'It's Okay to Not be Okay' Episode 2: Kang-tae is Mun-yeong's newest obsession as she plans to toy with him
The theme of 'It's Okay to Not be Okay' is to depict different kinds of mental illnesses and trauma within the plotline through its lead characters' fractured minds. An author who suffers from anti-social behavior and has trauma from childhood that she hasn't overcome and a medical caretaker of a psychiatric hospital, who is the sole caretaker of his older brother who also suffers from a so-far unnamed medical condition. What happens when the two of them meet? The former is Mun-yeong (Seo Yea-Ji) and the latter is Kang-tae (Kim Soo-Hyun). Their fate is intertwined in the most fascinating of manners, especially now that we know their connection from the past.
In Episode 2, it is confirmed that the tale that Mun-yeong had narrated at the beginning of the show is a reference to her and Kang-tae's relationship as children. Kang-tae did confess that he liked this girl as a young boy but the memories of liking her did not turn into something beautiful that can be cherished. All he recalls is running away after seeing the girl that he liked kill a butterfly without a second thought. After this, Mun-yeong is enticed by this man who is not tempted by lust or money and we see her want to hold on to him as she would her favorite toy.
The scene, which sees Mun-yeong dream of catching hold of Kang-tae after he walks away from her the first time brilliantly showcases what Mun-yeong thinks of Kang-tae. We see her become a giant, rising high above the biggest skyscrapers and try to catch hold of Kang-tae who is adamant about not meeting her again. This animation is a play on what Mun-yeong feels about Kang-tae. The fact that he is her latest toy that she wants to play with as she wishes, becomes clear when she tries to get closer to him.
When Kang-tae asks for her autograph as a way of compensating for inflicting injury on her in the previous episode, Mun-yeong surprisingly agrees to give it to him. Only later do we see that she used Kang-tae's brother Sang-tae (Oh Jung-Se) being a fan of her to her advantage. Inside the new book, she writes an invitation to her fan meet and asks Sang-tae to come to meet her in person. She does this to attempt another meet with Kang-tae. Considering how big a fan of Mun-yeong Sang-tae is, it works perfectly too.
However, when a kid dressed as a dinosaur triggers Sang-tae's fascination into treating the kid as an actual dinosaur that he wants to befriend, things turn chaotic. The kid's parents mistreat him and call him names, including physically assaulting Sang-tae. All of this triggers Sang-tae's episode which is self-defensive. All of this happens in the few minutes that Kang-tae leaves his side to take a call and the incident results in attention from a huge crowd around Sang-tae taking pictures and videos of him and calling him names.
When Kang-tae notices the disturbance and sees his brother in the middle of all of this, he hurries to be by his brother's side and in the meanwhile, Mun-yeong considers her options. Should she help him or should she not? It's on a whim that she decides to stand up for Kang-tae's brother, but she ends up creating a bigger scene and the same becomes a scandal. She is canceled online for being rude to her fans and offline, people decide to cancel her books. However, none of this seems to bother her as much as a corrupt, piece of sh** reporter who tries to make use of this incident to ask for sexual favors.
Mun-yeong is not your garden variety celebrity or author for that matter. Even as a children's author, her work is dark, real, sometimes grotesque and always takes the side of the witch. Mun-yeong believes that witches are more hardwired to deal with real life than the princesses that are featured in the fairytale. So when this reporter tries to make a move on her, she ends up scaring him by, making a counter move on him that he didn't expect. Every time someone attacks Mun-yeong, she doesn't take it lightly and her reactions are always unplanned. She is similar to a ticking time bomb that can go off at any moment and it is this characteristic of hers that makes everyone wary of her.
However, Kang-tae seems to realize that her impulsive reactions are similar to his brother's episodes and so he tries to teach her a technique to calm herself down. The fact that Kang-tae would consider helping her even after seeing her throw a fit piques her interest further and it is this interest that turns into an obsession by the end of the episode. When she learns that Kang-tae is from the same hometown as her, that's when Mun-yeong realizes that he is the little boy who had followed her around when they were kids and that further adds to her fascination. How will Mun-yeong's obsession change Kang-tae's life is something that we will see in the upcoming episodes.
'It's Okay to Not Be Okay' originally airs on tvN on Saturdays and Sundays at 9 pm KST in South Korea and can be streamed on Netflix.