It’s contract marriage o’clock, and our heroine belatedly realizes she snagged an original luxury item instead of the knock-off she was shopping for. But it’s too late to back out now, and the show must go on!
EPISODES 3-4
The week resumes with Ji-wook’s tuxedo transformation that slackens everyone’s jaws at the wedding shop. Like monitoring spirits — which they embodied all week — Woo-jae and his wife are also present, and while the wife swoons, her husband stews. Woo-jae can’t believe his ex is getting married to a younger and more handsome man, and his jealousy increases when Ji-wook invents a childhood connection love story with Hae-young. Pfft. This groom has watched too many K-dramas. Woo-jae starts working on the math: if Hae-young and Ji-wook are childhood friends, when did they start dating? Is Ji-wook the reason she broke up with me? Did she start dating him immediately after our breakup? But coming from a two-timer, X + Y = itZ none of your business.
Meanwhile, Hae-young is not pleased that her husband-to-be did not inform her of his lethal face card. But maybe this is her wake-up call to start paying more attention to him. Ji-wook, on the other hand, can’t help but remember all Hae-young’s words and actions because he has a crush on her his brain is a “computer” that registers the details of her private life she spills without a care at the convenience store. Okay, genius.
We move on to the last stage of wedding planning: the proposal. Ideally, this should be the first stage, but what does order matter in a fake wedding? Hae-young needs video highlights of their romantic history to be played at the wedding. But maybe what she needs is a psychiatric evaluation, as Ji-wook says. Because who goes around alone with their camera to fake being on dates with their partner? Lol.
Ji-wook ends up planning a thoughtfully cute proposal which is true to the nature of their convenience store relationship. He arranges cup yogurt by color to spell the “marry me” and gives Hae-young a ring made from her favorite brand of jelly — which has been discontinued. But Ji-wook called the manufacturer and other stores that carried the product, and bought out the last batch in stock. “You said it’s your favorite and I wanted to see you happy,” he says to Hae-young. And anyone who says romance is dead clearly has never been swept off their feet by a K-drama male lead.
The wedding ceremony finally arrives, and we get a glass of melancholy margarita when we see Hae-young’s mom in the waiting room taking pictures with her relatives and friends. This is part of Hae-young’s plans for Mom to say goodbye to her people and vice versa, and this leaves Hee-sung and Ja-yeon with misty eyes. We’re also treated to a side-eye sandwich when Hee-sung catches the bouquet, and the significance of the action makes her boyfriend of ten years uncomfortable because he’s a chronic cheat. And she knows this, but she has chosen to ignore it for reasons best known to her.
Following the ceremony, we get a taste of honeymoon hotdogs — but ain’t nothing ~hot~ about the newlyweds staying up to count the congratulatory money. Heh. I did appreciate that Hae-young and Ji-wook were comfortable around each other and didn’t fight over the division of the bed like many a K-drama couple stuck with the one bed trope. The attraction is there, there’s a hint of awareness, but there’s little to no awkwardness between them. And I love it.
Counting the money leads to a conversation about trust, and Hae-young notes that she knows next to nothing about Ji-wook. Ji-wook then reveals that his mom moved to Canada when he was young, and his grandmother made him promise never to visit her because Mom’s new family don’t know about him. But for a while now, his mom has been trying to invite him over even though he always turns her down. This wedding was Ji-wook’s last resort to get her to stop trying because he is “planning to start his own family,” and I like that he also has a stake in the marriage.
Hae-young is pleased that Ji-wook trusts her enough to share this part of his life with her. And as someone with mommy issues of her own, she tells him to do whatever he wants regardless of his grandmother’s wishes. Hae-young might joke around with the “husband” tag, but she means it when she says Ji-wook is her priority and family, and he’s touched by her words. Ji-wook and Hae-young part ways the next morning, and in a voice over, Hae-young tells us that was the last day she saw him. Mini time skip to three months later, there’s already a new part-timer at the store (cameo by Byun Woo-seok!), and I don’t mind buying Kopiko for the rest of my life if I had part-timers like him and Kim Young-dae at my local convenience store.
In a serving of dramatic dessert, Gyu-hyun’s long-suffering secretary, YEO HA-JOON (Lee Yoo-jin), was high school classmates with Ja-yeon — and she had/still has a crush on him up to the point of naming the male lead in her webnovel after him. Aww. Ha-joon remembers Ja-yeon used to write children’s stories, but she’s too shy to tell him she has a different fanbase now — and she’s amassing more by the day (viz., Gyu-hyun stumbles on his mom’s tablet PC and is traumatized by the level of spice in her reading collection. LMAO!)
Gyu-hyun spends an entire night binging Ja-yeon’s Spice Up Our Love novel. But since he can’t bring himself to stop his mom from reading the explicit stuff, he decides to leave Joseon-level hate comments on the “debauchery” he chose to feast his eyes on. A sensible son would get his nose out of his mom’s business, but Gyu-hyun would rather “break the writer’s pen” with his comments and rob his mom of her only source of happiness and escapism. Smh. Ja-yeon has never been fazed by negative comments, but the intensity of Gyu-hyun’s bile shocks her, and she decides to sue him. Get him, girl. Do not settle!
Chairman Bok is furious when the summons arrive, and he storms into Gyu-hyun’s office to beat him up. You just know the Boks are the definition of a forked-up family when the son writes hate comments, the dad has affairs, and the mom insinuates that her son is predisposed to cause trouble because he has his father’s DNA. Tsk. For a man whose moral compass is faulty, Chairman Bok is not accepting of other people’s mistakes, and he threatens to disown Gyu-hyun if his name appears in the tabloids. This is most likely why Madam Fangirl admonished Gyu-hyun to stay vigilant if he wants to inherit the company.
When Gyu-hyun mentioned that he’s his father’s only child, his mom’s reaction suggested that she won’t be surprised if there’s another Bok offspring out there. And her statement about Chairman Bok “getting rid” of a problem from his philandering days also points in this direction. Putting the pieces together, I wouldn’t be surprised if this problem has something to do with a certain someone in Canada. In all of these forked-up family moments, though, the show’s humor always shines through, and that’s one of the things I love about it.
Gyu-hyun shows up at the police station looking like a bum to hide his identity, and Ja-yeon lurks the premises to catch a glimpse of her hater. But when they bump into each other, Gyu-hyun is taken aback to see his nemesis in the flesh, and Ja-yeon is shocked by how normal — polite, even — he is. The meet-not-cute changes Ja-yeon’s perspective as she realizes that seemingly ordinary people can be vicious behind their computer screens. The scene also highlights how Hae-young’s actions have cemented her place as a very important person in Ja-yeon’s life — from defending Ja-yeon’s writing dreams to judgmental teachers in high school to running to pick her up from the police station.
Circling back to our newest couple, Hae-young wins the in-house contest and becomes the leader of the TF team. Yay! As for Ji-wook, we see him visit Hae-young’s mom at the nursing home — which is surprisingly opposite his goshiwon. Coincidence? Maybe. But was it also a coincidence that Mom had a moment of lucidity at the wedding and addressed him as “My Ji-wook?” Ji-wook leaned in to reply “it’s me,” and now I wonder if he was among the dozen children Mom fostered. So there’s a chance he wasn’t lying about his childhood connection to Hae-young after all.
Ji-wook gets a mysterious visit from a mysterious man in a mysterious car, and the next thing we know, he shows up at Ggulbi Education with a brand new haircut and a suit! Hae-young is shocked to see her husband among the new recruits, and he swaggers up to her with an “I missed you, ma’am.” Yes, she missed you, too, but that’s not the point. Who are you and what have you done to that mini mane of glory the part-timer who was not interested in getting a corporate job? It seems this man is out to destabilize Hae-young every week with his transformations, and I’m here for it.
Two week in and I’m still having a blast with this drama. It’s a super entertaining and easy watch, and even the bits of melo surrounding Hae-young’s mom’s story and her regrets about dad’s passing don’t dampen the mood as much. Now that Ji-wook has shown up at Ggulbi, he and Hae-young are going to have to keep up the happily married ruse. And you know what that means? Noona romance, hijinks, skinship, kiss kiss and fall in love. Ha! I can’t wait.