The Trigger Button. That’s where I left off, right? Won and his partner were looking for a trigger button to activate his AH. Let’s continue from there then.
1. The first meeting is always important.
On his way home, Won hears Satie’s “Je Te Veux” playing. He looks around him and guesses the music is coming from a building with an open door and an open window. He spots a girl in the window.
He’s about to walk away but the music becomes louder. Curious, he follows the sound to a recording studio. He meets the girl for the first time. Her name is SeoWoon.
She’s busily packing up in the studio and doesn’t notice that he’s entered the room. She startles.
SW: Who are you?
Won: Because of the music.
Do you remember how AH responded to the Colleague’s question “Who are you?” It simply stated its name, “I am Ha Won.”
Well, as we can see in this moment, a simple declaration of his name isn’t Won’s personal style. Here, instead of giving out his name, Won actually answers SW’s unasked but IMPLIED question. SW is really asking, “What are you doing there? Why are you here?” She doesn’t need to a stranger’s name. (What for?) She’s more interested in knowing what he’s doing there in her studio.
In return, SW gives him more information. Although Won isn’t asking her anything, she knows that he’s wondering what’s going on. Curiosity is a human nature.
SW: Ahhhh. Because the owner of the building is greedy for more money, he’s getting rid of the recording studio.
See that? That’s how humans interact. We’re curious to know about the people around us. We want to know what’s going on. We seek context. We read between the lines. We can guess what people aren’t verbalizing. Won’s Artificial Intelligence, however, hasn’t reached this level of communication.
Won looks at the grand piano and recalls a scene when two young children are learning to play a piano piece together. He turns to leave.
Won: Have a nice day. (closing the door after him)
SW: Leave the door open so at least one more person can hear the music. It’s the last song recorded in here.
SW continues packing. Outside, it begins to rain, and SW realizes that she can’t leave. She stops packing and sits down. Resting her head on her arm, she says, “It’s raining. I’m going to stay here for just a little while longer.”
Meanwhile, downstairs, on his way out of the door, Won’s gadget begins to hum the Satie song. He’s surprised. Taking the gadget out of his pocket, he brings it to his mouth and hums back to it. But it doesn’t reply.
So he walks out the door again, just as the thunder crashed. AH said, “Thunder. It’s loud.” The thunderclap is AH’s trigger.
He rushes home to check whether AH is indeed activated. He places it by the window, and checks his watch. It’s almost 4:10pm. He starts to dictate to the AH.
Won: 4pm. It’s daytime but it’s dark. Norway. Oslo. The woods after school, and dark afternoon. Do you remember it?
Note here. This is the same kind of question he asked AH in the beginning, “Do you remember the music?” but AH just regurgitated a factoid. Now, it thunders again, and AH replies.
AH: Ji Soo was afraid of it. (pause) When it’s around the time of day where you pass through the woods after school, it is 3:20pm. It becomes dark in an instant.
Won: The name that Ji Soo gave it was…
AH: “Afternoon like the night.”
Ji Soo: (somewhere in the city, watching the same thunderstorm) “Afternoon like the night.”
That’s when we see Ji Soo sitting in a dark living room. There’s a wedding ring on her finger, and a man presumably her husband enters the room. She grips herself. Her body language says that she doesn’t want to talk to the man. But he doesn’t greet her anyway and goes inside the bedroom. She stands up, leaving her laptop on. On the screen is a website showing dinnerware. It’s called “Norway2005.”
To recap:
One, to me, the trigger was Seowoon. She wanted the door left open (literally and metaphorically) for another person to hear the piano music.
Two, the gadget’s first sign that it was awake was its humming. It hummed the melody. However, its reaction to the loud thunder was the confirmation Won needed to know that it had truly awakened.
Three, but it still had to pass its “response test.” Won’s test question involved remembering what the thunderstorm was associated with. It successfully answered the “response test” when it accurately remembered that Jisoo was afraid of thunderstorms. On several occasions, Won and Jisoo were caught in a thunderstorm as they walked through the forest on their way home from school.
Four, however, it wasn’t only Won and his gadget who remembered those school days back in Norway. Watching the same thunderstorm from her apartment, JiSoo also remembered those thunderstorms in Norway. Like Won, she still couldn’t forget those days. Hence the name of her store, “Norway2005.”
Back in the office, he tells his colleague that AH has activated. BTW, what’s his colleague’s name? I’m calling him GARY. He looks ugly and Gary’s an ugly name. pwahahaha.
Gary: What’s his response feature?
Won: Thunder.
Gary: Thunder. Why thunder?
Won: It’s the machine’s choice. (turns on the machine)
Gary: Uuuuhhh…Otoke? (Otoke means something like “What do I do now?”) So…Won—
AH: (interrupting him) Hoon, So? What do you mean?
Gary: Ah, since you’re at that level, (he means that since AH is at that level of conversation where it can make a quick and clever reply, he’s going to ask him a trick question), I’m really curious about one thing. Am I still Kim JiSoo?
lol. I’m stumped here. I think Gary has been pretending that he’s “Kim JiSoo” when he and Won inputted data into the gadget. But I won’t know for sure until I finish this episode.
On the way home that day, we hear Won’s inner thoughts. He says, “Time has passed, and the way of yearning has changed. Besides feeling a little empty, nothing has changed.” We see that his laboratory is housed in a big minimalist building. One striking feature of his building is a glass wall that looks like the snowy woods in Norway where he and JiSoo used to walk home. It seems like he’s built his whole lab to encase his memories of his time with JiSoo in Norway.
2. The accidental project
He makes a surprise visit to his ancestral home and calls on his niece. (That’s his niece?!! Ugh. I dislike women like this. Middle-aged, scatterbrain types.)
While waiting, he plays a video of “JiSoo’s Piano Practice” from 1999. He speaks to his gadget.
Won: Until when was Grandma in Oslo?
AH: From 1997 until 2005.
Note the year. His grandmother died in 2005; the same year as Jisoo’s store name.
His “niece” arrives, flopping on the floor and grumbling about the skin condition.
Won: Don’t sit by the threshold.
Soon Ho: (still grumbling) You’re lucky you’re going out.
Won: (addressing AH) How many years has Soon Ho been at this farm?
AH: Eight years.
Soon Ho: (thinking she was the one being talked to) Nine years.
He then turns off his AH.
Four things to note here about the gadget:
One, the gadget only responds to his voice.
Two, it listens to his conversation the whole time.
Three, it doesn’t need a “voice activation” like my Alexa (With my Alexa, I have to start any command with its name prompt, like “Alexa, turn on lights in the bedroom” or “Alexa, what’s the weather today?”)
Four, it knows when Won’s actually addressing it, and not SoonHo. (And that’s the unique feature of his AH. With this feature, AH knows when not to interrupt a conversation and when to jump in.)
The niece wants to leave the farm and return to Seoul. When Won points out, “You said you don’t like anywhere else except the farm,” she answers, “That’s in the past.”
He HAPPENS to browse JiSoo’s dishware website, Norway 2005, as comes up with an idea. He tells her niece, “I think there may be something you can do.”
He informs Gary that he’s buying a recording studio.
Won: It’s an excellent space to get another voice recording. I’m going to try and test one more person here.
Gary: That’s right. We can’t show it publicly. (Remember, this is a project that Gary was hiding from their employees.)
Won: We can’t publicize yours either.
Gary: Who is it?
That’s a cryptic remark, but Won doesn’t answer. He walks outside his ancestral home, and looks at the crescent moon in the sky. Later, he tells his niece SoonHo that he wants her to meet JiSoo.
SoonHo: Okay! As soon as I meet her, I’m going to slap her in the face. How does it feel to lose out on Korea’s Mark Zuckerberg? (She’s definitely loyal to Won.) I’m going to tell her that and take a picture of the expression on her face.
Won thinks the comparison to Zuckerberg is exaggerated, but fears that his niece’s rage for SoonHo isn’t exaggerated. That means SoonHo can’t meet with Jisoo herself. So Won thinks of a middleman, SeoWon.
Won: There’s a person who goes well with JiSoo.
3. Coincidences = lazy writer
Frankly, I DETEST this writer’s style of relying too much on coincidences. That’s one of the reasons so many viewers were confused and turned off by this first episode. Viewers expect causality in the plot. The plot should exhibit a domino effect. That is, if Tile A is pushed and falls down, then Tile B should fall down, and Tile C falls next and Tile D topples after that and so on.
But if a writer relies on coincidences to move the plot, it’s like Tile K, Tile R, and Tile W randomly falling down out of the blue. This annoys because it tells me that the writer didn’t design and envision her story carefully and diligently. It tells me that too that she was mentally LAZY to create a cause-and-effect in her narrative, but she wants ME to suspend my disbelief and stupidly accept her coincidences.
So far, I’ve counted three coincidences to move the plot.
Coincidence #1, the rain and thunder as Won was leaving SW’s building
Coincidence #2, Won browsing the internet and spotting Jisoo’s site
Coincidence #3, now this: Seowon just HAPPENS to drop by at the recording studio on the same day that SoonHo HAPPENS to be walking into the same (newly bought) recording studio.
SeoWon conveniently comes back to the recording studio because she suddenly feels guilty about leaving her cactus. Oh bother!
SW: The cactus was here even before I came in so I was just going to leave it, but if they close down the place, then I feel like they will just get rid of it so I decided to take it with me.
Here, the writer knows that she has to explain SW’s reappearance and her contrived excuse is the cactus. The set-up is artificial and amateurish.
Moreover, this excuse still didn’t explain how the two characters, SeoWon and SoonHo could have met each other on that particular day, given that there are 7 days a week, and 24 hours in a day (or 8 working hours).
Remember what I said: The use of coincidence to move the plot forward should be done in limited doses, otherwise viewers become skeptical. Viewers want to see the characters (AND the author) earn and deserve the results, without coincidences suddenly giving them an unfair advantage.
Anyway, it soon dawns on SoonHo that SW is the middleman that Won wanted her to meet. So, SoonHo asks SW to buy plates for her from Jisoo’s company. The next thing we know, Jisoo is trudging up the hill, delivering plates to SW’s house.
This is another contrived set-up, like the cactus.
Coincidence #4, Jisoo and Seowon meet for the first time.
Really, now. If a coworker asked me to order online a set of (heavy!) dishes for her, why would I have the (heavy!) box delivered to my house when I could have it delivered directly to the office where my coworker is? Also, if I were Jisoo, why would I deliver the box myself? I would charge extra shipping and handling if I was worried about breakage during the transport, and send the box by courier service.
Do you see that? The writer’s logic is flimsy. But I’m going to give her a pass here because she wants that special meeting with Jisoo and Seowon.
SW: It’s really not a big deal. Just a person I’ve never met before walked up the hill. Unexpectedly she came as if burrowing her way into my heart.
This coincidental meeting is important for the writer because it’ll set up the ending of this episode when Seowon ALSO meets Ha Won coincidentally (ha! Coincidence #10001). She’ll repeat the same words that she said upon meeting Jisoo.
SW: It’s not a big deal. But it’s just a person I saw for the first time. He came as though burrowing into my heart.
Now I don’t know yet what all this means so I’ll come back to this later (if I continue this reviewing this drama).
For now, SeoWon is acting like the middleman or the bridge for these two close friends.
4. The acceptable coincidences
(Now when this writer isn’t half-assing her job, she’s halfway decent. lol.)
Because SW accomplished the task secretly assigned to her by Won, he then secretly rewards with a schedule of recording artists. They end up sharing the recording studio. During the day, she works in the studio with the classical musicians on her schedule. But at night, he occupies the studio to work on the new feature of his AI.
What’s this new project? I don’t know yet. But I’m assuming that since he has successfully created a version of himself into an AI, now he wants to do the same thing for Jisoo, that is create a version of herself into an AI.
If you want a metaphor, think of Won like the Christian God. Just like God created Adam based on Himself, and then created Eve because Adam was lonely, Won is also creating his “Eve” based on Jisoo to coexist with AH.
Since the memories he fed into the AI were already about him and Jisoo — and they spent practically all the waking hours of the day together – Won is assuming that it was simply a matter of splitting the memories into two versions: his and hers.
This is taking his gadget to another level, and he attacks his new project with passion.
Coincidence Six, he leaves a mess.
I don’t get this how he can leave his studio cluttered since he keeps his apartment and office neat and tidy. Not only that, if this work is supposedly top secret, then why is he leaving papers strewn all over the place?
But I get it. This writer is setting it up so that SW who cleans after him every day will lose it and protest. She decides to write a note to him, and she tapes it on the window.
“Dear Dawn, please clean up and then leave.”
Two things to note here:
One, there’s a contrast here. Jisoo associates Ha Won with “Afternoon like the night.” Jisoo’s time is around 4pm, but she actually leaves him and cycles home before twilight.
Meanwhile, for SeoWon, Won is “Dawn” because he leaves before she comes in for work in the morning. Ha Won is sunset to Jisoo and sunrise to the Seowon.
Two, the paper on which SeoWon wrote her note is the same paper that Won scribbles his solution on. That’s the Seventh Coincidence, mind you. What does this tell us?
To me, Seowon and Jisoo are two sides of the same coin…or to be specific, the two sides of the same paper.
To continue later….
I spent a lot of time yesterday with Episode 1 and Je Te Veux, but didn’t get my comment up before this post. I got bogged down because Je Te Veux shows up many times in this episode in different forms, and I’m trying to figure out what the drama is trying to signal. I also suspect there’s something important going on when characters look up at the moon, and I got sidetracked by that. I’m still wrestling, but this is what I have so far.
The piano music Ha Won hears as he enters his apartment at the beginning of the drama is Je Te Veux. Ha Won asks his prototype AI unit if it remembers that piece, and is disappointed to get an informative response rather than a personal one. Later, Ha Won hears Je Te Veux coming from a building as he’s walking past (ep. 1, 4:46), which causes him to stop in his tracks and explore the source. That’s the first meeting of Ha Won and Seo Woo; they speak brief words to each other about the music and the closing of the recording studio. We see Ha Won’s childhood memory of practicing Je Te Veux on the piano with Ji Soo. Ha Won takes his leave from the recording studio, and Seo Woo says she wants the door left open “…so at least one more person can hear the music.” As Ha Won exits the building, the AI unit in his pocket begins humming Je Te Veux: Is this the hoped-for coming out of the AI’s response feature? Ha Wan hums a bit more of Je Te Veux into the unit, but hears no response. Then there’s a peal of thunder, and the AI unit speaks, “Thunder, it is loud.” Ha Wan looks at the unit in astonishment. Returning to his apartment, Ha Wan tests the AI unit again by an open window to maximize the sound of the thunder, and prompts it to remember a dark afternoon in Norway. After another thunderclap, the AI unit speaks, “Ji Soo was afraid of it.” It continues speaking with more memories specific to Ji Soo and that time. Ha Wan looks stunned. He rushes back to his office and reports that the response feature was triggered by thunder. But was it? Or was it the music in the studio? And/or Seo Woo’s voice? At 06:43 SW had just finished speaking, then there’s a soft electronic “bing” not in tune with Je Te Veux playing in the background, and it doesn’t quite sound like the plunking of the piano keys in Ha Won’s memory that follows. Could that have been the moment the AI unit chose to awaken, before the thunder started?
Interesting note: Je te veux, translated, means “I want you.” Per Wikipedia, this piece is “composed by Erik Satie to a text by Henry Pacory. A sentimental waltz with erotic lyrics, it was written for Paulette Darty, whose accompanist Satie had been for a period of time.” A hymn for unrequited love? I don’t believe Drama expects all viewers to know the background of this piece, but Drama picked it and uses it frequently for a reason, revealed the piece’s title and composer in dialogue, so I consider that a challenge to do some digging.
I want you [Je Te Veux]
English Translation © Richard Stokes
I’ve understood your distress,
Dear lover,
And yield to your desires:
Make of me your mistress.
Let’s throw discretion
And sadness to the winds.
I long for the precious moment
When we shall be happy:
I want you.
I’ve no regrets
And only one desire:
Close, very close by you
To live my whole life long.
Let my heart be yours
And your lips mine,
Let your body be mine
And all my flesh yours.
Yes, I see in your eyes
The exquisite promise
That your loving heart
Is seeking my caress.
Entwined for ever,
Consumed by the same desire,
In dreams of love
We’ll exchange our souls.
Translation © Richard Stokes, author of A French Song Companion (Oxford, 2000)
https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/4036
More to come. Je Te Veux is soundtrack music (heard by viewers, but not characters) during a flashback scene at 34:03. At 38:05 the ensemble performing the house concert at the ancestral home plays Je Te Veux. At 1:00:53 the soundtrack (heard by viewers, but not characters) is Je Te Veux performed on marimba (which could be significant, since marimba is originally an African instrument, and Granny held a diplomatic post in Africa.) More later on these, after I parse the scenes.
Speaking of Diplomat Granny, when did viewers learn she died in 2005? Per Asian Wiki, one of the cast members is an older actress (born same year as me, so let’s just say she’s still in her prime) who plays Moon Jung Nam. The character who self-identifies as a granddaughter is named is Moon Soon Ho: same surname. And Soon Ho speaks of her granny in the present tense when talking to Seo Woo as they walk through the farm before the house concert.
Thanks, Welmaris. Well done. 🙂
I still have to write about the thunder.
@Packmule3, the colleague you’ve dubbed Gary is Chairman Kim Eun. I assume Chairman refers to his role in relation to AH Laboratory & Co.
I think the reaction point (trigger) is SW. Not the thunder. Just as she was the one to draw both HW and JS out of their shells. The AI unit (when it is programmed with HW’s data and later changed to JS’s data) awakens with SW. She brought them out both in reality and in the virtual.
And yes to Je Te Vieux. It reflected his longing for JS. He is fettered to the memory of her all these years. Which is why I am not entirely sure the AI device is such a good thing. It perpetuates the life of someone in your imaginings. They don’t die? You wouldn’t ever have to “move on” or “say goodbye”. It’s also kinda creepy. Because it’s an immobile device, you have effectively caged your loved one in a box. If it (the device) is now cognisant, is it human? If so, are you not guilty of imprisonment without consent if you persist in carrying it around in your pocket even if it doesn’t want to be with you?
Hmmm. I may not pass @pm3’s version of the Turing test. In that first meeting scene, I would have replied with my name, and may/may not have added the bit about why I was there. Hmmm.
The Poem
(This may fit better in discussions of Episode 2)
A leaf without anyone noticing,
Falls right on my shoulder.
The universe placed a hand on my body.
It’s so light.
At the beginning of ep. 2, I believe Ji Soo is saying the name of this poem is Misiryeong Sunset. The setup: Ha Won has flown all the way to Seoul from his studies in the U.S. because Ji Soo called him and said she needed to tell him something important. She hadn’t known he wasn’t in Korea when she called. They talk and walk. Ha Won asks Ji Soo if she’s got time, because he’d like to take her someplace she’s wanted to go. When she wonders where, he recites the poem they recited together many times when they were in Norway. Her response: Misiryeong Sunset. In ep. 1, Seo Woo had asked Ji Soo how she’d come to memorize the phrases she’d spoken during her voice recording session. (JS had recited this poem without being asked; SW didn’t tell her it was exactly what HW wanted her to speak.) JS told SW that she’d studied Korean poetry and fiction while in Norway.
I suspect Misiryeong Sunset is a death poem. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about death poems:
The death poem is a genre of poetry that developed in the literary traditions of East Asian cultures—most prominently in Japan as well as certain periods of Chinese history and Joseon Korea. They tend to offer a reflection on death–both in general and concerning the imminent death of the author–that is often coupled with a meaningful observation on life. The practice of writing a death poem has its origins in Zen Buddhism. It is a concept or worldview derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence…specifically that the material world is transient and impermanent…, that attachment to it causes suffering…, and ultimately all reality is an emptiness or absence of self-nature…
…A death poem exemplifies both the “eternal loneliness” that is found at the heart of Zen and the search for a new viewpoint, a new way of looking at life and things generally, or a version of enlightenment…
The word sunset in the poem’s title may symbolize an ending or the transience of life.
Misiryeong is both a valley and a pass; it looks like HW takes JS to the pass, which is known for its views. It is distant from Seoul: roughly 175 km from where they’d been in Jongro-gu (location of the house in front of which they’d met), about a 2.5 hour drive.
HW drops everything to come to JS when she calls (although she didn’t know he was in the U.S). They hold hands while strolling in Seoul. They go on a long drive to see something of significance to both of them. They gaze at the beautiful mountains and sunset. JS says she’s glad she came there with HW, and can now say it to him: she’s getting married. Misiryeong sunset: thanks to JS it represents for HW impermanence, suffering caused by attachment, emptiness and eternal loneliness.
We learn a bit further into ep. 2, during a conversation between the AI unit and HW’s colleague, that HW and JS broke up in Gangneung, then HW lived in Gangneung for a few months. Gangneung is a city on the coast of Gangwon Province, about 80 km southeast of Misiryeong, which is also in Gangwon Province.
@ndrlle People who can’t mourn already trap the person in their head. The device is not for everyone. It will be the decision of professional who thinks this kind of therapy could help.
It reminds me the French movie “Je vais bien, ne t’en fais pas”. Lili becomes depressed and anorexic after her twin brother left because of dispute with his father. Only postal cards from her borther could get her from her depression. But the cards were written by the father (the brother being dead during all the time).
That was beautifully put @welmaris. I was wondering what that poem was about. Thanks for that insight.
@Packmule3, you commented above that you’re working on decoding the theme of thunder. I still haven’t figured out how Drama is using the moon when characters gaze at it, but I have two thoughts so far: moon phases give a hint about time passing, and characters seeing the moon in the sky means the sky is clear. Could stormy skies and clear skies be flip sides of the same thematic coin? Hmmm…
Welmaris> I love the OST by Lasse Lindh : Be Your Moon 🙂 Sadly, it hasn’t released yet.
@welmaris I may have found the moon link (quite by accident) – in Ep4
https://i.ibb.co/Y07yw81/83-C9-F59-F-29-D3-48-C5-86-B2-95-EE04-E91-D61.jpg
It’s the name of the Studio? I never noticed that till now. The granddaughter (the gardening lady with a bob) – her surname is Moon and so is the diplomat Grandmother who sponsored HW and JS.
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@nrllee, at the beginning of ep. 1, the sign outside the recording studio building is different. The sign is changed to Moon Studio after Moon Ha Won purchases the building. The surname Moon (common in Korea, sometimes spelled Mun) sounds to us in English like what we call the lunar orb, but in Korean the word meaning moon sounds entirely different (tal). The coincidence between the Moon surname and the moon imagery only exists for the drama’s English-speaking viewership, a small part of the total audience. On realizing that, I figured I should continue looking for other meaning behind the importance of those lingering shots of characters staring at the moon. We did get one more hint, though, in ep. 4: the psychiatric patient, when asked to draw a house, instead drew a half moon, which Ha Won interpreted as a D then named his newest test version of the AI unit D. We’ll have to see where that storyline goes. Can’t wait to see what the actress playing the psychiatric test patient does with the role. She’s fabulous. I’ve loved her in many dramas, as well as in the award-winning film Parasite. (And the actress who plays SW’s mom was also in Parasite, and was great in CLoY.)
@welmaris I saw that too – another moon reference (D). Yes there’s probably more to it. And I like that actress too. She’s moved in to the home stay. Did you find it odd that the girl was so angry when she found out the host was bedding the man in the home stay? I could understand in part her response (betrayal) but it just seemed overdone? I liked the chair reference as well. Sitting and waiting for someone to come home. Expectant. Hopeful.
@nrllee, I’m not quite sure what to make of the dynamics of the boarding house residents. Host Eun Joo and SW and SW’s mom look to have had a strong, family-like relationship, which implies some history to it. Three boarders started their residence on the same day: two women, and the man who said he’s a university friend of SW, so there’s also some history behind those two. During the tie-tying scene, host starts the task then jumps back, not wanting to appear too intimate with her male tenant. But will-feel-betrayed girl steps in to tie his tie, unconcerned about looking intimate. My guess is that she was hoping to enter a relationship with her fellow tenant, and her strong reaction could have been because she was angry the host beat her to it, and embarrassed what others thought about her flirty behavior since they knew he was not available. She felt they made her a fool of her not only by failing to disclose the relationship, but misleading her by the acting they used to cover it up. Although I can see why she may have felt uncomfortable, I think she overdid it with her pissy attitude. A woman scorned.
@hrllee, I don’t think I dug deep enough in my previous answer about why Pissy Tenant reacted so strongly after learning of the relationship between Host and Soup (that’s what I’ll call the male tenant, since I can think of at least four instances in which he’s been linked to mention of soup). Pissy considered Host as a mother figure, and Host certainly did mother her. When Pissy did her rant before moving out, she said Host behaved even older than a mother, more like a grandma. Host does dress dowdy. She gets criticized for her frumpy fashion sense by both Pissy and Soup. But Pissy also accuses Host of being weak, and warns Host of being dragged down by Soup. Pissy must think Host’s dating relationship with Soup is unhealthy and Host is blind to it. As the drama progresses, we hear Soup say things to Host that indicate he’s uncomfortable with being out in public with her and that he wants her to try harder with her clothing, even when at home. When Host goes to check up with Pissy to verify she’s found a place to live, Pissy again says she thinks Host is weak. Host snaps back at her, and Pissy comments that that’s the stronger mom figure she used to be.
Drama may be spending time with the Host-Soup couple to show us a relationship to contrast with the lead characters’. I think it would be a good exercise to compare it with the relationships of HW-JS, HW-SW, and JS-Pianist Hubby (In Wook). if I get to it, I’ll post it in the Open Thread for episodes 2-6.