'When the Weather is Fine' Episode 5: Hae-won's life takes unexpected turn as her mother visits, Eun-seop in a daze
Spoilers 'When Weather is Fine' Episode 5
'When Weather is Fine' Episode 5 sees how Hae-won (Park Min-young) reacts to her mother returning to her hometown as well. In big part, it seems that Hae-won is unhappy with her mother being in the same place as her as if her mother symbolizes everything that she ran away from Seoul.
Then we see flashes from the past, something that the show uses as a narrative technique to add context to how each character responds a certain way. In these flashes, we first see Hae-won as a child traveling with her mother to her grandmother's place.
The child seems happy to meet her grandmother but both her mother and grandmother seem resigned. As if they have given up on things around them changing. Then we see Hae-won's mother being investigated by a police officer who asks her if the acceleration was unintended. Hae-won's mother replies that she never hit the brakes and she sits there with bruises pink and purple on her face and tears in her eyes.
On the surface, it seems that Hae-won's mother was a victim of domestic abuse. This also explains why Hae-won had trouble when she was in high school with kids assuming that her mother and she were to name equally for her father's death.
However, there seems to be more to Hae-won's mother than meets the eye. Myeong-ju (Jin Hee-kyung) refused to meet her daughter after she gets imprisoned for killing the husband. She refuses to acknowledge Hae-won even when she arrives for her mother's funeral and it is all this that had left Hae-won bitter about her mother. Interestingly enough, Myeong-ju doesn't acknowledge her daughter in the present as well.
Yet, she has a say in her daughter and sister's life. With her arrival, Hae-won's aunt Myeong-yu (Moon Jeong-hee), who was until then quite stubborn about shutting down the guest house backs off without an argument. Despite not being close to her mother, even Hae-won takes her opinion into consideration about staying at Im Eun-seop's (Seo Kang-joon) place until the guesthouse is fixed. However, there is only so much that Hae-won can take when it comes to being ignored by her mother. For years, she has accepted that her mother, unlike others, would only meet her twice a year, that they wouldn't share intimate details about each other's lives, or that she would even share her address with her own daughter. However now, Hae-won wants answers to all the questions that had burned in her when she was young.
The perfect opportunity arises when she sees her mother alone at the dilapidated guesthouse, trying to fix what she can. This time she also tells her mother how she has never asked why she did what she did to her father. Myeong-ju has no response. She seems to have a love-hate relationship with Hae-won's father. She is back in town for his birth anniversary but Hae-won isn't aware of this. Instead, she tells her mother to leave so that Hae-won could spend time in peace without being awkward and uncomfortable around her mother.
Myeong-ju is shrouded in mystery and this time around so is Eun-seop. He is waiting for someone and goes in search of them every time he visits the shed in the woods. He has a connection to the woods and there is more to him than he has revealed so far. His interest, his likes, and dislikes are all somehow connected to Irene and we see just hints of the same in each episode. Enough to keep us hooked. Beyond that, most of the episodes are set in an abstract manner when it comes to their relationship.
For instance, this episode concentrates more on Hae-won's mother and her relationship with the family. It also sneakily introduced Bo-yeong as a conflict in Hae-won and Eun-seop's buffing romance. We also meet actor Kim Young-dae play the part of Hae-won's schoolmate, who might end up saying more chaos to Hae-won's relationship with Eun-seop.
New episodes of 'When the Weather is Fine' will air on Mondays and Tuesdays on JTBC.