Call It Love: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

85 April 14, 2023April 14, 2023

Call It Love: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

by Dramaddictally

It’s over! And there’s only one acceptable thing to do: use your weekend to binge it all from the beginning. We’re sending our siblings off into the sunset, with all the love, healing, and family they’ve found along the way. And while sometimes big growth means ending up in a distant place, the drama reminds us that it can also lead you somewhere even better: right back where you started.

EPISODES 15-16

The dreaded time jump! Why did they take this masterpiece and tack that ending on there? We had 30 extra minutes for some Episode 12-esque sparks between our leads and I’m disappointed to say we did not get anything even close. There’s one kiss (one!) and it’s between Joon and Hye-sung. Yes, that needed to happen and I give an A+ for getting these two together and ready to make a happy home. But Woo-joo and Dong-jin deserved some blissful feels — and, frankly, so did we.

There were no real surprises in these episodes and things went mostly just the way I thought they would — and I mean that as high praise. The drama was true to its characters, never backing down on what it set up, and it took the story to its logical, happy conclusion (minus the one-year hiatus). While I wasn’t psyched on the loss of momentum at the end, overall, this drama warrants a stream of accolades, from writing, directing, and cinematography to set design and ensemble cast. When it comes time to award the beans this year, I can already tell you which jar mine are going into.

Call It Love: Episodes 15-16

We start our story where we left off last week: Woo-joo on the phone with her mom and Dong-jin off to the side, listening to all of Woo-joo’s kind words about him. He’s there to help her get her house back, and she’s saying she’ll give up the house for him. It’s such a beautiful moment, it almost hurts the eyes.

Dong-jin convinces Woo-joo to take her father’s will and use it to reclaim the house. He’ll be happy when she’s back in her home, so she shouldn’t worry about him in the process. He walks her to her door and they say a sad, painful goodbye — no hugs included.

Call It Love: Episodes 15-16

When Woo-joo shows the will to her siblings, Hye-sung bawls her eyes out. Their father left the property to her, his eldest daughter. But really, she’s crying for all the things she’s been holding in and unable to release. She’s sorry for everything they’ve been through because of their dad — and even more sorry they have to feel grateful to him now because of this will. She and Woo-joo sit with their complicated feelings, and their sister bond is as strong as ever.

With Joon, they visit some lawyers who advise them to press criminal charges against Hee-ja. But, they all agree they’d rather find another route. Hye-sung is so grateful to Dong-jin that, like Woo-joo, she wants to be careful of how their actions affect him. And Mom feels the same. When Hye-sung calls to tell her they may have to file a criminal suit, her only question is, “How’s Woo-joo?”

Call It Love: Episodes 15-16

Meanwhile, Dong-jin is busy getting the house back from the new buyers. When he explains the situation to them, they agree to nullify the contract as long as their down payment is returned. That’s good news and the matter seems settled, but later, Dong-jin quits Best Fairs and tells Sun-woo he will use his severance pay and company shares to get the money to pay back the buyers.

Why can’t he get the money from Hee-ja? Well, even though the drama throws in a few lines to help us understand her, Hee-ja is not going to change. After last week’s confrontation where Dong-jin admits he’s always been unhappy, we see Hee-ja cry when he leaves. She takes her luggage and moves out of his apartment, but not before doing his dishes and laundry (cameo by Dong-jin’s undies). As she folds his clothes, she thinks about what he said and it seems like maybe she’s ready to turn over a new leaf. But then, we see her try to swindle the buyers into paying for the rest of the house before they find out she doesn’t actually own it. So, not a total turnaround.

Woo-joo and Dong-jin meet up to discuss how to proceed with the house. They both have the same idea: Dong-jin will try to persuade his mother to give it up, but if that fails, Woo-joo should go ahead with the charges. Woo-joo thinks Dong-jin is doing all this because he’s a good person, but he says (basically) that he’s doing it because he loves her. The pain is palpable when they’re together, but they also can’t stand not being around each other, so they continue to keep in touch.

Hee-ja moves back into the house and, before Dong-in has a chance to speak to her, Hyun-joo is at her door. After throwing a few insults around, Hyun-joo tells Hee-ja she should thank her son. If it weren’t for him, she would have called the police already. Instead, she’s giving her the chance to leave without taking the issue to court. (Yes! Mom already has it decided and is taking care of it herself. I love this woman.)

On her way out, Hyun-joo runs into Dong-jin. He apologizes on his mother’s behalf and she tells him she doesn’t want to take legal action and that she’s trusting him to handle the situation. From there, she goes to see her kids and tells them not to press charges.

In the meantime, Hee-ja’s shifty boyfriend reports her to the police for hiding her husband’s will. I don’t quite get what he hopes to gain from this, but (for the story) it absolves the Shim family from having to report Hee-ja, while also getting Hee-ja in trouble. Dong-jin agrees to go with his mother to the police station and Hee-ja seems to gain some temporary humility. She says she just wanted to live a good life and Dong-jin tells her it’s not too late. They have a misty-eyed moment and she thanks him and apologizes — which seems to move him.

In the Shim family household (a.k.a., Joon’s house), Mom tells Woo-joo that she wants Dong-jin to come over so she can feed him — which screams to me that there’s already a reconciliation afoot. Ji-gu, though, is ahead of the game, hanging out with Dong-jin without telling anyone.

Dong-jin comes over for his homecooked meal, where he and Hyun-joo eat alone. Woo-joo told everyone else to leave so he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. It’s a nice gesture, but it means that Woo-joo is not there to hear Mom say that she’ll make him food anytime he wants and that she feels sorry and grateful to him. Earlier, we heard her tell Hee-ja that she pitied Dong-jin for being her son, and in this moment over lunch, it seems to me that she’s almost inviting him into her family.

As Hee-ja prepares for trial, she learns that she faces jail time. To avoid it, she needs someone from the Shim family to write a “non-punishment application letter.” Woo-joo meets with her and gets a lot of things off her chest. She says she suffered for years because of the affair between Hee-ja and her father, but now she sees she aimed all her hatred at Hee-ja — when in reality it was her father that wronged her the most. Woo-joo reflects that it was easier to hate Hee-ja than to hate her own dad.

Hee-ja is too dim-witted to understand what Woo-joo is saying but it’s a turning point for Woo-joo. She vows to stop hating Hee-ja from that moment on. And then she agrees to give her the letter she needs so she won’t go to jail. During the conversation, Woo-joo also reveals that she loves Dong-jin. This is about the only thing that sinks in for Hee-ja and, when she gets back to Dong-jin’s place, she asks if he was in love with her too. He says yes. He felt happy for the first time and liked her a lot. Hee-ja cries and can’t look at him, and I think she does care about him on some level. She’s just very selfish.

Call It Love: Episodes 15-16

All the running around in these episodes has at least one great outcome: Joon and Hye-sung are spending time together again. He’s still apologetic and she’s still standoffish — but, they’re coincidentally wearing matching outfits, so we know this couple is a go.

Joon admits that when he heard Hye-sung crying over the will, he wanted to go hold her tight. He thought about her all night long — and so, that’s his answer about how he feels. With the confession out of the way, he takes her hand, interlacing fingers, and they walk home, where he’s about to make her dinner. Awww. What a rewarding road it’s been with these two.

But the happiness of their union makes the official breakup between Woo-joo and Dong-jin feel even worse. Woo-joo wants a last farewell, so they can formalize their breakup without feeling so sad about it. She invites Dong-jin to take a trip to his favorite hiking trail, where they say their goodbyes.

Both express what they gained from the other, with Woo-joo saying, “If I hadn’t met you, I’d be walking backward for the rest of my life.” Dong-jin thanks her for loving him and promises to live a fun life, which is what she wants for him. When they finally part, they hug so tenderly, you can almost feel it through the screen.

And here is where our one-year time jump takes effect. We start by checking in with Joon and Hye-sung. In earlier episodes, we learned that Joon did not want to get married. But now that our siblings have moved back into their own house and left Joon’s so empty, he wishes Hye-sung never had to go home. He asks her to marry him so she’ll stick around his place full-time. They joke that it’s a childish reason to get married, but it’s actually a pretty mature (and cute) conversation.

Woo-joo is now working on trade fairs for another company and liking her new job. We learn that Dong-jin has been living out his camping dreams, driving around and rarely returning to Seoul.

Call It Love: Episodes 15-16

One day, Woo-joo goes to Joon’s pharmacy after not visiting for a year. When Hye-sung finds out, she senses that Woo-joo went back that neighborhood because she’s thinking of Dong-jin. She tells Woo-joo that Mom was not upset with Dong-jin — in fact, she had offered to make him food whenever. Hye-sung concludes that there’s nothing prohibiting Woo-joo and Dong-jin from being together. (Which, *flips table*, someone could have told her a year ago!)

Ji-gu has kept in touch with Dong-jin this whole time and, overhearing his sisters’ conversation, he invites Dong-jin to a performance where he’ll be singing. He tells Woo-joo to go, too, hoping they’ll meet. Both Dong-jin and Woo-joo attend and smile at each other across the crowd. In the final shot, Woo-joo runs over to Dong-jin as if she’s about to grab onto him, and they both move out of frame.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if I’m not happy at the end, I don’t consider it a happy ending. I have two principal problems with the last 30 minutes. First, I found it boring. Literally zero feels. After feeling so much for these characters for so long — with such measured buildup — I can’t understand why the writers would choose to pull the plug and drain out all that intensity.

My second issue is that there was no narrative reason to keep our leads apart. The central conflict had been resolved and there was no compelling explanation for why they separated. The drama tries to tell us that they’re “taking a romantic rest.” This information is shoehorned in after the time jump when we hear a narrator (possibly a radio DJ?) talking about “taking some time for your soul after fiercely blazing your trail.”

Uh, I mean, I guess this explanation could make some sort of sense except our leads had already talked about their healing process when they were out in the woods together. That conversation made it sound like they’d already gotten what they needed on this journey — and what they needed was each other. These are two people who had spent so much of their lives feeling alone that I don’t see how more alone time would serve them in any way.

The ending didn’t serve the story or the audience. It was cute, but it could have been great. And we could have had 30 minutes of handholding and camping kisses!

Call It Love: Episodes 15-16

All right, let’s move on to talk about all the outstanding things this drama did. I don’t want the the ending to color my perception of the whole show — and, right now, my perception is in desperate need of a rose-colored filter. This is a drama that pushed boundaries. It continually set up trope-y expectations and then knocked them down. It gave all the side characters flesh and blood — and I felt for every one of them. It played with ideas about different kinds of love and what it means to be a family. And it gave us complicated, relatable leads that were impossible not to root for. How many dramas can say all that?

On a technical level, the choices were just as good. The use of one-point perspective (which is the cinematic technique that creates that clean, symmetrical look) added so much to the beauty of this story. It conveyed coldness, emptiness, and loneliness when it needed to — and allowed the color filter to supply the atmospheric warmth.

Plus, the whole cast deserves an award, individually and as an ensemble. And Lee Sung-kyung way exceeded my expectations with her performance. She and Kim Young-kwang did such a fantastic job with their micro-expressions and transformations that — I don’t want to take anything away from either actor — but I have to give massive credit to PD Lee Kwang-young for bringing it out of them and capturing it.

In short, this drama deserves a re-watch and I’ll be binging it pronto from start to finish — or, at least, from start to Episode 15.

Call It Love: Episodes 15-16

Required fields are marked *

1 lapislazulii

April 14, 2023 at 9:14 PM

Funnily enough I think I had an opposite experience to you @dramaddictally with the last 30 minutes of the show! It was a wonder I could see through the tears at the end there, with that violin BGM, soft wind, the lighting, Jigu smiling so brightly like he’d swallowed the damn sun, the expressions, the way time seemed to slow down and stop, everyone else disappearing, the pink haze no longer there. At this point my standards for love have reached beyond the stratosphere, good luck to any future partners hahaha.

I do understand the critique you've raised with the ending though and why it made people feel a little bittersweet - I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling a little that way too. I do wish we had more happy Woojoo and Dongjin scenes at the end there. Stylistically though, the ending did make sense to me considering the themes of self-love and healing in particular. The way I read it was that yes the conflict was resolved but they needed to learn how to be happy and comfortable with their own company first before getting together and it was really nice seeing them explore their new found 'emotional' freedom if you will. Plus I did expect this kind of ending to a degree - it feels like a staple of the genre after all too. I just love the leads so much that I was greedy for more, so as a fan it left me a bit wanting but as someone appreciating the overall craft of the plot, I think it was a very poignant and beautiful ending. The look in Dongjin’s eyes when he spotted Woojoo at the concert spoke SO loudly, and I’d much rather that than a timeskip reuniting happened offscreen. Even the final second when they both seemed to brake character felt symbolic of the actual characters breaking free of their restraints finally.

And also - Jigu!! As the eldest sibling myself, my attention naturally fell on the older two out of the three siblings for most of the show. I saw myself in both of them and could totally sympathise with the pressure of feeling like you’re the pillar of the family and mum 2.0 with a sometimes self-appointed (to a degree, because the expectation comes from parents too sometimes) duty to ensure that any younger siblings are on the right path and shielded from ‘the bad stuff’ . So I forget sometimes that that love and concern can be a little suffocating and stifling for the younger one/s and that they’ve grown up too/aren’t little kids anymore and have their own thoughts, dreams and aspirations. So by the end, whilst I liked Woojoo and Hyesung as characters, I think my favourite sibling ended up being Jigu because I really liked his quiet understanding and observations of everything that was going on around him and as well as his love for the family. Whilst Woojoo was expected to be the pillar and Hyesung felt the burden of ‘but I’m the oldest sibling so I should be the pillar’, I think the real glue in the family was Jigu - the way he flitted between mum, his two sisters and Jun to keep the family ‘vibes’ together,...

Required fields are marked *

lapislazulii

April 14, 2023 at 9:18 PM

...brought a smile to their faces (even if it’s masked by exasperation at his antics) and even his interactions with Dongjin, helping him be a little less lonely and find happiness with Woojoo, it was all really, really sweet and so understated. It’s made me look at my own younger sibling in a new light actually, because when I think back to certain fights or issues in the household, it’s usually my brother who works quietly in the background to make sure everyone is okay and the one that puts a fond smile on our faces at the end of the day. Baby of the family perks I guess 😂

I don’t know how to put into words precisely everything I felt and feel about this drama but I do want to say a heartfelt thank you to all the beanies who posted and shared thoughts from the very beginning - I wouldn’t have given this drama a shot if I hadn’t read all of your lovely opinions - and also to you @dramaddictally for the beautiful recaps. Hands down the most enjoyable part of watching this show was having been able to take the journey with you all 🥰 It brought me genuine happiness waiting for Wednesdays to roll around each week, to share that excitement with everyone and to engage with all of your beautiful perspectives and thoughts. Drama watching can be a bit of a lonely experience sometimes and I’m forever grateful for this wonderful community for making it feel little less lonely ❤️

It's not a comment if I don't make at least one typo - *than a timeskip where the reuniting happened off screen 😂

Required fields are marked *

Anne18

April 14, 2023 at 9:32 PM

Comment was deleted

Required fields are marked *

DancingEmma

April 14, 2023 at 11:25 PM

@lapislazulii: I want to echo your lovely words. Your point about KD watching really resonated with me as I also don’t have any one in RL to discuss them with. I sometimes wish you and others would materialise from the thin air when I’m watching dramas that I’ve come to like so much or not so much so we could talk and kvetch. You could all then go back to your lives as though it never happened because we will all get amnesia (maintaining the anonymity of the DB and utilising the trope for good!😂. And, rinse and repeat.

Required fields are marked *

indyfan

April 15, 2023 at 7:29 PM

Love your points re discussion. Without the comments here, I'd have no idea how divisive the ending was. On other forums it seems to have passed muster. But beanies have made strong arguments for otherwise. Drama watching is much more fun while having a (civil) passionate discussion.

Required fields are marked *

pickleddragon

April 15, 2023 at 12:24 AM

JiGu kind of won MVP in the end, didn't he? :D
I didn't see much point in him throughout, and he seemed liked a dumb, goofy but kind chap mostly, but he pulled himself together towards the end, showing far more empathy and playing unexpected machinator to bring the OTPs together.

Required fields are marked *

Eazal

April 15, 2023 at 1:13 AM

He was there in all important moments of the family, being the bridge connecting two sides as if he really didn't know what he was doing, but knowing. As the donsaeng in my family, I relate to this position.

Required fields are marked *

skelly

April 16, 2023 at 11:06 AM

JiGoo made up for the fact that I fully detested Haesung throughout. In her own sweet way, she is just as selfish as Heeja, and I actually pity Jun for being so lonely that it is worth it for him to give Haesung what she wants. That last, year-later 'oh-by-the-way-mom-thinks-he's-okay' was the last straw.

Required fields are marked *

2 Anne18

April 14, 2023 at 9:16 PM

Comment was deleted

Required fields are marked *

3 Anne18

April 14, 2023 at 9:18 PM

Comment was deleted

Required fields are marked *

lapislazulii

April 14, 2023 at 9:24 PM

I like your theory about the connection to the female gaze!! You know it's good art when it makes you think beyond the story to look at how the story is told and the purposes/potential meanings behind those choices!

My theory is a stretch but I was thinking that maybe it also had something to do with creating a bit of a 'twilight' or 'dusk' feel - that time of the day when the sun either hasn't quite risen hasn't quite set/hasn't quite risen and it feels like time is stuck in a bit of a limbo. It's like you're on the verge of a new day but not just there yet. Maybe to mirror our leads feeling like they're perpetually stuck static in a constantly moving world? Idk but it's fun coming up with theories and reading ones others have come up with!

Required fields are marked *