My "Emotion Watch" record of watching "Everyone is fighting their own worthless self" vol. 8 After the broadcast of episode 12 (final episode)

Following my thoughts on episode 11 written yesterday↑, I would like to write my thoughts on the final episode, episode 12, on note after re-watching it, while also avoiding spoilers. Please bear with me.(Contains spoilers below)

Episode 12 / Dong-man's "hardest time in his life"

Dong-man says that until his second year of university, his family was wealthy and they got along well. Seeing the siblings both aspiring to paths in literature (poet) and art (film director), and even though they bickered back and forth, somehowliving under the same roof and caring for each other made me feel likethere were remnants of those days when he was "carefree" and happy, just as Dong-man said. Dong-man unusually and immediately denies Eun-ha's words, "The time when your father's business failed and your parents passed away one after another was the 'hardest time in your life,' right?" And although Eun-ha doesn't know it,
we, the viewers, have already seen and know Dong-man's "hardest time in his life." That is precisely why Eun-ha's words, "You've never talked about it before, have you?" made
Dong-man's expression, as he hurriedly looked away and could only manage an awkward smile even to her, whom he trusted so much, pierce my heart even more.

Episode 12 / Neighborhood Secom

On the day Eun-ha's grandmother is discharged from the hospital after knee surgery,Dong-man and Jin-man go to pick her up by car. Later, while Jin-man is glaring at him in the same store, I remembered the scene where Dong-man meets Ma Jae-young and warns him, "There are guys who look down on a house just because there are only women there," "Eun-ha's house isn't just women," from the same writer Park Hae-young's "My Mister" (2018).
In that drama, in episode 10, Ji-an's (played by IU) grandmother enters a facility, andDong-hoon (played by Lee Sun-kyun), who lives in the neighborhood, carries the grandmother on his back to the taxi scene, and in episode 12, there is a scene where the two of them, who happened to be together on the way home from work, run into Dong-hoon's local friends in the neighborhood, and everyone walks her home saying, "The night road is dangerous."
(By the way, the episode 12 scene is said to be one of the scenes that writer Park herself particularly liked after watching the drama.) At this time, Dong-hoon's older brother Sang-hoon uses his neighborhood network to tell a junior who lives right near Ji-an's house,"Dong-hoon's subordinate lives here, so keep an eye out to make sure no weirdos come around," and the junior readily agrees, saying "It's an easy task" (see video below), and I thought that Dong-man and Jin-man, as brothers for Eun-ha, had become exactly that same"neighborhood Secom."

Episode 12 / The final role of the Emotion Watch

Dong-man speaks ill of Gyeong-se as if he had returned to episode 1, and is overheard by the person himself. Dong-man, who had a falling out with Gyeong-se after trading insults with him, who said, "Let's end this now,"decided that it would display "thrilled" anyway, but when he looked at the Emotion Watch, what was displayed there was "regret." In this drama, not only Dong-man and Eun-ha, but
the relationships between various pairs of people were depicted in great detail, I think. Starting withinseparable sibling and married relationships like Dong-man and Jin-man, and Gyeong-se and Hye-jin, as well asfamily relationships without blood ties like Mi-ran and Oh Jung-hee, and Eun-ha and her grandmother, as well asfriendships based on mutual trust like Dong-man and Jun-an, and Eun-ha and Mi-ran, and evenrelationships that should have had strong ties in the past but are now objects of jealousy and hatred like Dong-man and Gyeong-se, Eun-ha and Oh Jung-hee, and Eun-ha and Ma Jae-young. Both Dong-man and Eun-ha are tossed about by various human relationships in the play, and with the help of the Emotion Watch, they "name" their emotions. The two gradually become able to grasp their own emotions even without the Emotion Watch, and along with that, the number of appearances of the Emotion Watch decreases. In the midst of this,
the fact that the last thing Dong-man learned by looking at the Emotion Watch was the emotion of "regretting" cutting ties with Gyeong-se I thought was significant.It may be that what Dong-man couldn't articulate well even to himself until the very end was actually his own feelings toward Gyeong-se. People
tend to be unable to speak their true feelings or treat those close to them harshly. Dong-man says that he loves "Billy Elliot" and "Eternal Sunshine," and that "half of the movies I've seen in my life, I saw with Gyeong-se." For him, Gyeong-se must have surely been that kind of person.

Returning to the place where they had their falling out, Dong-man places his hands on the ground just as Gyeong-se did, looks up at his face from below, and while crying, says, "Let's be the same again." Playing in this scene was "Parallel Night (나란한 밤)," a song that had frequently played in scenes where Dong-man's true feelings were visible. This was also the song that played in the first episode when Dong-man, devastated by the immense gap that had formed between him and Gyeong-se at the wrap party for Gyeong-se's film, rode the bus home alone at night. "
나란하다" means "lined up," "parallel," or "even/aligned." With his directorial debut finally decided, this scene where he says, "I'll debut and reach the same level," might have been the night when Dong-man, who had been running desperately to catch up to Gyeong-se's ever-receding back, finally caught up to the point where his voice could reach his ears and stood shoulder to shoulder.

Episode 12 / A Fine Daughter

Even though she hated her mother so much, Eun-ha simultaneously held the conflicting emotion of "wanting to be acknowledged by her mother." I believe what saved her was the words of Oh Jung-hee, which reached Eun-ha by chance through Mi-ran's mouth: "My own daughter is "fine (근사하다)"." While "It's a good thing that child wasn't raised by me. She grew up splendidly" is certainly an overly irresponsible thing to say, from the viewer's perspective, one also has to agree that Eun-ha is who she is today because she wasn't raised by her. Eun-ha sublimated the experience of being "abandoned by a parent"—which would undoubtedly have a negative impact on a child's personality development—into the positive form of a script. Being praised by someone else when you aren't around carries more truth and reliability than being praised by the person right in front of you. And for Oh Jung-hee, who
is wearing high heels at any given time, "근사하다" (stylish, cool, wonderful) is the highest form of praise. Perhaps that is why Eun-ha shed tears, because she understood that.

Episode 12 / Is this an epilogue from here on?

I only realized it after rewatching, but while the episodes up to 11 were one hour long, episode 12 had a running time of one hour and 20 minutes. However, right at the one-hour mark, Dong-man reaches the crank-in of his long-awaited directorial debut. At the site of the safety and success prayer for the film, Dong-man gave a speech borrowing the words of his brother Jin-man. I think the narration by Jin-man that plays there is one of the messages the screenwriter put into this work.

Following these words, Jin-man's lecture, the conclusion of the search for Young-sil, Dong-man's slump, and even the preview, wrap party, and awards ceremony were depicted in a rush, but I felt that the crank-in of Dong-man's film, depicted along with Jin-man's narration mentioned earlier, was the ending of this work, and all the scenes that appear after that are like an epilogue.
The moment Dong-man, an "aspiring" film director who couldn't debut for 20 years, finally became a real film director felt like the perfect ending for this story.

Episode 12 / Who decides a person's title (Postscript)

In the scene I wrote about earlier that I felt was the “epilogue,” there is a scene that I couldn't quite digest and just watched without much thought both the first time I saw it and when I watched it again. That was the scene where Jin-man gives a lecture.
As a viewer, I was first curious about what would happen to Dong-man, who had finally started making his movie, and the story related to Jin-man that I was still curious about was, after all, the conclusion of the search for Young-sil. The scene where he says, “I was asked by a junior, so I had no choice but to appear as a poet,” had already appeared once before, so I didn't really understand the meaning of a similar scene appearing again at the end at first.
However, after I finished writing this note, I had an experience where I felt “unsettled” by words someone said to me. Then, the phrase Jin-man said at that time, “It’s no good if I get hung up on words like this every time...,” suddenly popped into my head.
In this scene, someone appears who calls Jin-man, who has a steady job as a welder and also works as a seasonal laborer harvesting Chinese cabbage and radishes during the off-season, someone who “is jumping from one manual labor job to another.” Thinking back, even though Dong-man was also barely making a living at first by working as a lecturer for a scenario course and a part-time worker for a catering service, he had been listed by the Emotion Watch company as an “unemployed man in his 40s.”
People fit a person's occupation into an easy-to-understand general framework and arbitrarily decide that it is that person's identity. And they make malicious guesses, saying, “Maybe he’s living that way on purpose because a ‘poet who works as a welder’ feels more special.” Resisting such twisted views of the world, stereotypical titles, and mistaken prejudices and preconceptions, and speaking with dignity as he looks forward, saying, “I like welding more than poetry, and it suits me,” I felt that the screenwriter’s powerful message, “Your identity is not something to be decided by someone else. It is something you decide for yourself,” was visible through his words.

12th Episode / What I Wish for My Loved Ones

In the first half of the 12th episode, Jin-man said this to Dong-man, who was getting impatient because he couldn't start filming.

And while watching Dong-man having fun at the wrap party after successfully completing the movie, Eun-ah whispers this to herself.

For 20 years, Dong-man has been “doing” and desperately fighting to make his worthless self a valuable existence. However, even when Dong-man finally achieved that in the final episode, the value (reason for existence) of Dong-man to his beloved brother Jin-man and Eun-ah was just “being.” This is the ultimate irony, and I think it was another message the screenwriter put into this work.
For the people who are truly important to you, it doesn't matter whether they achieve something or not. You just want them to be by your side. Wishing for that is also, perhaps, a human truth.

12th Episode / People Are Assets

In the second episode, when Dong-man was told that the protagonist of the script he wrote lacked power and asked, "Do you know where power is sold?", Eun-ha replied, "If you have a loved one...if the protagonist wants to see the weather, if they are acting for the sake of a beloved niece...or for a beloved brother...then their heart should be racing." I felt that Dong-man's final acceptance speech was the answer to these words.

Dong-man, who was hungry (i.e., starving for love) in the beginning to the point where Eun-ha told him, "This director has nothing he loves," used his beloved brother Jin-man, and the existence of Eun-ha, who taught him where power lies, as his power to create a story (movie), and made his own cry of "I exist!" known to the world so that it could reach his niece far away, making that existence known to the world. And he thanks Eun-ha, who discovered him when he was nobody, trusted him, and stayed with (i.e., existed with) him.
People act using the existence of someone other than themselves as a driving force, discover their own value (reason for existence) through those actions, and in turn, give power to someone other than themselves. And, someone who receives that power also uses it as a driving force to take new actions. The existence of humans is like relay runners passing the "baton" of power, causing those actions to chain one after another. Regarding this acceptance speech scene, I think interpretations will vary depending on the viewer, but I felt that the words "
I will work even harder to create from now on!" spoken in Dong-man's voice after the screen went dark, felt like writer Park Hye-young's declaration of determination spoken through his mouth. Surely,
she will also use the "existence" of the viewers as power and continue to "act (write scripts)" from now on, I believe that.

X impressions & information sharing posts after watching the final episode

From here on, I would like to summarize the posts I made on X after watching the final episode.

Koo Kyo-hwan who was Dong-man from the start

The true identity of Eun-ha's psychological counselor

What work should I watch next?

The end is not the end

The unknown struggles of the actor playing Ma Jae-young

Behind-the-scenes stories told by the director

The planning intention of "Mojamsa"

The "growth" of actor Koo Kyo-hwan

About the cardigan hug

The manga that filled my "Mojamsa" loss

Hilarious parody

Commentary video by Oh Jung-se

Behind the scenes of "Mojamsa" told by two members of the Eight-Person Association

Interview with Kang Mal-geum, who played Ko Hye-jin

Interview with Director Cha Young-hoon after the broadcast

[Extra Edition] Posts related to Koo Kyo-hwan

Partners in both public and private life

[Extra Edition 2] Posts related to Oh Jung-se

Choi Seong-gon is very popular

It has become quite long. Thank you for reading this far!

Continue here ("Chi." as an answer to "Moja-msa")