During the first week of broadcast, I wasn’t particularly convinced of this show’s merits, despite the fact that I had anticipated it. Then episodes three and four came the second week, and I was pretty swayed, mostly due to the fact that Son Yeh-jin’s veteran acting skills were really kicking in and convincing me of the Gae-in character, who I didn’t particularly like in the beginning.

Recap of episodes 3 and 4

As a refresher, we ended the last episode with In-hee demanding that she stay at Gae-in’s place because she’s got no place to go. Gae-in quivers as she tries to tell In-hee that they no longer have any kind of relationship and that she isn’t welcome at Sang Go Jae. She’s still extremely hurt over what happened between her, In-hee and Chang-ryul, and isn’t ready to deal with it yet. In-hee, however, tells Gae-in that it’s her fault that her marriage didn’t go through, and that it’s her fault she’s homeless right now. (ABSURD.)

The girls literally duke it out in form of a fight, full of hair grabbing and shrieking, and obviously this displeases Jin-ho. Jin-ho stalks out and tells em to STFU and for a second, In-hee stares at him agape. After he retreats back to his room, In-hee demands to know who he is, and how ridiculous it is that Gae-in’s already let a guy move into her old room. Feeling testy, Gae-in asks In-hee if she’s gonna try to steal him too.

Well guess what? She can’t. Because he’s gay.

In-hee does nothing to come off as a better person, and keeps insinuating that it’s not her fault that Chang-ryul was unfaithful — just look at how Gae-in is. She probably pushed him away with her own unattractiveness. This is no doubt another blow to Gae-in and she reiterates to In-hee that she needs to leave, now. With nothing else to say, In-hee stalks off.

After the whole hoopla is over, Jin-ho stalks out and asks Gae-in to tell him again what she just told In-hee earlier. Gae-in is apologetic, telling him that she didn’t mean to let it spill that he was gay, but she’s not really getting his point. She brings up again what she saw of Tae Hoon at the motel a couple of days earlier and at no point does Jin-ho try to correct her that that was a misunderstanding. But, now Jin-ho understands why she’s under the impression that he’s gay.

Again, instead of trying to correct her misconception or anything, Jin-ho is so mad that he just packs his stuff and tells Gae-in that she give him back his lease deposit, and goes.

The next morning at work, Jin-ho looks like crap, is drinking a shit ton of expresso, and his hyung pauses and stops to ask him what’s wrong. Jin-ho tells him that he has a headache, and Sang Joon just assumes that it was the troublesome lady from Sang Go Jae, perhaps pestering Jin-ho to date him, or to marry him, or something like that. Nope. Jin-ho asks Sang Joon what he thinks Gae-in told him, but he couldn’t even say the word “gay.” It’s that contagious, ladies and gents.

Instead, Jin-ho balks. He suggests they give up the whole thing and try to approach the project from a new angle, preferably one that doesn’t rely on him being in Sang Go Jae and observing any of its architecture or anything. Sang Joon says, well, suuuuure you can do that, and sure nobody’s going to like it, sure they’re going to prefer another firm’s ideas, sure it’s okay they can lose this project, Jin-ho will just, y’know, lose the firm, and Sang Joon, y’know, he can just work at a supermarket. Selling cabbage. Or carrots. Whatever. Sob.

(Lee Minho and Jung Sung Hwa’s scenes are fucking golden. They play off each other like they’re playing tag. So much comedic chemistry.)

Gae-in goes to the doctor for a follow-up on her twisted ankle. As she walks out of the hospital, she remembers a time when Jin-ho assisted her at the hospital, and told her that a “thank you” would have sufficed if she was grateful for what he did. (Flashbacks already, this can’t be good.)

And so Gae-in goes in nicely to Jin-ho’s office to persuade him to come back. She offers him a nice gift — two miniature models, one of a chair and one of a table — as a thank you for paying for her hospital fees the first time he took her to get her ankle checked out. Jin-ho thanks him for the gift, and for a minute Gae-in thinks she got him back, but nope. He’s not going to oblige and Gae-in is frowny faces all around.

Jin-ho and his hyung go over to the art center for a meeting, where they run into In-hee. In-hee is, coincidentally (or not), Chairman Choi Do-bin’s personal assistant. And somehow, Chang-ryul is always pestering In-hee about their relationship, wherever they may be. So, when Jin-ho bumps into In-hee, she is with Chang-ryul. Can we get an awkwaaaaard?

In-hee takes this as an opportunity to greet Jin-ho and the play it up like she didn’t mean for “what happened last night” to happen. Obviously, she’s referring to barging into Gae-in’s place, having the screaming match, doing the hair pulling thing, and being a general nuisance. But the way she says it makes it seem like she and Jin-ho actually did something together the other night, which just pisses Chang-ryul off. Jin-ho’s a smart boy, so he gets what she’s trying to pull, and plays along. This infuriates Chang-ryul and they get into a shouting match and do their usual Korean-men-duke-it-out-by-exchanging-sharp-words-and-half-assed-blows doodad.

They stop, however, when Chang-ryul’s dad witnesses the scene. He admonishes Chang-ryul for picking on those who are weaker than he is, obviously snubbing Jin-ho right to his face. There is very apparently a lot of bad blood between the family, and Jin-ho is doing his best to try to make up for all that the Hans took away from his own. He tells Chang-ryul’s father that if gets a nosebleed from a fairly fought fight, then it’s fine. But when his opponent beat him with a rock in his hand, then things aren’t fair. That’s why this time around, he wants to fight hand-on-hand, no dirty tricks. All the while, Chairman Choi looks on.

Jin-ho’s firm is really treading dangerous waters, seeing as their contractor has bailed and fled for the Philippines. On top of that, people who worked on the construction site have gotten injured, and Jin-ho is looking to take out loans to pay for their med bills, which Sang-joon just thinks is absolutely crazy.

So, then the best alternative is to suck it up, win the next project for the firm. And the way to do that? Go back to live at Sang Go Jae. Yep.

When Gae-in comes home, she’s surprised and happy to see Jin-ho. Jin-ho, however, remarks that the way the house looks like it should be home to pigs, something uninhabitable and unsuitable for human beings. So as a condition for living in the house — not because he needs to stay there and observe architecture or anything — he forces Gae-in to embark on a very thorough cleansing of the house. They go to the mart to pick up housing stuff and then when they come home, they scrub and clean and dust and blow the house down.

After an intense day of cleaning, the two go to throw away their trash. Jin-ho recognizes a framed photo of Gae-in and Chang-ryul in the garbage, so he asks Gae-in if she’s sure she wanted to throw that away. Gae-in reassures him, albeit unwillingly, that yep, it’s trash. But Jin-ho’s a good samaritan, and tells her to separate the frame from the photo and dispose of each separately.

We have two things that must happen by the Law of K-dramas concerning Two Forced Co-Inhabitants of the Opposite Sex: the bathroom incident.

One happens when Jin-ho is taking a shower. Because of the way the doors in this house work — with no locks — Gae-in accidentally walks in on Jin-ho just before he wraps a towel around. Ahem. She tells him not to be embarrassed because her lenses are not on and she can barely see without glasses, so it’s alright. And the him being gay thing also probably factors in there somewhere. No mutual interest, blah blah blah. (We’ll get to the second incident later.)

Then when Jin-ho goes to bed later that night, he hears Gae-in and Young-sun talking about the incident. At first the convo was like giggle-giggle-didn’t-see-much-giggle-giggle, but then it becomes well-maybe-it-was-that-big-or-no-that-big and Jin-ho is insulted. Before he can interrupt, however, he gets a call about his mom being missing.

Now, Jin-ho has a particular relationship with his mother. His father passed away when he was young, and he and his mom were forced out of their house by Chang-ryul’s family. So after he hears his mother has gone missing, he suspects that she must’ve gone to one restaurant in particular, and finds her there. They reminisce about the old days when his father was still alive, and when conversations get bleak and teary, Jin-ho reassures his mom that he’ll get back the house the Han’s took away from them.

The second accident comes at a later time. After Jin-ho goes home, he gets called over by Gae-in for some help in the bathroom. It’s awkward, sure, what with all the towel-wraps and being naked under the towel, but once again, Jin-ho is GAY. He’s gay, okay? Got that? Gay. Has no interest in women’s bodies.

Gae-in is looking for a contact lens that fell out and since they’re not on her eyes anymore, she can’t see. Jin-ho’s job, then, is to help her locate them. (Don’t question logistics, like how she could very well have just gone out and gotten her glasses, put them on, and then looked for the contacts herself, and saved us so much discomfort. Again, don’t question anything.)

So Jin-ho helps Gae-in, but much to his personal displeasure, her woman parts waggle everywhere, bumping him in the face at every turn. Then, because of The Law of K-dramas, once again, we have the next thing: the floor is slippery and Gae-in takes a misstep and…Jin-ho catches her. They’re both very aware of the touching, but Jin-ho dismisses it because he can’t possibly be attracted to Gae-in, and Gae-in dismisses it because Jin-ho likes dudes, plain and simple. Jin-ho reaches over tentatively, and Gae-in misconstrues it to be an act of something else, but he’s just reaching over to grab the contact that fell onto her shoulder.

Later, Gae-in bugs Jin-ho to go have dinner. Jin-ho gives on, but only because she’s a huge pest and the only way to shut her up is to actually grant her her wish. So they go to a local pojangmatcha and Gae-in gets tipsy at record pace. Jin-ho spots Do-bin enter the same eating space, and they greet each other. In order to avoid trouble, Jin-ho tells Gae-in to quickly finish up and go. She tells him happily that they’ll go after she uses the loo. While she’s gone, Jin-ho starts getting glances from a flirtatious ahjumma, and unfortunately for him, she turns out to be the wife of a big, beefy, violent dude. The dude sizes up the situation and assumes that Jin-ho is putting moves on his woman, and confronts Jin-ho about it, ready to fight when necessary. (Why are they always ready to fight when necessary? Why can’t K-drama men just chill out a bit?)

But before anything serious happens, Gae-in stumbles tipsily out and breaks up the argument. And then, she reckons, VERY LOUDLY, that Jin-ho can’t have possibly been putting moves on the woman. Why? Because he’s GAY! That’s why. Meanwhile, Do-bin looks on. Uh oh.

Jin-ho is so incensed by Gae-in’s little outburst that after he pays for the meal, he whooshes out of the place. Walking home, Gae-in stumbles after him until she starts to apologize to him for the scene at the restaurant, ultimately bursting into tears, yelling at herself for being stupid. She sits down on a bench and eventually slumps down into a slumber. Jin-ho can’t rouse her, so he just leaves her and goes.

But before Jin-ho makes it back home, he feels bad, so he goes back to fetch her. As he’s making a grab for her to get back up into sitting position, he pulls her too roughly and once again aggravates Gae-in’s ankle, causing her to shout out in pain. Well, now there’s only one alternative: carry her home.

On the way back, Gae-in sweetly tells Jin-ho that his back is really warm, which she says out of surprise. She’d always thought that backs were cold, because her father’s back was always turned to her, and his back never radiated any particular kind of warmth.

Once at home, again, Jin-ho just drops Gae-in onto a couch and gets ready to call it a night, but Gae-in has one last favor to ask of him. Her ankle still hurts, so it’d be super great if he can just, y’know iron out all those kinks by giving her ankle a massage.

Only, while he does so, Gae-in makes pretty ridiculous sex sounding moans. LOL. Finally, Jin-ho is fed up and bids her goodnight, but not before Gae-in gives Jin-ho a wide warm cheer, saying essentially, “Gay dude, you rock!”

The next morning, Gae-in wakes up, finally realizing her little “But he’s gay!” outburst at the restaurant the previous night, and worries how Jin-ho might respond to her this morning. So when Jin-ho steps out from his room, Gae-in drops dead and feints like she’s still asleep. Jin-ho knows what the fuck’s up though.

As a way to try to make up for her mistake, Young-sun helps Gae-in plan for dinner. The two go to shop for food, and after picking up ingredients, Young-sun suggests that she pick up a movie. That’s what gay friends are good for — talking about your feelings, shopping with you, and watching lame-o movies. Gae-in is hilarious and opts to choose “Brokeback Mountain” because “he should at least be comfortable around me.” “Comfortable with his ‘gay-ness’” is of course the unsaid modifier here.

Once Jin-ho comes home, he tests Gae-in on what she remembers from the previous night by faking her out, saying that she lent him some money. Gae-in did not lend him any money, thank you very much! Oh..crap, that means she does remember last night, doesn’t it? Gae-in’s cover is blown and she sheepishly apologizes for the misdeed, and Jin-ho in return asks for a written statement, promising that she’ll never, ever utter his gayness out loud in public.

After contract-makin’, Gae-in promises to make him dinner. As with most other things, Gae-in is a pretty miserable cook. Young-sun had earlier already brought some seafood over (some kind of shellfish) and Gae-in had planned on cooking that. Only, she sucks in the kitchen. She can barely cut up veggies without slicing herself; she can’t flip anything expertly using her pan, and is general fail.

When dinner time comes, however, Jin-ho stays away from her food at all costs, eating whatever food is available from the fridge. Gae-in tentatively pushes for him to try her cooking, and he does. Cautiously. When he gives Gae-in the okay that he’s not dead yet, Gae-in looks at him happily. Jin-ho senses that she wants to try the food, and offers her some, but out of hesitant politeness, Gae-in declines, saying that she already ate lots and lots while she was cooking. (Or, she messed up so many of them during cooking that she couldn’t possibly have eaten any, but out of politeness must insist she already ate. Oh polite Asians, I love thee.)

After their meal, Gae-in is watching a movie all by herself, laughing her ass off, which Jin-ho sees and makes a snide remark about. He’s out in the kitchen fetching himself some water, and in a slip-of-tongue, Gae-in says to Jin-ho, “In-hee, give me some water too,” which just reveals how ingrained into her her friendship with In-hee was, and how much of a bitch In-hee subsequently turned out to be for forsaking that.

Jin-ho is taken aback, and gives her water, before mentioning that all that popcorn she’s eating will make her gross and fat. Gae-in insists that it won’t, and Jin-ho finally sits his butt down next to her. He then carefully asks Gae-in how long she’s lived with In-hee that it’s become so easy for her to call out to her like that, and Gae-in tells him it’s been ten years.

After several moments of silence, Gae-in switches topics, and humorously prods Jin-ho to tell her when he started to feel like he was “different.” Different in what sense? Well, different in the sense that he liked dudes. For her, it was when she was seven. Jin-ho is taken aback and asks her if she means she’s a lesbian (LOL), but nope, she just says that that’s when she knew what not having a mom meant. She didn’t have her mom do things for her when other kids had their mothers. She mentions not being able to remember her mother’s face, and Jin-ho says that maybe because she was so young when her mother passed away, out of self-defense, she subconsciously let go of her mother’s image.

Then on a different track, Gae-in harps back on when Jin-ho “found out.” Jin-ho shuts her up by stuffing popcorn down her face. Yep, that’ll do it.

Next day at work, Sang-joon notices that Jin-ho is noticeably absent from his desk. Turns out, Jin-ho has some rather explosive and frequently occurring diarrhea. Gae-in finds out late from Young-sun that the seafood was spoiled, and Gae-in is stricken with horror. She didn’t eat anything at all, so she’s perfectly okay, but Jin-ho, on the other hand, vows for revenge in the sanctity of his loo. (Watching Lee Min-ho play this was almost priceless.)

Gae-in, meanwhile, interviews for a job, thinking that there was a position needing someone with her skills, but as it turns out, they needed actual architects, and not furniture designers. Ouch.

So Gae-in trudges out in the pouring rain, and having seen her at the office earlier, Chang-ryul follows her, looking after her wistfully. Yeah, buddy, you lost the right to do that when you dumped her a week ago and tried to marry one of her best friends. Good one, CR.

After Jin-ho gets home from work, he sees Gae-in and is prepared to do some damage, but Gae-in looks at him in alarm and starts rummaging around for medication, knowing that he must’ve been sick the entire day. She is apologetic for what happened, and though Jin-ho looked like he was ready to dispense some carefully chosen words about her cooking from the previous night, he doesn’t have the heart to step on Gae-in while she was sopping wet, scurrying around for medicine. So Jin-ho flings her a towel, admonishing her for getting the whole house wet, but we know he’s starting to be a big softie.

So Gae-in decides that tonight, she will cook him some porridge. (Porridge is a food that’s very healthy and very good for cleansing the system after you’ve eaten a lot of bad crap. One usually has porridge if they’re sick or if they are, in Jin-ho’s case, recovering from food poisoning.) This time, Jin-ho is smarter. He makes Gae-in try some of her own food, just in case. Everything’s fine.

Well, everything is fine until Gae-in gets a phone call from a drunk Chang-ryul, who wants to see her otuside and won’t leave til she comes out. Gae-in is stirred, but tries to resist. Jin-ho tells her that she shouldn’t go see him, no matter what. Gae-in also insists herself that she won’t, but we’ll see.

After dinner when Gae-in is back in her room, all she does is look at her phone and her clock. Her clock and her phone. Her phone and her clock. Finally, she lifts herself up and goes outside. (DAMMIT.)

Just as Jin-ho exits his room to give Gae-in a bandaid (for hurting her finger earlier), he sees her rushing out. To himself, he says, “Jin-ho, success,” because he knew that she’d go for Chang-ryul.

Once outside, Chang-ryul tells Gae-in that he just wanted to see her for a little bit. Gae-in is stirred, like his presence has always done to her, but she tries to stand firm. She tells him she doesn’t understand what went wrong in their relationship, and this is when Chang-ryul gives an answer and I want to smack a bitch.

Chang-ryul tells Gae-in that he never really saw her as a woman. He wanted more, but she didn’t offer him anything. Gae-in stares at him in disbelief, because for her, their relationship was pure love, where his very presence affected her in every way. Chang-ryul then tells Gae-in that she wouldn’t give anything to him, but In-hee would. She gave him all of her. Yep, he means what you think he means.

This is astonishing news to Gae-in, because she never knew that this is part of the reason why they broke up, and the reason why Chang-ryul never truly loved her. As if things weren’t already really shitty, Chang-ryul gets a call from In-hee in the middle of the conversation, which just alerts Gae-in to the fact that they’re still living together. Talk about adding huge gobs and doo-doo piles of salt on the wound, sheesh.

(Son Yeh-jin is stunning in this scene. She ain’t a veteran for no reason.)

When Gae-in goes back into the house, she passes Jinho.

Jin-ho: Park Gae-in sshi, do you have no pride? Are you a fool, going whenever someone calls?
Gae-in: Stop it.
Jin-ho: You are like a puppy. Even though you’ve been abandoned, once you’re called, you go running out with a smile. Do you know how pathetic you look?
Gae-in takes a cushion and strikes Jin-ho repeatedly.
Gae-in: Why does everyone think I’m an easy target to pick on? What exactly did I do wrong? Why is everyone hurting me? Why?
Jin-ho: Why do you let it happen? You’re the person who let it happen.
Gae-in: People like you, you’ve never waited for a phone call from the person you like, who affects every part of you even if you do so little as look at him. You will never know. The person who made me feel that way, if he calls me out — even if he’s in the wrong — I still want to hear why he came over. What am I do to? I’m like this, what am I supposed to do?

And then to recover from this highly emotional talk, one must drink. In her slight drunken state, Gae-in relays to Jin-ho what Chang-ryul said to her, specially the part where he told her that In-hee gave everything to him. Jin-ho scoffs, calling him crazy and pondering why it even matters now to say these things. Gae-in laments about being called a girl, and not a woman.

Jin-ho: Just forget about it.
Gae-in: How can I do that? This is coming from the first person I’ve ever liked in my life. He said I’m not a woman, and that’s why he gave up on me.
Jin-ho: At this point, there is no point to those words.
Gae-in: Regardless, I feel like maybe it was my fault. It wasn’t Chang-ryul’s fault, it’s not because In-hee’s bad. It’s all because of me.
Jin-ho: If you feel that wronged, make him come back. Make him regret letting go of a woman like you.
Gae-in: Jin-ho sshi… (reaches over) Can you…turn me into a woman?

Annnnnnnnd scene.

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The whole share-how-it-feels-to-be-gay thing is starting to irritate me. On the one hand, like I said in my first post on this drama, Jin-ho didn’t intentionally lie about being gay to try to get himself into the house. That was borne out of a misconception. But now that he’s fully aware that that’s what Gae-in thinks he is, he makes no real attempt to tell her, “Hey, you know, I’m not gay. It was all a misunderstanding.” He subverts her questions by making off-hand remarks about having interest in women, just not Gae-in. This doesn’t help the situation at all because Gae-in just brushes it off as him being flippant.

So now we’ve stepped into the territory of Jin-ho lying by virtue of not telling Gae-in the truth. In the beginning it was just a mistake, but now he’s continuing that lie with no real intention of stepping out of it. Obviously, this is for plot’s sake so that we can keep him in Sang Go Jae, which will give rise to a conflict later when Gae-in learns of the truth, but now Jin-ho is no longer innocent and is a conspirator in the whole thing. He was using her regardless of not she thought he was gay, since the point from the very beginning was to act like he was an interested tenant and move in, but now there’s the added bit about sexuality.

On the acting front: I don’t care what anybody says, Lee Min-ho is a damn good actor and has great chemistry with Son Yeh-jin. When I first streamed the episode, I didn’t realize, but then on a clearer version I saw Jin-ho tearing in response to Gae-in’s outburst at the end. That is some good acting-and-reacting going on right thurr.

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Posted in: asian pop culture - film/television | Tags: Korean dramas, Lee Minho, Personal Taste/개인의 취향, recaps, Son Yeh Jin