Today’s Webtoon: Episodes 13-14

Today’s Webtoon: Episodes 13-14

by solstices

Our team is met with one crisis after another, dashing their sails and threatening their precarious position in the company. Meanwhile, a traumatized artist’s past comes back to haunt him, forcing him to confront the scars of his childhood.

 
EPISODES 13-14 WEECAP

When they get a moment alone, Ma-eum asks Joon-young about the encounter with Chief Heo that she just witnessed, but he plays it off as no big deal. However, she isn’t willing to take it so lightly, considering the damage that Chief Heo’s interview did to the team.

Ma-eum presses Joon-young further — does he still think of himself as separate from their team? Has he ever been sincere towards them? Oh no, that misunderstanding has got to hurt, especially since Joon-young has been growing progressively more honest and genuine with the team.

Joon-young meets with Ji-hyung, sighing resignedly that he recorded his conversation with Chief Heo, but didn’t manage to get him to admit his malicious involvement in the article. A flashback reveals that after his dinner with Chief Heo and the Youngtoon CEO, Joon-young asked Ji-hyung to meet.

Coming clean about how he’s been sending confidential files to Chief Heo, Joon-young reveals Chief Heo’s close ties with Youngtoon and his plans of sabotage. Since any misstep from him now could cause Chief Heo to retaliate against the webtoon team, Joon-young requests to continue keeping up his charade with Chief Heo in order to obtain evidence.

Aw, Ji-hyung truly is a good supervisor. The next day, he approaches Joon-young and advises him to come clean about Chief Heo to Ma-eum, astutely noting that she must have caught on to their involvement.

Ji-hyung leaves him to his thoughts, and then we get a flashback montage of all the times he was endeared by Ma-eum. Whether he’s developed feelings for her or simply has a soft spot for her is left ambiguous, but it’s clear that her presence has been a positive influence on his life. He’s making the mature decision to step back and not allow his personal feelings to cross a professional boundary, and I like that he genuinely wishes the best for his new recruits.

Heeding Ji-hyung’s advice, Joon-young meets Ma-eum at her manhwa cafe. Except Ma-eun’s dad returns at that exact moment, and he remembers Joon-young from their previous tussle, LOL.

After the misunderstanding is resolved, Joon-young ends up getting invited to stay for dinner, where Ma-eum’s mom and sister try to matchmake the two. (It’s adorable how happy that makes Joon-young, hee.)

Later, Joon-young clarifies the truth of his double-agent strategy regarding Chief Heo. He explains that he couldn’t reveal it earlier, or Ma-eum would have dissuaded him. Shocked by his dangerous plan, Ma-eum asks why Joon-young is risking himself like that, and he confesses that it’s because of her. Ma-eum was the person that made him want to stay on and protect their team.

Ma-eum and Dae-ryuk meet with the director in charge of the webtoon’s drama remake, but the director keeps pressing Dae-ryuk’s buttons, speculating about his trauma that influenced his webtoon. Unfortunately, he hits the nail right on the head, and it triggers Dae-ryuk’s flashbacks and a panic attack.

Hyperventilating, Dae-ryuk flees the meeting room, running straight through incoming traffic and nearly getting run over. Ma-eum can’t reach him in time, and she ends up having to apologize to the exasperated director.

Ma-eum’s concerns regarding Joon-young and Dae-ryuk weigh on her as she walks home that night, and ever-perceptive Ji-hyung notices. He helps her tie her undone shoelace, reminding her that they’re in the race together.

That gets Ma-eum to spill her worries, and she confesses that she’s afraid she might not be the right person to be Dae-ryuk’s editor. Has she facilitated his burgeoning instability in pursuit of his growth as an artist?

Worried, Ma-eum visits Dae-ryuk to check up on him, and he hands her a manuscript. He’s drawn his story as a webtoon, since he didn’t think he’d be able to put it into words. We see the panels as Ma-eum flips through them — Dae-ryuk’s mother tied him up with chains when he was a child, then she abandoned him and he had to look after his sick grandfather till his deathbed.

The last drawing is of Ma-eum embracing Dae-ryuk, and I think it’s so telling that he drew himself as a young boy. Dae-ryuk is still trapped in the trauma of his childhood, to the point that he feels phantom chains suffocating him even to this day.

Plaintively, Dae-ryuk entreats Ma-eum to help him stop himself from spiraling into an even bigger mess. With her by his side, he thinks he can run away from even the worst misfortune. But Ma-eum gently tells him that she’s not God; she doesn’t have the right nor the confidence to be anyone’s savior. Still, she wants to help him, and she thanks him for mustering up the courage to confide in her.

Dae-ryuk sheds tears of gratitude, and the two arrange another meeting with the drama director. To everyone’s relief, both director and artist apologize and reconcile, and the project is back on.

However, Dae-ryuk isn’t out of the woods just yet. For the first time ever, he finds himself unable to draw even a single webtoon panel. Ma-eum even enlists the help of Dong-hee, who readily returns to Seoul to help Dae-ryuk out, but to no avail. Dong-hee surmises that Dae-ryuk isn’t struggling with a mere creative block, but a psychological one.

Worse yet, Dae-ryuk’s mother (Kim Soo-jin) suddenly shows up at the webtoon team’s office. She’s a real piece of work, demanding for Dae-ryuk’s address and screeching at Ji-hyung and Ma-eum when she doesn’t get her way.

Realizing that Dae-ryuk’s conundrum may have to do with his mother, Ma-eum heads to his apartment to ask him about it. Ma-eum cautiously raises the possibility of meeting his mother again, but he flat-out refuses; all he wants to know is why she tormented him like that, but he never wants to see her again.

Except right then, Dae-ryuk’s mother rings the doorbell, having tailed Ma-eum all the way to his doorstep. The moment she identifies herself, her presence instantly sparks panic in Dae-ryuk, and he shoves both her and Ma-eum out the door.

If you thought that things couldn’t possibly get any worse for Dae-ryuk, well, brace yourself. The aggressive boyfriend that previously misunderstood Dae-ryuk just posted his exaggerated version of the incident online, earning Dae-ryuk criticism over the falsehoods.

Dae-ryuk blames himself terribly for the fiasco, to the point that he can barely eat, but thankfully Dong-hee stays faithfully by his side to take care of him. Meanwhile, Ma-eum and Joon-young search for evidence both offline and online, and they finally luck out when witnesses send in videos of the boyfriend beating Dae-ryuk up.

Now that the tide of public opinion has turned against him, the violent boyfriend apologizes and snivels that someone else made him do it. To absolutely no one’s surprise, Chief Heo is also behind this latest act of sabotage. Sigh.

Weeks pass, and Dae-ryuk still can’t produce any new manuscripts. With the deadline looming over their heads, Ma-eum offers to accompany Dae-ryuk to meet his mother, and he hesitantly accepts. They meet at a cafe, and Dae-ryuk’s mother shamelessly claims that she misses him, shedding overwrought tears. Dae-ryuk rebuffs her attempts at reconciliation, and she runs out.

After all this time, Dae-ryuk’s mother finally wants to make amends, and she prepares food for him in the hopes that he’ll eat well. Since he refuses to see her, she passes the lunchboxes to Dong-hee instead, but Dae-ryuk throws the food out the moment he finds out it’s from his mother.

In a terribly cliché reveal, we find out that Dae-ryuk’s mother has returned to see her son because she has Alzheimer’s and thus doesn’t have much time left. The reason she chained Dae-ryuk up when he was a child? He accidentally caused a fire by playing in the kitchen while she wasn’t home, so she restrained him with a metal chain to prevent him from reaching the stove again.

Uhh, excuse me? Wouldn’t that just make it even more dangerous for him, in the event that something happens again and he can’t escape? Was she seriously unable to think of any other alternatives, like using the chain to lock the kitchen door instead?

In any case, once Dae-ryuk learns of this, his perception of his mother changes. He and Ma-eum rush to the bus terminal, where his mother is about to leave the city for good. Except it turns out she hasn’t actually left yet, and thus ensues a tearful reunion.

Dae-ryuk asks if just seeing him grown up is enough for her — is she going to abandon him again? Crying, he pleads with her not to run away, and to get treatment for her illness instead. Tentatively, he reaches out to hold his mother’s hand, overcoming his aversion to touch, and she gently cradles his face in turn.

Honestly? I really don’t like what the drama did with Dae-ryuk’s storyline. Regardless of the rationale behind it, chaining a young child up like that was not okay, and it feels like the drama is downplaying Dae-ryuk’s abuse.

Just because she has Alzheimer’s doesn’t make her suddenly showing up and retraumatizing Dae-ryuk okay, and it felt like the show was trying to force us to feel empathy for her. Instead, I feel for Dae-ryuk, who forgave his mother so quickly and showed such boundless empathy for her suffering despite the pain she’d inflicted on him.

Ma-eum’s voiceover narrated that a child’s world is created by their parents, and that’s exactly why I take issue with this narrative choice. Dae-ryuk’s world was shattered as a child when his mother tied him up as if he was a wild animal that needed to be leashed, and the trauma warped his psyche so badly that it affected his entire life ever since.

Trauma doesn’t simply disappear overnight, and no amount of homemade dishes or terminal illnesses can change that. Not every abuser deserves to be redeemed, and I wish the show had allowed Dae-ryuk to come to terms with his trauma and move on in a healthier way, whether that means standing up to his abuser or finding his own form of closure.

Instead, the way the drama treated his storyline felt awfully contrived for the sake of forcing a “happy ending,” and it potentially sends a dangerous message that victims of abuse ought to afford their abusers a chance at reconciliation. This plot arc could have been empowering if done right, but I think the drama faltered badly in the way they chose to write it.

I did like the subtle details that added a (much-needed) dose of realism to the arc, such as Dae-ryuk still recoiling instinctively from his mother’s touch even after he forgave her, but I’m inclined to chalk that up to the actor and not the script. I’m steadily losing faith in the latter, whereas my awe and respect for Kim Do-hoon’s acting grows with every episode.

I think the drama could have explored Dae-ryuk’s arc in a more realistic and complex manner; for example, they could have explored the unreliable nature of memories, especially childhood ones. It could have been a compelling arc, had the drama focused on how his mother made a grave mistake in a misguided attempt to “protect” her child, and how that child completely misunderstood her intentions because he was too young to comprehend the concept of danger. (Though I still maintain that there’s no excuse for metal chains.)

Instead, the writer threw in every cliché they could think of in a poor attempt to make Dae-ryuk’s mother a sympathetic character so she could be redeemed. It just leaves a rancid taste in my mouth.

I think this drama does have its heart in the right place, but its failure to grasp a direction and commit to it ends up doing it a disservice. This week, both the trauma arc and the false rumors arc could have facilitated in-depth discussion on these complex social issues, but the show’s over-dramatization of them cheapened their impact and made them feel almost like caricatures.

It also feels like the drama is being over-ambitious and trying to cram too many plot lines onto its plate. We want quality, not quantity! As we enter the show’s final week, here’s hoping that each character arc will get the resolution it deserves. If not, I’m going to take a leaf out of Man-cheol’s book and raise a very angry fist at the drama. I’ve grown way too attached to these characters — as Man-cheol wrote on his knuckles, don’t mess with his kids!

 
RELATED POSTS

Today’s Webtoon: Episodes 13-14
Source: Buzz Pinay Daily