The drama hit its series high rating with this episode, although that only translates to a very modest 11.1%. Still, yay for upward mobility. (IRIS, in comparison, is far out in front with its own series high at 33.7%. We’ll see how Hero fares next week.)
SONG OF THE DAY
Spicy Soda – “나에 곁으로” (Stay by my side). Love the crescendo and the chorus on this one.
[ Download ]
[ Download ]
EPISODE 12 RECAP
Yes, the kiss was a real one, and it takes both participants by surprise. In fact, what makes this scene (for me) is Tae-kyung’s gobsmacked expression as he pulls away, completely confused with what he’s just done. Mi-nyeo is just as startled, and the moment she recalls her bearings, she presses her nose.
At a loss, Tae-kyung tries to cover up the moment. He very awkwardly laughs, “Ha. Ha? HA! Go Mi-nam, you’re funny.” Turning stiffly, he hurries away and heads into the building. I love how utterly discombobulated Tae-kyung is. He rationalizes to himself, “I was just so angry that I lost reason. I’m not this kind of person. Why did I do that?”
Mi-nyeo is lost in a daze and prays, “Mother Superior, the star in my heart has exploded into thousands of them. What do I do?” She stumbles into the building (after first geeting lost in the revolving doors) and sits down to rest: “It’s like fireworks are going off inside my heart. I’m dizzy.”
When Shin-woo calls, she vaguely recalls that she was supposed to meet him. She’s too stunned to be very coherent, and murmurs, “Where am I? I’m doing fireworks.” Shin-woo tells her to calm down; he’ll come to her.
Mi-nyeo wonders what prompted Tae-kyung’s kiss, and imagines a few possible answers. Was it out of anger? (But he’s never done this and he’s been angry before.) Was it out of flirtatiousness? (No, he’s not that kind of guy.)
Heyi arrives outside the agency, wondering at the best way to send Mi-nam back home. She considers telling Tae-kyung about the nunnery, but cautions herself to handle this with care. She spots him leaving the building, but he’s so lost in his own thoughts that he walks right by without acknowledging her. Thinking he’s ignoring her out of anger, she asks if he’s still upset with her.
Tae-kyung replies that he’s not angry, nor does he have anything to say to her. But it’s almost worse that he doesn’t care enough to be angry with her anymore. She asks, “Am I nothing to you? How could a woman like me be nothing to you? I’m pretty and popular. We were voted Korea’s best-suited couple — how could you not like me?” (What saves this speech from being aggravating is the honest-to-goodness confusion in Heyi’s voice as she asks it. She genuinely believes her own hype.)
Tae-kyung agrees that Heyi is pretty and popular, but she’s also fake, “so don’t confuse things.” She asks, “Then what will you do if Go Mi-nam confuses herself and says she likes you?” That makes Tae-kyung pause before answering: “That won’t happen, not when she’s foolish enough to cast away her pride. I’m sure.” He doesn’t sound quite convinced, but he’s recalling Mi-nyeo’s supposed feelings for Shin-woo.
Heyi spies Mi-nam exiting the building, and takes advantage of the moment to ask pointed questions that will get overheard while Tae-kyung remains ignorant of Mi-nyeo’s presence. Heyi warns Tae-kyung not to get “confused” regarding her: “Go Mi-nam is a man — don’t mistake her for a girl.” I’m pretty sure she knows that by pushing Tae-kyung’s buttons, she’ll get the desired answer out of him:
Tae-kyung: “I’m not someone who gets confused. Go Mi-nam isn’t a woman.”
Heyi: “Then when you bought her the hairclip and clothes and protected her, did that mean nothing?”
Tae-kyung: “Yeah, it had no meaning, I just did it. It meant nothing.”
He doesn’t see that Mi-nyeo has overheard and turned away in sadness. Heyi asks if he can be sure that those gestures also meant nothing to Mi-nam. Tae-kyung tries to convince himself, “It was nothing to her.” Then he stops, bothered. “How can it be nothing to her? Forget it, it was nothing to me too. If I let it make me feel bad, I lose.”
Shin-woo tries to get in touch with Mi-nyeo, but she doesn’t hear her phone ringing as she cries in a darkened studio. Now that Tae-kyung has said she means nothing, she’s mortified for hoping and feeling more.
Shin-woo worries that she’s sick and rushes back to the agency. Hearing her sobs, he comes upon her in the studio, but Mi-nyeo stops him before he can turn on the lights: “I want to stay in the dark. I feel so embarrassed, I want to hide in the darkness.”
Shin-woo may be patient, but he has his limits and raises his voice as he asks, “How long were you going to cry like this? After you were done, were you going to come to me? I see, you totally forgot me. Even so, I was waiting for you and came running and worried about you — I feel like an idiot!”
She apologizes for breaking the promise and for thinking only of herself. Shin-woo answers that he’s tired of always thinking of her: “Take a good look at how I feel in the light.” With that, he flicks on the lights to show her how upset he is — but in the light, he sees how miserable she is, and his anger starts to dissipate. Mi-nyeo repeatedly apologizes, and he says in a gentler tone that he’s sorry for getting angry.
Sit together after Mi-nyeo stops crying, Shin-woo admits that he was going to confess his feelings to “that woman,” and had prepared flowers, presents, and a song for her. He jokes that it’s Mi-nyeo’s fault it didn’t work out, but smiles and adds, “No, it’s not your fault. I don’t think she was ready for it yet.”
He doesn’t have gifts or flowers now, but he picks up his guitar. Under the guise of practicing, he asks Mi-nyeo to listen. The lyrics describe Shin-woo’s emotions of feeling like a fool (for caring despite always getting hurt and disappointed). Here’s the song as sung by Jung Yong-hwa — I’m sure there’ll be an official track released at some point, but this one is just an audio rip from the episode, so beware of the quality. [ Download ]
Although she doesn’t pick up on the meaning behind it, Mi-nyeo says it’s a good song: “You’re not embarrassed of your feelings, or sorry for them. You’re diligently liking her. If you’re a fool, you’re a cool one. Can a nobody be cool like that?” Shin-woo says consolingly, “Even if the other person doesn’t know it, no love is nothing.”
Tae-kyung has retreated to his own studio, where he tries to work out his feelings. Why did he kiss Mi-nyeo?
Tae-kyung: “Because I was angry. Why was I angry? Because like an idiot, Go Mi-nam was going to Shin-woo. Why did I stop that? Because I didn’t want her to get hurt. Why would I hate that? What is Go Mi-nam to me? Ugh, this is complicated and confusing. I’ll have to see Go Mi-nam in the bright light and think things over.”
When he walks out intending to find Mi-nyeo, he sees her leaving with Shin-woo, who has teasingly told her to buy him dinner. Watching the two together, Tae-kyung thinks, “Seeing her in the light makes me even more confused. What the heck is she to me?”
Tae-kyung is called to his own dinner meeting with Sung-chan and Hwa-ran. Sung-chan is surprised that Hwa-ran was able to persuade Tae-kyung to do the song, and hears she has worked out the copyright issue with the songwriter’s heir — which is a shock to Tae-kyung, who didn’t know the songwriter was dead. Hwa-ran explains that she’ll probably be able to locate one of the twins, and smiles as she wonders if the kids will remember her — they were such cute things who used to fight over the cookies she brought them.
(I spoke too soon when I wondered previously if Hwa-ran had lost her power to hurt Tae-kyung, because hearing her speak fondly of another man’s children hardens his expression. That can’t be pleasant, and Hwa-ran is so coldly honest that it doesn’t occur to her to watch her words.)
When Sung-chan steps aside, Tae-kyung bitterly tells his mother that she and her lover are the same — she’s a woman who would abandon her child for love, and he’s the man who would write a song for that woman. As though to dispel any misunderstanding that she was a usurper, Hwa-ran makes clear that the twins’ mother died after giving birth.
He sneers, “Is that why you played the mother to them, bringing them cookies?” She says, “Yes. Because I loved him so much, I could be like a mother to them.” (Ouch. The implication is that she didn’t love his father, and therefore Tae-kyung.) She adds, “If he didn’t die early, they would have been your siblings.”
(Hwa-ran doesn’t mean they’re blood-related, but that she would have raised them as her children, since she would have stayed with the songwriter.)
Tae-kyung notes sardonically, “For him to make a person like you think of being a mother, it was a frightening love.” Hwa-ran: “Yes. My love is great enough to be frightening.”
After dinner, Tae-kyung comes home in a funk, thinking that he could use Mi-nyeo to distract him from his darker thoughts.
Mi-nyeo worries how he is but is too timid to bother him. As she peers into the hallway at his room, he walks by, and the two freeze uncomfortably. Mi-nyeo ducks back into her room without saying something, and at her reaction, he feels a tiny bit of satisfaction, because “She must not feel nothing, then.”
Mi-nyeo vacillates between leaving Tae-kyung alone (not wanting to add to his burdens) and making some kind of overture. Finally, she decides it would be best to assure him that she’s completely fine in the wake of the kiss, and not feeling bothered about it.
She texts: “Hyungnim, I’m truly fine.” Belatedly, she realizes she has mistyped a character, and now the message connotes something else. (She meant to tell him she is okay about the kiss. Instead, her message suggests the kiss felt okay.) Oh no! She doesn’t want him to the get the wrong idea.
Mi-nyeo decides that she has to erase the text before he has a chance to read it, and sneaks into his bedroom. It’s empty, so he must be in the bathroom. With relief, she spies the phone on his bed, and grabs it just as he emerges from the bathroom. Mi-nyeo dives to the other side of the bed to hide.
Unfortunately, the phone is locked with a PIN number. In frustration, she tries a few combinations, but is unsuccessful. Tae-kyung turns off his music and calls out, “It’s 4820.”
Mi-nyeo enters the password before registering that Tae-kyung is aware of her presence. With dismay, she faces him as he indicates that he’s already read her text, and mocks her for it.
Tae-kyung asks if she’s really fine with everything, and when she answers yes, he deletes the message: “Everything today is deleted.”
He sees the redness on her forehead — she smacked it on the ground when she dove behind his bed — and gives her medicine to apply. However, his warning not to get it in her eyes comes too late, and she yelps in pain. He flushes out the ointment with water, then treats her eyes with some drops.
Mi-nyeo stumbles up to go back to her room, running into things because she can barely open her eyes. Tae-kyung grabs her hand, then leads her back upstairs.
She asks, eyes still closed, “Are you still very angry with me?” He answers, “How can you know whether I’m mad when you can’t see?” She reminds him that she’s a public nuisance who’s always angering him.
Tae-kyung tells her, “At first, you were. Now, you’re…” He trails off and Mi-nyeo again assures him that she’s fine with everything. He finishes, “In any case, I was smiling just now. I’m not angry with you.”
The next day, the guys have a photo shoot with Heyi, to make up for the aborted press conference. The air is distant between the A.N.JELL guys and Heyi, now that they know what kind of person she is. She watches them cheerfully interacting with Mi-nam and pouts, “I’m the one wearing the princess’s clothing, but she’s receiving the princess treatment.”
She tells herself that as long as Tae-kyung stays away from Mi-nam, she can put up with it. And she only has to wait a little longer, because Mi-nyeo will be heading back to the convent soon.
Heyi ropes the guys into helping her, wielding Mi-nam’s identity as a weapon to get them to do what she wants. They’re reluctant, but do as she wants. You’d think that forced attention isn’t very satisfying, but Heyi will take it where she can get it, and is pleased to monopolize the guys as long as Mi-nam is kept at a distance. It’s pretty pathetic, if you think about it.
The stylist points out how pretty Heyi looks, making Mi-nyeo feel inferior, since she’s always dressed as a boy.
The guys treat Heyi like a necessary evil, addressing her with thinly veiled distaste. Tae-kyung doesn’t bother hiding his low opinion of her, which prompts her to threaten, “You know that when I’m in a bad mood I talk a lot, right?” Jeremy and Shin-woo remind him to be careful.
I think Heyi hates his new attitude even more than the old one. In the past he was hostile, but now he’s dismissive, and indifference is worse. Therefore, she latches onto the first bit of leverage she stumbles across, when the stylist comments that Mi-nam must envy Heyi because she wants to look pretty to Shin-woo. Heyi’s startled — Mi-nam likes Shin-woo? (In the stylist’s defense, she assumed that Tae-kyung told his girlfriend and therefore isn’t spilling a secret.)
This gives Heyi newfound hope — and a new plan. She might be able to solve her problems by hooking up Mi-nam with Shin-woo, and asks the stylist to help her.
Heyi proposes that Mi-nam would enjoy a chance to look pretty in front of the boy she likes. Therefore, when sudden rain calls a halt to the shoot, the stylist takes Mi-nam aside and makes her up as a girl. She explains that she wanted to do something nice for her: “Just while it rains, you can be a pretty girl. When the rain ends, you can go back to being a guy.”
She convinces Mi-nyeo that it’s safe, since the rain is keeping the crew indoors and they’re in the greenhouse, which is a separate building.
Mi-nyeo enjoys the brief moment of feeling pretty, and the stylist snaps a picture so she can hold onto the memory even when she has to dress as a guy. The stylist steps out for a moment — and sends Shin-woo in on a false errand.
Seeing him, Mi-nyeo is flustered and her instinct is to hurry to change, but Shin-woo tells her not to: “If nobody saw you, what a waste it would have been. Mi-nam, you’re very pretty. Beautiful.”
He says she’s like a fairy-tale character: “When it rains, you’re a girl. When it stops, you return to being a guy.” He recalls hearing a similar story somewhere (he means RANMA!), then calls her the swan princess — a swan in the daytime, a princess at night.
At the same time, Heyi drags Tae-kyung along for a walk outside. (She sighs that it’s like a scene in a movie, and he agrees — a horror movie.) Spotting the greenhouse in the distance, she suggests they head there to get out of the rain, knowing who’s inside.
And so, Heyi and Tae-kyung walk in to see Shin-woo sitting with a girly Mi-nam. Heyi coos at how nice they look together, and insinuates that they’d make a good couple. She says, “You’re working hard to look good to Kang Shin-woo. It’s pretty. Doesn’t it suit her?”
Tae-kyung doesn’t betray an outward reaction but his glare is furious as he says harshly: “It doesn’t suit you. It’s laughable.” He whirls out, leaving his words to cut at Mi-nyeo’s own fears. When Heyi catches up to him, he says with contempt, “Get lost.” Heyi is startled at the intensity of his reaction: “Why is he so angry? I thought he’d mock her, seeing her like that.”
Mi-nyeo beats herself up, agreeing with Tae-kyung’s assessment: “He’s right that it doesn’t suit me. I did something really laughable. I told myself I wouldn’t be ashamed. I told myself I would be fine. But I’m more foolish than a fool.”
Shin-woo tells Mi-nyeo not to cry: “Don’t cry anymore because of Tae-kyung.” He confesses, “I’ve found out that the reason you’re crying is because of Tae-kyung. You like him.”
Shin-woo: “I didn’t want to make things difficult for you by getting involved. But I hated seeing you always crying.”
Mi-nyeo: “I thought I was doing well enduring it and hiding it. You figured it out?”
Shin-woo: “Yes. Because I’ve been looking at you.”
Mi-nyeo: “My feelings must be visible.”
Shin-woo: “Tae-kyung can’t see them clearly yet. Do you want to show him?”
Mi-nyeo: “No, I don’t want to shock him or make him feel bad. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of my feelings and make sure they are not seen. I’ll change my clothes and return to being a man.”
The snooping Reporter Kim wanders around the grounds, intent on uncovering the secret of A.N.JELL’s mystery woman, and sees Shin-woo walking off in the rain. He suspects some drama must have gone down in the direction of the greenhouse, where Heyi has returned to find Mi-nyeo berating herself for being foolish.
Heyi: “It was wrong for you to have come here from the start. You should have stayed at the convent and become a nun. When you’re done being Go Mi-nam, do you intend to go back to the convent? In my opinion, why don’t you go back to Rome to become a nun? Go back to that.”
Mi-nyeo: “Yoo Heyi, although I have given up that path, it’s not something to speak so lightly of.”
Heyi: “I said, go back home!”
Mi-nyeo: “Ms. Yoo Heyi.”
Heyi: “Do that and Hwang Tae-kyung! You want to stay with him so he’ll see you, don’t you? If he’s nice to you, you raise your hopes. You act like you don’t, but you want that, right? Do you want him to see you being so foolish? Do you want him to find out?”
Mi-nyeo: “I don’t want him to see me looking foolish. I won’t be found out.”
Just then, the reporter steps inside, interrupting the scene. Seeing the two women and knowing that Shin-woo has just been here, he smells a scoop. Mi-nam whirls around to keep her face averted.
Heyi mutters to her to run away, so Mi-nyeo knocks the reporter aside and runs out into the rain, while Heyi holds the reporter back.
The rest of the crew is still indoors to wait out the rain. Hoon-yi thinks Tae-kyung looks sick: “You look like you’ve been really hurt and are in pain.” Tae-kyung answers tersely that he’s not hurt — he’s mad and surprised. Hoon-yi guesses, “You saw something you didn’t like, which made you feel shocked, which made you angry, which made you feel hurt.”
Tae-kyung has to admit to himself, “I want to deny it, but he’s right. I was shocked to see her like that, and angry that someone else was with her, and that hurt. Since it hurt, I lost.”
Hoon-yi flips through photos and sees Mi-nam making the pig-nose and comments, “She’s still doing that.” This grab’s Tae-kyung attention, and he asks, “Mi-nam does that every day. What is that?” Hoon-yi explains that he told her that whenever she feels her emotions overtaking her in front of the person she likes, she should make the nose. He assumes that Shin-woo must have been in front of her in the photo.
The truth dawns on Tae-kyung as he asks, “Is that what that meant?” He rifles through the photos to confirm his hunch, and sees that the shot of Shin-woo doesn’t line up. Instead, the photo matches with one of himself, and he realizes, “She’s looking at me.”
Hoon-yi’s part idiot, so he doesn’t catch on and chides Tae-kyung for being mean to Mi-nyeo. He urges him to be nicer to Mi-nyeo, especially since she looks up to him. Why, she even treasures the hairclip he gave her, even though it was a cheap old thing that broke.
That strikes him as strange too, so Tae-kyung grabs her bag and fishes through it, until he finds the broken clip. “She found this again?”
You know a storyline has gotten good when you’re frustrated that it cuts away to Mi-ja and Hwa-ran, even though we do finally get some clear answers about the big birth secret.
Mi-ja asks why the singer is so keen on meeting the twins. She saw her scar — is she the twins’ mother? Hwa-ran laughs at that ridiculous idea, and answers that she owes the kids a debt, but she didn’t give birth to them. She’s searching for them “because it was my fault they lost their mother. She died because of me.”
(Note: This clears up that Mi-nyeo is not related to Tae-kyung, not that it was ever really a concern, right? Hwa-ran cares for the Go twins because she loved their father and feels indebted to their mother. Since her love died, the closest thing she has is his children, who are living ties to the person she lost years ago. Her own son represents bitterness and a loss of her great love, and since she has a small heart, she just couldn’t love him with the same openness.)
Mi-nyeo seeks out the comforting embrace of Mother Superior as she cries out her heartbreak.
Mi-nyeo: “He’s like a bright, shining star. When I receive that light, I feel brighter and also darker. When it’s bright I get my hopes up, and when it darkens I feel disappointment. I hate myself for this and feel ashamed.”
Mother Superior: “As you have come to know this love, you are quite beautiful.”
A bit later, Mi-nyeo sits outside, looking up at the night sky. She can’t stop crying, and says, “Because the tears keep coming, I cannot see the stars. If I continue to not see them, I won’t get my hopes up or feel disappointment. I wish I didn’t see them.”
A car screeches up and interrupts her thoughts. Mi-nyeo looks up at the source, squinting against the bright glare of the car’s headlights, which are directed at her.
It’s Tae-kyung, who gets out of the car and faces her, leaving the headlights on:
Tae-kyung: “Go Mi-nam. I see you very well right now. You can’t see me because it’s too bright, can you? When I couldn’t see you, were you always crying like that?”
Mi-nyeo: “I won’t cry anymore. Please pretend you didn’t see me.”
Tae-kyung: “How can I pretend not to when I can see you so well? Go Mi-nam, you were looking at me like that all this while, weren’t you? I couldn’t see you so I didn’t know.”
Mi-nyeo: “Please act as though you don’t know. I won’t look anymore.”
Tae-kyung: “Don’t stop looking. You can’t quit of your own accord. Keep looking at me! Like you are now, keep looking only at me!”
Mi-nyeo:”Hwang Tae-kyung…”
Tae-kyung: “Go Mi-nam, from now on, I’ll give you permission to like me.”
COMMENTS
I’m a little dissatisfied with that last line translation because that sounds condescending in a way he doesn’t mean. He’s being sincere and the tenor of the message is, “I know that you like me and from this point on, I’m okay with it.”
Maybe it’s the lack of spoilering, or maybe I’m just thrilled to have the truth (finally!) out in the open, but I loved the way this episode ended. Truth be told, I was feeling let down by the first half of the episode — it felt like stuff we’ve come to expect. It’s sort of standard to feel a little lag at this stage, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it, especially when I think the writers are good enough to keep things moving. The wacky appeal of the earlier episodes was because so much zany stuff flew at us unexpectedly, and that kept us on our toes: Mother Superior emerges from a gym locker, Jeremy’s imagination runs wild, Mi-nyeo believes making a pig-face will control her emotions, Tae-kyung throws away Heyi’s shoes, Tae-kyung gets lost and refuses to admit it…
Therefore, when Tae-kyung finally figured out that Mi-nyeo’s in love with him, it comes as a nice huge breath of fresh air. Finally, we can lay to rest one tiring plotline and get busy with the next phase.
Surprisingly, I liked Shin-woo better in this episode. Maybe it’s not surprising since the reason I liked him was that he was finally honest. He didn’t outright tell Mi-nyeo that he liked her, but he dropped a very big hint when he told her that he was always looking at her. (If she were a sharper person, she could pick up his meaning.)
It was interesting when he got angry at Mi-nyeo for standing him up at the restaurant, because (1) you could say that his anger made him look petty or small-hearted, because he was thinking of his own foiled romantic gesture more than her pain. But (2) I liked that flash of anger because it made him seem human, rather than that Robotic Second Lead With Perfect Responses To Every Crisis and Perpetual Understanding. I don’t care if Shin-woo shows a flaw or two — heck, Tae-kyung’s flawed up the wazoo but he’s insanely charismatic — so I welcomed his moment of bitterness. And then he saw how hurt Mi-nyeo was and his anger melted, so he’s not entirely selfish.
An example of plot tiredness is the Heyi and stylist connection. (I say “tiredness” because the plot itself is fine, it’s just that it’s been drawn out a wee bit too long so it’s worn out its welcome.) I don’t really mind Heyi’s continued bossiness in this episode because even though she’s still blackmailing everyone, at least the situation is different. It’s only for show now and everyone knows her true nature, whereas before she was manipulating people’s emotions. I’m okay with her character at this point because she’s so irrelevant to the relationships that she’s like an amusing pest. Also, Tae-kyung’s reaction to her has changed, because now he can’t even bothered to care about her. That brings out her inner vulnerability, and that’s actually something I find interesting. I want to see more of that Heyi — the girl who has been so surrounded by yes men that she draws her own self-worth from how people see her.
The stylist, on the other hand, greatly grated on my nerves because at this point she has turned from amusing minor character into Plot Device. She just keeps blabbing information to Heyi. I don’t care that she’s a blabbermouth so much as I wish Heyi were cleverer about finding out her secrets. She just keeps falling into information.
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November 12th, 2009 // by javabeans
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