Warm and Cozy: Episode 8

by javabeans

Yessss, finally. As recently as yesterday, I was all set to give up on this show being anything other than a Hong sisters pastiche—still cute and fun to watch, mostly because of the leads, but all paint by numbers and predictable. It felt like they’d taken a coloring book and merely filled in the white space with crayons, rather than drawing new pictures from scratch. And while it’s not like Episode 8 reinvents the wheel or drops us off a cliff of narrative possibility, it is the first episode to surprise me with anything at all, and added a much-appreciated jolt of energy I hadn’t felt before. Just because it’s a relaxed drama doesn’t mean it should lack any sort of conflict, after all.

SONG OF THE DAY

Acourve – “고백” (Confession) [ Download ]

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EPISODE 8 RECAP

As Gun-woo catches Jung-joo before she rolls off her chair in her sleep, he realizes it makes him feel uncomfortable. He looks perturbed as Jung-joo snuggles closer, then sets her back on the chairs and tucks her in with a blanket.

He’s about to leave, but she starts fidgeting in her sleep and grimacing in pain, which he mistakes for cancer pain. Worried, he feeds her a couple of her not-cancer pills and asks if it’s very bad, tears in his eyes. She’s only half-awake and her mumbled response just adds to the misconception. When he rises to get her some water, she grabs his wrist and pleads in her sleep, “Don’t go.”

Her grip goes from wrist-grab to handhold, and he crouches there at her side, watching her sleep fitfully.

In the morning, Jung-joo wonders why he’s back, and Gun-woo just tells her cheerily that he got kicked out of the resort by his brother. It’s something that confuses everyone, since at the resort, his brother and sister are wondering similar things. Why would Gun-woo voluntarily out himself and return to the restaurant when he had a perfectly good excuse to stay at the resort?

Poong-san tells Jung-joo conspiratorially that it was because of her—that Gun-woo was so worried that he couldn’t leave her here on her own. He looks so proud of his Cupid meddling, though I wonder, do you really think you’re helping by giving Jung-joo the wrong idea? Or are you just really, really sure that the wrong idea will turn out to be true?

Jung-joo’s pleased at the thought, and it makes her extra stammery when Gun-woo gets inadvertently close while looking for ingredients over her shoulder. Flustered, she moves away to keep looking, and Gun-woo follows close behind, totally oblivious.

He chides her about the broccoli going bad in his absence, and she scoffs that he’s acting like he came back for her sake rather than being kicked out. He retorts that she’s acting like she didn’t want to take him back when she was the one to cling. Jung-joo barks, “Who clung?” And then remembers her words last night, to her mortification, though she pretends she can’t.

Gun-woo says he kept his promise to be with her when she’s sick, telling her he was worried, while she just replies that it was because she drank last night. She sees that he saved the conch shells from last night, and cheers up when he says he couldn’t throw them away since they came from her very first catch, and that she should save the edibles for him next time.

Gun-woo decides that it’s time to talk to Jung-joo about her illness and assess how serious things are. It’s a promising sign of maturity, though inconveniently timed—it has Poong-san gulping nervously and trying, to no avail, to hold him off for a bit longer.

The diver ajummas wonder why Jung-geun applied for the diving school but doesn’t come out to learn how to dive. But they recognize that Hae-shil feels a certain responsibility for helping him when she saved his life, and urge her to take a little extra care.

Hae-shil heads to the resort to try to track him down, and Jung-geun spots her first and whirls around to avoid being seen. His confused entourage just follows when he hurriedly walks in the opposite direction, and he mutters at his secretary to talk to her when she starts to follow. She explains that she’s looking for Song Jung-geun, who’s prone to bragging and says he owns an inn.

The secretary dutifully reports back to Jung-geun, who puffs up with extra pride to hear that Hae-shil came asking for inn-owner Jung-geun, not the fancy resort president. He takes it as yet more proof that she’s been thinking of him and decides he’ll deign to meet with her—only to hear that the secretary took it upon himself to send her away saying that there’s no such person here, in case she would cause trouble for Jung-geun. HA. Now she ‘ll just think he was spinning more lies about his very important status.

Jung-geun goes racing out of his office, shaking off all the important businessmen who try to have a word, and just misses Hae-shil as she drives by on her bike. He starts running down the road after her, calling her phone. He catches up to her when she pulls over to answer, though he has to lean against her while gasping for air. Though from the way she reacts to the touch, it doesn’t seem she’s without feeling.

She does lie about not coming to the resort to see him, saying that she was there to see the president instead, but he knows right away that she’s making that up. Furthermore, when she asks why he hasn’t been coming to the diving lessons. Jung-geun replies that he was doing that to see her, not to learn how to dive, but she’d told him she didn’t want to see him. So which is it—did she miss him, or not? Should he come out for lessons, or not?

Hae-shil just tells him to make it to diving class, and that’s enough to make him light up.

Ji-won (ugh, her) meets with Gun-woo’s noona, and when she hears that Jung-geun may be seeing someone, her eyes practically cross in jealousy. She emphasizes that Gun-woo’s just a friend, since she’s angling for big bro instead, though noona calls her out for keeping Gun-woo dangling on the hook while knowing he likes her. She warns Ji-won not to take for granted that she’ll always have him around, because he could change his mind and leave, as Gun-woo’s father did. Ji-won wonders if that’s what happened with Gun-woo’s mother, and noona realizes she’s again said more than she meant to.

Mr. Gong hears that Mayor Wook scheduled his office dinner at Warm & Cozy instead of his restaurant as usual, but he’s not in the least miffed about it. He’s caught on to Wook’s interest in Jung-joo and gets the employees to all agree to help set that romance in motion. It’s adorable how everyone wants to marry off the mayor, and they all work on a plan for the dinner.

This entails enlisting Gun-woo’s help too, though he says crankily that Jung-joo’s not the least bit interested in the mayor. Mr. Gong explains that they’ve decided to swap out the usual games with an arm-wrestling match, where everyone will purposely lose to Wook so he can impress Jung-joo. They’ll award him the prize, a pretty necklace, which he’ll then give to Jung-joo, at which point the employees will discreetly exit to allow them privacy. Then it’ll be Gun-woo’s turn to make sure nobody else comes by, so the couple can do anything and everything they want. Rawr.

Gun-woo imagines this scenario playing out in his mind, then scoffs that she wouldn’t just take a necklace so easily. But when he sees Jung-joo happily wearing a visor given for free by a local business, he gets a little uneasy. Especially when she declares that she likes all free things, and would accept anything given to her.

At the dinner, Wook’s staff encourages Jung-joo to take a seat and drink with them, while Gun-woo watches jealously from the kitchen. The arm-wrestling tournament begins, and an employee shows off the prize necklace before the final round kicks off. The other finalist asks Wook what he’ll do with the necklace, and he replies that he’ll give it to whoever cheers loudest for him. Ha, and then everyone moves over to the challenger’s side, leaving Jung-joo as the only lady on his side. That’s not obvious at all!

But it’s okay, because Wook is happy to promise Jung-joo the necklace if he wins, and she checks that the others don’t mind. She gives him an adorable “Fighting!” and he responds in kind.

Gun-woo sidles up just then, and Jung-joo tells him excitedly that the necklace is hers if the mayor wins. Gun-woo nods and says, “Of course he’ll win, since that’s how the game is rigged.” Oh, you’re so petty! He points out that the challenger didn’t disclose the handicap that he’s left-handed, which is proof that he has no desire to win.

The mood completely dies, but Gun-woo goes on about how it’s an unfair deal, and that these employees have a duty to be honorable in their public service jobs. And Wook isn’t about to proceed in a stacked game, so he suggests that Gun-woo step in and try to beat him, then.

Gun-woo rolls up his sleeve and promises to win the necklace for Jung-joo, and then the men sit down and get ready, their arms practically seizing in tense anticipation. The battle begins, and as Jung-joo watches the fight unfold, she realizes that the two men are fighting over her and admits that part of her feels really good about that. Hee, for once a heroine admits it!

This launches her into a fantasy sequence where she imagines she’s a princess with two suitors fencing it out over her. Poong-san the Pageboy asks who she’s rooting for in her heart, and she looks back and forth between them, conflicted.

By now both guys’ faces are beet-red and their arms are swinging from one side to the other. Jung-joo asks herself where her heart is, and finally concludes, “Mayor… I’m sorry!” Apologetic, she strikes a pose—elbow up, head down, just like Wook’s underwear ad. Pwahaha. He’s so shocked that his concentration breaks, and Gun-woo seizes the moment to slam his hand down to victory.

Jung-joo opens her eyes to see the results, and for a split-second is excited to see that Gun-woo won. Then she sees Wook’s wide-eyed look of hurt and bows in apology. Aww, poor slack-jawed mayor! If it weren’t so sad it would be hilarious. Well no, it’s hilarious anyway, but poor mayor nonetheless.

Gun-woo crows that the necklace is his, then presents it to Jung-joo, per his promise. She asks why he intervened when she could have won the necklace anyway, and he replies that he didn’t win it for her—he just didn’t like the mayor. So he offers it to her casually like some random freebie, and now that her hopes have been disappointed, Jung-joo rejects the offer. She tells him to give it to the girl he likes, and he just stews in exasperation at how this conversation skewed in the wrong direction.

At the resort, Jung-geun and noona have drinks with Ji-won, and talk of the upcoming party where noona urges Jung-geun to make peace with little bro. Jung-geun tells her to bring her boyfriend, and noona teases that it’s time for him to bring a partner too. Ji-won offers herself for the job, only to have him decline the offer, and when noona points out that she should be Gun-woo’s partner, she’s hasty to insist that they’re just friends. Noona clarifies that Gun-woo likes Ji-won, and Ji-won looks pissy to have that outed.

She finds Jung-geun afterward to clarify that she and Gun-woo aren’t together, and that she wasn’t just joking about wanting to be Jung-geun’s partner. Gah, are you still talking? I wish she came with subtitles, so I wouldn’t have to listen to her petulant voice. Jung-geun understands that she’s making a confession, and very clearly draws the line—he doesn’t think of her that way.

Gun-wo gets a message on his phone and heads out, and Poong-san speculates that Ji-wan called him out, which Jung-joo hears with some disappointment. So when she sees that the necklace box is empty, it makes her upset, which Wook notices as he settles his bill. He lingers after his party leaves and asks what happened to it, and she admits that she doesn’t have it because she told Gun-woo to give it to the woman he likes.

Wook is affronted to hear that Gun-woo took that necklace to another woman and calls her a dummy for losing the necklace just like that: “So why’d you go and root for the person you like, when you should have rooted for the one who likes you?” Awwww. At her confusion, he asks how she could miss what he’s saying, and she lets that sink in. And then: “Did you… know that I like Gun-woo?”

Wook just gapes at her missing the point so completely. Then she complains about him insulting her for liking Gun-woo one-sidedly, and exclaims in frustration that she really is a dummy if all she took from his comment was that he was insulting her. Which… she then takes issue with as another insult. Sigh, this could go around for days.

Wook grabs her arm and instructs her to look him in the face, ready to clear up the misunderstanding for good. Which is when Ji-won pulls up to the restaurant and ruins everything for everyone. Well, by everyone I mean mostly us, who have to watch her now.

On the upside, seeing Ji-won arrive and ask after Gun-woo cheers Jung-joo up considerably, as she realizes that he didn’t go off to give her that necklace.

As it turns out, Gun-woo meets the doctor he’d contacted previously, asking for advice on what to do to help his sick friend. He really is being so sweet about the illness that I fear for the fallout when he realizes what the truth is…

Jung-geun takes to haunting Hae-shil’s home again, and when he calls, she wonders if he’s got surveillance on her and looks around her front yard. He ducks out of sight and broaches the topic of parties, and whether she’s been to any. She informs him that she’s on her way to one right now, and heads over to meet a group of her diver friends for a makgulli party.

One diver ajumma comments on how happy she looks these days, suggesting that it’s time she forget about her bygone husband now—it’s been thirty years. Mr. Gong notices Jung-geun lurking and tells him the rest of the story, about Hea-shil moving down to Jeju from Seoul at the young age of 19, freshly married, and losing her husband within a year. She’s worked hard and lived diligently on her own, so he’d better not disrespect her. In fact, Jung-geun is really best off just leaving her alone.

Watching her drinking makgulli with villagers, Jung-geun sees now that this is her “level”—the words are terribly snooty, though I suppose the point is valid about her not fitting in with his world. So he wishes her well at her party, thinking to himself that he can’t invite Hae-shil to his, and starts to leave.

But she starts to sing a song just then, stopping him in his tracks with her mournful verse about bidding a love goodbye. Perhaps against his will, Jung-geun finds himself following her home, quietly, and seeing her gaze off wistfully with tears in her eyes. Now he recollects her first words to him upon rescuing him from the water, about life being precious and worth living. Perhaps words she’s lived by.

The town’s sly blogger-novelist plies Gun-woo’s noona with liquor, fishing for more details to incorporate into the novel she’s writing. So that fisherman who died had a 19-year-old diver wife, did he? Noona tells the blogger to stop pumping her for information about her mother and Gun-woo’s father, all while drinking up.

Gun-woo arrives at the restaurant with heavy heart, wondering how to broach the topic of Jung-joo’s illness with her. From the medication she’s supposedly taking, the doctor had deduced that Jung-joo must be in a lot of pain and wondered whether she’d given up hope on treatment. The best thing, he’d advised, would be for Gun-woo to persuade her to go to Seoul for treatments.

As he and Jung-joo clean up inside, she hesitantly mentions that Ji-won was by, which he already knows. They bicker mildly about her being in a hurry to kick him out and him staying put, which ends with him offering to stay here at Warm & Cozy with her “until the day she dies.” That gives her a thrill, while Gun-woo encourages her to speak up about something she might want to tell him, which she’s been holding back on for fear it would burden him.

She’s embarrassed and deflects, which he takes for reluctance to talk about her condition. So Gun-woo asks if there’s anywhere she wants to visit and offers to take her there, after he first takes her to his brother’s party at the resort. She figures it’ll be fun, going to a free party and getting a free trip—but her wording makes him feel bad, and he asks if his feelings are just like a freebie to her.

Her reply is teasing, asking what they’re worth if they’re not free, but his are uncharacteristically serious. He replies that he doesn’t know, then hands her the conch shell from her first catch, saying that he’s put a catch of his own inside. She lights up to find the necklace in the shell, and he says that he put a ton of effort to win the necklace he didn’t want to see the mayor giving her: “I don’t know how much my feelings are worth, but it’s not a freebie that gets given easily to just anyone.”

Jung-joo admits that she was rooting for him to win, and thanks him for the necklace. He smiles to himself, and she heads up to bed feeling giddy, staring at her necklace. The free visor that gets handed out to just anybody gets tossed aside as a random freebie, while the pendant she calls the real thing.

In the morning, Wook drops by the restaurant and notes that it’s closed for the day. Jung-joo tells him about the party she’s going to and asks for suggestions on scenic places to visit in Jeju. Wook notes the necklace around her neck and gets cutely pissy, saying that he knows tonnnnns of great places, but he’ll only share them with the woman he likes. She wheedles for a tip, and he barks that she should like him or marry him if she wants to know, but that his info ain’t free. In a huffy, he bikes away… and then rounds back in a circle to grudgingly mumble a location at her.

At the resort, Ji-won receives word that the folk performance group they’d hired can’t make the day engagement, and suggests getting real Jeju divers to fill in. Hae-shil and her diver ajummas end up receiving the last-minute request and arrive at the resort with their gear in tow, just as Jung-geun sends his driver to collect her at home to be his date at the party after all. He instructs the driver to wait there until she arrives.

Jung-joo gets dressed up for the party, and Gun-woo compliments her freely, though behind her back he allows himself to worry for her condition. He tells Poong-san he’ll talk to her when they go to the beach afterward, so Poong-san realizes he’d better come clean before then.

Ji-won meets with the same doctor Gun-woo had met (I’m recalling that her family is affiliated with a hospital), who wonders if she knows Gun-woo’s sick friend here in Jeju. She mulls over that curious bit of information, wondering who it could be. Then she sees Gun-woo arriving at the resort with Jung-joo, and her mouth drops open in outrage to see his date. Clearly a case of I don’t want you, but I don’t want anyone else to have you either. Brat.

The diver ajummas are briefed on the reason for being called here, which is to take photos with the guests at the party. Oh, like Mickey Mouse at Disneyland? Ouuuch, that’s insulting. The ajummas are indignant, and the hotel employee makes things worse by insinuating that they’d better comply since their president is a sponsor for their festival. One ajumma gets particularly worked up, and in the chaos Hae-shil gets knocked into the pool.

Jung-geun arrives and hears of the situation, just in time to see Hae-shil getting out of the pool. He’s apologetic, but the damage is done and Hae-shil heads off angry at him for the event and for lying about his identity.

Gun-woo splits from his group to meet his hyung and noona before the party, and Poong-san takes the moment to warn Jung-joo cryptically about what’s going to happen tonight. He tells her to enjoy everything to its fullest, because things may change drastically before the night is over, when “the door to the truth is opened.” Ha, it’s cute how poetic he gets about his part in the lie.

Gun-woo goes up to his noona full of purpose and tells her not to sell Warm & Cozy. She asks if he means to just let Jung-joo keep borrowing it, and he nods yes. She asks for how long, and he replies, “Even just one day more.”

Ji-won finds Poong-san and asks him about the sick friend, and he’s surprised enough to use Jung-joo’s name, confirming the doctor’s story. She plays along like she knew all this already, though she perks up when he mutters about the whole thing being a misunderstanding. Off she goes to confront Jung-joo, all full of smug attitude. Ugh, you. Just… leave already. Go poof.

Ji-won finds Jung-joo, full of self-satisfied condescension as she asks if it was nice having Gun-woo being so nice to her all the time. But she’d better not confuse that for actual feeling, Ji-won says, gleefully announcing that he’s under the misconception that Jung-joo’s deathly ill. Everything he’s done was out of pity. You are the worst and I hate you with the burning of a thousand venereal diseases.

Gun-woo can’t get a hold of Jung-joo or find her anywhere at the resort, and Ji-won stops him to tell him point-blank about his misunderstanding. She says that Jung-joo lied to him about being sick to get him to do all those things for her, and informs him that he was being used. Of course she’d put together the facts that way, since that’s what she’d do. But Gun-woo just shakes off her arm and continues on, surprising her.

Jung-joo heads to the lighthouse alone thinking back to all those times Gun-woo was so sweet to her, now seeing them through the lens of her new information. Every act of concern, his constant helping hand, the promise to stay with her until she died… all driven by pity.

Gun-woo drives up to the lighthouse and makes his way to her, his eyes burning with this… look… that I just know is going to end well. It is, it is! Those eyes!

Jung-joo takes the lead, asking if the thing he meant to ask her was about her sickness. She tries to act nonchalant, but her voice breaks on her tears as she asks if he only stayed with her because he felt pity for her, thinking she was dying?

But she’s not dying, she informs him, and he’s a dummy for believing that. In between sobs, she says, “You said you were mine till I died. But now what?”

Still staring at her intently, Gun-woo closes the gap between them and pulls her close to his chest.

“I’ll keep being yours,” he says, and as soon as the words are out, his conflicted expression eases and he smiles. “Until [I] die, I’m yours.”

(Translation note: The Korean language constantly drops subjects and objects, frustratingly, and this conversation can be interpreted ambiguously — even though it’s totally clear to me that they’re talking about feelings and not objects — so that’s worth keeping in mind. I don’t think it’s wrong to wonder if they’re talking about the restaurant, though they’re totally not talkin’ about the restaurant, if you know what I mean.)

 
COMMENTS

Now that is a way to do a confession. I love it I love it I love it. I take back everything I said about you behind your back, Gun-woo, maybe while throwing darts at you in effigy and chanting hexes. Not that I didn’t love him before; it’s just… he inspires an urge to throttle that’s almost as potent as the urge to attack with kisses.

Now, though, he’s all in and I’m just all aflutter at what comes next. I know we’re only halfway through and there’s no getting around an inevitable slew of conflicts to trip up the budding romance, but here’s to also hoping that leaving eight episodes open after the confession means we get eight episodes of skinship and kisses. You guys can fight in between all the making up!

One thing I really give Gun-woo credit for is acting on what he knows—the problem is always that he doesn’t know a whole lot, ha. When he recognizes how he feels, he doesn’t go through a whole lot of mental gymnastics to rationalize or deny it (unlike, say, his emotionally regressed older brother). Granted, that could be because his brainpower isn’t up for the exercise, but in any case, he’s a simpleminded and -hearted kind of guy, in a good way, and there’s a really lovely straightforward appeal to that.

I’m glad to see the return of the extended metaphor and the way this episode played with multiple meanings on the same spoken thing. We had Jung-joo’s love of all things free, which translated later to a valuation of feelings—not a literal dollar-for-dollar conversion, but a tip of the hat to the idea of freebies lacking emotional value. Which is doubly interesting because love is, of course, freely given—in one case, handing out samples indiscriminately devalues the item, but in the other case, feelings are given with thought and intent and therefore, as Jung-joo noted, “the real deal.”

It nicely recalls an earlier episode when Jung-joo accused Gun-woo of being too careless in his temptations (ddukkboki in that case, though she really meant his affections), because his thoughtless and intention-less gestures were still giving her fluttery feelings, and she wanted to protect herself from the misinterpretations. Whereas here, she dismisses the win as thoughtless and he counters that it meant something real.

We also had the recurring usage of the phrase “until I die” peppered throughout the show, building to a nice surprise here as the crux of his confession. The drama has been rather thin on the usual Hong sisters energy, which often employs fast jokes and a stream of puns and zippy pacing. I don’t miss those things for their own sake, but as tools in adding texture to otherwise familiar stories—stories of rich men and poor women, or bickering housemates developing romantic tension, or pouty manchildren being infuriating and adorable in equal measure.

Rather, I appreciate that those devices build extra layers of meaning on top of the basic plot, because that’s what makes their dramas feel like their dramas, like things only they could (or would) write. It’s a relief to see they haven’t entirely lost that touch, not just because I miss it but because Warm and Cozy is a better drama for it, and the actors are so winsome that they deserve to have material that makes use of the depth they’re capable of showing.

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