Still obsessed over Hello My Teacher...
I cannot wait until this scene:
I am now on episode 15 of Hello My Teacher and it’s certainly going into my all-time faves list.
Oh, how do I hate Tae-In’s family? Let me count the ways. Seriously. Are their minds glued to the gutter? What?
Picture this: they come into Tae-In’s house. What do they discover? Bori, fully dressed asleep on the couch. In the living room! Tae-In is asleep sitting up, by the couch, also fully dressed. Seriously. WTF in this would indicate that OMG they had sex the night before her wedding to Arts Teacher? Huh? Am I missing something? But OMG! He is holding her hand as they are both asleep! Clearly, this indicates a night of debauchery.
UGH.
I do love how when they wake-up, Tae-In stutters, almost, trying to explain. He is such a boy at that moment, and my heart breaks for him, because nothing happened (she cried/drunk herself to sleep and he put her on the couch, the end) but of course his family’s lack of interest in explanation is all-consuming. And OMG, they drive Tae-In to the family house, and I love that even then he mumbles at his father ‘But we didn’t do anything, just slept’ and his incoherent attempt to explain, his own lack of comprehension at his family’s habitual dreadfulness makes me want to cry. I have to say, Gong Yoo is really good at portraying Tae-In’s relationship with his father: someone who is half-terrified almost to an unreasoning degree, but also someone desperately needing his approval. I think it’s because he is so starved for a sign of some love.
His Dad’s reply? He kicks him out of the house for good, disowns him, blah blah. Charming family. (No, the fact that he later secretly sent him money pretending to be Uncle doesn’t make it better. UGH).
But I love that Bori, calm and decided, after that ugly scene, methodically takes off her wedding dress and he engagement ring, and leaves them, and breaks it off with Arts Teacher, unequivocally. That is what I love about her: she will not lie to herself and will not hide from the truth or reality or her feelings. She has been in love with Tae-In for quite some time, but she didn’t realize it consciously, truly (because it is a HUGE thing), even if she did think he was ‘handsome’ and she was the one who invited him in for a meal and to stay over night, in such a parallel to an earlier scene where he was the one who invited himself over. And I love the scene when he was over and woke up because she was crying and just held her as she wept. And of course the scene when he carries her home, drunk, and she feels so comfortable. But she didn’t really face it, head on, until that night in Tae-In’s place.
Because I think when you spend the night before your wedding to Arts Teacher sitting in Tae-In’s apartment, in your wedding dress (he made her try it on to cheer her up), getting smashed on soju because you dread the wedding so much, and you end up crying on Tae-In’s shoulder saying you don’t want to get married, the jig is up. I think the most meaningful comment in the entire drama, and the whole reason why she and Tae-In work but not she and AT, is what she tells Tae-In, when she is crying and he is trying to cheer her up: “I can cry in front of you. I can’t cry in front of AT.” Because she can never be herself with AT: it is never real, it is a silly crush and all surfaces, pretensions, never the real flawed flesh-and-blood Bori, just as Tae-In is so very much intense and alive but Art Teacher so bloodless, dreamlike…
I love though, that Tae-In gets expelled and Bori fired, but they both continue on with their lives. Bori ends up teaching cram school and Tae-In goes wandering but comes back a year later (time jump!) to go to a cram school to go to college. Both of them are very strong people, who will make their own lives, quite a contrast with someone like AT. And I love that Bori doesn’t seek out Tae-In (she doesn’t know he got expelled, I don’t think) even though she acknowledges she loves him, to herself, unequivocally, because she wants to let him grow into himself and not screw up his life and his relationship with his family (little does she know) and if he still wants her leter, then maybe yes, but the point is not about selfishness (just as he leaves her alone because he thinks she married AT) the point is about being happy in loving someone without any expectation of gain or happy return.
Btw, I love the scene when she sees him in the airport. EEEE! And now reunion is coming up and she is going to come and so will he and eee! Seriously. I also love that I got to know secondary characters so well I am interested as to what they are up to, from Jem Ma (who I ended up loving) to that self-absorbed kid from Tae-In’s posse who is now, unsurprisingly, a model ;)
I am now on episode 15 of Hello My Teacher and it’s certainly going into my all-time faves list.
Oh, how do I hate Tae-In’s family? Let me count the ways. Seriously. Are their minds glued to the gutter? What?
Picture this: they come into Tae-In’s house. What do they discover? Bori, fully dressed asleep on the couch. In the living room! Tae-In is asleep sitting up, by the couch, also fully dressed. Seriously. WTF in this would indicate that OMG they had sex the night before her wedding to Arts Teacher? Huh? Am I missing something? But OMG! He is holding her hand as they are both asleep! Clearly, this indicates a night of debauchery.
UGH.
I do love how when they wake-up, Tae-In stutters, almost, trying to explain. He is such a boy at that moment, and my heart breaks for him, because nothing happened (she cried/drunk herself to sleep and he put her on the couch, the end) but of course his family’s lack of interest in explanation is all-consuming. And OMG, they drive Tae-In to the family house, and I love that even then he mumbles at his father ‘But we didn’t do anything, just slept’ and his incoherent attempt to explain, his own lack of comprehension at his family’s habitual dreadfulness makes me want to cry. I have to say, Gong Yoo is really good at portraying Tae-In’s relationship with his father: someone who is half-terrified almost to an unreasoning degree, but also someone desperately needing his approval. I think it’s because he is so starved for a sign of some love.
His Dad’s reply? He kicks him out of the house for good, disowns him, blah blah. Charming family. (No, the fact that he later secretly sent him money pretending to be Uncle doesn’t make it better. UGH).
But I love that Bori, calm and decided, after that ugly scene, methodically takes off her wedding dress and he engagement ring, and leaves them, and breaks it off with Arts Teacher, unequivocally. That is what I love about her: she will not lie to herself and will not hide from the truth or reality or her feelings. She has been in love with Tae-In for quite some time, but she didn’t realize it consciously, truly (because it is a HUGE thing), even if she did think he was ‘handsome’ and she was the one who invited him in for a meal and to stay over night, in such a parallel to an earlier scene where he was the one who invited himself over. And I love the scene when he was over and woke up because she was crying and just held her as she wept. And of course the scene when he carries her home, drunk, and she feels so comfortable. But she didn’t really face it, head on, until that night in Tae-In’s place.
Because I think when you spend the night before your wedding to Arts Teacher sitting in Tae-In’s apartment, in your wedding dress (he made her try it on to cheer her up), getting smashed on soju because you dread the wedding so much, and you end up crying on Tae-In’s shoulder saying you don’t want to get married, the jig is up. I think the most meaningful comment in the entire drama, and the whole reason why she and Tae-In work but not she and AT, is what she tells Tae-In, when she is crying and he is trying to cheer her up: “I can cry in front of you. I can’t cry in front of AT.” Because she can never be herself with AT: it is never real, it is a silly crush and all surfaces, pretensions, never the real flawed flesh-and-blood Bori, just as Tae-In is so very much intense and alive but Art Teacher so bloodless, dreamlike…
I love though, that Tae-In gets expelled and Bori fired, but they both continue on with their lives. Bori ends up teaching cram school and Tae-In goes wandering but comes back a year later (time jump!) to go to a cram school to go to college. Both of them are very strong people, who will make their own lives, quite a contrast with someone like AT. And I love that Bori doesn’t seek out Tae-In (she doesn’t know he got expelled, I don’t think) even though she acknowledges she loves him, to herself, unequivocally, because she wants to let him grow into himself and not screw up his life and his relationship with his family (little does she know) and if he still wants her leter, then maybe yes, but the point is not about selfishness (just as he leaves her alone because he thinks she married AT) the point is about being happy in loving someone without any expectation of gain or happy return.
Btw, I love the scene when she sees him in the airport. EEEE! And now reunion is coming up and she is going to come and so will he and eee! Seriously. I also love that I got to know secondary characters so well I am interested as to what they are up to, from Jem Ma (who I ended up loving) to that self-absorbed kid from Tae-In’s posse who is now, unsurprisingly, a model ;)