As our story progresses and time passes, our heroine’s hard work finally pays off and she sets out on a new course in life. Dreams might come true, but it’s not always smooth sailing. Sometimes there are earthquakes.
EPISODES 7-8 WEECAP
Oh no, not the passage of time in a drama — it’s always hard for me to float a story for several months and pick it up in the new present-day. Nevertheless, that’s where we land this week. Bobby has been promoted and is now a team leader at the Jeju branch of Daehan Noodles, and Yumi is still plugging away at her writing, failing contest after contest.
Though they’re long-distance now, our couple seems to be going strong, and their constant video chats and co-ramyeon-eating are adorable. But Yumi’s confidence in her decision – and her writing — is starting to plummet, and when her old boss at Daehan hints that there might be a spot for her at the company again, the opportunity lifts her right out of her slump. The thought of a regular paycheck and normal work life has her village exploding with won-shaped fireworks.
Poor Yumi goes through a bunch of ups and downs all in the space of the same day — going to Jeju to visit Bobby, getting told the job is no longer hers, getting greeted by Bobby’s eager smile, having to tell him she didn’t win the contest, and then getting a surprise text message from an editor that would like to publish her novel! OMG! I was as excited as Yumi and Bobby were in that moment, and we all enjoy this turning point in Yumi’s life as a metaphorical aurora borealis appears in her village, which is such a pretty way of expressing change. (But Show, why can’t you tell us more about what she wrote besides the dang title? I need to know!)
But while both Yumi and Bobby are on cloud nine and enjoying their brief Jeju visit, there are some rumblings that occur by way of new characters, and those rumblings eventually lead to an earthquake. Yumi’s hunch cell — who lives far out of the village catching vibes — knows something is up.
Bobby has an obnoxiously-bubbly intern on his team, and YOO DA-EUN (Shin Ye-eun) has a balloon-popping giggle-infested village. Wow, I’ve never disliked Shin Ye-eun so much lol. I’m strangely protective of this Yumi-Bobby pairing, and the show did a fine job of showing Da-eun’s girliness and twirliness and how, in contrast, Yumi feels like a real woman. No less cute or sweet, but far more grounded and likable (IMHO).
Yumi tries to be extra nice to Da-eun since she knows she’s being a little ridiculous in being jealous of her, but the drama goes so far as to show us Bobby through Da-eun’s eyes. And there we learn that Yumi’s unexplained feeling of rivalry towards her is quite warranted. This little gizibe is head over heels infatuated with Bobby, and we all know he’s smart enough (and has enough EQ) to know it.
While Yumi is trying to negotiate her feelings and deal with Da-eun’s presence in Bobby’s work life, she has her own almost-suitor. We dig into the past, to Yumi’s college days, where a wackadoo and awkward sunbae AHN DAE-YOUNG (an extremely hilarious Jeon Suk-ho cameo) was crushing madly on her and forcing himself to read Thomas Mann novels just for a reason to talk to her. No small feat.
Over a decade later, he turns out to be the editor that wants to publish her novel — and he’s as shocked as any that his crush turned even more crushable in the present. We linger on his weirdness for sooooo long, and see his awkward interactions with Yumi, trying to be a hardass editor, but inwardly squeeing like a schoolgirl.
Speaking of schoolgirls, we spend way more time than we need to in Dae-young’s cell village but OMG it’s absolutely insane and hilarious. Unlike the cute cells we are used to seeing, Dae-young’s cells are like GI Joes in unitards that behave like fourteen-year-old girls. The drama level is off the charts, and the drama has as much fun going all-out here as I do watching it.
Yumi’s hunch cell isn’t sure where its bad feeling is coming from, though… is it Da-eun? Is it Dae-young? It causes Yumi to ask Bobby a pointed question: when did you start liking me? Bobby’s love cell consults his memories and is about to blurt out the truth when he’s stopped gangster-style and the memory is promptly erased by cells that know better than to tell the truth. Later, he tells her he started liking her when was dancing in the break room… but we know better. There’s a seed of something there that Bobby’s subconscious doesn’t want Yumi to pick up on, and it does not bode well.
However long we linger with the ridiculousness of Dae-young, it’s clear he’s not about to shake Yumi’s heart — she doesn’t remember him, he realizes it’s ridiculous to confess his crush, and this whole little interlude just becomes a great cell village scene, satire, and funny wordplay. We have to hope he’s a better editor than he is love rival.
The only other contender for stirring up trouble with our couple is Da-eun, but that also seems to be wrapped up quite nicely when Bobby announces that she got a job in Busan and is moving there forthwith. Buh-bye!
Except before she leaves, she confesses — in not-very-well-masked-terms — that she has fallen for Bobby. High EQ Bobby picks up on it, and knows he needs to play dumb. Which he does quite well. He watches her hop on the bus to go to the airport, but all is not well. The little tremor in his cell village when she confessed to him has now become a veritable earthquake.
Not only am I taking a giant fearful gulp that he’s going to cheat on Yumi — if only emotionally — but I’m also scratching my head over what he sees in Da-eun. To top it all off, the two just had a beautiful one-year anniversary, and mid-kiss Bobby put a couple ring on her finger. Not sure how he did that. Or how I can be swooning hard one second, and the next left with one emotion and one emotion only: WTH Bobby!