For anyone on this website just getting into Friendly Rivalry, here’s a hundred thousand words you can read about it if you are insane (like me). My attempt at a thorough analysis of the themes, characters, and symbolism. Also the plot gets mostly explained along the way.
friendly rivalry deep dive pt 1
friendly rivalry deep dive pt 2
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friendly rivalry deep dive epilogue
bridges and stairs: directional movement in friendly rivalry
ok before Home Week of FR-Fest ends i think this is as good a time as any to post my Way Too Many Thoughts about Seul-gi and her stepmom and parenthood in Friendly Rivalry that i've had marinating in the drafts for like six months. Kids can't have homes of their own, after all, only the ones created for them, and thus Seul-gi's physical precarity all her life and her abandonment as a child are one and the same — she has to fight and claw to survive on her own, because there's no roof over her head she can ever trust. Until there is. If you have no idea what I'm talking about please watch Friendly Rivalry if it seems like your speed, and if you're here for @fr-fest thank you for helping build the fandom that's been such a big part of my experience with the show. And now, onward!
It's fascinating that a show like Friendly Rivalry, with its dark and gritty genre and tone that's perfectly suited to depicting the unsparingly bleak side of life, could very well have made every adult some form of antagonist and every parent-child relationship some form of toxic. And it very nearly does! It comes so close; as far as Seul-gi is concerned at first there's no reason to think it would be otherwise! And the ways in which Kwon Hui-yun is the sole exception have burrowed into my brain and refuse to leave.
Because on the one hand, the thematic contrasts are not subtle, and they're quite daring! Parenthood looms large over the whole premise, by way of the elite academy setting — it's the exact point where literal reproduction meets elite reproduction, the place where all the baggage of legacy, class status, and children as investments is at its most amplified. We see this most starkly in the prologue to Episode 3: Jae-yi's birth is precision engineered in a grimly comedic parody of both patriarchy and religion, her father seeking an extension of himself via scientific and superstitious control of a process where her mother is depicted merely as instrumental.
danny devito I Get It Now.jpeg
The cross above the bed ain't subtle: this is one man, one woman, and a child made to obey the will of the Father, maybe with a few modern bells and whistles but ultimately just like it's supposed to be now and forever, amen. All part of the Plan, made by men who pass it off on God. Chaehwa merely integrates that control into the broader engine of the economy: the Father's investment will pay off, society will keep its elite pipeline chugging along, and Jae-yi will be rewarded handsomely as long as she keeps the whole cycle going undisturbed over any fussy feminine quibbles like "autonomy" or "justice" or "falling in love with a girl the system was designed to quietly dispose of."
Love the way Friendly Rivalry depicts institutions that don't even bother to fake a pretense of kindness when they think they don't have to, so many anonymously loathsome motherfuckers to hate
Seul-gi in turn lives such a hard life precisely because she's been accidentally cut off from this cycle. If she'd grown up with her father she'd be indistinguishable from the rest of Chaehwa, maybe even with a massive leg up, but as an orphan from nowhere trying to better herself without the built in cheat codes of elite access she's at best a regrettable glitch, and at worst a threat to be eliminated. She's not part of the Plan, not anymore. And consequently her stepmother doesn't "count" in the way everyone else's parents count; she provides no status and no inside track with her husband dead, her financial resources are tied up in wrongful death litigation, and the way she's come to be Seul-gi's guardian is viewed not with reverence by society but confusion and pity. The one thing she can give, whether Seul-gi thinks she deserves it or not, is love — a kind of love that's frighteningly rare.
Because although Tae-jun is orders of magnitude crueler to his daughters than every other parent we see [ok maybe not Ye-ri's mom, who incidentally shares with him the specific evil of abandoning a disfavored child to predators], it's clear from everything we see that the culture that produced him is everywhere. It's in Gyeong's strained relationship with her mom [and that's mostly as good as it gets]. It's in Beom-su's parents closing ranks with the school administration to ensure she has impunity for her violence after they clearly couldn't prevent her from spiraling to that point in the first place. It's in the angry mob chasing after Byeong-jin after he fails to help their kids cheat the system with the system's tacit permission, those kids' actual skills and growth a secondary concern at best. And the only exception, the only parent we see who both loves her daughter unconditionally and manages to cultivate a genuine relationship of mutual care and respect, is the one who isn't a biological parent at all.
This is almost certainly the first time in her life Seul-gi has ever heard anything like this!! i'm not ok!!!
That combination, of uncynically asserting a model of single adoptive parenthood that's wholly positive, and then pointedly contrasting it with "natural" models of respectable nuclear families that are repeatedly shown to ruin lives, is one of the most satisfying rejections of an entrenched status quo I've ever seen in fiction. And it's not an accident that it's done by the same show with an A-Plot about lesbian love and its capacity to break these specific cycles of abuse; the two narratives aren't just deeply radical, each is fundamentally an extension of the other.
After all, Seul-gi's biological mother is never seen once. And her quest to first find her father and then get any kind of closure for his death, initially presented as the core of the story, is rendered anticlimactic in the most horrific way imaginable — he wasn't killed by the man tormenting Seul-gi and the girl she loves, but by a girl just like them that he victimized himself. By the end her quest to ruin Tae-jun is no longer about revenge for her father but about rescuing the life she's built now. That means her love for Jae-yi, and that means the home she's built with her stepmother, who she has gradually come to realize cherishes her as her own. Both of those sources of love are made up of dozens of hard individual choices, but they're also both deemed mistakes by society, aberrations from the Plan that are either regrettable or outright verboten. And that lack of built in acceptance, that deviation from the Plan, provides a blank slate for these women to build love on their own terms, and a grim clarity about what they're fighting to protect and who they're up against.
Which way, parent of dark academia toxic yuri daughter?
But on the other hand!! This subversion of expectations lands with the same grounded, layered thoughtfulness that runs through the whole show. Hui-yun's parental virtues are so powerful precisely because they're not reified. Seul-gi and her stepmom aren't found family, there's not a whiff of sentimental trope-iness about them even when it totally would have landed. They simply are family, in every traditional sense but with their unique contingent challenges. And while Hui-yun's status as a stepmother matters immensely to both the story and themes, she's not embodying some overdetermined symbolic contrast to the dominant culture; in fact she was enmeshed in it, married to one of the most powerful and reprehensible men we meet! The flashback where it's revealed that she was helping search for Seul-gi as a futile stepping stone to biological kids of her own is heartbreaking, and raises the question of how different things would have been if they had found her earlier. Would she have loved Seul-gi the same as her hypothetical half-siblings? Would any family involving Woo Do-hyeok have been a good place to grow up?
The ambiguity in her motivations! We'll never know what combination of regret, hope, and responsibility drove her to this and that's awesome!!
We can only guess, and in another instance of incredibly thoughtful restraint we never get any other hints of what her marriage was like, including when/if she ever would have found out who Do-hyeok truly was had he survived [her half-truth explanation to Seul-gi for why she settles the lawsuit, "I don't want to be disappointed by your dad anymore," is soul-crushing for how understated it is. And her one briefly narrated interlude where she attributes her understanding of Je-na's situation to "women's intuition?" That's simply the void screaming at you, forever]. In any case, whatever plans of parenthood she once had are replaced by a very different reality, a classic "one door closes/another door opens" story but with none of the triteness of a cliche — and one where Hui-yun forces the door open herself, initiating the search for Seul-gi after her father had given up and sustaining it past the point where any pretenses of self-interest, of restoring or creating a "real" biological family, were still in play.
EDIT: ok i knew i was gonna miss something and i know the FR timeline is hard to keep straight but this is pretty embarrassing: of course Do-hyeok IS [briefly] alive at the moment they find Seul-gi, *because Tae-jun is the one who makes that possible,* manipulating this man's love for his daughter [possibly the last thing he doesn't hate about himself] to facilitate that same man's abuse of his own, and extract advantage for himself at every step. It's a horrifying final twist of the knife that every circumstance of Seul-gi's life and presence at Chaehwa has been an object of exploitation from the very beginning, with Jae-yi's manipulations only the unwitting aftershocks of her father's, but it's also grimly poetic. In assuming Seul-gi was a disposable bargaining chip and accidentally bringing her into the lives of both her father's widow and his own daughter, Tae-jun has brought her to the two woman who will love her in ways he could never fathom, and in underestimating all three of them he ensures his own downfall. END EDIT
And it's in that context where all we have left to assess is what Hui-yun does upon that search's miraculous success: she takes in a traumatized high school senior, having missed all the formative parenting years she presumably once desperately wanted, and immediately tells her that she'll never have to apologize for her presence in their home. She's not a good parent by way of her Woman Settings being set to Motherly Virtue; if anything she clearly has no idea what she's doing at first. But she immediately gets started on becoming a good parent, and she quickly laps her competition simply by stepping up for a child who has never been able to rely on anyone before.
almost murdered? car totaled? not important, got a hungry teenager to make happy
Of course Seul-gi doesn't trust it at first, and though that skepticism is misplaced she's never framed as stupid or shortsighted for it. In fact both parties are allowed to be flawed without judgement; her stepmom doesn't deal with burdens with superhuman grace. She leaves the apartment a mess sometimes, she gets frustrated when Seul-gi's desperation to beat Tae-jun clashes with her own grief and responsibility to protect her, she clearly dislikes Jae-yi [an understandable parental instinct lmfao] and only belatedly realizes how much she means to her daughter. Her love for Seul-gi is unshakeable, but not frictionless. That's why the scene outside the courthouse, where Jae-yi races down the steps to walk together with Seul-gi and Hui-yun quietly lets it happen, and THEN visibly realizes what it means that they're holding hands and that Tae-jun is Not Happy about it, is my favorite in the entire series.
Look at her eyes! She's barely in the frame but you can still see her realize exactly what talk she's gonna have to have in the car lmaooo
But the show also provides clear benchmarks for the evolution of Seul-gi's feelings. At the beginning she just barely restrains herself from venting her frustrations over a quiet, awkward dinner, because she thinks she doesn't have the standing to speak her mind. She treats herself as a temporary guest in her own home, not wanting to burden Hui-yun and convinced that the only reason she's been taken in to begin with must be rooted in some kind of self interest, the only kind of human behavior she's ever witnessed. If it doesn't quite add up, it doesn't need to — Seul-gi's simply operating from the assumptions that best allow her to protect herself. And she might have continued to, were it not for her injury and the subsequent smear campaign that threatens her last chance at a real future. With the walls closing in and her own resourcefulness not enough to save her, she has only one card left to play. But still she holds off as long as she can, and her fateful decision to call Hui-yun to her expulsion hearing is ultimately a split second choice — a choice to reject the school's vicious framing of her as a loveless orphan who can be easily railroaded, a choice to call their bluff, and a choice, no matter how desperate, to believe in someone.
when your back is against the wall but the opportunity to be petty is so tempting that you accidentally confirm that your stepmom would die for you
We never know for sure exactly how much Seul-gi thinks this is actually going to work. And when her stepmom gets the call, she has all the excuses in the world not to respond, if she truly didn't care. The hard u-turn she takes, and her subsequent furious challenge to the entire power structure of Chaehwa [who in their bottomless apathy don't even understand why she's there at first] can only be attributed to love, and even Seul-gi knows it. So it's after this that she starts smiling freely around her stepmom in a way we otherwise only ever see with Jae-yi; she opens up to the love of her life and her newfound parent in parallel as they both keep showing up for her in the same places, and proving her assumptions that she's unloveable wrong in different ways.
EDIT: my other miss was right here, though the thrust of it all still stands – it's just that the trust was already planted in the car ride over from the hospital, when Hui-yun tells her not to back down and belatedly fills her in about the lawsuit negotiations Seul-gi had left the apartment earlier to avoid; that gesture of goodwill, so far removed from her prior hesitancy to even ask for Seul-gi to communicate when she'll be home "if we're going to live together," is an unambiguous signal that she's ready to stop doubting herself and take this parenting shit seriously. So when Seul-gi makes the call, there's still uncertainty, but she does have reason to be confident it'll work. END EDIT
And then there's the most explicit moment of all — the one exchange where the unspoken becomes spoken, when Hui-yun prevents a desperate and rage-stricken Seul-gi from throwing her future away permanently by murdering Tae-jun. In the aftermath, both of them shaken, she admits her refusal to settle the lawsuit in the face of Seul-gi's fear that she'd do the opposite, but reframes it from the perspective of the parent — Tae-jun's lawyers are trying to guilt her. What kind of parent would put their child through this? What kind of parent would pass up the financial windfall of a settlement to protect her child's future? If she's failing to prioritize Seul-gi, maybe it's because she's a stepmother? But what makes Hui-yun so unique as a parent is that she doesn't TELL Seul-gi what to think about this, she asks her what she DOES think.
this moment makes me want to run through a goddamn brick wall. confidence in herself but without ego, trust in her kid but without delusion — a parenting clinic. the best to ever do it
And with the last of her distrust evaporating, Seul-gi immediately responds: "No. You did the right thing." And when Byeong-jin does Byeong-jin things and ruins the moment, she shoves her bag into her stepmom's arms before recklessly running off, the trust they've been steadily building since that school hearing sealed in a moment of classic teenage childishness — here mom, hold this, i gotta go.
Of course because this is Friendly Rivalry, breakthroughs without true escape are only prelude to more heartbreak, and as long as Tae-jun is on the board he'll try to turn love into weakness, oblivious to its resilience but very effective at inflicting pain all the same. Jae-yi and Hui-yun will both do anything to keep Seul-gi safe, even if it means Seul-gi hates them for it. And so at the same time that Jae-yi appears to be slipping away for good Seul-gi finds out that the lawsuit WAS settled after all, the nightmarish betrayal she was always afraid of, and immediately after she was promised it would never happen. And that's when she DOES blow up, her anger paradoxically a sign that she's comfortable enough to let her vulnerabilities show [again in parallel to her lesbian situationship, where she can only express vulnerability after finally defeating Jae-yi in the battle of galaxy brain 12D cat and mouse by trying to drown herself. Yuri!!] But she still responds to her stepmother's wounded but calculated rebuttal with a chastened "I have no right to argue." She can't entirely shake the internalization of herself as a burden, the scared child behind the mask of fierce independence — but in this home her outburst won't cost her anything, and by the end she'll realize that even the most painful conflict will never make her unloved.
Hui-yun adhering to the principle of "if I'm mad at my kid, really I'm mad at myself"
Because what Hui-yun never does is treat Seul-gi as one of her burdens — her status as the One Good Parent is built not with any inherent qualities or cultural signifiers but by her nigh-revolutionary insistence that her child is not indebted to her. First she's just a roof over Seul-gi's head and a guarantee of food in her stomach without judgement, then she's falling asleep at her side in an operating room even if Seul-gi can't know she's there, and then, when Seul-gi takes the first leap of faith to ask her for help, she's dropping everything to turn the car around and defend her from expulsion. The other side of that turning point, the one that ensures they'll never truly go back, is that it doesn't just sink in for Seul-gi how her stepmom feels about her as a parent. She realizes in that moment how she feels as a daughter.
Top 10 Seul-gi faces to break your heart :(
The moment she refutes Beom-su's lie, she doesn't do it to the administrators, or to her attacker, but to Hui-yun. For the first time, she cares what a figure of authority in her life thinks of her. For the first time, she wants an adult to be proud of her — and in the back of her mind she's probably terrified that even if her stepmom has inexplicably stuck by her up to this point, now she has a reason to stop doing so. And when Hui-yun never doubts her for a second, and instead throws protective scorn over every other adult in the room, they truly become a family. It's why Seul-gi can say no when an indignant Hui-yun tells her they're leaving in protest, because now she knows she's talking to someone who will protect her at all costs but also respects her as a human being.
The impact of this growing bond is significant, but never overplayed; never distracting from the main story, but always mattering when it appears. When Hui-yun is forced to go back on her promise to Seul-gi and settle the lawsuit [because Tae-jun nearly kills both of them via vehicular sabotage while making Jae-yi watch, naturally, jfc this show], it's not a moment of high melodrama, merely a grimly necessary choice and its consequences. Her chance for closure is gone, justice is impossible, but her daughter's safety comes before any of that. So she lets Seul-gi believe it was an accident, even knowing that the missing context will make Seul-gi resent her for settling for what she thinks are purely financial considerations — better her daughter be furious with her than live every moment of her life in incapacitating terror. She even takes a moment to ask Seul-gi if she wants to keep her father's wrecked old car — not because that's a reasonable course of action, but because she wants Seul-gi to know that she has a say, that her opinions matter. And yes, she's also guiltily covering for the choice about the lawsuit that she's not going to give Seul-gi for her own safety. Even the best things don't get be clean in Friendly Rivalry, but they do get to be Good, in the end.
At least Jae-yi has the courtesy to be cryptic and gay — this girl has no idea how to deal with people caring about her this directly, with words and shit
And in the end the painful sacrifices pay off, because all the work Hui-yun has done has made it undeniable to Seul-gi, no matter how high her emotions run — that everything her stepmom does, she does for Seul-gi first. You can see it even in her penultimate confrontation with Tae-jun, having hit rock bottom but still making unhinged evil genius chess moves to make Jae-yi proud [ok worried out of her mind, in reality, but still]. In her characteristic style of blunt confrontation, she lets Tae-jun know that she suspects exactly why her stepmom did what she had to do, and that she's willing to fight for her just as hard precisely because she would never ask her to. And it's not a coincidence that she's talking to the highest-status, most celebrated parent in the Chaehwa orbit, whose meticulously planned and perfected daughter was willing to die to destroy him, and is now willing to live for this girl from nowhere.
i swear this show would be 10/10 solely on the strength of its full gallery of Chung Su-bin facial expressions
Of course Friendly Rivalry's greatest balancing act is that while it's a furious rebuke of societal cynicism, it never loses its grounding sense of realistic pessimism. The power of love is great and wondrous, but it cannot in a head to head fight overcome the power of, well, power. The final tragedy is that there's only so much any of them can do against their incredibly entrenched tormentors and the systems they represent — Seul-gi goes through physical and mental hell to put Tae-jun away for a despair-inducing few months, Jae-yi goes over the ledge for only the possibility of saving her sister and seeing the love of her life again, and Hui-yun is powerless to spare Seul-gi from the grief that follows.
But everything she can do she keeps doing, down to the final scene, when she fends off invasive reporters while for the first time calling Seul-gi her daughter in dialogue, no qualifiers attached. Seul-gi's relaxed suggestion that they move elsewhere together to escape Tae-jun is met with her mother's stern but affectionate veto, and the implication is loud and clear: This is our home. Let me do my job to keep you safe, and you do yours by living your life. It's a stunningly beautiful resolution for how restrained it is. There's no grand climax because that's coming in the mail courtesy of Jae-yi — there's simply the quiet depiction of a family made whole, not triumphant but surviving. No bloodlines, no 20 year plans, no missions from God, just one woman and her daughter against the world.
Ok that's uh. everything that was building up in my brain on that. Masterful work from Chung Su-bin as my GOAT protagonist, Kang Jin-ah as Parent of the Year, and of course from Kim Tai-hee, Min Ye-ji, and the entire Friendly Rivalry team for creating something you never run out of things to say about. Happy FR-Fest, everyone — this goes out to all of you whose writing and art has built up an incredibly vibrant fandom for one of the best shows of the decade; I wouldn't have found it without you guys. Here's to one year of Seul-gi and Jae-yi, and many more to come <3
I think often of the little moments when Jaeyi cannot help but be incredibly tender and desperate in the ways she protects and therefore loves Seulgi.
The closet, when she pulls Seulgi's hand to her heart, looks her in the eye and giggles at the rumors that her friends are making up about her. Only to have the most somber look slide over her face as she hears them start to talk badly about Seulgi. Never breaking eye contact, sliding both hands over Seulgi's ears. The way her sister did for her when they were little. It's one of the only ways Jaeyi knows how to convey a soft and deep sense of love.
I think of the moment in the elevator in the episode before. When she opens the elevator at the cram school building to a wide-eyed Seulgi, skittish and clearly in trouble. The deliberate earnest way she takes her hat off, makes determined eye contact and places her hat on Seulgi's head, telling her to go to the roof. Then taking her place in the elevator? That moment was romance. That was Jaeyi expressing to Seulgi that she wants to protect her. And when she lifts the hat from her head upon the rooftop, and takes her hand, standing above her but feeling so incredibly equal to her, Jaeyi feels like she's found the one she wants to know in the entire world. No one has ever intrigued her the way Seulgi has.
I also think of the episode where Seulgi has to beg Jaeyi for her to give her a sample so she can pass the drug test. Seulgi, on her knees, desperate, her eyes nearly brimming with tears. But Jaeyi would have given it to her anyway. And when she stands, she can't help but dust off Seulgi's knees. It makes her sick to think that Seulgi ever debased herself like that for her. In Jaeyi's mind, they are EQUALS that's what makes her so driven to choose Seulgi.
In the webtoon, we know exactly how her falling out with Jaeyi unfolded. In the TV series, it's vaguer. I've mentioned in the past (at least in passing) that the viewers can decide whether or not to apply the backstory from the webtoon to the TV series.
My personal answer is that I don't think that it happened in exactly the same way (bc some of the specific details don't match what we know about the characters in the TV series), but I think the degree to which each character is culpable is probably the exactly same as in the webtoon. I say that because there are certain scenes that, in my opinion have more meaning and depth if you make that assumption.
Spoilers for both the webtoon and TV series under the cut!
Early on in both the TV series and the webtoon, Yeri and Gyeong speculate that Jaeyi is doting on Seulgi in order to "make her a loyal dog." "That's her hobby, right?"
The subtext, which is expanded on in the webtoon but not the series, is that Jaeyi has done this before... with Beom-su. Hence her comment in the TV series that "once you've been chosen by Jaeyi, it will be hard to keep your sanity."
The two of them used to be so close that they went on private vacations together. This despite the fact that Jaeyi's parents disapproved of their friendship (Jaeyi used the excuse that if she couldn't hang out with Beom-su, her grades might slip--an excuse I don't think her parents would accept once she got older). But it was a deeply unequal relationship in which Beom-su obeyed Jaeyi unconditionally.
When Jaeyi found out that Beom-su was not loyal to her alone, but would obey anyone who gave her attention (in this case... Ye-ri), she no longer wanted to stay friends with her. But she knew it would look bad if she just dumped Beom-su for no reason, so she created an opening.
In the webtoon, Gyeong and Ye-ri originally became friends with Jaeyi because their moms ordered them to persuade Jaeyi to introduce them to her math tutor. Jaeyi, who was very aware of that. "let slip" to Ye-ri and Gyeong that she was leaving her study notes at school overnight. Then she left the room, knowing that Gyeong or Ye-ri would order Beom-su to get the notebook so that they could copy it.
It was Ye-ri who gave the order, but Gyeong allowed it to happen, trusting that Ye-ri would share the notebook with her too.
The next day, at the start of class, Jaeyi announced that her notebook was missing, knowing that Beom-su wouldn't have had time to share it with the others yet, so it would be in her desk. When it was discovered there, Jaeyi used that as the excuse to dump Beom-su, which made her the permanent target of everyone's bullying from then on.
There's no way that it happened exactly like that in the TV series. In the TV series, Ye-ri is majoring in music, so she wouldn't need to order Beom-su to steal Jaeyi's study notes. Initially, I assumed that in the TV series, Gyeong would have given the orders while Ye-ri stood by, but upon rewatching, I don't think that anymore, because there are certain scenes in episode 8 that are more impactful if you assume that Jaeyi dumped Beom-su because of something Ye-ri ordered her to do.
Ye-ri tells Beom-su that if she gets her the right kind of phone charger, she'll add Beom-su to the blind date lineup. Beom-su eagerly agrees. But when she brings Ye-ri the charger, Ye-ri doesn't need it anymore... so she lies and says that she had asked for the phone, not the charger. Not only did she lie and swear at Beom-su, but physically pushed her to the ground as well. All of this is in public, and everyone laughs at her.
As we know, Beom-su confronts Ye-ri with a knife. She says "Why do you keep lying to me?" which suggests that Ye-ri has behaved like this in the past. And what gets Beom-su angry enough to actually use the knife is when Ye-ri says, "This is why Jaeyi stopped talking to you."
If we assume that, like in the webtoon, Beom-su was actually dumped because of something she did on Ye-ri's orders, that line becomes much more hurtful.
Some fans of the TV series might not want to believe that the TV series version of Jaeyi would use someone as a personal toy and then cruelly dump them like that. I've seen it pointed out that Jaeyi's worst actions in the TV series are usually motivated by fear of some kind, and this admittedly doesn't fit that bill.
But the "Isn't [making classmates into loyal dogs] her hobby?" line is in the TV series too. I think it only makes sense, then, to believe that's something she's done in the past.
Whether her motivation for cutting Beom-su off was simple jealousy (something we see a lot from her in the webtoon, but not so much the TV series) or whether it was something else in the TV version, that's very much a question that can be answered any way one likes. I'd love to see people speculate on the specifics of what happened.
It occurs to me that I might also need to explain to some Ye-ri fans why I think Ye-ri in the TV series is capable of doing that to someone in her friend group. I certainly don't think she would have done it to Gyeong. But in the webtoon, Beom-su is someone Ye-ri and Gyeong weren't necessarily that close to in the first place: they just happened to all be friends with Jaeyi. Furthermore, it's not like she was deliberately trying to ruin Beom-su's friendship to Jaeyi. Rather, she chose her own social survival over Beom-su's just as she did in episode 8. I think it's entirely consistent with how she is characterized in the TV series, all things considered.
Jae-yi won’t reveal her secrets to Seul-gi yet this episode, but that’s okay because the first scene solves one mystery for us. We see Jae-yi sneak into her father’s office, unlock his desk, and take out a file with her sister’s name on it. In the file, she finds information about Seul-gi’s dad, stepmom, and Seul-gi herself.
So we now know that: (1) Jae-yi is looking for information about her sister, (2) Woo Do-hyeok is connected to Je-na in some way, and (3) Jae-yi started getting close to Seul-gi due to Do-hyeok’s connection with her sister. Seul-gi’s dad (rip) can no longer reveal anything, but maybe his daughter can.
Why does Jae-yi change Seul-gi’s name to “Princess” in her phone? In the interview I’ve referenced a few times already, Hye-ri mentions that viewers have tended to interpret all of Jae-yi’s actions “through the lens of love” even when that wasn’t the intention. Sadly...I don’t think Jae-yi has love on the brain here. She hasn’t even met Seul-gi yet!
A cynical interpretation makes more sense to me. If she gives Seul-gi a name, she’s a person. But if she’s just a word—just a picture on a flyer—it’s easier to forget her humanity. In this moment we can see Jae-yi’s plan to use Seul-gi as a tool start to take shape.
Then we flash foward and—oh no what’s this? Her tool has feelings? And she’s *really* cute when she’s angry? Abort mission!!
One thing I haven’t paid much attention to so far is Jae-yi’s ears and when they twitch. (Yes, this show will have you analyzing the way a character’s ears move. It’s a disease.) This user noted on X that her ears move when Seul-gi asks to sit next to her again (and that it’s very puppy-like awww), and I think they also twitch when Seul-gi takes her hand at the end of Epiosde 2. Her ears move again in this scene when Seul-gi says her full name and demands an answer from her.
(Seul-gi had been using the casual affectionate -ya suffix for Jae-yi until now. Does anyone know the first time Seul-gi addresses Jae-yi that way? My gut tells me it was in Episode 3 but I haven’t gone back to check.)
Based on the first two moments, you could say that her ears move when Jae-yi is pleased about something—both are moments when Everything Is Going According to Plan. But this moment feels a bit different. Is she pleased about being cornered and told off? (I mean, maybe because it’s Seul-gi she’s into it...)
When dogs pull their ears back, it can be a sign of submission, and this is the first time that Jae-yi essentially admits defeat. For once, she doesn’t have a clever response. She dismisses Seul-gi’s question and tries to escape.
But Seul-gi isn’t about to let her run away. In another first for Friendly Rivalry, *she* is the one who grabs Jae-yi’s hand. The dynamic we’ve come to expect, with Jae-yi in the active dominant role, has been turned upside-down.
Well, almost—but not quite. Jae-yi doesn’t let it happen. She slips out of Seul-gi’s grasp and smiles.
I *love* this little interaction! It’s so perfect. Apparently the smile was improvised by Hye-ri on the spot, and once again I’m floored by how in touch she is with this character. Because this cocky little smirk to mask her surprise is sooo Jae-yi.
First-time viewers at this point might be asking, Is Jae-yi really into Seul-gi, or is she just playing with her?
For second-time viewers, there’s no doubt our girl is ten toes down. There was lots of subtle evidence sprinkled throughout Episode 5 that Jae-yi is attached. Her emotions are slipping through the cracks in her facade more and more. She’s upset that Seul-gi is giving her the cold shoulder. When Seul-gi sneakily leads her to the teacher’s room to confront her about Na-ri, she takes the bait.
On a second watch, the question of her loyalty is replaced by a more interesting one, imo. It’s not just Does Jae-yi really love Seul-gi?—yes, times infinity—but Is Jae-yi’s love strong enough to overcome her desire for control?
Can her love transcend her father’s curse?
As of now—not yet. When Seul-gi tries to take her hand, she recoils, the same way she did with Je-na as kids. It’s not that she doesn’t want to touch Seul-gi—she can hardly keep her hands off the poor girl. It’s being touched that triggers her reflex to pull away. Because being touched means she isn’t calling the shots. It means there’s a chance someone might find a way under her armor and touch skin.
Her heart is in the game—but she’s still treating her relationship with Seul-gi as a game, and she’s losing. In this episode we’ll see her rely on some of her old bad habits in her desperation to win Seul-gi back.
As for Seul-gi, she’s still trying to figure out if Jae-yi is someone she can, literally and figuratively, hold onto—and for now that’s also a no. She’s been suspicious of Jae-yi’s kindness from the beginning. She let her guard down for a moment and got burned for it. Now she can’t even get a straight answer out of the woman. Jae-yi’s slipperiness is opening up her old wounds and reawakening her trust issues.
Like Jae-yi, we’ll see Seul-gi fall back into old patterns of behavior in this episode. Both girls are struggling against the ways they’ve learned how to survive.
Meanwhile Gyeong, the most antagonistic toward Seul-gi of the main cast members, starts warming up to her. (I love how the day after she has her gay awakening, Seul-gi just asks Gyeong point-blank if she has a crush on her—like, hey, might be worth finding out who else is for the ladies around these parts.) At a student assembly, Gyeong reveals her discovery about Seul-gi’s father, and explains the rest of her theory as Seul-gi follows her home: Jae-yi’s dad doesn’t want the malpractice lawsuit to tarnish his hospital’s reputation. He needs to find a way to settle. If Seul-gi’s stepmom is too stubborn, then maybe Seul-gi is the key.
According to Gyeong, Jae-yi has only been cozying up to Seul-gi for her father’s sake. The goal is to befriend her so she’ll be more willing to sign the settlement papers.
*EDIT* In the script book, instead of going straight home, Gyeong takes Seul-gi out for dinner, and they go to the same tteokbokki place that Gyeong went to with her crush and Jae-yi earlier in the episode prologue. Although I understand why they had to cut it, and it was probably the right choice for continuity, I love how explicit it is in the original text that Gyeong is (probably subconsciously but still) trying to get back at Jae-yi by stealing her new girlfriend.
Gyeong surprised me in this episode. I thought I had her figured out. But her oddly self-aware confession to Seul-gi (she’s not being nice out of the goodness of her heart, but doing it to get back at Jae-yi, because of her inferiority complex) made me consider her from a new angle.
After all, we know why Jae-yi has a grudge against Gyeong, and vice versa—but why does Gyeong immediately dislike Seul-gi so much? All she’s said is that she doesn’t want an unknown “bumpkin” hanging out with their clique.
I think there might be more to it than that. (When is there ever *not* more to it than that with this series...) Gyeong knows her relationship with Jae-yi is far from friendship at this stage: it’s grown cold and transactional, with bitterness on both sides. She uses her connection with Jae-yi for her own personal gain, and at the same time hates that she relies on Jae-yi for anything.
Then Seul-gi comes along and Jae-yi showers her with attention and affection...the same way she used to treat Gyeong. That has to sting. Seul-gi is a reminder of the friendship that Gyeong lost. Maybe even a reminder of the something more that she and Jae-yi could have had?
That’s why Gyeong needs to believe that Jae-yi’s kindness toward Seul-gi is just a dirty trick—because if it’s real, that would mean all of Jae-yi’s affection toward her had been real once, too. It would mean Jae-yi hadn’t been her nemesis from the beginning, but someone who genuinely loved her, platonically or otherwise.
Gyeong can’t accept that. It’s not pure logic that leads her to suspect Jae-yi of duplicity—there’s an emotional undercurrent pulling her in that direction, too.
The end of this conversation is...mysterious. Or is it? Gyeong asks Seul-gi if she has any painkillers for period cramps, and Seul-gi replies, no, you dork, I’m poor. We know Gyeong also suffers from hernia pain, so I thought she might be lying to get pain meds for her back...but then later she goes to a doctor and asks for an IUD. It sure is a classic rich kid move to try to bum drugs off your poor orphan friend. Is the implication that she doesn’t want to ask her mom for help? That she’s too busy studying to take care of herself? That she suspects Seul-gi of being a drug user...or dealer? I feel like there might be some subtext that I’m missing.
Speaking of drug dealers, how’s Jae-yi doing? Not well apparently :( In one of her lowest moments, she bombs Seul-gi with a series of desperate messages trying to convince her she’ll need help to study for midterms. It’s...pretty sad. Jae-yi has always been clingy and manipulative, but she’s never been so open about it. As someone who isn’t used to losing, or rejection, being beaten and rejected by the person she cares about most seems to have sent her into a downward spiral.
Then comes one of my favorite scenes from this episode—maybe one of my favorite scenes in FR period. Showing no sign of the desperation we just saw in her messages, a lethargic and dead-eyed Jae-yi speaks to a nurse drawing her blood. The nurse is freaked out by the way Jae-yi stares at the needle as it pierces her skin. Jae-yi says she wants to know exactly when the needle goes in to prepare herself. The nurse responds, but doesn’t it hurt the same either way?
Oh, Jae-yi, you sad little weirdo. How I love you.
This is another one of those scenes that’s so rich, I could dedicate a whole post to it. On one level it’s about control, and how Jae-yi tries to maintain a sense of control in situations where she has none. She can’t stop the needle, or the pain. But she masters them (or imagines that she does) by refusing to look away—by watching, and bracing herself.
This is a theme that will come up with Jae-yi again and again: her need to exert “control” over the future by anticipating it.
But the nurse casts doubt on this habit. Is it really a form of control? Or is Jae-yi only letting her fear control *her*? The needle will still hurt one way or the other.
(Any theories out there, by the way, about why she might be having her blood drawn in this scene?)
*EDIT* The procedure here is called an EBOO treatment and it seems to be a popular therapy at bougie clinics in Korea. She’s having blood drawn so it can be oxygenated and reinfused into the bloodstream later, which allegedly improves concentration, boosts the immune system, etc.
Of course this scene isn’t really about needles. This conversation makes it clearer than ever that Jae-yi is depressed. The nurse says that Jae-yi has trouble sleeping, a common symptom of depression. (Another symptom is intrusive thoughts of death, and we’ll later learn that Jae-yi thinks about death—a lot.) Jae-yi then asks the nurse to take more blood, despite looking exhausted. Risky self-destructive behavior? Depression baybeeee.
I think this scene is also, in a sneaky way, about Seul-gi. You can tell Jae-yi is thinking about Seul-gi because (1) when is she ever not, and (2) she mentions that she slept really well last night—the night that Seul-gi slept over. With a smile, she reassures the nurse that she’s running on “stored-up sleep.” Her night with Seul-gi is, I think maybe literally, the only thing keeping her going right now.
Jae-yi is facing a pain worse than a needle prick—her girl is ghosting her, and it’s exacerbating her depressive symptoms, and she doesn’t have any way of getting her back. She has no control over Seul-gi anymore.
Other people might look away and try to forget. But not Jae-yi. She’s going to handle the situation like she always does: by watching, and preparing. She’s decided to wait for an opening.
Jae-yi isn’t the only one going through a rough patch. From the state of her apartment, Seul-gi’s stepmom also seems to be going through it. Seul-gi cleans up the cans, dishes, and clothes scattered around when she comes home—but then she gets suspicious. Her stepmom never mentioned the malpractice lawsuit to her. Why is she keeping it a secret?
Seul-gi searches her stepmother’s room for clues: she finds unused pregnancy tests, her dad’s life insurance policy, and...several more green envelopes like the one she found in the mail in Episode 4. Now we finally learn what they contain: sinister messages, outlined in black crayon on a colored background (no handwriting that way), hinting that Woo Do-hyeok’s death was not an accident. Are these messages what prompted the lawsuit?
Instead of trusting the evidence all around that her stepmother is a grieving woman barely keeping it together, Seul-gi’s defenses detect a threat. If Jae-yi never really cared about her, what if her stepmom doesn’t care about her, either? What if she’s only trying to cash out and run?
At the dinner table, Seul-gi vents her fears and suspicions while her stepmom listens silently. She doesn’t confirm or deny what Seul-gi says, so we’re left to wonder if there’s any truth to the accusations.
Personally, I think her stepmom probably just didn’t want to burden Seul-gi with everything she knows. She suspects that Do-hyeok’s death had something to do with Je-na, and the spooky anonymous messages are a lot to explain to a kid whose father just died. She’s trying to protect Seul-gi, but Seul-gi is struggling to see good intentions in anyone right now.
*EDIT* It was pointed out to me in the comments (thank you @16th-cornelia-street!) that Seul-gi doesn’t confront her stepmom about the lawsuit. She imagines a confrontation, but holds back. I think this makes it even clearer that Seul-gi is losing faith in other people. Even though she suspects her stepmom of planning to betray her, she’s wary of revealing what she knows—maybe because she’s afraid she’ll get kicked out. It’s also reminiscent of the way she feigns ignorance to manipulate Jae-yi.
The next scene illustrates how Jae-yi’s betrayal hasn’t just eroded Seul-gi’s trust in others, but in herself too. All her insecurities have come flooding back: She really is alone. Maybe she was never that special. Maybe without her grades she’s nothing. Maybe without her pills she’s nothing.
The teacher hands out a book of mock tests from previous years and tells the kids to start memorizing. (I love how there are zero scenes of actual teaching in this series.) Seul-gi is about to do as the teacher says, when she looks around the room and sees every other student putting the book away and carrying on as usual. It’s a moment that puts us directly in Seul-gi’s shoes. Are these mock test questions actually useful or not? If they don’t use the book, how is everyone else studying? It’s like the whole class is in on some big secret.
(I would also like to know their secret. Why *does* no one else use the book? Is it too inefficient, when they have access to targeted study materials? Is no one else underprivileged enough to need it?)
Seul-gi has another underwater vision, but this time, her whole class is down there with her, each hunched over their desk inside their own little bubble. Back in Episode 1, I said I didn’t like the bubble imagery, but I really love it here. Seul-gi isn’t the only one isolated in this class—rivalry isolates everyone from each other. They’re under the same pressure, but there’s no support or solidarity to be found.
With her confidence shaken, Seul-gi needs more than ever to prove herself. And she’s convinced there’s only one way to ace midterms: drugs.
Unfortunately her stolen stash is nearly used up. She hits the streets to solve the problem herself, as she did with the school uniform, but again her insistence on self-reliance backfires. She doesn’t have the time or the money to get her fix by legal means.
Her last resort is an acquaintance from the orphanage, Su-jin, who we haven’t met before—but the fact that Seul-gi doesn’t call right away, and the “??” after Su-jin’s name on her list, suggest she’s dreading the interaction.
Instead it’s Su-jin who calls, begging for money, clearly not doing well. Seul-gi hangs up and blocks the number. Her survival mindset has dulled any compassion she might feel. Su-jin is just further proof that she can’t rely on anyone.
Then by luck Seul-gi figures out how the local Chaehwa drug ring works. Thankfully they advertise on social media. Remember A-ra and her paper cranes, and the sanitary pads? We witnessed our first drug deal earlier this episode, when Beom-su came running into the classroom pretending to need a pad in a hurry, and A-ra passed her a box. (Kind of a genius way to do the handoff in broad daylight tbh.) Now we learn how A-ra recruits her customers: her paper cranes all have verification codes written on them.
Seul-gi orders thirty pills and A-ra arranges a pick-up at the skate park later that night. But A-ra isn’t the brains behind the operation. She’s chatting with someone else: the supplier.
Now we finally get our confirmation that, yes, Jae-yi somehow finds time in her busy schedule to deal drugs.
Question: Why? I don’t think her motive is ever clearly explained. She certainly doesn’t need the money. It’s a loose thread that invites lots of speculation. I’ve heard the theory that she’s plotting to fake her death from the very first episode, and starts selling drugs to raise money for her new life.
Personally, I don’t think so. There’s way more evidence that Jae-yi is suicidally depressed than there is evidence pointing toward that kind of scheme.
But that leaves the question open: What does Jae-yi gain from this side hustle?
I think the simplest answer is that it’s another one of the “sins” she starts committing in her prologue. Like those other sins, it’s more reckless behavior. (What else are you supposed to do when you’re a clinically depressed gifted kid with access to way too many pills?) Also like those sins, it’s a kind of rebellion against her father.
This is maybe the most direct way that she rebels. She’s stealing the drugs from his hospital and selling them to students at the school he sponsors—and she’s his daughter. If she got caught, his reputation would take a massive hit. If she doesn’t get caught, she still gets the satisfaction of breaking every imaginable rule right under his nose.
*EDIT* This interpretation is confirmed in the script book interview with Kim Tae-hee. To the question “Why did Jei start dealing drugs?” she responds: “It’s a form of rebellion against her father. Keeping Seulgi close is part of that defiance, and stealing medication from her father’s hospital to sell to students is another way she acts out. In Jei’s mind, this is her way of taunting Taejoon—‘Even if I’m doing something this terrible, as long as I maintain top grades, you can’t touch me.’ ”
A-ra tells Jae-yi that their new buyer is probably “the transfer” and that’s all it takes. Her opening has arrived. How long do you think it takes her to throw on her drug dealer outfit and leave the house? I’m guessing about...seven seconds? Six and a half?
Let’s address the elephant in the room. Huge spoiler warning if for some reason you haven’t watched the show?? (Seriously go watch it if you haven’t.) Before Jae-yi leaves to meet up with Seul-gi for the exchange, we see her in the pharmacy holding a bottle of pills clearly marked Consotine—the pill that Seul-gi has ordered. Later Jae-yi tells her that they are all out of Consotine at the pharmacy, so she brought some of the Real Good Designer Shit instead.
Even on the first time around, we know this is a lie, but on a second watch, we know the truth: Instead of Consotine, Jae-yi gives Seul-gi harmless multivitamins.
I think this helps us see where Jae-yi is in her character arc. All this time she’s been selling drugs to her fellow students without remorse. But now, because it’s Seul-gi, she swaps out the drugs for a placebo. That’s not the kind of decision you can make without any reflection or self-awareness.
She has to know. She has to know she’s going to absurd lengths just for the chance to talk to Seul-gi again. Seul-gi is much more than a tool or a face on a poster to her now—she’s a person Jae-yi wants to protect.
And that’s what makes the tension in this scene so electric, no matter how many times you watch it. This is Jae-yi at her most paradoxical. At Peak Antihero. Even with her heart firmly in the right place, she’s indulging in—reveling in—all her most toxic traits.
Because it’s fun.
*EDIT* When I first wrote this entry, I suspected that Jae-yi’s reasons for giving Seul-gi the pills were a little more complicated, but I hadn’t fully worked out my thoughts on it. Then the script book came out and did all the work for me. About this scene Kim Tae-hee writes, “When Jei gave Seulgi the vitamins in Episode 3 [Episode 6], her feelings must’ve been complex. On one hand, she was anxious about what would happen if she gave Seulgi real ADHD medication and Seulgi ended up taking first place. On the other hand, she was genuinely curious to see how well Seulgi could perform without it. And more than anything, she probably wanted to know if Seulgi trusted her enough to take the pills without knowing what they were.” This interpretation lines up with what what she says in the script book about when Jae-yi starts to recognize her feelings for Seul-gi. According to the director, it’s not until Episode 8 that Jae-yi realizes she’s in love. That makes sense to me: Jae-yi is still very much in rivalry mode here.
Look at her! She is having the time of her life. This is clearly the first time that Jae-yi has felt the will to live in ages. Finally, she has some leverage!
This scene isn’t about one addict—it’s about two. Seul-gi needs the reassurance that Consotine provides, and Jae-yi needs the thrill of the game.
If you set aside the knowledge that Jae-yi isn’t actually obliterating Seul-gi’s mind with some unknown substance, her behavior is still not cool. I mean, it’s very cool, but bad. Bad Jae-yi. The first thing she does is deliberately undermine Seul-gi’s confidence: So your great study secret is doing drugs, huh? Then she lies about the Consotine to intimidate her. Then she undermines her confidence again, saying that she’ll never be able to succeed without drugs because everyone else at Chaehwa is doing them. (Then she does some skateboard tricks because she’s a huge dork.) Then she pulls out some classic Jae-yi manipulation, baiting Seul-gi with the promise of revealing how she obtained her personal info, but only if she can score higher on the midterm test. And finally she tops it off by giving her the cram school study materials which she just so happens to have to make Seul-gi even more dependent on and indebted to her.
She anticipated, and she came prepared.
Jae-yi is playing a role here again—the mysterious bad girl—and she’s even dressed for the part. Being in love with Seul-gi hasn’t changed the fact that she’s in love with the game itself. And in this game she’s willing to do almost anything to win. Even if that means ruthlessly exploiting every one of Seul-gi’s insecurities.
*EDIT* One interesting tidbit from the script book is I think A-ra is meant to be watching this whole exchange? At the end of the scene there’s a cryptic line that just reads: “Someone watches [Seul-gi] from a hidden spot, their gaze trembling.”
Centrum is a hell of a drug.
Wait. Did I do it? Did I finish a whole episode in one post??
Well, I cheated a little. I skipped the Ye-ri scenes in this episode because we’re going to learn a lot more about her in Episode 7. I’ll cover those scenes in the next entry, when I analyze her prologue. Until then!
There's just something about Jaeyi and Seulgi both dealing with abandonment (Seulgi being lost at the beach and ending up at the orphanage; Jaeyi's mother and sister leaving her to deal with her father alone) and having internalized that the only way for anyone to pay attention to you is to be at the very top, to be the best. So it's meaningful that when the chips are down, they stick up for each other. The most powerful thing either of them can ever do for the other is to prove that "I will not leave you behind," because no one in their lives has ever done that for them before.
Is Jae-yi's evil dad a crank doctor?
Musings on God, Gut Health, and Gay Soda
Happy Pride everyone!! (for like another hour in some timezones, shhh it still counts) And hey, it's a World Cup Summer, where we get to watch elite competition bring out transcendent human spirit in unpredictable ways even as it's all orchestrated by corrupt rent-seeking institutions who only value rivalry for the profit they can extract from it and the abuse they can sanctify with it! So that means there's no better time to vomit more words onto the internet about Friendly Rivalry <3
And wouldn't you know it, this time I actually have some beautiful and profound thoughts about the lesbians from the lesbian show about lesbians that lmaooo just kidding, I'm stuck on this loser-ass Tae-jun line to Jae-yi in episode 11:
It's one of the fakest confrontations these two ever have, for sure — he's at such an enormous advantage in this moment that he could be saying anything, and he's absolutely making that point to her by choosing words this inane and perfunctory. But even so this specific line fascinates me, because bro what?? The big Tae-jun contrast is usually between the hyper-competent surgeon and the abusive monster hiding in plain sight, but in moments like this... is it just me or does the show also keep lowkey calling him a crank doctor whenever he's not literally in the operating room?
Ok so hear me out: "You'll catch a cold from being out in the rain" is a really common thing to say but it's not true, it's a classic case of correlation mistaken for causation. It's the rain and/or cold trapping you inside where all the people breathing at you are that makes you sick, which of course is a lot more front of mind for all of us in the real world 2020s (wait did COVID happen in the FRverse?? I think the timeline benchmarks we get make it just barely impossible to tell either way). Now, for your average person just running on intuition it's a reasonable mistake, but Tae-jun's whole thing is Trusted Medical Professional. Surely he doesn't actually believe it. Surely this is just another part of the game, where Jae-yi knows it's bullshit and so does he. Surely the master surgeon is not a huge dumbass about how viruses spread. Could he really come through the system that purports to demand perfect demonstration of knowledge all the way up the ladder and still carry an elementary misconception about how human bodies work?
I'd argue absolutely! We know for one thing about his religion, and the show does not pretend to have kind things to say about it. Tae-jun's very first appearance in Seul-gi's metanarration is played for absurdity, even if it quickly segues into what will become his familiar menace; we're meant to understand from his superstition and the way he railroads the needs of others to accommodate it that Tae-jun is a fundamentally unserious man, who is dangerous precisely because he has the power to make his religious hangups everyone else's business. And the subsequent scenes of his abuse of his daughters, while much more chilling, retain a heightened extremity to them, with his twisted inversion of the tale of Cain and Abel being so flagrantly sinister and self-serving that it immediately signals that he's willing to twist any narrative any way he requires to facilitate his abuse. It's made clear from the start that Tae-jun's belief that God made him special is not tempered with any of the humbling poetry and metaphysics through which the average parishioner might take on such a belief, but is held quite literally — his Electness makes it unthinkable that he be made of the same stuff as everyone else.
That belief, over and above baseline religiosity, fundamentally negates the supposedly scientific mind that turned him into a surgeon, and it forces him to resolve the contradiction by turning the work itself into a religious exercise; Tae-jun relishes the ability to act on the bodies of others at their most powerless, he relishes manipulating viscera with hands that will always remain clean, but the vital societal role of helping people that has ostensibly elevated him to his station is entirely incidental to his sense of self. And as long as his power is unchallenged, he has no reason to back down from these beliefs. If rivalry is all that matters, and if God exists, then he'd be a fool to not think God wanted him to win, just for the sake of winning.
But while a weaker show might use the disturbing extremes to which Tae-jun bends standard CCD parables as a shield to insulate religion writ large from critique, here it's just the opposite — the show sees his particular derangements as an outlier, yes, but very much part of the predictable distribution of abuse that takes root deep in society's bones. As the fucked up ethics of Friendly Rivalry's child protagonists are shaped by their families as a proxy for society, so too do Tae-jun's beliefs come from his community, from his church and its services; they are not sprung sui generis from his own wicked soul (sorry meta-narrator Seul-gi, i know despite/because of being raised by nuns you don't really get religious shit at all but there are so many more of him out there than you think). And those services are consistently played for outright parody, the solmenity of the adults and Je-Na undercut by Jae-yi being bored out her mind and quickly understanding the whole enterprise to be best enjoyed on a purely transactional basis, just like everything else in her life. Her family is pointedly hardly ever seen together in their foreboding fortress of a home, but the one place they're always together is the pews, the organizational nexus from which Tae-jun's domination over his family and his class's domination over society flow together to become a durable system. It's no accident that it's also here where we see our only glimpse of the family he grew up with, a fleeting glimpse into his long-crushed vulnerability making itself known at the very moment the cracks in his dominion are finally appearing, as he has to enact his most morbid farce in the false funeral of his daughter.
Of course what makes this blistering critique of Christianity land is that it's not unique; Friendly Rivalry does not pick favorites among powerful institutions. Religious, secular, Christian, Buddhist (those scenes with Kyung's family doing pre-test prayers are also depicted with less than zero reverence), every corner of society falls under the same microscope. And on the flip side, the show never condescends to individuals just for participating in the big institutions that make up the world around them, which we know because even the C-SAT itself is not fully vilified — a big part of the hopeful ending is the sincere implication that Seul-gi is about to ace the test, secure her future, and then go make out with Jae-yi about it! Friendly Rivalry despises the broken promises of its institutions – capitalism, religion, the education system, the family – but it never lets those betrayals negatively polarize its storytelling against the dreams of those promises made real. And paradoxically that turns it into a scorchingly honest reckoning with how much we need to. ahem. Burn It Down for that reality to ever exist. This is not a work about selling out or refusing to conform to mainstream society as abstract concepts, it's a work about abuse and the systems that produce it, with a cleared eyed focus on the how of it all: Tae-jun is not the only outcome his communities and institutions and in-groups can produce, but someone like him is an inevitable result of the impunity they provide. And since Friendly Rivalry understands that revealing power alone does not dismantle it, Tae-jun's favored technique is invariably not to hide at all; within this framework, playacting a concerned father bullshitting that Jae-yi's going to catch a cold and actually believing it are one and the same. His indifference towards an accurate understanding of his daughter's health is the flex, his power is that it doesn't matter that he's wrong.
And that confluence of power and ignorance, however religiously it's justified, is reinforced by secular society at every turn. Knowledge and truth and a well-rounded understanding of how the world works and why are repeatedly discarded by Chaehwa's incentives. Unapplied math "taught" through gated study materials dominates the curriculum. The only real science education we see is Jae-yi larping as a Bond villain in Med Club, which clearly exists more to be another point of competitive ranking data than to actually do anything with those mice (and you wonder whether you can join any of the clubs at Chaehwa just because you're interested). Kyung gets accidentally pushed into her true calling because the adults that don't give a shit about her sense of justice also don't give a shit that she can quickly parse the documents she stole off Mom's desk; they just know that the maximum payout for second place math grades is engineering school, then patent law. Not actually engineering anything, of course, then we might have to teach her something.
There's no cliche Sellout STEM vs Righteous Humanities thing going on either, it's all a toxic pit with nowhere to hide. Jae-yi has to learn enough English so she can flex it as a symbol of the school's prestige in the opening assembly, and then never needs to use it again. Yeri's harp lessons aren't a corrective to Jae-yi's love of music being ripped away or the underdog story of a devalued skillset, they're simply the other side of the coin, a cynical and desperate attempt to shop around for sparsely populated fields to scam a number one ranking at literally anything (and speaking of music and the assembly, lets pour one out for that school choir that don't even get to finish their one song, the very first warning sign we see for what Chaehwa is like). And a major plot turn can hinge on Seul-gi being a better writer than everyone, including Jae-yi, not because she's particularly dedicated to it but because that's a skill that's only seen exercised for resume building — it's not the priority stat to buff, so the orphan with a unique life story can easily lap the field and be rewarded with insincere supplication by the same peers who were sneering at the country bumpkin moments ago. Again and again grift is rewarded in broad daylight and genuine learning happens almost by accident, all the way down to the killer question heist — it would already be an enormous act of cheating to give favored kids the problem in advance, but no one is paying all that money just for their kid to botch a prepared calculation under exam pressure, so the capsules also simply write down the answer. The point was never to learn something, even with an unfair advantage, but to skip to the result. The actual knowledge never mattered at all.
So if we're all gonna grow up to be grifters, what exactly will that look like? One thing that set my alarm bells off on rewatch is that Tae-jun's practice is gastrointestinal medicine, and discussions of Gut Health always have me on the lookout for medical quackery — the disgraced doctor who founded the entire Anglosphere anti-vax movement that's destroyed so many lives all over the world was a guy who thought the MMR shot caused autism specifically through bowel disease. That specific link definitely feels coincidental, since the corruption of healthcare we see in Friendly Rivalry is much more about control and surveillance and toxic incentives then the kind of anti-public health free for all I'm used to stateside; it's the original form of eugenics where you try to violently shape the population using the tools of science, rather than by withholding them. But the boundaries of these things are amorphous, and there's a shared core of disgust towards difference, fear of frailty, and charismatic manipulation across the whole spectrum of health fraud. And beyond vaccine denial there's an entire genre of alternative wellness junk specifically predicated on the fantasy of achieving perfect control of the gut microbiome, full of grifters parasitizing an incredibly rich vein of real science to make a quick buck telling people what they want to hear.
We don't know what's in "A Daejun-dong Dad's Guide to Full Marks on the CSAT," the book Tae-jun shills during one his TV spots, but given the abusive control he exerts over his daughter's diet we can hazard a guess. And in any case the title tells us all we need to know: the concept of "I'm just a normal father doing what's best for my daughter" is a classic hook that straddles the lines between real science, pop science slop, and outright grift. It's a perfect loop of bad incentives; it positions health not as a something you deserve in its own right but as a means toward results, but then sells itself not with that same credentialed expertise those results are ostensibly meant to obtain but with the faux-humble authority of the patriarch, literally Father knows best. It's reaction in its purest form — the modern patriarchy is inherently threatened by the rise of mass education and the resulting social and scientific miracles that could lead to its undoing (birth control yesterday, HRT today... artificial wombs tonite queen?) and it responds by coopting science and education into tools to reify itself. Toiling away in the classroom is only meant to deliver you to a paradise of power that frees you from challenge, skepticism, or even curiosity. And Tae-jun's specialty is the ideal vehicle for this weaponization of science against itself — the human digestive system is just too ripe for cultural neuroses that are desperate for perfect control, cleanliness, and purity when that will never be what our bodies have on offer, and the food we put through that system is too easily subject to control and restriction by the powerful, whether by the rich in our societies or by the Father (or Mother, as Ye-ri can attest) in our own homes. Which brings us full circle: what much more famous Friendly Rivalry scene does Tae-jun's fake concern about Jae-yi's delicate immune system remind you of?
Yes, it's the festival, the moment where Jae-yi realizes she's in love, and ok maybe I will write a little about the lesbians.
Despite one scene being significantly more important than the other, the parallels are striking. In both instances, Tae-jun is dispensing plausibly believable health advice to try to undermine his daughter's confidence, and this time it isn't even complete bullshit! But it still mostly is — yes, too much soda and grilled red meat is bad for you, but no self-respecting nutritionist is going around snatching single glasses of coke out of people's hands at parties, because they understand that health is a cumulative process that has nothing to do with purity or abnegation in their own right. But Tae-jun's deeply rooted beliefs in his own superiority cannot allow for the existence of bodies that aren't subject to paternalistic moralism. So even though he knows the science, he uses technically accurate facts in a thoroughly unscientific way, where the adverse affects of certain chemicals in sufficient amounts over long enough timeframes get reduced to an absolutist question of sin — the tiny molecules inside us that simply do what the laws of physics demand are transformed into scales of judgement weighting our souls. The problem is not Jae-yi doing something bad for her health; his abuse has already ensured she has to live with depression-induced sleep deprivation that's ruining her life. The problem is being outside his control, whether because of her stubborn love for her sister or because her heart was controlled by Seul-gi instead. And that brings us to the other key parallel: he only deploys this particular move in circumstances where one party has enormous power over the other; he delivers the line about catching a cold when he finds Jae-yi with the phone he planted, cornering his daughter with no way out.
...Except at the food stall he's the one reeling! As if aware of his own typical staging Tae-jun tries to enter the scene as a sinister figure, very rudely snatching his daughter's glass right after her girlfriend lovingly filled it up for her (a moment which shattered my heart when I finally noticed it — it might the first time Jae-yi reflexively waits to receive Seul-gi's care as if it's normal, as if she could deserve it). But he's probably legitimately scary in every single scene of Friendly Rivalry except this one. He has no aura, no menace, and there's no real tension; he's nothing but an annoying pest, and Jae-yi and Seul-gi seem untouchable. For maybe the only time in the series they're completely united, neither holding back from the other, openly relishing each other's presence and the visceral pleasures of life itself. Seul-gi's response to his wheedling is to belch soda bubbles, and Jae-yi, in full sight of her father, looks at her like THIS:
Hye-ri is the master of making her most affectionate expressions her subtlest but my god does she commit to the perfect exception here. No one has ever been more in love or less guarded about it than this, the moment the full force of Jae-yi's feelings hits her like a runaway train, when she realizes that Seul-gi has just instantly neutralized everything she's ever been afraid of. The end of Friendly Rivalry is so bittersweet because it's all about Seul-gi and Jae-yi being bound to each other and strengthened by each other even as they're torn apart, but the festival gives us that brief utopian fantasy — what if they could skip all that hard miserable work of getting into the Yuri Hall of Fame and just be together, two teenagers in love for the first time? And in that fantasy they don't just get to have a real date, or play out a kiss they can't have yet in each other's eyes with all the people around them none the wiser. They achieve a temporary invincibility, they go to a place together where Tae-jun cannot reach them even as he's standing right there. It's a heartbreaking "could have been" even as it's really happening – a world where this persists, where they kiss under the fireworks because Kyung never has to interrupt, would have to be a world where Tae-jun was just an out of touch old man, where the long shadow of his abuse did not fall over every corner of their lives.
And it's not an accident that that moment is communicated by the two of them putting food in their bodies purely for pleasure — once you start wondering if Friendly Rivalry is using hunger and the Gut as a metaphor for love and desire where a patriarchal class system tries to control and suppress both, you can't stop seeing it. Seulgi's malnourishment creates the heart shaped hole in her shadow. Jae-yi falls in love with her for good while she eats junk food messily and defies her panoptically-controlled diet in response. Ye-ri's eating disorder is paired with the constant threat of sexual exploitation and the financial and familial isolation that turbocharges both. Kyung's gastritis-exacerbated back pain mirrors her sex drive being a huge physical inconvenience that she can't get truly in touch with or talk to anyone about. And then the romantic climax of the whole show is lesbian intestinal surgery, culminating in Jae-yi taking the scalpel from her father and leaving a very conspicuous scar in an area of Seul-gi's body that she might be seeing a lot more of in the future. None of these thematic layers or the conclusion they build to are subtle, but all of it utterly passes Tae-jun by. To him the Gut is simply a collection of unclean matter subject to his purifying control, invested with religious meaning only through his own power over it, and therefore he cannot see what's happening when love transforms the same guts he saw as an instrument of humiliation into something truly holy, something he has no right to touch.
(...wait is this whole show about all the different disgust responses girls are trained to have toward their own existence and how that changes for worse and for better under each other's gazes, that's not why i like it so much is it, hahaha jesus christ ANYWAY -)
Tae-jun will use the same line from episode 11 one more time, in episode 15. But this time Jae-yi's hair wasn't wet from the rain. She was swimming, and when she throws an equally bullshit line about her own exercise regimen back at him, she's covering up that she was swimming to save Seul-gi, to pull her to the surface and put her own air in her lungs. That scene, excised from its own moment and only revealed to us in the finale, is famously Kim Tae-hee's partial solution to the "they never get to kiss for real" problem, the only real moment where we know for sure Friendly Rivalry, a show that is not shy about making itself hard to watch, added something in to throw a bone to the fans. So it's remarkable that they managed to find a way to thread that needle without compromising the story, and it's even more remarkable that I don't hate, hate, hate the moment with a burning passion — in a vacuum "CPR-as-subsitute-kiss" is a horrendously tacky trope, and people being immature about it in real life is why doctors stopped recommending mouth to mouth entirely in the hopes that it would get more people to actually attempt the chest compressions. But Friendly Rivalry makes it work, for one thing with excellent direction; the CPR goes by in a few frantic moments where all we feel is Jae-yi's fear (that wide shot!) and the only physical gesture the camera lingers on is Seul-gi's ensuing wrist grab. But it also works thematically, because the basest mechanisms of survival have been at the heart of this love story from the very beginning. Of course Jae-yi sealing Seul-gi's lips to fill her lungs is romantic, not because it has anything in common with a kiss, but because it has everything in common with cutting open her insides to extract a secret she swallowed to prevent her lover's own self-sacrifice, and then sewing her back together again — all the with the power and purpose of well-trained medical science.
So by the final time Tae-jun is trying to cow Jae-yi with condescending bullshit about her health that he probably also believes anyway, he doesn't know he's already lost. He'll be able to gain the upper hand in his schemes against the children he's torturing, sure, but the world he so carefully engineered for them is no more: Jae-yi will never heed him again, and Seul-gi will never fear him. His final appearance is on its surface a reminder of his impunity, a haunting specter that will follow Seul-gi wherever she goes, but the framing puts the lie to that. Friendly Rivalry's telltale vertical lines tell the real story, and this time it's Seul-gi looking down from high above, and a pathetic man stripped of his self-aggrandizing narratives, with no other purpose than to look up at her, all alone in the rain.
Hang on to that umbrella, Tae-jun. You wouldn't want to catch a cold.
