Answer Me 1988: Episode 17

by girlfriday

Two weeks was a really long time to wait, but we pick up right where we left off, smack dab in the middle of our friend triangle, with a possible shift in our heroine’s feelings. We near the end of adolescence with this episode, and the thing that takes over everyone’s thoughts are dreams—what they want to be, what they want to do, and who they want to be with.

 
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EPISODE 17: “Irony of life, Part 2”

April 1989. After Taek cancels their movie date, Deok-sun sits in the library muttering to herself like a crazy person, arguing back and forth about whether she has a right to be mad, or if Taek had every reason to cancel because something more important than her came up. She’s clearly upset about him canceling on her and wonders if she’s nothing to him, and then decides with a sigh that yeah, she’s probably nothing. Hm.

Her friend Ja-hyun thinks it’s terrible of him to make the date and cancel, and decides that Taek must think of her as a fool. Oh if you only knew. Deok-sun asks where their friend Mi-ok is, and Ja-hyun says she’s under house arrest, and that her dating life is over as she knows it.

Taek’s dad burns his hand on the stove while making dinner, and when Sun-woo’s mom goes to pick up Jin-ju after work, she notices the bandaids on his hand. He insists that it’s no big deal, and she cutely feeds him pastries as he walks along carrying Jin-ju.

Deok-sun and Ja-ok part ways at a corner, just as a motorcyclist zooms by, nearly knocking into Deok-sun. She hurriedly grabs her bag and darts out of the way, and only belatedly sees that her foot has a big track mark on it. Did he run over her foot? Ack.

Jung-hwan’s dad is still recovering from his back surgery, and Dong-ryong is still suffering from hemorrhoids and decides to follow a homeopathic remedy. He takes out a garlic clove… and sticks it where the sun don’t shine.

Deok-sun has her foot wrapped up and has to be piggybacked from room to room by No-eul. The thing that upsets her though is being injured on the weekend when she doesn’t have to go to school anyway. Dong-ryong pops in to make sure she’s still alive, and when he says he’s off to play soccer with the boys, she asks for a piggyback ride so she can watch.

Jung-bong bursts into Jung-hwan’s room with red eyes and announces that he’s done folding a thousand paper cranes. Jung-hwan isn’t there though, and Jung-bong pauses when he sees a flyer on his desk recruiting cadets for the air force. Ack, already?

The boys sneak onto a field with a soccer ball, and Sun-woo runs to the bathroom, leaving Jung-hwan and Taek alone. They sit in awkward silence for a while, and Jung-hwan finally brings up his wallet, asking if Taek opened it up and looked inside.

Taek lies that he didn’t, and even gives a perfect clueless expression to make it believable. Jung-hwan doesn’t look convinced, but it’s not like he can argue.

Dong-ryong finally arrives with Deok-sun on his back, both of them complaining and kicking and screaming the whole way. The mood lifts when the boys run around playing soccer together, and though Deok-sun can only sit on the sidelines, she cheers them on with a big smile.

Jung-hwan and Dong-ryong are winning and they slide onto the grass to lie down, only Dong-ryong mostly falls straight on his bum. He winces in pain, and when he gets up, the whole group gasps and Deok-sun asks if he’s on his period. He looks down to find his pants soaked in blood, and the others carry him off to the hospital in a panic.

They leave Taek behind to go tell Dong-ryong’s dad what happened, and he looks over at Deok-sun, who can’t walk because of her foot. She tells him to go tell Dong-ryong’s dad and come back, but he stoops down in front of her to give her a piggyback ride. She hesitates though, and no matter how much he prods, she won’t do it.

A security guard arrives and catches them on the field, so Taek just picks her up in a princess-carry and goes running down the field at full speed. Well that’s an impressive show of strength from the guy who always looks like you could knock him over with a feather. Deok-sun seems impressed too, or is maybe she’s affected by the closeness, because she seems to see him differently.

Bora’s friend congratulates her on going after her dream, and though Bora does seem happy about studying law like she always wanted, she takes out the necklace Sun-woo gave her and looks at it with a heavy sigh.

Jung-hwan’s dad is actually happy about being injured because Mom is waiting on him hand and foot, though he makes the mistake of saying that she wouldn’t have made it onto the National Singing Contest stage anyway because they have standards. Mom immediately takes away his fruit, his pillow, and his blanket, and Dad regrets putting his foot in his mouth.

Sun-woo puts medicine on Taek’s dad’s burn, and Taek comes over so they can all eat together. Taek tries to help by setting out the silverware, but Sun-woo tells him that sitting still is more helpful because he has to re-pair all the chopsticks.

Deok-sun lies in bed thinking about Taek and the moment he scooped her up and carried her across the field, and she tosses and turns over it.

Taek joins Sun-woo in his room and they sit quietly for a while, until Sun-woo starts to talk… but then changes his mind. Taek already seems to know what he wants to say, and tells Sun-woo about the time he came home early once from the baduk training center and found Dad eating cold rice in cold water.

Taek says that Dad was running around in a daze because he’d been so completely caught off-guard, and he had thought in that moment, “It would be nice if there were someone by Dad’s side.” He turns to Sun-woo and says, “I like that it’s your mom.” Aww, Taekie.

Sun-woo smiles and tears pool in his eyes as he asks Taek if he’s okay with it, and if he doesn’t miss his mom. Taek says, “It’s been longer for me than for you. It must be easier for me.” Sun-woo realizes that he’s younger than Taek in some ways, and then they argue adorably about who should be the hyung. Sun-woo says his birthday is earlier, but Taek argues that he’s mentally older. Augh, you guys are going to make the cutest brothers.

Sun-woo’s mom wants to clip the big headline in the newspaper about Taek’s latest win, but Taek’s dad acts like it’s no big deal for Taek to be in the paper. She wants to throw a party for his grand slam win, but Dad vetoes the idea, not wanting to add pressure by only celebrating his victories. He’s always treated Taek the same, win or lose.

The news announces that there’s going to be a record number of shooting stars that night, and Jung-bong drags Jung-hwan outside to stargaze. He’s determined to make a wish on a falling star, and as always, Jung-hwan just humors Hyung and does as asked. Inside, Mom finds old journals written by both boys when they were kids, and Dad says he’s saving them all to give to them when they get married.

Sun-woo runs out excitedly when Bora calls from down the street, but when they’re together the air is thick with tension as Bora gets up the nerve to say something. Just when she opens her mouth, Sun-woo grabs her hand and points out a falling star.

Up on the roof, Jung-bong and Jung-hwan see them too—a shower of falling stars—and Jung-bong quickly makes a wish. Jung-hwan claims to have forgotten to make one, and guesses that Hyung wished for a happy romance with Mi-ok. But Jung-bong says no, he wished for his little brother to be able to do whatever he wants in life. Awww.

Mom and Dad read Little Jung-hwan’s journal, and one entry is all about Deok-sun and how she’s stronger than the boys in their class. Another is about playing soccer with Deok-sun and Taek, and how Hyung’s dream is to become a soccer player, so Jung-hwan is going to try and become one in his stead.

And then we see a flashback to the moment when the brothers watched Top Gun together, and Jung-bong was so taken with the movie that he wished he could become a fighter pilot. He knew right away that he never could, but now we see that it was never Jung-hwan’s dream at all—he just always picked the future Hyung would’ve wanted, like he was determined to live for the both of them. Great, now I’m crying.

Back in the present, Jung-bong says that what he really wants is for Jung-hwan to find what he wants to do, and not what Hyung wants to do: “That’s my wish.” Jung-hwan turns away to hide his tears, and then insists that he wanted to go to the air force himself, not because of Hyung. Jung-bong doesn’t really believe him, but lets him win the argument.

Down on the steps, Sun-woo says he wished for Bora to quit smoking, and asks what Bora wished for. After a pause, she says, “I wished for us to break up.” Ouch. Sun-woo squeezes his eyes shut to keep from crying, and Bora says again that they should break up and that she’s sorry.

With that, she gets up to walk away, and Sun-woo calls out after her, “Noona, if you take one more step, I’ll never see you again for the rest of my life.” But she keeps walking ahead without turning back. Sun-woo sits there stunned for a long while, then curses before burying his head in his hands.

Jung-hwan sits outside by himself long after Hyung has gone inside, and Mom tells him to make a wish on a star. He sits there looking up at the sky contemplating his wish, then murmurs, “My wish? I wish that bastard were a terrible person.”

We see him looking across the street to the next rooftop, where Taek is outside smoking a cigarette. Jung-hwan sighs knowing his wish will never come true, and Taek awkwardly tries to hide his cigarette.

Jung-hwan lies awake that night, Deok-sun continues to toss and turn, and Taek takes sleeping pills even though he told Dad he wouldn’t. And when she’s alone, Bora lets herself cry over her breakup with Sun-woo.

The next morning, Deok-sun sees Dong-ryong’s dad on his way out and asks after Dong-ryong, who’s still in the hospital. Dad says he’s okay and then scowls to see news of his son’s embarrassing incident in the local paper, and runs around stealing all the neighbors’ papers.

Mom asks Deok-sun what she wants to be when she grows up, and Deok-sun grows quiet because she doesn’t have an answer. No-eul knows what he wants to be though, and says that he’s going to become a singer. Mom shoots that down right away, making him pout.

Deok-sun is alarmed when she gets a phone call, and upstairs, Jung-bong gets dressed up for his big birthday date with Mi-ok. He heads out in his pink shirt with the jar of a thousand paper cranes in his hands, and Deok-sun comes hobbling out into the street after him to say that Mi-ok can’t come out today because of her dad.

Jung-bong is heartbroken at the news, and Deok-sun offers to pass along Mi-ok’s birthday present at school. Jung-bong writes a letter that night to tell Mi-ok happy birthday, and to make sure she doesn’t feel too bad about having to cancel their date.

The moms gets together and talk about their dreams when they were young. Sun-woo’s mom says she wanted to be a singer, Deok-sun’s mom says she wanted to be an actress, and everyone is shocked when Jung-hwan’s mom says she wanted to be a painter.

Upstairs, the dads sit in front of the TV watching a news report about the new generation choosing very different dream jobs, like science and education over being a civil servant. Jung-hwan’s dad says he wanted to be a scientist, and the dads are surprised when Taek’s dad says he wanted to be a wrestler. Dong-ryong’s dad says he wanted to become a dancer, and though the other dads turn down his offer to show them, he gets up anyway.

Deok-sun waits outside for Taek to come home, and though he tells her to go home and shuffles inside, she follows him in and knocks on his door. She sits around as he pops some sleeping pills and goes to bed, and he tells her to go home before passing out.

We see her limp towards the door, but when Taek opens his eyes, Deok-sun is lying there across from him, upside-down. The screen is fuzzy and dreamlike, which makes me wonder if it’s really happening…

He opens his eyes wide when he sees her, and she does too, and notices that he’s holding her hand. Omo. They gaze at each other for a long beat, and then Taek leans in to kiss her. Her eyes flutter closed and she kisses him back. Eeee!

But… did that really happen, or was it a dream? Why is the screen so fuzzy?

Jung-hwan’s mom waits excitedly for her family to react to her breakfast, but when Dad is the only one who gives her the reaction she wants, she frowns. Everyone heads off to school again today, and Taek stands out in the street as everyone passes by on their way out.

Finally Deok-sun comes out acting like nothing is out of the ordinary, and Taek asks when she left last night. She says she went home right away as he went to bed, and he realizes that it was a dream after all, and mutters under his breath, “That’s a relief.”

She asks if he dreamt something, and he tells her it was nothing and asks after Dong-ryong. She’s jealous that Dong-ryong gets to skip school and figures he’s having a blast. He is, but for a very different reason: Mom is at the hospital spoon-feeding Dong-ryong his favorite home-cooked meal, and he couldn’t be happier.

Deok-sun runs into Dad on their way home and wheedles him into buying her an ice cream cone. She asks if it’s okay if she doesn’t get into college, and Dad says she could find lots of things to do if she doesn’t get into college. She gets him to admit that that’s a lie, and he suggests that she give it her best shot for one year instead of giving up without even trying.

She agrees to give it her all for a year, and makes Dad promise not to hate her if she fails anyway. But when Dad asks what her dream is, Deok-sun says with a long face, “I don’t have one. I don’t have a dream. Pathetic, right? I must really be dumb.” Dad is taken aback, but he rebounds right away and assures her that it’s perfectly normal for her not to have a dream because lots of people don’t know that at her age, and she can find one starting now.

That puts a smile back on her face, and Dad says he didn’t always want to work at a bank, but he just worked hard to eat and live, and ended up here. She asks what Dad’s dream is now, and he says it’s for Bora, Deok-sun, and No-eul to be healthy and live well. She clarifies that she meant his personal dream, but Dad says that’s it—that’s all a dad could want. It makes her cry, and she teases him for calling that his dream.

We flash back to the dads hanging out and talking about their past dreams, which turned into talk about their current dreams for their kids. Dong-yong’s dad was most worried about Dong-ryong taking after him and dancing instead of studying, and Taek’s dad didn’t want Taek to take after him either—he wished Taek would just be a kid and say what he feels, not endure everything silently.

Jung-hwan’s dad said his dream was for Jung-bong to just stay as healthy as he is now, and there was nothing else he wanted. Deok-sun’s dad had complained that all of their dreams were about their kids.

The moms were having the exact same conversation downstairs, where talk of their past dreams naturally led to talk of their present dreams. Jung-hwan’s mom wished for Jung-bong to go to college and for Jung-hwan to be a little less taciturn. Deok-sun’s mom wished she could make Bora and Deok-sun a little more like each other. Sun-woo’s mom just wished for her kids to be able to stand tall and not be at a disadvantage in life.

Another flashback shows Dong-ryong’s dad taking a cab first thing in the morning just go buy Dong-ryong bananas in the hospital, and Taek’s dad sneaking a big bundle under his jacket on the morning that Dong-ryong’s dad had stolen all the papers. He’d bought an extra one to cut out Taek’s big front-page story, and we see that he’s been scrapbooking for years and clipping every single one of Taek’s articles from the start. Of course he has.

Deok-sun tosses and turns again, and takes out her diary to write. She wonders why she’s the only one without a dream, and that despite Dad’s words making her feel better, she’s still envious of other people who have dreams. She wonders how other people know what it is they want to do, and why she doesn’t know.

In the morning, Deok-sun complains when Mom sends her to deliver food to Bora. She grumbles all the way up the steps as Bora shows her to her gosiwon room, but then when she opens the door, Deok-sun is shocked to see how tiny the space is. It’s basically a box, and I can’t even figure out how a grown person would lie down in there (or maybe you’re not meant to sleep at all, just study ’round the clock?).

Deok-sun immediately bursts into tears and asks Unni if she’s been living like this the whole time, even more upset when she sees a half-eaten ramyun on the desk. She wails on Bora’s shoulder, and Bora laughs at her, but pats her back sweetly. And at home, we see that Mom and Dad eat scraps of leftover crab where there’s probably no meat left, because they sent all the whole crabs to Bora.

Jung-bong writes a letter to Mi-ok asking for a reply, and every day he waits for Deok-sun to give her another letter, and another, and another. Finally she returns with a reply and hands him a letter, but Deok-sun is on the verge of tears as she hands it to him. It can’t be good.

He opens it up to read just a short reply from Mi-ok: “My wish is for you to forget me.” He finds the space travel card tucked inside, and he bursts into tears. Poor Jung-bong. Deok-sun narrates that Mi-ok finally replied after 35 letters from Jung-bong, and that it was the last letter between them. She tells us that before the summer came, Mi-ok left to go study abroad in America, and they lost touch with her too.

July 1989. Jung-bong packs a bag to go to the temple, still heartbroken. Deok-sun studies so hard that she gets her first nosebleed ever, and she smiles proudly.

December 1989. The first snow falls, and Sun-woo’s mom points it out to Taek’s dad, who just nods and doesn’t even look outside. Then all of a sudden at the dinner table, he says, “The days are cold now… should we live together?” Eeee, he finally said it! She’s stunned and doesn’t say a thing in response, but we see her crack the tiniest smile.

Deok-sun narrates that they have a week left before the end of their senior year. She comes by to see Taek, but his room is empty, and she narrates that while they spent their senior year studying, Taek broke three more records in baduk.

The college entrance exam comes and goes, and Dong-ryong announces that he has a surprise for the group: tickets to the college music festival next weekend. As the group of friends heads out together, Deok-sun narrates that they went to college music festival that year, and it was the last night that they spent together as teens.

As Dad changes the calendar, Deok-sun narrates, “It was 1990, and we turned 20.” Jung-hwan packs his bags and stops to carefully fold the pink shirt that Deok-sun gave him and makes sure to take it with him. She tells us that he got into a military academy.

Sun-woo’s mom clutches a piece of paper in tears, and we see that he got into medical school at Yonsei on a full scholarship. Mom hugs him, crying tears of gratitude.

And after nine years failing the exam, Jung-bong got into Sungkyunkwan University’s law department, and Mom and Dad are so proud that they buy a banner and a street band to celebrate. Deok-sun narrates that she went after her dream too, and we see her and Dong-ryong ride the subway to a tutoring academy together, because they didn’t get into college and are studying to retake the exam next year.

We see the years pass with Deok-sun’s family as they gather in front of the TV every year at the end of December to see who won the music daesang that year. As always, Dad is the only one who can never guess the winner.

October 1994. The moms are excited that all the kids are coming home for Taek’s birthday, and Sun-woo’s mom opens Taek’s front gate… and then walks right through a gap they cut in the wall that separates the two houses. Jin-ju is all grown up now, and plucks white hairs from ajusshi’s head and says, “Dad, that’ll be 1000 won.” Omo! He’s Dad now!

Deok-sun’s mom is over the moon at her savings account, and Dad agrees that they can probably move out soon. He says that their two daughters are better than him with their steady paychecks, though he regrets how little they see them these days. He sighs that they’ll get married soon, and Mom starts crying at the thought. He teases her, and she promises to remember this and take note of whether or not he cries at his daughters’ weddings.

Jung-bong wears baggy pants and has a computer and a pager now, and his parents are acting like newlyweds these days, reenacting Han Seok-hyu commercials and going on bicycle dates.

One by one, we see how everyone has changed. No-eul is all grown up, Sun-woo is a resident, and Dong-ryong is sporting mid-nineties fashions head to toe. Taek is clean-cut and his hair is no longer a helmet, and he even got a car (though apparently he hasn’t learned how to park it).

And kyaaaa, Jung-hwan in uniform! His family ruuuuuns to the door when he arrives, and Mom kisses him repeatedly as they all hug him.

Last but not least, Deok-sun comes home, also in uniform… as a flight attendant. They’re all so grown up!

 
COMMENTS

It was a ridiculously long episode, but it didn’t actually feel as long as it was because we sped through so much story time all in one go. I’m actually really pleased that we spent most of our time in their teenage years, because the adolescent coming-of-age stuff is really my favorite part of the Answer Me franchise, though if I had known that there would be no advancement in the lovelines until adulthood, I might’ve wished for a little less time in the past. But in any case I’m still excited about this part, where we fast-forward past the college years and meet our characters all over again, to find out what’s changed and what’s stayed the same, and what our gang has been though in the past four years. Obviously the love triangle is going to pick up where it left off, but what everyone has been doing in the meantime will inform how they proceed now, not to mention the fact that we might finally get to find out if Deok-sun’s heart ever decided that she liked someone on her own without him liking her first.

In today’s episode she seemed to finally feel something for Taek and see him differently, which we’ve never really seen before. But when they confirmed that the kiss was just a dream, I wondered if he’d missed his window to confess at just the right time. Not that it’s any different from Jung-hwan, who obviously did the same thing and stuck his foot in his mouth to boot. I guess they’re really two peas in a pod, and four years later they’ll be on even ground all over again.

I’m just happy that our kids figured out what they wanted to do and chased after their dreams in realistic ways, and that for many of them, their dreams started because of the people around them. It was so touching to discover that Jung-hwan had flip-flopped on his dream career so many times because Jung-bong had changed his mind that many times, and every time he discovered something new he wished he could be, Jung-hwan adopted it as his new dream. That he did that his whole life just wrenches my heart, because even as a little boy he knew that Hyung wouldn’t be able to play soccer or be a basketball star, so he decided he’d be those things for him. Who does that? Jung-hwan would never admit it either, but I love that Hyung knows and tells him not to do that anymore, because his dream is for Jung-hwan to find his own dream. That’s really what the whole episode is about—how everyone’s dreams are in actuality not about themselves at all, but about wishing something for the people they love, or even sacrificing what they want for someone else.

It’s too bad that no couples survived the time jump to 1994, but that’s actually more realistic than a couple lasting from high school through college. What really matters is that one couple formed in the interim, because I was going to have a fit if Sun-woo’s mom and Taek’s dad didn’t get married. I’m sad about not seeing their wedding though—think of the whole neighborhood gathered into a giant awkward group picture, and Jin-ju as a flower girl! It’s likely that they never had a wedding at all and just quietly signed a certificate and knocked down the wall between their houses (so cute), and I guess more than anything I’m just glad they got over their fears and worries and chose to live in the moment. It was pretty much a done deal when Taek and Sun-woo had their conversation about their parents getting married, and I can’t wait to see their family dynamic now that time has passed. Now all that’s left is for Sun-woo to win Bora back, and for someone to confess to Deok-sun already. No, no, don’t hurry, we’ve only been waiting SIX YEARS.

 
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