this drama showed how having an abusive and manipulative father left all the family members with a lesser sense of self-care and even just knowledge of their own emotions or how to prioritize them (like seongyeom here who doesn’t realise he’s hurt but still feels upset and not just on his siter behalf) because they got used to things just being this way and for their own feelings to be ignored or not taken care of so even the siblings care for each other they struggle to point their own emotions and pain and take care of themselves and seongyeom even struggles with how he should care for his sister
and mijoo who only has the family she’s made for herself over the years, people she has no blood in common with but with whom she had to create actual emotional bond on which she based her relationship with them and who learned how families behave and care for each other by watching others since she couldn’t watch her own and assume things had to be this way like seongyeom and his family and she shares that knowledge with seongyeom and over the course of the whole show (but the essence of this is in this scene) she helps him point out what he feels, wants and needs and in returns he uses that to care for himself and others
her learned this isn’t what family is for and that family should be about comfort and that if yoru blood family doesn’t provide that then it doesn’t fulfill the contract and can’t be treated as such but his sister hasn’t been taught that by someone else like he has with mijoo so she still believes she has to do things to ease her father’s success and that she owes him this despite her pain
to make sure his sister doesn’t have to keep on putting herself and her pain down he uses something else he’s learned about families from someone else and that is that family members hold each other accountable and can fight and that there isn’t just one adult with power if there are two adults in total (because the parents should share the responsabilities of taking care of the kids and providing a safe envrionnement but also because if one doesn’t act well the other can stand up for their children) and himself as a kid as the right to demande from his mother that she finally steps into her role as an authority figure in their household, as a mother, and stand up to his father and protect her children (and its fitting because his mother is an actress who spent most of her life running away from that role - which is so closely linked to the one of wife - to put on other people’s shoes)
and the thing is despite the fact that she has made a name for herself outside of her husband’s name and that she has neglected the care her children needed,she still wasn’t free despite being successful, she still was being held by her husband’s words and his power over her (even though she’s the one bringing him money!!! giving him children!!!) and he still managed to make her feel like she couldn’t, in the most private aspect of her life, be in control, and only seongyeom learning from others what families can stand for and showing what that is to his sister and his mother and “directing” them to play this new part, made her stand up for herself and for her children and finally untie herself from her husband and use her power over him to bring him down and make them live a life where they could take care each of themselves and of each other
this is a show about running so you could say that knowledge about self-love and self-worth is shared amongst the runners/characters liek the baton in a relay, love spreads and it does win races no matter how small or big they might seem at first and it works because it’s shared and because you have people who’ve learned it and who are willing to share it, you have to work for it, like athletes have to train, but it’s worth it
