Guess what? it’s another post about Answer Me 1997 and Hospital Playlist! Youre Welcome :)
Ok so the other night I watched episode 11 of Answer Me 1997--the one where Yoon Jae runs through the streets to walk Shi Won home bc that creep is following her--and it really made me think about how good this writer/director team is at depicting Big Moments, in a way that can be really frustrating to watch but also really effective.
Specifically, they like to show Big Moments where there's a tension that comes from the opening of new possibilities. Where someone is teetering on the edge of a realization, or has just had a realization, or has just made a decision, and we get a scene where the characters pause and wait for something to happen. Some of the best moments in this show are where we linger on Shi Won's still, silent face, and you can see things shifting and rearranging themselves in her brain. These moments feel so powerful because she's so rarely still or quiet, and the viewer and Yoon Jae lean forward, desperate for her to act. Tension is in the air as we wait for what she will decide to do now that something has changed. And then, of course, it cuts away and we never see the resolution. This pattern frustrated me massively when I first watched the show, and it's showing up again in Hospital Playlist.
Now, I think that I have a better idea of what they were trying to do with this sort of structure although I won't lie, it does still drive me up the WALL. All I want is to see cute romantic moments and you guys are always cutting away like relationship development is a secretttttt kill meeeee. Anyway. Moving on These scenes are so powerful because they leave us trapped in the moment of tension, unable to get a resolution. Who doesn't remember the end of the first episode of AM97 leaving us hanging on the question "tell me not to date her" without ever giving us Shi Won's reply?
I think the reason we don't get a resolution to these scenes because there isn't a resolution to the bigger conflicts these scenes are a part of yet. The whole show is building toward a resolution of these tensions, so any relief that we would get from seeing the aftermath of charged scenes like this one would be a false relief, and rob the story of the sense of growing conflict that builds the whole way through. The writers gradually move toward more linear storytelling as the show progresses, because our character conflicts are growing and becoming an inescapable part of their lives.
Back to Hospital Playlist, since my thoughts on these two shows are deeply entwined. In this show they tend to do that sort of cut away more blatantly with the medical scenes--we usually get introduced to the issue and then see characters reflecting on the resolution of it, rather than us watching the situation unfold directly. When it comes to the relationship developments, however, I noticed that the characters themselves often are the agents for this sort of cut away. These are older characters pushing 40, and the hidden emotions and character conflicts that they bring up have been a part of them for years, even decades. They have the social skills, (but also possibly the self-sabotaging habits) to defuse a moment of emotional tension and realization by immediately redirecting our attention. I'm thinking of Ik-Jun speaking to Jeong Won about his feelings for Gyeo Wool and then turning it into a joke, or of Ik-Jun telling Song Hwa that eating with her is special, and then commenting on the rain in order to move the moment along (wow he does this a lot huh?). If this truly will be a multi-episode show, I think we are going to have to live in the tension of these moments and accept that the resolutions will be postponed for a long time yet.
