Frankly Speaking: Episodes 11-12 (Final)

by DaebakGrits

This just in: rom-com K-drama about a news anchor and a variety show writer ends its 12-episode run on a whimper. It’s not an awful drama, but — much like the Truck of Doom careening towards our hero’s family at the end of last week’s episodes — it should have picked a lane and stuck with it. Our story has been consistently inconsistent, but at least our finale has delivered on its rom-com promise of a happy ending.

 
EPISODES 11-12

The tense final moments of last week’s episodes are further exaggerated in our finale’s opening scenes, as we follow Ki-baek’s mother in the hours leading up to the car accident. The whole montage feels emotionally manipulative, like a Hallmark commercial trying to boost card and porcelain figurine sales before Mother’s Day, and even though there is no actual PPL to be seen, the vibe is morbid and very “show your mother you love her… before she dies.” So, for those of you thinking the screeching breaks and flashing headlights were a fake-out, sorry. Ki-baek’s family was very much hit by a dreaded Truck of Doom.

Ki-baek’s father and brothers walk away from the accident mostly unscathed, but because Mom intentionally turned the wheel so she would take the brunt of the impact, she’s currently in a coma. The doctor solemnly warns Ki-baek that he should be prepared for the worst, but Ki-baek assures his family that Mom will be fine — but wait! That’s a lie, and last we saw Ki-baek, his truth-telling was stuck in the “on” position. So unless there’s some sort of loophole that lets him lie if he believes — or really, really wants — something to be true in his heart, then it looks like his switch has malfunctioned yet again. The how is yet to be determined, though.

Our story settles into a bit of a lull while Ki-baek steps up to be the backbone of his family. With his father still in shock and neither of his brothers possessing a go-getter attitude that brings home the bacon, Ki-baek starts taking on as many variety show gigs as possible in order to pay Mom’s medical bills and keep the family afloat. He even asks for an advance on his next gig, and says nothing when his agent discreetly pulls a news anchor position from his pile of job offers.

It’s clear that Ki-baek is unhappy. Oh, he puts on a smile and tells Woo-joo “everything’s fine,” but it’s totally not. And even though Woo-joo is under the impression that Ki-baek is still stuck in truth-telling mode, she senses something is wrong. His smile doesn’t feel genuine, and logic and experience have taught her that most people in his shoes would absolutely not be “fine” in his situation.

Before Woo-joo can comfort Ki-baek and help him through his suppressed emotions, though, she has to resolve her own issues with her birth mother. At Bok-ja’s encouragement, Woo-joo stops dragging her feet and calls Birth Mom. They meet up at a park, and Birth Mom explains that she’d come looking for Woo-joo a few years after leaving her at the orphanage, but after discovering that she’d been adopted, Birth Mom had simply watched her grow from afar. She never explicitly states why she abandoned Woo-joo in the first place, but we can infer from the scar on her hand that maybe Woo-joo’s father or step-father was abusive. If that’s the case, though, it seems like Birth Mom’s abuser is no longer in her life because Birth Mom chose this point in time to reconnect with Woo-joo because she is moving overseas with her son and his family.

Woo-joo barely reacts to Birth Mom’s story — or the news that she has a brother. Instead she listens calmly, and when Birth Mom is finished, Woo-joo thanks her. If Birth Mom hadn’t abandoned her, then Woo-joo would have never met Bok-ja and become the person she is today. On some level, I can understand Woo-joo’s optimistic perspective on the situation — she’s had a lot of time to come to peace with being abandoned — but at the same time, the resolution feels too simple. Was the only lingering feeling Woo-joo felt for her mother really just a faint, unresolved sense of missing her birth mother? Or are the writers being lazy because, well, they literally ain’t got time for that?

Either way, this chapter to Woo-joo’s past is closed, and now that she’s learned to confide her feelings in others, it’s time for her to swap places with Ki-baek and be his pillar of support. After she catches Ki-baek lying, he comes clean and admits that his ability to lie has come back. According to his doctor — whose sole purpose for existing is to give a pseudoscience explanation whenever Ki-baek’s truth-telling abilities change to suit the plot — Ki-baek’s ability to lie has returned because he needs to tell lies in order to protect his family while Mom is in the hospital and they’re all struggling. (Sure, Doc. I’ll believe you — but only because you’re handsome and I’m too apathetic to complain.)

Woo-joo, who’d been waiting on Ki-baek to come to her when he was ready to be comforted, scolds him for keeping his feelings bottled up, and Ki-baek finally reaches out to hug her. He tells her he loves her, but instead of confessing her own feelings — although they’re definitely implied by her tone — she scolds him for hiding his emotions from the people he loves. They should lean on each other during hard times.

Right on cue, the point in the story comes for the men in Ki-baek’s family to set aside their differences and rally together because Dad has made — yet another — poor financial decision. He gave all of his merchandise to a shady “friend,” who was supposed to sell it on his behalf, but Shady Friend ran off with the merchandise and started dodging Dad’s phone calls. Ki-baek and his family sneak into the warehouse to retrieve the merchandise, but they’re caught in the act and have to fight off Shady Friend and his goons. Turns out Dad was once a boxer nicknamed Beethoven — because he made everyone he punched deaf — and he takes care of most of the goons while Ki-baek and his brothers struggle to take down a single goon together. Clearly, the taekwondo lessons they took as kids were useless.

Mid-fight, the police raid the warehouse, and Ki-baek and his family hide until the coast is clear. As they come down from their adrenaline highs, old family tensions resurface. The bickering, however, turns into conflict resolution when Dad apologizes for being, well, a bit of a incompetent loser. His poor financial decisions over the years made life significantly harder for his family, and it’s no wonder that angsty teenager Ki-baek crafted his at-school persona to escape the reality of his home life. In response to Dad’s plea for forgiveness, Ki-baek also apologizes for his own behavior and for allowing his insecurities to damage his relationship with his family.

Once again, the ease with which this family conflict is resolved rubs me the wrong way. Personally — and this may be my very American perspective on familial relationships talking here — but I feel that adult l Ki-baek is justified in wanting to separate himself from his family in order to find a sense of stability that he never had growing up.

Let’s be real, if the actors playing Mom and Dad weren’t so darn likable, then it would be significantly harder to sympathize with their characters’ repeated mistakes or gloss over their current reliance on Ki-baek’s income. Despite being “good” people, the whole family is willfully ignorant of how to better themselves and compliant with the current status quo, which makes Ki-baek’s frustrations a lot more relatable than the ease with which he forgave his family.

Then again, I guess when your mother is in a coma and on the verge of dying, a person tends to reevaluate his priorities. Speaking of Mom, she wakes up from her coma — not before the show first tries to fool us into thinking she’s died, of course — and our drama continues its slow progression through our plot’s falling action and resolution.

From here, our plot follows a predictable, tried and true K-drama finale ending formula, having us visit each group or pairings of characters before and after a six-month time skip to get some sense of what direction their lives will take after the drama ends. We begin with Woo-joo and Bok-ja, who is, presumably, free to marry her boyfriend now that his disapproving mother has finally died. However, she seems hesitant, and after Woo-joo encourages her to live for herself now that she’s free to do so, Bok-ja confesses that her man has not even so much as casually broached the topic of marriage.

Okay, sure, his mom just died, but even after the six-month time skip, Bok-ja still isn’t engaged. She’s decided to do the proposing herself. I’m all for a woman taking an initiative, but I’m not as optimistic as Bok-ja and Woo-joo on this one. A 40-plus-year-old-man using his mother as an excuse to not marry is a potential red flag, especially since he apparently continued to dodge the topic six months after her death. As long as Bok-ja is happy, I guess, but we never actually see the outcome of the proposal, so who knows if he accepted or ran for the hills.

Moving on to a more appealing side couple, we have Yeon and Eon-baek, whose romance stalled out when Yeon realized she’d been neglecting to spend time with her son. Gu-won wasn’t terribly keen on sharing his mother’s free time with another man, and Yeon obliged his request. However, after teaching his mother to ride a bike and getting his fill of mother-son time, Gu-won realized he missed his days of roaming freely through the neighborhood without adult supervision. His mom needed a friend her own age ASAP, so Gu-won tricked Eon-baek into coming to Bok-ja’s salon while Yeon was getting her hair styled. Eon-baek came running, and it’s adorable how eager — and then shy — he is to see her.

I’m happy to report this couple is still going strong after the time jump. Eon-baek and Gu-won are best buds — partly because they are close to the same maturity level and partly because Eon-baek is also the only person who believes Gu-won when he says he has a superpower. (I can’t be the only one who thinks the mind reading thing was random, even for this show, right?) On a professional front, it looks like Eon-baek’s gym is flourishing, too, now that Dad is on board and teaching boxing classes.

As for our OTP, their lives are climbing in a positive direction — as a couple and within their respective fields — before and after the time jump. Woo-joo has come up with a new variety show concept, and her former writing team is eager to abandon the gravy train that is season two of Couple’s Paradise in order to join her. At first, she pushes them away, not wanting them to give up their stable incomes in order to hitch a ride on her train that has yet to leave the station. But, after her boss gives her project a green light, she’s eager to have Yeon, Ha-young, and the rookies join her.

Ki-baek is having similar success. His agent eventually showed him the news anchor job offer that she’d previously hid from him, but he turned it down because, as he explained to Ji-hoo, he no longer feels as though he needs to be a news anchor in order to tell the truth or feel successful. But, six months later, he is a news anchor — albeit an unconventional one who freely encourages his nervous guests to drink alcohol in order to relax.

Like most rom-coms, this one ends with a proposal and an exchange of couple rings — but by the time we got to this pivotal and iconic moment, I was ready for the credits to roll. Honestly, I found the last hour of Frankly Speaking needlessly boring and a bit patronizing. Like, how many times must a show spoon feed me the morals before I should feel as though my intelligence is being attacked?

We get it. True happiness comes from embracing flaws and loving one’s self, and people should feel comfortable enough with their loved ones to share their feelings. It’s not that hard, so did we really need those lessons dumbed down to a children’s book level and regurgitated in the form of Gu-won’s (admittedly adorable) school play? It leaves me wondering if maybe the writers felt compelled to over-explain the morals of the story because they didn’t figure it out themselves until half-way through the drama. Given how inconsistent they were with the laws of Ki-baek’s truth-telling ability, it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case.

That said, I didn’t find myself wanting to skip through all of our finale. In fact, if I had to praise one thing about Frankly Speaking, it would be Jung-heon’s character growth, especially in these last two episodes. His journey has been a textbook example of how writers can show us what a character is feeling through his actions and surroundings rather than tell us through voiceovers and pointed dialogue (and school plays). Jung-heon started out rather unlikable — an archetype of the egotistical television star — but as the show progressed, we peeled back more layers. The flashy outside was just a protective shell for a man as lonely and empty as the spare room he kept locked away in his apartment.

In our finale, we saw him finally admit to himself and to others that his current lifestyle and unrelenting work ethic was no longer sustainable. He was burnt out, depressed, and experiencing panic attacks, and this prompted him to run away from his problems and the world. One of my favorite scenes from the entire drama was when he permitted Ki-baek to enter his empty spare room, which is a metaphor for the emptiness of his life that he’d kept the outside world from seeing. So it was a momentous step in Jung-heon’s healing process from him to reach out to Ki-baek and let him inside the room, and to witness his vulnerable side for the first time since they were teenagers.

Overall, I’d rate Frankly Speaking a solid “meh.” It had a lot of good moments — both funny and poignant — but good moments are just that: good in the moment. And without consistent storytelling to weave them together, they can’t make a drama enjoyable or memorable in the long term.

Mark my words, ten years from now, a Beanie will submit a “Name that Drama” request seeking the title of a drama in which the first and second male leads dress up as Aladdin and his magic carpet. Hopefully, one of us will still remember the name Frankly Speaking, but with my memory, I’m more likely to be the Beanie asking the question.

 
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