Reel Tastes & Travels – a light dose of entertainment to wake you up

‘The Lost Love‘

So far we’ve seen several romance tropes play out in the BOD virtual universe (with half a dozen breezed through in the last episode itself!). There’s the Cinderella story ( working class girl catching the eye of the rich business heir) with a side of the Darcy effect ( the heroine being the one responsible for melting the hero’s cold, aloof exterior), the college romance, the damsel in distress, the workplace romance and so on. 

Here we see the second chances story play out – reconnecting with a past love and discovering that the magical spark between you has never really gone away.  And who better to star in such a romance than Eun-ho, the college heartthrob who is now a successful architect and just as dreamy and perfect as ever. Mi-rae is ecstatic and all thoughts of ending her subscription fly right out the window. 

She happily dives into the virtual relationship and at first, it seems like a reasonably positive step. So far, we’ve seen every BOD scenario help Mi-rae open up a bit more to the idea of dating again, even if she has so far resisted actually taking that step. So maybe experiencing a relationship virtually (rather than just experiencing the heady initial phase of falling for someone) could help ready her take that plunge again in real life. 

Instead, things take a slightly disturbing turn (for me at least) when it turns out BOD has a feature where the virtual boyfriends can interact with subscribers through texts/calls on their phone. Leave aside the issue of data privacy. But this presents a very alarming prospect of the lines blurring between the real and BOD worlds. If someone can experience the perfect virtual boyfriend to the extent of even being able to speak with them through the day, what is the incentive to go out and take the risk on a real and fallible person?

We see that happen with Mi-rae as well. As the episode progresses, she plunges deeper and deeper into her relationship with Eun-ho. Thankfully, before she goes all in, she receives a wake-up call when she sees an article about the best boyfriend avatars in BOD. She realizes that all the romantic moments that she had so cherished (across both iterations with Eun-ho) are in fact programmed behaviors that other subscribers are also experiencing in parallel. What she has with him is not real or special. It is merely a program fulfilling its function. That’s the push she needs to decide to leave but (just as in the real world) threaten to cancel a subscription and that’s when all the best hidden offers come out. In this case it’s the offer of a tailor-made boyfriend just for her customized to her preferences. And that’s all it takes for Mi-rae which was frustrating. For a supposedly smart and pragmatic woman, this didn’t make too much sense. She decided to leave because she realized the artificial nature of this world. How does literally having a boyfriend coded for you make that any better? But of course, the plot needs to move along, and I imagine we are building to a scenario where she realizes the value of a real-life relationship and chooses that over BOD, rather than opting out simply because she doesn’t feel special enough. 

Speaking of real relationships, how are the prospects looking on that front? Still fairly dim for the most part. Kyeong-nam spends most of the episode maintaining his impassive routine, although he does snap out of it long enough to tell Mi-rae he likes her and would like to ask her for a date. Mi-rae is absolutely gobsmacked (naturally enough given she’s spent most of the series attributing all sorts of malicious intent to his actions at work) and dismisses it out of hand. 

However, while that certainly seems like a dead end, I believe this episode actually planted the seeds to change her mind in the future. The whole team goes on a retreat, and she starts to see how her other teammates view him – rather than stand-offish they see him as a strong, handsome, silent type and quite swoon worthy. She’s not there yet but I think this opens her eyes a bit that there may be more to him than what she has perceived so far. On paper at least, he’s not a bad match – handsome, good at his job, sharing similar interests (as evidenced by their close performance in the webtoon trivia game. The kicker of course is the cliffhanger at the end where the real and virtual worlds collide. Mi-rae heads back to BOD to meet her new customized boyfriend who turns out to be a carbon copy (looks wise) of Kyoung-nam! Well, they do say love and hate are two sides of the same coin. 

Stray Musings

• In other news Mi-rae’s friend breaks up with her boyfriend and is distraught, not quite the best advertisement for a relationship when BOD offers such an appealing alternative
• Full props to Kyoung-nam for being a gentleman about Mi-rae’s rejection (even saving her the trouble of having to actually reject him by taking the effort to note her avoidance of him after his declaration)
• I guess the avatar resembling Kyoung-nam is an indication that he really is her type? Or perhaps even indicate her subconscious interest in him which might influenced her answers to the design questionnaire