Latest / Daebak K-Rambles Podcast: K-drama Reviews / The Trunk | Full K-drama Review / Ep. 84

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The Trunk | Full K-drama Review / Ep. 84 · Daebak K-Rambles Podcast: K-drama Reviews

• 0:18
  I'm Jessica and this is Tabaki Rambles where a couple of
• 0:21
  friends review Korean dramas, except it's not two friends
• 0:24
  today, it's a trio of friends. That's right, it is a drama trio
• 0:28
  episode. Today I am joined by Caitlin
• 0:32
  from No sleeper dramas vlog and podcast and Liliana from T and
• 0:36
  Soju podcast. How are you guys doing today?
• 0:40
  Oh yeah, yeah. All good.
• 0:43
  All good here. Yeah.
• 0:45
  We had a double header today, this is our second.
• 0:48
  Recording. Of the day.
• 0:50
  So we've been here pretty much the whole day recording with
• 0:54
  each other and we haven't gotten sick of it yet.
• 0:56
  We are going to talk about the trunk today and I know that
• 1:02
  Liliana watched it late last year when it aired and you
• 1:06
  actually, I think you did an episode on it.
• 1:08
  I. Did I did.
• 1:11
  I purposely did not listen to your episode because I didn't
• 1:14
  want to be spoiled on what you thought about it, so please
• 1:17
  forgive me. I will be going and listening to
• 1:19
  it after we finish wrap this recording.
• 1:22
  And. If I'm to understand Caitlin,
• 1:25
  you're maybe 10 minutes removed from finishing this show.
• 1:29
  Yeah, I basically knew. I, I mean, we knew we were
• 1:32
  reviewing this late in January. So I was like, I'm just going to
• 1:35
  wait until January to watch it. And then I ended up having to
• 1:39
  binge it in the last two days, including 10 minutes ago.
• 1:44
  Yeah, nice. So before we get into it, before
• 1:47
  we get into the fun, if this is your first time listening, go
• 1:51
  ahead and subscribe on your favorite podcast app.
• 1:53
  We're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many more.
• 1:55
  And if you like us, please give us a five star review on Apple
• 1:58
  Podcasts and Spotify. Come and check us out on social
• 2:01
  media to stay up to date on our latest episodes and reviews.
• 2:04
  You can find me on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok as of now at
• 2:08
  Tabakpod. DAEBAKPOD And lastly, if you're
• 2:13
  a fan, please consider becoming a patron.
• 2:15
  It's a great way for you to get involved and show your support.
• 2:17
  You can check out the page on patreon.com/tibach Pod and thank
• 2:21
  you shout out to our patrons, Janet, Curtis, Bale, Cindy, CD,
• 2:26
  Alana, Grace, Lorna, Sammy, Caitlin, Julia #1, Michelle,
• 2:30
  Tenmei, Martha, Delphia, Maria, Sarah, Julia #2 and Pam Thank
• 2:35
  you guys for being patrons and thank you also to all the free
• 2:39
  patrons on there as well. All right, we're going to get
• 2:42
  into the non spoiler section of the trunk.
• 2:46
  Are you guys ready? Yeah, Yes, I am.
• 2:50
  Nice, the My Drama List synopsis reads.
• 2:53
  Angie works for a contract marriage provider in NM,
• 2:57
  arranging one year marriages for clients.
• 3:00
  After completing her 4th contract, she meets Jung Wan, a
• 3:03
  music producer for her 5th. Zhang Wan, still haunted by the
• 3:08
  pain of his past and missing his ex-wife Sol Yong, starts his
• 3:12
  second marriage with Ng. As they grow closer, a
• 3:15
  mysterious trunk is discovered in a lake, unraveling dark
• 3:18
  secrets behind the NM company. This show is adapted from the
• 3:23
  novel Trunk by Kim Ryeong, which was first published in May 2015.
• 3:29
  It's about 10 years old. This show aired in its entirety
• 3:34
  November 29th, 2024. It's 8 episodes long, directed
• 3:39
  by Kim Kyute, a really prolific director.
• 3:43
  So he's directed Worlds within Iris, Padam Padam, that winter
• 3:48
  the wind blows. It's all right.
• 3:50
  This is love, which we know all about Liliana because you
• 3:54
  guessed it on that episode with me reviewing it.
• 3:58
  He's also directed Moon Lover, Secret Heart Rio, which is a
• 4:02
  huge show from 2016, which is finally coming to Vicki,
• 4:06
  streaming pretty soon. Coming soon is the tag right now
• 4:10
  on that. And of course, there's an
• 4:12
  episode on the podcast feed for that show.
• 4:15
  The show is written by or adapted by Pakun Young.
• 4:20
  And I really didn't know who she was until I looked her up.
• 4:23
  And then I was like, oh, right, she's written Huadong from 2016,
• 4:27
  Romance Full of Life, Housewife, Detective, The Third Charm, and
• 4:31
  I have not done my best yet. It really made sense when I saw
• 4:36
  that she had written the third charm.
• 4:38
  Then I was like, oh, that makes total sense to me.
• 4:42
  The trunk and the third charm, I don't know, it just made a lot
• 4:45
  of sense. That really took a lot of people
• 4:46
  by surprise that show and was tonally not what people were
• 4:51
  expecting. It's a little shocking and yeah,
• 4:57
  is it a romance? I don't know.
• 4:59
  I don't know if you guys have any experience with Pakkun Young
• 5:02
  or the director's other work. The director?
• 5:08
  I don't think so for that director, apart from it's OK, is
• 5:14
  it? It's OK That's love.
• 5:15
  Is that the one he directed? I think that's the only one I've
• 5:19
  actually watched out of that list from him.
• 5:22
  And for the writer who are wrong because, I mean, pretty people,
• 5:30
  let's not. Yeah, enough said.
• 5:32
  I think that's the only two things I've watched out of those
• 5:35
  lists. For the director, definitely
• 5:38
  moon lovers. I've watched.
• 5:42
  I want to say I I mean I I iris, I did watch too.
• 5:46
  I can't remember if I've watched padam padam.
• 5:48
  I feel like I have, but I can't remember.
• 5:52
  I have to remember what it even is too.
• 5:54
  But anyway, so I've watched a couple of the director.
• 5:58
  I have watched none of the writer but I like recognize the
• 6:02
  titles obviously. All right, this show stars Kong
• 6:06
  Yu as Han Zhong Wan. He is our male lead, of course.
• 6:11
  He is a prolific Kalu star in his 40s at this point and still
• 6:17
  looking damn fine. He's done about 15 or so movie,
• 6:21
  yet everyone's smiling on this speed, on this speed right now.
• 6:25
  Kim Jong, born 1982. He did that movie in 2019.
• 6:30
  Age of Shadows, 2016, Train to Pusan, of course, 2016, A Man
• 6:34
  and a woman from 2016. I feel like that goes hand in
• 6:39
  hand with this show. If you haven't seen A Man and a
• 6:42
  Woman, I highly recommend it. Of course TV he's most recently
• 6:47
  been in squid game season 2 the silent sea from 2021 Goblin.
• 6:53
  Of course he's the goblin, the great and lonely God and coffee
• 6:57
  Prince from O seven. Really not as many shows as you
• 7:01
  would expect when you look it up, but his Co star is Sohyun
• 7:06
  Jin. He she plays no Ng.
• 7:09
  You might have seen her in Why her?
• 7:11
  You are my spring, The beauty inside temperature of love,
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  Doctor Romantic, another Miss O and let's eat too.
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  So what? What is your experience with
• 7:21
  Sohyunjin and Kongyu? You guys.
• 7:24
  So for Gongye, we all know I didn't finish Goblin and apart
• 7:30
  from that nothing. I've only like, I've seen his
• 7:33
  cameos in Squid Gains 1 and that was it.
• 7:36
  I had not watched him in anything else and I don't know
• 7:40
  why I he does. I suppose for dramas he does.
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  Like he's done a lot of older dramas and I tend to not really
• 7:48
  go back to older dramas all the time.
• 7:51
  So yeah, I know. I know Goblin.
• 7:53
  But look, guys, we're not going to go down that road again.
• 7:57
  As for like Soyo and Jin, she's the complete opposite.
• 8:01
  I've actually watched her in a lot of things.
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  I've watched another Miss I Doctor romantic temperature of
• 8:06
  love, The beauty inside You are my spring and why her?
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  And I really like her as an actress.
• 8:13
  I think her acting's fairly good, but also I think her
• 8:17
  projects, even if the drama isn't that great, I always tend
• 8:22
  to appreciate her character and her acting in it, if that makes
• 8:25
  sense. So I, I really like her.
• 8:28
  She's one of those actresses that I, you know, I keep an eye
• 8:33
  out for. And if she's in something that I
• 8:35
  think I'll enjoy, I I'll tend to check her out.
• 8:38
  Now after watching the trunk, I was like, OK, I get the GONQ
• 8:42
  hype before it. I really did.
• 8:45
  I really didn't get the Gong U hype.
• 8:47
  I was like, I know, I know, I know, I know.
• 8:51
  But to be fair, I hadn't really watched him in a lot of things
• 8:54
  and the only thing that I had partially watched was Goblin and
• 8:59
  that wasn't necessarily him. Like to me that's not a him
• 9:03
  problem, it's a story problem. So agree to disagree, agree to
• 9:08
  disagree. All right, all right.
• 9:13
  I can't. I can't help it.
• 9:16
  But apart from that, I get why everybody's so you know, up for
• 9:22
  gong you now. OK.
• 9:24
  All right, Caitlin. For Gong You, I've pretty much
• 9:29
  seen everything. Like I've seen most of his
• 9:33
  movies. A lot of the movies that you
• 9:35
  listed I've watched and I pretty much have seen every single
• 9:40
  drama he's done as well for the most part, even the bad ones,
• 9:46
  yes. For So You Jin, I kind of have
• 9:50
  like bounced around. I have not seen a lot of her
• 9:54
  older dramas except for Beauty Inside but most mostly I watch
• 10:00
  that because I love the movie so much.
• 10:03
  The movie in my opinion is better.
• 10:05
  Which is way different I'm I think from the show.
• 10:09
  Right, Yeah, but I I've seen Beauty inside, I've seen You are
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  May Spring and I've seen why her, but a lot of her older
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  dramas I I just have not. I did not watch.
• 10:19
  They also were airing in a time I didn't have access to Korean
• 10:22
  drama, so I didn't really go back and watch them yet I guess.
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  OK, so between us, we are rounding out all of their
• 10:31
  careers, both of their careers, because I've seen a lot of
• 10:37
  Kungu's movies, I've seen most of his K dramas, even the bad
• 10:42
  ones like Big and Biscuit, Teacher, Star Candy and all of
• 10:46
  those. And then of course, Sohyun Jin,
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  I've also seen let's see two another miss O temperature of
• 10:52
  love. And then I kind of dropped off
• 10:54
  and didn't really see myself watching why her you're my
• 10:59
  spraying or the beauty inside, mostly because the beauty inside
• 11:02
  the movie is so great. I'm like, I don't really see the
• 11:06
  need to watch the show and I see Caitlin nodding her head.
• 11:10
  I love both of these actors and I think we can all agree that
• 11:15
  maybe not Liliana coming into the show loving Kong You, but
• 11:20
  this is a really great leading couple.
• 11:23
  There's something to be said about at least for Kong Yu, he's
• 11:29
  very choosy with his projects and he's at a stage in his
• 11:34
  career where he doesn't have to do anything at all.
• 11:37
  He just can exist, subsist on the CFS, you know, ads.
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  He can sell products and be brand ambassador and just make
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  his money that way rather than starring in a show or a movie.
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  But that gives him the ability to be really choosy.
• 11:59
  Every project that he does, there is something that he finds
• 12:04
  very unique about it. Whether the project is
• 12:08
  successful or not. You know, there's something that
• 12:10
  he saw in it that he a message that he wants to convey that he
• 12:14
  believes in. And so I want you to think about
• 12:18
  that when we go into the discussion about the trunk,
• 12:21
  which I don't feel is going to be a particularly long
• 12:23
  discussion, mostly because I didn't take any notes, y'all?
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  I don't think Caitlin took any notes either.
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  But, you know, we'll see. What did you guys think of this
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  show? I don't know who wants to go
• 12:36
  first, but. Let Caitlin go first 'cause he's
• 12:40
  got fresh mind. Caitlin.
• 12:44
  I, I love this show. I think I liked it a lot more
• 12:50
  than I thought I would. And ironically, I did not like
• 12:55
  the parts I thought I would like.
• 12:58
  I was expecting to like certain parts of this show because there
• 13:01
  was a lot of parts that I was like, oh, that's something up my
• 13:04
  alley that's speaking my language.
• 13:06
  I'm definitely checking this out.
• 13:09
  In hindsight though, I actually liked those parts less.
• 13:13
  I'm not giving anything right obviously right now, and I liked
• 13:18
  other parts more that I did not expect to like.
• 13:21
  So I mean, it wasn't like a perfect drama for me, but it was
• 13:25
  definitely something unique in my opinion and kind of went
• 13:32
  against the grain of what I normally like and enjoy when I
• 13:38
  get to the other side of finishing a drama for me.
• 13:43
  So it's kind of contradictory to what you thought you were going
• 13:46
  to like, and the things that kept you engaged were things
• 13:50
  that you didn't realize were going to be sitting.
• 13:53
  Yes. OK.
• 13:54
  All right. Yeah.
• 13:55
  Do you want to say what those things are?
• 13:56
  Is that too spoilery? It's too spoilery.
• 13:59
  I don't want to. Liliana.
• 14:03
  I ended up really enjoying this one.
• 14:06
  I have quibbles with it. There's a couple of things that
• 14:10
  I, you know, I have a couple of, I don't know, quibbles with it.
• 14:15
  But overall I really, really enjoyed it.
• 14:17
  I almost feel like it's how to explain it.
• 14:22
  It's almost like a combination of a Western show with a Korean
• 14:27
  show mixed together and you kind of taken the best parts of both
• 14:33
  things and put it into this show.
• 14:35
  That's kind of like what I felt and it kind of worked in and I
• 14:40
  didn't think they would make it work, but they did.
• 14:44
  I, you know, like I said, gonk you in.
• 14:48
  This was great. I understood why people enjoy
• 14:52
  him so much. Soya Jin was great in this.
• 14:55
  The pacing was fairly good. I think they did a really good
• 14:58
  job developing these characters and kind of growing them even
• 15:04
  for 8 episodes. And I was like, see it can be
• 15:08
  done. It can be done in eight
• 15:09
  episodes. You can give us a full arc story
• 15:14
  and you know, with really good characters.
• 15:18
  So I think overall I really enjoyed it.
• 15:21
  I did have a couple of quibbles with it, but even saying that I
• 15:24
  I really liked it. Yeah, I would agree with you
• 15:29
  both that I came into this thinking it was going to be a
• 15:35
  romantic thriller. That's what was sold in the
• 15:38
  trailer for it. That's what the marketing was
• 15:40
  selling. And I think the problem that I
• 15:43
  found, my quibbles have to do with the thriller part, because
• 15:46
  honestly, I didn't give a shit about the thriller.
• 15:49
  I think the best parts of the show happen very internally and
• 15:54
  happen with the romance aspect of these two very flawed
• 15:59
  individuals trying to work it out, trying to figure each other
• 16:04
  out and this mini healing journey that they go on.
• 16:09
  I thought this show was super stylish.
• 16:12
  The cinematography was super Moody and I, I did say that I
• 16:16
  think on my story, when I finished watching, it was like I
• 16:20
  didn't see much K drama to this story, to the production of it.
• 16:26
  It felt very western and I could recast this whole show with
• 16:32
  Western actors and it would be the same show, which I think
• 16:37
  bothered people. I think that was irking a lot of
• 16:41
  watchers that this was not a typical K drama in any sense of
• 16:48
  the word. It was, like I said, very
• 16:51
  stylish. It was a very introspective
• 16:52
  drama. It's not average, it's not
• 16:55
  fast-paced. It is very evenly paced within
• 16:58
  the 8 episodes, but I wouldn't say that you know, you have
• 17:02
  cliffhangers at the end of every episode and things driving you
• 17:07
  to watch the next episode. There were great depths of
• 17:11
  emotion and fear throughout the show, and it's about two
• 17:17
  traumatized and flawed and broken people inadvertently
• 17:22
  finding a measure of comfort in each other and the courage to
• 17:24
  heal and the courage to move forward instead of staying
• 17:27
  stagnant. And I would say the older you
• 17:32
  are, the more you'll get out of the show.
• 17:34
  I don't think that younger people will find much to latch
• 17:38
  onto in the show. I think this is for mature
• 17:40
  audiences only. There is a deep.
• 17:43
  Well of. Melancholia in this show and
• 17:49
  this idea of like choking on your own memory, but thinking
• 17:55
  that that's actually what's keeping you going, that that's
• 17:58
  your oxygen tank versus what's holding you down and what's
• 18:02
  drowning you. And that is really nuanced and
• 18:08
  hard to understand if you haven't lived a lot of life,
• 18:12
  sorry to say. It's about unhappy people.
• 18:17
  It's about codependency. It's a bit of a darker
• 18:20
  psychological drama. These characters are not going
• 18:23
  to be easy to pinpoint. They're not black and white, and
• 18:27
  this is very soft and understated romance.
• 18:31
  There's a lot of soft and innocent parts to them, but
• 18:35
  there's also really dark and difficult aspects of them that
• 18:39
  are unlikable. And I think a lot of people were
• 18:44
  off put by the sex scenes in this show.
• 18:48
  A lot of people had complaints about the characterizations.
• 18:53
  I mean, we can go into like the complaints, but my main
• 18:57
  complaint has to do with the police procedural and the
• 19:01
  mystery aspect of the show, which didn't work at all for me.
• 19:05
  That was not why I was watching the show.
• 19:07
  Yeah, that's what I I also disliked that part a lot, which
• 19:13
  it was unexpected. That was the unexpected part is
• 19:15
  I was assuming I was going to like that part more than I did.
• 19:21
  And it wasn't even like my normal criticisms of like the
• 19:26
  tropiness of how bad cops are written sometimes in crime Jamas
• 19:29
  or anything. But it was just you could take
• 19:31
  all this out and it would still be a great drama.
• 19:35
  You could take all this out for the most part and it would still
• 19:39
  be fine. It would still like this doesn't
• 19:41
  add anything to it at all and not even the purpose of why it
• 19:47
  was in there in the 1st place really even added to the to the
• 19:50
  drama in my opinion. So that that was the unexpected
• 19:53
  part for me as I thought I would like that part better than I
• 19:56
  did. Yeah, because you're you're so
• 19:59
  into crime and that's your bread and butter and you're like our
• 20:03
  expert in that genre. But I think also the reason why
• 20:08
  is even if you did take those parts out, there was enough
• 20:13
  thriller aspects to this that probably would have still
• 20:18
  sustained me without because it was like a character thriller
• 20:23
  than a plot thriller. And you can have thriller
• 20:27
  elements to a drama without it having to do with murder or
• 20:31
  anything like that. Yeah, I agree.
• 20:33
  I agree that it was much more of a character study than people
• 20:37
  were expecting. I read this, I had a camera
• 20:41
  froze a review or a summary, but I think it was a review in Teen
• 20:44
  Vogue. And this sentence, like really
• 20:47
  brought it together for me. They said, adding A twist to the
• 20:51
  contract marriage trope, The Trunk tackles the plot device
• 20:55
  from a film noir perspective. And I was like, that's what
• 20:58
  people didn't like. That's what it is.
• 21:01
  It's a film noir. People aren't used to seeing
• 21:04
  noir in K drama. I think it was a little bit too
• 21:09
  real for people almost because it's like it's very flawed
• 21:13
  characters, isn't it? You can almost argue that they
• 21:18
  are a little bit dislikable for the most of it part of the
• 21:23
  drama, and I think people don't like that.
• 21:26
  I think people were expecting, you know, a cohabitation fake
• 21:32
  marriage trope, you know, they were going to fall in love and
• 21:36
  everything that comes with it. And I actually prefer it much
• 21:42
  better the way it was done because like you said, there is
• 21:45
  a lot of nuances to it and there is a lot of grown up stuff to
• 21:52
  it. I am.
• 21:52
  I would rather have a character growth and a character arc then,
• 21:58
  you know, have a stagnant character for the whole drama,
• 22:03
  so to speak. And I think the way these two
• 22:06
  actors work together and work to show their characters really,
• 22:10
  really worked for me. So yeah, I, I like both of you.
• 22:14
  I also, I wasn't keen on the thriller aspect of it, the
• 22:18
  police work aspect of it. I just didn't think it was
• 22:21
  necessary. Like you said, it didn't add to
• 22:24
  the drama. And you could have taken that
• 22:26
  whole aspect. And actually, I feel like the
• 22:29
  drama could be even better without it because it doesn't
• 22:32
  add to the plots. So yeah.
• 22:36
  I mean on the opposite end too, I also saw comments that people,
• 22:41
  and I won't spoil it, we can do it later, but like people also
• 22:45
  didn't like the ending because some opinions I saw, right?
• 22:51
  Like some opinions I saw were either it they didn't get the
• 22:56
  ending they were expecting from what they got from the rest of
• 22:59
  the show and it seemed like a cop out because they didn't know
• 23:03
  how to end it. Or along those same lines like
• 23:08
  the ending didn't fit the rest of the story and what people
• 23:14
  assumes the ending would be. And like because as Jess was
• 23:18
  saying this isn't the typical K drama, it doesn't fit into the
• 23:24
  norm of AK drama and people were like well the ending does.
• 23:28
  The ending is a classic K drama ending which is why I don't like
• 23:34
  it because it doesn't fit the rest of the show.
• 23:36
  That's kind of the opinions I've heard on the ending.
• 23:41
  Other people I know loved it too but like that's just some
• 23:43
  commentary. I mean granted again I finished
• 23:45
  this 10 minutes ago so it was like this is like 2 seconds of
• 23:49
  Google. Search.
• 23:51
  On an ending because I was really trying to remind myself
• 23:54
  of something I noticed in the end, which I'll reveal the
• 23:57
  spoiler thing but. Yeah, the online complaints
• 24:03
  range, they just ranged. And I think the complaints were
• 24:07
  not quite specific enough for me to think the writing was
• 24:13
  particularly bad. I think our quibbles are, I feel
• 24:17
  are going to be all the same, but they're going to be
• 24:19
  specific, right? But the online things that I
• 24:24
  were seeing was like, oh, Gong, you finally acting with someone
• 24:28
  in his age group. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
• 24:32
  whoa. Bitching about age gaps again.
• 24:38
  Someone else again, people who haven't watched Kong Yu in other
• 24:42
  things, likely his movies where he is butt naked with people.
• 24:48
  Someone said I didn't know grandpa had it in him.
• 24:52
  Oh God. Which is like 1.
• 24:53
  Of the best kissers in the game, people, one of the. 40 What do
• 24:59
  you mean? You wish you look that good at
• 25:02
  40. 40. You wish you look like that at
• 25:05
  40. I was.
• 25:07
  Living living. Look, even before I watched this
• 25:12
  and was like, I actually do appreciate his work and I really
• 25:15
  liked this role. I have eyes.
• 25:19
  I could look at him and be like, he's a fine man.
• 25:22
  What do you mean I don't understand people?
• 25:26
  I don't understand. Someone else said that one
• 25:29
  really sent me. I had to like take a break from
• 25:31
  social media after I read that one that I didn't know grandpa
• 25:34
  had it in him because put some fucking respect on Khongyu's
• 25:38
  name. First, second and third.
• 25:40
  OK. The other thing that I read was
• 25:43
  thinly developed characters. I see confusion running through
• 25:48
  here. I do not I do not agree with
• 25:50
  that. I.
• 25:50
  Absolutely 100% disagree with that statement.
• 25:55
  Were we watching the same show here?
• 25:57
  Like that Is one of the best things about this show is the
• 26:00
  character development? What do you mean?
• 26:03
  Now, there were some things I will say.
• 26:04
  There's some things I wish they had developed more, which we can
• 26:09
  get into. But I wouldn't say it's like
• 26:12
  thinly develop. Not even like not one of these
• 26:15
  characters are thinly developed. Like, it's not like Gongu's
• 26:19
  characters, like has a whole back story and everybody else is
• 26:21
  just like right here on the same plane or whatever.
• 26:25
  I Yeah. They said nobody had a clear
• 26:28
  want. Nobody had a clear.
• 26:30
  Why? Again, vastly.
• 26:33
  Disagree. Disagree.
• 26:35
  I mean, did this person watch this show?
• 26:39
  Someone else, I won't say who it is, someone said one of the
• 26:43
  worst K dramas I've ever seen in my life.
• 26:47
  She could, whoever it is, clearly did watch the police.
• 26:50
  I was going to say, I was going to throw back at Jess and say
• 26:54
  clearly they. Haven't watched them.
• 26:57
  I was going to say, clearly they haven't watched The Bride of
• 26:59
  Habec. Bride of Habec and.
• 27:06
  Then the last thing that I had, not a Dirk hole, I paraphrased
• 27:10
  that the romance was overshadowed by their exes and
• 27:13
  their past traumas. I would say that is what made
• 27:18
  the romance and the progression of their courtship, if you can
• 27:23
  even call it that, was their exes.
• 27:27
  I'm sorry. And their past like that thing
• 27:30
  is too. If if you wanted the ending that
• 27:33
  they gave at the end, you needed to get through that first.
• 27:37
  Like they needed to come to terms with their trauma and or
• 27:42
  like figure out the secrets that were going to be revealed in
• 27:45
  this plot in order to get to the ending.
• 27:47
  That was the ending. I think these people were just
• 27:51
  going into this thinking it was going to be a romance.
• 27:54
  I really think people just like. A straightforward romance.
• 27:58
  Yeah, like what normal everybody seems to do is like, they go to
• 28:02
  drama, right? Where did they get that idea?
• 28:06
  But like. The trailers and the posters did
• 28:10
  not give room. Like for once, actually for once
• 28:15
  I will stand up and be like, look, it didn't give that vibe
• 28:20
  to me. It did not give me like full out
• 28:22
  romance vibe with what they were putting out.
• 28:25
  So I don't know what they were talking to you.
• 28:28
  I don't know. We all know there's people out
• 28:30
  there who just click play and be like it's a romance, it's going
• 28:33
  to be a romance and then they get mad when there's no romance.
• 28:36
  Like I see that countless times and crowd.
• 28:38
  But there was like romance in this.
• 28:40
  I know but like ROM com when I say romance they like they want
• 28:44
  straight up ROM com. No darkness romance all the
• 28:49
  time. I.
• 28:50
  Think that's what people wanted it and yeah.
• 28:54
  I agree with. You.
• 28:55
  Yeah, I agree with you, Liliana. This trailer and these posters
• 28:59
  did not give that whatsoever. And maybe people didn't watch
• 29:03
  the trailer. Maybe.
• 29:04
  Maybe there are people who don't watch trailers.
• 29:08
  Fine, you don't watch the trailer, but you start at the
• 29:11
  beginning of episode 1 and there's literally a dead body
• 29:15
  and a shot. What do you expect you're going
• 29:17
  to get like? I can't believe we're on the
• 29:21
  same page about this. I thought one person would be on
• 29:26
  the defense or on the offense here, but like we're all on the
• 29:30
  same page. I want to reiterate to
• 29:32
  listeners, we did not discuss at all the trunk for the last two
• 29:37
  months. We have not discussed the trunk.
• 29:40
  We did not talk about it. Caitlin just finished it.
• 29:44
  So it's incredible that we're all coming at this and we have
• 29:48
  very similar thoughts. Again, if you've listened to
• 29:52
  Drama Trio, we have very different taste in drama
• 29:56
  sometimes and I'm just glad we're here.
• 29:59
  I'm so glad we're here to talk about this because this, as you
• 30:03
  can see, was a very divisive show.
• 30:06
  Mixed bag. I wanted to talk really fast
• 30:10
  about the book because a few people in our circle did buy the
• 30:15
  book and read it, read the translation of it.
• 30:19
  And one of those people was Naz from the Soon Diaries podcast,
• 30:22
  and she posted about it and I did talk to her about it, and
• 30:26
  Naz hated the book. She thought it was awful.
• 30:31
  This is a quote from her story, her Instagram story in December
• 30:36
  of 2024. She said it's completely
• 30:39
  different from the show. I now understand why the show
• 30:42
  had to take so many liberties because absolutely nothing
• 30:45
  happened in this book. I'm truly baffled.
• 30:49
  So if you'd like to talk to somebody who did read the book
• 30:54
  and saw the show, definitely reach out to Naz from Swoon
• 30:57
  Diaries pod. I'm sure she's more than willing
• 30:59
  to talk about this show and the differences between the source
• 31:04
  material and the show. We're not going to be talking
• 31:07
  about the differences. What I want to point out mostly
• 31:10
  is that the book seems to be also divisive, and a lot of
• 31:18
  liberties were taken right. What we got in the show is
• 31:22
  loosely based on what the book had going in, if that makes any
• 31:26
  sense. We got a different thing than
• 31:30
  the book. With that being said, we're
• 31:33
  going to spoil the trunk. Get into more specifics about it
• 31:38
  right after this. Excuse me, I can't, you know.
• 31:42
  I have no tingle. Oh, sorry, swear.
• 31:49
  Discussing shirts? What?
• 31:54
  All right, we're on the other side of spoilers.
• 31:56
  During the break we were talking at length about how insulting
• 31:59
  people were to Cong you and how they just don't understand age
• 32:06
  and how time works, and he was just so rude of them to say that
• 32:13
  about Kung Yu. Well, I think also too.
• 32:15
  I mean, you said it earlier, Gong Yu is very picky about his
• 32:20
  dramas. So there's years he doesn't have
• 32:22
  a drama come out. And as you've said, people don't
• 32:25
  watch movies like they, they, they he's a movie, he's a movie
• 32:29
  actor. So I think a lot of people do to
• 32:32
  K dramas becoming more popular over the next last five years or
• 32:36
  so. There weren't a lot of dramas
• 32:39
  with people of a, of actors and actresses of a certain age
• 32:44
  coming out becoming popular. I think we've seen a resurgence
• 32:47
  of that. But like a lot of these older
• 32:49
  actors and actresses were famous, famous in quotes like I,
• 32:53
  I assume, I think they're still famous, but like their heyday
• 32:57
  was when they're younger. And a lot of these newer
• 33:00
  watchers have not gone back and watched those and seen these
• 33:06
  when these actors and actresses when they were in their 20s and
• 33:09
  30s. And so I think there comes a
• 33:13
  they kind of avoid them now because they are older.
• 33:18
  They're like, I'm not going to like that type of drama because
• 33:21
  the actors are all older too. I think there's a, it's AI think
• 33:24
  it's a combination of a bunch of stuff, but I think part of it is
• 33:27
  the type of actor or type of watchers that are watching them
• 33:31
  nowadays with what the dramas have been coming out in the last
• 33:35
  five years or so. Because even with like Squid
• 33:37
  Game like Squid Game season 1, Gongyu had a very small.
• 33:41
  Role Oh yeah, it's. Done.
• 33:43
  I, I hear, I hear in like season 2, it's a little bigger role.
• 33:46
  I haven't seen season 2 yet, but like I've heard it's a bigger
• 33:49
  role and he did get recognition. He did get recognition more for
• 33:54
  season 2. I saw a lot more people talking
• 33:56
  about him per season 2 versus season 1.
• 34:00
  All right, so we're going to get into the trunk and we're going
• 34:04
  to settle down into a little rhythm here.
• 34:06
  We're going to talk about it. Caitlin, did you have anything
• 34:10
  you wanted to start us off with since you are the freshest on
• 34:13
  this? Yeah, I'll start off with
• 34:16
  something a little comedic because it's going to be really
• 34:18
  quick, but I was not expecting the cameo right out of the gate
• 34:23
  in episode 1 of Jung Kung Ho. I like, was not expecting it
• 34:29
  whatsoever. And then they all of a sudden
• 34:32
  came out with that. And then I want to say.
• 34:35
  Wait, there was also a second cameo, which you wouldn't know
• 34:38
  it unless you looked up the cast list, but the other husband that
• 34:43
  was on his deathbed and he was thanking her, all hooked up to
• 34:48
  the machines and stuff. That was also somebody that was
• 34:52
  a male lead from The Greatest Love.
• 34:54
  You know that guy? Wow, yes.
• 34:58
  I don't remember his name, but I do.
• 35:00
  I do know who you're talking about.
• 35:02
  Oh. My God, hold on, Chasung 1.
• 35:07
  Chasung, One who is also a star of yesteryear, who audiences
• 35:13
  would recognize in Korea, but he's all covered up and you
• 35:17
  would only know it if you looked at the credits.
• 35:20
  But two cameos. All right, So the only notes
• 35:24
  that I have are that the female lead shows up at his house with
• 35:28
  her trunk, her own emotional baggage, so to speak, and she
• 35:34
  immediately strips down naked and takes a shower in his
• 35:37
  shower, which is really shocking and weird.
• 35:41
  I thought that was very invasive.
• 35:43
  I don't know if you guys had any thoughts about her method and
• 35:47
  how she just sort of walks around and inspects the house
• 35:52
  and opens all the closets and sees the other trunk in his
• 35:55
  closet. And you can tell that she's just
• 35:57
  rifling through his life and inserting herself.
• 36:01
  And you can see that she is working him out, figuring him
• 36:07
  out. And also it's figurative, right?
• 36:11
  Like she's also doing that literally, but she's doing that
• 36:13
  figuratively in his life. And this is a little violating.
• 36:20
  I think to me that scene was almost like, yes, it was
• 36:24
  invasive, but it's almost like her shedding her outside clothes
• 36:29
  and kind of almost stepping into the character of his wife, if
• 36:33
  that makes sense. That's what, yeah, that's what I
• 36:35
  was going to say too. She's like going in, assessing
• 36:40
  the situation, so to speak, so. I love that word.
• 36:43
  Step into the role of wife, she is like almost evaluating what
• 36:49
  does this role require of me? What is he going to require of
• 36:54
  me, so to speak. So I think that was a really in
• 37:00
  your face way of doing it almost.
• 37:03
  But I, I liked how it was done because if you are watching this
• 37:08
  and you weren't watching it with, you know, I don't know, a
• 37:12
  deeper look or whatever, it can just look like she's getting
• 37:16
  there and getting very comfortable and going for a
• 37:19
  shower. But it's so much more than that,
• 37:21
  I think. And this show is actually really
• 37:24
  good at doing this sort of stuff where on the surface it seems
• 37:27
  like something, but if you dig, it's got a lot of more baggage
• 37:33
  for you to unpack. And I I really like that aspect
• 37:37
  of it. So compare that with the other
• 37:40
  wife, the ex-wife who I have in my notes, she is an emotional
• 37:44
  terrorist. She.
• 37:46
  Needs therapy. Yeah, yeah, the woman needs some
• 37:49
  serious therapy. That's basically all I have for
• 37:52
  her. So she's an emotional terrorist?
• 37:56
  I think some people almost commented that she's like a
• 37:59
  sociopath or something because everything needs to be her
• 38:06
  control and everything needs to be for her and what not.
• 38:10
  And she is actually one of my quibbles with this show.
• 38:14
  Her character. Oh.
• 38:15
  Yeah, go for it, one. Of my quibbles, so it's not
• 38:18
  necessarily throughout the show because I actually really
• 38:22
  enjoyed the seeing Gongu's character like a break away from
• 38:26
  her and it starts happening very quickly because I think it's
• 38:30
  like episode 2 or something or episode 2 or 3.
• 38:34
  It's like the smallest detail, but our female lead, she hurts
• 38:38
  herself and he takes her to the hospital and he gong you gets a
• 38:43
  call from his ex-wife and he's like, I'm really sorry I can't
• 38:47
  talk right now. And he puts the phone down and
• 38:49
  it's like it's the smallest thing.
• 38:53
  But it's something that before, you know, in G came in.
• 38:57
  He wouldn't have done that. So I actually really liked
• 39:02
  having such a horrible character, her in a sense as the
• 39:06
  ex-wife, because watching him break away from that was really
• 39:11
  satisfying for me. But my quibble is horrending.
• 39:15
  I didn't like it. I didn't like how her character
• 39:22
  was just like, yeah, I know I'm bad and I'm dealing like I I'm
• 39:26
  going to be that way and I'm dealing with it.
• 39:28
  And it's kind of like, yeah, I needed a little bit more from.
• 39:35
  Yeah, I saw, I saw that complete too, just from a couple of
• 39:37
  people that she didn't deserve her redemptive arc.
• 39:42
  See I didn't really see it as redemptive arc.
• 39:45
  Exactly. I don't think she even got one.
• 39:47
  Yeah, that much. I mean, I think like she when
• 39:50
  she got rejected and knew she couldn't get back with Gong Yu,
• 39:54
  she tried to get back with the other dude and he ended it too.
• 40:00
  And then at the very end. She was like, I'm going to help
• 40:04
  this dude through his trial and get him a lawyer and then we'll
• 40:08
  see what happens. Like, I I don't think she
• 40:11
  learned anything. I think she wanted the other guy
• 40:14
  because she can control him again.
• 40:17
  She can. He has to do whatever she wanted
• 40:20
  to do because of the contract. So I yeah, I don't, I don't see
• 40:25
  her. I didn't see her having
• 40:26
  redemptive arc whatsoever. Yeah, I think because there were
• 40:30
  very few consequences for her, people thought, oh, redemptive
• 40:34
  arc. Yeah, yeah.
• 40:36
  But I don't think she, I mean what she got was nobody under
• 40:40
  her thumb, nobody was within her grasp or control.
• 40:45
  And that is torture for a narcissist.
• 40:49
  Right. Yeah, absolutely.
• 40:51
  Yeah. So yeah, I don't know.
• 40:54
  I, I think she got some a very sliver of punishment there where
• 41:00
  she basically pushed everyone away due to her own antics and
• 41:04
  now she has nobody left to control.
• 41:06
  She's just grasping at straws and trying to help this guy with
• 41:10
  his murder trial. But you know, it is what it is.
• 41:15
  She I think I had someone question me about the baby and
• 41:23
  the chain of events of the baby. Yeah.
• 41:27
  So I didn't really think it through.
• 41:31
  I mean, I did think it through, but I didn't really put a lot of
• 41:34
  thought into it, if that makes any sense.
• 41:37
  She obviously her and Kong, you were going to have a child.
• 41:41
  She was pregnant. I think she was somehow in her
• 41:44
  last trimester or something like that.
• 41:47
  And there was a like a cutaway scene of her on the toilet
• 41:52
  struggling. I thought it was she was having
• 41:55
  a miscarriage. So what I I didn't get that from
• 42:01
  the story. What I thought was because she
• 42:06
  gets run over while she's pregnant.
• 42:09
  Oh no, she doesn't get run over. She.
• 42:12
  Steps, Yeah, sorry, she steps, she steps.
• 42:15
  And I think that would have been actually something that I would
• 42:19
  like them to explore the little bit in her character, because
• 42:22
  they do talk about depression and whether she does that for
• 42:26
  attention or not, or whether she's depressed in that moment
• 42:30
  because she's losing everything and she doesn't want to be a mom
• 42:34
  and she's now figuring out that she's going to have this baby.
• 42:38
  Yeah, that was something that I wanted to pick at more,
• 42:41
  definitely. Was her psyche there and how was
• 42:46
  it because she was afraid of losing her power and identity as
• 42:52
  a woman in her control over Kong you, who really did want to be a
• 42:57
  father and was happy that she was pregnant and was looking
• 43:00
  forward to the baby. And she was like, I've never
• 43:05
  wanted to be a mother. I've never thought about this.
• 43:08
  I hate being pregnant, so on and so forth.
• 43:12
  I truly think she was having a miscarriage and then she was
• 43:15
  already kind of hating the idea of having a baby, and then she
• 43:20
  just hastened it along, stepped in front of the car to, I think,
• 43:27
  just kill herself because, like, yeah, she was deeply unhappy.
• 43:31
  It could have been, I don't know, hormones.
• 43:34
  Pregnancy does weird things to women.
• 43:36
  I'm just saying. It does.
• 43:37
  It does, sorry, it does, and she survives.
• 43:43
  But there's that dilemma where they asked the father, Kong,
• 43:47
  you, what do you want to do? Save her or save the baby?
• 43:52
  We can only save one. And he says save the baby.
• 43:57
  I don't whatever you do, save the baby.
• 44:00
  She overhears this and it does horrible things to her mind.
• 44:06
  And heart, actually, that whole segment is a very interesting
• 44:12
  segment because who do you save in a situation like that?
• 44:17
  There's couples that would argue save the mother.
• 44:21
  We can try for another baby. You know, there's stuff like
• 44:24
  that. There's couples that would argue
• 44:27
  save the baby, but then you're not only a widowed father, but
• 44:32
  you're also having to raise a newborn by yourself with, you
• 44:36
  know, no experience. And I think that that was a
• 44:39
  really interesting point that we can understand where Gongu's
• 44:46
  character is coming from. But for a character like his
• 44:50
  ex-wife, for somebody else that isn't even born to be chosen
• 44:55
  over her from, you know, the husband that she thought was
• 45:00
  under her thumb completely, that must have I.
• 45:06
  Think. It broke her.
• 45:08
  Because. She was already, yeah, she was
• 45:10
  already unwell. And then that on top of it for
• 45:13
  something that was so unwanted from her.
• 45:16
  Yeah, that that would have broken her, I think.
• 45:20
  Now, I don't know the laws or anything in Korea about should
• 45:29
  they just have asked the mother if if she's lucid and she's
• 45:34
  there, just ask her. She's a steward of her own
• 45:38
  healthcare. Do you want us to save the baby
• 45:42
  or not? I'm not sure if the husband
• 45:46
  would be the one to make that decision.
• 45:48
  I don't know. That seems like AK drama ISM.
• 45:51
  But barring that, yeah, that is of conundrum that nobody wants
• 45:56
  to answer. And the movie and the book are
• 46:01
  both touted as being feminist. With that label in mind, what
• 46:07
  how do you feel about her character?
• 46:10
  The ex-wife I see, I kind of like, there's one specific scene
• 46:15
  that I'm thinking about and you guys will know straight away
• 46:17
  what scene it is that had a lot of people up in arms.
• 46:21
  And it's the scene where her current husband is showering and
• 46:26
  she comes in and kind of like is oogling him and whatnot.
• 46:31
  And a lot of people had a lot of trouble with that scene
• 46:34
  specifically because they thought it was done in poor
• 46:39
  taste. And, you know, it wasn't
• 46:42
  necessary. But I'm like, do you know what
• 46:45
  that kind of like is woman forward, so to speak?
• 46:50
  I don't understand why it was such badly received because I'm
• 46:55
  like, why can't a woman do that? Why?
• 46:59
  If it was a man in that situation, you probably wouldn't
• 47:02
  have argued so much. Like why is there why are we
• 47:07
  standing on here and saying, oh, that was done important.
• 47:10
  No, it wasn't. She was looking at a fine man.
• 47:13
  What do you want? Like what do you expect?
• 47:15
  I was supposedly my husband that she's, you know, having lots of
• 47:21
  sex with like what do you expect?
• 47:24
  Yes. But I think also it, I think it
• 47:27
  also played into her character. It wasn't just a woman.
• 47:32
  It wasn't just a woman looking at a nice looking man.
• 47:37
  It was a power play. It was her being like, I have a
• 47:44
  contract with you, you have to do whatever I say.
• 47:48
  And so that means I can you can't come over here, you can't
• 47:52
  touch me, but I can look at you all I want.
• 47:55
  And I mean, I think that fit her character to AT like she would.
• 47:59
  It would definitely be something her character would do.
• 48:03
  Yeah, the sex scenes as well as the denial of sex is all part of
• 48:10
  her character, and I feel like it's very feminist, if that
• 48:13
  makes any sense. Like, yeah, why not?
• 48:16
  Why not? Why can't you say no?
• 48:18
  It's her body. It's her.
• 48:19
  Yeah, like enough said, It's her body, so.
• 48:24
  Why can't you say no? And why can't you do it on the
• 48:26
  couch if you want? And The thing is, they are in a
• 48:30
  contract relation, literally a contract relationship, and it
• 48:34
  stipulates that she can do whatever the heck she wants, so
• 48:39
  she's paying for it, so. Yeah.
• 48:42
  So there was, there's a couple of things.
• 48:44
  This leads into a couple of questions, which is, one,
• 48:48
  thoughts on the sex scenes. 2 Was it gratuitous?
• 48:52
  Which the overwhelming sense that I got online was yes.
• 48:55
  People thought that all the sex scenes, especially with her,
• 48:58
  were gratuitous. The ex.
• 49:00
  And does it perpetuate the idea that all people with sexual
• 49:04
  desire are evil because she is so unhinged?
• 49:10
  OK, so again, I watched this after it aired, after everybody
• 49:15
  had been talking about it, right?
• 49:17
  So the way that people reacted about these sex scenes, I
• 49:22
  thought one, I thought it was a completely different person
• 49:24
  having sex scenes. I didn't understand.
• 49:27
  I because like the ones that I read did not name a character in
• 49:31
  in name. They just were like the sex
• 49:33
  scenes are over the top or whatever.
• 49:35
  So I was assuming it was the leads.
• 49:37
  I was assuming it was Gong Yu and his relationship.
• 49:43
  So I was very surprised when it was actually her.
• 49:48
  And again, I think it fit her character really well.
• 49:52
  Like, I didn't think it was over the top.
• 49:54
  I think it was very much along with what her character was.
• 49:58
  I mean, she knew she had this IUD in her.
• 50:03
  She did not want to get pregnant again.
• 50:05
  She was like, I'm paying for this dude to be my husband, this
• 50:09
  nice, younger, very fit, good looking guy.
• 50:13
  I'm going to have fun. I'm going to control him and
• 50:17
  have a good time and use him. And she definitely used him
• 50:23
  because I think there came a point in her relationship with
• 50:27
  him where she was not satisfied by what she was trying to get
• 50:32
  out of her ex-husband. So she went and had sex with him
• 50:37
  to have some sort of control in her life because if she didn't
• 50:41
  have her current husband, her life would fall apart.
• 50:45
  I did not think it was over the top.
• 50:48
  I did not think it was like came out of nowhere.
• 50:50
  Like, yeah, it was a little surprising because it's a like
• 50:54
  you walk in and you think it's AK drama and then they have
• 50:57
  that. But it's not like I was
• 50:59
  expecting. I also was expecting with giving
• 51:02
  people's reactions that it wouldn't be the woman that was
• 51:04
  having a full frontal scene. I assumed it was the men, which
• 51:09
  you normally don't even see in American television most of the
• 51:13
  time. So I assumed I was fully
• 51:16
  expecting to see male genitalia in this show.
• 51:20
  And I didn't see anything. Like when she went into the
• 51:23
  locker room to look at her husband.
• 51:25
  I was like, oh, OK, this is the scene that you're going to see
• 51:28
  the male genitalia. No, not at all.
• 51:30
  So no, I did not. I disagreed with most of what
• 51:34
  people said. Also their reaction.
• 51:36
  I assumed there was going to be a lot more sex scenes.
• 51:39
  Yeah, there wasn't. That bad 'cause there's really
• 51:40
  one, there's like one sex scenes, Yeah.
• 51:43
  So yeah. I thought the same thing.
• 51:46
  I've honestly, personally, I just kind of went, I don't know,
• 51:50
  maybe I'm just desensitized or maybe I just thought it was
• 51:55
  fitting. When they cut to it, I didn't
• 51:57
  even blink. I didn't even bat an eye.
• 52:00
  I was like, this is this fits. And we kept going.
• 52:03
  Then it was the next couple of nights that I looked online and
• 52:06
  I was like, oh shit, people have not seen ass before.
• 52:10
  People don't know how to act. And it was incredible.
• 52:15
  The viral videos that were being shared about this stupid ass sex
• 52:21
  scene that I thought was nothing to write home about.
• 52:26
  I don't know. I don't know.
• 52:28
  Again, maybe this show benefits from an older audience and the
• 52:32
  youngins just haven't been here long enough to see some of this
• 52:35
  in AK drama or just. I mean, I was shocked.
• 52:40
  I was shocked that people were clutching pearls over this.
• 52:44
  It was to me, like you both said, it fitted her character.
• 52:48
  It's just a woman taking her pleasure how she wants it.
• 52:52
  I mean, and it fits with her character and her control.
• 52:56
  And also it kind of adds another layer to because then later on,
• 53:01
  we do have a sex scene between, you know, our main couple.
• 53:06
  And you can kind of see the differences of, you know, what
• 53:10
  they're building and the type of relationships in those scenes.
• 53:14
  And you know, you can directly compare them and say this is,
• 53:20
  you know what a healthier at that point.
• 53:24
  It's not quite healthy yet, but you know what I mean?
• 53:26
  They're working on it. They care for each other.
• 53:28
  They're working on a situation as directly opposed to the
• 53:33
  ex-wife that feels like she's using her current husband for
• 53:39
  her needs and to fulfil whatever black hole she has in her soul,
• 53:43
  so to speak. So it didn't bother me.
• 53:47
  It didn't. Didn't bother me.
• 53:48
  And bother me, yeah. I thought people were going to
• 53:51
  talk more about the fact that this show has a weird neutral
• 53:57
  perspective on sex work because these contracts.
• 54:03
  Absolutely, Absolutely. Are low key sex work and I was
• 54:08
  like, oh, they're prostituting themselves in in this marriage,
• 54:11
  in the context of this marriage and just slapping the label
• 54:15
  marriage on it. Make it better, make it all OK
• 54:19
  or you know what what is is it condemning it?
• 54:23
  Is it celebrating it? No, the show is very neutral on
• 54:26
  it. So I thought people were going
• 54:29
  to talk about that more than hey, they're bumping and
• 54:32
  grinding. Fuck yeah, they are like that's
• 54:36
  the whole thing. Let's move past it.
• 54:38
  But also, I wonder if they could have just said no, if that makes
• 54:44
  sense, because that would make the difference.
• 54:46
  Because this freaking manual that everybody and their mother
• 54:50
  keeps mentioning never shows up. So we don't know what the rules
• 54:54
  are for these freaking marriages, right?
• 54:58
  Because Angie does say, I think they do have a conversation and
• 55:02
  our main couple and they do have a conversation about, you know,
• 55:06
  sex and whatnot. And I think she says if we're
• 55:09
  both wanting it or something along those lines.
• 55:12
  Guys, I watch this. That's.
• 55:14
  Basically what Yeah, that's basically what she did say.
• 55:17
  And it was the same with like if they ever wanted a divorce, they
• 55:20
  both have would have would need to say yes, I want this divorce.
• 55:25
  So yes, you are correct. There is this conversation about
• 55:29
  consent because if she feels uncomfortable or she doesn't
• 55:32
  want to but they won't, they don't.
• 55:35
  So I think for the ex-wife it's a little bit different because
• 55:39
  the guy for some reason, goodness.
• 55:41
  Oh, he's into her. He wants to jump her bumps.
• 55:43
  He's. Into her.
• 55:44
  So I think that's why the thought of almost prostitution
• 55:50
  didn't even cross my mind in a way, because there was kind of
• 55:54
  like for our main couple, there was a clear conversation had
• 55:57
  about it and there was consent and whatnot.
• 56:01
  I'm not saying that in prostitution there isn't
• 56:03
  consent, but you know what I mean?
• 56:05
  Like that with the ex-wife as well.
• 56:09
  The man wanted to jump her bones, like you said.
• 56:13
  So right, right. They were all just consenting
• 56:16
  adults. I'd like what what do you want?
• 56:20
  There was I, I don't know what else to say.
• 56:23
  I think the other thing a lot of people had problems with though,
• 56:26
  which I also liked, like one of the things that we said, I am
• 56:31
  switching gears in this dress, so it's.
• 56:33
  Not no, it's OK, I'm not. I'm not going to be talking
• 56:36
  about the sex scenes anymore. I mean, might be, but like in
• 56:39
  the end of the year episode with Liliana, I said I like I wanted
• 56:43
  more dramas with Gray characters, with morally Gray,
• 56:46
  not black and white, that thing. I got the feeling a lot of
• 56:51
  people were not expecting everybody to be flawed in this,
• 56:56
  and I loved that. Part of this drama is just like
• 57:01
  everybody had trauma, everybody was flawed, Everybody had stuff
• 57:07
  that they were trying to work through.
• 57:10
  Whether they did add by the end or not, that's a different
• 57:13
  story. But like, I loved that part and
• 57:16
  I don't think people were expecting that at all.
• 57:20
  Yeah, for whom? You.
• 57:22
  I think people definitely had to rethink his character when you
• 57:26
  find out that he was like, yeah, kill my wife.
• 57:30
  Right, right. Save the baby.
• 57:32
  Yeah, but in I mean, I actually did not think that was I'm
• 57:37
  again, I mean, this is a there was a horrible situation to put
• 57:40
  him in. I would never want to have be in
• 57:44
  that situation, but let alone watching your own wife step in
• 57:48
  front of a car to get away from that situation.
• 57:52
  Like, I can't even. Yeah, I can't even imagine.
• 57:56
  So like, on one hand, I could, I sort of could understand that
• 57:59
  answer because he was probably pissed at her.
• 58:03
  He probably was like, I'm so happy that you're pregnant.
• 58:07
  I'm going to have this baby. I've always wanted to be a
• 58:10
  father. Always wanted a family.
• 58:12
  Be the opposite of what my family life was and you
• 58:16
  literally took that from me by your own selfish.
• 58:21
  And granted, yeah, they didn't communicate and he didn't know
• 58:24
  how horribly sad she was and whatever, but like, I can't
• 58:30
  really 100% blame him for the him saying that either because
• 58:33
  that's got to be trauma within himself within itself to see
• 58:39
  your wife intentionally walk out in the middle of the street to
• 58:44
  kill yourself and your baby. You also have to rethink Kung Yu
• 58:49
  when he's still living in the house.
• 58:52
  Yes, that too. That too.
• 58:54
  The entire fact that he's still in that house, no matter the
• 58:57
  fact that the ex-wife completely redid the house, remodeled it,
• 59:02
  whatever, He's still living in that house where so much shit
• 59:07
  went down with his father, with his mother.
• 59:10
  And I would be the first one to sell the shit out of the house
• 59:14
  and get the fuck out of Dodge. He's.
• 59:16
  Choosing to stay in that, choosing to.
• 59:19
  Stay there, stay in that trauma, wallow in there and not move on.
• 59:25
  And there's something very childish about Kong you and even
• 59:29
  about his profession that he doesn't even have like a grown
• 59:32
  up profession. He just like goes to work
• 59:34
  whenever he feels like it and he's this vague music producer.
• 59:38
  We never really see who he's producing.
• 59:41
  And he doesn't have any issues with money.
• 59:45
  He doesn't even care about money while his business partner in
• 59:49
  the music production business is struggling financially.
• 59:52
  Over and over we see that he's like, we're about to go under.
• 59:56
  He's telling his wife we can't do this, we can't do that.
• 59:58
  He's constantly thinking about financial troubles and Kong you
• 1:00:02
  in his own fucking world. So Kong you is so removed for
• 1:00:06
  he's so insulated in this trauma House of his and you have to
• 1:00:11
  think he's fucked in the head. He needs therapy just like
• 1:00:15
  everybody else, no matter how everybody has needs therapy.
• 1:00:20
  But Kong you has a lot to work through in this show, this
• 1:00:23
  character and what's her face to Angie, the female lead.
• 1:00:28
  Oh my God, boy, does she have stuff she has to work through as
• 1:00:31
  well? I feel like we haven't touched
• 1:00:32
  on her and her back story, but anything that's happened with
• 1:00:36
  her mom, I don't really quite understand.
• 1:00:39
  I wish we saw more of what happened there in the fallout
• 1:00:42
  with her and her mom and then living in her own trauma house.
• 1:00:47
  A lot of like pot calling the cattle black here because she is
• 1:00:52
  living when she's not on a job and in a marriage.
• 1:00:56
  She's living in her own trauma house.
• 1:00:58
  Keeping this apartment that her ex fiance abandoned and ghosted
• 1:01:03
  her keeping it just as he left it.
• 1:01:06
  Everything in place. The neighbor keeps putting fish
• 1:01:10
  back in the fish tank when they die.
• 1:01:13
  Like it is a pristine shrine to this dude and this whole thing
• 1:01:20
  of he's gay and was had this I think was it like an orgy video
• 1:01:25
  that came out just before their wedding.
• 1:01:27
  I don't even fucking know. It was this whole thing, this
• 1:01:30
  whole. Stink.
• 1:01:31
  He was bisexual. Like a bisexual.
• 1:01:35
  Yeah. Basically what happened was the
• 1:01:38
  stalker guy found out she was marrying him.
• 1:01:43
  He he, he revealed the photos to her mother.
• 1:01:48
  Her mother put it all online, which caused him to be outed
• 1:01:55
  basically to everybody in Korea. And he up and left and left in G
• 1:02:02
  to deal with the fallout. Yeah.
• 1:02:05
  That's a lot. Like, that's a lot to be living
• 1:02:08
  through and grieving because you can see that she is grieving
• 1:02:13
  that relationship and she really hasn't stopped grieving all
• 1:02:18
  these years. There is no closure for her.
• 1:02:21
  Yeah, I was going to say that. There's never been any closure
• 1:02:24
  for her until he comes back and they have that final
• 1:02:28
  conversation. I think that's when she shuts
• 1:02:32
  the door on that relationship, I think.
• 1:02:37
  Yeah, so then too, there's so much going on there.
• 1:02:40
  Of course, the ex-wife who is emotionally manhandling Kong Yu,
• 1:02:45
  who has this codependency on her, he has relied on her his
• 1:02:49
  whole life and she has manipulated him literally his
• 1:02:54
  whole life. I think they were childhood
• 1:02:55
  sweethearts. At least college sweethearts.
• 1:02:58
  Maybe not childhood, but college at least.
• 1:03:01
  It's just a really bizarre relationship.
• 1:03:05
  I think that he basically latched on to whoever was near
• 1:03:09
  and she was nearby and relished, you know, the power that she had
• 1:03:14
  over him. And that turned into a really
• 1:03:16
  toxic marriage. You know, she never wanted to be
• 1:03:20
  a family, and that's what Kong you wanted and needed.
• 1:03:24
  And she really imploded that one.
• 1:03:27
  The thing is, I was just going to say on Gongiu's character, it
• 1:03:32
  would have been actually interesting because he said he
• 1:03:36
  so wanted to be a dad, but I don't think he could have been a
• 1:03:40
  dad at that point. And there's like a much deeper
• 1:03:43
  conversation about that because he's not mentally stable.
• 1:03:48
  No, not at all. And to bring a child into that
• 1:03:52
  environment, it would have been catastrophic, I think.
• 1:03:57
  And he doesn't see that because obviously when once, if you're
• 1:04:02
  in it, you won't be able to see it.
• 1:04:05
  And I think that's the type of nuances that you get in this
• 1:04:08
  show that as an outsider, as somebody watching the show will
• 1:04:13
  be able to pick up on it. And some people may watch it and
• 1:04:17
  be like, but I can see it like why?
• 1:04:19
  Why? But obviously the characters are
• 1:04:21
  in it. They will not have that outside
• 1:04:24
  perspective that we are getting. So I think a lot of people might
• 1:04:29
  have forgotten that when they were watching this show for a
• 1:04:33
  bit. Yeah, and I mean, even even if
• 1:04:36
  he was in the good mindset to have a child and be a father,
• 1:04:41
  the wife definitely was not. So like it would have destroyed,
• 1:04:45
  it would have destroyed their marriage anyway.
• 1:04:49
  Because I don't think he, I mean, they were both selfish in
• 1:04:53
  their own way. I don't think he, I mean, I
• 1:04:55
  don't think, I know he was not thinking of his wife at all
• 1:05:00
  during those 910 months that she was pregnant.
• 1:05:03
  He was like, I need this child. I'm going to be the father.
• 1:05:08
  And then she didn't want the child.
• 1:05:11
  She probably would have just shunned the child and I.
• 1:05:13
  Think she was jealous of it? Yeah, definitely, definitely
• 1:05:16
  jealous of it and definitely did not like the fact that he was
• 1:05:21
  happy for the child and not necessarily happy when he was
• 1:05:26
  around her at all. That the source of his happiness
• 1:05:30
  was this. Child.
• 1:05:33
  Yeah. Instead of her.
• 1:05:35
  Right. Yeah, like even that's even the
• 1:05:38
  the situation she had when she almost had to have a
• 1:05:43
  hysterectomy. Oh yeah.
• 1:05:46
  And she was sad that she hadn't gotten to that point that they
• 1:05:51
  saved her uterus and saved everything.
• 1:05:53
  And she was like, it would have been so much easier if I had
• 1:05:57
  gotten this hysterectomy, like, because she did not want to get
• 1:06:01
  pregnant again, did not absolutely did not want to get
• 1:06:04
  pregnant again. That was very telling of her
• 1:06:08
  character. For sure, she should have just
• 1:06:11
  had it go on hormones the rest of her life.
• 1:06:14
  So let's talk about the stalker. You mentioned the stalker.
• 1:06:18
  I think this is a blight on the show.
• 1:06:21
  I do not care for the stalker. The stalker is pretty vague.
• 1:06:25
  We do not have a lot of info on the stalker.
• 1:06:30
  Utterly useless of a character I have like here in my notes.
• 1:06:34
  Stalker took an unhealthy obsession with her after she
• 1:06:36
  took a cooking class once. Do I have that right?
• 1:06:41
  Yeah, yeah. At first I thought he was an
• 1:06:44
  ex-husband of hers, like one of the people that she had
• 1:06:48
  marriages with. But no, it was just a random
• 1:06:51
  guy. Which I mean, to its credit,
• 1:06:55
  that's mostly how that happened. Like, not mostly, but that that
• 1:06:59
  is a common thing that you just randomly walk past somebody and
• 1:07:03
  all of a sudden it's a stalker. Or you take one class of theirs
• 1:07:06
  and all of a sudden it's a stalker.
• 1:07:07
  Whatever. But yeah, like he wasn't even
• 1:07:10
  like a main character in her life.
• 1:07:12
  It was just a random passing in a class that she took.
• 1:07:18
  Didn't he actually used to work for the company she worked at as
• 1:07:22
  like some type of security person?
• 1:07:25
  If I'm. That was, that was the ex.
• 1:07:27
  That was the husband of the ex. Wife, yeah, but I I think he was
• 1:07:32
  also because I know we had this question on the tea and so like
• 1:07:36
  when we did it maybe I'm misremembering I'll have to
• 1:07:40
  listen back, but either somebody messaged me this or afterwards
• 1:07:45
  because I had the same question about how they had met and I
• 1:07:49
  think somebody had said that she.
• 1:07:52
  Took a coping class. But he also worked at the same
• 1:07:57
  company that and that's where they saw each other for the
• 1:08:00
  first time was at this company. Tiebreaker.
• 1:08:04
  I know I, I think, I don't think he ever worked for the company.
• 1:08:10
  I think he worked for the. Company.
• 1:08:12
  I think he was just a passerby who became obsessed with her and
• 1:08:17
  then followed her everywhere and disrupted her and got into the
• 1:08:22
  company and tried to, I don't know, whatever he wanted to do
• 1:08:25
  in that lobby of that company when he killed the security
• 1:08:28
  guard. Now this is a very real fear for
• 1:08:33
  women is that you just get a stalker and it escalates and
• 1:08:38
  escalates. There's really nothing that the
• 1:08:40
  police can do. They won't take it seriously.
• 1:08:44
  They haven't done anything to you.
• 1:08:46
  They're just making you feel uncomfortable.
• 1:08:48
  And it becomes a problem when the woman loses her life.
• 1:08:53
  So Liliana, you are correct, but he didn't work for the company
• 1:08:58
  so apparently Google. I don't remember this, I thought
• 1:09:01
  it was a cooking class or something.
• 1:09:04
  Apparently the company hired him to be a self defensive
• 1:09:10
  instructor for the girls, for the men or the wives or
• 1:09:16
  whatever, and he essentially became obsessed with her through
• 1:09:20
  those self-defense classes. So we're technically both right?
• 1:09:25
  Yes, he was employed by the company but it was a
• 1:09:27
  self-defense contractor class so they didn't meet in a class and
• 1:09:33
  ironically he was hired by the company.
• 1:09:36
  I thought it was a. Cooking class.
• 1:09:38
  Because, because, because then when they talk about it with
• 1:09:42
  like his CEO, the CEO said it would look bad on the company if
• 1:09:48
  we had hired somebody who'd done this.
• 1:09:50
  So we took care of it by sending him to a psych ward quietly
• 1:09:55
  instead. So that's why I thought I
• 1:09:59
  remembered something along the lines that he had done something
• 1:10:02
  for the company. Well, no, it would look bad on
• 1:10:04
  the company because he entered the premises, killed an employee
• 1:10:09
  of the company, was stalking an employee of the company who was
• 1:10:13
  the female lead. And then if they went to the
• 1:10:16
  police, the police would be like, oh, OK, So asking a bunch
• 1:10:19
  of questions, what do you do? What does this company do?
• 1:10:22
  When on what day did he come by yada yada.
• 1:10:25
  And this whole subdivision of this company is under the table.
• 1:10:30
  This is. Illegal.
• 1:10:32
  Yeah, right. These.
• 1:10:33
  Contract marriages are illegal, so that's why they're like, we
• 1:10:36
  can't let this get out. We have to handle this quietly.
• 1:10:42
  Right. But yeah, you guys are both
• 1:10:44
  right. We're, we're both right
• 1:10:45
  essentially is yes, he did work for the company, but not in the
• 1:10:49
  capacity that we assumed he'd be working for the company.
• 1:10:53
  OK well I did appreciate that one-on-one he had with the
• 1:10:57
  ex-wife when he mocked her and imitated her.
• 1:11:02
  Oh, that was juicy. That was great.
• 1:11:04
  I think the actor who played him was phenomenal.
• 1:11:07
  Oh yeah, I had never, I had never seen him in a drama
• 1:11:10
  before. And if I I didn't remember him
• 1:11:13
  from a drama before. Yeah, I but I would say this
• 1:11:16
  storyline is a Horror Story in real life.
• 1:11:21
  So many stories of stalkers very much like this, and it just
• 1:11:25
  escalates and it always ends really badly.
• 1:11:27
  When Konyu invites him into the house, I was like, oh.
• 1:11:33
  I was like, what the hell are you doing?
• 1:11:35
  What the fuck? Yeah, that was a wild choice on
• 1:11:38
  his part. I was like, what are you doing?
• 1:11:41
  You are literally bringing his stalker into her inner sanctum.
• 1:11:45
  What are you doing? What are you doing?
• 1:11:48
  Also, by the way, the actor who played her contract marriage
• 1:11:52
  husband, The actor who played the husband, the contract
• 1:11:56
  husband, this is his first acting role.
• 1:11:58
  Oh, oh, for the ex-wife. For the ex-wife, yes.
• 1:12:02
  OK. This is his first acting role.
• 1:12:05
  Oh. My God, apparently he was on a
• 1:12:10
  dating show. Like a reality dating show.
• 1:12:14
  Yeah, he fine the but yeah, so Kong Yu again, that character
• 1:12:19
  just allowing the stalker into the house and being like pretty
• 1:12:24
  please stop stalking my wife. Yeah, yeah, where's a shotgun?
• 1:12:30
  Like get off my property that I don't understand that at all.
• 1:12:34
  It was a very childish move. Again, so sheltered and no St.
• 1:12:40
  smarts at all from Kong. Yu's character doesn't
• 1:12:44
  understand the threat to his wife, you know in G at all.
• 1:12:50
  Oh God. I just didn't understand the
• 1:12:53
  stalker and how it just. That was the tension of the show
• 1:13:00
  that I couldn't get behind. I agree.
• 1:13:04
  Yeah, I it it wasn't needed and I wasn't.
• 1:13:08
  Needed. They could have gone the route
• 1:13:11
  of beefing up NM Corporation to be more sinister.
• 1:13:15
  That's what I wanted them to do. I wanted to know more about the
• 1:13:19
  company. I mean, you could do like
• 1:13:21
  multiple seasons of this show with different couples and
• 1:13:25
  different thing. Like there's a lot you could do
• 1:13:26
  with that. You could do multiple seasons.
• 1:13:29
  There's like a whole universe you could do with this company
• 1:13:33
  of like different characters, different stories, how they
• 1:13:36
  started it in the first place. Like the director is very
• 1:13:39
  mysterious in general of like, why did she start this company
• 1:13:43
  in the 1st place when she like she had that one liner in like
• 1:13:46
  the last episode of oh, in my marriage in the first two or
• 1:13:49
  three years. I wanted to kill him too.
• 1:13:53
  I was like, OK, well, did you end up killing him?
• 1:13:55
  Like what's going on there? Prequel But yeah, I think I
• 1:14:01
  think it was like, as you said, just I think it was there to add
• 1:14:05
  tension, but there was so much tension with the ex-wife and how
• 1:14:10
  crazy she was and even the tension with her contract
• 1:14:14
  husband herself. Like, one of my favorite scenes
• 1:14:18
  is when they were all together having that dinner, and there
• 1:14:22
  was so much tension between the four of them trying to size each
• 1:14:27
  other up and, like, figure out what was going on.
• 1:14:31
  That is what was enjoyable about this drama.
• 1:14:36
  And yeah, the stalker murder part wasn't really needed.
• 1:14:41
  Not at all. Talking of scenes that I really
• 1:14:43
  liked, the kiss scene between our couple calling you is one of
• 1:14:47
  the best kissers bar none. And the scene where his father
• 1:14:54
  dies and he has to attend the funeral, presumably by himself,
• 1:15:00
  and the ex-wife shows up. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:05
  I have, I, I have like literally the quote from that scene
• 1:15:10
  because I love this so much. Let me find it.
• 1:15:15
  Let me go through it. Caitlin, you go ahead and sit
• 1:15:17
  like, oh, episode 5, episode 50, basically she comes back.
• 1:15:24
  So basically they have this interaction between a female
• 1:15:28
  lead and the ex-wife in the bathroom where she's like, I'm
• 1:15:32
  going to take over now. I was going to swear, but you
• 1:15:35
  know, basically go walking. Swear it's fine.
• 1:15:39
  And then she comes back and she sits down next to our male lead
• 1:15:45
  and she says to him, Miss Ayon is gone, I'll accompany you now.
• 1:15:50
  And he says to her, what about the manual?
• 1:15:53
  And she says, I think I'll take today off because basically what
• 1:15:58
  they had said about that. Then she gives him like her hand
• 1:16:02
  and holds his hand for comfort and whatnot.
• 1:16:04
  What she had say was it isn't in the manual or something along
• 1:16:08
  those lines for her not attending, you know, the funeral
• 1:16:12
  and playing his wife. So that's what she says in that
• 1:16:16
  scene. But even like just a
• 1:16:18
  conversation between those, it's just like so simple.
• 1:16:22
  All she says is I'll accompany you now.
• 1:16:24
  Like the other one's gone. I'm here now, I'll support you.
• 1:16:28
  And she just gives him his hand. I like her hand for comfort.
• 1:16:32
  And it's such a direct comparison to his ex-wife when
• 1:16:36
  she was standing there and being like poking at him and like
• 1:16:41
  dragging him and whatnot. And performative.
• 1:16:44
  Exactly, exactly. And our female lead comes in and
• 1:16:47
  she doesn't even care for the people that are around.
• 1:16:50
  She is like, is there for him, solely focused on him.
• 1:16:53
  So yeah, I really like that scene as well.
• 1:16:56
  Wonderful scene. The scene so their face off in
• 1:16:59
  the bathroom is great and also their face off in like the
• 1:17:02
  construction site. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:05
  They start like throwing hands. Oh, love that part.
• 1:17:09
  Love that part and any interaction between them is so
• 1:17:13
  biting. I love it.
• 1:17:16
  The scene of I think it's the scene where Angie finds the
• 1:17:23
  camera. She has this whole like she says
• 1:17:27
  to the ex-wife, don't you know his father put a camera in that
• 1:17:32
  chandelier to spy on his mom and you're doing the same thing and
• 1:17:35
  yada yada. I just love how Angie handles it
• 1:17:39
  because I feel like most people would tell Kong Yu's character
• 1:17:44
  right away, but she doesn't. Why do you think she doesn't
• 1:17:49
  tell him? I think like she said in the
• 1:17:52
  drama, like she didn't know how to and I really think I think
• 1:17:56
  that was why like, how do you tell somebody who knows?
• 1:18:00
  And I I'm sort of speaking from personal experience on this is
• 1:18:05
  like you tell somebody who you have been married to who you
• 1:18:09
  have built this life with, you think you're going to end up
• 1:18:13
  together forever and you tell them the darkest secrets and the
• 1:18:18
  things that like the lines they cannot cross in their
• 1:18:22
  relationship. Like everybody has boundaries.
• 1:18:24
  Everybody has that line that if they cross, it is done.
• 1:18:29
  And the cameras was gong use line.
• 1:18:32
  He told her this in and became vulnerable and was like, this is
• 1:18:37
  my trauma. This is what happened to me in
• 1:18:41
  this house. And she used that against him
• 1:18:44
  and she use that for her extremely selfish ways of
• 1:18:49
  controlling him because she realized she was losing that
• 1:18:54
  control. And that like, I don't know how
• 1:18:58
  you tell somebody that, like how you reveal that this line that
• 1:19:04
  you had this boundary that you had and trusted that boundary to
• 1:19:09
  somebody else who you thought was going to be your forever
• 1:19:13
  partner. I found out they crossed that
• 1:19:16
  boundary and they basically crossed the line.
• 1:19:19
  That was your line. You don't cross.
• 1:19:22
  And I would find that. I mean, for me, I don't know.
• 1:19:27
  I would be it. Would be.
• 1:19:29
  Very difficult for me to tell somebody that, but at the same
• 1:19:33
  time, if I was that person and it.
• 1:19:37
  It's so like, invasive and so voyeuristic, and I had no idea
• 1:19:43
  that was happening. And then the person who's living
• 1:19:45
  with me knows. I actually was expecting Gong Yu
• 1:19:49
  to hate her after finding that out.
• 1:19:52
  Which was this? Yeah.
• 1:19:54
  Angie. And I was surprised by his
• 1:19:57
  reaction because he knew she knew eventually.
• 1:20:02
  So I could kind of understand, I could definitely understand why
• 1:20:05
  she did not know how to tell him because how do you tell somebody
• 1:20:09
  that? But on the other hand, it's like
• 1:20:12
  if I was gong you, I would want to know that.
• 1:20:14
  That's just like, it's really complicated, so complicated and.
• 1:20:20
  I do think what helps is that footage that he saw of Ng
• 1:20:25
  crying, right? At the table, yeah.
• 1:20:29
  That I think did wonders for his softened reaction toward Angie,
• 1:20:34
  if there was ever going to be a blowout reaction toward her,
• 1:20:38
  because you could see that she is devastated for him and
• 1:20:44
  saddened by the situation and doesn't know what to do, how to
• 1:20:47
  handle it, how to tell him. So her crying there and and
• 1:20:51
  sobbing at the kitchen table I think was the perfect thing for
• 1:20:56
  him to see right when he saw the cameras.
• 1:21:00
  Yeah, that was horrible. That was horrendous.
• 1:21:03
  And my question was, did who you tell that to his ex-wife as well
• 1:21:08
  about the camera situation? Because he definitely said that
• 1:21:10
  to Ng. Oh, she definitely knew.
• 1:21:12
  She. She definitely.
• 1:21:14
  Knew she definitely knew about his whole thing with that camera
• 1:21:17
  stuff because Angie, even Angie was like, how could you do that
• 1:21:21
  to him? She knew she knew though they
• 1:21:23
  were there. She knew that whole story and
• 1:21:26
  that whole background definitely.
• 1:21:28
  And she stabbed him in the heart with.
• 1:21:30
  It did it anyway. Betrayed him.
• 1:21:31
  Yeah, yeah. For her own like she just could
• 1:21:35
  not fathom the idea that she would have to live apart from
• 1:21:40
  him for a year and not be able to control.
• 1:21:42
  Him and not be. Able and not know what was going
• 1:21:45
  on in that house. Yeah.
• 1:21:47
  Especially because she knew they both recognized her from that
• 1:21:52
  graduation scene. They both did.
• 1:21:55
  And they both knew. Like, she specifically chose her
• 1:21:58
  for that reason. She was trying to control even
• 1:22:02
  them together. So let's switch gears to the
• 1:22:05
  mystery thriller aspect and the police procedural that was at
• 1:22:11
  the front and end of every episode.
• 1:22:15
  There was a mystery of like, who got killed?
• 1:22:17
  Was it Indie? Was it this person?
• 1:22:19
  Was it the stalker who got murdered halfway through the
• 1:22:24
  show? Halfway through the show, they
• 1:22:26
  tell you it's the stalker. And then you're like, OK, so I'm
• 1:22:30
  not upset. Like I don't even care who did
• 1:22:32
  it, it just I thought that was another blight on the show.
• 1:22:36
  I did not give a shit about the police procedural.
• 1:22:39
  It was very when the Camellia blooms to me.
• 1:22:44
  Caitlin's laughing. So did you guys have thoughts
• 1:22:46
  about it? I was just going to say I didn't
• 1:22:49
  care for it. I didn't think it added anything
• 1:22:52
  to the show, but also I think the constant switch back and
• 1:22:57
  forth was a bit jarring at times and it wasn't obvious that you
• 1:23:04
  were what timeline you were. Following I would agree.
• 1:23:08
  So I think that made it very confusing.
• 1:23:12
  They could have done it. I don't know gradiate it like
• 1:23:15
  with a different colored. I don't know, they could have
• 1:23:18
  done something. They could have changed the
• 1:23:20
  cinematography or the color. Green, yeah, it's different to
• 1:23:22
  me. For sure what you were looking
• 1:23:24
  at. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:23:26
  So for the first couple of episodes, you're kind of like
• 1:23:29
  what is happening, and then you kind of have to figure out that
• 1:23:31
  everything that is cop related is in the future and everything
• 1:23:35
  else is in the past. But I just felt like that was
• 1:23:39
  jarring and I didn't think it was needed.
• 1:23:41
  I don't think the stalker storyline was needed at all.
• 1:23:45
  There was plenty for the show to like sink their teeth into or
• 1:23:49
  without having all of that. And again, I couldn't care less
• 1:23:53
  that the stalker died. I didn't think, you know, I
• 1:23:59
  thought it was a bit ridiculous having the ex wife's current
• 1:24:03
  husband kill him. I was like, what is he like,
• 1:24:06
  why? I don't know.
• 1:24:08
  This doesn't feel like why, why is he even doing that?
• 1:24:13
  I didn't quite. For me personally, I didn't
• 1:24:15
  think his reasons were strong enough to warrant that response
• 1:24:23
  in a way because from what I gather he didn't want him to
• 1:24:27
  released the documents because that would bring the company
• 1:24:30
  down and he didn't want his fake marriage to end or something
• 1:24:34
  along those lines. That's kind of like what I.
• 1:24:36
  It was also revenge. It was revenge because he
• 1:24:39
  killed. He was a keeper.
• 1:24:41
  He was a security guard before he became a husband.
• 1:24:44
  So he killed his colleague. His coworker was killed in front
• 1:24:48
  of him in the lobby. So he killed the serial killer,
• 1:24:52
  the stalker guy to get revenge for his Co worker?
• 1:24:56
  Yeah, that husband. That fine fine husband had
• 1:25:00
  trauma of his own. Yeah, I don't think you're
• 1:25:03
  wrong, Liliana. I think that also was an aspect
• 1:25:06
  that he didn't want the marriage to end, so getting rid of the
• 1:25:10
  stalker would preemptively maybe not Ngongyu's marriage as well
• 1:25:15
  as his own marriage. So I think you aren't wrong in
• 1:25:18
  your reasoning too. But I actually was surprised by
• 1:25:22
  that. I wasn't expecting him to be the
• 1:25:25
  person who did it at all. So I, because it was so
• 1:25:29
  unpredictable, because he never really crossed my mind, I didn't
• 1:25:33
  expect him to be a security guard or a keeper of the
• 1:25:38
  company. I always assumed he was just the
• 1:25:40
  husband, whatever. So that was surprising.
• 1:25:44
  But then the also the other thing that, and this was like my
• 1:25:47
  own imagination, which I wish they kind of did, but they
• 1:25:50
  didn't. When she goes into the field to
• 1:25:53
  get this trunk right and to open this trunk and she realized she
• 1:25:57
  couldn't open it because it's the wrong trunk.
• 1:26:00
  Yeah. Before they, and this was before
• 1:26:03
  they revealed what was actually in the trunk.
• 1:26:06
  Right. I immediately was like OK who in
• 1:26:09
  the house also works for this for this company who also is a
• 1:26:13
  contract wifer, her husband. I was like is gong you also a
• 1:26:18
  contract husband? Like what is going on?
• 1:26:21
  Or was the ex-wife also a contract wife?
• 1:26:24
  What is going on? Of course that didn't happen,
• 1:26:27
  but that was where my mind went when the second trunk was
• 1:26:31
  because like, what are the odds that the same trunk exists twice
• 1:26:36
  in the house? Granted, she found it when she
• 1:26:39
  was first unpacking in episode 1, but still it's.
• 1:26:42
  Because she made it, the ex-wife made it so because the ex-wife.
• 1:26:48
  So there's a flashback that Angie is buying that specific
• 1:26:53
  trunk and gong, you and the ex-wife are in the shop and she
• 1:26:58
  says I want that trunk as well. So she made it that way because.
• 1:27:04
  She's crazy. Right, right, right.
• 1:27:07
  I forgot. I forgot about that scene.
• 1:27:08
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:27:11
  What did you think? I was think of what was inside
• 1:27:13
  the trunk. That was the other bit of this
• 1:27:15
  mystery was what could possibly be inside this trunk.
• 1:27:20
  We find out that it's baby clothes and baby paraphernalia
• 1:27:25
  from the child that they lost for what the Kong Yu and his
• 1:27:29
  ex-wife lost. What did you guys think of that
• 1:27:33
  being the, I guess that twist or whatever?
• 1:27:36
  So like the wife cried over it, which I don't think she was
• 1:27:41
  mourning the kid. Like, I don't I really do not
• 1:27:44
  think she wanted this baby and I don't think she had any
• 1:27:48
  connection to it. I think the crying when she
• 1:27:52
  actually did open it was basically her.
• 1:27:56
  And I don't know if it's mourning the marriage, but like
• 1:28:00
  sort of accepting the fact that she's never going to have gong
• 1:28:05
  you. Like she's never going to be
• 1:28:08
  with Gong you just because like I don't if she was crying over
• 1:28:12
  the baby, I that would not make sense to me because like her
• 1:28:16
  whole character of this drama up to that point gave no inkling
• 1:28:21
  that she cared for having this baby at all and didn't want to
• 1:28:24
  get pregnant and didn't want this child at all.
• 1:28:27
  So to her all of a sudden try over baby clothes and mourn this
• 1:28:31
  child. Who put the baby not making
• 1:28:33
  sense to me? Who bought the baby clothes?
• 1:28:36
  I want to say it was gong you like.
• 1:28:38
  I want to say it was either them two together or CI.
• 1:28:44
  Think it was her. Yeah.
• 1:28:46
  Because it's so. You think it was Gong you?
• 1:28:50
  Or like them together. I didn't.
• 1:28:52
  Yeah. I didn't really say.
• 1:28:53
  I didn't think it was her, no. But The thing is, Gong Yu would
• 1:28:58
  have wanted, I think from my read of his character, he would
• 1:29:02
  have wanted no reminders of that baby.
• 1:29:05
  I don't think he would have wanted anything around.
• 1:29:08
  Whereas for her. And even if he had stored, why
• 1:29:12
  would he have stored it inside her trunk?
• 1:29:15
  It doesn't necessarily make sense.
• 1:29:18
  So to me, what makes more sense is that she stored those clothes
• 1:29:23
  away and she put them in her own trunk.
• 1:29:27
  Like she's surprisedly the only one with the combination to open
• 1:29:30
  that thing up. So she would have put them away,
• 1:29:34
  I think. It's her.
• 1:29:35
  I agree with Liliana. I think that deep down she
• 1:29:42
  doesn't necessarily want the baby.
• 1:29:43
  I'm not saying she wants the baby.
• 1:29:45
  I'm thinking she might be mourning the life she should
• 1:29:49
  have had even if that baby had come.
• 1:29:52
  I don't know. That might be a little inkling
• 1:29:56
  in her towards that baby. I don't know.
• 1:29:59
  But I think there is some emotion there from her for that.
• 1:30:07
  I. Think so too.
• 1:30:07
  Why was she crying after she was having the miscarriage before
• 1:30:11
  she jumped in front of the car in the street?
• 1:30:15
  I think that's there's a contradictory aspect to her that
• 1:30:20
  is hard to pin down. And I think that it has to do
• 1:30:25
  with her deepest desire, which is maybe she did want the baby
• 1:30:30
  secretly. See, I didn't even see her
• 1:30:33
  crying during the miscarriage. I didn't see her crying for the
• 1:30:37
  kid, I saw her crying for the fact that Dong you would blame
• 1:30:42
  her if she had the miscarriage because he was so happy of
• 1:30:46
  having this child. I don't think we're wrong.
• 1:30:49
  I don't think any of us are wrong.
• 1:30:52
  Right. I think it's a confluence of
• 1:30:54
  things and the surprise of seeing the baby clothes in her
• 1:31:00
  trunk, which is only she has the combination for she bought it.
• 1:31:05
  It really is symbolic, right? It's a metaphor for we all have
• 1:31:08
  trunks, right? That only we have the
• 1:31:11
  combinations for. And we lug it around from place
• 1:31:15
  to place and nobody knows what's inside.
• 1:31:17
  And for her, it was this deep, deep desire, maybe connection to
• 1:31:26
  wanting the baby or or wanting to be try it out, be a mom,
• 1:31:31
  something that maybe it's just contradictory to her nature,
• 1:31:34
  right? Yeah, I think two things can be
• 1:31:37
  true at the same time. I think she can feel like she
• 1:31:41
  wants the baby and she can also feel like she doesn't want the
• 1:31:44
  baby. I think those two things can
• 1:31:47
  coexist at the same time. 1 does not evaluate the other and I
• 1:31:51
  think can hate. The baby because of how it
• 1:31:55
  changed her relationship. Exactly.
• 1:31:57
  Exactly, Yeah. And even hate herself because
• 1:32:01
  deep down she may want this baby, so and it may go against
• 1:32:06
  everything that she is as a character.
• 1:32:09
  So I think like I said, I just think two things could be true
• 1:32:13
  at the same time. So I think she might not want
• 1:32:17
  the baby and in her mind thinking I've never wanted a
• 1:32:21
  kid, I don't want it. But then deep down.
• 1:32:23
  The idea of. Wanting it, Yeah.
• 1:32:25
  The idea of the baby and then hating herself for wanting that
• 1:32:30
  baby. So.
• 1:32:32
  So yeah. I think we've come to the same
• 1:32:35
  conclusion, Liliana. And then for Angie, you know, at
• 1:32:40
  the end of the show, she had, she like, gets rid of the trunk.
• 1:32:43
  She sells the trunk. It's empty.
• 1:32:45
  And that's also a pretty powerful message as well, where
• 1:32:48
  she's like, I have no secrets, There's nothing to hide.
• 1:32:51
  I'm not going to carry around this baggage anymore.
• 1:32:53
  This emotional. Yeah, she's letting go.
• 1:32:57
  So I found that really great. The ending.
• 1:33:00
  Do you want to run through the ending really fast?
• 1:33:03
  I really liked the scene of her going to his house for the final
• 1:33:08
  time and he's selling the house and he just picks up a mallet
• 1:33:13
  and goes to town. And it's like he is literally
• 1:33:16
  breaking walls, figuratively and, you know, directly breaking
• 1:33:21
  walls. And I really liked that imagery
• 1:33:24
  and the fact that he's breaking the walls that have kept him
• 1:33:28
  shackled to this house and, you know, breaking away from them.
• 1:33:33
  So I loved that last little scene and normally I hate the
• 1:33:41
  whole separation in the last episode type of situation.
• 1:33:44
  Oh, they needed it. Exactly.
• 1:33:47
  This is one of the very, very, very few places where I'm like,
• 1:33:53
  this is exactly what they needed because together they started
• 1:33:56
  the journey. But they need to work on
• 1:33:58
  themselves by themselves. They need to work on that trauma
• 1:34:02
  and be happy with themselves as people to then be able to give
• 1:34:06
  themselves to a relationship. And I, you know, they need to
• 1:34:11
  walk away from the fact that they're almost like trauma
• 1:34:15
  bonded because they kind of like to dumped all of their trauma on
• 1:34:18
  each other for a little bit. So I really liked the ending.
• 1:34:23
  I liked the fact that they walked away and with no, what's
• 1:34:28
  the word with no plan. They just said if we meet again,
• 1:34:32
  if we meet three times. They left it in a serendipitous
• 1:34:36
  place, which is I. Think where people.
• 1:34:38
  But that's K drama. See.
• 1:34:41
  I think that's Western as well. That's very Western as well,
• 1:34:44
  sorry. It is.
• 1:34:46
  Have you seen a ROM com in the West?
• 1:34:48
  And I think, and I think it works really well for them as
• 1:34:51
  characters. I really like that montage of
• 1:34:54
  them just him cooking for himself, them getting pets for
• 1:34:57
  each other. Like, you know, but they're.
• 1:34:59
  Still like their own person. Because.
• 1:35:02
  She likes dogs, he likes cats. And they have some
• 1:35:04
  commonalities. They both dislike tomatoes in
• 1:35:07
  their cheeseburgers. And, you know, it's very
• 1:35:11
  realistic. You know, these are some things
• 1:35:14
  that real grown-ups have to contend with as they grow and
• 1:35:19
  change. It's like, yeah, I kind of
• 1:35:21
  figured they're like, I don't really like dogs.
• 1:35:24
  I like cats. Cats are chill.
• 1:35:25
  And Kong you. I think he's a cat guy as well
• 1:35:27
  in real life. So it's that it's sort of tracks
• 1:35:31
  her as well, like her just finding her own way and getting
• 1:35:36
  out of that bunk. And just getting out of that
• 1:35:38
  house because she had not lived in her own home for a very, very
• 1:35:44
  long time. She either lived at the house
• 1:35:47
  that was meant to be her married house or at, you know, fake
• 1:35:52
  husband's houses. So for her to have her own space
• 1:35:57
  and live in her own space. I just, I was really happy with
• 1:36:01
  like the ending overall. I really liked like them getting
• 1:36:04
  distance and perspective and kind of leaving it up to chance.
• 1:36:09
  If they meet, they meet, you know, and it's an open ending.
• 1:36:13
  But I think that's reminiscent of life itself.
• 1:36:17
  Because. What is life but an open ending?
• 1:36:20
  So yeah, you know. I liked it.
• 1:36:23
  I thought it was really cute and romantic.
• 1:36:25
  Kong You smile at the end. I wanted to read something from
• 1:36:30
  a follower who really, really liked the show and they said
• 1:36:33
  this. I loved that it felt like Pulp
• 1:36:35
  Fiction. Everything was connected but not
• 1:36:38
  in the way I thought. I loved that Kong You was able
• 1:36:41
  to find love and realize the abuse his ex was doing that he
• 1:36:45
  wanted to love again. Female lead is amazing.
• 1:36:48
  Loved her and why her and she played understated bitch with
• 1:36:51
  class and ES. I agree.
• 1:36:54
  I loved that the people I thought were horrible were and
• 1:36:57
  that everyone had their own misery to contend with.
• 1:37:01
  I love how Kong Yu's character just came out and said it.
• 1:37:03
  I want to sleep with you. You should know that.
• 1:37:06
  Then when he said I think I could be someone who can't live
• 1:37:09
  without you. He was just so raw and honest
• 1:37:11
  with it, and I love that so much.
• 1:37:15
  I just thought I'd read verbatim what they messaged me.
• 1:37:18
  I agree completely. I thought it was a raw and
• 1:37:22
  honest take at very flawed individuals.
• 1:37:26
  It was a noir. And for those who don't know
• 1:37:28
  what a noir is, it's a style of filmmaking known for its dark
• 1:37:31
  and cynical, pessimistic themes. And that's what this show is.
• 1:37:35
  The K drama in it is that it ends on a bit of a positive
• 1:37:39
  note. It ends on like an uptick.
• 1:37:42
  That's the K drama in it, that's the romance in it.
• 1:37:45
  I thought it was really thought provoking, probing and I don't
• 1:37:52
  think it's for everybody, unfortunately.
• 1:37:55
  Do you guys have any last words? One thing I noticed watching
• 1:37:58
  this was the red and blue comparison, which is obviously
• 1:38:04
  from the Matrix, like red pill, blue pill.
• 1:38:08
  And that was A constant theme through this entire up until the
• 1:38:13
  last scene because Gongu was wearing red pants and she was
• 1:38:17
  wearing blue pants. So was he going to take the
• 1:38:20
  show? Was she going to take the blue
• 1:38:22
  pill again and go back into the illusion of them getting
• 1:38:26
  married? I forgot to say that this show
• 1:38:30
  had some goblin tie insurance. Like they go to the movie
• 1:38:34
  theater and watch a scary movie and Kong U's character is a
• 1:38:38
  scaredy cat. That's the same as Goblin.
• 1:38:42
  There's a scene just like that in Goblin, just a little more
• 1:38:44
  played for comedic effect. And then she, the female lead,
• 1:38:48
  wears a bright red scarf just like the female lead in Goblin.
• 1:38:55
  And I don't think that's a coincidence.
• 1:38:57
  None of that to me. Is, I don't think, no, I don't
• 1:39:00
  think that was a coincidence either.
• 1:39:03
  Yeah. It reminded me when you said the
• 1:39:05
  blue pill and red pill. Yeah.
• 1:39:08
  So like if people don't know what that like what that whole
• 1:39:12
  Matrix thing is, basically it's the famous scene where Morpheus
• 1:39:17
  hands out the red or blue pill and Neo has to make a decision
• 1:39:23
  on if he's what he's going to take.
• 1:39:25
  And like the blue pill is, he's going to continue in the Matrix
• 1:39:29
  and live out the life that he had been living.
• 1:39:32
  And then the red pill knocks him into reality and takes him out
• 1:39:37
  of the illusion. So that's essentially what it's
• 1:39:41
  doing. Like with the colors in this
• 1:39:43
  drama, a common blue, we see the ex-wife, the horrible ex-wife
• 1:39:48
  wearing a blue necklace the entire show.
• 1:39:51
  He's taking blue medication. Gongu's character, most of the
• 1:39:56
  clothing he's wearing when it comes to being in that house is
• 1:39:59
  a shade of blue or black or like that.
• 1:40:02
  That color scheme and then you have her walk in and she's
• 1:40:07
  wearing red or color shades of red a lot of the time.
• 1:40:11
  There's a scene where the ex-wife once they've he finds
• 1:40:15
  out what he did and she tries to go and smooth it over.
• 1:40:19
  He took out red juice from the fridge and was drinking it while
• 1:40:23
  she was trying to give him her case and everything like that.
• 1:40:27
  So like. It's.
• 1:40:29
  It was interesting and they even like explained the the matrix
• 1:40:33
  lingo with these two colors in the show like in the drama.
• 1:40:38
  So once they said that I was like oh OK I should probably
• 1:40:42
  watch out for these two colors in the entire drama which is why
• 1:40:46
  I noticed so much. But I loved how it worked even
• 1:40:49
  to the last episode or last seen in the last episode because I
• 1:40:54
  like, you should have seen me. I like watch the last scene.
• 1:40:56
  I'm like, oh, Oh my God, Oh my God.
• 1:40:59
  Because it was like, is he going to walk away from this
• 1:41:02
  relationship and continue down the red pill path that he had
• 1:41:05
  been living for however many months it have been since they
• 1:41:10
  last saw each other? Or is he going to start over
• 1:41:13
  with this new relationship and enter this blue illusion with
• 1:41:17
  her again? So I love that messaging so
• 1:41:22
  much. Me too.
• 1:41:24
  Yeah. All right, guys, we've done it.
• 1:41:26
  We have traversed the entirety of the trunk and if you guys
• 1:41:32
  have anything you guys would like to say to us about the
• 1:41:35
  trunk, we are more than happy to discuss it with you on the
• 1:41:39
  socials. You guys want to say where they
• 1:41:41
  can find you? So for me it's T and Soju pod,
• 1:41:45
  all one word on Instagram, TikTok and all of those places.
• 1:41:51
  I'm no sleep. The number 4 dramas on
• 1:41:55
  Instagram, TikTok blog, YouTube, whatever.
• 1:41:58
  Yep. Hit us up.
• 1:41:59
  You know where to find us. That's it, That's our show.
• 1:42:02
  I'm Jessica and this has been the Tibock Here Rambles podcast.
• 1:42:06
  Bye. The.