Summary
When Life Gives You Tangerines slips through episodes and eras in Episodes 9-12, but Volume 3 still isn’t interested in making this story easy on you.
When Life Gives You Tangerines has been a complete surprise and a riveting portrait of loss, grief, and family, especially in a brutal, heartbreaking Volume 2. There’s good news and bad news here, folks. The good news is that the show hasn’t lost any quality as it progresses through Volume 3, Episodes 9-12, and indeed through the next generation, as the focus shifts to Ae-sun and Gwan-sik’s children, particularly Geum-myeong. The bad news is that it still isn’t interested in giving you an easy time emotionally.
If there’s a theme in these four episodes it’s the complexity of romance, as we settle heavily on Geum-myeong’s love life as she moves to Japan and returns to Seoul. Along the way, she meets artist Cheong-seob, and their relationship develops in a similar way to Ae-sun and Gwan-sik’s in Volume 1.
Cheong-seob is one of those doomed romantic heroes, in a way. His affection for Geum-myeong is immediately evident and only becomes more obvious through various chance encounters, but she feels frustratingly elusive to him, being in a long-term relationship with Yeong-bum since her first year of college. He’s forced to swallow his true feelings, believing her heart belongs to someone else, despite being very much framed as the “hero” in her personal story.
This takes on a rather literal quality when he saves her from carbon monoxide poisoning by carrying her to an ambulance, which coincides with Ae-sun having finally decided to visit her daughter in person since she clearly can’t just catch a break. But it’s also figuratively true. Geum-myeong bonds with Cheong-seob’s mother in a way that contrasts rather obviously with her relationship with Yeong-bum’s mother, who can’t stand her for nebulous reasons. He represents an easier, more agreeable life; the road not taken that might have led to greener pastures.
When Cheong-seob is forced to leave for his compulsory military service, and does so without confessing his true feelings, this leaves Geum-myeong to occupy more of the focus as she’s forced to navigate the issues that crop up from her future mother-in-law’s obvious distaste for her. Deep into their relationship, Geum-myeong and Yeong-bum remain unmarried for this reason, and their pending nuptials feel more like a threat than anything else thanks to the interference.
The frosty dynamic also becomes obvious to Ae-sun, who is deeply puzzled by the unexplained but flagrant hostility. The humiliations continue apace until the logical endpoint, when Geum-myeong can no longer take it, and decides to call off the wedding and leave Yeong-bum.
What struck me about this subplot is the sheer pointlessness of it. Geum-myeong and Yeong-bum have been together for years and share a lot of history, but the needless pressure of his family’s belittling prejudice proves to be a frustratingly insurmountable obstacle. In the absence of any deeper reasoning, it can only be a class thing, a theme that has echoed throughout the previous two volumes. Geum-myeong doesn’t come from a privileged family, and this is, to Yeong-bum’s family, somehow more important than the connection and memories they both share.
Romantic separations are painful at the best of times, but separations for reasons as pointless as these are almost unbearable. Yeong-bum’s fervent attempts to win Geum-myeong back after she calls off the engagement speak to ignorance of this, a kind of shortsightedness that you only suffer from when you’re on the prejudicial side of the aisle.
The complications and pain take Geum-myeong home to Jeju Island, where Ae-sun is relieved by the reunion, but it nonetheless feels like a backward step in many respects. Geum-myeong is essentially being asked to start from scratch; to return to the same place not just geographically but also emotionally, to reconsider options that she had already considered and thought she had decided upon. That’s more painful than even the separation itself.
But When Life Gives You Tangerines Episode 12 ends with a hint of better things on the horizon in the return of Cheong-seob from his military service, and in his happening upon Geum-myeong at a bus stop. Their reunion is postponed, since Geum-myeong boards the bus, but Cheong-seob gives chase. Having already allowed the love of his life to slip away once, he isn’t prepared to do so again.
