Ugh! Peaceful Property! You Wanted A Cross-class Romance!? How About We Actually Dive Into The Full-on

Ugh! Peaceful Property! You wanted a cross-class romance!? How about we actually dive into the full-on physical and spiritual oppression that produces those classes?? How about we actually depict capitalist systems as literally horrific?? But let's not stop there!! How about we show the wealthy protagonist as directly complicit in those horrors?? Not enough?? How about we make him literally kill the poorer romantic lead?? How about we actually explore what it would mean for someone whose wealth is built on nepotism and a history of exploited labor to recognize what that means about their relationships to other people in the world?? What kinds of compassion do the wealthy need to ask for and what practices and mindsets do they need to change before those they've hurt can even begin to live life unafraid of financial ruin, let alone actually caring for the wealthy love-interest?? What ghosts haunt a cross-class romance and how can we truly exorcise them????

Peaceful Property went hard with dreams this week. You know, 'dream' like the American Dream? You know, 'dream' like Peach's dream of cooking in a palace for a bunch of rich people and refusing to make peace with a 'hypothetical' rival? You know, 'dream' like Home's nightmare of his poorer friend overtaking him for the harm Home caused him? You know, 'dream' like Home's fake dream of moving to America and having ten wives? You know, 'dream' like Home's real dream of having a normal family.

The dreams themselves had an air of love and hope about them, and they were nurtured with kindness and support by members of the ghost hunting team, but the show kept subtly drawing our attention to the hollowness, violence, and repression of the 'dreams' in this episode. These were capitalistic and patriarchal styles of dreaming.

Notice, they exorcised no ghosts this episode. We saw instead our influencer Chai-Un (Pompam, doing THE MOST with this Old Queen stock character) ignoring Peach's offerings to his family's ghosts and going full glutton all by his lonesome. The upper crust might offer invitation to one or two from the lower class entering into their echelons, but what has that spiritually alleviated?

If the mutual heartbreak at the end of the episode wasn't enough to clue you in, these themes are the biggest indicator that Home and Peach will end up together as family. The show has framed the inherent harm and distrust between the aristocracy and the lower classes as foundational in making the patriarchal family primary. I had previously thought there was a possibility we'd get a little weird found family ending. Home, though, faked drinking to let us know he's faking other things--heterosexuality. BUT ACTUALLY, we got so many references to full-on gayness this episode, but in ways that let us know the show has a queer Marxist vision even for that. Chai-Un referring to his partner as his "wife" and playing the stereotype of Rich Gay: these aren't arbitrary.

This gay baiting question is actually thematically important. I've been enjoying the revisit to some old-school homoerotic subtext, because old-school homoerotic subtext was often tied into the same problems of patriarchal capitalism. They forged intense bonds that they then had to sever to form family units as they economically competed against each other and maintained the honor of their patriarchal position. The participated in societal dick measuring contests to see whose estates were grander and whose cok was long, as the neon sign says.

With Peach's adjustment to the contract, we are now left with the possibility for Home's queerness and desire for Peach to possibly disrupt his family's fortune in a major way. If Home really wants to exorcise the specter of Peach's pain and suffering from his waking dreams, Home can't be one of the 12 gay billionaires in the world. He's not going to be his investor or his savior. He'll have to let go of his patriarch's will to find something that won't sooth his wallet but will sooth his soul, something decidedly 'not normal.'

Side note: Who gave this show the right to let New and Tay and Jan show the true force of their full RANGE????

Peach was always jumpy. Peach was always the kind to jump at shadows and sounds. And then he almost died and now he can see ghosts and that hasn't helped a single thing, has only made it worse. And the one person who believed in him despite his jumpiness died and he was at fault, he used the wrong oil, he was so scared and so distracted by his own fear that he lost the one person who believed in him and now he is haunted by ghosts but even more haunted by his own past, by his own history, by his own loss, by what he did and what he lost and what he saw.

But this moment was what destroyed me because it was about Home telling Peach he had to face this alone and then still coming in to comfort before stepping out again, being the one to come through the door and hold him despite his own stance that this had to be done alone. Because being alone doesn't make you stronger. It's being together that does. It's being with the people you love that lets you grow stronger, it's being supported that gives you strength.

The pancakes and the hope on his face and knowing that there's nothing he can do right now and that he can't ask for forgiveness because he waited too long to be able to say what needed to be said and now instead he's bringing all the work he put into his to them for pain and that's all that's left for him for a while. The hope. The way he ran. The taxi! Everything! And then showing up to them gone, to the home he'd given them empty, to the one place that was his and the people that were his, his family, evicted and gone and leaving him alone again, all alone again.

And the hope just draining from him. Everything leaving him and the loss of everything that had become important to him and knowing that he was losing it and that he would never get that back. The pancakes still in his hand. The hope he desperately wanted gone, the family he wishes for, gone. Everything gone because of people who think they're protecting him and have always been protecting him and assuming they know what's best.

They've been protecting him and isolating him for so long and now the consequences have arrived.

His family, trying to protect him, has taken away the only people who could see the him past who they had shaped and protected and now he lost that. He lost the safe place his grandfather left him, the people who'd turned it into a home, the place that let him feel like he was more than a lonely man with no dream to work towards and no goal besides amassing more money.

He made the pancakes with his own two hands. He refused all help. He worked as hard as he could and he did everything he thought was right and he begged Peach to wait and he told him he was his family but the truth caught up when he thought he still had time.

#same girl FRIED GREEN TOMATOES 1991 — dir. Jon Avnet