Who doesn’t want to be loved? To be held, to be told one matters?
These two episodes touched on the fact that sometimes people just desperately want warmth and love from others. Honestly it was sad watching all our characters from that lens. This weeks episodes started out with Ko Moon Young returning to her hometown, returning to her old home, “the cursed castle”. She also very openly expressed her new found obsession, Kang Tae. I mean she was willing to return to her hometown and even to the nursing home her father lives in, just to be able to spend some time with Kang Tae.
We learned that she is much more unstable mentally than we initially thought. Her personality really is all over the place, and it’s hard to figure her out, one moment she is doing reckless things, like almost running Kang Tae over when he tried to stop her from running away with a patient, and then other moments she’s actually doing things to help others out.
On the other hand, the second lead female character, she confuses me and scares me even more than Ko Moon Young. Nam Joo Ri honestly feels more evil and reckless than Moon Young, it’s the little things she does. Her small forced smile, the anger she’s holding back, the way she appears a good person, but you never really actually see her doing anything good. The fact that she’s never really happy and envies Ko Moon Young. It just scares me to wonder about what she is capable of. She’s for sure waiting to unleash her true self, I don’t believe her act for a second.
We learned a little bit more about Ko Moon Young’s mother. I think she is the reason why Ko Moon Young might be the way she is. It appears that her mother might have hid her away for some time, and she definitely put negative thoughts into her head. The memories of her mother and the person she was still haunt her. We were shown a scene where she seems to remember her mother’s death, she’s standing outside of a basement room with a big door lock, and she holds the key, on the other side is her mother, dead. We aren’t really given many details more. My theory is that her mother used to lock her up there and perhaps one day, she locked her mother up instead and her mother committed suicide. She may feel guilty, thinking that she was the reason her mother died, perhaps that is also why her father calls her a monster and wanted to kill her, perhaps he blames her too.
One of the most touching scenes, was not even a real scene at all, it was Ko Moon Young’s dream. After dreaming about her wicked mother, telling her the story of Sleeping Beauty, and telling Ko Moon Young that she was cursed, and the only one that could break the curse was the prince, but that was IF her mother didn’t kill him first. She then see’s herself when she is younger, and she’s looking down at the water of some lake, a woman is in the water, and is asking her to save her. She just stands there, until she pops out of the water screaming: Save me! She “wakes up” in another dream, and she’s crying, finally revealing to us that she isn’t as tough as she leads on, she gets scared and frightened just like everyone. She then imagines Kang Tae, he’s sitting there by her side, he puts his hand on her shoulder. Surprised to see him there, she then sits up and he caresses her cheek. “Don’t cry” he tells her, and she leans into his touch and even smiles a little and then sheds a tear. It was so touching to me because her dreams reveal a lot about what she wishes would happen. How she’s probably been battling these nightmares alone, all the pain from her past, but now she even dreams that Kang Tae will be there by her side, to comfort her, to soothe her and love her. You wouldn’t even think Ko Moon Young in real life would ever even want anything of that sort, since she pretends to hate everyone and everything and only care about herself, she also leads on that she is completely okay, and healed, but she still has a lot of scars left to heal.
The patient from these episodes also demonstrates his yearning to be loved by his family. He is the son of an assembly man, who has been pushed aside by his family all his life, for not being smart, for not being like his siblings, for being slow, and having a mental illness. His mental illness makes him have manic episodes where he does reckless things, like get naked in front of people, spend tons of money, and run away. He admits later that all he wanted was attention. Thanks to Ko Moon Young “kidnapping” him, he is able to reveal to the world, and his family, how much hurt they have caused him and why he has been acting the way he has been. His mother finally for the first time, pays attention to him, though furious, she snaps at him and even slaps him, but he is happy. He is happy to be finally acknowledged by his mother, he has a realization and tells Kang Tae “My mom doesn’t hate me, she loves me like crazy”.
We also find out that Kang Tae didn’t get much love from his mother. He was always put into second place, his brother with autism always being the more important one to his mother. We are shown heart breaking scenes of him getting wet by the rain, as his mother only shares the umbrella with Sang Tae, and also only hugs him as they sleep. Leaving Kang Tae to wish for the love and warmth that his mother only demonstrates towards his older brother.
All of the themes of this week’s episodes are summarized in Moon Young’s book: Zombie Kid. A book that got banned from being released because of its grotesque nature and illustrations, however, the message is a special and unique one. The story of a boy who was born without any feelings, only the desire to eat, his mother, thinking she is protecting him, locks him away, and makes sure he is well fed by doing everything she can to provide him with all the livestock to eat. However an epidemic strikes and kills off all the animals and many of the people, so the surviving move away, the mom remains with her child and to satiate his hunger and not having any more animals to feed to him, gives her son her own legs and arms so that he won’t be hungry, all that is left of her is her torso. In her dying moments, her son embraces her and speaks for the first time and says: “Mom, you’re so warm”.
It’s heartbreaking how some parents waste themselves away, doing everything they can so that their children have everything, material wise, but they forget about the true needs of their kids, love and warmth and quality time. The poor boy in the book, yes his mother made sure he ate, but by locking him away, she deprived him of the one thing he needed which was her, his mother.
THIS DRAMA IS HEAVY. It’s dark and emotional, and not light at all. We still have so much left to learn about all the characters. I am interested in learning more about what exactly happened between Moon Young and Kang Tae in their childhood. What about you guys? Are you guys digging this drama, or are you put off by the dark topics and rather watch a more lighthearted drama for the summer? Let me know, I’m interested in hearing what everyone else is thinking about this new drama! As for me, I am ready for EP 5-6!
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