Search Query: WWW: Episode 10

by LollyPip

A lot of changes are happening lately, mostly in regards to our strong heroine and her ability to relate to people. Between her new romance and her new job, she’s learning that the way to success isn’t to pretend she’s impenetrable, but to show people that she cares and let herself be a bit vulnerable.

 
EPISODE 10 RECAP

Ga-kyung’s parents pressure her to kneel and apologize to Chairman Jang for refusing to follow orders at Unicon and getting Chairman Jang in trouble with the president. Chairman Jang even threatens to cancel KU Group’s business contract with Ga-kyung’s father’s company, but for the first time in a decade, instead of knuckling under, Ga-kyung announces that she’s planning to divorce Jin-woo.

She tells her stricken parents that they’ve already sold her for their company once, then informs Chairman Jang that she wants alimony to compensate for the years of psychological abuse. She warns Chairman Jang that if she fights her, she has enough evidence to take this to criminal court.

She leaves, and Jin-woo walks Ga-kyung’s parents to their car. He tells them not to contact Ga-kyung, upset that they never stood up for her. They ask if he really intends to divorce, but he just says that he and Ga-kyung have something very important in common — they were both abandoned by their parents.

He drives until he finds Ga-kyung sitting at the bus stop again, crying she has nowhere to go. She asks him why she’s been living so hard, but he just sits beside her as she cries, gently tucking a handkerchief into her hand.

Later, Jin-woo takes Ga-kyung to an empty apartment and tells her to stay here until things are settled. He tells her without her asking that she’s the first visitor here, though she probably doesn’t believe him. She counters that not believing him would imply that she’s jealous, and that’s too romantic.

She mentions the new car he bought (after Ta-mi smashed his old one) and asks why he’s been driving a sports car, and Jin-woo admits that he’s enjoyed seeing her make fun of him. Ga-kyung apologizes for mentioning the divorce without talking to him first, and he asks if he’s part of the reason she wants to split up. He’s satisfied when she says he’s not.

In the morning, “Barro manipulation” is number two in the real-time rankings, right above the news about Brian’s resignation. Brian has gone on a fishing trip with a friend, who fusses at him for not leaning into Barro’s good reputation to keep his job.

Brian says that he didn’t build up Barro’s image so he could lie to people, and that resigning was his way of showing that Barro can still be trusted even if he can’t. He does admit that if manipulating rankings was illegal, he might have done things differently, because he’s not a saint.

Over at Unicon, a still-angry In-kyung bursts into Ga-kyung’s office to yell at Ga-kyung for holding a press conference without permission. Ga-kyung says calmly that one of them had to do something to raise their market shares because Barro is taking their users, and that if they don’t do anything, Barro will overtake their top spot in less than a month.

She sneers that In-kyung the the CEO of a pathetic organization that only shifts responsibility and hopes for the best instead of actively working to raise their shares. In-kyung screeches at her, and Ga-kyung actually rolls her eyes.

She walks up on In-kyung, backing her into the wall, then purrs into In-kyung’s ear, “Stop praying and start working. Stop giving approvals and start thinking. Think about how you can protect Unicon. I’m starting to want your position. Don’t make me more determined.”

There’s a meeting at Barro to discuss whether to accept Brian’s resignation. The board worries that the public would forgive him, but that the employees might feel differently. A couple of team leaders with younger employees mention that their teams want Brian back, since he’s a big reason they came to work at Barro. It’s decided that the CEO position will be left open for now, and a decision will be made soon.

Later, in a team meeting regarding marketing, Alex seems upset and distracted. Ta-mi notices that everyone seems a bit off, so she says that she wants to talk to them all individually so that they can ask questions or tell her anything.

Hyun bristles, knowing that Ta-mi used to do this at Unicon, but Ta-mi reminds her that Brian hired her to bring the advantages she learned at Unicon to Barro. Hyun asks if she can refuse and Ta-mi says she can’t, making the others giggle.

Alone in her office, Ta-mi opens her laptop to find that her desktop background has been hijacked by a picture of Mo-gun, and there’s a note saying to clean up all the random icons if she wants to see his face (cute). She turns on her phone to message him and gets a notification that today is his birthday.

He’s at Unicon, presenting the music he composed for a new game. It’s received well, but Mo-gun seems either sick or upset, though he says he’s okay.

As Ga-kyung leaves work later, two men intercept her and say that Chairman Jang wants to see her, making it clear that she has no choice. One of them even reaches to grab her arm, but Mo-gun is suddenly there threatening to call the cops, so they leave.

Mo-gun asks Ga-kyung if she’s okay, and she says honestly that she’s embarrassed. He walks away to save her further embarrassment, but Ga-kyung stops him to say that her plant revived and ask how often she should water it, and he says to just water it when it’s dry. She tells Mo-gun to “water his plant” as well, because she’s been messing with Ta-mi lately.

It’s Jin-woo’s turn to wait awkwardly while Chairman Jang works on yet another bizarre piece of art. He tells his mother that Ga-kyung is serious about the divorce and that he supports her, but Chairman Jang says that their parents created the marriage so their parents will decide whether they may divorce.

She says that she brought Ga-kyung to the family, which means Ga-kyung belongs to her, and that Jin-woo that he can leave if he wants since he’s of no use to her, but Ga-kyung has to stay. Jin-woo tells her that that makes him want the divorce even more, just to protect Ga-kyung from her stalker mother-in-law.

Chairman Jang suddenly realizes something and asks if Jin-woo likes Ga-kyung. He says he’s felt guilty for ten years that Ga-kyung has to put up with her, and that the word “like” doesn’t begin to describe how he feels.

Ta-mi gets a cake for Mo-gun’s birthday, but when she runs into Sun-woo outside Mo-gun’s house, Sun-woo says that today isn’t a good day to celebrate. He awkwardly attempts to explain, saying that Mo-gun has two birthdays.

Sun-woo tells Ta-mi that Mo-gun is probably sick in bed, and that there’s more to the situation but it’s not his to tell. Ta-mi puts together the clues — Mo-gun saying that he went to school in Australia, his mother giving him an English-sounding name so that he could live abroad — and guesses that Mo-gun was adopted.

Inside, Mo-gun makes himself dinner while video-calling with a man who switches between Korean and English. He wishes Mo-gun happy birthday, and Mo-gun calls him “Dad” even though the man isn’t Korean.

Ta-mi eventually knocks on the door, dinner in hand, which is good since it turns out that the meal Mo-gun was cooking was only for show. He’s running a fever, and he says softly that being sick made him miss Ta-mi even more than usual. He’s listless as he eats, and confesses that he gets sick around this time every year, blaming it on the change in seasons though he says that he’s always loved the season that’s coming.

After they eat Ta-mi puts Mo-gun to bed, and while she does the dishes, she recalls Sun-woo saying that Mo-gun was very loved and despite everything, he’s a good guy with a healthy mentality. She lies down to watch him sleep and thinks about when he told Brian that he’s always dreamed of getting married and having a family.

He wakes up and asks Ta-mi why she’s still here, and she says she likes his face when he’s sleeping. They joke about whether it’s worth paying to see, then Ta-mi pulls him closer to lay his head on her arm (the way he snuggles into her just kills me). She says she wishes she were tall so she could hug him better, and he sighs that it’s nice to be sick.

Hyun dresses up to play manager for Ji-hwan on his first day back on the set of What’s Wrong With My Mother-In-Law? In Ji-hwan’s first scene, his character crashes the funeral of his dead evil twin. The young actress who plays the mother-in-law after extensive plastic surgery passes out and he catches her dramatically, and he introduces himself as the younger twin of her dead son-in-law.

He walks off-camera as the other actors continue the scene, coming within inches of Hyun and making her freeze, wide-eyed. He puts his finger to his lips and stays there for several long beats until the director yells “Cut!” then backs up and explains to Hyun innocently that he just had to stay out of the shot.

Mo-gun feels much better when Ta-mi calls to check on him, and he gives her the credit since he’s usually sick for several days. Ta-mi hears him washing a coffee mug and asks why, since she did all the dishes last night, and she gets huffy assuming that he thinks she did a bad job.

The truth is that the mug was dirty, but Mo-gun fibs that it’s just his habit to do the dishes each morning. Ta-mi snaps that she’s never doing his dishes again, and Mo-gun asks her please not to, ha. He tells her to think of him today, and Ta-mi says breezily that she thinks of him so often, she must have been born to like him. Something about that makes Mo-gun go all serious, and when they hang up, his heart is pounding.

When Ta-mi gets to work, she starts the private interviews. Ah-ra goes first, and she gives Ta-mi some cute cellphone cases in return for Ta-mi giving Ah-ra her designer bag. She says she loves working at Barro and wants to learn more about marketing.

Next is Bong-ki, who uses his time to complain about his girlfriend’s insistence that he start manscaping, hee. Jenny says she has nothing to talk about, but when Ta-mi asks about her hobbies, she goes a little crazy around the eyes and says that she really, really likes men. PFFT.

Alex has been uncharacteristically withdrawn for several days, and during his talk with Ta-mi, he tells her that Unicon is offering him a promotion and a significant pay increase. Ta-mi says she’ll respect whatever decision he makes, though the thought of losing Alex obviously bothers her.

Over drinks after work, Ta-mi asks Hyun if she’s ever been scouted by another company. Hyun says she has, including Ga-kyung’s recent offer to work at Unicon, but she wants to become Barro’s CEO and stay until she dies. Hyun notices that Ta-mi is matching her shot-for-shot and warns her that she can’t keep up. Ta-mi says this is her normal drinking pace and takes another shot just to prove it.

Before long Ta-mi is hilariously drunk, and she brags that she has a boyfriend to pick her up. Hyun insists that she has a boyfriend too, and a skeptical Ta-mi challenges her to prove it, so Hyun texts the only guy she knows — Ji-hwan, ha.

While they wait, Mo-gun arrives for Ta-mi, who can barely hold her head up. Hyun runs outside when Ji-hwan calls her, and he obviously finds her adorable as she stammers that she needs him to pretend to be her boyfriend then cringes in embarrassment.

He agrees, and they work out a backstory for their fake relationship, which includes speaking banmal with each other (LOL, Ji-hwan is so happy). Ji-hwan flusters Hyun by holding her hand and calling her “Hyun-ah” with a big ol’ grin, and he turns on the charm big-time as he answers Ta-mi’s questions.

He throws Hyun for a loop by telling the truth about how he and Hyun met — that she thought he was a criminal and tripped him, put him in the hospital. He says she kept showing up in his dreams because he fell in love with her at first sight, and awww, he’s telling the truth, isn’t he?

He tells Ta-mi and Mo-gun everything — how Hyun visited him every day, and got angry when he lost his drama role as if it happened to her. Mo-gun asks Hyun when she started liking Ji-hwan, and she stammers that she just thought he was nice from the first moment she met him. Something about her words have Ji-hwan looking shaken.

Mo-gun takes Ta-mi home and carries her to bed, and he fends off her wandering hands when she tries to undress him. She slurs that she’ll protect him against anyone to tries to hurt him, then starts to cry. She asks him why he didn’t tell her about his real birthday, and he confesses that he worried she would reject him.

Ta-mi cries harder, saying that Mo-gun only talks about fun things and hides everything else. Mo-gun tells her that he was abandoned at an orphanage, and at first she sobs that she feels terrible for him. Then she says she’s grateful that his birth parents brought him to her even if he resents them, then apologizes for being grateful.

She falls asleep, clutching his hand tightly and vowing again to protect him. Mo-gun says quietly, “You’d better keep that promise. Don’t leave me.”

Alex goes to Unicon to look over the job contract they’re offering. The hiring manager uses Brian’s resignation to tempt Alex to get off the “sinking ship” that Barro will become, saying that Unicon needs him, and Alex asks, “You don’t think Barro needs me, too?”

Ta-mi informs her team that the new header for Barro’s main page, which was scheduled to change next month, will be moved up two weeks. Unicon is also putting up a new header next month and Ta-mi wants to avoid being accused of copying them.

She asks the team for some ideas for the Shopping Team’s project, and Ah-ra talks right over Alex in her excitement. Ta-mi puts Ah-ra in charge, though she asks Alex to help her out.

On her lunch break, Ta-mi calls Mo-gun, who’s still in bed after taking her home late. Ta-mi pouts that he refused to stay with her, and Mo-gun says he regrets it now. He also promises to talk about himself more, adding that his real birthday is November 19th and he wants a cake with candles.

She asks him to hang out this weekend, and when he asks if he can go to a middle school reunion instead, she rolls her eyes but says he doesn’t need permission. However, Hyun is subjected to a whiny rant about how Mo-gun should want to spend time with her rather than go to a reunion where there will be girls.

Back at the office, Alex tells Ta-mi that he thinks he has to accept Unicon’s offer, and she says she respects his decision. Meanwhile, Ga-kyung talks to someone on the phone about Alex, making it clear that her actual goal is to shake up Ta-mi’s team.

Ga-kyung heads to the kitchen to attempt to make seaweed soup, and despite some funny mishaps (whoa, that’s a lot of seaweed) she ends up with something that looks edible. Jin-woo comes by with her things, and I love that his response to seeing her meal on the table is a worried, “You cooked? I brought some food…”

He tries what she made as she loudly warns him away, and only one taste clues him in that she used the wrong soy sauce. Ack, it’s probably super salty! But Jin-woo keeps eating and invites Ga-kyung to join them, then laughs when she prefers to eat what he brought, hee.

Ta-mi meets with Brian at a pojangmacha to tell him about her suspicion that Alex’s offer from Unicon is another scheme of Ga-kyung’s. Brian asks if she’s tried to stop Alex from leaving, and she says she has no right when he’s being offered better pay and a promotion.

She admits that she needs Alex on her team, reciting a long list of his good qualities. Brian points out that if Ta-mi doesn’t talk to Alex, he’ll never know all these things she admires about him and he’ll think he’s not needed on the team.

A little drunk, Ta-mi goes straight to Alex’s house and asks him point-blank not to go to Unicon because he’s a crucial part of her team. She tells him all of the qualities she values about him, and she even says his gossiping was a big help when she first came to Barro.

She says she can’t stop him from going to Unicon, but she wanted him to know that she hopes he stays. As she turns to go, Alex blurts out that he’ll stay at Barro admitting that he only thought he wasn’t needed.

The two of them go for round two, and Drunk Alex has some grievances to air. He complains about Ta-mi’s decision to put Ah-ra in charge of marketing and admits that he cried in the restroom, thinking that Ta-mi didn’t want him around. Ta-mi loudly blames herself, hitting herself in the chest, and Alex grabs her hand to make her hit his head instead.

The rest of the team show up after being invited by Ta-mi and find them like that, hee. Alex gives them the biggest goofy grin, but Ta-mi tells them angrily that he was planning on ditching them for Unicon. Alex growls that he’ll kill all those Unicon bastards, and Ta-mi smiles at the team smugly.

Hyun pats Ta-mi’s back later as she tosses up her cookies, tsking that Ta-mi is drunk for the second night in a row. Ta-mi says the alcohol was the reason she was brave enough to ask Alex to stay, and she sighs that she’d become an alcoholic if it meant Brian would come back, too.

Ah-ra and Ta-mi share a taxi, and Ah-ra asks Ta-mi to call her by her real name outside the office (instead of Ellie, her Barro name). They both grow thoughtful, wondering where so many drivers are going this late at night, and Ta-mi says it consoles her to know she’s not the only one awake at this hour.

Ah-ra says that Ta-mi must be having a difficult time lately. Ta-mi admits that when she is, she sometimes wants to lean on Ah-ra but can’t because Ah-ra’s dream is to be like her, and she doesn’t want to ruin that. Ah-ra tells Ta-mi to lean on her anyway.

We see the other team members all making their way, all of them looking just a little bit lonely. When Brian arrives home, he gets a text from the group — it’s a picture of them all together at the bar, and it makes him smile.

 
COMMENTS

I just love how visually meaningful this drama can be. That last scene was so powerful, and said so many things without a single word of dialogue. The team was all together — even Hyun! — yet although they have each other and people in their lives who love them, it’s still possible for them to have lonely moments. It’s so relatable that no matter who you love and who loves you, sometimes you just feel lonely anyway.

Speaking of relatable, I think I finally found it — some compassion for Ga-kyung. I still find her tactics distasteful and I hate how she treats people like pawns to get what she wants, but I can see how it’s all she’s ever known, given the way her own parents used her to ensure their company’s success. Ga-kyung gained some of my sympathy when she said she’s never been happy, and she gained a bit of my respect when she rolled her eyes and got up in In-kyung’s face for the way she treats her. It would be better if Ga-kyung started using her anger and sense of injustice for good, like Ta-mi does, but for the first time I can see that it’s possible she’ll eventually get there. Her rivalry with Ta-mi would be more interesting if they were on a level playing field.

I do think that in a small way, Mo-gun started off Ga-kyung’s change in attitude when he showed her that a plant will die if left in a corner without sunlight or water, but will flourish with even a little bit of care. That seems obvious, but to Ga-kyung, the plant symbolizes her sense of independence, which she was trying to smother and kill just to make herself stop hurting every time she was forced to be someone else’s puppet. And I think that her telling Mo-gun to take care of Ta-mi shows that, despite her recent actions, a part of Ga-kyung still cares for Ta-mi and regrets what she’s doing to her both personally and professionally. For the first time, watching this episode, I feel like Ga-kyung’s eventual redemption arc is something I can get behind.

Ta-mi is also changing since she’s been at Barro and started seeing Mo-gun. She’s a lot softer now, and is starting to be able to tell people that she cares about them about without feeling as though it makes her dangerously vulnerable. Mo-gun started it off by being accepting of Ta-mi and caring about her exactly the way she was, even when she was prickly and mean to him. Now Ta-mi can even tell coworkers that she values them and cares about them, though it’s cute that she still needs a little liquid courage to get it done. Hey, baby steps.

RELATED POSTS

• Premier Watch: Perfume, Investigation Couple 2, Search Query: WWW
• Jang Ki-yong ruffles Im Soo-jung’s feathers in tvN’s Search Query: WWW
• Pondering the meaning of love, marriage, and work with tvN’s Search Query: WWW
• Im Soo-jung, Jang Ki-yong, Lee Da-hee, Jeon Hye-jin join tvN romance drama
• Jang Ki-yong up for tvN fantasy noona romance opposite Im Soo-jung