I'm Jessica and this is Taba K Rambles, where a couple of
friends review Korean dramas and we're back.
We're back with AK Drama. For this episode, I am joined by
Liliana from TN Soju Asian Drama podcast.
How are you, Liliana? I'm doing well, thank you.
I'm very excited for this drama because this has been on my list
for a long time, so I'm really, really excited for us to talk
about it. Yes, we're missing Caitlin, our
third drama trio, but we'll be back together soon.
It feels a little weird to be here without her, but we we miss
her and we're going to soldier on without her.
On this review of It's OK, That's Love.
And like Lillian said, we are really excited, like super
excited to cover this one. I have been wanting to talk
about It's OK That's Love on the podcast for like ever.
Like I it's been like a season or two that I've really wanted
to cover it. I was going to do it last
season. It kind of fell through and I
asked you if you wanted to do it to cover it.
I know that you haven't really watched some older K dramas.
This one I haven't is celebrating A10 year
anniversary. It is 10 years old.
And I was like, Lily on our you game.
And you were like, yeah, like, it's been on my watch.
List for a really long time, so. So I was like, Oh my God,
perfect. So we watched it and we are
going to deep dive on It's OK that's love on this episode.
Liliana, what is what do you like you watching this week?
Like what's in your besides it's OK that's love.
Like what did you watch this week?
So I've been catching up on love next door, the Jung he and Jung
swimming drama. I'm really enjoying it.
Like I I'm a little bit behind just because TN soldier is on a
break and I think, I think I I took a break even from watching
anything. So like last week I've not
watched a lot, but I'm going to catch up with it this weekend.
I'm going to have like all the episodes and I'm going to be
caught up with it, but I'm really enjoying Love Next Door.
What about for Chinese dramas? I think I have to break.
Oh, I'm watching the Are You the 1A Chinese drama and that is
basically about an assassin that falls in love, not falls in
love. She basically gets injured and
forgets all of her, like her memories.
And then when she wakes up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm still watching that one. But I'm going to wrap it up this
weekend because that's finished now and it's been done for about
a week. So I'm going to finish up that
one this weekend as well. I'm watching the story of
Minglon, which is just like. That'll take you.
That'll take me a minute. I'm re watching ashes of love
which my God I'm already like for reasons for reasons but my
goodness I as of now I've watched like 8 episodes already
and I'm just just binging through these and I'm just like.
God, it's so easy. Like when you hit those, those
are the best dramas. When you're, you're just like, I
can't get myself to stop. Those are the best dramas.
Yeah, yeah, I was. I'm not going to lie.
I was petrified to go back to Ashes of Love.
I mean, it was my first Asian drama ever.
It is really, really special. And I was like, I am petrified
if I go back in and this is not as good as I remember.
But so far I'm just like, I'm loving it.
And I'm like seeing it with such different eyes this time around.
And it's been a really fun experience so far.
And then I'm just watching a Japanese drama, which is called
Where the Sea Begins. And my God, this drama has my
whole heart. I'm like, I love it so much to
the point where I think it may make it into like my best dramas
of 2024 just because I adore it that much.
It's about it's, I don't think there's not a lot of people
talking about it, which is also interesting.
I hear nobody talking about it. It's a beautiful story of people
like connecting and whatnot. It's like it's brilliant.
So that's that's what I'm watching right now.
So yeah, I think that one's probably one of my favorites
that I'm watching. All right.
Well, thank you so much for sharing what you're currently
watching. I am basically not watching
anything. I I basically was binging this
show that we, well, we watching it and binging it this week in
preparation for this podcast. I binge it in the span of three
days. So yeah, my pace was 4 1/2
episodes a day. A day.
A day, 4 1/2 episodes I had to get through every day and I was
watching it at 1.25 speed, which isn't really that much of A like
speed up. No, no, no, no.
Yeah. No, it's not.
It's. Not just a little, it's just a
little touch of a of a. Especially with like old Korean
dramas, and I find this with both old Korean dramas, at old
Chinese dramas, they speak really slowly and there's like
really long pauses between people talking, at least like
this is very common in Chinese dramas, I think older Chinese
dramas. So if you speed it up a little
bit, it just feels like it. It makes no difference.
It just feels better. Natural rhythm.
Exactly. But I did it out of necessity
because I was like, let me cut like a couple of minutes off of
these episodes, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we just.
Need to get through it faster. Anyway, thank you so much,
Liliana for being here. And we are going to deep dive on
this. But before we do, if this is
your first time listening, go ahead and subscribe on your
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Thank you guys. Love you guys.
All right, it's OK, that's love. I am going to start with the My
drama synopsis work through the director, writer, cast and we'll
get into the non spoiler section.
Didn't give us our general thoughts.
Then we'll get into our soilery thoughts.
Maybe some surprises along the way because I have a couple of
notes that I wanted to bring. U OK?
My drama was synopsis. Despite being a bit of a prickly
pear, Deng Jayol has become famous for authoring mystery
novels and for hosting a popular radio show.
While sitting on a talk show panel with psychiatrist Jesus,
it became clear to all that the two just rubbed each other the
wrong way. The unthinkable happens when
Tayol's girlfriend plagiarizes his work, forcing him to lie low
until the media storm blows over.
Only then he can prove his innocence.
Jayol moves into a house he owns but rents out.
One of the current tenants. Is none other than Jesus,
unwittingly making them housemates.
So we get 2 tropes here. Enemies to lovers.
We got cohabitation. Yeah.
Add to the mix to Dong Min Jesus, senior colleague and
fellow psychiatrist, and Park Sue Kwang, a young man with
Tourette's syndrome. As personalities clash, Tail and
Hesu help the other heal from deeply rooted emotional scars.
All right, so this show aired from July to September 2014.
As I said, we are celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Happy birthday to It's OK, that's love.
It is September when we are recording this and it is
September when this will be aired as well.
So 16 episodes long, the standard 16 from back then.
Kim Kyutai is the director. I just actually covered another
Kim Kyutai drama, Our Blues from 2022.
This director, I really, really like this director.
He's got some wins under his belt.
Like I said in the R Blues episode, he's done live from
2018, Moon Lover, Scarlet Heart Rio, which is another episode.
You can scroll back in your podcast feed and listen to that
one. That was a swerve Secret love
That winter the wind blows. Also with Joy and sung and
Songhekio. This director won best director
at the 49th Beck Song Awards with that drama That Winter the
wind blows. Padam Padam Iris worlds within a
love to kill. He's been in the game for a very
long time, basically 20 years. This drama is written by Nohi
Kyung, the writer from Our Blues Again.
So this this is a a writing and directing partnership.
They've done a few dramas together, including, you know,
Our Blues and It's OK That's love.
They've done live together, Padam padam worlds within that
winter the wind blows. They tend to work well together.
As you can see this screenwriter.
No Hi Kyung. She won best screenplay for Dear
My Friends at the 53rd Beck Song Awards.
So they are both, you know, highly regarded showrunners, you
know, So the cast. Cho and Sung plays Zhang Jiyol.
He's the male lead. He's obviously been in a lot of
things that people recognize. He's a household name.
He might not have as many things like the number, the quantity of
things is not that many, 11 movies, 11 TV shows, but they
are, they're in the zeitgeist. How?
I don't know how else to put it like they.
Yes. Really recognizable movies and
TV shows that are formative for people in Korea, formative for
people in the international audience of K dramas as well.
I think he's a star. Like to me, he's like a major
star at I love him and I think you recently saw him Liliana in
moving because you. Were.
Watching Moving Finally, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
So it's kind of funny story, but I was actually just coming up to
finishing moving while I was watching this as well.
And it was a lot of fun to see the roles because it's night and
day. They are two very different
roles. And I was like, this actor has
demonstrated that he has range and he's really good at doing
different things. So I, I'm kind of glad that
that's how it worked out actually, because I hadn't seen
him and anything else before. I don't think so it worked out
really well that I just happened to be watching two dramas where
he, you know, was in both of them.
And I, you know, I kind of got to see what he was all about in
that sense. Yeah, yeah.
The significance of him cannot be understated.
I'll also, I have to say this, I have still been scarred by
something happened in Bali, which from 22,000 and four I, I
say this every time it's, it's hard to imagine unless you were
there or it's not that I was there in 2004 when this
happened. But yeah, I came into the show
blind, not knowing the vibe, the, the, the way it was going
to shake out or anything. And it's it's a it was a totally
different experience to how people watch K dramas now, which
is this group watch element this, you know, you theorize
with people, you talk about it. If you don't catch an episode,
you get spoiled online. And that was not how I watched
something happened in Bali. I watched it based off of a
friend recommendation. Obviously, Miguel, if people
have heard previous episodes where I've talked about this,
Miguel, I was like, you got to watch this show.
It's so good. You're going to your life is
going to be changed. All this stuff recommended.
Something happened in Bali from O 4 and I was like, Oh my God,
really? OK, Bet I watch it.
I was flabbergasted. I was like shocked.
It was like going, it was like, I don't know how else, but it
was like walking in to maybe go see Disney on Ice.
You think you're going to see Disney on Ice and it's like a
cabaret show. Like you're like, well, I
thought like, you know, it was that feeling.
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're just shocked I always
have to mention it. Anyway, there is an episode on
moving if you want to scroll back in your podcast.
If you didn't listen to it. I think it's one of the best
shows of 2023. OK his Co star and it's OK
that's love Kong Hyojin. I fucking love Kong Hyojin.
I think she is one of the best actresses in K drama land and
people that started watching K dramas like during the pandemic
don't know. Who she is, they don't know who
she is. They don't know her.
And I'm like, put some respect on her name.
That's how I feel, truly. She plays, you know, our female
lead in this show, Jesus. And she's been in about 23
movies. She's been in shows like When
the Camellia Blooms from 2019, The Masters Son from 2313 with
Soji, sub pasta biscuit teacher and Star candy.
And I have to, I have to say, I am so excited for whenever this
show drops. When the Stars Gossip is the
current title of it, it's with Lee Min Ho or Immano.
She plays an astronaut and he plays a gynecologist and the
whole. Thing is talking about this.
Oh my, it's like a sci-fi romance or something.
I'm like fucking there like I am so there.
It's insane so. You know, I'm not even a Imman
Ho fan, but I was like this. I I just need to check this out
because it just sounds, you know, it sounds so different.
It sounds wild. I'm like, I just need to and
I'll, I'll gladly like even if I'm not his biggest fan, I'll
gladly go in for this actress because she tends to deliver.
So I I'll more than happily go in like to watch.
What she? Puts right and so.
You like? I did, I did.
And funnily enough, I had watched The Master's Son before
and I was like, it's OK. But I don't think her role does
a lot of justice to her in like the Master Son.
She's very like almost drab in that, no, I don't know if drab's
the right word, but she's very, I don't know, she's sleep.
Deprived. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, it's a different character.
Yeah, see, But I understand what you're saying.
She's muted. So in this one, in this one I
got she's so. Fun.
Like I remember her being very fun in that show.
Anyway, talk to me about her in this show.
So I liked her way more in this one because it's like you get to
see a different side to her. Not only is she she's quite
smart in this. She plays, I mean she plays a
psychologist. So you know, she obviously is
going to be a smart character in terms of that.
At least she can be a little bit.
She's sassy and she's fun and she's I don't know, I liked her
character in this one. Probably I probably liked her
weigh more in this than I did in the master son.
But like the master son, I liked it, but it wasn't like a show
that I loved, if that makes sense, Whereas this one, I
really, really liked this one. So I was like this one if
people, I was kind of thinking people always hype up this show
like it's OK, that's love. And I'm like, do you know what
hype it? I I think it deserves the hype
that it gets. So, you know, whereas with the
master son, whereas with the master son, I'm like, I don't
quite get the hype, if that makes sense.
So I think that's why I liked her weigh more in this role.
Oh nice. Oh my God I love that.
OK, so we do have some supporting cast members that are
recognizable people names of their own.
Sung Dong Yiel plays Dong Min. I called him Sung Be Dock some
of the doc in my notes. He said in like 40 movies
including Miss granny, midnight runners, great battle, the
pirates, last royal treasure, 48 TV shows.
What hasn't he been in the entire reply series including
Moon Lovers, Scarlet Heart, Rio, Legend of the Blue Sea, Wadong
Prison Playbook, Miss Hammer, Robbie, Liv, GD, San Sisyphus,
most recently If you wish upon me in my sweet mobster.
I mean he's been in the game for like 20 years.
He was in Lovers in Paris in 04. Iconic.
So you've definitely seen this guy.
He's been everywhere. He's been everywhere.
Ekwang SU plays SU Kwang, the guy with Tourette's syndrome.
I just call him running man. Running man, Yeah, he just has
been. In Running, he was in Running
Man for 11 years. So he's Running Man in my notes.
He's been in 14 movies, including the same movie as
before, Pirates, The Last Royal Treasure.
I feel like everybody was in that one.
I feel like it employed half of Korea anyway, 22 TV shows,
including most recently The Killer's shopping lists, and he
was in live as well. Sound of Your Heart, Entourage,
Innocent Man from 2012, which is a really good show.
City Hunter from 2011. Yes, and Dong Yi.
Films 2010 he's been. Yeah, he has done a lot of cameo
work as well. I just didn't include that in
his filmography that I've wanted to mention because if you see
him pop up as like a big character in an episode or two,
that's also why his filmography is so long.
When you when you see him. I think we have two more people.
No, three more people. Jin Yong.
Jin Kyong plays Yongjin. She is the female psychiatrist
in the friends group. She used to be married to Sonbe.
Doc for My Notes, 32 movies, 34 TV shows.
Most recently the story of Park's marriage contract, My
Lovely Liar, all the doctor romantics, a ton of things.
She's been in so many things. E Song Kyung plays Sonia.
This was her first role ever. This is the E Song Kyung from
Weightlifting Fairy. Kimbok Chu.
This is Kimbok Chu herself. It is.
In her very first acting role ever.
You know she's been in She's in the Trap While You Were Sleeping
as a cameo. What did you this?
This was her first acting role ever.
What did you think about Issan Kyung?
This character reminded me a little bit of her character from
Weightlifting Book 2. Really.
But like more on the female
side, if that makes sense, because like what Drew is very
because of the sport she plays and whatnot, she tends to be not
as feminine, if that makes sense.
And I think in this one, but I liked her.
I think like for a first role she did fairly good.
For a first role she didn't have a lot to do, but I think her
character overall wasn't that bad for a first role.
So I think, I think she did OK. Yeah, I think she did pretty
good. I don't think I would ever
necessarily guess that it's her first role or I would.
I guess that she would go on to be such a big star also, like
from the same show. I thought that her character in
It's OK That's Love was giving a lot of what she gave, and she's
in the trap, which was like this neurotic, yeah, energy and
selfish, bratty person. Yeah, that's what she was giving
in this show. But anyway, yeah, do Kyung Soo.
Also in this show, AKA Dio from EXO, he plays Kong Wu.
This is the most awesome. He's a baby.
He's just a little baby. Yeah.
This is his first role ever. Also, he's since been in nine
movies. He's been in four TV shows of
relatively small filmography for, I think, such an excellent
Idol actor. He's so good.
He needs to be. I feel like he could do, he
could become a really good like household name in the acting
industry because he has the chops to do it.
Like he has the talent to do it, He really does.
And so I wish, I wish he would lean into the acting career a
bit more. And I can't believe this was his
first role and he's only got 4 TV shows under his belt.
That's wild. To me, I mean, not counting the
first that I think it was to the beautiful you in which Exo
appears in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. And that I didn't count that.
I'm like that's. Not no, no.
Anyway. Well, I was just going to say
when he came on screen, I was like, Oh my God, he looks like a
baby because I know him from like 100 days my Prince and like
old like from what he looks like now, like I really, I don't
think I've watched him in anything else but 100 days my
Prince. And I was like, he came on.
He was like, oh, he looks like a dad.
So precious. Yeah, yeah.
So that's our cast, pretty big, but it's an ensemble cast.
This is a bit of a found family show as well, but I think I know
the answer to this. But what do you how did you feel
about this show? How did you think it went?
I really, really, really liked it and I think it reminded me of
why I like K dramas. I like and I always say, I think
K dramas can do this type of show really well.
Like this is the type of K drama that I fall in love with time
and time again. And unfortunately, I don't think
we've seen much of it lately, But I this, like I said, this
had been on my to watch list for ages.
Everybody takes it as like a really, really good drama.
And I've been burned so many times with people saying, you
know, this, this is a great classic drama, you know?
And I'm like, OK, yeah, OK. But I went in and I was like,
I'm going to keep a very open mind.
I was worried about a couple of things.
I was worried that because it's an older drama and because of
what it centers around, it centers a lot around mental
health. And I was like, in the dear
Lord, year of 2024, they still get mental health problems
really wrong in Korean dramas. And I'm like, how is a 10 year
old show gonna do OK with like this type of topic?
So I was worried about it. And I don't think actually, for
a show that is 10 years old, I actually think they did an OK
job with it. I think they handled, you know,
a lot of those aspects of the show well.
I think it still stands the test of time.
Like there's nothing there that I would be like, Oh my God, this
feels so old and so outdated. It's a 2014 show, but it still
translates well in terms of it, you know, being watched in 2024,
ten years later. So that is, I think a real
advantage and a real, it really shows what it's about.
The fact that 10 years later it can still be watched and enjoyed
so much. So overall, I really liked it.
I think there's like literally a couple of things that I wasn't
such a fan of, but we can get into that in the the spoiler
section. But I liked the acting.
I think the acting was so well done here.
Yeah, I was mind blown. I the last three episodes I was
crying non-stop. I was like bowling for the last
three episodes, I'm like, Oh my God, this is so good.
The emotion that the these actors deliver is just so well
done. Overall.
I just really, really liked it, I think.
I am so glad to hear you say that you enjoyed the show, that
it didn't feel dated for you, that because I think that's a
concern right for anybody. This is a huge reason why I want
to cover older dramas is because they don't get the love and
appreciation that they deserve. And people, newer K drama fans,
younger K drama fans, are averse to dipping back into this vast
well, this library of K dramas and instead just choose to watch
currently airing dramas. And that's fine, except I feel
like you're just missing all of this great content.
You're missing all of these great writing.
You're missing references. Like there's dramas and people
that you're watching now that you don't get the significance
of. You don't know their
filmography. And it's almost to me, like
watching a movie with like, I don't know, Ben Affleck now.
And you're like, this movie sucks.
Why is Ben Affleck a thing? Yeah.
OK, slow down. You haven't watched Ben Affleck.
You don't understand. Like Ben Affleck, you have to go
back and watch Goodwill Hunting and like all these, you have to
get the thing before you can really understand the yeah, this
isn't top tier Ben Affleck, this is sucky Ben Affleck.
But. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The whole thing of of Ben Affleck and why he's important
and why he's famous is because of all this other stuff, this
foundational things. That's what made him famous, why
he's worth watching sometimes. And I think I think as well with
like the older K dramas, realistically speaking, they are
the blueprints for what you watch now.
So it's like you can still see the same track, like you can
still see traces of those old K dramas on, you know, the new K
dramas that you watch now. Say I, I think it's good to go
back and I will hold my hands because I was very much a person
that was a first. I was like, I did not want to go
and watch older dramas. I was like, I don't want to
touch them. I just don't feel like I need
to. But to be fair, I, I think I'd
started, I think the oldest ones I'd kind of watched were like
20-15, maybe 2014. Well, now 2014, but I think I've
watched all the stuff now and the beginnings.
Yeah. Yeah.
But in in the beginning, because there was none of this, you
know, blown up when I started watching, there was none of
these blown up dramas that there is now that are on air and
that's so easily accessible. I went back and I watched a
whole load of dramas from like especially like 20/16/2016 was a
great Korean drama. Yeah.
And like, so I think going back and watching some of those, it
is also really, really good, especially when K dramas aren't
having the best of times lately, at least for me.
At least for me. Yeah, when there's a dry spell,
a drought, it's always nice to be like, oh, right, I have a 20
years of K dramas that I haven't really.
Yeah. Looked at.
Anyway, I'm gonna get off my soapbox now.
So the way that I felt about this drama, it was so great.
Like I love this drama. Re watching it, I was a little
bit afraid that I was going to like it as much and it was going
to lose its Sheen a little bit. But no, no, no, no, no.
It was really, really good. And I just think these
characters are so well written. They're so strong.
They're so, they're so flawed, right?
They're making weird, funky decisions.
And they're working through these little, you know, they're
having conversations with each other and they're dissecting it
in real time. And you're like, oh, that's what
I do. Like, you know, that's how.
You. Go about your life.
They feel human, they feel real to you.
I. Think they have their little
idiosyncrasies right? They tease each other I I don't
have words exactly for how real they felt and organic their
relationships felt. I think that probably the
difficulty in the show comes in the fact that it's been 10 years
and we as an audience have a better understanding of mental
health and mental illness than we did 10 years ago.
And of the protocols, the medical protocols around such
things, right? There's certain hospital
protocols that I think we're not followed.
Oh yeah. Or just ignored in the show.
And, you know, there's a lot of like conflict of interest things
in the show that wouldn't fly just like don't lie.
And I understand that it's AK drama and they can take creative
liberties with certain things. But I think on the whole, it
nailed like the spirit of mental health and mental illness.
And in portraying these things with a lot of intent, they had
definitions for things popping up on the screen for the
audience and they were taking their time to explain certain
things. And I think we forget that ten
years ago nobody was talking about mental health and mental
illness. No, no, they barely talk about
it now in Asia, so. Nobody was talking about it.
No, back then this was groundbreaking.
This was a whole new thing. To do back then was to have
these characters be psychiatrists, right, doctors of
the mind, and then to have the plot unfold the way it does, to
have this sort of twist that happens.
I don't know about you, but like, I was the first time I
watched it, that twist. I got got.
I did not see it coming.
I didn't not see it coming. That was what I was gonna ask
you. Like, I don't wanna spoil it,
but we're just gonna talk about the twist generally right now.
But like when the twist happened the first time I watched it, I
was completely taken aback. I shocked this.
I have a friend of mine who lives with me.
I've known her for a really long time.
We went to college together and whatnot.
She loves this drama and she watched it all like she watched
it when it was airing I think or just after it was airing.
So she watched it really long time ago.
She loves that. And I had gone for coffee with
her and I said, I'm finally watching this.
And she got so excited that I was like, watching it and what
not. And then she goes, you'll have
to keep me updated. Like just message me how you're
feeling about it. And when I got to that twist, I
messaged her and I was like, get out of here.
Like this is even happening every time.
Like, how did I not see that coming?
And The thing is, it's so well written.
It is. The clues are all they're there.
On 2nd watch I was like I'm a fucking idiot like you were the
whole time. So I think that just shows how
good it's written and how well it's written.
The fact that they layer these little clues for you, You don't
see it you. Literally don't see it like I
again and I was way more familiar than the native Korean
audience on mental health and mental and the and the specific
ones that come into play with A twist back then back when I
watched it 10 years ago. But Even so, I did not freaking
see it coming. I got hit by a freight train and
honestly it made the show better.
It did it did it. Truly, the show was great and
then it like took it to another stratosphere.
It was almost like it could happen to anybody.
Like it was it was a very if they kept talking about it
throughout the show that like all of us can have issues like
mental health issues and nobody is immune.
They were, I mean, early on in the show they were talking about
if you're a surgeon, does that mean you don't get cancer?
Things like that were very powerful statements to make.
You know, if you're a doctor, do you not get a cold suddenly
because you're treating people that have have colds And that is
not the case at all. And the same goes for mental
health and mental illness, like anyone can suffer from these
things and it's OK to get treatment, to seek.
Help. Do you know what I, I think I
first of all, I think I gave this grace because it is 10
years old. But even saying that it was, you
know, the fact that they had again, people playing
psychiatrists, but not just that, but they had people
seeking the help of these psychiatrists was a really big
step. I I feel like I want to rewatch
it because I feel like it would be the perfect follow up show to
what after watching this one. It would be daily dose of
sunshine. I knew you were going to bring
this. Up very similar, but it's that
it is, though. It's so similar.
You take away the romance because there's not really a lot
of romance in Daily Dose of Sunshine.
There is some, but it's so like comparable to like these two
shows are so comparable in terms of like what they deal with, but
it's like Daily Dose of Sunshine is a 20/24/23 updated version of
it, if that makes sense. Right, right.
Even even saying that the you know, it's OK that's love still
stands on its own and still like 10 years later it.
Feels current. It feels relevant.
Exactly, exactly, exactly so and I would say.
You wouldn't have shows like. Daily dose of sunshine.
Daily Dose of Sunshine. Yeah.
If it wasn't for shows like It's OK, That's Love.
Exactly. Breaking ground.
And I saw this article from the Korea Herald, from the director.
It was a little interview with the director talking about why
it's this is such a necessary drama regarding its message to
society. And I'll read a little bit of
it. It was at the premiere in Seoul,
he admitted that some of the socially awakening ideas
embedded in It's Okay that's love could appear heavy quote UN
quote and unfamiliar UN quote UN quote to the audience, but
dramas with social messages should not be shunned, he
alleges. This is his quote.
I think it the show is a necessary drama.
I am sorry that some dramas with social messages have been
shunned. Both the writer and I tried to
pay much attention to have the message delivered more
effectively. Fun and comfortable the drama
contained. This is not his quote.
The drama contains both ROM com plots and character development,
and addresses the discrimination of minorities such as mentally
ill people, criminals and emotionally ailing people.
Some scenes include Konko Jin, the psychiatrist, bathing her
physically and mentally impaired father or being attacked by
psychologically disoriented patients.
A confined murderer with mental disorder also appears in the
drama. In such context, the director
has underscored the fact that the drama breaks away from the
traditional genre of a medical ROM com.
He called It's OK That's Love, a hybrid that puts more weight on
breaking the social prejudices toward the minority groups, he
quotes Miss No. The writer has the seriousness
and the wait, and I have the lightness and mass friendliness.
Together we make a great synergy, he said.
The director said he was pressured about the difficulty
of bringing the story to the screen without deviating too
much from the ROM com frame. Which makes me think that the
studio or the the network was like hey I don't want this to.
Be like not. Fun like, I don't want this to
not be a ROM com because we want people to watch, he says.
I personally found it hard to keep the balance between a ROM
com and a conventional melodrama.
Everyone seen would contain both features.
So long as this balance stays unbroken, the drama will be
close to a perfection, the director confided.
Yeah, so I really agree with what he's saying.
You can see that he's trying to break new ground here with the
drama and how it portrays mental illness, mental health.
Because it's very obvious that the native Korean audience is so
unfamiliar with these topics, with why they're important to
talk about. And to have big stars like Toen
Song and Kong Hyojin being front and center and talking about
these things openly as psychiatrists and as like the
male lead, going through these struggles very openly and
honestly. But also with this like ROM com
fun light hearted atmosphere with this found family with
these really lively characters that is in so enticing.
And it totally works. Yeah, I think they did a great
job of managing that line between what obviously the
studios and, you know, the networks would accept, and still
being able to push beyond anything that had been done up
to that point. So I think they did a really,
really good job. Both the screenwriter and the
director just worked so well together in tandem to bring this
story to life. And again, yes, you can still
see the tropes that the drama hits, like the cohabitation, the
quasi. They say enemies to lovers, but
to me it's not really enemies to lovers.
It's kind of like mildly dislike of each other to.
Yeah, yeah. I don't think he ever
necessarily disliked her either. She really disliked him.
Yeah, she did. She really did.
But you know, you have those beats that Korean dramas tend to
hit, but then he go, they both go beyond and they push into
almost unchanted territory. And that's like what made the
drama so special, I think, to me at least.
I'm also going to point out the fact that this is an older
couple, right? These protagonists, the female
lead and the male lead, are in their 30s.
Yep, which is lovely. It's lovely, I love it.
They're in their 30s, they're older, they're at a totally
different stage in life. They're not in their 20s,
they're not teenagers. And I feel like back then it was
way more prevalent to have drama centered on younger
protagonists. Young people in their 20s are in
high school school dramas. And today I just read a, a
headline that was saying that Korean dramas, it's like the
first time that they really don't have high school dramas
people or dramas with young people in them centred on people
in their 20s beginning their lives because of the aging
Korean populace. As we all know, the birth rate
in Korea is extremely low. They are not having children in
Korea. And because of that, there is an
aging population. And so a lot of the K dramas
that are coming out of Korea are about older people, people in
their 30s, forties, fifties, right?
If you look at the dramas that are currently airing, they are
not about, you know, kids in school uniforms.
I mean, but also, there's only so much you can push.
You're putting all the actors in school uniforms, isn't there?
You know, it's it's true, but it's a different world and it's
OK. That's Love was doing this 10
years ago. Yeah, exactly.
So one of the last things that I wanted to discuss was I found
out that there is a bit of a fan war situation between It's OK,
that's love and it's so. It's OK to not be OK.
I I had no idea that this was
the thing. I love both shows.
I wanna. Put on the record I.
Love both shows I. Remember watching?
Hands up, I love both shows. I had no idea that they were
being compared. I think it's because they're
similarly named and they cover similar topics of mental health
and mental illness. They are fucking different
shows, OK? They are wildly different shows.
They have totally different vibes, different casts,
different writers, different, different directors.
They are like a good ten years apart.
I think what it's It's OK to not Be OK was aired in 20 and 20, I
think. I think it's a pandemic show,
yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think 2020.
Almost a 10 year age difference between them.
I think people, I put it, I put a poll up on Instagram to see
what people were saying, like, how did you, how do you feel
about this? And a lot of people, it was a
mixed bag. Some people were like, I love
it's OK to not be OK more because of the cinematography
and the cast and the story and yadda, yadda, yadda.
It's better. Some people thought that it's OK
that's love was dated, which I don't know about that
subjective, but OK. Yeah, even the vibes are so
different, like It's OK to not be OK has almost like this
gothic vibe over it. It's such a different.
Like I love both shows. And also, The thing is, for me,
I watched It's OK to Not Be OK live like as it was airing.
So I had a very different experience with that show than I
had with it. It's OK That's love.
I watched it, you know, in my own little bubble of sorts.
But even saying that, like, I still loved both shows.
And the fact of the matter is, if you put it out there that
you're watching, it's OK, That's love.
There will be people for you to talk to about this show because
it's a very well loved drama. Like there's people that love it
and will still want to talk about it.
So I don't, I never understand the point of fan wars.
You are allowed to enjoy both things.
Like you don't, it doesn't have to be either or.
I don't understand this, you know, mentality of something has
to be better Like than what you like.
It's like it's a useless mentality.
It's like again, yes, they have similar they cover similar
topics. They both cover mental health,
but one is way, way more into the romance than the other, I
would say. And they're very different
vibes, very different stories at the end of the day.
And I. Wait, which one is more into the
romance do you think? I think it's OK.
That's love. No, I think it's it's OK to not
be OK. They lean a very heavily into
like the romance story of it. It's centered around those two.
It's centered around like their story, whereas I think you get
more of a bigger found family and it's okay.
That's love, even though in the other one, God, it gets so when
you're talking about these two and it's OK to not be OK, you
have like a smaller found family because you have the main couple
plus the brother. So you have like a smaller found
family. But I think in it's OK, that's
love. It's just a bigger one.
And you have like, you know, the psychiatrists and you do get to
go more into the hospital side of it and you get to see a lot
more of that. But I, I don't know, I just
think they're different shows. And I think why pick when you
can enjoy both? I could, yeah.
I couldn't understand. Yeah, I was like, why choose
between vanilla cake and chocolate cake?
Just have both cakes. Yeah, I had people saying, oh,
it's OK, that's love. The costumes were dated.
It was really zany lighting and sets.
I was like, I don't understand. That's not dated.
Someone said it's OK, That's love was very easy and simple to
understand. Like they were talking about it
positively that way. And even though they had watched
It's OK to Not Be OK more recently because it's a more
recent show, they couldn't fucking remember any details
about that show at all. They were just like, yeah, the
female lead was rude and like, they was what she was like, not
gonna lie. They're right about that.
Another person was talking about the tonal shifts and it's OK,
that's love being weird. And I was like, I don't, I
didn't get a tonal shift at all. Like I I guess maybe they're
talking about the twist. Yeah, but that was it was there.
We were just dumb to not see it. We're just stupid like.
We just did a. It's almost like watching the
6th Sense and being like Oh my God.
Exactly. He's dead all the time.
Do you know when it comes to these type of comparisons?
I also always think it's so unfair to compare to compare
especially to dramas like this. Like it's OK to not be OK.
It had Netflix money behind it. I was.
Going to say the same cost. Of course the costumes are going
to be better. Of course the sets are going to
be better. It's almost 10 years apart.
Things have developed. The male lead in that is the
most expensive male like he gets paid the more.
Yeah, of course. It's going to have more budget.
It's good. It's such a big budget drama.
I mean, they ended up selling the books that she wrote in
this. They ended up making merchandise
out of it and selling it. They I just feel like it's an
unfair comparison because you can't.
It's like comparing apples to oranges almost.
It's like, you know, there it's an older drama that had maybe
half the budget of that one. It's a maybe win, maybe even
less. Like you can't go in and say,
oh, their costuming sucks. And I was like, their costuming
is adequate for the time that it was being recorded and
distributed in like, I don't know.
I don't know what to say but. Yeah, also the Sunboat Song
talking about the OST, we gotta talk about the OSD on It's Okay,
That's Love. Jesus.
Did you like it or? I'm not gonna lie, I did get a
little because they kept using the same song.
They they kept using the the same songs and I I think I knew
the songs off by heart by the end of it.
There is actually. There is something, but I can't
talk about it until we're in the spoiler section.
OK, All right, all right, so I have a few fun facts that I
wanted to talk through. This is kind of funny because
there's a couple of episodes where Komi Ojin has like an arm
cast. Yeah, Oh my God.
Is there something to do with that?
Because I was like, this is a very over exaggerated cast.
She actually broke this is she actually broke her arm.
At 1:00 AM on June 19th, 2014, Konghya Jin was riding in a van
that became involved in a three vehicle rear end collision with
two trucks. She was on her way back to Seoul
after filming in Kungi Province. This resulted in a left arm
fracture and knee injury and scratches to her face.
After recuperating, she and Co star Chun Sung later left for a
shoot in Okinawa, Japan. They actually filmed in Okinawa,
Japan For those that episode where their characters go on a
romantic trip. Her fractured arm was
incorporated into the story. And I was like.
Oh. My God, how funny.
That makes so much sense. That makes so much sense.
It was like, she just fired. It's like one.
It's like a sitcom when, like, a female cast member gets pregnant
and they, like, just incorporate it into the story.
Yeah. I was like, this cast is so big
but it's supposedly very minor. Interesting.
Yeah, in the drama, yeah, it looked too real, you know what
I'm saying? Like they didn't like fudge it.
It looked like a real cast. Anyway, so the show ended up
with modest ratings, which is about 10 to 12% on average and
it ranked 3rd on the year end. Content power index, CPI for
short, developed by CJE and M and AGB Nielsen Media Research,
which monitors non traditional variables such as number of
mobile and Internet streaming viewers and online buzz in
social media. And I have to be honest, 10
years ago that probably didn't matter as much.
Now that matters. That's the only thing that
matters, I would say. So it did well by today's
standards, you know. Yeah.
It also received praise for addressing the discrimination
and social stigma attached to people with mental health issues
and other minorities. It was nominated for three picks
on awards and I will close out the section of the non spoilers
section with a portion of a of a review that I saw from my My
Drama List MDL. This reviewer posted a very long
review. Sometimes I don't like reading
the My Drama List reviews, but this one caught my attention
because they started off by saying that they have bipolar
disorder and it was a very involved several paragraphs of
them talking about their disorder and how it feels to be
in a manic state and and all of this stuff and how it was very
poetically written. I was very well written, but
then they go into their basically five star 10 however
many points, top points you can give.
An MDL? Yeah, it's 10 out of 10 on MDL.
So this is from Surprise Lobotomy from October 2014, so
very close to when this finished airing.
This is a 10 year old review from MDL.
They say if there is a single safe harbour in all of this,
it's love. When 2 souls dredge through the
fire and connect, the bond can become unbreakable.
Empathy is the great uniter. Shared pain is like cement.
Love will harden through pain. This is what separates this
drama from the rest. This is why it's OK.
That's Love is a masterpiece. Mental health is not a topic
that is addressed very often in Korean dramas, and when it is,
it's often come comes across as comical.
It's usually presented as one of the two extremes, something too
light, often existing as Comic Relief or a silly quirk meant to
add flavor without substance, or as something too heavy existing
as some ethereal force that twists the mind into something
less than human. It's Okay That's Love is able to
present something serious and keep a light hearted tone
without being insulting. If you're looking at the
melodrama tag and expecting something that borders on
mahjong, this drama is not that. The feeling of melancholy
threads this drama together, but it does not weigh it down.
You won't find endless sobbing, misunderstandings, or
two-dimensional characters. Instead, this drama showcases
the marriage of two souls through unconditional love and
growth. Love is strongest when flaws can
fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, and the characters in
this drama complement each other perfectly.
It's important to emphasize that these characters are flawed.
Too often drama shy away from characters with real problems
and instead settle on external conflict to move the story in
its entirety. The characters in these dramas
are perfect outside of the experiences they undergo and the
forces that act on them, and it makes them two-dimensional.
This is not the case in this drama.
Most of the conflict is internal, but it's relatable and
organic. Every single character is
presented in a manner that allows you to love and empathize
with them. It's a multi layered story.
The supporting cast is also very well developed.
In addition to a perfect atmosphere, this drama does
something almost unheard of in a Korean drama.
It presents a love story that is not about the chase but rather
endurance. Adult topics such as sex,
intimacy, and trust are at the forefront and allow the drama to
paint a picture of actual couplehood instead of
traditional guy chase girl or girl chase guy fair.
You'll watch the couple grow not only as individuals but as
loving creatures. It doesn't stop at love either.
The concept of friendship as a refuge is just as strong.
The entire cast grows over the course of the show.
So I thought they summed it up perfectly.
And I love that they had such a read on the show.
The same same as my read and I don't have such a close
connection or experience with mental illness, you know?
That's so beautifully written. It was beautifully.
Written I just. Had to.
I had to share it so. So well written.
Yeah, whoever you, wherever you are, surprise lobotomy, I hope
you're doing well. I know it's been 10 years, but
it was a beautiful review. And it really was.
Really hit everything on the head.
So, Liliana, before we get into the spoiler section, what would
you rate this show out of five's Hold you bottles?
I've been thinking because I don't know, would I put it out
that do you do halves? I do half.
Yeah, I. Probably say, then I probably
say a 4.5. Like I, I don't think I would go
like 5. There's a couple of *** things
that I don't think I can ignore. So I don't think I will go 5,
but I would go 4.5. That would be my rating 4.5.
Same 4.5 both 4 point fives across the board.
We really, really love this show.
Yeah, as you can see, and it's very nuanced and layered and the
characters are just so fun to be around and very interesting and
a lot of positives about this show.
And we really did not spoil anything about the show.
No, we did not give away anything, nothing, all.
So we are going to get into spoilers right after this.
Excuse me. I can't.
I have. No, I'm sorry.
What? All right, we're on the other
side of spoilers. Anything goes, we are going to
spoil. It's okay.
That's love. It is a 10 year old drama, but
we highly encourage you to go watch it for yourself.
Please, please go watch it for yourself and come back and
finish listening to this episode.
So I guess we'll start in the beginning.
In episode 1, they show him being stabbed by his brother
immediately after the older brother is released from
president. We jump right in, don't we?
We just. Go right into it.
It is so shocking. We get the shared house, so we
get introduced to these three people that live together, this
found family so to speak. And then we get a time trip of
26 months later, 2 years later, she's a psychiatrist and they
are treating Lee L like the actress.
Lee L is playing a battered trans woman who is being
admitted because her family abused her for chopping off her
balls. And I don't say that like to be
flippant. That is what her brother said
like that. That's literally the line that
her, the trans woman's brother said and the aunties or calling
a shaman to beat the demon out of her and all this stuff like
trying to cure the trans out of her.
Yeah. And our female lead, Jesus, who
like wants to transfer Lee L to a psychiatric ward.
Otherwise the family can do whatever they want to her within
the hospital, which I don't quite understand that either.
Like you can just beat up on a family member while they're in
the hospital. I was confused about that, but
OK. She quizzes the interns that she
has with her because it seems like she is of a higher ranking.
Like, she's not necessarily a resident, but she's not a
professor yet. No, no, I think she's like in
the between. She's training to become one,
but she's not quite, you know, quite yet.
She's an inbetweener, but she has some underlings that are
interning with her that are residents or something with with
her and so she quizzes them. What are we going to do about
this trans woman patient Lee L What is our plan of care for
her? One guy says let's take her
history down about their childhood, adolescence, gender
roles, that she's like bye, no next, what do you think?
And goes to the next intern. The next one's like she didn't
do anything wrong so we should just discharge.
Her. I was just going to say next,
Next, Barry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She was. The intern was like, yeah, she,
she when she was getting sex reassignment surgery, she didn't
have any psychological problem except for gender identity
disorder. And another intern chimes in.
Being gay isn't a psychological problem, but a problem that has
to do with preference. And she's just like, bro, like,
shut up. Like she can't like deal with
these interns who have competing and wrong ideas about the plan
of care for this poor trans woman who is just getting beat
on by her family. Like it's a basically attempted
murder at this point. It really is.
It really is so off the bat, like from jump we get a very
interesting and controversial patient.
We do. We do, right?
It's not something that you would have like 10 years ago,
like just going to 10. Years ago 10.
Years ago, seeing that in a show in a light that isn't mocking or
anything, it's again, we'll, I think we'll say this a lot
throughout this episode, but it's groundbreaking.
It is. It's groundbreaking and you can
see that these interns have varying levels of experience,
but also they are audience proxies.
Yeah, I was going to say that's yeah.
They are meant to represent the audience and their limited
knowledge or how they might feel toward this patient like the
trans woman. So her reaction and how she
eventually handles this patient, which is with compassion and to
obviously just get her out of the situation like her, she was
basically saying why don't you just go non contact with your
family there? They do not understand you.
They will never understand you. You.
Need to leave. That's basically.
You just need to leave. You need to leave the situation.
They're going to kill you was her point.
She was basically saying you need to prioritize yourself.
Like you need to stop trying to understand your abusers, these
aggressors, which they're your blood relations and you know,
prioritize yourself. But just you're on the line.
Yeah, just that alone as well. In a society where your elders
are to be respected. Exactly.
Flies in the face of Confucianism.
It's so I was just like, I can't.
It's right off the bat. It's right there.
They are just showing you such
to us right now in 2024, even in a like even in Asia right now
now that's such a rare thing to say.
It's changing, but it's so slow. But like to us Westerners,
that's even like that's a more obvious thing.
If something is not working for you, you need to prioritize
yourself, your mental health, your mental well-being.
And I think like millennials onwards are really taking that
into account and pushing that forward into other generations.
But I think to have that in a show, in a Korean show 10 years
ago, I as soon as I pressed play, I was like, this is mind
boggling to me that that is what's happening straight off
the bat. Like I it's flying against
everything that Korean culture kind of stands for, in a sense.
Yeah, So then we move on. We find out because nobody's
perfect in this show. Literally nobody is perfect.
Just like life. She has a sex phobia.
Our female lead has a sex phobia.
Really. She says it's an insecurity and
relationship avoidance. And even though she has a
boyfriend who's cheating on her, which comes out later, which is
really funny of a, of a situation, but that's her thing.
Like, that's her issue that she has to work through throughout
the show. She meets the male lead in the
first episode. They're going on like, a
television program together. Yeah.
And she is the expert, like psychiatrist that they bring on
this show. And he is this famous writer who
is also on this panel. She comes in and she jokes that
he she hopes he's not disappointed that she's a woman
psychiatrist instead of the scheduled male psychologist
because it was going to be Sombe who was going to go on the show.
And he was like, why don't you go on and said he was like off
like having sex with his wife before she like boarded a plane
to the states. That like he was like, I don't
want to go on the show. You go on for me.
You guys, you. Go.
So she's filling in, the male lead says.
Dead ass. Yes, he was hoping for a fiery
debate, but because she's too pretty, it'll be a distraction
and you get the instantly that he is a male chauvinist.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's like looking down the
makeup artist, like Blouse to like, look at her cleavage in
the mirror and like the female lead is clocking all of this
shit. And.
She's like, I got you, I know who you are.
He's just made to be unlikeable. Like right from the get go it's
like. Yeah, he's a likable asshole.
Exactly. Yeah.
And they do this show. It's a very interesting but
seemingly flawed audience participation experiments that
they do. They're talking about inherent
human goodness versus human evil.
And they're asking if the audience if they've had bad
thoughts versus if they've acted on them or if the men felt
sexually aroused by a stranger versus if they've actually
sexually assaulted them. And I was like, whoa, whoa,
whoa. Like, this is a lot for episode
1. Yeah.
This is all to promote some book that was just released.
And she argues that the male leads books because it.
I don't think. I don't think that he wrote this
book that they were talking about, but that his fictional
books promote unhealthy cycles of violence and sexual deviancy.
Nowadays she'd probably say that his books are sexploitation or
the exploitation of sexual assault for sensationalist
literature. That is what she was getting at.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He says she shouldn't be looking
at the rapist in his presumably there's maybe a book or two
about a rapist that he's written.
He says she shouldn't be looking at the rapist as a patient in
need of treatment, but have compassion for the sexual
assault victim who gets revenge on their aggressors in the same
manner that they were assaulted. Like they get their look back in
my book. Why aren't you looking at, like,
that aspect of my books? And you're looking at me
promoting something based on the fact that I have this rapist in
my book. It's a very controversial take
of them talking about this. Yeah.
In Episode 1, she ends the broadcast by saying there is
hope no matter how difficult the situation is, and that is the
thesis for the whole show. Yeah.
The entire. Basis, yeah.
And I will say like right off the bat from that section there,
I loved it like the back and forth between them.
The. Banter.
It's so good and I'm like, I exactly.
And it's like it's toe to toe. There's no her being, you know,
she is. And This is why it's beautiful
when you write a female character in her 30s, because
the kind of woman that you are in your 30s is not necessarily
the same that you are in your 20s.
You are more self assured, you are more confident.
And I'm not saying 20 year olds can't be that, but in a
situation like this where she is a very popular author and you
know, in a situation where she is almost made to feel less than
because she is a woman, he does that.
He says that right off the bat, but she does not back down.
She's like, no, no, no, no, this is my career.
And the banter that they have. She doesn't stand down.
There's no like hesitation on her part.
There's no like she gives it as good as she gets it.
And I'm like, I love this. This is what I mean when I want
strong female lead characters, I don't mean I want them to be
physically strong. I want her to be womanly strong
in the sense that she can see the situation, but she doesn't
back down. And in that type of situation,
she is calling things as she sees them.
She's sharp. She's determined, she's dogged,
she's intelligent and like. And that catches his attention
as well, yes. Yes, he like is instantly
attracted to her. Exactly.
And it's not like necessarily because I mean, she's a
beautiful, she's a beautiful actress, but he kind of like
sees this woman that is standing toe to toe with him and that
attracts him. And I find those relationships
to be way, way better than that instant love of, you know,
you're gorgeous. I'm in love with these sort of
type of situation, if you know what I mean, rather than we
intellectually match and that and that makes me attracted to
you. Like I just feel like that
speaks to me so much better. I agree.
So I love their meet cute.
It is, you know, they're seeing the good and the bad in each
other because she's she's already doesn't like him.
She got a bad first impression of him.
Rightfully so. I I mean.
Yeah, so we head into episode 2. There is this chase scene with
the schizophrenic patient off his meds that was at the club.
It was crazy. She hits our male lead over the
head and causes like a head injury.
His head is like split open, he's bleeding and she's she's
defending her patient. And this is rare to see that
like the male lead comes to her rescue when she's being
assaulted by her patient and she's like, no, don't hurt the
patient. That is like that go flies
against like K drama tropes. It's subverting the trope of
like, oh, it's a damsel in distress.
She needs his assistance. He comes to her rescue and she's
fighting this guy in the club who's obviously distressed and
she's like, fuck off, get off of him.
And like, yeah, it's great. It's great.
And you see how dedicated she is as a physician.
I was just going to say again, she's very dedicated to her job
and she doesn't allow this man to just sort of bulldoze his way
in. In fact, she's kind of like, I
don't need your assistance right now.
In fact, you're, you're making this much more difficult than it
needs to be. Yeah, yeah, I, I, I enjoyed that
scene as well. It's crazy.
There's a car chase scene. I mean, it's wild.
It's wild. Then we get a new housemate in
the house. A new bombshell joins the villa
because there he goes to live in his Hongbei house.
He rents it out to these three people running Man Tourette's,
Guy Sombe and our female lead Jesus.
He goes to live there because of the plagiarism scandal with his
like Bessie and his girlfriend who were cheating together.
That was like a little like not so great because it was the the
impetus for him leaving his office, Tel Penthouse apartment
or whatever to go live in the hung their house.
But I don't know, like they'd never really circle back on it.
And he stayed friends with his bestie like it was like nothing.
I for some reason thought that that was like one of his
brothers as well. I don't know why, I don't know
why. Because he was, so he was.
He would hang out with his mother all the time.
Exactly. So I honestly thought, Oh my
God, So his brother did this to him.
And also I don't understand, that is one of the
inconsistencies that I kind of wish because that aspect of it
was used to sort of plow the story through to put him into
that house to force that cohabitation, right.
But later on that, again, like you said, that's never circled
back on. And in fact, that fringe is key
to deciphering everything that comes later on.
And he's so and he's like, he obviously cares so much for him.
And I'm like but but but didn't. You it's a 20 year friendship
that he threw away from like this bitch who was very
obviously that's shady and obviously didn't care for him.
Like he couldn't tell that she was just using him to get ahead
and plagiarize his work. And it was bizarre.
So like I that was like, in the grand scheme of the show,
whatever. But yeah, we find out that she
has a sexual trauma because of her mother, her mother.
She thinks that mothers should be motherly.
Her mother is the legendary Kimikyon, by the way, legendary
actress. I love her.
I love her and she plays a, you know, someone who a mother who
is flawed. Like every character is so
flawed and so the mother, we don't find out until later, but
the mother was basically having an affair for like all her life.
All of the female leads, adult life and childhood life with
this President Kim. We never see President Kim,
which great. I don't want to see President
Kim. Yeah, yeah, 9.
Doesn't matter because her dad is in a wheelchair, severely
disabled, non verbal. I think they said later that he
was. He's paralyzed with the mind of
a three-year old. But do you know what that's I'm
just going to slide this in because it's much, much later
on. Like there is actually a
conversation between the mother and our female lead and she kind
of says your father doesn't even understand anything.
And then she comes into the room and, like the father, cries.
That's not right and. Yeah.
So, yeah. So it's like, no, you know,
there is something that like, I think he does understand.
I think he does understand. But I think the point is that he
needs 24/7. Yeah.
She's a caregiver before she really is a wife.
And that is a really like speaking from personal
experience a little bit here, that is a really hard role.
That is an extremely hard role. My my dad was in.
He had a brain aneurysm and that left him in a very critical
situation for a fairly long time and my mom became his carer.
And it's hard, like it is hard work.
And I think that that is emphasized like that's you get a
little look of that in this show a bitch that it takes a village
to the point where, you know, female lead her sister.
They're all coming in to kind of help.
But at the end of the day, it is the mother's like, you know,
doing, but she still has to work and keep a roof over their heads
and raise the at that point, I can't quite remember.
Do were they already adults when the father had the accident?
I don't think they were, I think.
They were, they were. Children.
Yeah, yeah. So not only does she have to be
a caregiver to her husband, but she also has this whole thing
where she has two kids to look after and a restaurant to keep
going, and it's all she. She did.
It's a lot, she. Was having this affair out of an
emotional need? Yeah, fulfillment out of that
need, but also out of, like, a financial need.
Yeah. Right.
Because President Kim was also apparently giving her money.
I don't know if she was like prostituting herself, Like it
kind of made it seem like why was President Kim like paying
for college? Like I didn't understand that
necessarily why there was large sums of money being sent to the
family. But and the whole thing of her
not being loyal to the father and having this long standing
affair with this President Kim that hurt the female lead to the
point where she was distrustful of relationships and had this
sexual phobia. Like she did not want to have
sex was basically a version of 30s in her 30s.
And the whole thing for her to unpack that I thought was really
well done. And for her to finally
understand where her mom was coming from and why she needed
that. She needed that relationship to
help her sustain her so that she could do this caregiving 24/7.
You know she's not getting that emotional.
Support. Support.
No, she is the emotional support.
From her husband at all. It's like she's she's let alone
physical needs. Like her, her, you know, she
wants to have sex like that's not that's.
She's not getting any of that. Next, not getting any of that,
she has no partner. But yeah, she still has to give
a lot of herself to everything. And it's like at the end of the
day, there's only so much you can give of yourself without
looking after yourself, if that makes sense, Like.
Exactly. There has to be a point where
you have to put your own needs 1st.
And that is interesting because I feel like that's a message
that holds true throughout the show for various parts of the
show. And it comes around for I think
every single character character that at some point the character
to resolve their own trauma or their own problems, they have to
put themselves 1st. And I think that was very
interesting and also very cleverly done, like just
throughout the whole drama. I felt that it was the term
nowadays would be self-care. It was a form of self-care and
self love to you know, have this affair no matter how cuz it was
selfish. And sometimes you need to be a
little selfish you. Need to be selfish, and I think
that's what she came to terms with, is that like mom needed to
be selfish in order to be selfless toward her father.
I think, like it's beautifully done in this show, that at first
glance you really dislike the mother, like at first glance,
because you don't understand her, you don't understand where
she's coming from. Like you don't get her, but as
the show goes on, you become to you come to empathize with her.
And it's like that review was saying you kind of come to
empathize with every single character in one way or another.
And the mother's journey, I like that she's not even in essence,
not even that big of a character, but she has depth and
she's well developed and you come to understand her.
So I I think that's a plus all around for this show that most
of the characters even like secondary, you know, characters
that a lot of people would dub, you know, not necessary for the
show or, you know, reasons or they would be used to further
the plot. That's not the case here.
Like these characters are well developed and I really really
enjoyed that. So moving on, at the end of this
episode we get a really funny, funny scene because our male
lead sticks his foot in it. He spills the beans at the
soccer game night that her boyfriend is cheating on her
with the PA and she goes when she goes.
What did you say? Like, she like, clarifies and he
says, yeah, I saw them when we were at that TV recording, yadda
yadda, yadda. And he, like, spills the beans
because he thought they were in an open relationship.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He like got it in his head.
Relationship, hey. He was like, oh, I didn't know
she was like that. He smells of beans and she goes
ape shit. She go.
When she turns off the TV in the middle of the game, I was like
Oh my God, like I braced myself even though I had already seen
this episode. And she confronts the boyfriend
like right there. See, that is something that I
really, really liked. I really liked the fact that she
doesn't let him like the boyfriend ex-boyfriend talk her
out of it. She's like no we're done we are
done. Like I but it makes sense.
It makes sense with her character to do that.
If they have gone the route of her character kind of like being
on the fence about taking him back or anything.
It wouldn't make sense because her character.
One of her issues is that relationship phobia and it is
stemmed from her mother having an an affair and everything.
It would be ridiculous for her to even for one second to be
like. Wishy washy and like.
I don't exactly I. Think I'll take him back?
And she's like he was. Sorry, she's like fuck you
leave. Go.
We're done. Bye.
No explanation needed. Done.
And. We were together for almost a
year, 300 days. They were celebrating the 300
day anniversary and he was like, yes, we're finally going to have
sex. Do you remember?
He was like so excited because he thought that they're going to
have sex. 100 you thought I laughed so hard at the ensuing
fight with the food because they had all this food game night,
game day food out and they started throwing food, throwing
crunches, crotch shots. Our male lead gets like hit in
the crotch and he's like, I don't understand, like how?
This is why. Am I getting my?
Games and why am I catching strays?
It was so funny. It is classic K drama humor and
ROM com shenanigans and you know what it what a recent show
reminded me of like this type of humor was Love next door.
Love next door. Yes, in the 1st 2:00.
Episodes there was. Like spring onions?
Yes, with the spring onions, she was like hitting.
That whole scene from Love Next Door is reminiscent of like 10
years ago. This was the style.
But this is what we mean when we're saying these are the
blueprints that you still see in today's dramas.
Like you, I don't think you can quite grasp these new dramas
without at least knowing. I'm not saying go back and watch
the full catalogue, but like, without at least knowing a
couple of the older dramas. All that was needed was the
bloody kimchi slap at that point.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it was great.
But because the housemates rally like so like because they're
like you fucking cheated and like running man, just like
flies at the boyfriend. It's so.
Great. I love it.
So this episode ends with because our male lead is so
suave and charming and like he's always like putting on the
moves. You know what I'm saying?
Like it always seems like he has.
So he comes up to her room with a bottle of wine and two wine
glasses, and he's like, I think you need a drink.
And like, is offering her some wine.
And she's like, yeah, I'll take some wine.
I love when she fills up her glass and she's like, no more
all the way to the top, keep it going, keep it coming.
He fills up the wine glass all the way and she goes to take a
sip and goes and like throws it. Right in his.
Face just this full wine glass right in his face.
And I vividly remember that scene from when I first watched
it 10 years ago. I love that scene.
It's so. Iconic to me, yeah.
And also because you can see like on the male lead's face
that he was not expecting that at all.
Like you could just see it in his face.
And he's like, he has that face of what the hell did, What did
just happen? Yeah, she closes, but then she
goes back in her room, closes the door and she's like, I can't
believe this guy, yadda yadda, like bitching about him.
And he knocks on her door again and she's like, what the hell
does he want now? She opens the door and he throws
wine in her face because his whole shtick is like, I give as
much as I get. I, you know, I'm you give me,
I'm going to give it back as much as I get.
He's always like tit for tat and so he throws the wine back in
her face. It's so funny.
It really is. It really is.
And that that's like back and forth the.
Light this is a ROM com enemies. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah. And it's.
So fun to see them. So we get into episode 3.
She wants to kick him out of the house because he's annoying her
and she's calling it sexual harassment.
I don't know if I would go so far as to call it sexual
harassment, but he's basically pursuing her when she wants
nothing to do with him. But he's not he's not going like
too far necessarily. I would say I.
Don't think he is, but I think like for her she just doesn't
like him so she. Has her her complexes right,
Like she's she's a verse to relationships.
She doesn't like this guy already.
She thinks he's a male chauvinist.
She wants him to fuck out the house.
So like she's using all of these tricks and and buzzwords to get
him out. So she's calling sexual
harassment on him. What she does, though, is she
clocks his narcissistic personality disorder, and she
says he's like a hunter pursuing his quarry, that he's obsessed
with conquering her and getting her into bed.
And I would say at this point in the show, she's not necessarily
wrong. She's not.
No, she's not. And she's also thinking that he
broke up her relationship on purpose, like unleashing this
bombshell revelation at the opportune time.
And he says, like, no, it's a true mistake.
It all this bravado that I have that I displayed at the talk
show. I'm really like, kind of dumb.
I'm not that tactful. In.
Real life. So he's trying to convince her
like, look, I'm not this isn't a strategy to try and get you
like, I really thought you were in an open relationship.
I like I read the whole thing wrong, she says.
Is someone else's pain funny to you that you would even write
about it? Because by now she's bitching at
him in his room and he's got all these sticky notes.
He's planning his next book. And he says I even sell off my
pain to live. Why would I care about another's
pain? Yeah.
And I'm like, yeah. The ex-boyfriend comes back in
the rain. Oh my God, that scene.
Bro begging for a second chance. She's just like which part of
no. He says that she's abnormal
because he waited 300 plus days to have sex with her.
She's not putting out. He says do you know how hard it
was? And I have my notes in all caps
bro fuck off. Right off.
Like right off dude, he's a douchebag.
And I think that the show is also like with the boyfriend
demanding sex, that is also like audience proxy.
Because I feel like even today in Korea, there's such a
prevalence for this right in this highly patriarchal society
that men get what they want. Men have needs.
Men don't need to use a condom because like, yada yada yada,
all these things in this show, it makes him look stupid.
It makes him look like an asshole.
Yeah, because he is. Because he is.
And so I like that they are challenging these things that
like, you should have sex with them because you've been dating
for so long. And it's like, why?
I have issues. I have things I need to work
out. Like you couldn't just wait.
And I love the fact also that she doesn't let his opinions
define who she is. And I adored that because
normally you would kind of see he's trying to shift all the
blame onto her. What he's doing is I went to
that, I went out and cheated because you're not putting out.
That's basically what he's saying.
She's like, no, no, it's your fault.
If you are, it's your fault. You cheated because you wanted
to cheat. If you wanted to be a respectful
person, you would have waited. It's that simple.
If you were truly in this
relationship for the right reasons, you would have waited.
And I like I said, I love the fact that she doesn't let his
actions define who she is as a person.
I think by this point I was like, Dio, he's not real.
Really. Not my original watch.
Oh, OK, OK. On the re watch, I was like,
it's very obvious that he's not real because he shows up to drop
off his manuscript for review and like, how would he know
where he lives? How would he know where the male
lead lives? How would he know this whole
drama with the plagiarism and all this stuff with the
childhood friend? That's not public knowledge.
In my mind I was just like, oh, he must have told him off
screen, my good mind of mine. Right.
Like, you start making up, like, little things.
Exactly. Fill in the blanks and make it
work so that Dio isn't like this outlier and you have no red
flags for him. But really, he's just showing up
out of nowhere, like random places.
Yeah, Yeah. And The thing is when they go
back and explain it, it makes no sense because she's like, she's
like, he says, oh, I had the script in my hand and she
remembers and he's like, he's, he's making, but he has nothing
in his hand. And I'm like, remembers to look
at his hand like it's I, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then even early on, Dio's manuscript seems to imply that
the male lead is the culprit in a murder.
And the title of the story that Dio is writing is Two brothers,
and the imprisoned older brother insists that he's innocent of
the murder of their father. This whole thing is very close
to. Hey, story.
The Male Leads story, exactly. Yeah.
There's a reference to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in the
Male Leads radio broadcast. He says psychiatrists will say
that we are all patients. Just as we catch a cold, we
continually bear an illness of the mind we need.
We need to acknowledge that and understand that we are all
hurting. Then the world will be a bit
more beautiful than it is now. And I'm like, oh, that's so
nice. That is.
We don't understand that like later in the show, he is going
to be severely I'll. Yep, Yep, Yep.
We're still in episode 3. They are.
The housemates are out drinking and Homeboy brings up consent
when the two psychiatrists are talking about who needs therapy.
Slash, who's a perv in this couple because she what happens
with the female lead, which I don't know if this is
necessarily kosher, but she workshops her patients and their
care when she's like with her friends and especially when
she's with her somebody. She's like, I watched a movie
The other day where this couple was going through this and this
and this and like, what do you think they should do?
How do you think they should handle it?
And like she workshops their care, like how she should handle
their their situation. That's probably where you think
this is probably not ethically right.
Not probably ethically, right, But also she keeps getting good
answers. So I'm sure that's why she keeps
doing it is because doing it. Yeah, good answers.
So. But in this case, she says she
watched a movie. They're actually her patients.
And he says the point is when the man was sleeping with the
woman, did he have her consent? Can I use the handcuffs?
Can I use the belt? You need to ask if the girl
doesn't want to, you shouldn't. And I was like Nope, got to
pause the show 10 years ago. Years.
This is years before the Me Too movement here in the West, years
before Burning Sun. This show was talking about
consent, clear as day. And doing it very well.
Yeah.
Yeah, so he brought that up. We're in episode 4.
He kisses her. This is after like they get into
this scuffle. Yeah, yeah.
At the bar that same night, they get into a scuffle and they
start running. They book it and they're evading
the police and these awful like gangster like young people who
like came over and laid hands on running man, triggering a
Tourette's episode. A Tourette's?
Yeah. Yeah, so they land back at his
office till apartment and he kisses her.
And I remember this scene like it was yesterday, like I was
watching it. I was like Oh my God, yes, he
kisses her. I don't know if I like the
placement of this kiss though, because she just finished saying
how much how she's much better than she was 10 years ago in
terms of like the severity of her phobia of her complex that
she can kiss and stand to be touched.
Now she's worked on how she perceives love, but while she's
off medication and not breaking out in cold sweats over kissing
a guy, she's still working on it.
Yeah, exactly. It's.
Still a work in progress. And he kisses her right after
this. And I was like, what?
And right after he had just talked about consent and like,
if she doesn't want to and all this stuff and she's so averse
to him right so far in the show. And he's just like, plants one
on her. And I'm like, I don't know if
that's the best lad. Like, it doesn't land.
Yeah, like 10 years later. That's probably a dated kiss, if
I if I would say. So what he was saying before the
kiss was you keep imagining like the way that she's prepping
herself for a scenario where she's going to kiss a guy or
she's going to have sex or something is she keeps imagining
like kissing somebody over and over again and it's sort of like
desensitizing her to the concept of it.
And he's just like, you just got to do it.
Yeah, and he's like, you just got to do it.
And that's when he kisses her so I understand what he was on
about but also like not. It's not timed very well I would
say. Not good timing.
She slaps him, but then this, the follow up, I was like, this
is strangely super sexy because she gets up to leave.
He has a like up against a wall and he keeps turning on and off
the lights using and then he's like using a lighter to like
light up the room and light them up as well.
And his face is right there in front of her, basically
caressing. Hers is very intimate.
And he's making this gigantic point that when she finally
falls in love, it'll only be a moment that will lift this love
darkness that she's been experiencing.
And it's OK that she hasn't loved for 30 years and that her
300 day relationship ended like it's fine.
Just kind of, yeah. Almost comforting her, but in
this very cheeky way. It's in his very own way.
I would say it's very him the way he does it.
Yeah, exactly. But I like that part more than
the kiss that preceded that. I would agree.
There's little zingers here and
there that are like a little bit problematic and dated and it's
running man is worried because she didn't come home last night.
She ended up she was so like tired and drunk that she just
slept over at his house in in the office till running man is
worried. He's like, what if the male lead
like raped her? He's got valid concern, right?
Valid concern. Completely valid concern, but
the Sombe dock says. Do you think she'd fall victim
to that? And is the male lead lacking
that he'd resort to raping her basically?
And I was like, that is totally flawed, outmoded thinking.
Could happen to anyone. Yes.
So I was like, Oh no. You're showing your age now.
Yes, that was that little thing was showing its age.
They go and visit this like schizophrenic, old schizophrenic
patient of hers who's pregnant but married, married and
pregnant now. Foreshadowing Foreshadowing.
Foreshadowing. Yeah, but he saves her from
drowning because she has like a suicidal attempt.
Episode. Yeah.
This whole thing was really strange.
I thought this was really strange because the scene.
Of was. Mostly because of the staging of
it was weird. She's standing with her husband
at the shore and all of a sudden she's like 20 feet out in the
water. He made it nowhere.
And her husband's still on the shore.
And I'm like, yeah, what was he doing?
He, she was standing right next to him.
It's not like he went anywhere. And then he came back and she
was trying to commit suicide by, like, drowning herself.
No, he was still standing there, like yelling at her to come
back. And I'm like, what the fuck?
I I was confused about the logistics on that.
I was like, does he not know how to swim?
But even if. Not then he got in the water and
that's like right then he got in the water and he couldn't swim.
So then two people were drowning a drowning.
But then then the male lead goes out and someone else goes to get
the husband and the male lead goes to get the pregnant
schizophrenic wife. So it's just the scene at the
the shot of him grabbing her and then just standing up in like 4
feet of water with her on his shoulder, pounding on him,
beating on him, struggling against him.
But then she like just all of a sudden goes limp and the female
lead has to do see like terrible CPR on her.
That's just. So bad.
It's so bad. I was like, that is not CPR.
That's something else. Yeah, so bad.
So that whole scene, I was like, can we just like, delete it?
Like, I don't know. What is this?
It's not. Necessary.
So I didn't like that they end up spending the night, I think,
out in this town. And she asked him, are you
someone who thinks love conquers all too?
That love will always give you only happiness, joy, flutters
and courage. And he says it will also give
pain, blame, hurt, sadness, despair and misery.
It will also give the strength to overcome those.
It has to be at least that to be love.
And I was like, Oh my God. That's a beautiful description,
yeah. She catches him asleep in the
park bathroom. The cleanest park bathroom that
I've ever seen in my life. So clean I was like where?
Share your tips. Sparkling and he shares with her
that his stepfather would beat him and his older brother would
beat him. His older brother would beat him
for getting beat by the stepdad. So one day the stepdad
physically abused him so bad because he wanted the gambling
money. So homeboy just took off on
foot, no? Shoes.
Just like Dio earlier in the show.
And that is key. That is such a key.
So key, Because it was a rural town, there weren't many places
to hide, so we just hid in the public latrine and dove into the
filthy pile of shit at the bottom just to evade his
stepdad. And he's laughing as he tells
the story. And since then he's slept in the
bathroom because he's felt it's the safest place.
So this is like another piece of the puzzle right for our mill
lead is that he has OCD, which we'd never even covered before,
but he has OCDI think it's pretty mild, but he has OCD.
He sleeps in the bathroom because it's safe.
Based on childhood trauma. Yep.
And she's OK with these things. She understands him.
She understands what it is. And she knows that her, his
brother is in prison for murder and she's OK.
It's just like he has found his person.
He has because he's truly shown her all of his aspects and she
still there. She's not running for the hills.
So. They go on this hike in this
most beautiful valley with the most beautiful water feature,
and he dunks her in this like Clearwater.
They're playing around, splashing together.
All this I remember from my original watch.
I was like, Oh my God, it's, it's so vivid.
It's beautiful. He kisses her again.
And. She's speechless, she's
flustered, her heart's beating wildly, she's having a physical
reaction to him, she doesn't know what to do with herself and
they like have a full on make out session.
Yep. She is rocked like to her core
after this whole interaction, they had to go get new clothes.
Like he low key like buys her clothes.
That's another like little trope as well.
And he confronts her outside the car.
He wants to know if this reaction that she's having
because she's trying to push him away is because of her anxiety
disorder or not. Like what's going on.
He says the second kiss because they kissed again and they made
out. He's like that second kiss.
You like that one like? He's like, yeah, yeah, he's.
Literally like in her face about it.
He's like, no, we got to talk about it because you like that
kiss. She was into that one.
She's like denial, denial, denial.
Yeah, she. Thinks and she keeps saying like
throughout the show he's such a Playboy he'll just hate on
anyone. And it's basically like she's
she's trying to like distance herself from him because she
doesn't want to get hurt and he does give off Playboy vibes.
So anyway. He really does.
He does. He's such a player, so.
That's like as you as again, as the show goes on, that's just
the facade that starts to peel away from him, and it's so
nicely done. So he says not just anyone.
He doesn't just flirt and hit on anyone but people I have
feelings for. I wasn't just hitting on you, I
kissed you because I like you. And he full on confesses.
He does and it's like it's so and The thing is, I will say
when I while I was watching it, I was like, Oh my God, he's
already confessing. It's only episode 5 and he's
already confessing. It's like, you know what I mean?
Everything happens quite early, but has this show proved that's
fine, It works out, that's fine? Yeah, yeah.
This is the episode, I think it's episode 6.
He fights with Dio's dad in this rural area.
This is my OST background music. OK.
Problem that I had with this scene, right?
Talk to me. So first of all, I wrote down
that because these are my notes before knowing that Dio was
imaginary, right? So I write even if the male lead
is damaged, he still tried to help like Dio's character like
because he see and like I wrote this because he sees himself in
Dio's character and I'm like. How true that was.
And I was like, this is wild.
But the little thing that I said is so while this scene is
happening, they sort of have almost like this cheery
background music happening. It's kind of like this.
I don't know, but it's kind of like it sounds it.
Remember what the needle drop was on that?
Is it the So let me go. No.
No no, no, no, no. Like it wasn't even AI.
Don't think it was a song itself, I think it was just like
a background music. I.
Can't. I can't.
Quite remember, but what I wrote is I didn't like how there was
almost a cheery song playing while this scene was happening
because it almost like when I, I, I spoke to my friend about
this and I said to her, this has been so far the only thing that
I haven't liked because it's such a heavy scene.
Obviously at that point, I don't know that he's imaginary and
that realistically nothing is happening around him.
He's just on the floor in fetal position, but nobody is around
him. Like I don't know that when I'm
watching this episode. So to me, there's a real
domestic violence scene happening, right?
And they have this cherry almost like Cherry song or background
music behind it and it downplays the whole scene.
It almost like contradicts the scene.
I don't remember what it was, but I don't remember feeling
that way about that particular scene.
But yeah, like that never happened.
Like he doesn't find nobody. And I was like, I was like, oh,
maybe they're trying to downplay the scene because there is no
scene. The scene is irrelevant.
Oh, very true. Like maybe they picked the music
so that it's almost to throw us off the scent.
Exactly. So I was like by the end, but
while I was in that moment, you. Were like, what's up with him?
Exactly. Watching this man getting beaten
up and this kid all beaten up and this mother all beat, I was
like, I don't like it So because it always felt like it was this
disrespectful to like the hard moment that we were watching on
screen. But then again, you come back 6
episodes later or however many, 5, four episodes like, well,
however many and it's like it's irrelevant because that scene
never happened. And it's kind of like, OK.
Yeah, I think around here they said like, he goes to the police
station and they're like, why were you?
Why were you over there like that?
The house is abandoned and all this stuff.
He's like, that's not abandoned. I think it was around this time,
episode 6-7, that I realized on original watch that Dio was not
real. He's a hallucination.
See. I had no clue, No clue until
they hit you right with it and they reveal it.
Yeah, I was like, no clue. Maybe, maybe I'm giving myself
too much credit and it was around here that I was getting
antsy and getting a little bit like, is DIO not like, but it's
questioning. Yeah.
But not fully accepting the fact that idea is not real.
Unoriginal Watch. Let's shout this character and
you it's. So it's so tangible.
It's it's, it's hard to explain unless you watch it, but it is
such a Tangier. It's like, again, I've made the
comparison of 6th sense before. It's like sixth sense.
Like, you're like, this is a real tangible person with real
issues. They have a domestic violence
situation at home, and he feels particularly called to save him
because of his own past. It made total sense.
It made sense. Yeah.
And I was today, today when I finally like realized that DO
was not, you know, it was part of his imagination.
It was part of his psychosis and whatnot.
I came, I had this thought. How is it that an imaginary
character is more fleshed out in this show than in 50% of other
shows out there where the characters are real like.
Stop. It's like, how is it possible
that they wrote an imaginary character so well that I would
be hard pressed to believe you have to pay like super attention
to every single detail to hit it on the nose before, you know, or
to get first couple of episodes and, you know, or you, you have
an inkling. Do you know what I mean?
Like, you have to to be so. Yeah.
So I goodness, yeah. I just have one note for episode
6. Yeah.
And I said, it's like the whole she goes into his bathroom and
it's like the camel picture on the wall.
And I wrote down like, because he says, do you know what the
picture of the camel is? The nomads of four desert tie up
their camels at night like this to a tree in the morning.
They untie the rope, but the camel doesn't run away.
It doesn't. It's because it remembers the
night when it was tied to a tree, just like we remember our
wounds from the past. It means that the wounds from
the past, the trauma is holding onto our ankles right now.
And I'm like, stop. Like, this is, it's so well
written. It's imagery.
It's imagery done so well. And it's such great dialogue
because he's explaining exactly what he's feeling through this
image and like, through art. The trauma.
Yeah, this trauma is holding on to him.
And I, I love that little like scene.
I really did. Yeah, that was beautiful.
So skipping to episode 8, they go on vacation to Okinawa and
she tells him that she, I think earlier he had discovered that
she had her passport in her purse at all times and it's
because she always wants to be free and travel the world and
that's why she always keeps it on her.
So they go to Okinawa. She breaks her arm running
through the parking lot on the way to the terminal.
And that's why she has the cast. That's what we were talking
about in the non spoiler section.
How about the? Cast on her arm.
Yeah. He says to her that if he could
not write, he wouldn't know what to do.
He jokes that maybe he'd kill himself, like Hemingway.
And she says that if she was like, what if you couldn't
write? Of course you could do other
things, like trying to come at it from a different angle.
Like, you don't have to kill yourself just because you can't
write. That doesn't make no sense.
Like you can do other things. She says she became a doctor
because when the school kids started calling her dad a
retard, she decided I'm going to become a doctor.
And she did, out of pride. She wanted to learn more about
the human mind, to understand her own mother better, as well
as understand herself better. She said it was also an
ascension of class and ambition because she grew up poor.
She did. I really liked how she kind of
broke down why she chose her profession.
And it really had. It wasn't like a noble pursuit,
right? Which I think is very key is
that she was like, this is going to elevate me.
You know, my father was completely incapacitated.
Like, he became bedridden, essentially.
My mom became a full time caregiver.
And this affected me because I was bullied.
Yeah, my father was bullied. And she's such a strong willed
character. She was like, fuck all that
noise. I'm going to become a doctor.
Yeah, I'm getting one better. Yeah.
OK. I'll level up, that's all.
Yeah, and I love that. I think that's different, right?
She. Wasn't like this.
Compassionate. She's not this compassionate
person and that's something that she works on throughout the show
is she is compassionate, but she's not as compassionate as
some of like the Doctors and other shows and other case
dramas that you might come across.
She is not inherently compassionate.
It's something that she is working on and something that he
helps her, the male lead helps her is to gain a new perspective
on her patients and their unique plans of care.
He causes her to ask different questions and empathize and
breakdown even further her prejudices.
So I really like that about this couple and about her as a
doctor. In this scene, his phone rings,
quote UN quote, but it doesn't. Dio is on the line and she goes,
oh, does your phone ring? He's like, yeah, you didn't do
it. And he gets up to talk to Dio.
It is so fucking subtle. It's there, It's there.
It's all there though. It's literally all there.
I was so mad at myself for not catching me to that one.
Yes, so mad. I know at the end of this
episode they have sex on the beach.
Big day. What a beautiful scene.
Beautiful scene. Beautiful scene.
Beautiful. Scene.
She she cries post coitus. He's just like strokes her hair.
He's crying with her. Definitely empathizing with her
deeply. Where she's at, Yeah.
Where she's at and he calls himself passive but really he's
I think he's just empathizing with her.
He's like feeling with her. And she asks him if he loves her
and he says yes. And she goes but I don't love
you yet. And I was like, she's so fucking
real for that. Like she's so real.
She's like, it's only been two months since we've known each
other. And she's just like, I don't
love you yet. Like I'm not there yet.
I'm not going to say it back yet.
And he just like takes it. Yeah, he's just like, OK, it's
fine. That's cool.
Yeah. She won't say why she's crying.
She says she'll share it later and if he hears how bad she's
really is, what she was thinking about and still loves her, then
she'll believe that he loves her for real.
Episode 10 and 11, it's them working through their
relationship, you know, setting boundaries instead of him
snapping at her that he's working and writing and not
using a coherent sentence of like, hey, I'm working.
Like can you come back in an hour or whatever?
Or disappearing for days and not calling her while he works and
neglecting food and sleep. Maybe they can agree to meet on
certain days so then they come up with like, oh we'll meet on
Fridays, we'll do date night, yadda yadda.
The only note that I have for episode 10 is Dio being
imaginary of our male Eat Get out of here.
So that's that's when you realize.
That is when I realized that that is the only note that I
have for episode 10 because I was like, I get it.
They're having this whole discourse of like they're trying
to figure each other out. They're trying to, what they're
really trying to do is they're trying to figure out how they as
individuals slot into a relationship.
That's what they're trying to do, right?
And I was like, yes, this is very important.
What about DIO just happened? What just happened?
What the fuck just happened? Exactly because that's when you
start to see like his brother gets called in because they find
his purse out by the house. Like he gets to look at the
camera footage and he's just like in his fetal position.
And the Caddy is the TV footage of him in the field on the
street fighting with nobody. Yeah, is jarring.
It's so jarring. I was like, what?
Just so that for that episode and then like even to episode
11, that was all my brain was focused on and they were having
all the like these conversations and yes, I I clocked to those
and yes, I was watching, but all like my, I was like, it felt
like I was being told. And exactly, you're reeling from
that and you almost, almost miss everything that's happening with
our main couple because you're like, but, but I just got hit
with this and This is why I am not a big rewatcher, but I
think. You might need to rewatch it.
Yeah, but I was like, at some point, not in the immediate
future, you know, not right now. I would say, you know, in a
couple of years time or whatever, it would be something
that I would probably not mind going back because now knowing
what it is and what's happening, I would probably pick up on
other things that I was just like, for these two episodes,
like I said, I was just like, what?
What, what, what, what, what, What do you know that meme, that
Jennifer Lawrence meme of meme, You know, what do you mean?
That was me. I was like, what do you mean?
He said that. What do you mean?
I thought I was I was waiting for Adm from you or a voice note
from you for when when you got to these episodes, because I
recommend their show to people every so often and I expect them
to circle back and be like, what the fuck?
Like, because these couple of episodes is when it's truly
like, this is a reveal. This is when shit hits the fan.
I feel like these are the episodes when they walk away
from the ROM com. Like they start, there's still
bits there, but this is the breakaway from the ROM com and I
could kind of understand. A tonal shift.
The tonal shift, this is when it happens.
But like to me, whereas some people might find that, I don't
know, they don't like it or they might find that it's, you know,
they don't see it coming. I always thought there was going
to be a tonal shift. I just didn't think it was going
to be done in this manner. I didn't expect it to be with
him getting severely, you know, him being ill and him having.
Yeah, like I didn't see that necessarily being the tonal
shift, but I saw that there was going to be 1 coming because
like you can't stain, you know, 16 episodes.
And plus by that point our female lead is fairly, we've got
quotation marks exactly. So like.
What else is going to happen? So it's going to have to be his
story in the second-half. And I always thought it was
going to be his brother and like that whole situation, which it
is, right, It is, but I always thought but it's not at the same
time because it's like it's the male lead.
That's where the focus is on it's truly.
Smart. I mean, it's their story and how
they, how they endure, how they work through it, how she
processes this news and how he processes the news that he's
actually schizophrenic. Yeah.
It's wild. I'm like, it's wild.
I yeah, for those two episodes, like I said, I was just reeling.
I was like, what do you mean? And.
It's not like they didn't. It's not like they did it like
without laying any Easter eggs for us.
It's there. It's there.
This was. Always the plan.
Yeah, and as soon as they say it, it clicks in your mind.
You're like, Oh my God. This makes sense this.
Scene makes sense. This makes how did I not see
that how dumb I am? And it's like it's brilliant
that a script or a show makes you feel dumb in the best way,
in the best way. Because it's like, because I
watching this now, I've watched a lot of dramas, a lot of
things, and I feel like I can see a lot of things coming.
Like it just sort of happens. Yeah, you get comfortable with
the plot piece, with the writing, the style.
You just, and I'm sure other people that have watched lots of
dramas feel the same way. You're it takes a lot for to
surprise you. Exactly.
So when it's a lot rarer
nowadays that I'm like so shocked and so caught off God,
Oh my God, I promise. And this happened and I was
like, what? What?
Oh my. God, I'm like turning red.
I'm so like jazzed. I'm like so pumped.
Yeah, so I I was just like, I can't believe that a 10 year old
drama is that is like it's that good.
I can predict the plots of pretty much touch everything
that I'm watching right now, but a 10 year old drama is just like
taking it out. Yeah.
I like I said, those two episodes, I was absolutely
reeling. Absolutely reeling.
Yeah. And I have to say, going back to
the fan wars for a minute for it's it's OK to not be OK.
There is a twist in it's OK to not be OK.
There is for the identity of a character that you had seen
throughout the show. I always felt that that was the
most contrived, shitty reveal of the show.
Because they've done. So much better.
They could have written it better.
Like it was just not it. There were no Easter eggs.
It comes out of nowhere. It comes out of nowhere.
That is, you know, a tonal shift really big that nobody sees
coming. Like, but you don't see it
coming because there's nothing there.
This I will absolutely agree. This one, for example, it makes
you feel dumb because it's all there, like all there, all
appeal, all the info. Yeah.
You just don't know how to put it together until they you.
Just got bamboozled. Yeah, exactly.
Whereas with it's OK to not be OK, they don't give you
anything. So when it happens it's like I'm
not dumb, they just didn't do it properly.
Right, right. So I'm being facetious, but
like, if you want to talk about writing.
Anyway, going back to our show, I am so glad that it caught you
off guard. Oh my God, so off God.
I was not prepared for what hit me and by that point I love that
character. I.
You're so invested in his journey, in his, in his
problems, in his complexes and in his childhood trauma.
Everything about him is so clear.
Yeah, I wanted him to finish his book and succeed and get out of
that shitty situation with his mother.
And then it's like, oh, OK, then it does come back.
And he says, if you want to see me, just look in the mirror and
look at what you've built. And that's the scene that we
have to get to because bowling, I was bowling.
And The thing is, I was watching this every day before I went to
work, like, because I have time in the morning.
And I was, like, crying my eyes out.
And I'm like, what do I do with myself?
Like, what do I do with myself going into work now?
But yeah, it's like, you care about this character.
You want to see him succeed. You want to see him?
Well, exactly. And it's like, oh, he's not
real. He's not.
OK, So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go really fast through the
next couple of episodes and then we're gonna get into the finale
episodes and we can talk about his treatment because that's
what the final few episodes is, is because he has to get
admitted. Like there's no other way around
it. Yeah.
So yeah, in episode 11 they go on a on a talk show cuz he's got
he's like a radio DJ part time. They talk about the Before
trilogy from Richard Linklater. Do you know those 3 movies?
No, I don't. Oh my God you have to watch
those 3 movies they're so good. It stars I.
Swear to God, every time I record with you, you discover
that I haven't watched something you.
Gotta watch these movies. They're so good.
You have to watch them. It's called the before trilogy
because there's 3 movies in the trilogy and they all have before
in the title. So it stars Julie Delpy and
Ethan Hawke when they, I've totally forgot that they did
this, but he they particularly talk about Before Midnight,
which is the last movie in the trilogy and it shows.
It's the same couple at different phases in their life,
at different stages in their relationship.
And at this stage and before midnight, they're married and
they're in their 40's. The female lead chose to cover
this movie on his radio show for the ending scene, which is a big
fight. And in this point in the show,
they're fighting like they're they're on the House.
Yeah, she says. For me, unlike the two main
characters in Notting Hill or Pretty Woman, not because
they're characters whom anyone would fall in love with, not
because they're pretty, sexy, cool, nor because they're young,
but just because it's you, just because it is that person, even
if they are a little lacking, I'll tempered and old, they're
loving relationship despite all that was very moving to me, just
like the couple. And before midnight, they
reconcile at the end of the movie and they reconcile at the
end of the broadcast. And I thought that was a very
like they the pull of the Before trilogy is so cool and
significant to me because they've have characteristics of
those two characters from the Before trilogy, Ethan Hawke's
character and Julie Delby. They are like very witty and
clever and well read intelligent people that are constantly
butting heads intellectually and like having these teta tets and
and verbal teta tets. It's this like bickering banter
between them? Yeah.
Quick dialogue, but they have this intense sexual chemistry
and they love each other and they would do anything for each
other and they'd just grow together.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that is what this couple is.
It it definitely is. So they go grocery shopping
together in this episode as well, which is very significant.
It's a very domestic chore. Only committed couples of
married couples do this in Korea.
So it's a very big deal. And she's so contrary.
I just love that she's almost purposely difficult, like in
this moment especially. She asks if he prefers seasoned
soybeans or horseradish. Soybeans, he says seasoned.
She puts the opposite in the cart.
She asks apple juice or orange juice.
He says apple juice she gets. She puts orange juice in the
cart and says they can juice the apples they have at home and
drink that. His face is so priceless.
He's just like, like, Oh, my God, like, he's like, so annoyed
but mildly entertained. And she kisses him in the aisle
and there's couples all in the background.
And it's just such a cool scene. Like, you're just like, Oh my
God. Like they're going all the way.
They've been talking all this time about, like, marriage.
And they talk about babies in the next scene.
He wants 3, she wants one. This was, I think, the moment
where I, like, deviated from really liking him to, like,
maybe not so much. And it's just my personal
preference. She asked what his ideal wife
would be, and he says his ideal wife would give birth every
three years to a total of three children, spacing out the kids
as one does every exactly every three years.
And Yep, have dinner ready when he gets home.
Just basically be a stay at home mom.
And she laughs in his face. She's like, like.
That's not me. Yeah, that's not me.
Yeah, that's exactly what's happening.
Not happening. And it's just like such a common
thing that you hear Korean men want the stay at home mom or
just that concept of women will quit their jobs when they get
married, quit their jobs when they have children in Korea,
which contributes to them just not getting paid as much in
Korea and and the gender wage gap and all sorts of shit right
in Korea. And she's over here.
She is a highly educated professional.
She's like, I've worked hard for my degree.
She's like. I have speed debt and I'm not
gonna give up my profession. I like worked hard.
She's like, maybe I want one, if that.
If that. She's just so real, like it's a
tangible character. Anyway, moving forward, his
hallucination gets stronger and stronger with Dio.
It's revealed that neither brother, the male lead or the
imprisoned brother killed the stepdad.
He died of asphyxiation. So the mother who lit the fire
that burned their house down is to blame.
She's the one who actually killed the stepfather.
The mother is under like disassociation.
She's completely forgotten that she did this arson back in the
day which ended up killing the dad.
The fact, the way that the doctor put that together,
though? Oh yeah, that the mirror thing.
Yeah, I was just like, really? Really I was like, that's a
threat I will let. You have it.
Yeah, Yeah. I'll let you have it.
There's been a lot of like non K dramatisms in this.
We'll give you this K Dramatism. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We'll let you have it. We'll, we'll look the other way.
So he proposes to her at the end of this episode.
She's shocked, she's shocked. And I think at the beginning of
episode 12, he basically tells her, like, put me into your life
schedule. I've already put you into mine,
which is a very nice concept because she's like, I have all
these plans. I want to travel and go in
sabbatical for a year and like, it's going to be very difficult
to keep a hold of this relationship, yadda, yadda,
yadda. And he's like, plan for me
because I'm playing for you. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about the last three
episodes. My God, where do you want to
start, God? Where do you want to start?
Well, but the fact that they, obviously the doctor and the
friend find out and diagnose him and then, you know, the Sunbey
and the friend find out and they have to bring it up to her and
she's just in denial. Like for the first little bit
she's in denial, but her mind starts clicking things together
and they're like, he is becoming a danger to himself.
Has he shown you know? And she starts.
Regressive self harm behaviors. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's she starts putting these together and being like, Oh my
God, this is happening. And then that's when they sort
of bring his mother in and they kind of tell her that they're
going to have to have him committed.
And it's like, that must have been tough on a female lead to
have to say that to the mother and to be like, this needs to
happen now. Maybe would have been better if
an unrelated Dr. put that across to the mother as opposed to the
girlfriend. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This whole thing of like conflict of interest, friends of
his psychiatrist, friends of his are handling his care,
diagnosing him, treating him, and his girlfriend is working in
the same hospital in the same ward as him being treated.
Not supposed to see him. Not supposed to see him.
She's like breaking hospital rules.
She does get disciplined, but it's like a slap on the wrist.
Basically, yeah. It's like very unethical.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will say that is one thing
about this drama, but it is quite unethical in certain
places. But maybe, you know, 10 week,
this is where you have to give it a bit of grace and be like,
this was 10 years ago. It's AK drama.
It's AK drama, yeah. You got to give it a bit of
grace. Yeah, exactly.
So, So for me then episode 14 is like one of the episodes that I
have quite a lot of notes because a lot happens in episode
14 because like, it's, it's the scene basically where he gets
into a car accident and he's seeing oh God, dying.
So that's, and I'm like sobbing, absolutely sobbing because
nobody sees it. But to him, that is his reality.
Yeah, that is what's happening. And he's begging everybody
around him to save DO he's like, I'm trying to just save him.
Just sit. And he's begging our female
lead, and our female lead is just like holding on to him for
dear life at this point. And it's just like, Oh my God,
Oh my God. And I'm like sobbing, absolutely
sobbing throughout that. The acting in this scene, Oh my
God, phenomenal. Oh my God, phenomenal.
Not only from our main couple, but everybody around him and
from DO like this is his first role.
And I'm like. DoD throughout the show is just
devastating. He is, he is, He's so.
Good, he's. So good.
This is his first acting role. I would have never guessed.
No, I wouldn't either. I wouldn't either.
I would have thought he came from the Juilliard School of
yadda yadda yadda because he is that good.
It's crazy. It's crazy.
And then obviously. Unassailable.
It's, it's, it's wild. And then our male lead gets put
into care, he gets admitted. And like one of the lines that I
have is him, you just see the shift because obviously he's on
all of these medications and he's just like vacant.
He's not there. Like he's not there.
And the acting for this is insane.
Insane because up to this point, we've seen this almost larger
than life character. We've seen this very funny
character, this. And this is the point.
Yeah. This is the point.
You realize, Oh, my God, A lot of it was an act, a persona that
he put out to the world so that he would, you know, keep people
away. And I, and even then he says it,
he says it to a female lead. She isn't supposed to visit him,
but she does. And he says to her, I'm not like
myself in here of seeing Gong Wu is a disease.
I'll cure it myself. And it's just like, Oh, no.
Oh my God, Gong. Wu is like his safety blanket.
That is his safety blanket and he it's like taking that away
from somebody. It is.
It must be. Because he needs him.
He needs him. He needs him.
And it's just like you get to the point where he's just like,
I don't know what's real. I don't know.
Like I can't. I can't imagine.
I can't. That's something that I can't
imagine. You know myself, I've never been
through that. And I think it's one of those
things where unless you've been through a situation like that,
yes, we can try to empathize with the character, but we're
not going to know what it's truly like.
To the point where he is a broken man.
He is vacant, he's almost not there.
And he is even saying to this girlfriend that he wanted to
marry. I don't know if you're real.
I don't know what's real. I'm not me.
I don't know like. What's?
Happening anymore, I don't feel like myself.
And it takes courage on her part to step away and be like, but
this is what's best for you. Like I can't this me not doing
anything is me helping you. I can't get you out of here.
And it's just like, it is such beautifully well written.
It is angsty. It is this, you know, gut
wrenching, like you're saying. It's just so well acted because
you have these two broken people.
And it's she becomes almost his reason in a sense to kind of,
you know, hold on. And I don't know, I it's just so
well written. It's just so well written, so
well acted. Her family demands that she
break up with him. Oh.
My God yes I wrote down because I was like I can see on this
watch coming from. I completely understood the
family. I understood it like I didn't.
I didn't agree with them, but I understood them.
That's my point. Because like to especially to
her mother, her mother is a constant caregiver.
She doesn't want her daughter to be in that situation.
And although it's very different situations, like there is no
cure for her father, for him with the right medication and
the right observations. He can have a good quality of
life. Exactly.
So it's very different for her mother.
All she can see is this tag of disability of this tag of her
daughter, this stigma that her daughter is going to have to
care for her partner, that her daughter is going to have to
give more of herself then she's going to get back.
And that's probably all the mother can see.
So actually when I first watched it, I was so angry at the at it.
I was so angry at the mother, but a little bit like as I was
sitting on it and I was, you know, thinking through it, I was
like, actually, I don't agree with the actions, but I
understand the actions. I understand where they're
coming from. So.
So yeah. I don't think I, I don't agree
and I don't, I don't think it was right for her to slap her
and like get lay hands on her and stuff like that.
But I understand where it was coming from and what she said.
And at one point she even says, do you know what it's like to
live with a patient? And like that says it all.
Like that is the crux of the issue is that she would be not
living with a partner, living with a patient.
Something else that was added, which I did not like this
character. I thought this was the worst
written character of the show, especially when everybody else
is so well written. The sister.
Oh. I didn't like.
Her she added nothing, added nothing they could have.
Written out. Yeah, she was not necessary.
She says this juicy ass bit in
this episode. She says because she quits her
job at the cafe, which I guess she felt obligated to do because
that's homeboys building and technically his his cafe.
She comes in and like glares at the female lead and says that
she went to Community College because of her because the
sister, like the female lead, went to medical school.
Yeah, but she worked her ass off to get there.
But the family could only afford to send one of the daughters to
a very expensive or prestigious school.
So there's a lot of resentment and bitterness there.
And we never unpacked that at all in the show or even hinted
that that was there until this one moment.
And I was like, oh, that didn't like that.
But that was juicy. Earlier in this episode, the
brother, the imprisoned brother that I think by now is out,
tells the Sunday doc to unleash the truth of the whole situation
on his disassociated mom, on the mother.
But the doc someday says no, you should do it yourself.
I. Didn't understand that the.
This is what he said. Like basically he was saying
you're so abrasive and basically you could just torture her with
the truth until she remembers the quote is there's no medical
basis. But who knows, Like maybe it'll
work. And I was like, what?
What do you mean what? Do you mean torture the poor
woman with the truth until she like, has a breakthrough?
Are you? Joking.
Oh, you break her and she has a breakdown.
Yeah, like I was like, that's just wrong.
So I feel like they gave the Sombe doc like the most
questionable like medical practice things in the whole
show. I have the quote from when she
goes to see the female lead goes to see him.
This is against ethical standards, against his plan of
care, against hospital regulation.
She's not supposed to see him. And she goes in and they're
having this conversation. It's just like you said, he's
like really vacant. He's low energy and he looks
bad. And he says words won't come to
me that well. It's hard to walk to.
I want to see you but suddenly get sleepy even now seeing you
in a while. I want to make you laugh, but I
don't know how to make you laugh.
I can't think of any words. I want to hug you but I don't
think I can. I'm not sexy, huh?
And I started crying. Broken I was.
So I started crying, sobbing. I was, I lost it because he
said. Being here, I feel so small.
Jess, when I tell you I started crying in episode 13 and I did
not stop crying until episode 16, I was just like sobbing the
whole way through those last episodes, completely sobbing.
It was so much. It was so so much very high
intensity emotions the last few episodes and thankfully like we
do get a happy ending. We do we.
Do we do like there's like several time jumps, I think in
the last episode. She does go on sabbatical and
travel while he gets treatment. He's in and out of treatment.
He does make a comeback. Oh my God, that scene episode
15, I I have to talk about it. I have to talk about it in where
he no. The goodbye to Dio.
Yeah, but just before that he finally clicked that Dio's
character is not real. Right, because she tells him.
She tells him to find the contradiction in the illusion in
order to break it. She's like, there's always
something wrong. Yeah.
About it, about the hallucination.
And it's not the doctors that can find it, it's only you.
It's him, yeah. Yeah.
And it's the fact that he's been the same age and the same, yeah,
school kid for three years. Or it was so awful.
He's like, what year? He asked EO, what year are you
in? In high school?
He's like, oh, I'm in second year and he's like, how long
have we known each other? He's like three years.
Don't don't like. It's just.
Such a moment and everything starts coming back, yeah.
And then he starts noticing all the wrong things that he didn't
see or didn't realize before. And he gets admitted again.
And then he washes his feet and he brings out some trainers.
And I think I just have this. And I wrote it down because in
episode 16, he says, so Dio's character says, shouldn't I come
anymore? And he says, my girlfriend said
to say thank you, that if I hadn't met you, I probably
wouldn't have survived the guilt.
I was actually comforting me as I was comforting you.
Thank you for everything, Guanggu.
I realized after I met you, even though I act tough, the assaults
from my stepfather and brother were really scary.
I really hated how weak I was for not being able to do
anything while my mom was being beaten.
When I was running away barefoot, even though I wasn't
crying, I was really scared. It's all in the past now, right?
I think I've become quite a decent adult now.
And then he goes, I'm leaving and I'm like.
Zombing And he's like, even Dio says like even if you see me
again, like don't acknowledge me.
Yeah, just ignore me. Just ignore me.
I can't. I can't.
And I'm like, I'm tearing up.
Just it's always about it. I know it's always been a
facsimile of himself, right? A mirror image of his younger
self. And so it's like it's, it's a
part of him. It's just so layered and deep.
It's I, yeah. You know, healing your inner
child kind of thing. And yeah.
And. Not that all schizophrenic
patients have such a, like, inner child hallucination that
they need to say goodbye to and make peace with, but like, in
this specific K drama case, that's what was happening, Yeah.
And actually, I think watching it, so I'm just going to mention
this because I, I thought it was quite interesting.
Daily Dose of Sunshine has a schizophrenic story in it.
And they say it's really stigmatized in South Korea to
the point where they won't like rent to people houses and stuff
if they know that this is schizophrenic and whatnot.
And like having watched that in Daily Dose of Sunshine and then
seeing it, you know, in this drama 10 years ago, it was
really like impactful. And I think that's what kind of
made me click even more with the mother situation as well.
And I was like, the way that they did it here, it really
worked. It really really worked.
I think that we have to say one last thing about the twist is
the significance is also in the fact that Choin Song, this
household name, this Hot K drama actor has a mental illness like
he, he is suffering from a very serious schizophrenia, a very
stigmatized illness in Korea that a lot of people don't even
a 10 years ago, let alone today, don't even know the symptoms,
don't even know like what that is, how to treat it, yadda yadda
yadda. To see him of all people be the
vehicle for this story, I think is brilliant.
Like, that's part of the brilliance of the show.
Yeah. Is that he's the one that told
the story like through him is is how people are learning about
this? Yeah, and it's heart wrenching.
And it's heartbreaking. It's good shit.
It's good drama as well. Yeah, so.
Good. It's so good, it's so good.
We got through the end of the show.
I'll as we said, it's a happy ending.
I don't know if we want to go like going to do that.
She they get married, she gets pregnant, and they're still
living in the house with the housemates.
I will say, I will say I really enjoyed.
That's just like my last little thing.
I really, really enjoyed the fact that coming out on the
other side, she still went and did what she was supposed to do.
She didn't stop herself because she was meant to go abroad to do
some medical thing. You know she's going to work
abroad or something. She's going to answer that.
Yeah, yeah. And he's like, that's fine.
You go do you? We can still be, you know, we'll
work on each other. And it's like it's beautiful
that they went away. They worked on each other and
they came back even stronger than before.
And I'm like, I this is brilliant writing because like.
It's a time jump done correctly. Exactly.
That's exactly what I thought. It's not a time jump for time
jump's. Sake.
Exactly. It's not a breakup.
They don't break up for breakup's sake.
It's not, it's not even that. It's just that they go away.
They work on each other, you know, they work on themselves.
They have the goals that they like.
He needs to get better and like she can't even be that.
She's she's not allowed to be there like ethically and like
for a plethora of reasons, she really can't help him in this
journey. And she is his goal and her
goals were already there from the get go.
Like she wanted to travel, she wanted to be free, she wanted to
go on sabbatical and she always wanted that.
So like they do that. Yeah, this is her showing, for
example, her mother that she can still have her life and she can
still be herself and she can still be in the relationship as
well. It's like it's it's just so well
done. This is a strong female lead.
Well written. Like this is what I mean when I
say I like strong female leads. It's the fact that the woman can
have it all. She can have the relationship
and she can have the career and she can do what men do.
It's just like, I don't even know what else to say.
I just, I loved it. I really did.
This warms my heart if you have gotten this far in the episode
Which. Is a really?
Long one, thank you so much for listening this far and if you
spoiled the whole show for yourself, I promise you you will
not be disappointed. Watch the show for yourself and
just experience it. There's a lot that we didn't
talk about, a lot that we left on the table, so many scenes
that we didn't dissect and this just not not enough time in in
the day. Thank you so much for for doing
this Liliana, for watching the all the 16 episodes and for deep
diving on It's OK That's love. Where can people find you online
in case they haven't listened to all the other episodes with you
on it? Or any drama trio episodes?
So you can catch the tea and soju see drama podcast on any,
you know, if you're listening sites, Spotify, Apple podcasts,
Amazon Music, all of those. And we don't just do, although
we do focus mainly on Chinese dramas, we do dive into other
Asian dramas too. And then on the socials, it's
just tea and soju pod on all of them.
So that's Instagram, TikTok X Twitter, Yeah, on all of those
as well. Awesome.
Thank you again, Liliana. We'll talk soon.
So. Much.
Yay. All right, that's been our show.
We'll get out of here. I'm just, and this has been the
Tabaki Rambles podcast.