like this
charity case got to go to Sky Castle because she's like,
they're whatever. I don't know, like diversity
person. She's not wealthy and all that
kind of and stuff. But then she like points out all
these like, you know, injustices or unfairness and special
treatments and different things like that.
Somehow works her way into and of course the coordinator gets
her there into the house, finds out who her dad is like that,
that things just go crazy. Like after a certain point, it's
just like your brain is exploding with information
that's coming out about this family left and right.
I just I haven't my notes. I have one note.
This is from like episodes 3 through 5 early because after
episode 5 I stopped taking notes.
I would have a thesis if I tried to take notes on this show.
Definitely. Yeah, but I have here in all
caps. Pixie Cut is a raving
psychopath. She's manipulative towards the
teacher. By teacher I mean the
coordinator doing everything she can to get her back, bribing her
with gold bars and fancy packed homemade food, handwritten
apology notes. Until finally she prostrates
herself on her knees, crying for forgiveness.
It looks sincere, her promise that she would be OK if her
family turned into a disaster just like the other one,
Yongja's family. That she'll be OK with teachers
methods. But in the hallway she smirks.
Riley like a fox, like a crazy person, like a psychopath.
Because the amount of times that these women were twirling
mustaches with each other, especially the coordinator and
the Pixie cut. Yeah, another good match for
each other. They were well matched as well.
Those three like Hannah this, which is a student, She's she's
a teenager, She's 17 years old, 17 or 18 years old.
So Hannah Pixie cut, one of the mom central mom and the
coordinator who we haven't even fucking gotten to that bitch.
Yeah, we haven't gotten to. Those three are like the Trinity
of the show. They are so well matched against
each other and it is like K drama crack to see them up
against each other. It is amazing.
And again, like this Pixie cut lady is diabolical.
Yep, you know she gets in the plant lady's face.
The the line she kept saying to her, which is from their
childhood, and she even also says that I think to the hair
lady, but she's gonna rip your lips off your face, which I'm
sure is like maybe a Korean common insult, but it's just
like it sounds so much cooler than like I'll kick your ass and
English. She's like, I will rip your lips
off your face. I'll rip your lips.
Off my face. Oh, my God.
Rip your mouth. And you have no doubt.
Yeah, You have no doubt she'll do it.
Yeah. Yeah.
Rip your mouth. Yeah.
Something she's gonna do something.
She's gonna rip your mouth. I just think she's a in various
points you're like, oh, she's got us together and then
suddenly she's a fucking lunatic.
Yeah, it's got to be stifling to act like live a lie every day,
24/7 to everyone. Yeah, to have like those crazy
eyes and be intimidating, just actively intimidating people who
for all intents and purposes, they're your friend, right?
The moment. I like the moment when she outs
herself with the plant lady. Oh yeah, that was crazy.
In the in the clubhouse. Well, what about in the
clubhouse too? Yeah.
But yeah, in the street. In this for everyone's street
and this is an early episode when she says her famous I'll
rip your lips off your face or something, whatever that is.
Yeah. And plant lady's like Oh my God,
it's you. And she's like oh shit.
I just gave it away that I'm this girl from her past and we
went to school together and we have this little history.
I love that moment because again, she's just.
It's like a rabid animal. Like this lady.
The Pixie cut lady acts like a rabid animal at times.
That's what I'm saying. Like she's kind of feral because
of how she grew up. Like she grew up unparented.
She grew up with everyone hating her by virtue of where her
station in life was, which she had no control over because she
was a baby slash child. She believes she's been betrayed
by her bestie. She trusts no one and she kind
of isn't like she can, she's like this.
And not to excuse it or anything, but just like she's a
reason for why and how she can be so diabolical.
And henna can kind of identify with it because she kind of has
somewhat similar stuff going on where like a single mom, very
poor sick mom, you know, knows she's better than everyone, at
least academically and hates it, you know what I mean?
So they kind of have these like chips on their shoulder And and
it's interesting because even other people who come from the
sheep, I guess comes from the worst social background the the
the Pixie cut lady. But yeah, it's I try to just
juxtapose her to the, I mean, probably orphanage parents
weren't wealthy. So the plant mom is not like
that. The orphan dad is not like that.
The pyramid dad is not like her. Like, nobody is quite like her
except for Hannah's, like the closest, but she's like another
level. Oh.
My God, it's like these she's there's so many moments that we
could talk about with Pixie cut, but.
Well, we need to go back to the coordinator because we fully
glossed over her, OK? And we need to talk about the
Goatee dad because we also glossed like that.
We haven't talked about like the rest of the families too,
because they're so, they're so important.
So what do you want to what do you want to say about the Goatee
Dad? I want to say that I mean it
gets very mock Jungy, but I did like his acting despite it
because he it is like crazy to be like, wait, you're telling me
the person I sent to another hospital for possible surgery so
I could like win favor with my boss or whatever to state, you
know, treat his grandson is my daughter and like.
That was like the best twist though.
Like it was the most mock Jungy thing in the whole show.
Yeah, but I lived it up because he deserved it.
Not to say, oh God, this is terrible what he said, but like,
I'm just they're. Not real people, they're not.
Real people. This is a drama, but he fucking
deserved what he got. He Hannah Hannah did not deserve
it. Did not deserve to die.
No. But the Father deserved that
reckoning and that sort of cosmic punishment that he got.
It's weird because the whole time he's kind of more affable
compared to his wife. So you kind of don't like harbor
ill will towards? That's what I mean.
But then it this takes you out so hard and then you're like.
He progressively gets more frustrating, especially because
you realize even though he looks down, he looks down on his wife
for her background, her upbringing, and he supports her
lying to the children and the whole neighbourhood about her
name and her identity and everything about her.
He supports that because he's embarrassed about her.
Plus he is super interested in upward mobility at work, so he's
doing everything he can to get in the good graces of that
chief. That old turtle, 1000 year old
turtle as they called him. Like that was his nickname
because they hated him and that whole thing.
He was such a hypocrite. Yeah, because he did act like
kind of holier than that in many ways.
Like he's like, well, I'm not as bad as that everyone else here
almost like the plant lady. But yet he had like terrible
like the workplace politics of this.
That piece of this drama was also interesting, if you're into
that, because he is doing the most to like, manipulate
something there and like, make make the other surgeon the
husband of the beautiful hair lady, his lackey in a way,
almost just like it's assumed that he's going to be the one up
for promotion because he's like, yeah, I was number one, top of
my class. So whatever he was like 20 or 30
years ago. And they were building, the
writer was building this case against him where Doctor Huang
had already investigated him low key for his patient outcomes,
because seemingly all his patients have terrible outcomes.
They are in chronic pain, they don't end up well, and they have
more issues after he does surgery on them.
So. But his economic metrics are on
point because he turns those patients out of their beds so
fast. Yeah, he turns.
Fast and he's making a lot of money for the hospital.
So whatever he's doing is making patients spend more money at the
hospital. So he's giving surgery, he's
making them get surgeries when maybe they don't need surgeries
and maybe they can use alternative methods, maybe
injections or physical therapy and different other methods that
can fix their issues without resorting to surgery, which is
the most expensive option. All of these like unethical
practices within the hospital, which is run like a business.
And unfortunately, like, it's like that in the United States
as well, is they're really building this case that he's not
a very good doctor. Or he is, but he's not providing
appropriate care. Like maybe he knows what to do,
but he doesn't care about that. He cares more about like
himself. Looking good.
Exactly so. Then we get to this part of the
show where mysteriously Hannah falls from like the fifth floor
of the clubhouse during Ozo. With the Esso in the bedroom
next door. Yeah, yeah.
We don't know which kid did it or if a child of the Sky Castle
crew did it and she is severely injured.
She needs a. Surgery.
Emergency surgery. She's eternally bleeding I
think. She's a bright She's got like a
brain bleed or something. So she needs a surgery from the
neurosurgeon, Dr. Huang, the plant lady's husband, right?
Because at this point, Goatee dad has finagled his way into
getting a promotion and he's like the chief of the spine and
Joint Center or something. He's also head of like.
Yeah, Yeah. He's chief of like something
finances. Yeah.
Instead of the chief of the joint and spine center, which is
what the Doctor Huang is the plant lady's husband.
Yeah. Anyway, he got a higher
position. He like wheeled and dealed and
he's got a higher position and he changes the order of the
surgeries. Because the because Turtle's
grandson was in a some kind of accident as well the same.
State. The.
Hospital director's grandson, 9 year old grandson also came in
with a very almost an identical injury.
Also needs brain surgery. But after henna.
That's but he came in after henna.
So they prioritized him just cause of who he is and henna got
transported to another hospital which there's no time for that
and he knows. That, and he knows that.
He knows he just doomed henna, he was very unlikely that she
was going to make it to another hospital to receive this life
saving surgery and he basically kills his own daughter.
But doesn't know at the time that she is his daughter.
So good. That's why I said it's so good,
because like, you're there and the audience knows and this
fucking bitch Pixie cut knows that's his daughter and doesn't
say shit. To him that entire time and then
Channy crying his a little heart out for her so heartbreaking, so
hard to drink and then getting arrested for it.
OK, we can't go back to we can't go back to Channy right now
anyways. We already talked about that.
Yeah. But yeah, so he gets trained
for. Him that's murder later but yeah
the dad fucking himself over because of his unethical.
And mind you, as a viewer, we're already grappling with the fact
that Yesso and Henna are sisters, almost like twins or
Irish twins, whoever know of it. I don't know if that's offensive
or not, but I know that that's like a phrase some people use
sometimes. But because they're so close in
age, I mean, they're from different mothers, so it's a
different situation. But they are.
They're half sisters enemies. And half.
Sisters and they hate each other they hate each other she's.
Tight with Yebbing and she's Yebbing sister too.
Half sister too. So that's like another crazy
component. She is the one person that.
Right. So here's the.
Here's the order. If if people that are listening
and they don't intend on watching Crack Castle.
So it's Pixie Cut is married to the goatee.
I'm sorry, I just have to make this clear.
So Pixie Cut is married to the goatee Dr. Yeah, they have two
daughters. One is Yeso, who's at the center
of this whole freaking thing. She's the one in high school and
in high school, and she has a younger sister or a younger
daughter in middle school, in middle school named Yebin.
So Yeso and Yebin and Henna who goes to school with you?
So. And they fucking hate each
other. They're both neck and neck for
#1 Hannah is a bit like Channy. Who would you would you?
I was like what? Where is he?
Would you? He's also like they're they
don't go to like Hogwan or whatever.
And they're both really good. And she like tutors people for
cash because she's a very sick mom who's single mom.
She's know who her dad is and she eventually finds out.
It's go T, Dad. It's go T, Dad.
And goatee dad basically condemns her to.
Death without realizing that that's his daughter without
realizing he didn't even know he had another daughter.
Yeah. Yeah, but guess who's?
New so much. Picks a cut.
Picks a cut new. The fact that she hides that
from him for. Over a.
Year and she does seem like she's gonna tell him or tries to
tell him or wants to tell him or something, but then does it and
then can just sit the way she just sits with that with at the
dinner table and like Henna's like playing her and like
wrapping around her finger and saying things like I want to sit
at the dinner table with Ebbing and I want to lie lay in the bed
with Ebbing and I want blah, blah, blah.
And she's giving herself she wants so she doesn't tell her
husband like, you know, I'm your daughter.
But then at the same time as calmly sitting with her at the
breakfast table or dinner table or whatever, I just was like.
I'm like, she's just like, that's why I said she's like.
She's just like I thought she was.
The Pixie cut is a psycho. Exactly, exactly.
You have to just be. You have to be out of your mind.
So then he's OK. So the goatee dad is grieving
like crazy because he's like, he's just like an utter.
Well, when Yeben tells him finally so his younger daughter
Yeben being the one to tell. Oh my.
God. Oh, what a moment.
Because she's like he, Oh my God, it's just, are you even
human? Are you even a person?
Because Oh my God, it's so mocked on because the Pixie cut,
Pixie cut says, oh, today is Henna's funeral.
He goes, oh, I'm going golfing with, you know, so and so.
And she's like I've told you for multiple days now, two days to
funeral you, you have to come. You need to come.
You're going to regret it if you don't come.
And she still doesn't just say Still.
Fucking doesn't tell him that's your daughter.
Come to the funeral of your daughter.
She's like, you'll regret it, OK, Why?
Why will he regret it? Why?
She doesn't say it. She doesn't say she's a coward.
She's instead gathering his golf clubs and all that crap.
Like I was getting so mad. Oh my God.
So then he goes golfing, he comes back drunk as a skunk, and
that's when Yevin, his youngest daughter.
We had to be find out. I forgot, I forgot.
How does she find out? Oh, because the whole community
starts to find out. Hair overheard Hannah and Nesso
arguing the day of the accident, the morning of the accident, and
that's when she realizes, oh, they're siblings.
They're half siblings. That's cock Goss, she tells Bob
Cut. This is crazy.
And then they. Pyramid dad's wife.
Yeah, Pyramid dad's wife and they talk with Pixie Cut at the
funeral girl. They're sitting down like in the
funeral hall talking with Bixie Cut and they let it slip cause
side swept hair is a big blobbermouth.
She's talking loud all the time. That's right, and Yeben over
and. Yeben walks by and overhears and
she's like Oh my God, even more devastated.
She was the only person who showed the proper amount of
sadness and grief toward. Him she loved.
Tenna she loved. Her, yeah.
Except Channy. Poor Channy.
Yeah, except Channy who like loved her too, but it like
differently romantically. Romantically loved her, yeah,
yeah. But Uju was also her friend.
So true. True, true.
So anyway, so yeben that night her dad didn't show for the
funeral, comes back drunk as a skunk after golf.
She gives them hell. She's like, aren't you in bed?
She says something like, aren't you embarrassed to be like this
when your daughter, you didn't attend your daughter's funeral,
like Hannah's your daughter, I think she says you can't even
call yourself a human, right? Something like that.
And I love that line that she said you're inhuman.
Well, he. Didn't know but like so it's a
bit unfair but also. Also.
I also I do. Already skipped it.
You can't. You can't.
Yeah, you can move golf, right. I think he.
Skips it because he does feel guilty that he knows he sent
some girl to her untimely death. Yes, and it's a girl he knows
because whether or not he knows it's their daughter.
He knows Hannah. He knows.
Living in your house. Yeah, his house, so he knows.
Henna, classmate of his daughters, tutor of his other
daughter. It's not like she's just nobody
rando. He knew her.
And lived in her house ate her his food he offered her a raise
or whatever extra pocket money whatever when you having did
well so they had this established relationship.
It hits him so hard like a ton of bricks when ya been says that
and he can't cope. He just can't cope.
He's like having a nervous breakdown from his mom at the
like, fancy wherever she's hanging out with her.
Friends, I love that and he just embarrasses the shit out of her
and I'm like do it, say it louder, wailed loudly.
And she doesn't care. She does not care because she's
very single minded and she still wants him to be the head of
blah, blah, whatever CFO or whatever he is at this hospital
and wants. Yeah, So to be third generation
doctor, he is like, I'm quitting.
I don't even want to work. I don't want to be a surgeon.
I don't wanna do this anymore. This, this pursuit of yours.
He's like, it wasn't even my pursuit.
I don't know, 'cause it was your pursuit for me.
It almost kills me. It does kill my daughter.
You don't even care, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it's just like this whole breakdown of communications,
which I feel like it again, like some Asian cultures and not say
other cultures don't, but I can only speak for my culture.
There's a lot of that. There's a lot of that where it's
like people are so single minded about whatever thing, whatever
they deem to be success or whatever the goal is that
everything else does fall to the wayside.
She doesn't care what he wants. That's not the point.
She doesn't care that someone died, you know, necessarily if
it means like, you know, he's not gonna be CFO of this
hospital, right? Or whatever it is.
She, that is her thing forever. She's 70, whatever years old,
however old she is, I don't know.
Still, she's like this in her eyes, that's her son and her son
has to be the best. Doesn't matter that he's 45
years old or whatever. Whatever he is, Yeah, Yeah.
It's kind of crazy, but. It's super crazy because she's
like, yeah, why don't we talk somewhere else?
How how can you do this in front of all of the customers?
And he's like, my daughter, you're not hearing me.
My I killed my daughter. Which is her granddaughter.
Her granddaughter. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, just as much as yeah so and yeah, Bean, but she does not
really care. Yeah, like she's so single.
She's like, this is so embarrassing.
Like I had my own. She's like, what about my soup?
I put in an order soup so oh. My God, like, slap some sense
into these people. And he finally does have this
cathartic moment where he tells his mother, you know, I never
even wanted to go to medical school.
That was something that you wanted to do.
So I'm giving up your dream, not my dad.
I love those moments. That she wanted for him.
There's so much living vicariously in a way through
your kids. And like, again, this whole
concept of like their success is yours to own and keep in a way.
Yeah. And it was.
And it's a credit to you. It's so weird in a way because
I, I don't think we have this, I guess throughout the US, if it
may be in, I don't know, Korean American communities, I don't
know. But it doesn't exist in the US
in the same same way where it's like it's, you know, Aunt Becky
did what she had to do for her daughter.
She thought, but it wasn't like, yeah, my daughter's at USC cuz,
you know, and that's my all credit is due to me.
I don't know. It's just it's different.
I feel like here. Yeah, you don't necessarily get
clout. I mean, I guess you do.
I don't know. It's not just but I.
Don't think someone else is not going to throw you a party
because your kid got into Harvard Medical School, No.
You're just like, oh wow, that's great, Congrats, that's the end
of it. Like.
I don't know, you might be like, slip me the number of the tutor
or whatever. The SAT cab person.
Yeah, but you're not gonna be like, let me throw a little mini
ballroom, whatever. Viennese, the Flopster and the
whole and string quartet. Yeah, in your honor.
No, but the mother and him saying you raised me wrong, my
life is an empty shell, is what he told the family.
He also was upset that he couldn't recognize that Henna
was his daughter, which I I found that interesting.
I mean, I don't have kids but I wonder like if that's the thing
I feel like it would could be. That he didn't feel any
connection. Yeah, he was so blinded by his
own ambition and everything, whatever was going on in his
life. Yeah, that he's just like, OK,
the help. We have our servant, we have our
in house tutor. Yeah, like he and she even
looked at him and was like up like when she's dying.
Oh my God. And he's he like, saw it but
didn't see it, didn't register. I don't know where he was.
Like, she's delirious because she's dying.
I don't know what he thought, but yeah.
Or I like the fact that they were calling each other out on
this in the final episodes about they did not care what happened
to other people's children. They did not.
They other people's children
could commit suicide, could die. I mean, dire things could happen
to other people's children, but it didn't matter.
It's somebody else's problem, somebody else's story.
It would never happen to me because I'm different.
There's like an arrogance about these people and there was an
arrogance about him when he made that call to not save Hannah.
I do think I mean you like you said yourself, he held this
maybe resentment, definite judginess towards his wife for
being from a low class family and lower socioeconomic class
any and it probably extended to the help whoever he consider the
help. So he didn't really bat an eye
and Hannah or think much of her outside of like, Oh, my
daughter's happy. So here he calls into question
his whole mentality about who? Whose lives have value.
Because I killed my daughter and I thought she had no value.
I thought she was a nobody. It's crazy.
That was, even though it was Mac
Jung, it was in like a bit ostentatious.
Yeah, still in a way believable or something.
It resonated, I'll say that. I agree, but we had to talk
about the coordinator. OK, The coordinator is the last
person that we have to talk about.
We could talk at length specifics about what happens to
each character and specifically Pixie cut because she has a lot
of shit that she does and says, but we can't go into that
because the coordinator, Oh my God, what you got to say about
the coordinator? Another one with a secret
identity. There's some parallels to some
of this stuff with the with the Pixie cut.
Yeah, So's mom. Lying about your past and who
you are. Lying about your past having
different names cuz she was Jenny or Kim or something.
Jennifer. Yeah, Jennifer Kim and from
like, but that's Virginia somewhere in the she was in.
Fairfax, VA Yeah, yeah. Fairfax, VA.
Apparently, there's a thriving area in American community in
Fairfax, VA. Could be, could well be, yeah.
And then her daughter, she basically was a bit like, yes,
So's mom, but her daughter was a already a genius.
Like a prodigy, yeah. Georgetown or GW or one of those
places at. GW.
Yeah, OK. And then she is having some kind
of fight with her husband and then she might or might not have
cut the brakes on her husband's car, but her daughter was in the
car and they get into an accident.
The. Husband died?
No, she did cut the brakes on her head.
OK so she gets accused of this Is this was a whole thing
throughout the show? Like did she or did she not kill
her husband by cutting the brakes on his car?
Was there ever a doubt? Like absolutely she did this.
Right, She, I mean, she was just as cutthroat as other as like,
you know, yes, as mom of like we, I have to make the most out
of my genius prodigy child. And he's like, can she live?
And he's, she's like, no, not, not through anything but
academics. And then she's like, but you
can't live either. Literally tries to kill him.
But the daughter's in the car when this happens.
And so she becomes disabled and the prodigy stuff is gone.
She's not gonna like develop the the average pace of other
people, intellectually or otherwise.
So she just like hides her in some creepy house, like a safe
house. Literally in the mountains.
Yeah, watches her in the woods like again.
A creeper, She's a. She can't, she can't face her I
guess, or doesn't want to be in her presence or something so she
barely ever sees her. Gives her lots of toy gifts and
the kid is just doing like math equations or whatever in her.
This has that prodigy. It's so creepy why she dressed
as her in a dress was like beyond.
I was like, oh. My.
God, why the why the child's frilly dress like?
Why not just dress like a little?
Communion dress, you know what I'm saying?
Like a. It had a rough, like a little
rough rough. And.
Taffeta. Yeah, it's just bizarre, like.
It just made it so creepy. Yeah, anyway, so this lady is a
whole mess, a whole last mess and she was mentally ill like as
well. So definitely, definitely she
was she was out to get these elite families as as basically
as revenge like for what she did herself to her own daughter,
like she shot. Herself, some foot flagellation
she did through other people. It's not even self flagellation
because it's not really hurting her to do this to the other
families. It's it's like if I shot myself
in the foot, now everybody else has to get shot in the foot.
And that's what she was doing. She was and the tactics that she
was using to like get into the kids heads and yeah, shake their
confidence and make them dependent on her.
She was literally grooming them. Grooming.
It was crazy. Yeah, I love when people bring
up grooming in K dramas because I'm like, this is a very
textbook. This one is, and I feel like
sometimes people use that word so lightly.
They do. They're like, oh, it's flippant,
like, oh, it's the man's older than the woman by 10 years.
Oh, he's grooming her. No, slow down.
Like that's not the case. But 100% of the time this, this
is 100% grooming. And it's scary grooming because
she's got them locked in like a window.
Even when she shows the like flashback of like touching young
Jays, I don't know somebody. It was very sexual, like did you
get those sexual overtones? I was upset.
I didn't want to. It's upsetting.
It's rejecting. I rebuke it it.
Was highly upsetting to see her like do the one-on-one
meditations with the kids which was basically her conditioning
them to to be reliant on her for everything.
So manipulative, so conniving. And they already like, it's such
a long con and like they have all this trust in her and faith
in her and she's their one hope. They're saving grace.
Of course, they have this, like, over dependence on her and
overly trustworthy of her. Yeah, it was so upsetting.
And she messed young Jay up so bad.
Oh my gosh. Was on the way to messing up
ESO. For sure, but I mean at first
you don't realize the extent of her manipulation tactics with
young Jet. Like even when she says that
little story to him, the bedtime story of that couple in the in
the olden times who had this in and they would kill their
patrons and bury them. Under the floorboards or
whatever of their their establishment basically on the
property and then suddenly they have a couple of kids and they
do everything possible to make sure that they are successful
and can pass the state exam. This is like in a saga, like
something you would see in a saga.
It's a historical like little Yeah ditty that she's telling
Yong Jay. And they do.
They pass the state exam and they have high-ranking
positions. And when they return to their
little town, they instantly fall dead.
Just keel over. And die.
I was trying to make sense of this.
Oh allegory. Oh really?
Well I just was like, not sure how she was what she's trying to
tell him about. Well, I just think it was like a
karmic thing, like she was like, you reap what you sow.
What they reaped was death and destruction.
And they did. They were killing the patrons
that came to their inn in order to steal their money.
And then they expected their children to be successful and
and wonderful and great and studied well.
And you know they can't. You can't have.
You can't. And that's how we planted this
seed of like. Your mom is not your like friend
in this situation, right? Has she well or no?
I think the the seed was when your parents are they're
happiest, that's when you exact your revenge like they're in
that little story. The karmic revenge was your
children died as a result of what the shit that you
committed. Yeah.
And what she's saying was you can do that.
You can create that same effect manually in your life by taking
away this happiness from your parents.
As soon as you give it to them, you take it away, commit this
revenge against them. And she was very vague about
like what this revenge would be. She.
Kind of left. Well, he disowns.
He ended. The letter he disowns.
Yeah, yeah. Which is probably like the Yeah,
I don't. Know and that's why the mom
commits suicide at the beginning because she was.
He's like she thought she lost her son.
Yeah, completely. Completely like he cut her off.
Like forget the Med school, I think she was more devastated
that she's lost her son. I know I was wondering about
that because it's hard to tell with her cuz she is saw her so
little cuz it's like what if that happened to ESO's mom?
Part of you is like, I mean, she did love her ESO.
You can't deny it, I guess, but it's so it's.
Not like she didn't love her, but it was a very.
It's toxic. It's a toxic love.
And it almost seems like it could have been, but we don't.
Again, it's a bit blurry, like transactional.
If you go exactly, exactly, then I will continue to love you.
Very conditional. Yeah.
So yeah, she was feeding these kids some shit, like every time.
And then like you come to find out she wasn't even tutoring
them. Honestly, she was stealing.
OK, this is the thing. I thought everybody knew this
was happening the whole time, like from the bank meeting.
I was like, what do you think is happening here?
You think these people, the, the percentages they were giving
like 9900%, everyone gets into Seoul National University Med
school. That's what the hell else could
be possibly happening. They're cheating.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they have access to the
CSAT. CI don't know what to say.
Pronounce it CSAT beforehand right?
You know. They have access to something,
whether it was their, I think they were stealing their
school's questions, finals, like finals and midterms questions.
Either way, either way, to me, you should have realized or to
me, I was like thought that's, I thought that's what was going on
the whole time that you're buying a coordinator in quotes
to cheat, very similar to Aunt Becky.
It's not like she didn't know that her kid didn't play water
polo or whatever, you know what I mean?
Like. They know we're gonna have to
put this story of Aunt Becky like Lori Loughlin's in there,
because I can't remember exactly what she did.
I don't, I don't even know if that was her kid, but there was
like a gang of parents. It was not.
It was not just her either. Yeah, it was like.
A bunch, it was a bunch of parents and one of the things
that this guy or people or whoever offered was things like
staging photos with like a canoe or whatever, whatever they call
those things and saying you're on crew and you you row crew and
and with water polo and saying you play water polo.
You may have never seen fake extra thing.
Yeah, yes. And get taking photographs as
though it's proof that you do this.
I don't know what college application requires you to
submit photos that you did these things, but that's what these
people were doing. I mean, massive fraud, like it's
just, but this was fraud as well.
And yes, it was so naive of the parents to think that they were
just like. Why would it cost this much if
it wasn't high stakes? Cheating Like that was my thing.
I was like, well, what the hell is It was happening.
Millions of well, they were saying billions of one, but in
U.S. dollars it would be millions of dollars.
Of course they're cheating. How can they care?
That's what. I thought that's literally what
I was so confused by the end when they're all shocked and
dismayed that these are actual test questions, not just to
really like coincidentally. Lucky.
And the fact that the kids were also bamboozled.
Like none of them put two and two together.
I thought you were supposed to be smart.
Yeah, I thought you guys were smart.
Like as soon as you guys finished the 1st test, you guys
should have been like, Oh my God, all the questions that I'd
studied were on the test. How SUS.
They never put two and two together.
To range. I mean, they didn't sleep, get
much sleep, so maybe that's why. But no, yeah, they weren't
fired. But cylinders, yeah, it was very
weird. That's only one.
Maybe my biggest hang up of the show was that Parks, I was like,
what did you think was happening?
What did you think you were paying for?
What did you think was going on? How could she guarantee
anything? Why did you listen to her and
bend her every word and will? I thought this was all like an
elaborate ploy to make sure she gives your feeds your kids the
test questions. That's that was what I was
thinking. Yeah.
But I don't know actually. I'm not sure if we have much
else to say about this show. Like, we went through every
character. Yeah, I think so.
I just want to reiterate again that I really again, I think the
acting was on point for what it was because it could have been
in some and it could have been mock Jung in the way that's
annoying like how you don't yeah, her to watch those things.
But they did a good job of being restraint and practicing
restraint in certain areas and the kids also.
I just again, I'm shocked with the girl who played Yeah, Bean
acted so well and showed so many different emotions.
Yeah, so too because she's annoying, but she had her
vulnerable moments. She was friendless.
She had a crush on Unrequited Live with Wuju.
So, yeah, so she was rotten. Like she was selfish.
And I love when the plant lady is like, what are you going to
do with that spoiled, selfish daughter of yours?
Like you can't, you can't do anything with her.
Nobody wants to be around her. Like she has no respect for
elders and adults. And she's like a terror.
It was so evident that she was right like and nobody wanted to
work with her when she tried to get away from the coordinator
and was trying to set up other teams and get in on other study
groups. Like none of the other moms and
students would allow her yes O in because she burned every
bridge in town just being super condescending and mean to the
other students. Yeah, no one's going to want to
study with you, bitch like it no life.
The coordinator as well, like she maniacal madness coming up
in waves off of her by the end of the show.
Yeah, the desperation. The desperation, she tried to
kill her child. Like what I was like, she's a
coward. Like there's so.
Many. I thought it was going to be
murder. Suicide.
Me too. Me too.
Like they were going to both eat porridge or something, which I'm
not sure that they weren't. Maybe they were.
It was Curry. Oh, Curry.
Sorry. They were going to eat poisoned
Curry and die together, mother and daughter.
But then she finally got in the room with her daughter and felt
some type of way. Yeah, finally.
It was so sad to see the the daughter go.
I'm sorry. I'll study harder.
It's just like she knew she created.
This whole situation is her own. Is her own making of her own
making she. Did this to her own daughter the
whole like time the plant lady was like, you're you guys are
all so greedy. Your greed is getting to you.
And that also applied to the coordinator.
I think that's it's, it's interesting.
I don't again, I don't have kids, but like, I think it's
something to think about for parents about like one's own
greed and one's own aspirations that they're, they're sort of
like putting on their kids that may not because not your life to
live, it's your kids life to live.
But I think some parents would disagree, at least based on this
drama. Yeah.
Also, I think I have one note here that I was like, oh, I
should say this. The Pixie cut.
I think she had a Pixie cut because hair in Confucian belief
connects you to your parents. And she wanted nothing to do
with her history, her parents, her father in particular, with
her past. And she, it's like she's cutting
it off, like cutting off all that connection.
I thought it was really important that she had a Pixie
cut. That's a good point.
That's a very good point, yeah, 'cause you kind of had to wonder
why she 'cause there's so much like displays of femininity and
blah, blah, whatever. And she did dress in like, you
know, dresses and jewelry and heels and things that are
associated with feminism, femininity.
I mean. And she, but she had the short
hair, which right now in Korea is not considered a good thing
for anti feminist people because they think that means you are a
feminist, which is a really considered a bad thing in some
parts of Korean society. So, yeah, it's very, it is
interesting, Yeah. We could talk way more about Sky
Castle. If you want to talk to us about
Sky Castle, we are totally game. We are totally game.
Meena, where can people find you online?
Well, I will always respond to DMS on Instagram.
I am K pop bookshelf. I do have my own podcast, K Pop
Bookshelf. It's, it's a bit of a misnomer
'cause I don't only talk about K Pop actually most of the time
talk about other stuff, Korean history and sociology and stuff
like that. So check it out.
It's like AK bookshelf. Yeah, yeah.
I gotta reel you guys in somehow.
So I call the K Pop bookshelf. But I do also talk about K Pop
sometimes. That's all.
Yeah. All right, Mina, thank you so
much for coming on the podcast and talking at length about Sky
Castle. This was so much fun.
Is there anything else you want to say about Sky Castle before
we get out of here? I actually would just really
encourage people to give it a chance.
If we have piqued your interest and you didn't watch it or other
people have told you like now is the time, now is the time to
just watch it. Even though you're like, I don't
know if it's for me, Just give it a chance, that's all.
Only thing I would say I agree we highly recommend it.
Please reach out to us if you want to talk about Sky Castle
more because there is so much we actually did not talk about
about this show and a lot of specifics that are even crazier
that we just didn't talk about. But that's been our show.
Thank you for having OH. My God, yes.
Thank you. Thank you.
That's been our show. I'm Jessica and this has been
the Tabaki Rambles podcast. Tell you the truth, sometimes we
live and listen. I all right, it's a it's faker.
Shut it up.