As our atypical show hits the halfway mark, our con artist heroine struggles between staying professional or giving into personal feelings, while our superpowered hero finally picks a side. But like with a house of cards, all it takes is a slight breeze for everything to come crashing down.
EPISODES 5-6
We resume for the week with Gwi-ju and Da-hae’s “let’s see if we end up falling in love” kiss — which leaves Da-hae flustered from a combination of guilty conscience and heart flutters. As for Gwi-ju, if the moment was a tape, it’d be worn out due to the amount of times he travels back to it. But the Nile is a river in Egypt whose waters steer him into declaring that the kiss was “meh” — and this earns him a deserved punch to the face by Da-hae. Lol.
Gwi-ju insists that Da-hae keeps the marriage registration thingy from Man-heum, but when Man-heum’s wrist watch goes missing from the family vault, the search leads her straight to the marriage registration form. Oops! It’s obvious that Da-hae wanted to spill the marriage tea, so as payback, Gwi-ju informs his family that Da-hae — who they thought was alone in this world — has a (non-biological) family.
Sauna Mom adopts an ex-convict with a heart of gold persona to visit the Boks when she learns that they are digging into her, but her attempt to gaslight the family fails to hit the mark. Dong-hee is all for kicking Da-hae out, but Man-heum is reluctant because she saw Da-hae wearing the family’s ring in a dream. “What if she stole it?” Dong-hee asks. “The dream wasn’t telling you she’ll be a part of our family. It was telling you she’d steal from us.” Loool. Have I mentioned how much I like Dong-hee? Man-heum needs to listen to her daughter more.
Gwi-ju is also not convinced that he saved Da-hae from the school fire as she claims, but she evades all his questions about the incident. Gwi-ju was unable to save anyone even though he returned to that moment countless times, “So how could I have saved you?” he asks. “Because you love me,” Da-hae replies, and I rolled my eyes so hard, they fell to the back of my throat. Does she realize that she was a high schooler back then and this man was already someone’s father? Despite Gwi-ju’s pleas for Da-hae to come clean, she doubles down and makes him out to be the bad guy for doubting her. Still, Gwi-ju wants to trust Da-hae and save her — although he’s worried that he’ll mess things up in the process.
“You won’t,” Soon-goo assures his son. “Whatever happens with [Da-hae] can be undone. You can always go back in time to fix it.” Must be nice to have a re-do option for your life choices. Soon-goo adds that Da-hae might lead Gwi-ju back to his daughter, and true to Soon-goo’s words, Gwi-ju’s return to a Da-hae moment — the kiss, obviously — leads him to the family vault where he sees Yi-na taking Man-heum’s watch!
Gwi-ju wonders if Yi-na is being bullied at school, and why she never tells him anything. Because you never ask, duh! But this is not a bullying case per se; Yi-na just wants to have friends, and she stole the watch as a gift to get into Miss Popular’s good graces. As a school bullying victim, Da-hae worries that the same thing is happening to Yi-na, but our mind reader assures madam con artist that she is fine. I’ve never been a fan of Da-hae’s manipulation and I read all of her actions as calculated ways of endearing herself to the Boks. But when it comes to her interactions with Yi-na, she’s mostly genuine, so I no longer mind as much.
Da-hae visits Yi-na at school to assess the situation with Miss Popular, but Yi-na warns Da-hae to keep her mouth shut otherwise she’ll expose her as a fraud. Ha! Blackmailing a con artist? I love it! I agree that Yi-na needs to talk to someone about the imbalanced nature of her “friendship” with Miss Popular, but the problem is there’s no one to have that conversation with. Da-hae is the most likely candidate, but you can never fully trust a con artist, and the rest of the Boks are nothing to write home about.
While Da-hae is a first-hand witness of the other Bok superpowers, nothing could have prepared her for the reveal that Yi-na is a mind reader. How do you even con someone who can read your mind? LMAO! Da-hae freaks out and goes through all the stages of meltdown as she tries to evade Gwi-ju — who also came to the school to check on his daughter — and she ends up getting locked in the gym’s storage room. A flashback reveals that Da-hae’s bullies locked her in the school’s storage shortly before the fire, and in the present, her storage PTSD kicks in. Just great!
Thankfully, Gwi-ju finds a panicked Da-hae in the storage, and via her traumatized words, he confirms that she was the student his firefighter sunbae was going back to rescue when the building exploded. Sunbae died before he re-entered the building, and if Da-hae made it out of there alive, “It seems like I’ll have to be the one to have saved you,” Gwi-ju says. This PTSD storage scene was pretty emotional, and for the first time in three weeks, I felt sorry for Da-hae. Chun Woo-hee carried the scene so hard, I actually empathized with a scammer. Wow! I guess Da-hae is slowly growing on me.
Now that Gwi-ju has confirmed his savior status, he becomes a changed man. He’s suddenly working out, cleaning his room, and making breakfast for Yi-na — which she doesn’t eat. I know Yi-na hardly eats at home, but would it kill Gwi-ju to persuade her to take a bite or at least give her a snack or something? If this man puts in as much effort in Yi-na’s diet as he does in his unrelenting attempts to convince Da-hae — who has moved out of the Bok mansion — to return, maybe the girl won’t be so averse to sharing a meal with the family.
When it comes to single parents and romance, I’m more interested in the parent’s relationship with their child than I am in the sparks between them and their new partner. I feel parent and child should have a bond outside of a third party, and I’m not a fan of how the show anchors Gwi-ju and Yi-na’s relationship around Da-hae. It’s almost like Gwi-ju cannot be a good father without Da-hae in their lives, and that’s unfair to Yi-na. Maybe I’m being a little harsh on Show, but the whole “Da-hae will lead Gwi-ju back to Yi-na” thing is not working for me. And with this setup, Show better have a damn good reason as to why everything and everyone orbits around Da-hae.
The main OTP is not doing anything for me, but the Yi-na and Joon-woo pairing is where all the cuteness is at. Joon-woo could tell from Yi-na’s eyes that she didn’t mean it when she called him a jerk last week — and no, he has no ancestors with the Bok last name. Lol. Yi-na is already flustered by the transparency of her feelings, and when Joon-woo confesses that he likes her, my baby girl doesn’t know how to react. Awwww. But Miss Popular overhears the confession, and that’s the end of her “friendship” with Yi-na. I’d say good riddance, but she was Yi-na’s only friend in the world, and Yi-na is understandably hurt when Miss Popular calls her creepy because she always seems to know what she (Miss Popular) is thinking.
Man-heum has another precognitive dream, and you know it’s serious when the biggest Gwi-ju × Da-hae shipper warns her son to call off marriage plans with Da-hae. But Gwi-ju insists on seeing things through to the end, and he proposes to Da-hae. Becoming Mrs. Gwi-ju will move Da-hae a step ahead to the end goal of conning the Boks, but her feelings for Gwi-ju have gotten in the way of the con, and she’s reluctant to proceed with the marriage.
Da-hae claims Gwi-ju’s superpower makes her uneasy, and in case his proposal stems from a sense of responsibility, she tells him that he doesn’t have to save her. I mean, she’s alive and well in the present, so who exactly is he saving? “The fact that you’re alive proves that I’ll save you one day,” Gwi-ju replies, and I’d be lying if I say I understand anything about this past and future saving business. Perhaps in saving Da-hae, Gwi-ju will also be saving himself from the bad memories attached to the school fire. And since everyone and their parents are getting saved, maybe someone can save me from my confusion and mixed feelings about this drama (and save us from the Kopiko PPL that has snuck its way into the show).
Unlike Da-hae and her cold feet with Gwi-ju, Grace is still full-steam with Dong-hee. But Dong-hee is nobody’s fool. She might tell off a sleazy client harassing Grace at the gym, and share a meal together, but it doesn’t mean she trusts Grace — not even with her discovery that Grace is connected to Da-hae and Sauna Mom. Dong-hee tells Grace about her plans to stop Gwi-ju and Da-hae’s wedding, and Grace rushes down to the Bok mansion in time to stop Dong-hee from announcing that she found the family ring in Da-hae’s luggage. Dong-hee topples over the first floor railing in the ensuing struggle, and Grace is shocked to see her float midair thanks to her superpower.
Blissfully unaware of the drama going on in the house, Gwi-ju and Da-hae walk down the aisle, and our groom tells his bride that he’ll remember the moment for a long time as a happy one. This is Da-hae’s breaking point, and she declares that she is a fraud. *Insert dramatic music* No one saw this coming except for Man-heum the dreamer. Heh. “I’m sorry,” Da-hae says to Gwi-ju. “You can’t save me.” Great! Way to break a man’s heart after he finally found hope that he can change the past. This sucks for Gwi-ju, but it was bound to happen, and I’m glad Da-hae owned up to the con herself rather than leaving him to find out from a third party. Now that everything has been said and done, will Gwi-ju sink back into depression or will he grab the reins of his life and forge ahead? We await the second half of the show to give us answers.