Recap: Search: WWW, Episode 9
Things in the Search: WWW world are really moving now. Song Ga Gyeong is standing up to her Mother-in-law, Cha Hyeon has met the young actor she fangirls over, and Bae Ta Mi appears to have made a decision to move forward in her relationship with Park Morgan. The competition between Barro and Unicon remains fierce. And of course, there’s kissing.
Search: WWW Episode 9 Recap
When we left off, Ta Mi had stopped Morgan from leaving and they were kissing in the hall of her apartment building. He pulls away from the kiss and says that he had tried to rewind things, but it didn’t seem like it was working. Ta Mi tells Morgan that she wants him to be a part of her everyday life. “Play with me,” she says.
Oh family residence
Oh Jin Woo enters Song Ga Gyeong’s room and asks her if she’ll watch his new movie with him now that the editing is done. While he’s there, Ga Gyeong hands him the page from the ledger describing his part in Bae Ta Mi’s false keyword search ranking. He hands it back to her telling her to keep it herself.
The next morning
Ta Mi wakes up and enjoys the view of naked Morgan in the bed next to her. He gets jealous when she hands him a man’s clothing. He asks who the clothes belong to and tells her not to see whoever it is again. Ta Mi refuses saying she’s going to keep seeing the man. A closer look reveals the clothes to be the ones he lent her when she was hiding out at his place during the keyword search scandal.
Temple memorial
The Oh family has gathered to remember Jin Woo’s dead father. It is clear that Mama Jang is clearly still pissed off over Song Ga Gyeong’s recent rebellion. She uses the memorial to show her displeasure by punishing her younger son in various ways. She sets her brother-in-law ahead of Oh Jin Woo in front of all the relatives present.
Ta Mi’s apartment
Morgan sits next to Ta Mi on the floor of her apartment watching the rain fall outside the window. They talk about the way he promised to always come to her in the rain and how she used to worry whenever he showed up. She tells him that she’s not anxious about him coming to her anymore, she wants to share her life with him now. Morgan thanks her for letting him into her life and asks her not to ever kick him out.
Back at the temple
Song Ga Gyeong and Oh Jin Woo eat with a cousin and his wife. The wife cheerfully digs at Jin Woo for being the ‘black sheep’ of the family. Later Ga Gyeong comes after the cousin’s wife in the bathroom and sets her straight about how the hierarchy of the family really falls.
Ta Mi’s apartment
Ta Mi and Morgan relax in her living room, eating ice cream and listening to music. She asks him about his history with music and he tells her about the band he and CEO Kim were in back in high school. He tells her that he loved the popularity it brought him. Growing up in Australia he was discriminated against for being Korean. Music made things easier for him.
Barro offices
Scarlett is working late when she gets a phone call from her actor, Seol Ji Hwan. He says that he is coming to see her and she goes out to the street to wait for him in the rain. He arrives bleeding from the head, soaking wet, and clearly upset. He begins to cry when Scarlett speaks his name.
Scarlett takes him inside the office. She dries him off and starts to clean his wounds only to discover that the blood is fake. Seol Ji Hwan tells her that it is stage make-up from a role that he is filming. He continues to cry and Scarlett asks again why he is upset if it’s not about being injured. The actor tells Scarlett about his dog who died the year before. There is a picture of them on their last walk together in the street view maps on Barro’s website. The updated facial recognition software has fuzzed out the faces of animals as well as humans, erasing Ji Hwan’s last picture of his beloved pet. Scarlett promises to get the blur removed from the dog’s face on the website.
Brian’s musical interlude
Barro
Brian muses that in a few years the charts could be dominated with music created by Artificial Intelligences. Tammy counters this with the fact that there still aren’t flying cars even though people have been dreaming about those for 30 years or more.
The two discuss the difficulties involved with being in a technology-based company. The fact that some things take more than 20 years and still aren’t in common use but other things become obsolete within 5 years makes much about the internet business a gamble.
Tammy gets a phone call and goes outside to the street to meet with Morgan. He runs up to her out of breath and hugs Ta Mi as she scolds him for wearing sexy clothes out in public again.
He runs away quickly again, since he’s late for a meeting and only had a quick moment to spare to see her in. Tammy goes back inside where the team discusses the 5.3% rise in market share that Barro has gained. Suddenly they see news of a surprise press conference being held at Unicon.
Unicon
Song Ga Gyeong stands in front of a room full of reporters and announces that Unicon is going to ask for a formal cyber investigation into the search word ranking manipulation. She apologizes to the public for having a system that manipulated the public and vows to make it harder to manipulate searches in the future. With the help of a few well-placed questions from the press, Director Song effectively throws Barro under the bus.
Back at Barro
Brian realizes that he will be the one to take the fall for this since it was his decision not to forward the information to the cyber investigation unit. Tammy and Scarlett try to brainstorm a way to help Brian but he tells them both to stay out of it. Tammy feels guilty knowing that Song Ga Gyeong only had the confidence to come forward because she had the only evidence linking Oh Jin Woo to the crime. Scarlett is telling Tammy that none of this is her fault when they notice that once again Bae Ta Mi’s name has made the top of the keyword search rankings.
Unicon
CEO Na storms into a conference room demanding to know who authorized the press conference. None of the directors have any clue about it. CEO Na is furious and realizes that Director Song might be making a power play.
The wireless dead zone
Song Ga Gyeong walks into the dead zone bleachers for some peace and quiet. We hear her phone buzzing with notifications. When the phone becomes suddenly quiet, she sits down in the silence. When Ta Mi finds her there, Ga Gyeong rises to leave. The two women argue about morals and justice, and Bae Ta Mi accuses her former friend of knowingly putting her name back on the search list. Ta Mi declares that there is no friendship left between them anymore. Even so, she says that she will never stoop so low to hurt Ga Gyeong the same way because she wants to win fairly.
When Ta Mi exits the dead zone, she finds Morgan waiting for her. He’s upset that she came where he couldn’t reach her, but he comforts her when he sees how upset she is over the loss of her friendship with Song Ga Gyeong.
Barro
Scarlett watches as Bae Ta Mi drops lower in the search word ranking. A scandal involving the Prime Minister is rising through the rankings. The scandal was first revealed on the same day Ta Mi’s name hit the rankings and now the public is wondering if the government manipulated the searches to make the Minister’s scandal go away quietly.
President’s Office
The President calls CEO Jang, wondering what she has done to cause the Prime Minister’s scandal to resurface. CEO Jang tries to assure the President that she had nothing to do with it. When she hangs up the phone, Song Ga Gyeong stands silently in the room. She remains quiet as her mother-in-law rants at her in anger. CEO Jang asks why Song Ga Gyeong couldn’t just disappear quietly like she dreamed and Ga Gyeong answers that she is doing what she has to in order to disappear.
Barro
Brian sits quietly in his office when he turns to find Scarlett standing in the door with a bottle of liquor. Brian tells Scarlett that he feels sorry to Tami that his actions have put her on the search list again. Scarlett offers to write the apology speech for Brian for the company. She reminisces that they’ve been through a lot together since he became CEO. He says that this bump in the road could be the last one for him.
The Aquarium
Morgan and Ta Mi sit together watching fish in an aquarium. They talk about Ta Mi’s work and her relationship with Song Ga Gyeong. Morgan says that he brought her to the aquarium for some peace and quiet since the people there care more about fish than they do search rankings. Ta Mi teases him asking if he needs to say high to his friends from when he was also in a fish tank. 😜
Outside Millim
The two walk back home to Morgan’s place having decided that Ta Mi will spend the night there to avoid reporters. They find the broadcast jockey Yoon Dong Joo waiting for them. She’s come to make Morgan her boyfriend and can’t figure out why he’s holding hands with Ta Mi. Things get rather rude between the two women but Morgan makes it clear that his heart belongs to Ta Mi and he’s not just after her money or reputation.
Inevitably, talk turns to Pyo Joon Soo and Morgan becomes jealous when it seems that Ta Mi is defending her prior relationship with the older man. When they get inside they argue over Pyo Joon Soo and Yoon Dong Joo. Ta Mi becomes annoyed and storms off to the bedroom telling Morgan to sleep on the couch tonight. He kisses her when she comes back out to ask for some clothes and they make up. She thanks him for coming to find her and he promises that he will always find her.
The next day
Actor Seol Ji Hwan texts Cha Hyeon from the subway asking if they can meet up. He comes by to thank her for fixing the picture of his dog on the Barro website. He also has some big news for her, his lines and scenes in What’s Wrong With My Mother-in-Law? have all been increased.
Cha Hyeon takes her actor out to a cafe to take some photos so that she can start an actor bio on the Barro website for him. She finds out that Seol Ji Hwan is pretty smart having graduated from a science-focused high school in just 2 years. He’s embarrassed that he didn’t go on to college, but Cha Hyeon thinks it’s great because he’ll be an asset on the variety show circuit. We also learn that far from being a newbie to the business, Ji Hwan has been acting professionally for nearly a decade.
Barro
Tammy waits for the elevator. When the door opens, she sees Pyo Joon Soo about to step off. He tries to hide inside the elevator. Tammy asks him a question about a board meeting that has been called. Joon Soo tries to flatter Tammy but she is having none of it.
The team meets to discuss what they should do to win back the trust of the public. They learn that Brian has taken full responsibility and resigned from the company. The team tries to come up with a solution to save Brian’s job. Tammy and Scarlett try to talk him out of resigning, but it doesn’t work.
Oh Jin Woo’s office
Song Ga Gyeong meets with her husband and they discuss the news about Barro’s CEO resigning. Jin Woo says that Brian resigning won’t be a benefit to Unicon. Ga Gyeong says that she would have rather had a known enemy to fight and his resignation wasn’t her intent. Jin Woo congratulates her on her plan working. Ga Gyeong tells him to congratulate her properly by taking her to a movie. They go to his theatre to screen the newly completed film.
The two sit in the theatre together. Song Ga Gyeong muses about the love reflected on the screen. Her husband tells her that he makes those scenes so that people could delude themselves into believing in a love like that. Ga Gyeong tells him that she’s surprised that he would ever make a rom-com.
Ga Gyeong tells Jin Woo that he could date if he wants to, knowing that he has already been cheating on her. He tells her that he is fine with being alone.
When they leave the theatre, she’s surprised to see that he is still driving the sports car that he started using after Ta Mi and Cha Hyeon trashed his other car. She says that she thinks the car is fun and the two decide to go out for dinner together. Her phone rings and Ga Gyeong answers her mother’s call, dinner will have to wait.
Oh family residence
Oh Jin Woo and Song Ga Gyeong return home to find her parents kneeling before his mother. Ga Gyeong’s father demands that she come kneel with them and apologize for causing trouble for her mother-in-law.
CEO Jang has removed a deal that would keep Ga Gyeong’s father’s company afloat. She claims that she has not made her in-laws kneel but at the same time asks how long Ga Gyeong is going to let her poor father kneel on his bad knees by himself. Ga Gyeong recalls a similar scenario from the past. Where her parents begged on their knees while offering her up as a sacrifice in an arranged marriage.
But Song Ga Gyeong has had enough. She’s tired of living as a household dog. She tells her father to just go out of business and announces her intention to reclaim her own life.
Final Thoughts:
This episode had so many great moments. I’m so excited to see Song Ga Gyeong taking control of her life. Although, I’m starting to really feel sorry for Oh Jin Woo. Never thought I’d see the day when a drama made me cheer for the cheating husband. What are your thoughts about the episode? Do you still love this drama? Let me know in the comments.
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