When Life Gives You Tangerines: Episodes 9-12 » Dramabeans
When Life Gives You Tangerines: Episodes 9-12
by Dramaddictally
With autumn comes major change, as well as death in every sense of the word, from losses of life to the end of an era. But with each ending there’s a new beginning, which is why we’re also introduced to a couple of new characters — not to mention that someone in the family has a baby on the way.
EPISODES 9-12
One major transition from the drama’s first two volumes to this third installment is the shift from overt politics to a focus on economics. And while the two are entwined, and economics has always shaped the lives our characters, we’re moving away from bombarding headlines and into the murky waters of economic growth.
On the storytelling front, this centers us on Geum-myeong as the main protagonist, with the parents’ lives and struggles coming alive only where they overlap with their kids. Geum-myeong is her parents’ pride and the drama maintains its pressure on the topic of progress. What does it mean for Geum-myeong to fully succeed? Does she have to marry up the economic echelons? Is being a working woman enough? These are internal questions but they also reflect the changing times.
When we left off, Geum-myeong was on her way to Japan to study abroad. When we return, we’ve skipped over that part and see her in 1990, living as a boarder with a family in Seoul. The room she’s renting doesn’t offer the best conditions. There’s a small child that enters as he pleases, a patriarch who wants Geum-myeong to feel grateful that they’ve given her housing, and a grown-up daughter who sneaks her boyfriend into the house against her father’s wishes.
That boyfriend is an aspiring artist named PARK CHUNG-SEOB (Kim Sun-ho). And Geum-myeong first comes face to face with him when he’s hiding in her closet to avoid his girlfriend’s dad. From there, they have another random meeting while Geum-myeong is looking at job postings on a bulletin board, and Chung-seob hooks her up with a gig selling tickets at the cinema where he also works.
Little by little, they interact on the job, as well as on the walks home (because it seems that Chung-seob is still visiting his girlfriend, even after Dad discovered him in the closet). The quiet shots of the two getting to know each other are threaded throughout the episodes, and they run parallel and counterpoint to the main focus — which is Geum-myeong’s deteriorating relationship with Yeong-beom.
We meet back up with Geum-myeong and Yeong-beom when he visits her ticket booth and drops his change, along with a ring, into Geum-yeong’s hand. It seems like she’s been expecting him because she goes on break and runs to an empty theater, where the two embrace and he whirls her around. He’s been out of the country and this is their first reunion in some time.
It’s off to a bad start, though. Geum-myeong wants to show Yeong-beom her life in Seoul but, as she’s walking him to her boarding house, he starts criticizing the neighborhood. From his side, when he sees how run down the area is, he says it’s not safe for her to live there. But from her side, it sounds patronizing and out of touch. They argue, and he says she doesn’t really know Seoul. She retorts that he’s the one that doesn’t really know Seoul (and this a clear dig at his upper-class position).
If you recall in the first volume of episodes, we saw Geum-myeong in the early 90s talking to a potential mother-in-law and being asked to quit her job when she gets married. We later learned that this woman, BU-YOUNG (Kang Myung-joo), is Yeong-beom’s mom. Up to this point, it wasn’t clear if Geum-myeong goes through with the marriage or not. Here, we finally get the answer, and the leadup is a terrible thing to witness.
Bu-young degrades Geum-myeong, as far as I can tell, for growing up poor and not being from Seoul. While it’s true that we’ve seen two generations of mothers-in-law that are not nice to their sons’ wives, the social class dimension is what makes these current interactions different. It’s not only that Bu-young talks down to Geum-myeong, but that Geum-myeong appears to be unsure of her own value in the situation.
Two things play into this. First, while the love that Yeong-beom has for Geum-myeong is clear (he wants to protect her, he wants to do right by her), it’s not in his personality to cause conflict in any form. There’s a moment when Geum-myeong is in tears after an interaction with his mother, and she tells him he has to be a good son or a good husband. He can’t be both. Yeong-beom replies, “What man could choose one over the other?” And Geum-myeong doesn’t miss a beat when she says, “My dad.”
This is particularly important because we’ve seen various moments where both Gwan-shik and Ae-soon hear how Yeong-beom expresses his love for Geum-myeong, and both of them think that he sounds just like Gwan-shik when he was courting Ae-soon. But we’ll come to see that the two are not alike in the moments that matter most. Because when it comes down to it, Yeong-beom’s determination to remain neutral is the same as not being on Geum-myeong’s side.
The second thing that plays into Geum-myeong’s insecurity about her own worth has to do with her parents, and how they interact with Yeong-beom’s parents. This becomes evident the first time the two families meet at a lunch in Seoul, where Geum-myeong’s mom and dad have traveled from Jeju to get there — and it’s Yeong-beom’s parents who are an hour late.
Ae-soon and Gwan-shik are polite and accommodating, while Bu-young and her husband stride in without apology. Right away, they start criticizing Geum-myeong, and we get inside Ae-soon’s head through flashbacks to see how she’s perceiving it. As she watches Geum-myeong serve the other five people at the table, she realizes that Geum-myeong hasn’t left enough stew for herself, and has a paltry amount in her bowl. Ae-soon blames herself, remembering how she did the same with her in-laws, and thinks, “children do what they saw growing up.”
Ae-soon switches her overfull bowl with Geum-myeong’s and at first no one says anything about it. But a little later, Bu-young starts complaining that she won’t be able to hand over her household duties to Geum-myeong after the wedding because “she doesn’t know anything. Look how she ladled the soup.”
At this, as polite as he can be, Gwan-shik says that as a working woman it will probably be difficult for Geum-myeong to take care of the household duties. And Bu-young tells him that’s why she’s asked Geum-myeong to quit her job. The bride’s parents go quiet, while the groom’s parents insult Geum-myeong and order her around — until they’re essentially insulting Ae-soon and Gwan-shik for not raising their daughter “right.”
When Geum-myeong is ordered to dish up more food, Gwan-shik looks at Yeong-beom and nods in his direction — it’s a gesture that says “help her.” And we see flashbacks to that moment in the 60s when Gwan-shik decided to sit at the table with his wife and daughter during family meals when it was not customary to do so. Geum-myeong’s voiceover says that Gwan-shik fought his own war and “he never left mom stranded alone on the battlefield.” (I’ll be honest, I cried here. Because Geum-myeong deserves so much better than this.)
To his credit, Yeong-beom stands to help Geum-myeong, but Ae-soon tells both kids to sit and she begins to ladle the soup. Bu-young remarks that the reason Geum-myeong doesn’t know anything is because her mother does it all for her. Ae-soon — with a voice that’s about to break but a look that doesn’t waver — says that her daughter was too precious to her. She chose not to teach her those things. And then she serves Geum-myeong first, rather than last.
Now, with that kind of defiance, we might think that Geum-myeong would understand her mother’s position. But she doesn’t. After the tense meal, Ae-soon and Geum-myeong can hardly look at each other, and they go separate ways when Geum-myeong rides with her soon-to-be in-laws. Mother and daughter are both questioning why the other is so docile in front of these people, when that’s not the way they usually behave.
This comes to a head when the women go to pick out fabric for the wedding hanbok, and Bu-young dictates what Ae-soon is going to wear. Ae-soon says nothing, and neither does Geum-myeong. Later, mother and daughter get into an argument when they’re alone. Geum-myeong is yelling, asking why Ae-soon didn’t stand up for the hanbok she wanted. “Do you think he’s better than me?” she asks, wanting to know if her mother doesn’t think she’s worth standing up for.
Ae-soon explains that she doesn’t want his family to be cold to Geum-myeong. “How can I act on my temper and send you to their family?” she asks. Both of these women want the other to speak out — and both are holding back for the sake of the other. Geum-myeong seems to think that marrying into a family like Yeong-beom’s will complete her success story. And Ae-soon and Gwan-shik want Geum-myeong to have everything she wants. Neither side is willing to jeopardize anything for the other, and it’s got the makings of a tragedy.
With all four parents wanting this relationship to end, but no one calling it off, Geum-myeong is the one to make the final decision. She finally talks back to Bu-young after she learns that Bu-young made Ae-soon cry. It happened at a lunch with just the two mothers, where Bu-young said she didn’t like Geum-myeong because she wasn’t from the same level of family. It doesn’t matter that Ae-soon did her best to give Geum-myeong everything to outrun where she was born, she’ll always carry baggage from struggling. She’s not good enough for Yeong-beom, who’s his mother’s “masterpiece.”
Geum-myeong tells us that her “first love didn’t turn out to be a fairy tale.” And we see Yeong-beom in 2023, married to someone else — a person his mother selected — and both he and his aging mother are miserable. They’ve never gotten past the damage of him not marrying Geum-myeong, whom he truly loved, but wasn’t able to fight harder for.
The breakup isn’t easy on Geum-myeong either. She tells us they were together for seven years, and then spent a year separating. Neither wants to let the other go, but it just can’t work out. His family will never like her and, even if he cuts them off, it would hurt him, and she can’t live with him suffering like that. And so, she has to be the harsh one at the end, telling him to stop trying. It’s not about love; she loves him, but she loves herself too. And so, they sob and hug goodbye, and she tells us how much she’s losing: “In Seoul, where I had no one, he was my lover, my family, and my best friend.”
After this, she goes into a funk and can’t keep up with daily life. Her parents are worried about her, and one day, out of nowhere, she shows up at home in Jeju. With Eun-myeong away in the military, the house has been quiet, but now it’s alive again and the parents have a reason to prepare meals and show their love by stuffing Geum-myeong full of food. She eats and sleeps well, and after a few days, she goes out on the fishing boat with her dad. She’s worried that her parents are embarrassed that she called off the wedding. But Gwan-shik says that she’s good at everything, so he trusts that her decision is the right one.
She cries and feels guilty for all she’s been given. And it appears that her heartbreak is leading her to a place of appreciation for her parents, where she’s starting to see from their perspective. When she talks to her mom later, she asks the same question about embarrassment and learns that Ae-soon never sent out the invitations. “I knew you’d call it off,” Ae-soon smiles. “I raised you that way.” And then she adds, “You didn’t do anything wrong. You avoided stepping in a pile of poop because of your luck.” The time with her parents leaves Geum-myeong restored and recuperated, and ready to face her life again in Seoul.
When she’s back in the city, we see her getting on a bus at the same time Chung-seob is getting off. He’s fresh out of the military and it’s been a couple of years since they’ve seen each other. She doesn’t notice him and the bus pulls away, while he chases after it, calling her name. He doesn’t catch the bus, but we hear that a glistening winter is on its way. And we have a new romance to look forward to next week.
That’s where the episodes end, but we still need to talk about Eun-myeong. The interesting thing about Ae-soon and Gwan-shik giving all their attention to their daughter is that their son has ended up somewhat neglected. He wasn’t good in school, got into trouble, and ended up not going to college. But, like he says, where’s the money going to come from even if he wanted to go? They gave it all to his sister.
I don’t think that Eun-myeong is acting out to get attention, but that he believes whatever he does, it won’t really matter — he’s always going to be kind of a screw up in his parents’ eyes. It paints a picture of what happens when the resources that historically went to male children no longer go to them, but there’s no replacement role for them to fill in the family. And in this week’s episodes, Eun-myeong is getting further flung into trouble.
It starts when he gets caught with a girl in his room. They’ve been dating for over a year and the parents had no clue. Gwan-shik is ready to punish him, but Eun-myeong shouts, “Love is not misconduct!” Haha. As Eun-myeong goes on about his love, Gwan-shik recognizes himself in his son and almost seems like he’ll have a change of heart. Until they learn the girl’s name: BU HYEON-SUK (Lee Soo-kyung). That would be the daughter of the town jerk — the one who was chief, and who Ae-soon almost married.
This sets everyone off and both families are against this union. Hyeon-suk’s brother’s friends begin to torment Eun-myeong, beating him up wherever he goes, and he finally breaks it off with her. But they’ve got an obsessive love and she won’t leave him alone no matter the consequences. Finally, he goes to the military, which turns Ae-soon into even more of a mess (since her major conflict this week is how her kids are growing up and apart from her).
At the end, on the day Eun-myeong returns from the military, his parents are waiting and excited to see him. He stands at the front door of their apartment, and then Hyeon-suk enters with him. It turns out she’s pregnant. And by the looks of it, he’s asking his parents to take them in. Oh how times have changed, and yet they stay exactly the same.
These episodes have big losses, but we’re also given signs of new things to come. At the same time Ae-soon’s paternal grandmother passes away, she learns she’s about to be a grandmother herself. Geum-myeong breaks up with Yeong-beom, but it also marks her coming into her own. And Ae-soon may feel like she’s losing her kids, but really they’re just going through the same transition she did, when she realized how hard it is to be an adult — and how much it forces you to rely on your support system more.
I’m excited for the conclusion and sad to see this story go. And with our last installment in the winter of life, we’re sure to see the same mix of suffering and sparkling that we’ve grown accustomed to on every stretch of this saga.
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