I’m Not a Robot: Episodes 11-12

by Saya

The tiny circle of people who know Min-kyu’s secret is growing, and what they’re lacking in number, they make up in might. But the more deeply he trusts them, the more scared I am of how betrayed he’s going to feel when he discovers their secret. And as Jia falls for him more and more, will it compromise her robot identity?

 
EPISODE 11: “I want to kiss”

The Santa Maria team makes their way to Min-kyu’s mansion minus Baek-gyun, who won’t make it back tonight. Pi tells Min-kyu that they’ve come to take Aji-3. Trying to stall them, Min-kyu asks them to stay for dinner.

Pi shuts him down, and at a loss, he cries out, “Korean beef!” and a whole assortment of costly delicacies that make Hok-tal and Ssan-ip’s resolve crumble. At the table, Min-kyu explains that he made some extra dishes especially for “Researcher 1” (Hok-tal) and “Researcher 2” (Ssan-ip).

“You… don’t know our names?” Hok-tal asks. “Do I need to?” Min-kyu replies, undoing all their goodwill.

Jia urgently takes the clueless boy aside and tells him that to ask a favor, he needs to build closeness with them, not just feed them. She advises him to have real conversation with them and answer their questions frankly.

He returns to the table, and with a glance at Jia to reassure himself, he stiltingly asks Ssan-ip what his parents do. Ssan-ip replies that they run a laundromat in the US, and asks Min-kyu about his parents.

“They’re lying in their graves, side by side,” Min-kyu replies, a pained smile pasted on his face. Oof. Everyone stops eating. Hok-tal asks what happened to them, and Min-kyu tells them about the car accident in quite horrific detail, his tone all the while casual.

“Only I survived,” he finishes, awkward smile still in place. Aww somebody give him a hug right now. The researchers’ jaws literally drop as they finally look at him like he’s a person.

Director Yoon tells Yoo-chul that Baek-gyun is looking for new investors, and they set their plan in motion. While Baek-gyun has dinner with some potential investors, the curly-haired half of Yoon’s bumbling men-in-black pretends to be a server and swipes their business cards. He sends the information back to Yoon.

At the mansion, the researchers have scraped the plates clean and Jia whispers that this is the moment to reel them in. But Min-kyu being Min-kyu, he once again undoes it all by speaking down at them about how lucky they are to have such great food. Goodbye, goodwill!

Min-kyu doesn’t understand why they immediately make to leave. “Did we ask you to do this?” Pi asks. Unable to hold back, Jia steps in and tells them to at least have the manners to do the washing-up.

Jia approaches Pi while she washes the dishes and asks if they can’t stay: “He’s not strange… just a little brusque. He’s really tender-hearted inside.” Pi says Baek-gyun’s mind is already made up, and that it’s better to leave Min-kyu on a harsh note.

As she finishes the dishes, Robovac breaks down in front of her.

 
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A shoulder to lean on

 
Min-kyu calls Jia to his room. He sits her down beside him and drops his head to her shoulder. He says he doesn’t know how to open their hearts to him.

“It’s hard. It’s too hard,” he whispers. “You tried your best,” she says quietly, putting her arm around him in comfort.

Min-kyu gathers himself up and prepares to give things one more shot, but he’s horrified to come out to a scene of the team apparently dismembering his beloved Robovac. Yelling, he grabs his pretty from them and asks it with real worry if it’s okay.

The team watches agape, and even Jia is surprised at his near-panic. Pi explains that it was broken and that they were about to fix it. Min-kyu won’t let go, and they wrench it away from him.

It’s fixed in no time, and they’ve even upgraded it to have a cute face—happy when the filter’s clean, sad when it’s dirty, Pi says. In joy and relief, Min-kyu seizes it up and kisses it. The team is shocked by the realization that he isn’t a pervert after all, and even Pi softens.

Now that the team’s misunderstandings have been put to bed, they welcome Min-kyu’s hospitality with enthusiasm, and Min-kyu shyly says he’s got some chicken to go with their beer.

With only a pile of chicken bones left in front of them and all of them a little drunk, Min-kyu asks why they rejected his money. Ssan-ip slurs that Baek-gyun had already made his decision, and Min-kyu mumbles that they have great faith in him.

“The one who trusts no one, cannot gain the trust of anyone else,” Pi quotes.

Min-kyu’s eyes close in sleep. Jia, who’s been in “standby” all this time, catches him and rests his head on her shoulder.

The next morning, Baek-gyun heads back after what turned out to be a fruitless night, since the potential investors pulled out after getting wind of his scandal in the US. Just then, he gets a call from a new investor.

Min-kyu wakes up alone, and calls anxiously for Aji-3. Meanwhile, Jia and the rest of the team fail to sneak back to the barn before Baek-gyun. They claim they were out for a walk, and Jia says she came to pick up her suitcase.

Baek-gyun tells the team that they’ve got a new investor, and they’re to give a demonstration with Aji-3 immediately. Pi argues that the robot’s not mobile again yet, but Baek-gyun says they’ll just use a wheelchair, since everything else is working fine.

It seems that the new “investor” is Curly. The other guy—his uncle?—seems to be the brains of the operation, and Brains instructs Curly in a needlessly elaborate plan to kidnap Aji-3, ha.

Min-kyu hears from a KM company connection that Baek-gyun was defamed by a colleague in the States, and he gave up his research to the aggressor in order to protect his team.

Jia hangs up the pink dress for the last time. As she heads out, Baek-gyun offers her a lift, but a knock at the door makes them freeze. Min-kyu wants a word, so Baek-gyun goes outside to meet him.

Baek-gyun immediately informs Min-kyu that he has a new investor. Min-kyu reveals that he knows what happened to Baek-gyun in the US, and promises to help him regain his reputation.

“Who are you to do that? I’ll restore my name with my own strength,” Baek-gyun says in cold anger. And if that’s what Min-kyu came to say, he can get lost, he adds.

“Just as Aji-3 said, I’m really not good at talking,” Min-kyu says, half to himself. Rolling up his sleeve, he seizes Baek-gyun’s hand. The other man tries to shake him off, but Min-kyu holds fast. His reaction kicks in fast and spreads up his arm, neck and face. Baek-gyun stares.

Struggling to speak, Min-kyu whispers, “Help me… hyung.”

Via videolink in the mansion, Dr. Oh tells Baek-gyun that the robot that he made saved a life. Though this new knowledge clearly weighs on Baek-gyun’s mind, it doesn’t stop him leaving. With Aji-3 loaded into the van and the barn emptied, a stricken Min-kyu watches them leave.

Inside the van, it’s silence and sad faces all around. Behind the wheel, Baek-gyun wears a complex expression. Before he left, Min-kyu had shown him all his army call-up letters and dozens of allergy medications which he kept trying in hope of a cure.

“I know they call me ‘Three-part Baton’. They probably can’t even imagine that it’s a weapon to protect my life,” he had said. He’d expected to live the rest of his life like that—until he met Aji-3, whom he called a miracle.

“We’re going back,” Baek-gyun says. Everyone lights up as he turns the van around.

At the gates to Min-kyu’s estate, Baek-gyun offers Jia the chance to refuse, but she eagerly accepts (to his disgruntlement, lol). To the rest of the team, Baek-gyun announces that they misunderstood Min-kyu. Now that the misunderstanding’s been cleared up and Min-kyu’s promised to provide the investment, they don’t need to leave.

Baek-gyun and Pi talk privately, and she opposes their return. He denies it’s to stay close to Jia, but she also worries that his reputation could be ruined forever if their ruse were found out. She adds that everything they achieved in the test-run with Min-kyu was Jia’s doing.

Baek-gyun disagrees: Since Min-kyu believed Jia was Aji-3, what they achieved was Aji-3’s doing. “Pi, I want to see this test to the end. We did a tremendous thing. That’s the very reason we made a robot,” he says.

Director Yoon reports the failure of their plan to Yoo-chul, and instructs Brains and Curly to bring Aji-3 by any means necessary.

Still at his window when the van returns, Min-kyu breaks into a huge smile. They undertake a new contract, but Min-kyu’s dismayed when Baek-gyun talks casually to him, calling himself “hyung.” Baek-gyun adds that as the youngest of them all, he can think of himself as having three new hyungs and a noona. Min-kyu’s expression is absolutely priceless. Hahaha, you did it to yourself!

Baek-gyun has one last condition before he agrees to sign: that Min-kyu promises not to lay a finger on Aji-3. Min-kyu has no choice but to agree. Baek-gyun returns to the barn to find Jia holding her broken lamp. He awkwardly offers to fix it for her, though he says he’ll name his price afterwards.

Meanwhile, Min-kyu can’t get over the team treating him like their maknae and screams in frustration, haha. Jin-bae, there for the signing of the contract, tries to leave quietly, but Min-kyu gives him one more job, to find someone called Jang Doo-sang in relation to Santa Maria.

Min-kyu comes to the barn to collect Jia, and says from now on, he’ll pick her up every day. As they ride the golfcart back, he instructs her to minimize her movements to prolong her battery life.

“Is it because… I’m a treasure?” she asks cutesily. He scowls at her and threatens a scolding. Ha, not that far gone, eh? She sasses that he can’t scold her without a reason. “I have a reason!” he retorts. Suuure you do.

He snaps his fingers for Friend Mode, and complains all the way inside about how terrible it was for him to wake up alone and that he’ll sell her for scrap metal. She rolls her eyes. He also orders her to stay within sight at all times whenever he’s meeting someone, though he doesn’t elaborate why.

He orders her to clean a particular room, and leaves her muttering after him. But aw, it’s “Pretty’s Room,” full of new clothes and accessories. Master of the backhanded compliment, Min-kyu says pink doesn’t suit her, and also he’s only giving her this stuff because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed to be seen with her.

 
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A pretty new dress for Pretty

Min-kyu stares when Jia emerges in a new dress. “Do I look funny?” she asks. “You’re really pretty,” he replies. She’s disappointed when he stops himself from patting her on the head like he normally does, and he explains his promise to Baek-gyun.

Scowling, Jia thinks to herself, My body belongs to me, why does he [Baek-gyun] get any say in it?

Min-kyu steps closer to her, with something to say. “I want to kiss,” he tells her.

 
EPISODE 12: “This is when you must kiss”

“I want to kiss… Ri-el,” Min-kyu says. He tells Jia that he plans to go on three dates, and on the third, he’ll kiss her and propose. “But the kiss is the problem,” he wails, saying it’ll be his first kiss and he has no idea when or how he should do it. Jia sighs.

Meanwhile, Baek-gyun finishes fixing the lamps. He smiles as they light up, but wonders what use they are.

The next day, he tells Jia to wear the original pink dress and says that’s his price, but she refuses. Plus, she tells him, their real problem is that Min-kyu wants help for his kiss. “It’s not like I can practice with him,” she says.

Baek-gyun nearly loses his mind and volunteers the rest of the team to help. “Impossible,” Ssan-ip declares on their behalf. Haha. “Isn’t there anyone who knows about this kind of stuff?” Baek-gyun appeals.

Ask and ye shall receive: Enter Sun-hye, in a swirl of glamor. She introduces herself to the team, but is distracted by the robot. Amazed at the likeness, she says darkly that she’d have broken it already. “Then we’ll sue you,” Pi warns.

Sun-hye turns away from Pi’s icy gaze and invites Hok-tal and Ssan-ip to her coffee shop, “Summer Snow.” Bedazzled, Hok-tal stammers that it’s an illogical name. Sun-hye replies dramatically that life is illogical.

Before they meet Min-kyu, Jia warns Sun-hye that she’ll have to treat Jia like another person, not a robot. Min-kyu’s skeptical of Sun-hye’s qualification as a kissing guru, but a recital of her apparent credentials (and success rate) from Jia reassures him.

The lesson gets underway and Sun-hye says that a couple goes through three stages before kissing. First, they have attraction, then a romantic moment, which leads lastly to skinship.

She says most people need three dates to get there, but Min-kyu has an advantage because of his prior relationship with Ri-el, so he can go straight for the kiss. In sum, three dates are three opportunities to get his kiss.

Min-kyu’s challenge is to make Ri-el see him as a man. “And for that, you need sexual tension,” Sun-hye elaborates, saying kissing is all about moving at the exact perfect moment. She indicates Jia and asks Min-kyu if he’s ever imagined kissing her.

“No. Never,” he replies. Aw, Jia’s face falls, though Sun-hye says it’s a relief. Min-kyu nearly catches her slip but she covers by quickly instructing them to follow her.

Hok-tal and Ssan-ip spy on the kissing lesson from the bushes, armed with popcorn. Ha! Sun-hye instructs Jia and Min-kyu to pretend they’re on a date and go for a stroll together. All of a sudden, she shoves Jia into Min-kyu, and he catches her in his arms as she loses her balance. Skinship achieved!

 
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Learning how to kiss

 
After a few tense beats, Sun-hye asks, “Is this friend still not a woman to you?” Min-kyu quickly drops Jia and says it’s impossible: “I can never see this friend as a woman.” He wants Sun-hye to get to the point, and she says that was it—that moment he just experienced was sexual tension, and that’s when he has to kiss. She leaves him with one last tip to take an umbrella if it rains.

Yoo-chul’s dad sympathizes with Yoo-chul for losing Ri-el to Min-kyu. They agree that if Yoo-chul had been the majority shareholder, Ri-el’s father would have courted him instead. Dad asks how he can help, and Yoo-chul tells him he plans to get Aji-3 first.

Min-kyu picks up Jia’s novelty umbrella and heads out for his date, but he’s surprised to see Baek-gyun accompanying Jia. The professor points out that Min-kyu will be wrapped up in his date so he needs to look after Aji-3.

Elsewhere, Ssan-ip drags an unwilling Hok-tal to Sun-hye’s coffee shop, and she immediately likes that Hok-tal asks for a latte when everyone else asks for Americanos. They speculate about where Min-kyu’s going for his date, and Sun-hye says anywhere that isn’t crowded is good.

So it’s bad that Min-kyu’s brought Ri-el to the same busy promenade he was at before with Jia. Sun-hye also tells the boys that you shouldn’t go somewhere you went with a previous partner, since you’d only end up comparing the two.

Though doubtful about Min-kyu’s choice of place, Ri-el goes with it, but it’s painfully embarrassing to watch him repeat each thing he did with Jia, except it’s not at all to Ri-el’s taste. Jia watches him pick out the “pretty” baseball cap for Ri-el, but she doesn’t want to mess up her hair.

The date-course is a redo for Jia too. While she’s with Baek-gyun, she constantly looks back at Min-kyu. Both couples reach the bandstand, which Ri-el finds too noisy. Min-kyu has to shush one stallholder who recognizes him from the other day. “You were with another woman!” he exclaims.

In a coffee shop next, Baek-gyun positions himself to give Jia cover so she can eat and drink without Min-kyu seeing her. A few tables away, Curly spies on them and gapes when he sees her take a sip. He tells Brains when he joins him, but Brains doesn’t believe him.

Jia’s busy gazing at Min-kyu’s table. Min-kyu notices Ri-el’s feet blistered from her shoes and runs out a moment, returning with a pair of comfortable shoes. Though she finds the shoes unattractive, she’s touched by the gesture, and he puts them on her feet.

Baek-gyun comments that the couple suit each other and Jia unhappily agrees. Ri-el notices that Min-kyu keeps looking over at them, and makes the same observation, that they suit each other. Min-kyu isn’t so sure, though.

At their table, Baek-gyun reminisces that they used to go on dates like this, which Jia immediately refutes. Flustered, he argues, “We did! Think about it carefully!”

While Ssan-ip takes a bathroom break, Sun-hye asks Hok-tal about his nickname. He explains it’s from Planet of the Apes (Hoksong Talchul in Korean), which she finds unbelievable for a handsome face like his. He stares at her besotted, unaware of his milk-mustache.

Tired of watching the other couple, Jia asks when they can leave. But Baek-gyun says they can’t go until Min-kyu’s date is over. A cyclist passes suddenly, and Min-kyu sees Baek-gyun pull her close, out of harm’s way.

Lightning flashes, and Baek-gyun asks Jia to wait while he runs and buys an umbrella. Curly takes the opportunity to pass by Jia and stick her with a skewer. To his surprise, the skewer breaks and she doesn’t react at all, which finally convinces him that she really is a robot after all.

Ri-el gets a call and has to go, which scuppers Min-kyu’s gameplan. When he asks if she can’t wait until it starts raining, she gives him a weird look, and turns down the umbrella. Smiling, she says today’s date was better than the cocoa-date.

Left alone, Min-kyu looks sadly over at Jia. As it starts to pour, he shelters her under his umbrella. “This is my most cherished umbrella. Know that it’s an honor for you to share it,” he says. She smiles, and he presses the button that makes it transparent.

They look up at the rain, and he tells her that when he does this, it eases the suffocation in his chest. He wonders who came up with such an idea. “A genius? A master craftsman? I want to meet the person who made this umbrella,” he says.

Jia gazes at him, heart in her eyes. Suddenly, someone shoves past her, nearly knocking her down, and Min-kyu catches her, just like before.

Now only inches apart, Jia tells him, “This is the moment when you have to kiss.” Leaning forward, she touches her lips to his, and presses the button that makes the umbrella darken.

 
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This is your cue to kiss me

 
COMMENTS

I really like that Min-kyu has no confusion whatsoever about how he feels about Jia as a robot, and how he feels about a woman. They’re totally different leagues (and Jia knows it, as does Sun-hye) and in that sense, Sun-hye’s tests reassure me: He won’t ever romance a robot, even if he can easily consider her his friend. It’s interesting because in relationships, we often love the friendship aspect of them as much as the romantic aspects, but there’s a hard and fast line here that the ordinary mind simply doesn’t cross. As much as we may love our babies inanimate possessions, romancing them is beyond ridiculous: Romance, and subsequently intimacy, are things you do exclusively with other humans.

So in that context, I get Jia kissing him, even at risk of her robot identity (although there’s also a good argument for it fitting in with her robot behavior, with AI’s adaptive learning). It’s not only that she’s been repeatedly friendzoned (or is that robotzoned?) all hour and desperate to be a woman to him, it’s also that it’s been tearing her up on multiple levels watching him with Ri-el, for all the reasons TeriYaki mentions. I admit I actually quite like Ri-el, what little we’ve seen of her: She’s smart, plain-speaking and practical. On the other hand, I dislike Min-kyu and Ri-el together, and I don’t think it’s really Ri-el’s fault. Min-kyu doesn’t give her room to be herself—which is a shame, because although she doesn’t have feelings for him, she could still be a friend. But it’s like it never occurred to him that she had grown up and become somebody he didn’t know anymore. And to be fair, I think it honestly hasn’t. For him, time seems to have stood still within the bounds of his estate. Some of you astutely noted last week the fairytale motifs in this show, and I think we can also add Sleeping Beauty to that list.

Min-kyu is an odd mixture of cynicism and inexperience that is a result of his unusually isolated growing-up. It leaves him clueless (sometimes embarrassingly) and clinging to the familiar, which naturally extends to the way he feels about and relates to Ri-el. He’s clinging to the memory of a first love, and frankly, I don’t think the reality even then is what he remembers—as kids, they were friends. In the absence of new experiences, new friends, and better memories, she’s become a beacon for him in an otherwise bleak heart, but the Ri-el in his head was never the real Ri-el. So far, reality isn’t making a dent on his perceptions, which I find a little fascinating, because this is the same brain that saw people turning into monsters.

Given his condition, we already know his brain perhaps functions in a different way to most, and its protective mechanisms are quite extraordinary. So I wonder if maintaining his illusions (and consequently rejecting contradictory input) is his brain’s way of trying to protect him once again. But I also fully admit that I might be overthinking it, as it can be explained much more easily: He simply doesn’t have enough experience, especially in romantic situations, to be able to read social cues and body language correctly, so short of Ri-el outright rejecting him, he might miss all the other signs. Buuuut: He watches TV! Shouldn’t that prepare him for real human contact?

Speaking of human contact, the meal at the beginning was really something. The scientists are an enigma to him because in his experience of life, it’s only money that moves people. And given how everyone always wants a piece of him—or rather, his money—his mistaken belief has a foundation, though what it really reveals is that he apparently hasn’t ever met decent people. What he learns with the Santa Maria team is how to give a piece of his real, inner self. But it was so painful to watch. In that short time, I feel like we saw Min-kyu cut wide open, guts everywhere. He takes Jia’s lessons so literally that it makes my heart ache a little. He doesn’t just make himself vulnerable to his guests, he also shows an almost devastating level of trust in Jia. How much will it hurt him when he finds out they’ve all been lying to him?

I’m really digging this grudging new truce between Min-kyu and Baek-gyun. I’m fairly sure that he was sincere in that moment he first called Baek-gyun “hyung,” but it was pretty great to see him get owned by the team after that. Min-kyu is someone so used to calling all the shots, being obeyed, and having his way, that it’s never going to be unsatisfying to see him bested in a friendly match. I admit it looks like his childhood friendship with Yoo-chul can’t be saved, and that was probably wishful thinking on my part, but this new one between him and Baek-gyun promises to be even more satisfying. As much as they’re trying to one-up each other, there’s a fundamental respect growing between them, and the beginnings of real trust, thanks to Min-kyu quite literally putting his life in Baek-gyun’s hands. That’s why Baek-gyun came back: because Min-kyu personally affected him. Despite his lack of relationship maturity, I think we’ve learned enough to know he’s a generally good guy, even if he does sometimes makes bad choices like giving his robot his ex-girlfriend’s face…

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