Warm and Cozy: Episode 10

by javabeans

Good news: Things get better! Not-as-good news: Better is a relative term. At least there’s more cuteness sprinkled into today’s episode, along with more decision-making, which keeps the frustration levels down, and our hero inches closer toward being able to express his feelings in a functional adult way. I suppose it’s a good sign that after living his whole life in a state of arrested development he’s starting to make strides, and feeling the sting of the consequences when you take things for granted, and those things decide they’ve had enough of that nonsense.

SONG OF THE DAY

Welldone Potato, Solji – “잘해주지 말걸 그랬어” (Shouldn’t have treated you well) [ Download ]

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EPISODE 10 RECAP

Town folk crowd into Warm & Cozy, giving Jung-joo the ol’ wink-and-nudge about her marrying the mayor. She tries to correct the misconception, but those ajummas are still keen on pushing the two together.

Poong-san marvels at the crowd and says it’s all because they think Jung-joo’s going to be the mayor’s wife, which makes Gun-woo snappish. Dude, you had your chance, buddy. You deserve to stew!

The sight of all that cash in the register makes Jung-joo happy, and Poong-san asks if she’s okay with the rumors. She figures she can’t do anything about them, while Poong-san plays the imp by telling her that Gun-woo doesn’t like it. Maaaaybe it’s because he dislikes being busy, or maybe it’s that he doesn’t want her being the mayor’s wife…

Jung-joo thinks back to Gun-woo’s emphatic declaration the other night, where he told her he was going to treat her even better now, and wonders what he meant by it. She goes to ask him that directly, and he replies honestly, “I don’t want you becoming the mayor’s wife. I have to treat you well for you to be my woman.” Wait… this is a fantasy, isn’t it? There’s no way real Gun-woo would be this mature.

Yuuuuup, Jung-joo snaps out of it and returns to earth. She marshals her nerves to ask the question, but she’s overcome with emotion and rushes at Gun-woo in a sudden back-hug. She asks if his words meant he was going to like her back, and he half-laughs, “Did you figure it out now? I’ll like you—don’t become the mayor’s wife.” She thrills at the words, beaming and hugging him tight, and promises not to marry the mayor…

…annnnnnd then she wakes up again, clutching a lamp instead of Gun-woo.
#$%^&*()*#@$%#

Gun-woo breaks the reverie and asks if she’s mindless with happiness over liking [him/it/unspecified object]. She gets defensive before he clarifies that he meant liking that they’re doing so much business. Then he realizes where her mind went and gets cheeky, saying it’ll take a while for her to recover from her “sickness” since she’s got it so bad.

Then Gun-woo reminds her of his “I’ll be good to you” speech, which makes Jung-joo perk up—until he says he secured three restaurant reservations. He promises to keep being good to her, and she slaps on a disappointed smile.

He gives her a box to carry outside, then stoops to tie her shoelace, patting himself on the back for being good to her again. She asks why he’s treating her well, and he replies, “If you trip, you’ll get hurt.” THAT’S NOT WHAT SHE MEANT AND YOU KNOW IT.

She looks him in the eye and asks for an honest answer: What’ll do if she keeps liking him? Gun-woo replies that it’s not bad having her like him, as it makes him feel nice to be worthy of her feelings, and that he ought to continue being a good person. And so, he doesn’t feel motivation to help her get over him.

Jung-joo balks at his reasoning and snaps that she’s going to stop liking him. We know it’ll never happen, but I applaud the effort.

Mayor Wook hears that a Jeju restaurant owner is planning to move to the States for a few years to help raise her granddaughter. She doesn’t want to sell her restaurant but can’t leave it empty either, so Wook offers to put her in contact with someone who could run it in her absence.

He heads over to Warm & Cozy with wildflowers picked from near that restaurant and suggests taking Jung-joo to see them in person. She’s hesitant at the implied meaning, and he says gruffly that he didn’t mean right this minute, but promises to pick more flowers for her, and more, and more—so that she’ll grow attached and want to go with him one day. Awww.

Jung-joo puts the flowers in a vase, telling herself when all her balloons are popped (for Gun-woo), she’ll be able to go see the flowers.

Gun-woo doesn’t need to be told where the flowers came from, and in a roundabout way mentions going to buy flowers of his own. He makes it a point to say that they’re for another woman, whom he’ll be seeing this weekend.

He means his mother, whose death anniversary is approaching. According to his siblings, Gun-woo has a tradition of visiting his mother on the eve of her memorial day, to avoid seeing their gossipy relatives who still wonder who his father is. You know, drama, you keep telling me I should care who that is, but I don’t. I really don’t.

Noona wonders how Jung-geun’s love life is going these days, since he didn’t bring anyone to that party. She offers to set him up with a gallery director, only to have him one-up her, saying that the woman he’s seeing is a chairwoman.

Meaning, of course, chairwoman of the divers association. Jung-geun heads over there with his determined face on, clutching the black pearl necklace Hae-shil refused. He misses hearing an older ajumma asking her for a ride home, so when he sees a diver sitting in Hae-shil’s bike, he slaps his helmet on her head and ushers her onto his motorcycle instead. Away they go.

Jung-geun pulls over at a scenic spot overlooking the sea, all proud of himself at how cool he’s being. He dangles that pearl pendant and tells her to take it, then lifts the helmet visor and realizes he got the wrong lady. He immediately apologizes and offers to take her home, only to have Ajumma offer to help him.

A short while later, Ajumma returns with Hae-shil, who reluctantly stays to hear him out. Jung-geun finally introduces himself properly and asks for a date, which is really all it takes (was that so hard?), and Hae-shil agrees with a smiling “Why not?”

Mr. Gong is busy setting up a date too, thinking Wook’s courtship needs a push. He enlists Gun-woo’s aid in tricking the two into a movie date, calling it a “secret seduction” (the name of Yoo Yeon-seok’s new movie, which opened last week), where each would bring one-half of the couple, then ditch them in the theater. Gun-woo flatly rejects, so Mr. Gong just asks Poong-san next, putting Gun-woo in a pissy mood.

Gun-woo glares at Wook’s flowers and makes a move to chuck them, though he gets caught by Jung-joo and pretends he was just checking on them. Bringing up his weekend plans, he offhandedly offers to buy her flowers too, though before he has a chance to explain what it’s for, Poong-san interrupts to ask Jung-joo to the movies this weekend. She lights up at the free tickets and agrees.

Ji-won (blerg) hears from a friend that Gun-woo’s interference the other day was to save her from humiliation, and feels bad for the hand injury he sustained in the process. Should I be glad you have a conscience? But what good is it if you ignore it all the time?

Jung-geun brings Hae-shil in for a makeover, though he adds that it’s not because she’s poor, but that he wants to see her looking more beautiful. He admits to riding the motorcycle to look cool for her, and asks if she doesn’t want to look pretty for him. Hae-shil teases that he fell for her wearing a diving suit—could he handle it? I’m thinking no, but he agrees to try.

She emerges looking lovely and sophisticated and asks what he thinks, and Jung-geun looks at her critically. She’s missing something, he says, and holds out that pearl necklace, which he places around her neck, saying that she looks with black pearls (hint hint). Next on the date course: a fancy dinner on a yacht.

The weekend rolls around, and Gun-woo readies to head out to visit his mother’s grave. He hangs back to ask about Jung-joo’s movie plans, then proposes a game of rock-scissors-paper, where if he wins, she’ll accompany him instead. He tells her in advance what hand he’ll play (meant to give your opponent the choice to voluntarily lose to you), only to have Jung-joo instinctively play the winning hand against his paper.

Miffed, he tells her to enjoy the movie and heads out, while Jung-joo reasons, “If you just said you wanted me to go with you, I’d go with you.” So easily said, and yet, apparently not so easily done.

Poong-san and Jung-joo go to the movie theater, where he excuses himself strategically as Mr. Gong does the same. He sends Wook in first, making an excuse about buying snacks…

but at the same time, Gun-woo arrives and takes the empty seat next to Jung-joo. He asks for a rematch of rock-scissors-paper, informing her that he intends to play paper again—and this time, Jung-joo purposely loses to him.

Brightening, Gun-woo takes her hand and leads her out of the theater, just as Wook arrives at his seat and sees them leaving. Awwww. He sits alone, looking glumly at all the couples surrounding him.

Gun-woo says his errand isn’t pressing and asks Jung-joo if there’s anything she’d like to do today first. She rattles off a list of restaurant tasks, but he suggests they not do any of those and offers his hand, which she takes. Instead, they enjoy the afternoon doing date-like things like window-shopping, eating street snacks, and taking photographs. And when she falls asleep at a cafe, he just watches her with a smile.

Hae-shil thinks back to the end of her date with Jung-geun, when she’d said it had felt like a dream, that she wasn’t quite herself. He’d replied that she’s Hae-shil either way, just as he’s the same guy as that Mr. Song who’d followed her to the diving school. How can he say such mature things and then act like a five-year-old throwing a tantrum? It’s a mystery.

When she tries to return the pearl necklace, Jung-geun says he’d like her to keep it, just as he’d like to keep having her. He tells her to return it if she means to reject him, or to go to see him wearing it if she doesn’t. So for now, she looks at the pearl in its box, mulling over the decision.

In a cafe, Jung-joo eats a shaved ice bingsoo, saying it’s just as pretty as a flower. He says this can count as the flowers he’d offered to buy her, and that leads to a bickering round where she says it’s not the same as real flowers, and he says she could have stayed with Real Flowers (Wook) at the theater rather than losing on purpose.

She digs into her bingsoo angrily and says the cold will make her come to her senses, and Gun-woo supposes that she wouldn’t go with him if that happened. She snaps at him to go alone, and so they end up splitting up—he to his mother’s grave, and Jung-joo to the movie theater.

She runs into Wook there, and he says he saw her leaving earlier with Gun-woo. Jung-joo explains leaving him to return here, though she sighs that she doesn’t know why she’d gone when he didn’t force her. But she’s smarting at his petty meanness, like laughing that she’d voluntarily lost at rock-scissors-paper.

Wook notes that they turned a simple game into a psychological battle, to which she says, blinking back tears, that it’s not even a fight because she’ll always lose to Gun-woo. It upsets her, but she can’t help it because those are her feelings.

Wook suggests running away to eat at a restaurant near the wildflower patch, because with him she’d at least be even in a draw. He points out that running away is one recognized strategem of war when you keep losing in a fight.

Jung-joo is about to go with him, but when she steps aside and runs into Poong-san, she learns that Gun-woo must have really hated the idea of seeing his mother’s grave alone. That changes her mind, and she tells Wook apologetically that Gun-woo’s just played the winning hand again, and she’ll be losing again—she can’t help losing to him, because she likes him that much.

Gun-woo, for what it’s worth, wasn’t making fun of her for fun’s sake; he just seems perpetually incapable of saying the honest thing and hides behind wordplay. So as he heads to see Mom, he sighs glumly that he should have gone with Jung-joo when he’d taken her hand earlier. He’s especially concerned that a certain someone will have come by again this year, and in a flashback we see that last year, Gun-woo had found someone else’s flowers and food offerings at Mom’s grave.

Ji-won drops by Warm & Cozy to see Gun-woo, but sees that the restaurant is closed for the day and visits noona next. That’s when she hears that Gun-woo has a childless businessman uncle who wants to lure Gun-woo into working for him, and perks up at the thought that Gun-woo will inherit that company. UGHHHHHH. Go find a fire, and die in it. It will be fueled by the hatred of your viewers and thus burn eternally.

At the cemetery, Jung-joo reminisces about once thinking they might be twins. They don’t know why her father was in that photograph with Gun-woo’s mother, and as both parents are dead, they suppose they may never know. Gun-woo asks if she ever located her mother, and Jung-joo shakes her head—until Mom comes looking for her, she doesn’t think she’ll be able to find her.

And wouldn’t you know, just then Poong-san fields a call asking after Jung-joo, asking if she runs that restaurant. The middle-aged woman asks for directions to Warm & Cozy, then looks down at a photograph labeled as Jung-joo’s dol birthday.

Gun-woo leads Jung-joo to his mother’s grave, and his face darkens to see the same offering as last year already there. He has a guess as to their source: “My father.” He’s never met the man, but he knows that his relationship to his mother didn’t end well.

The townspeople don’t like the nosy novelist couple poking their noses into the story of Hae-shil’s dead husband, but they ignore the warnings and persist in coming back, like a cockroach that won’t die, or herpes. The novelist wife asks Mr. Gong to confirm whether the man in a photograph is that husband, and his reaction seems to support that it is—and it’s that same photograph with Gun-woo’s mother. Does that make Hae-shil’s husband Jung-joo’s father? What fresh makjang is this?

Noona tries to set Jung-geun up with her well-to-do acquaintance, only to have him say he’s waiting on his chairwoman’s decision. Hae-shil arrives at the resort wearing the necklace and is asked to wait while Jung-geun wraps up a meeting. Noona mistakes her for the maid and gives her cleaning instructions (ouch) while inviting in the blind date, although she does tell the woman that her brother’s seeing somebody else. Both ladies wonder at what kind of impressive woman she must be, and Hae-shil’s heart sinks to see what kind of expectations he comes with.

She excuses herself to leave, and noona talks down to her like she’s the maid again—and then recognizes the pearl she’s wearing and actually accuses her of stealing it from her brother. It’s only when Hae-shil says she’s here to return it that the thought crosses noona’s mind that she might be the woman her brother’s seeing, though she’s aghast at the idea.

Hae-shil hands the necklace back to Jung-geun’s secretary, who delivers it to him apologetically. Jung-geun catches a glimpse of her leaving the resort from his window, heavy-hearted as she walks away. Hae-shil keeps her head up, though she can’t help from crying as she goes.

Gun-woo tells Jung-joo what it was like growing up not knowing who his father was, wondering if he resembled him. It’s why he played soccer when he heard Dad might be a soccer coach, and took up painting when he heard it might be an painter. Yet according to his mother, Dad was a really awful person—and he wonders if he’s like him.

Jung-joo hastens to say that no, he’s a good person, reminding him of how well he treated her. He says that her liking him makes him feel like he is a good person, though he recognizes that if he were one, he ought to let Jung-joo go and not encourage her to keep liking him. But he’s bad, he says, because he doesn’t want to do that—he wants her to keep liking him.

Hurt, she says, “You really are a bad jerk.” She gets up and leaves, and he heaves a sigh.

Noona vents to Ji-won about her older brother’s taste in women, and Ji-won urges her to worry about her little brother too—they can’t just leave Jung-joo dangling around him. United as one front of meddling evil, noona calls Gun-woo while Ji-won heads to the restaurant to confront Jung-joo.

She tells Jung-joo that she means to accept Gun-woo now (…that she knows he’s going to inherit), and that makes it silly for him to hang onto this restaurant for Jung-joo’s sake when really, he only ever started it to wait for Ji-won to return. Which she has. So Jung-joo should leave now.

To enable Gun-woo to cut her loose, noona gives him a check for double Jung-joo’s deposit, to pay her off and get rid of the restaurant. She instructs him to return to Seoul immediately, where he can figure out what to do next with his life.

Gun-woo hugs the envelope close and sighs in contentment, saying how exciting it is to see such big numbers again. Then he slaps the envelope on the table and thanks his sister for the thrill, no intention of actually keeping it. Aww. That’s sweet. Noona shouts after him to take the money, but Gun-woo’s more fixated on the flower vase nearby, plucking a rose to take with him.

Jung-joo’s mulling over Ji-won’s snide words when Mr. Gong arrives at the restaurant with a grandma in tow—Wook’s grandmother, in fact, who insisted on meeting the wife she saw on television. Wook arrives in time to intervene, apologizing for the inconvenience and wondering if more relatives are going to show up unannounced.

Then he notices that she’s alone again, and suggests going to pick more flowers. He urges her to try that running away tactic and offers to hold her hand if it’s difficult, and Jung-joo considers.

Gun-woo arrives just in time to see Wook waiting for Jung-joo, hiding the flower behind his back as he asks what they’re doing. Wook steps aside to let them talk, and he looks (unreasonably!) betrayed to hear that they’re going out to eat dinner. He even offers to make dinner for them here, but Jung-joo says they’re not only going to eat dinner (take that!) and also plan to look at the flowers.

Gun-woo tells her he’ll show her a really expensive flower right here, but she cuts in just as he starts to take out the flower, saying she’s done losing to him. She holds up a hand for another round of rock-scissors-paper, but he sees he’s lost and declines.

Jung-joo leaves decisively, though once she’s outside she can’t help looking backward, fighting with herself. Recalling Wook’s words about leaving with him to at least result in a draw, she tells him she’ll go, and gets in the car.

So Gun-woo sits in the empty restaurant all evening, waiting for her to return, having replaced Wook’s flowers with his own.

Jung-joo returns that night with a fresh armful of wildflowers, and stops short when she finds Gun-woo’s rose in that vase. She tells him to put his rose in his room and pulls it from the vase, replacing it with Wook’s wildflowers.

Undaunted, he asks where she’ll be putting the rose, only to have her reply that it’ll go in the trash can.

She tosses it in the sink, and Gun-woo exclaims that she has no idea how expensive it was—it was worth at least 100 million won. She thinks he’s just blowing steam and says she won’t lose to him anymore. He asks, “Will you be able to do that?”

Jung-joo retorts that because he kept treating her well and doing nice things, she started to lean on him and therefore lost to him. But now, she won’t depend on him for anything, and she won’t lose either.

“Try it if you can,” he challenges. And while she’s working that out, he swwops in and surprises her with a kiss. She stares wide-eyed for a few moments before her eyes flutter closed.

Gun-woo pulls back, asking, “You lost, didn’t you?”

 
COMMENTS

I have the nagging feeling I’m supposed to find that ending scene swoon and romantic—just a hunch! maybe?—but for the life of me, I just can’t see it through that happy-giddy-sweetness lens that I want to see it through. What does it say about this one-step-forward-one-step-sideways-and-around-the-block plot that I have no actual expectation that Gun-woo’s kiss is forward movement? That I’m gun-shy about him doing it, setting Jung-joo all awhirl, and then retreating behind a jokey facade? That’s nothing more than an emotional drive-by, and it’s sort of become his modus operandi at this point.

Yes, there’s still hope that the ending scene is meant to herald in positive developments, and that he’s being pushed toward declaring his feelings rather than hiding behind all the wordplay and doublespeak, which has been his crutch till this point. It drives me dingbatty, the way he says something actually meaning one thing, and then steps back and pretends he only meant the face-value interpretation. That the loaded meaning was just Jung-joo’s wishful thinking, thereby making her think she was imagining all sorts of things when he’s in total control over her interpretation the whole time!

So fine, let’s leave open the possibility that Gun-woo’s kiss is earnest, ignoring that unsettlingly smug smile at the end. But if I believed for a second that he was kissing her because he likes her or is overcome with love or because he plain just wants to kiss her, I’d be the first one jumping up and down with giddiness, making enough high-pitched noises to set a neighborhood of dogs off on a barking fit.

I don’t doubt that Gun-woo cares, and that much of what he’s doing for Jung-joo in the name of “treating you well” is sincere—if I didn’t believe that we’d have no drama. And I do think his fatal flaw is that he is so protective of his feelings that he just won’t put himself out there—he won’t be vulnerable, so instead he pretends everything’s lighter than it is. Trouble is, when you make everything shallow, everything you get back remains shallow.

Jung-joo’s his opposite, allowing herself to be open and sincere, and while this approach gets her hurt over and over, it makes her much more admirable. But you can’t have a relationship when only one side is willing to be serious, and as a result it feels like Gun-woo’s playing a childish word game while Jung-joo’s trying to have an adult conversation. And there’s no hope of communication then!

It’s interesting, then, this drama’s repeated use of the phrase “treating you well”/”being good to you,” which in Korean is used to mean being nice above and beyond a standard level of politeness. It doesn’t necessarily mean romantic interest, but it can certainly lead to crossed signals and confusion, as Jung-joo experiences. He’s acting in all sorts of pseudo-boyfriendy ways, but always retreats behind the “treating you well’ excuse to keep things safe and platonic.

It’s an unintended side effect that in English, the phrase sounds extra ironic because in “treating her well” he’s actually treating her badly. (It may be a little ironic in Korean too, but the phrase is common enough in Korean to describe this kind of attention that it doesn’t feel as contradictory.) It’s something that comes out in his comment to Jung-joo about wanting to be a good person but feeling he might be bad, because his selfishness to want to keep feeling like he’s good (because Jung-joo’s feelings make him feel worthy), it actually encourages him to be bad (in wanting to keep fanning her like for him).

It’s funny that Gun-woo’s selfishness is one of the things that endears him to me, because he seems more like a real person that way and not so much an unrealistic paragon of virtues. Those people are such bores! But… there’s a fine line between selfish and charming and selfishly infuriating—actually, scratch that. It’s not such a fine line. It’s a big, wide line and it shouldn’t be that hard for Gun-woo to stay on the good side of it, and I want the writing to bring him back around before I spew rage-marbles at Yoo Yeon-seok, the unwitting victim of aggravating character development. (Though to be fair, the fact that Yoo Yeon-seok is playing Gun-woo is probably the biggest reason I’m still attached to Gun-woo at all, because he plays him with a cuteness and innocence that mitigates the assy factor.) I want to root for you, Gun-woo! Help me help you! If you don’t, I’ll just have to pout into my popcorn and cry.

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