On the Verge of Insanity ep5: I was starting to worry that Choi Ban-seok was a male Candy whose main purpose was to teach cold-hearted HR team leader Dang Ja-young a thing or two. But I should have had more faith in the writer who gave us so many interesting female characters in Witch’s Court. In some ways, Ja-young’s predicament is more realistic and complex than Ban-seok’s. Her job is to reduce the Changin permanent staff by 50%. She comes up with a perfectly reasonable proposal for that purpose. (In fact, I love how she made use of existing circumstances such as the promotion test and Han Se-gwon’s contempt for his fellow developers.) Hanmyeong’s president is all for it. Yet all she gets for her pains are a gang of furious men staring her down and the old paper slap. To be fair, the R&D department has every right to be angry. But why should she be humiliated before so many people just for doing her job? Men like Han Se-gwon and the lecherous ex-team leader have got away with so much more.

Moon So-ri really comes into her own in this episode, and so does the direction, sound and editing. In the final scene, you can feel the defiance, the suppressed panic and the way she is just barely holding herself together. You can even see how she has built up her defences over the years, precisely to deal with situations like these. I was going to focus on all the uplifting stuff in this episode – the joy of work when things go right, the pleasures of cooperation, the euphoria of coming up with good ideas and doing a good job. But it’s the downbeat ending that has stayed with me, and made me look at the rest of the episode in a different light.

On the Verge of Insanity: no romance but lots of chemistry.

The sexual harassment incident was just one of several issues touched upon by ep3 of On the Verge of Insanity, but I thought the show did a very good job of showing the following:

1. It can happen to anyone, even a strong, fierce woman who “could have been a union leader”.

2. Well-meaning people who are ostensibly on your side might still fail to support you. Dang Ja-young, though sympathetic “as a woman”, is not sympathetic enough to question Team Leader Kang’s indispensability. More disturbingly, it had been at her own team leader’s behest that Seong-eun didn’t report Kang earlier. I really like the scene with Seong-eun, Ban-seok and Team Leader Noh, in which Ban-seok realises that Noh has known about Kang harassing Seong-eun all this time but advised her to keep quiet about it. Seong-eun is too upset to notice that Noh is more anxious about his cordless vacuum cleaner than about her, but Ban-seok knows, and seems torn between concern and shame for his hyung.

3. The harassment can take obvious forms (though even then the perpetrator might still claim that he was just trying to be friendly or something). But even in less obvious forms, like Kang’s ogling and dodgy comments, it is just wrong, and should be taken seriously.

On the Verge of Insanity ep3: Jung Jae-young is NOT happy with HR’s way of dealing with sexual harassment.

Jung Jae-young and Moon So-ri being rather adorable while promoting MBC’s On the Verge of Insanity.

More proof of Ahn Nae-sang’s ubiquity.

Sung Dong-il can’t resist baby Yeo Jin-goo either.

계속 보게되는 짤https://t.co/6eVBje7m33

— 우유 (@whitemilk_s) May 18, 2021

Daebak Realty aka Sell Your Haunted House: I know the case-of-the-week format is not universally loved and in some cases might hold up the central story arc, but I must say I really like all Daebak’s cases so far. Not only are they really well written, they also diffuse the angst, and show Ji-ah at her fiercest and best – i.e. working hard instead of just moping. Ep9’s case, in particular, makes many interesting points about how women are viewed by men as well as by other women.