Let me write about the last scene before I move forward.

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Seowoo’s phone rings. It’s Jisoo calling.

SW: Is it really Dawn? Is Ha Won Dawn? (all she hears is JS breathing) Hello? Jisoo?
JS: SeoWoo! Did my call go through? I’m so scared
SW: What happened?
JS: There’s so much snow here. If I just go a bit more, there’s a village I used to live in.

She looks up and sees a hole in the roof.

SW: Can’t you go out to the big roads?
JS: I can’t walk anywhere at this point. When the snow stops, it’ll get better. (hears music) Are you listening to music. It sounds nice.

SW increases the volume and JS looks up at the hole in the roof again.

JS: (continuing) I’m scared but it’s wonderful. I used to always hand out with Won.
SW: You called 911, right? They have a rescue team there, right?
JS: They said they’re on their way.
SW: Then hang up and save your phone battery.
JS: (nodding her head although nobody could see her) Yes, that’s good thinking. (outside, snow falls from the branches)

She recites the alphabet. “Je Te Veux” plays again. And she looks up through the hole in the roof to see the snow-laden branch of the spruce tree. She recites the verse, “A leaf without anybody noticing, falls right on my shoulder….”

Now, the reason she keeps staring through the hole at the tree outside is because this reminded her of that time when she consoled Ha Won. She’d told him, “Stop looking out the window. Look at the ceiling. Your heart and mind will feel at ease.”

On the ceiling of that house was the shadow of branches.

Just like when she tried to comfort Ha Won, she’s now calming and soothing herself by gazing at the branches through the hole.

Of course, we can all appreciate the dramatic irony here. A big heavy branch falls on her and kills her as well as the whole universe that Ha Won has built around her.

But I’m also reminded of a philosophical question here. If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Scientifically speaking, yes, the tree made a sound. Just because NOBODY is present to hear the crash, DOESN’T MEAN that the tree toppled onto other trees, ripped off branches along the way, and landed on the forest ground WITHOUT a sound. The sound is just vibration rippling through matter.

But philosophically speaking, an argument can be made that the tree generates no sound at all. You see, the act of hearing is a personal experience. You can’t hear sounds for a deaf man, for instance. Even if a tornado sweeps through the forest, the fallen trees will not have made a faint noise for him.

Now, how does it relate to this drama then?

Suffering.

You look at the sufferings of the main characters in this drama and think, “If a person suffers in this world, and there’s nobody to hear – or even see – it, does she suffer?”

Take the case of Jisoo.

JiSoo suffers alone in the forest but SeoWoo hears her. SeoWoo’s listening in on her phone so she hears everything. SW knows what Jisoo’s frightened, and she suffers with her.

But for HaWon, JiSoo isn’t suffering.

He’s been waiting at the coffee shop for countless hours (days?). He’s finally accepted that JiSoo stood him up and wouldn’t be meeting him. He looks up at the moonless sky.

Then, like Jisoo, at that very moment, he’s looking at the branches. They aren’t the shadows of branches on the ceiling, but the branches of a real tree. Then, he decides once and for all, “Yes, Jisoo. Now, I’ll stop waiting.”

Do you see that? While JiSoo’s terrified somewhere in Norway, he decides to quit waiting for her. As far as he’s concerned, the suffering is one-way. He’s the only one suffering; JiSoo isn’t.

And that’s all because he doesn’t hear – or see – her suffering.

Two things about the cinematography in this episode.

One, I like the transition here.

He’s vowing to himself, “I’ll stop waiting” and his eyes are glistening with tears. Obviously, his eyes are the central point here. In his mind – or what we poetically call, the mind’s eye – he’s already imagining himself ending his one-sided love affair with Jisoo.

Then, the camera transitions or switches over to Jisoo inside the hut.

In contrast to Ha Won’s eyes, her eyes are glazing over; they’re dull. They’re losing focus. There’s this foreboding sense that Ha Won’s one-sided love affair with her is indeed about to end — as he declared — because she’s going to die soon.

Moreover, if you take a second look at this shot, you’ll see that Jisoo is captured like she’s inside an eye, that, is, the hole in the roof looks like a narrow slit of an eye. And Jisoo’s framed in the middle of this slit, like a pupil of an eye.

credit: Daniil Kuzelev

So visually, this shot recreates the image of a “mind’s eye.” If HaWon could only see with his mind’s eyes what Jisoo was going through at that very moment, he would have been in anguish, too.

Two, I liked the contrast: he was quietly standing here

while nearby, SeoWoo was bending over in shock and grief.

I like the melodrama of it. 🙂

It should have been HaWon howling in pain but instead it was Seowoo who took the brunt of the pain for him. And Seowoo only knew Jisoo for the length of what? two months? three months? But here she was, crying like her world just broke apart while HaWon stood there.

“If a person suffers in this world, and there’s nobody to hear it, does he suffer?”

Perhaps the clearest example is JiSoo’s pianist-husband, In-wook.

In the upcoming episode, we’ll find out that the people around him don’t know that he’s emotionally suffering. He goes to Norway to attend to Jisoo’s burial, but doesn’t tell his colleagues anything. He keeps his grief to himself. All the recording manager and the other artists notice is that he’s in a slump. And so he suffers in silence, and by himself.

Is his suffering any less real than Ha Won’s because nobody hears or sees of it?

🙂 It shouldn’t be, right?

However, I’m going to be honest (and brutally so) here. I really don’t care one bit about his suffering. His struggles don’t move me and, everytime he appears on the screen, I wish he’d speak his lines quickly and get out.

And there are three reasons for my antipathy.

One, my first impression of him. He came in as Jisoo was contemplating on her memories of Norway and the stormy weather outside her window. Then, he just walked away and entered his room. To me, he’d always be the interloper. He was the one who insert himself between Jisoo and Ha Won and broke up their bonds. So he should take responsibility for the mess he created.

Two, the actor’s actual appearance. DIRECTOR, are you freaking kidding me? How could Jisoo break up with cutiepie Ha Won for this ugly man? He looks like death warmed over. This actor is badly miscast as Ha Won’s rival.

Three, his involvement in the death of Ha Won’s mom. Knowing how close Jisoo and Ha Won were, did he really think Jisoo wouldn’t be weighed down by his burden? He should have disclosed all this before marriage. That idiot. Why didn’t he? Because he wanted to steal Jisoo from Ha Won and saw his main chance while Ha Won was studying in the US? Whatever. He deserved his misery and more.

Now, that the writer has been told to compress her story (and if I could advice her: to organize it, too) to fit 12 episodes instead of 16, I like nothing more than to see this character’s scenes, and the Ditzy Gardener’s scenes as well, decreased by a half. To me, they bring in no additional value to the script that the two main leads cannot deliver themselves.

Really now. The director can trim off these excess scenes:

1. What’s the point of this?

She didn’t endear herself to me by showing her klutzy side. For somebody her age, this type of airheadness isn’t aegyo, but aggravating.

2. No rehashing of Jisoo and the Ugly Pianist’s marital problems.

Again, what’s the point? What happened in their marriage couldn’t be fixed anymore because she’s dead. I don’t want to hear about her “failings” from the Ugly Pianist’s perspective when he caused it. The dead couldn’t defend herself.

3. Seriously, a plant lady talking to her plants is about as interesting as a cat lady talking to her cat. Director, please call “Cut!” because I already get it: she’s eccentric. I don’t need to see any more of that on film.

4. Their romance. The romance of an ahjussi and an ahjumma who don’t know their maximum soju intake is a bore, especially when they have zero chemistry.

Now, that the tvN network had declared last call on the writer and the director, they should jettison these dead weight and focus on the show’s two best assets: Chae Soo-Bin and Jung Hae-in.