Warm and Cozy: Episode 9

by girlfriday

Aaaaaaargh. You know when you’re having bad luck at Monopoly where every time you get close to finishing a lap around the board, you pull a card that sends you to jail and taunts you with the words, Do not pass Go, and no matter what you do, you can’t seem to make Go count, even if you’re standing right on top of it? I feel like I’m stuck in an endless loop with Gun-woo, where we keep going to Go, but Go never counts, and we just keep going ’round and ’round the board until I don’t know what we’re playing at anymore.

 
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Bily Acoustie – “호흡곤란” (Difficulty Breathing) [ Download ]

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EPISODE 9 RECAP

After learning that Jung-joo’s cancer was a big minty misunderstanding between both of them, Gun-woo pouts about all the nights he spent awake worrying about her. She sighs, “I didn’t even know that and I liked [you].” He peers over at her, but then she quickly clarifies that she meant Warm & Cozy—she thought it was hers forever and she liked that.

He tells her that she did really make the restaurant her own, and she can keep doing that because it’ll continue to be hers. But Jung-joo says she can’t: “I can’t keep liking [it] when [it’s] not even mine.” Okay, now they’re talking about Gun-woo again, yeah?

He doesn’t know why she has to give the restaurant back and not keep things the way they are, but he’s too exhausted to talk anymore and puts the rest of the conversation on hold.

Poong-san paces back and forth, knowing full well that he’s in deep trouble for lying. Gun-woo grabs him in a headlock on sight, but he doesn’t seem all that mad at Poong-san either, and heads upstairs to sleep. Poong-san tells Jung-joo that he’s been up many nights in a row trying to figure out how to convince her to get treatment for her cancer.

Jung-joo takes out the handwritten contract for Warm & Cozy and reads it again with a wistful smile, and heads over to Gun-woo’s side of the room late that night. He looks like he’s sleeping, so she talks to his back and says that they could keep things as they are—she can’t argue with the fact that he’s been nothing but nice to her since she first got here.

But she didn’t know that he was good to her because he thought she was dying, and she confesses, “I didn’t know that, and now I like you too much.” Eeeee, his eyes open slowly. She continues, thinking that he’s still asleep: “It’s too difficult. So I can’t stay by your side… I like you too much.”

He chooses that moment to whirl around and face her, totally enjoying the look of mortification on her face as he asks if that’s what’s really going on: “You don’t have a terminal illness—you have lovesickness!” Teehee.

She asks him to forget what he heard and gets up to leave, but he pulls her down to his bed and refuses to let her go. He decides that lovesickness is an illness too, and he can’t throw out a sick a girl, especially when she’s sick because of him. Ha, you are just enjoying this so much, aren’t you?

She insists on packing her bag and giving him back the contract anyway, knowing that he must be burdened by her confession. But she’s shocked when he shrugs it off like it’s no big deal.

He admits that when he thought she was sick, it was burdensome to think she was looking at him as someone to lean on in her final days, and she sputters that she never looked at him like that. Gun-woo: “I know, it turns out you were just looking at me because you liked me to death.” HA.

He keeps running with the lovesickness theme and asks why she’s not thinking of staying and getting cured, because chances are, he could mess something up tomorrow that’ll make her stop liking him. You know yourself so well.

He points out that in her current financial situation, staying and cleaning up her feelings is a better bet than leaving, and offers to sleep elsewhere for the night because she’s probably embarrassed after her confession. Hey, you don’t have to be an ass about it, now.

Speaking of asses, Jung-geun sends Hae-shil flowers along with his staffers, who apologize profusely for their mistake at the party and tell her about their boss’s offer to become a donor for the diving school and host their events at the hotel. They plead with her to accept or they’ll be in even more trouble, so she heads over to the hotel where Jung-geun is waiting with a lavish poolside lunch and a black pearl necklace.

Hae-shil accepts the help for the diving school, but refuses the necklace outright. He argues that she’d fish a loser out of the ocean but throw back a black pearl like him, and then has the audacity to ask if she’ll sit down if he donates twice as much, and accept the necklace if he gives ten times the amount. Ew, did you just offer her money, you jerk?

She gives him a satisfying shove right into the pool and declares that she’s thrown that black pearl back in the water, and doesn’t want it anymore. She says she has stronger willpower than he does too, so when she decides that it’s over, it’s really over.

Jung-joo goes to see Mr. Gong to get some advice on real estate, and he gives her the depressing verdict that her shack of a house probably wouldn’t sell. She asks how much Warm & Cozy is worth, and her jaw drops at the ginormous figure he taps out on the calculator.

She returns to the restaurant, chastened for thinking of this place so lightly, and tells herself that cleaning up her feelings to stay here is the right decision. But then she reaches for the necklace she’s wearing and remembers Gun-woo telling her that he worked really hard to win that for her.

Mayor Wook comes by just as she’s trying to convince herself that the necklace is free, and she’s shameless, so she can accept it. She starts to cry though, and he tiptoes out quietly.

He comes out just as Ji-won is pulling up, and Wook is smart enough to put all the pieces together and guess that this girl is part of the reason that Jung-joo is upset. So he does the first thing that comes to mind, and blocks her from going inside.

He whips out his mayor’s badge and says it’s for the peace and well-being of his village, and basically shoos her away until she’s forced to leave. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? Could you maybe write some new zoning laws to keep her away forever? Wook waits around the corner until he sees Jung-joo looking brighter as she gets back to work, and only then does he ride by on his bike with a little wave.

Gun-woo ignores all of Ji-won’s calls, so she runs to his noona to tell her about Jung-joo conning him out of the restaurant under false pretenses. UGH. But it turns out that Gun-woo is right there, and he walks in and tells noona that everything Ji-won is saying is a lie. Okay, that’s satisfying.

He says in no uncertain terms that Jung-joo never lied to him, but Ji-won already knew this and lied anyway. She tries to make the excuse that she must’ve misunderstood, but Gun-woo cuts her off: “No, I was the one who misunderstood; you just did something bad and got caught.” Oh, snap. I never thought I’d rewind a Ji-won scene, but I have to see that again.

Noona worries that he was too harsh, but he says that he can handle Ji-won treating him badly—it’s when she treats Jung-joo that way that he has to put a stop to it. But then much to my aggravation, he follows Ji-won out and gets her to admit that she’s nervous that he’ll walk away for good. What, are you still playing games with her, you idiot? WHY. Whyyyyyyyyyy. What is wrong with you?!

He says that he already knew she was bad before this, and acts like they’re all good now, which I don’t understand at all. AT ALL. Gun-woo turns down her request for lunch, and when she tells him that she came by the restaurant earlier but Jung-joo wasn’t there, he runs off, worried that she really left.

But he finds Jung-joo hard at work, and he sits back to watch her for a while before she notices him. She says she had some things to clean, and he asks if she’s done cleaning up—clearly they’re talking about him and not the floor, in their avoidy roundabout way. She says that she got the order wrong with her confession, and says that she should’ve thanked him first for being so good to her. Misunderstanding or not, he helped her, loaned her the restaurant, and even offered to let her stay even after learning the truth.

He takes that to mean that she’s staying, and she agrees that it’s shameless but she’s going to take him up on the offer and clean up her feelings for him. She says that she’s already 90% of the way there, and he’s a little taken aback that she could have gotten that far overnight.

She explains that her feelings are like a hundred balloons that were blown up with misunderstanding, ninety of which have already floated away. She says that she’ll pop the remaining balloons herself, and Gun-woo agrees to help.

She asks if he’ll help by staying at the hotel, but he says no to that. Noona knows the truth about their contract now, which means hyung will hear about it and think he’s utterly pathetic.

Cut to: Jung-geun sighing that Gun-woo is pathetic. Still, he has no intention of doing anything to change the situation, because Jung-joo is the best thing that’s ever happened to Gun-woo: He’s working hard, not gambling or wasting away money, and not getting into trouble.

Noona grumbles that he’s so weak and unlike them, wondering if he takes after his father. She amends that, remembering that his father was a really bad person, and Jung-geun reminds her never to leak anything about that man, for Gun-woo’s sake.

Of course that makes noona nervous because of all the secrets she’s spilled to her novelist friend while drunk. And contrary to her promises, the novelist keeps digging for the truth, this time seeking out Mr. Gong to ask about the death of a fisherman thirty years ago.

Mr. Gong cuts her off and tells her not to write about such things, wondering to himself why they’re asking about Hae-shil’s husband and his tragic death. He joins Hae-shil and the neighborhood ajummas, who wonder if Jung-geun isn’t going to come to diving school.

She says that a man like him would have no reason to; besides, she was mean to him when she blew up at him earlier. But we see that Jung-geun is gazing at her from across the river, looking forlorn. He even trips on the same rock that Gun-woo did when he was here looking at Jung-joo, and like hyung like donsaeng, he chucks it into the water in the exact same stupid fashion and scurries away, mortified.

With Gun-woo back at Warm & Cozy, Jung-joo decides that he should sleep on the bigger side of the room now. He leans in close with a smile: “Do we sleep together from now on?” He plays dumb as she stammers that she meant they’d swap rooms. He turns her down because he likes his side better, because he can see into her room from his bed.

It takes her a beat to realize what he’s saying, and Gun-woo assures her that he closed his eyes whenever he could see everything. She cringes and demands to know what exactly he saw, and he suddenly turns sincere: “I saw Lee Jung-joo.”

He describes how he saw her get up early every morning, stay up till late at night, and work so hard even though she was dying, and it made him respect her and want to work hard too.

She asks if all that respect is gone now that he knows she isn’t dying, but he uses her balloon metaphor and says that if there were a hundred respect balloons that were blown up with their misunderstanding, about ninety of them remain. That’s why he’s happy to run Warm & Cozy with her.

She promises to work hard not to pop any more of those respect balloons then, and heads off to her side of the room with a smile as she repeats quietly to herself, “Respect?” But then the smile fades as she realizes what it isn’t, and sighs, “Respect…”

Poong-san asks Gun-woo if things aren’t going to change between him and Jung-joo now, and asks if he never saw her as a woman. Gun-woo swears that he never had a chance to, with him thinking she was dying, and assures him that nothing will be different between them. Uh-huh. You just keep telling yourself that.

Jung-joo is in the storeroom when a light bulb starts flickering, and while reaching for a new bulb, she spills a packet of powdered sugar right over her head. Gun-woo rushes over to dust it off of her, and then pauses to taste his finger.

He jokes that she’s gotten sweet, and then helps blow the sugar out of her eyes. But that suddenly sends his heart racing, and he wonders aloud if things are different [a homonym for “sweet”]. Jung-joo: “It’s sweet? Then it’ll get sticky.” He gazes at her for a long while before musing, “If I keep going, it might.”

He brusquely tells her to dust off the rest herself and stalks off, though he pauses again to stare at his powdered sugared hand before trying to shake it clean.

Hae-shil is floored when Jung-geun shows up for diving school the next morning, and he argues that he was accepted and paid his tuition. He came as a matter of pride, and tells her that he’s going to make it so that she acknowledges that he’s a rare and special black pearl, at which point he’ll give it back to her, so that he can take it away. Pfffft. You are officially dumber than your brother, and around here, that’s saying a lot.

Jung-joo is surprised to see him there, and he greets her happily as her classmate. Jung-geun tells Jung-joo everything, and she agrees to keep it a secret from Gun-woo and help him look good in front of Hae-shil.

She cringes when Jung-geun takes matters into this own hands and offers the rest of the students gourmet meals if they let him win at everything and asks them to sell him their catch for many times the market price. Jung-joo asks if he really needs to take it that far, but he argues that he’s never seen a teacher hate her best student.

He’s momentarily derailed when a camera crew shows up to do a special feature for the local TV station, and he recognizes the reporter because he did an interview with her about his hotel. He pulls his diving mask on and starts to inch away from the group to avoid being on camera, and Hae-shil steps in to make sure that they shoot the others, while he swims away and shouts that he’s cutting class.

Everyone does interviews, and Mayor Wook is so nervous in front of the camera that Jung-joo has to hold his hand steady just so that the microphone stays still while she talks.

Jung-geun waits outside for Hae-shil after class, and asks in a much calmer and sensitive way what he can do to make things up to her. She says that she’s madder at herself than at him, and says that she’s never once been ashamed of her life until that day at the party. She calls him Black Pearl-sshi and says without any bitterness that he isn’t hers to keep.

He says that ever since he met her, he’s been practicing holding his breath under water, just to know what it feels like not to breathe like her. He asks her to test him and brings her hand up to cover his mouth and nose. She tells him to breathe and struggles to free her hand, so then he pulls her lips to his instead and kisses her.

She looks conflicted by the kiss and slaps him once she breaks free, and he tells her that being afraid of losing something means you already have it: “You’ve already accepted my heart.” She walks away without an answer.

Gun-woo is grumpy about serving the mayor and the TV crew, especially when Jung-joo cozies up to Wook at the table and Poong-san notes that she really might end up the mayor’s wife. Gun-woo sarcastically sends the salad out for the mayor and the mayor’s wife, and one of the reporters overhears them.

Wook passes along the reporter’s card to Gun-woo to help promote the restaurant on their program, and Gun-woo asks suspiciously why he’s being so nice. Wook doesn’t mince words and says that he’s trying to look good in Jung-joo’s eyes and wants Gun-woo’s cooperation, citing the necklace arm wrestling debacle.

Wook declares that next time he wants it to be a ring. Whoa. Suddenly Gun-woo realizes that all the joking about Jung-joo being the mayor’s wife could end up becoming the real deal.

He leaves the card for Jung-joo and pouts when she beams over the potential good press for the restaurant, and he refuses to let them shoot a segment here just to be stubborn. She tells him he has to cooperate on this, and he blows up at her word choice.

He wonders why everyone’s asking him to cooperate on everything, and soon Mr. Gong comes by to ask for his cooperation in getting Wook and Jung-joo hitched, by selling Warm & Cozy and leaving town. Lol, poor Gun-woo. It’s become a whole town project to get them married, apparently, all because of this TV interview.

It airs today and everyone gathers to watch it together, and Gun-woo feigns indifference only to sneak in and watch it anyway. The interviews play, and when it gets to Wook and Jung-joo, the captions introduce them as the mayor and his wife. Gun-woo gets pissed and Wook is embarrassed despite the cheers around him.

Wook’s relatives call immediately, thinking that he got married without telling them. So he has to take Jung-joo to see his elders to explain that she’s not his wife, which disappoints them tremendously.

Wook tries to ask her casually if they should just go ahead and get married instead of explaining themselves to everyone, and Jung-joo tells him that she likes someone else. The air is suddenly very awkward between them, and Wook quickly covers up his reaction with a laugh, wondering why she’s being so serious when he’s just joking around. Poor Wookie.

Gun-woo calls the reporter to yell at them about their broadcast error, going on and on about how they have to air a correction because they’ve turned a single girl into a married woman with their mistake. She says they’re looking into the source, and says that one of her reporters overheard the staff at Warm & Cozy calling Jung-joo the mayor’s wife.

Gun-woo cringes when he realizes that he was the one saying it to be snide, and hurriedly hangs up the call, ha. By the time Jung-joo comes back and tells them about going to see Wook’s family, he’s in a snit again, mostly because she says wistfully that she’d like to marry into a big family and be loved by parents.

He tells her to go ahead and marry the mayor then, and she tells him about Wook asking her that very thing today. Now they’re just trying to win the argument: “Great! Congratulations, Mrs. Mayor!” and “Yay, I’m going to be so happy as the mayor’s wife!”

But when she uses the mayor’s wording by asking for his cooperation, Gun-woo gets mad: “Cooperation? Is that what you really want?” He comes right up to her and blocks her in with his arms as he leans in close: “I don’t think the mayor is what you want…”

He seems satisfied by her flustered reaction and adds that he doesn’t really think there are only ten balloons left, and playfully flicks her on the forehead before walking off. Urg, you are so maddeningly sexy-hateful!

Gun-woo tosses and turns all night, then calls a friend in broadcasting to ask if he doesn’t want to do a story on his restaurant down in Jeju. The friend is there the next day to interview them, and asks if it’s okay that he includes the fact that they live together. Gun-woo calls it a good way to squash the Mrs. Mayor rumors, but that confuses Jung-joo even more and she asks to think about it.

The reporter friend sees Ji-won on a date with an acquaintance who was once rejected by her when he was poor, and he wonders if the guy is getting the revenge he always talked about, now that he’s a chaebol and Ji-won will give him the time of day. Well, that’s karma for ya.

But Gun-woo can’t have that, and stomps over there to keep her from leaving with the guy. She still introduces Gun-woo as a friend and gets in the car to go, but Gun-woo gets his hand slammed in the car door to stop her and pulls her out. He asks if she’s getting desperate, and she accuses him of judging her.

He knows that she’s greedy, but asks that she at least act in a way that he can agree with, even if he can’t cheer her on. Jung-joo sees it all, and I’m sure she’s wondering along with the rest of us why he lets that horrible girl walk all over him.

Jung-joo sits him down to tend to his bruised hand, and asks him why he likes Ji-won when she’s clearly selfish and greedy and going around dating everyone just to find the man who suits her taste at the moment.

Gun-woo says that’s what people used to say about his mother, but Ji-won was the only person who ever said there was nothing wrong with that, and she wanted to live like her. He knows that she wants to meet rich men, and famous men, and so on, just like his mom did.

Jung-joo asks if he’s going to accept her in the end even after all that, and he says that’s what his father did for his mother. So he decided long ago that he was going to keep liking her. What. Seriously? This is the reason? THAT IS SO DUMB.

Jung-joo tells him to go ahead then, whether or not he gets hurt and is in pain. She shoves his wounded hand aside and he whines that it hurts, and reminds her that they were always supposed to stay by each other when they were sick or hurting. Jung-joo shouts that she won’t, and tells him to be in pain alone.

When Jung-joo returns to Warm & Cozy that night, Wook is waiting for her because he’s worried that his relatives are going to come down here looking for her. She sighs and wonders if maybe it’d be easier all around if she just left, and Wook argues that she doesn’t know all of Jeju’s merits yet.

He gets all worked up as he says that he’s going to show her every single thing that’s beautiful about the island until she never wants to leave. Aw, why does it sound like he’s talking about himself? He confesses, “I want to be the one who gives you a reason to stay.” So swoony! Pick him!

She asks why, and he gets so frustrated that he gets up and grabs her by the wrist: “Lee Jung-joo, who doesn’t understand words! This is me, holding onto you! I’ll be good to you… so don’t go!” The moment turns awkward so he lets go, and from a distance we see Gun-woo watching with a dark expression.

Gun-woo is waiting inside when Jung-joo comes in, and when she asks about his hand, he says it hurts like hell because she told him to hurt: “Now it really hurts.” I take it we’re not talking about your hand anymore.

She apologizes for not going to the hospital with him when he was so good to her through her nonexistent cancer, and he adds that he’s still good to her now. She agrees, then tells him to stop being good to her, because she needs her expectations to lessen in order to pop the rest of those balloons.

She says that she wants to stay here and be okay, so she asks him not to be so good to her anymore.

But Gun-woo gets up and digs his heels in: “I don’t want to! I’m going to be good to you! I’m going to be way better to you than I am now! I’m going to be really good to you! So don’t be okay, Lee Jung-joo.”

 
COMMENTS

So lemme get this straight, Baek Gun-woo: You want Jung-joo to keep on liking you, you won’t have her getting over you, the mayor can’t have her, but you won’t make her yours either, and you refuse to let go of your stupid obsession with liking Ji-won to the end of days? What are you smoking, you crazy boy? In what world do you get to look down on Ji-won for stringing you along when you’re doing the exact same thing to Jung-joo? Not defending Ji-won, by the way, because I didn’t get a lobotomy—they’re just apparently more alike than I realized, and that makes me feel icky about what Gun-woo’s doing. Does he really think that this is okay?

It’s one thing to be jaded and not believe that love lasts, because that’s something that I understand—it’s a natural reaction to his family background, where he feels singled out among his siblings on top of watching his mother float from man to man. I get that he likes not being judged for that by Ji-won, but trying to recreate his mother and father’s dysfunctional relationship to prove something seems really overboard. I mean, what exactly does it prove—that that’s true love? Because clearly he’s never actually been in love to know the difference. He’s got the order all wrong, if that’s the case, because loving someone so much that you end up waiting your whole life for her to come back to you is totally different from waiting and waiting to prove that it’s love. And that’s not even taking into account that he probably doesn’t know the whole truth about his parents, from the way his siblings talk about it.

The balloon metaphor turned out to be apt, because Gun-woo is full of more hot air than ever. At first I thought he was just being cheeky and enjoying the feeling of being liked, and playing dumb to tease Jung-joo about her feelings for him. Childish, but so in character. And then he called Ji-won out on all her lies, and I was ready to hug him and forgive him for past idiocy. But the longer the episode went on, it was clear that he was still in denial about his feelings for Jung-joo, which confuses the hell out of me, because it seems like we’ve reverted. And THEN he returns to square one with Ji-won, only now he’s aware of Jung-joo’s feelings and is actively holding onto her while not letting go of Ji-won, and I just can’t even. I can’t. You don’t deserve her! And Hyung doesn’t deserve Hae-shil either, while we’re at it. He was just as bad today.

At this point I’m actually going to be disappointed if Jung-joo just accepts Gun-woo’s feelings, because now I’m too pissed at him to cheer them on. He has no idea how he’s hurting her, even when he’s basically putting her in the exact same position he’s always been in with Ji-won. Shouldn’t someone who’s always been kept on ice be more aware of how shitty that feels? It sucks to be so constantly frustrated by the drama’s insistence on holding the main relationship back (for a lack of other plotlines, sadly), but when you write the hero this way in order to create further complications, what am I supposed to feel other than anger? To run away with their metaphor, things with Gun-woo might be sweet, but sticky doesn’t even begin to describe the mess we’re in. Please, for the love of Yoo Yeon-seok, stop making me wish that Jung-joo would pack her bags and leave Gun-woo’s stupid ass on that island without her!

 
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