Age of Feeling: Episode 7

by HeadsNo2

If you would’ve asked me two weeks ago whether this show would reduce a girl to swooning and tug on the heartstrings, I probably would have said no. Maybe even heck no. But as the weeks tick by and the list of butts Jung-tae kicks grows ever longer, what’s emerging more and more is this show’s surprisingly soft heart. Whether it’s our hero and his merry band of brothers or Ok-ryun sharing a meal with her new (and dangerously charming) friend, I’m loving that there’s no shortage of fun relationships to explore. The best part? We’re still just scratching the surface.

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Jaejoong – “Mine” [ Download ]

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EPISODE 7 RECAP

The fight between Jung-tae and the bunch of thugs commences, with Jung-tae being smart enough to use one as a human shield against all the would-be blunt force trauma.

Despite being outnumbered, Jung-tae holds his own and even manages to kick some ass. He receives a few blows to the back and one to the back of the head (ouch), but it’s still not enough to keep him down. It’s brutal, but awesome.

While poor Ok-ryun continues to wait for Jung-tae outside the closed restaurant, we see him emerge, stumbling, from the warehouse. He’s covered in blood and barely conscious, but he’s won the fight. I don’t know why I feel like cheering. Is it the inspiring music?

Then, as she waits, a figure emerges from around the corner—it’s Jung-tae! He’s all but crawling to try and make it to their date and collapses in her lap, still alive enough to tell her that she shouldn’t have waited for him in the cold.

While she calls for help, Jung-tae fumbles in his pocket for the ring he bought her. He’s too weak to get it though. Aw.

Since Jung-tae is still on the outs with Boss Hwang, it’s up to Poong-cha and Jjang-ddol to find out more about the men who attacked Jung-tae. I kind of love that Boss Hwang never seems to be doing any work ever—he’s back to building his matchstick towers. Why not.

Ok-ryun tends to Jung-tae’s wounds as best she can, but he’s clearly in more pain than she can manage. He knows it too, and gently clasps her hand between both of his so he can rub small circles on her skin as he says, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Ok-ryun.”

She doesn’t say anything and only lays a light kiss on his cheek, as if to say all is forgiven. He reaches up to her face as she cries for him while his other hand wraps around her waist to pull her down for a true kiss.

They stay like that, tears falling from both their eyes.

Poong-cha confronts Dokku’s boss, Bool-gom, over the men who attacked Jung-tae, presuming that he must’ve been behind it. He has no idea what Poong-cha is talking about but is willing to fight over it anyway to settle an old score between them. Since there’s only one street in their town, Dokku is able to watch the events unfold from the crowd.

Poong-cha wins the fight, and threatens Bool-gom that he’ll kill him if he finds out that either he or Dokku were involved in Jung-tae’s attack.

So Bool-gom confronts Dokku (by choking him) over whether he was behind the attack. Dokku doesn’t need to say it for Bool-gom to know the answer is yes, so Dokku can do nothing against the harsh beating he had coming.

Jung-tae’s fallen asleep while under Ok-ryun’s care, and unconsciously murmurs: “Kaya… I’m sorry, Kaya… I’m sorry…” Tears well up in Ok-ryun’s eyes and she rushes off, leaving Jung-tae in maid Mal-sook’s care.

And ha, Mal-sook takes advantage of Jung-tae’s vulnerability to get a free feel of his pecs. Can’t blame her.

Ok-ryun manages to find Kaya to test her as to whether she was behind Jung-tae’s beating. Kaya passes the test by immediately showing concern when she hears he was hurt, which prompts Ok-ryun to warn her: “I don’t know what Jung-tae owes you, but I do know that debt is the root of all evil.”

She goes on to add that Kaya can’t capture a heart that’s already indebted to her, and puts it more simply by telling her to stay away from Jung-tae.

Kaya knows Shinichi was behind whatever happened and confronts him angrily, though she kind of makes her “I don’t care about Jung-tae” argument moot when everything she says can be translated to “I’m saying this because I care about Jung-tae.”

He knows it too, and claims that if she really didn’t care about Jung-tae, then his death shouldn’t matter. Kaya spits back, “Shin Jung-tae didn’t die. Keep this in mind: I no longer trust you.”

Boss Hwang and Jung-tae are friends again (yay!), now that everyone’s working together to find out who tried to kill him. But there’s no need, since Bool-gom drags a bloodied Dokku to the Dobi Base and drops him at Boss Hwang’s feet.

He admits that Dokku was responsible and is keeping to their gentlemen’s agreement that their gang members wouldn’t mess with each other. Boss Hwang can do what he likes with Dokku—kill him, even—but Bool-gom seems to be pleading for some sort of clemency.

In the end, Boss Hwang leaves Dokku’s fate up to Jung-tae. But Jung-tae shocks the room by saying that it wasn’t Dokku, but whoever is backing him.

Mama Kim tries showing some concern for her daughter, but Ok-ryun isn’t in the mood. So she goes straight to Jung-tae, the root of Ok-ryun’s worries, in order to beg him to not let Ok-ryun turn out like she did, always worrying about Ok-ryun’s father until he finally turned up dead. Huh. Is she asking him to live less recklessly, or to let her daughter go completely?

Across the ocean, a Japanese official shows Denkai an alarmingly accurate artist’s approximation of Ajusshi Choi, whom they suspect is responsible for assassinating some of their higher-ups. He urges Denkai to return to Joseon to take care of the problem, but what results is a power play between the men as to who is responsible for the other’s position of power.

So while the official helped Ilgookhwe gain its power, Denkai killed some people to get the official his position, and he’ll kill the official if he has to. Which came first, the politician or the assassin? I can’t even tell if they’ve reached an accord. Maybe it’s because I don’t speak Pissing Contest.

Meanwhile, a helping hand reaches out to light Ajusshi Choi’s cigarette—it’s Aoki, smirking like a cat who just ate the canary. He wonders aloud how interesting it is that you can smell a man’s profession on him, whether he’s a butcher or a hunter. And in Ajusshi Choi’s case, he smelled gunpowder.

Choi’s best defense is that Aoki using his nose like a scent dog is somehow beneath his status, which doesn’t really do anything to prove his innocence. When he tries walking away Aoki stops him forcefully, and it only takes one lightning-fast move for Ajusshi Choi to know he’s up against a master. He has zero hope of winning, and they both know it.

Aoki leaves him with a dark promise: “I think we’ll be seeing more of each other.” Ooh.

Kaya sneaks out of the house that night, and though Shinichi knows, he does nothing to stop her. She ends up outside her childhood home and is flooded by memories of her father when she spots a rocking horse he once made her.

She’d once come home crying about the other kids at school teasing her about her Japanese name, only for Dad to tell her that it was the name her mother gave her. Kaya means “to live as free as a bird”, which is how her mother intended her to live. That was when he’d given her the rocking horse, and they were happy.

In the present, Kaya weeps.

Ok-ryun missed her scheduled singing lesson, and her teacher comes to the gibang to fetch her. She feels bad and admits that something came up, but of course Soo-ok isn’t deterred. He tells her that if she’s truly sorry, she’ll give him her time in repentance—six hours of it, to be exact.

They go to a tiny hole in the wall for food, though Ok-ryun doesn’t eat. Soo-ok tells her what a privilege it is for her to be eating with him, since he hasn’t eaten with someone for… twenty years? Wha…?

He tells a sad story about his time spent in Japan (but not why he was there), and how he’d eat every meal huddled alone in a corner. His eyes are glistening by the end of the tale, and his worries about Ok-ryun not empathizing with him prove unfounded when she sneaks into the kitchen to mix together a bowl of bibimbap.

She brings this back to him with a bright smile and encouraging words as she calls him her friend, adding a few clucks of her tongue for his moping about. Apparently she wasn’t eating because she didn’t like the food, so she places the bowl of bibimbap between them and declares that it’s fair game.

The rules of their Shared Bowl Of Friendship? They have to all but keep their foreheads glued together and eat one spoonful at a time. It ends up turning into more of an eating contest, with both of them cracking up between spoonfuls and generally being adorable. Oh, to spend a day in her shoes.

When Kaya returns home, Shinichi pretty much admits to following her every move. She’s not surprised—he’s her shadow after all, and there’s no stopping something attached to her. But she does make the point that as her shadow, he can only move when she does and therefore has no will of his own.

Aoki drops in to update them on the state of affairs in Shineuijoo. He’s managed to put the kibosh on smuggling in and out of their town and only has Dobi Gang left to conquer. This is when Kaya abruptly interrupts that he’s to leave the Dobi Gang to her, likely to protect Jung-tae.

The air grows tense when Aoki asks Shinichi if he has the ability to protect Kaya, to which Shinichi replies with the rules of Fight Club—mostly that Aoki needs to be respectful of Kaya hime-nim, and that he shouldn’t insult him.

Aoki’s reply is just as terse: He doesn’t have to show Kaya respect because he’s above her in the family hierarchy, which means Shinichi should be showing him respect. He seems to be goading Shinichi on as he points out how Shinichi did nothing even when he felt insulted.

Kaya tries to intervene by claiming that Shinichi didn’t act because she didn’t order him to, but Aoki doesn’t give up: “A sword that ignores insults is like a wilted flower.” Ow. Shinichi is insulted, but holding himself back: “Bodyguards move only when the person they are protecting is in danger. Try touching a hair on her head. At that moment, you will die.”

It’s a little funny how Kaya is all, “Welp, this has been awful,” but she may as well be invisible to the two men in the room, even though they’re technically fighting over her. After all, it’s not like a sausage fest show like this can have two men in a room and not have them fight and/or compare weenie sizes. (Except for the Dobi Gang. The only weenie-measurer there is Dissenting Opinion Gangster.)

To make up for his lack of huevos rancheros with Aoki, Shinichi internalizes his self-hatred and points it outward toward Dokku for failing to bring Jung-tae to him. Luckily (or unluckily), Bool-gom has followed Dokku and now knows just how deep he’s in with Shinichi.

He acts all cool when urging Dokku to leave Shinichi in front of the man himself, but lets out the breath he’d been holding once he’s outside. Bool-gom seems to sense his own impending doom even without hearing Shinichi order Dokku to kill him if he wants to live.

We find the Dobi Boys gathered wonderingly around a few bottles of Coca-Cola, having never seen the stuff before. It’s funny to watch them act like the bottles of dark, mysteeeerious liquid are poison, and funnier still to see their horrified reactions when Poong-cha pops one open and drinks it. (“He’s not dead!”)

While Dissenting Opinion Gangster worries about all their former smuggling routes now being blocked by Ilgookhwe, Shinichi and Kaya arrive at Dobi HQ to have a talk with Boss Hwang.

Jung-tae can only stand by as Boss Hwang willingly climbs into their car to be taken somewhere more remote, so that Kaya can give him a variation on the offer she gave to Il-hwa: stand “beside her” (not “under her,” as Boss Hwang interprets it), or die.

Boss Hwang’s reaction is, as expected, an incredibly firm “No.” Kaya threatens him further by giving him ten days before she unleashes hell on earth upon him and his boys. Siiigh. I hear much thunder but I see no rain.

Dokku has paid his fellow gangster to deliver a drunk Bool-gom to another remote location so he can kill him. But as he approaches Bool-gom’s back with knife in hand, his boss drops the drunk act he was putting on.

He knows full well what Dokku plans to do, and since it’s Dokku’s first time killing someone, he tells him not to get nervous and do it correctly—or else he’ll change his mind and kill him instead. Dokku stabs him as he turns around, yet Bool-gom ekes out, “Stab me again.” He may be going to his death voluntarily, but he doesn’t want to suffer.

Dokku does as he’s told, his eyes wide with fright. As Bool-gom lays dying, he tells Dokku of his first time killing a man: The man had beaten a woman, by the sounds of it a prostitute, to death. Bool-gom had flown into a rage seeing such cruelty and killed the man with a rock.

But what brings tears to Dokku’s eyes is Bool-gom’s reveal that the woman who was beaten to death was Dokku’s mother. The man who beat her to death—the man Bool-gom killed—was Dokku’s father. Because of the guilt he felt toward Dokku, he took him in and protected him all this while. That’s why he surrendered to death by his hand so easily.

“Why are you telling me this now?!” Dokku screams, regret for what he’s done washing over him. Bool-gom knows nothing would’ve changed if he told him sooner, and even with his last breath he gives Dokku advice out of concern for him, knowing that if he doesn’t ally himself with either Ilgookhwe or Dobi, he’ll die.

At the same time, he thinks that Dokku will die by going too deep with Ilgookhwe and seems to be pushing him toward the Dobi Gang. Dokku doesn’t agree with his sentiments and claims that he’ll destroy the Dobi Gang if he can.

Bool-gom smiles sadly, like a father with a hopeless child as he lovingly calls Dokku an idiot and asks if his silly plan makes any sense. It’s the last thing he says before he passes.

With tears still streaming down his face, Dokku steels himself: “It makes sense to me. I’ll prove it to you.” He tells his departed boss to keep an eye on him from heaven, so he can watch him destroy his enemies.

Jung-tae confronts Shinichi over pulling Dokku’s puppet strings, and Shinichi doesn’t deny it. But he seems to hold Jung-tae responsible for the way Kaya’s life has turned out, and claims that he has to kill Jung-tae to save Kaya—because if her heart weakens because of Jung-tae, she’ll die.

They get into a short-lived fight, which Shinichi wins thanks to cheating with a bamboo stick. He wants them to continue it in front of Kaya, but on the condition that Jung-tae join Ilgookhwe if he loses.

Because Shinichi received orders to kill every member of the Dobi Gang, he promises to disobey them if Jung-tae were to win. Jung-tae adds his condition: that Kaya also be released from Ilgookhwe if he were to win.

But that’s something Shinichi can’t promise, since the decision is Kaya’s. Even so, Jung-tae agrees to the All Or Nothing fight.

He waits for Boss Hwang to return to HQ in order to tell him about Ilgookhwe’s nefarious plans for the Dobi Family, but claims that he’ll take care of everything.

Boss Hwang catches onto the way Jung-tae doesn’t include himself when talking about the Dobi Family and reminds him that he is their family.

“Are you only family when we eat together?” Boss Hwang challenges. “Even when we have no rice to eat, we’re still family.” D’aww.

Before Boss Hwang disappears inside, Jung-tae asks, “I would like to know how to win with a sword. No… I just want to know how to fight with a sword.”

 
COMMENTS

I’m honestly surprised with how well this show is handling the plethora (yes, plethora) of side characters it’s got going on, and was especially impressed with how Bool-gom and Dokku’s story was wrapped up. A good character reveal puts all their past actions into perspective to give the mental effect of solving a puzzle with pieces you’ve collected over time, so in that sense Bool-gom passed with flying colors—and Dokku too, even just by association.

Granted, the fact that even the despicable Dokku was humanized in a way that was authentic to him leaves me feeling like Kaya has no excuse. Maybe it’s because Dokku couldn’t be more unlikable if he tried. But that’s the point of his character, since he’s not being put forward for us to like. That’s where a lot of shows stop when it comes to presenting their baddies to us, like they’re sure that “You’re not supposed to like him!” is an excuse for giving us one-dimensional, scheming villains. What got to me about his moment was that the show wasn’t being cheap about it by giving him a dog to pet, a mom to love, or whatever other common tropes used to show the audience that the character in question isn’t so bad under that thick layer of greed. No siree, Dokku killed a man.

And only when the deed was irreversible did he find out just how severe his crime was, because the man he killed had secretly been protecting him all this while. I even liked how we saw Bool-gom’s vulnerability, not just when he handed over Dokku to the Dobi Gang but also when he showed his fear after meeting Shinichi. I’m sure most of my elation is due to surprise, just because spending so much time and energy on explaining side characters and their motivations seems to be the rare white elk of dramaland and not so much the norm. Bool-gom’s death certainly made him more of a tragic figure, and while Dokku may still be hateful, he manages to toe a very thin line of being almost pitiable—and at the very least, understandable. I get him, his ambition, and the price he’s paying for it.

The reason why I lumped Kaya in with what’s turning into a love letter to Feeling’s side characters is because I find it a little disquieting that empathy comes easier for literally everyone else but her. (Well, save for her freaky grandpa.) Even Dokku is getting more nuanced treatment than she is, because she literally did get the cheap moment he didn’t when she took that stroll down memory lane. We know she loved her dad, so it’s not that aspect that feels forced—it’s that the insert itself came off forced, like that was the only moment she could get to prove to everyone that she’s not made of stone.

The thing is, it’s easy to give a character walking down a dark and unlikable path one or two moments per episode where their humanity shines through. I’m all about humanity. (Hooray for humans!) I’m less about the fact that her humanity isn’t getting carried over to the rest of her scenes, even if we can chalk part of that up to the constrictive persona she has to put on. We could point to her protecting the Dobi Gang as a sign of her humanity because that’s actually in the text. It’s in the subtext where it seems like she’s getting the short end of the stick, since you can line up Aoki’s threatening-a-guy scene from last episode and her threatening-a-guy scene from this episode side by side and see a world of difference. Orrrr can you?

See, that’s why I hate arguing subtext, so I’ll argue something simpler: either Kaya is being painted with broader brushstrokes than most of her fellow characters, or nuance is there that just isn’t coming across. Orrrr is there? (Seriously though, is there?)

 
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