As our genuinely misguided geneticist pursues new evidence for destined DNA love, our hard-to-tie-down hero sets his sights on pursuing her. And the more we learn about his questionable tactics to win hearts, the more sense it makes that our sidelined second male lead is interjecting himself in the middle.
EPISODES 5-6
Whoa. Whose side are we supposed to be on here? The drama has me on my toes, wanting to like Yeon-woo, but not trusting him a single scintilla. We learn this week that he’s not just a man with a lot of dates, he’s one that manipulates feelings to make women fall in love.
When we ended last time, our hero was headed for So-jin’s face with pursed lips. But before he makes contact, she headbutts him and yells, “That’s how you get to know someone?!” She’d prefer to stick to her scientific experiments for getting acquainted, thankyouverymuch. And yet, later, she can’t help but to think fondly of his forward moves.
Kang-hoon is witness to the almost kiss, putting him on the defensive for his romantically naïve bestie since birth. He tells So-jin not to fall for every man that’s nice to her, and then tries to have a serious conversation with Yeon-woo about it. When Yeon-woo casually asserts that he’s curious about So-jin, and so he wants to pursue her, Kang-hoon asks, “Are you going to make her cry like all the others?” But Yeon-woo won’t be deterred.
And so, when So-jin is assaulted at work by a (genetically) disgruntled rich lady, Yeon-woo takes So-jin out to a noraebang, where he dominates the mic until she’s tapping her feet and becoming increasingly interested in him. (It’s also where Shindong and Leeteuk show up disguised as noraebang employees to give us a cameo performance by Super Junior’s sub-unit L.S.S.)
Determined to discover her DNA match, So-jin begins working on finding a telepathy gene. (*exhales profusely* Yeah, just go with it.) The idea is that whoever is fated for you may be able to pick up on mental signals you’re sending out, or you two might even be able to feel each other’s pain.
Evidence for this? Well, So-jin is allergic to pollen and while she’s suited up in the lab looking like she’s ready for a HAZMAT team, she starts to sneeze. And this happens to be just when Yeon-woo is at a flower shop picking out the prettiest petals he can find for her.
Needless to say, buying flowers as part of his seduction plan doesn’t go over well. But the fact that our heroine may have connected to him telepathically while he was buying them is much more up her alley in terms of a come on. Problems arise, though, because our hero is a seasoned game player, looking for ways to make her feel connected to him.
There’s a moment when they both say aloud what food they’re craving (“mandu guk!”) and then see it as evidence of their telepathy. This seems like a chintzy coincidence until we find out later that Yeon-woo had asked So-jin’s friend what her favorite food was. When it came time to say what he was craving, he took a shot and it worked (a.k.a., he duped her). But our unsuspecting heroine sees it as another sign of their cosmic connection.
Kang-hoon becomes increasingly worried about So-jin’s blossoming infatuation with Yeon-woo. He tells a colleague that Yeon-woo is a dangerous guy who “has a habit of making women fall in love with him but then, when he has a change of heart, he kicks them to the curb.” And once we learn that he’s manufacturing ways to feed So-jin’s romantic fantasy, it feels like “dangerous” is not an overstatement.
As a (not-even-a-little-scientific) experiment to test their telepathy, So-jin names two locales in the city and tells Yeon-woo to meet her at the one she’s thinking of. She’ll send him mental signals, so he knows which of the two places she’ll be at, and if he arrives at the correct one, then obviously they are oh-so-destined for each other.
To the show’s credit, they end up in different places. And, even better, Yeon-woo runs into Mi-eun and So-jin runs into Kang-hoon. But while our second leads seem happy, our leads are wishing they had run into each other instead.
We keep getting little clues to throw us off kilter and make us wonder who has telepathy with whom (if it exists at all). When Yeon-woo invites So-jin to a celestial show, where they’ll be able to see the planets in the night sky without a telescope, Mi-eun stumbles onto their campsite. She introduces herself as Yeon-woo’s ex-girlfriend and the two note they have a habit of running into each other by accident. At the same time, So-jin offhandedly mentions that she can feel Kang-hoon’s pain, since they grew up together.
Later, the idea is introduced that people with more memories together might have a stronger telepathic connection (which would explain our second leads showing up all the time). As Kang-hoon keeps reiterating to So-jin, she and Yeon-woo hardly know each other. So maybe telepathy has nothing to do with fated love?
As a last-ditch effort to “prove” their telepathy, Yeon-woo gets the notion to “pre-determine a coincidence.” That is, he has his friend follow So-jin and report her whereabouts so that Yeon-woo can end up in the same place as her and call it fate. And even though the friend loses her trail, Yeon-woo determines her location and arrives to meet her, where she exclaims that the telepathy finally worked. And then he asks her out on their first real date.
Ugh. No. Just no. I like the interactions between all four leads. But how are they going to redeem Yeon-woo from this kind of emotional manipulation? He’s lying and misleading her to get her to go out with him. This is the behavior of someone with no conscience, not a romantic lead I want to root for (even if he has Siwon’s face and charm).
And yet, it’s so early that I expect to have my (judgmental) opinions upended, since there have already been some interesting turns. I really like that the show increased the danger by making me not fully trust the man we’re supposed to be falling in love with. At the moment, we don’t know if Yeon-woo’s feelings are real or not. And we’re left to question his actions and feel confused about his intentions. And if that doesn’t put you in the heroine’s shoes and make you feel like you’re dating a player, I don’t know what mind games will.