This article is the plot analysis of the eighth episode of the first season of "My Genius Girlfriend", "Promise".
Elena and Lila, the two heroines, have experienced the darkest moments of their lives in this episode, they are deeply hurt by the man they love, and what they thought was "a promise" has become a "blank check".
When they are in the wedding ceremony, they find that everything they have done before is in vain: even if they struggle, they cannot escape the shadow of their original family, and it may be difficult to cross the class gap for the rest of their lives...
【Tips: The following has spoilers!】 】
01
In class, Elena did not forget to compare her and Lila's respective love lives:
Although Lila and Stefano are about to get married and have a renovated house, they are just kissing.
In contrast, Elena did not marry Antonio at all, but the experience between the two was no longer limited to kissing.
Lila does like Stefano, but Elena finds that she doesn't like Antonio, but they do more intimate activities than Lila and Stefano. This made Elena feel angry, and she felt that she had to break up with Antonio.
Elena's absent-mindedness in class could not escape the religious teacher's eyes after all. After being named by the religious teacher, Elena boldly refuted the religious teacher's criticism of the Communists, and naturally the religious teacher drove her to the corridor outside the classroom door to reflect...
Nino happened to pass through the corridor at this time, and after learning the cause and effect of the incident, he hired a female teacher to help Elena relieve the trouble.
Nino seemed to approve of Elena's boldness and felt that they had a common topic in their thinking, so he sent Elena an invitation to write about the conflict with the religious teacher, and he would publish it in a magazine he was working with to expose social problems.
Elena told Lila about it and asked her for help in revising the article. Lila resisted a little at first, but agreed, and only then would Elena agree to accompany her to the shop to choose a wedding dress.
Nino is inadvertently mentioned during their conversation, and Lila asks Elena when she and Sarah Terre become good friends. Instead of telling Lila the truth, Elena tells Lila that she likes Nino, but instead claims that she only occasionally bumps into Nino at school.
In the process of revision, Lila asked Elena if she could make corrections such as deletions and changes, and finally insisted that she copy the revised article, which should be a recognition and farewell to the excellent self in the past.
While praising Elena for being good enough, Lila also made no secret of saying that she didn't want to read Elena's writing anymore because it would make her sad. After all, Lila, who is about to get married, may no longer be able to realize the dream she once mentioned about writing novels to make money.
Elena knew in her heart that Lila's revisions made the expression of the whole article clearer and more direct, and those deletions, substitutions and small additions even made her feel as if she had escaped from herself, running a hundred steps ahead, full of energy...
Nino read the article and admired Elena, admitting that he was indeed as good as the teacher said, and his writing ability was not as good as Elena.
Nino also invites Elena to accompany him on the way home, but Elena accidentally meets her boyfriend Antonio at the school gate, and she has no choice but to take Antonio with her to leave first.
Along the way, Antonio talks about the dress code for the wedding, and he plans to show up with friends and family in a dignified manner with Elena.
Elena had no interest in everything about the wedding, not to mention that she would break up with Antonio sooner or later, and did not care what the other party said. She is now full of thoughts about the publication of the article, and feels that this is the meaning and value of her existence:
"Ever since Nino asked me to write that article, I was secretly convinced that I really existed only the moment my name, Elena Greco, appeared in the magazine."
02
There were some small episodes in the preparation stage of the wedding, first of all, lila and her in-laws' relationship was more tense. Since Lila did not go to the butcher's shop to help, Stefano's mother and sister Pinocchia both had problems with her.
After all, the whole family will be busy in the butcher's shop, and even Elena's table mate, Stefano's younger brother Alfonso, who is in school, will go to the shop to help during the school holidays. Therefore, in their eyes, only Lila, the daughter-in-law who has not passed through the door, eats idle meals all day and spends money at every turn.
If it weren't for Elena's words and two words to resolve the conflict, I am afraid that Lila would have a fight with her mother-in-law and sister-in-law when she chose the wedding dress in the store.
Lila felt that Elena, a good child, had been pleasing since childhood, but people were afraid of her and even thought she was a bad child.
To comfort Lila, Elena thanks Lila for being able to arrange a grocery store job for Antonio's sister Ida, as a sign that she is actually a good person with a good heart...
Lila had thought that by marrying Stefano, she would be able to improve the life of her family on her own. However, when she and Stefano came to Ceruro Shoe Shop to check the shoe samples, they found that the model shoes made by her father and brother were basically not up to the level she had expected in the drawings.
Despite Lila's disappointment, she expressed her support for her family in front of her fiancé.
However, Lila's family is not sympathetic, after all, they have the inferiority of the common people, and even force Lila to make sacrifices for their own interests.
Because the cost and pricing of shoes are too high, the poor in the slums naturally can't afford to spend, and only those who can get to the rich shops in the city center can afford it, but it is the scope of the Business that the Solara family can reach.
Seeing that the result of daily hard work could not be exchanged for financial income, Lila's family and Stefano reached an agreement with the Solara family:
They could sell Cerullo shoes in high-end shops in the city center, on the condition that Silvio Solara be the wedding ordination bearer. Wedding ordination bearers mean a sense of kinship whose families will be tied together for the rest of their lives.
Lila's eyes are all scum of the Solara family, but the fiancé and family know that she hates the Solara family, but they cooperate with each other against her will, and together they force her to agree to cooperate, Lila's brother Reno even scolds his sister as a slut, accusing her of not knowing that she wants to destroy everything the family has worked so hard to get.
What they are doing now means that Lila's previous sacrifices and rebellions are meaningless.
Lila had already seen through that Stefano was a lustful businessman, and she expressed her suspicions to Elena: her fiancé Stefano may not really love her, and that she is only good to her because it does not endanger his financial interests.
Although she felt that Stefano was unreliable, when she decided to marry him, she bet all her money on Stefano. Now that Lila, who cannot achieve independence without economic autonomy, what else can she do to get herself out of trouble?
She could only make concessions for the time being, telling Stefano not to touch her bottom line and to forbid Marcello Solara from entering the wedding scene.
Stefano once again made an empty promise to Lila, and once he made a move to betray others, it was a sign that the person would most likely make a second or more times in the future...
Lila and Elena had gone to give a wedding invitation to Mr. Oliviero, but their elementary school teacher refused to admit that the woman dressed as a noblewoman in front of them was The talented girl Lila from before:
"I know Cerullo, but I don't know who she is."
Teacher Oliviero hopes that his two best female students will be able to change their class and destiny through learning knowledge.
When she saw that Lila, instead of breaking through the confines of patriarchal society, identified with her own commoner attributes, attached herself to men from evil families, and made her most disdainful choices, Teacher Oliviero somewhat hated the feeling that iron is not steel.
Teacher Oliviero's attitude made Lila question her decision, and she later asked Elena if marriage was the wrong choice.
From childhood to adulthood, Lila has always been jealous of Elena's ability to be pampered by others and the opportunity to continue her studies, compared to the lonely and lonely she is not so lucky, struggling alone but always struggling to get out of the quagmire.
Despite this, Lila still hopes that Elena will realize her unfulfilled dreams, so she agrees with Elena to continue studying no matter what happens, but she will spend money to send Elena to school:
"You're my genius girlfriend, and you have to be smarter than any of them, boys or girls."
03
Lila's wedding is undoubtedly a large shura field, where all the love-hate entanglements are staged.
At first, Elena and her childhood friends came to the wedding scene by car, and from their positions and words, they saw the meaning of internal digestion of feelings:
Pascale, a carpenter who had originally liked Lila, stood with Antonio's sister Ida; Enzo, who was also interested in selling fruits and vegetables to Lila, seemed to be more ambiguous with Pascale's sister Carmela.
Lila's brother Reno, invited her brother-in-law Stefano's sister Pinocchia to dance at the wedding scene, which shows that the brothers and sisters of Karachi and Ceruro have two pairs of meaning.
Elena's mother was far-sighted and did not want her excellent daughter to just fall into the circle of digestion within the slums.
So when she saw Elena and Antonio appear together, she advised her daughter to make a rational decision about her emotional belonging:
"We worked so hard to provide you with school, but not to let you be ruined by a mechanic, not to mention that his mother is still a madman." 」
However, it wasn't long before Elena was surprised to see Nino appear here, and it turned out that Nino and his sister Marissa had been invited to the wedding by Stefano's brother Alfonso.
Elena had introduced her table mate Alfonso to Nino's sister Marissa outside of school, and she did not expect the two to become close friends. Alfonso wanted to take Marissa to his brother's wedding, and Marissa pulled Nino over in order to get her parents to agree.
Antonio could only watch in frustration as Elena and Nino sat together, and then couldn't help but express his displeasure to Elena:
He borrowed money to make a special suit for the wedding, but not to watch Elena talk intimately with others. Not to mention that he had previously threatened Sarah Torre not to harass Elena, but now Elena was entangled with Sarah Torre's son...
Unable to accept the fact that he was a tool man in Elena, Antonio left the wedding scene in anger.
Elena did not intend to chase Antonio, who had left the field, but returned to Nino and took the initiative to talk to him.
Elena is then dismayed to find Nino staring intently at Lila, who is dancing, in contrast to his perfunctory attitude when talking to himself:
Nino decisively refused Elena's request to dance, which he found ridiculous and stupid.
When Elena tries to talk about the literary topics that Nino is interested in, Nino coldly states that it is useless to read novels. However, when Elena later talks to Alfonso at the dinner table about a literary work, Nino tells Alfonso that he also read the novel, which contradicts what he and Elena said before.
Elena noticed something was wrong and pointed out on the spot that Nino was reading novels. Nino countered that so what, he didn't think there was anything wrong with lying and deceiving Elena before.
Nino went on to hurt Elena by telling Elena that the article had not been published because the magazine had no page. Then he decided to leave the wedding scene, ignoring Elena who was trying to keep him.
Nino temporarily canceled her plans to publish articles for Elena, perhaps because Elena had released Nino's pigeons and had not fulfilled her promise to walk home with her after school.
When Nino saw Elena and Antonio walking together, he probably already despised Elena a little. Nino thought that Elena, who shared a common topic with him, was also a student of progress, but he was disappointed to see Elena fall in love with the people of the slums.
What made him even more disappointed was to see that Lila, whom he had admired as a child, was married to the son of the sinful Karachi family, and the beautiful image of the goddess in his heart was shattered.
Nino moved away from the neighborhood with his family at an early age, and Lila was both the object of his childhood crush and his only nostalgia for the poor neighborhood.
Poor Elena has always been a humble gesture in front of Nino, and after being hurt by the person she likes, Elena looks at the chaotic scene of the wedding scene in front of her, feels disgusted and sick, and instantly understands the words that Teacher Oliviero once said to her about the common people:
"If a person wants to be a commoner all the time, then his children and grandchildren will be like grass and mustard, and it is not worth mentioning."
These people at the wedding scene interpreted the common people's nature with practical actions, and their words and deeds exposed the sadness of the common people:
"At that moment, I knew better what a commoner was, more clearly than when Mr. Olivierro asked me a few years ago. We are the common people, the common people are competing for food and wine, they are quarreling over the order of serving, whether the service is good or bad, it is the dirty floor on which the waiter is walking around, the increasingly vulgar toasts. ”
Elena had advised Lila to accept Silvio Solara as the wedding keeper, because she felt that these young people were different from the older generation, and Elena naively thought that Lila's temporary forbearance and compromise would lead to a better life in the future, and even completely change the harsh living environment of the neighborhood.
However, the cruel reality is that most people have never really escaped the death of their original families, and although they clearly see the narrowness of their parents, it is difficult to get rid of similar fates and even end up in the same stream, becoming the kind of person they once hated the most.
Perhaps some innate things have long been subtly carved into the blood, such as Nino's emphasis on being different from his father, and at the same time unconsciously becoming a person like his father...
The so-called "easy to change nature is difficult to move", Lila's family and husband once again betrayed her, secretly colluding with the Solara family that Lila hated.
Marcello was able to come to the wedding scene without any scruples, no doubt with their acquiescence, which once again crossed the bottom line that Lila could bear.
Marcello was wearing the same pair of leather shoes that Lila valued so much, and he knew very well that this was the best revenge for Lila's previous rejection of him.
The shoes were made by Lila and her brother Reno, bought by Lila's husband, Stefano, and now worn at the feet of Lila's hated enemy, apparently stefano betraying his promise to Lila and sacrificing what his wife cherished most for the sake of the Sola family.
The tacit gaze of Elena and Lila is heartbreaking, they have admired and jealousy of each other, but at this time they invariably feel the despair and helplessness of being helpless and powerless.
At that moment, Lila realized that all the sacrifices she had made were meaningless, and the result of compromising with reality was to finally put her dream to her feet. Relying on her husband Stefano is impossible to change her fate and class nature, and in the end, her trusted family and husband will not hesitate to sacrifice her for the sake of profit.
At that moment, Elena also realized how wrong she had been. She had been chasing Lila as a child and wanted to escape the neighborhood, but now that she realized that her mother's world and this neighborhood, even Lila could not escape. Perhaps at that time, she strengthened her belief in continuing to study, and understood that only by receiving education and learning knowledge could she change her destiny.
At that time, only sixteen years old, Elena and Lila saw the truth of life and the essence of human nature at the wedding scene, which was the most humiliating and tragic experience of their girlhood.
However, it is far from over, and there will be more tests waiting for them in the future.
(Before the third season airs, I am afraid that I will not be able to write all the analytical articles of the second season, but I can only slowly make up for it in the future, and strive to catch up with the progress as soon as possible!) In addition, this article is unconsciously written too long, and I will try to be concise when writing in the future)