We now get to focus on the Sun-Man! He’s such a tortured being, and I do think there is a good justification on why he left the stage five years ago. I’ve seen plenty of comments about its choppy editing, but I don’t really see it personally. Maybe it’s because I’m so caught up in the story that I don’t mind the cutaways to other scenes. There are so many stories and threads being told at once, so there isn’t going to be a perfect way to transition between each one.
I’m glad that for once, I’m really caught up in a musical drama’s story.
SONG OF THE DAY
“Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People (featured during their morning exercise in episode 7) [download]
Hilariously, on the next day for morning exercises, it’s Jae Hun all dressed up and ready to go, and trying to make Do Sung get up from bed. Do Sung won’t get out from under his covers, and keeps waving Jae Hun away. Jae Hun: “Are you sick? If you give me a cold, I’ll kill you!” Aw – such a nice roomie.
As soon as Jae Hun’s gone, Do Sung quickly makes a desperate phone call to his uncle.
The freshmen gather in a studio and partner up, one person sitting with their feet crossed and leaning down, and the other person behind them, pushing down their knees or back to help them stretch. Cheon Jin (or more like Chang Jin – I keep messing up his name) sees Mr. Born to Dance leaning on top of Chae Young, and he immediately pulls the guy off, and switches him out with Ka Young. Heh. Meanwhile, tiny Tae Hee is paired up with tall Jae Hun, and she’s slapping him in the back, trying to force him to stretch out further down.
Chang Jin calls for all of them to switch – revenge time! Jae Hun gets on top of her –not in that way! – and Tae Hee collapses completely. Jae Hun freaks – did he hurt her!? He peeks down to her face, and she suddenly pops up. Surprise! She’s amazed he’s so enthusiastic over morning exercise now. Jae Hun: “I’m a changed man now!”
Then Chang Jin tells them to change positions – one person below facing up, the other person on top, helping them stretch their legs over their shoulder. Tae Hee is below; Jae Hun gets on top of her – yes in that way! – but then the two realize just how close their faces are… When Chang Jin calls for left leg to be on top of their partner’s shoulder, Jae Hun and Tae Hee gulp awkwardly and look away. (Am I the only one giggling and blushing for these two!?)
Red hot car drives up to campus – it’s Jung Myung Hwan. Sun-Man comes racing out of the building and drags Myung Hwan inside – he’s late for class! Sun-Man announces to the class that they’re going to have a wonderful guest teacher for voice lessons today, the great Jung Myung Hwan! While Myung Hwan sputters out a feeble denial, Sun-Man plows on about how Myung Hwan was a junior who went to Germany and studied opera. But now that he’s back in Korea, he’s decided to teach because he’s got nothing better to do. Introductions done, Sun-Man races out the door.
Myung Hwan chases after him, and the two play a tug of war with the door. Sun-Man threatens his friend: if Myung Hwan refuses to teach, he will release incriminating photos of Myung Hwan with different girls to his fiancee and college sweetheart. Myung Hwan loses; the students stare at him; Sun-Man jams the door outside with a mop for good measure.
Myung Hwan asks if anyone has a question about vocal training, to which Jae Hun raises his hand. He wants to know if it’s possible for a man to sing if he’s never sung before. Myung Hwan cries out – how could the guy never have sung?! But Jae Hun’s quite serious, so Myung Hwan swallows his protest. Chae Young gives Jae Hun a long sideways look.
In his office, Sun-Man calls up the Chancellor of the school, the one who convinced him to come back. He wants to know the identity of Eun Hae’s relative already, but the Chancellor holds back on the details. She won’t tell him until he’s a mature professor who won’t show favoritism towards a student, and who can stand back on stage and sing.
Back in class, Myung Hwan asks if Jae Hun has ever spoken; he has Jae Hun come up to him at the piano and repeat some lines loudly and emphatically. Then he sings out one line, and expects Jae Hun to repeat. (Oh my goodness, Jae Hun sings!) With some hesitation, Jae Hun tries to copy, but lets his voice peter out at the end. Myung Hwan continues, but Jae Hun is too scared to sing along, so he continues playing the same notes for the next line over and over again until Jae Hun sings.
When Jae Hun finally sings, he reveals to the class his deep, strong voice, still laced with some hesitance and insecurity. Myung Hwan sings with him, making it a duet, but he lets Jae Hun finish off the last note. The class breaks into an applause – Jae Hun can sing! Tae Hee and Byeong Gun smile with happiness and admiration for him. [download of episode rip, unedited]
Heading back to the dorms, Jae Hun can’t stop singing to Tae Hee, and she hands over a tonic and some oranges. Jae Hun thinks it’s a gift for him, but it’s actually for Do Sung. (His heart drops a teeny bit.)
He then asks if her father was present during their show, and she replies that he was – in the form of a picture that she put on a seat. He had passed away last May (indicating that it’s been a year since the accident), and that she was very close to him because her mother had disappeared when she was 3. She adds that her father was hit by a truck. It makes Jae Hun feel so guilty for asking that he asks her to hit him on the head (which cheers her up a bit), and then later thinks back to his own accident… Needless to say, he has the nightmare again.
The next day, Byeong Gun waits around the front of Sun-Man’s office. He jumps away as the door opens to reveal Myung Hwan and Sun-Man arguing; Sun-Man wants him to teach for a full semester!? Byeong Gun seeks Myung Hwan’s advice (which gives Sun-Man the perfect escape) because he knows how to sing – but just can’t sing in front of others. Yep, Jung Myung Hwan – you are now saddled with the responsibility of solving every little problem of young twenty-somethings – fun!
Chae Young and Prof. Yang have a photo session in one of the practice studios with the annoying photographer/reporter. As they pose by the piano, Chae Young fawns over the professor by making sure her hair is perfect. That’s also when the reporter asks if Sun-Man is going out with a student. He had seen something, but a teacher-student relationship would be really bad for the school, wouldn’t it? He asks for another favor – can he have a list of students in the musical department?
This is one bit of juicy gossip for Chae Young against this professor who kept picking on her.
Sun-Man heads to the storage room for his secret stash of soju. However, it’s missing. “Are you looking for this?” It’s Doo Ri – and she’s already drunk from drinking half the bottle herself. He angrily takes it from her, asking how she knows so much about him. She tells him to shut up and then says, “I think I’m in love with you.”
Sun-Man’s response? He takes her to the men’s room and dunks her head into a sink full of water several times. When she appears lucid, he tests her with some multiplication tables. Doo Ri retorts that she didn’t say she liked him because she was drunk, but that she got drunk so that she could have the courage to say it. Sun-Man thinks all this love stuff is nonsense; Doo Ri: “How do you know it’s nonsense? Have you tried it?” She is willing to try loving him, and she’ll figure out for herself if it’s nonsense or not.
She leaves the bathroom – face soaking wet – and bumps into Byeong Gun and Yang’s assistant moving a bench. They think nothing of it until they see Sun-Man come out as well, and then realize that it was the men’s bathroom. UH-OH…
Do Sung’s uncle arrives at the school, expecting to whisk Do Sung away immediately. But Do Sung isn’t packed; he still needs to attend Prof. Yang’s afternoon class! The arrival of the reporter has threatened his security in the school, and they know that his mother’s high-profile political life may be over if news leaks. The reporter also has a reputation for playing dirty and digging deep. The uncle wants to bring Do Sung overseas for school, but his nephew likes Haneul Arts. He actually has a friend here! (And by “friend,” I’m pretty sure he’s referring to Tae Hee.) His uncle says friends are overrated, but Do Sung didn’t even have that so-called “overrated friendship” growing up.
Prof. Yang hands over the student roster to her assistant to give to the reporter. But her assistant is lost in thought, wondering if it’s possible that Sun-Man is having a little affair with Doo Ri. Her other assistant – Jeong Dae – comes in and nervously tells Prof. Yang that Sun-Man won’t wake up no matter how much he knocks. It’s possible Sun-Man is drunk again… and he’s late for class.
That’s ok for his students though, because Byeong Gun is doing an excellent job imitating Sun-Man and his pickiness. He’s like that nervous joker who tries hard to make everyone laugh, but is so endearing.
Sun-Man is curled up in his sleeping bag in his office, dreaming of the fateful night his love Park Eun Hae ran to him across the street, and was hit suddenly by a car. He rolls off his cot and groggily turns off his alarm by throwing it at the wall. Prof. Yang comes in, raging at him while he’s trying to sit up due to a severe hangover. It’s perfect that she came to his office, because he has a favor to ask: can she sub for him tomorrow? He has somewhere to go and it’s quite far away.
Prof. Yang steps in close; if he is late one more time or skips a class for any reason at all, she will make sure he gets fired. Connections to the Chancellor be damned – she has her own connections too.
So Sun-Man stumbles into class, barely walking straight and reeking of alcohol. He has the lights turned down, and then seats two chairs facing each other. They’re going to learn about the emotion “anger.” He calls over Ji Eun and another student to sit in the chairs and get mad at each other. They just have to create a scenario themselves, and get mad at each other. Ji Eun confronts her partner – why hasn’t he paid her back? She wants her money now!
Unfortunately, her acting isn’t convincing, and the whole class ends up laughing.
Meanwhile, Yang’s assistant searches online about the ramifications of professors dating students. She gets caught by Prof. Yang, and so outside the office, she’s forced to admit that she saw Sun-Man leaving the bathroom with Doo Ri. This just confirms Prof. Yang’s fears, and what the reporter had told her. And speak of the devil – the reporter was just around the corner, having heard everything. “I told you so!” he gloats gleefully to the two ladies.
Back in class, Doo Ri volunteers herself to try the “anger” experiment. She doesn’t know whom she should address, so Sun-Man throws out her father. Doo Ri starts off by reminding her father that she’s his daughter. He only comes home 4 times a year, so he’s probably forgotten about her grandparents, her mother, and even herself. However, she stops midway; she can’t get mad at her father because she’s never expected much from him. His abandonment is like nothing to her.
Sun-Man tells her to go stand at the corner facing the wall. When she can remove the cloak that she uses as a shield for her emotions, then she come back and talk to him.
He picks his next target: Tae Hee. Jae Hun quickly pulls out Tae Hee’s father’s picture so that he may “watch” her act. Sun-Man orders her to get angry with her father. Tae Hee taps into her unresolved issue with her father: how he promised to take her to England but never did. That just pisses off Sun-Man, who’s already impatient with the class. They’re not tapping into their real emotion of anger. They’re just picking shallow issues to be angry about.
He creates a scenario for Tae Hee – what if her father were sitting right there, unable to look at her in the eye, unable to speak to her? What is going on? Why can’t her father – who’s never gotten mad at her – all of a sudden uncommunicative? Tae Hee remembers a time when he was like that, when her aunt had died.
Sun Man gives her a curious look… Thinking they might have something here, he urges her to keep going. She continues telling her imaginary father that he should not have done it again; he should have told her that he was leaving. He should have told her that he was sorry towards her.
Those words echo with Sun-Man – because Eun Hae had told him the same thing before she died. However, he goads Tae Hee – is her father her employee where he has to report to her everything he’s doing? Tae Hee yells back, with tears: “I didn’t die!”
A flashback of Eun Hae saying that she’s not dead yet, and her time isn’t over yet. She can go back to acting if she wants, because she’s still talented. She’s just working right now as a teacher for Sun-Man’s sake…
Back in the present, Sun-Man yells at Tae Hee to stop crying. This isn’t a diary entry where she can feel survivor’s guilt and cry. She’s supposed to get angry! Jae Hun stands up, unable to take it anymore. He doesn’t want Sun-Man to continue yelling at Tae Hee. Sun-Man banishes Tae-Hee to the corner with Doo Ri, and then calls for Jae Hun to come down for the exercise. Jae Hun refuses.
Sun Man: “Why? I think you have a lot to say. Your mother is sitting right here.” Jae Hun: “Let’s not talk about my mother.”
Ooh – Sun-Man’s hit a nerve. He continues: “I don’t think the man who came was your father. Women who obsess over their sons usually do it because their husbands have left them.” Jae Hun rushes down from his seat and right up to Sun-Man’s face, balling his fist. He warns Sun-Man not to go further, but Sun-Man tells him to get angry at his mother instead, not him.
Furious, Jae Hun tosses the chair across the room and glares at Sun-Man. Fine – he dares Sun-Man to trash talk his mother some more. He doesn’t care if he gets kicked out anymore – so Sun-Man can just keep on going!
Sun-Man walks up close to Jae Hun’s face. Now that is real anger. He tells Jae Hun to never forget that emotion he just felt. Heh – I knew that was coming, where Sun-Man just played Jae Hun for his own purpose.
Sun-Man: People say the stage is a fake world. No way. It’s the stage where it has to be real. Everyone is watching there. You can’t fool them. It’s harder to find the real stuff in the real world. Everyone is just full of crap. So whenever you feel real emotions, remember it well. It’s really precious.
BONUS - Jang Jae Hun in Ep 07
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