Crash Course in Romance

A well written and directed episode 15. I know that many of people hated it, but I am not among that number.

This may be one of the better kdramas made this year.

I now believe that the English language titling was done on purpose to mislead, in order to get as wide a viewing audience as possible for a story they deemed extremely important to tell; but, feared if titled more accurately, then the audience for a show about education/parent abuse would not get a very wide audience. Many of us were "tricked "into watching a painful show - that we might have otherwise avoided!

Now for the rest of the story....

My contrarian opinion has always been, since episode # 2 that the show was never a romance in the conventional sense; it was always a drama about the Korean for-profit educational system and the deadly lengths that parent will go to, pushing their children to test well.

That the show was about the educational system was obvious from the first few scenes of EP 1.

The romance was always a parallel plot playing out against the backdrop of students, schooling, testing and the for-profit education business. Why else would one of the main lead be high profile "for-profit" teacher and the other main lead be a "non-traditional" mother who is not a maniac about test scores, who is "introduced" to the schooling mania as the show proceed - so we can see that sickness .

She is intended to contrast to all of the other mothers [even the dead one killed by her son]. It's by her simple goodness that we can see the full depravity of the other mothers. Why is Choi called the "million won man", if not to point up the outrageous predatory behavior of the education-businessmen who only care about profits?

The romance is both fostered and hindered by the events that are going on in the main, education focused plot line; without that, this romance would make no sense. This unlikely romance only makes sense against this background.

The murders are also a necessary plot element that point up the most extreme damage that can result from this mother-forced testing score mania. Why start the show with the death of a young student? Why keep referencing in the main plot Su-hyeon’s suicide [the first death in this story] and Ji Dong-hee's resulting madness. [Episode 15 makes this so clear- that his love for his sister and his hatred of his abusive mother made him into an insane, murderous person. All the fruits of his mothers testing score madness!

The adults have failed them and are untrustworthy. This refrain is repeated multiple times and ways in this story. Even in this last episode.

There is not a single "birth mother" in this show that is a truly good person. The only real mother is an "aunt" who becomes a role model of a mother. Hae-yi's birth mother abandoned her twice; once when she was 2-3 yrs old and again, in the hospital when she left and allowed the murder to enter the room. Who saved Hae-yi from strangulation by Ji Dong-hee - the "aunt-mother"! The writers and directors again hammering home who the real mother is in the story.

The two most "mature" characters in the story are Hae-yi and Haeng-seon. When we first see Choi he is still in many ways, still a child; he only later grows into a full person as the story progresses.

If you still don't think that the main plot is about educational mania, then go back to EP 1 and watch the opening scenes and at minute 5:06 see the foreshadowing of death and murder.

Episode One is filed with foreshadowing, symbolism and the establishment of contrasting sets of characters and worlds - all in the service of pointing out the deficiencies in these two "universes". What's the tile of the first episode? Check it out and think on it.

Contrast and comparison are the two major narrative techniques used in telling this story and as viewers/participants we need to be aware of that and what that is showing us. Stories have meanings; that's why people have been telling them forever!

Take the murder plot and the educational testing plots away and all that is left is a vapid, not so believable love story between two very dissimilar characters - who live in two different worlds.

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