Thanks, @Table2000 for recommending this kdrama. I’m pressured now to finish this because you and my good friend @phikyl recommended it to me.

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I expected this kdrama to be nothing more than a fluffy teen romance with a little bit of social commentary on plastic surgery grafted on the plot. But it’s turning out to be more thoughtful and less superficial than I envisaged. I guess, I should have known better than to judge a book by its cover kdrama by its young cast members.

Episode Title: You Don’t Even Know

Just like in the previous episode, the title introduced the theme of the show.

To me, all the characters in this episode were walking in a mist of oblivion, half-truths, clueless-ness, and ignorance. They thought they had a clear understanding of themselves, other people and their circumstances when, in reality, no one knew the real deal beneath the “appearances.”

MiRae’s mother was wise to point this out to her, “Living is hard for everyone. It may look like everyone’s fine but they’re all enduring their hardships.”

Naturally, the first one to demonstrate her clueless-ness was MiRae because she was lead. Up until the Creepy Senior taunted her about being a Gangnam Beauty, she naively believed that her plastic surgery looked inconspicuous. In a strange way, the Creepy Senior did her a service.  If not for his cruel words, she wouldn’t have known that her plastic surgery was noticeable but people around her pretended not to notice it. It’s a metaphorical elephant in the room. The Creepy Senior dumped the truth on MiRae with the intention to hurt and shame her. But the kindness of strangers and her friends who avoided discussing the matter was also unintentionally hurtful and shameful. They wanted to spare her feelings but, in the process, they made her look more pitiful and pathetic. Why? She was the last one to know. 

Take for instance the guy in the restaurant who mistook her for an acquaintance of his.  He stammered an apology, “You look like someone else I know.” I’m sure this apology was sincere, but it could be misinterpreted as insulting. You see, the insinuation here was she looked familiar, NOT because she was a doppelgänger of his friend, but because her appearance was so common among women who had plastic surgery that their faces were interchangeable. Her beauty was a dime-a-dozen. Thus, the guy’s honest faux pas confirmed what the Creepy Senior bluntly told her earlier, “Gangnam is infested with girls” like her.

As to be expected, this realization unsettled her. She didn’t even know — just as the title of this episode conveyed.

Her ignorance was twofold. On one level, she was in a bubble of self-delusion. She didn’t know that others noticed her plastic surgery while she thought she was keeping them in the dark about it. It must be humiliating to be the last one in on a “general knowledge” that especially concerns her.

On another deeper level, she lacked self-concept. She didn’t know who she was and how to regard herself. She admitted as much, “I’m neither pretty nor ugly. Nor am I average. I don’t know what I am either. I don’t know what I should adapt to.” Her confusion underscored her limited understanding of her value as a person. It showed the viewers that from the start, she made her physical appearance (instead of her accomplishments, her kindness, and her relationships) the central part of her identity.

The next person to demonstrate clueless-ness was the pretty girl Soo-Ah.

All the girls at the previous night’s dinner party were skeptical that she had no inkling that MiRae had undergone plastic surgery.

The Senior girl wondered aloud, “Mirae definitely had her eyes and nose done. Is Soo-Ah that slow?” and Soo-Ah’s friend chided her, “Hey, but why are you so slow? ‘MiRae didn’t get anything fixed either’ (she mimics Soo-Ah’s voice). It’s so obvious that she did!”

But Soo-Ah maintained her ignorance. Even to KyungSeok, she insisted that she had no idea of MiRae’s plastic surgery. She blamed herself for being thoughtless and guileless. For a second, I thought KyungSeok would be duped by her innocent look so I cheered when he reasoned out that, “If you didn’t know that she had plastic surgery, then why did you ask her if she had it?”  That left Soo-Ah speechless.

What he meant here was if she suspected nothing, then she couldn’t possibly bring it up. Pretty much like how a blind person wouldn’t be able to recognize something, much less describe it in detail, if he hadn’t seen it.

Thus, she exposed herself as a fake. KyungSeok’s words to her as he walked away from her were, “You don’t look thoughtless.”

In comparison with Mi-Rae then, Soo-Ah’s ignorance was twofold as well. One, she didn’t know that her feigned ignorance didn’t fool anybody, especially her object of infatuation, KyungSeok.

And two, she didn’t know that looks could really be deceiving. You see, she thought that chic KyungSeok would be the right match for her because they were both “naturally” pretty people. But KyungSeok was more than a handsome face. He was also smart enough to spot real people with real empathy from fake people  — probably because of his exposure to his politician dad.

Now, aside from MiRae and Soo-Ah, there were other people living “clueless-ly. ”

There was KyungSeok’s mom who arrived from the US and was unaware that her husband was keeping tabs on her.

There was also MiRae’s mom. She told her daughter that everybody had their own problems to deal with. She was glad of MiRae’s new life after the plastic surgery, and she was glad to imagine that her daughter was having the time of her life in college. She really didn’t know that her daughter just exchanged her old social problems with a set of new ones because of her “new face.”

Then, there were the numerous admirers of Soo-Ah. They were clueless, too. They didn’t know that she was living a double life. She pretended to reside in a wealthy area when she actually went home alone to a rough neighborhood.

To be honest, I find Soo-Ah’s life more pathetic than MiRae’s. MiRae might have been born ugly but she was surrounded by parents and her best friend who loved her unconditionally. Meanwhile, Soo-Ah was popular because of her beauty.  But people wrongly assumed that with her beauty came a wealthy background and a happy family, too. She must have this all-around package of success. This image was something she had to maintain. She didn’t have the “safety net” of a loving family and supportive friends.

Lastly, there was KyungSeok. Having been born with a handsome face, he didn’t know the liabilities of having an ugly face. It’s just like the analogy of a blind man I said earlier. How could KyungSeok know how it was to felt ugly, if he’d never been ugly?

MiRae told him bluntly, “People like you who look cool no matter what, couldn’t understand how I lived.” He genuinely was surprised that MiRae described her face as needing plastic surgery. He asked her what she meant by “needing” a plastic surgery. When he discovered that MiRae graded faces and ranked them according to beauty, he was appalled. In revulsion, he asked, “Are you ranking other people’s faces? Maybe you should have fixed your pathetic mindset instead.”

Then, walking away from him, MiRae fumed, “That son of a bitch. What does he know? He doesn’t know anything.”

To me, this is my takeaway from this episode: having a cosmetic surgery is not the only way to create “false appearances.”  Sure, MiRae literally created a fake face. But while Soo-Ah didn’t undergo the knife, she too deceived people by putting on a false image of a good friend.  Then, there was also KyungSeok who appeared like he was a non-judgmental guy but shamed MiRae for grading her friends’ appearance. To me, he gave the false impression that he didn’t care about people’s opinions of him when he was in fact a very sensitive and vulnerable young man. That was why he blew up with MiRae; he expected more from her because he liked her. You see, if he was really that indifferent, then he wouldn’t be personally upset by MiRae’s behavior. He could ignore her like he did with everyone.

I also liked the way the writers handled this episode. They didn’t suggest any mind-blowing remedy for everybody’s problems. Instead, the second half of this episode focused on apologies. Everybody apologized for an injury they inflicted on somebody.

MiRae apologized to her friends whose faces she secretly graded and judged as average. Soo-Ah apologized to MiRae and explained that she rejected Creepy Senior which probably caused him to take out his frustration on MiRae. Lastly, MiRae and KyungSeok apologized to each other for their cruel remarks.

To me, that’s a right start. Start with a sincere, “I’m sorry.” Since it’s early times yet in this kdrama, and the characters had a lot of things to know about themselves and others, a tacit acceptance that they’re only human and fallible is one step to self-awareness.