Love, Take Two: Episodes 1-2 (First impressions)
by DaebakGrits
The tenuous relationship between a mother and daughter is put to the test after a health crisis has them both reevaluating their priorities and starting a new life in a small seaside village. This drama promises emotional healing, but there’s also a strong undercurrent of melancholy that suggests this story may also end in tears.
EPISODES 1-2
Our drama begins in a hospital, where a doctor explains a cancer diagnosis to LEE JI-AHN (Yeom Jung-ah) and her daughter, LEE HYO-RI (Choi Yoon-ji), but before we learn anymore context — or can process the fact that the cancer bomb has already been dropped on our plot — we jump back an unknown point in the past so we can be acquainted with our characters before their lives are turned upside down. Surprisingly, the cancer diagnosis isn’t the most depressing aspect of the first fifteen minutes of this drama. No, I found the relationship between Ji-ahn and Hyo-ri viscerally frustrating, and I almost immediately hated Ji-ahn’s character.
I try to give Ji-ahn some grace, as she’s obviously a product of her environment. She’s an independent single mother in a male-dominated profession (construction) who has likely had to make herself louder and metaphorically bigger in order to be noticed and promoted to construction site manager. However, when the time calls for it, she also knows when to shut her mouth and bow her head to the smarmy company CEO (Yang Hyun-min), who she warns her friend KIM SUN-YOUNG (Kim Sun-young) to avoid. Although these aspects of her personality are familiar and are often components of the formula used to create dynamic and empowered female characters, I took an instant disliking to her because of her treatment of Hyo-ri.
Hyo-ri is a hardworking med student who has been accepted into the country’s top program — a fact that Ji-ahn lets anyone and everyone know about. Despite how proud she is of her daughter, though, Ji-ahn has no respect for Hyo-ri’s time or mental workload. In order to save a few bucks on a taxi, she summons Hyo-ri in the middle of the night to be her personal Uber after drinking with members of her team and the company CEO. Then, when Hyo-ri reluctantly does her mother’s bidding, Ji-ahn shoves Hyo-ri into the spotlight and introduces her to the CEO. While she’s bragging about how successful her daughter is, she fails to read Hyo-ri’s tense body language — or notice that the CEO’s sudden interest in Hyo-ri is extremely inappropriate. Yeah, Ji-ahn was drunk — on alcohol and her daughter’s success — but her equally intoxicated male colleagues were the ones with enough sense to drag the CEO away and rescue an obviously uncomfortable Hyo-ri.
In addition to Ji-ahn’s frustrating inability to read her daughter and sense when she’s stepping on Hyo-ri’s boundaries, her proud momma routine is extremely toxic — even by K-drama standards. While there’s no doubt she’s genuinely proud of Hyo-ri, she also never misses a chance to remind Hyo-ri that she gave up her youth in order to raise her. Ji-ahn acts as though Hyo-ri’s successes are a currency she’s owed in exchange for being a mother, and poor Hyo-ri is stuck pursuing a career she hates because she feels indebted to Ji-ahn.
Suffice it to say, when Hyo-ri rage-quits med school, closes her bank account, packs an RV, and hits the road with her friend LEE SOOK (Yang Yoo-jin), I was rooting for her to escape that claustrophobic environment, and the small seaside village where her RV breaks down seems like just the place for her to find some breathing room and discover who she wants to be. Unfortunately, Lee Sook stupidly posts a photo of them eating with the local villagers (an ensemble cast made up of Kim Mi-kyung, Kang Ae-shim, Jung Young-joo, Park Soo-young and Yang Kyung-won) on social media, and Ji-ahn and Sun-young are able to quickly locate them.
Ji-ahn comes in hot and ready to drag Hyo-ri back to Seoul, where she will personally get down on her hands and knees and beg to get Hyo-ri reinstated into med school, but Hyo-ri refuses to leave. Ji-ahn accuses her of ruining her life by jumping off the path that would have given her an enviable life, but Hyo-ri expresses her frustration over not having been able to choose a path for herself. Ji-ahn comes to the conclusion that something must be wrong with Hyo-ri for her to just throw away her promising career as a doctor — because who doesn’t want to be a successful doctor (*eyerolls*) — and, sure enough, there was a catalyst to her behavior. Hyo-ri has a brain tumor.
Our story has now caught up to the opening scene, and as the doctor explains the intricacies of Hyo-ri’s tumor to Ji-ahn, Hyo-ri mentally checks out, having already heard her diagnosis and done her own research on it. Ji-ahn wants Hyo-ri to return immediately to Seoul for treatment and is naively optimistic that Hyo-ri can resume her studies somehow, but Hyo-ri is exhausted from shouldering her mother’s expectations and just wants to live freely with what time she has left because, even if she gets the surgery and undergoes treatment, there’s now guarantee she’ll be the same afterwards.
So, for the time being, Ji-ahn returns to Seoul alone, and, unable to sleep, she deep cleans the apartment in preparation for Hyo-ri’s return — because she will convince her to get treated. As she slowly begins to process her grief, I develop a small kernel of sympathy for her, but I also jadedly question how much of her anguish is for Hyo-ri. Is she crying out of love for her daughter who might die — or for her own hopes and dreams that will die with her?
After meeting with Hyo-ri’s doctor, Ji-ahn is despondent about the treatment costs, and matters only get worse when she’s fired because the company needs someone to blame for a discrepancy in their inventory — despite everyone knowing the likely culprit is her AWOL predecessor. With more time suddenly on her hands, Ji-ahn returns to the village to convince Hyo-ri to return to Seoul for treatment — which she will pay for with her severance and whatever she can collect from people who owe her money.
Along the way she bumps into her first love RYU JUNG-SEOK (Park Hae-joon) in a manner that is reminiscent of their first encounter in high school (cue: flashback). It was love at first sight for Ji-ahn, but her bold and public pursuit of the obviously embarrassed Jeong-seok did not do much to improve my opinion of Ji-ah. However, despite his discomfort in the flashback, present day Jeong-seok is cool, confident, and clearly unbothered by whatever did (or did not) happen between them in the past. He’s surprised to learn that her daughter is Hyo-ri, who has parked her RV outside his house while his son, RYU BO-HYUN (Minkyu), attempts to fix it.
Hyo-ri is not pleased that her mother has returned, and another fight ensues. Ultimately, she walks away from the situation when Ji-ahn tries to guilt trip her (“Am I not a reason for you to live?”), and escapes to the beach. She cries and yells her frustration at the waves, and from afar Bo-hyun watches. Personally, I don’t know what to make of Bo-hyun. He seems like a good kid, but he’s hardly had enough interactions with Hyo-ri to merit him following her out of concern — even if his desire to look cool in front of her suggests he already has a crush on her.
Innocent stalking aside, it’s a good thing he followed Hyo-ri to the beach because her emotions get the better of her, and she wanders too far into the ocean and is swept off her feet. Bo-hyun saves her, but Hyo-ri’s soaked hair and clothes trigger another argument between mother and daughter. The tension carries over to their dinner later that night with Jung-seok and Bo-hyun, but Hyo-ri does her best to ignore her mother and carry on polite conversation with her hosts. She compliment’s Jung-seok’s home and confesses that she always wanted “a house with a picturesque view outside the window.”
It’s clear from her tone that she has held this dream close to her heart for a long time, but mother’s failed promises and propensity to loan others money rather than save it has caused Hyo-ri to give up on making it a reality. Ji-ahn has the decency to look a bit ashamed, but when the opportunity arises for her to admit that she’s a single mother and boast about how wonderful a job she’s done raising Hyo-ri on her own, Hyo-ri puts an abrupt stop to the conversation and drags Ji-ahn outside.
A long standing — but unspoken — point of contention for Hyo-ri is how openly proud Ji-ahn is about being a single mother. When Hyo-ri was a child, Ji-ahn would go on the offensive and tell everyone she encountered that she was raising Hyo-ri on her own. It was Ji-ahn’s way of taking control of the narrative and owning what she knew others would see as a flaw, but her frankness also unknowingly placed a burden on Hyo-ri’s shoulders. Hyo-ri also had to pretend that she was equally unbothered by her family situation and in order to ensure the other kids wouldn’t talk about her and her mom, and she began studying fiercely “because grades equal power.” Although it’s impossible to undo the past, Ji-ahn is at least contrite and self-reflective when she walks away from this latest conversation, but does that mean she quietly returns to Seoul so Hyo-ri can enjoy some alone time to find herself and help Bo-hyun with his flower business in exchange for repairing her RV? Of course not.
Instead, the story takes a slight detour when Hyo-ri reads a text on Ji-ahn’s phone and discovers her mother loaned a substantial amount of money to someone again. Hyo-ri’s insistent that she will accompany Ji-ahn to collect from her latest debtor, who just so happens to be visiting his mother in the nearby area. With Bo-hyun as their driver (and the unfortunate middle-man in their argument over whether or not they should listen to music during the thirty minute), they arrive at their target’s home, but instead of the man they’re looking for, they find his three dirty and starved children.
Wordlessly, Hyo-ri and Ji-ahn set aside their differences to take care of the children, and Bo-hyun joins them when he realizes that he will not, in fact, get to watch them fight the man who owes them money. With their faces cleaned and their bellies fed, the children tell Hyo-ri and Ji-ahn where they can find their father, but by the time they locate Ji-ahn’s debtor, the fight has gone out of both women. Clearly he has his own problems, and his financial situation reminds Ji-ahn of her own struggles — most notably her decision to adopt her deceased friend’s baby daughter. That’s right, Hyo-ri is not Ji-ahn’s biological daughter.
Although Ji-ahn does not — and never did expect her debtor to pay her back, he heard about Hyo-ri’s cancer diagnosis, and, feeling guilty, he offers Ji-ahn the only thing he has of value: the deed to an old, dilapidated house. That house, however, is exactly what Ji-ahn needs to fulfill Hyo-ri’s dream of owning a home. It will require a lot of work, but surely Ji-ahn (a contractor) and Jung-seok (an architect) can turn it into something beautiful. More importantly, though, Ji-ahn’s decision to flip the house shows that she’s listening to Hyo-ri and attempting to give her the space (and a place) she needs to heal — metaphorically, at least. It’s still far too soon to know if Hyo-ri will survive her cancer diagnosis, but I’m betting she won’t. The tone of these first to episodes have an undercurrent of defeatism and pessimism to them that suggests this story won’t be about finding hope but about finding peace and making amends before the unavoidable end.
And speaking of the end, if I’m being honest, I’m not confident I will stick around to watch this drama come to a conclusion. My overall first impression of this drama is that it’s far too melancholy far too soon (for my taste), and even though Episode 2 did provide some necessary context to Ji-ahn’s characterization, it wasn’t enough to shake my initial opinion of her. Given more episodes, it’s reasonably expected that she and Hyo-ri will be transformed by their new rural lives and first loves, but at this point, I’m more invested in the house’s renovations than watching this mother-daughter duo set aside their differences — you know, just in time for Hyo-ri to die. So instead of investing my time in a show that will, at it’s best, likely break my heart, I think I will get my home renovation fix by watching the viral reels of that guy renovating his €5,000 house in the Balkans.
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