Move along, runners and mobsters, a new sheriff has arrived at the loser-in-love town! Serendipity has come to embrace us with a story of first loves, friendships, fun, and frozen food analogies. And if you’re a fan of any of these themes, you’re welcome to dive right in.
EPISODES 1-2
To help us understand why Hoo-young and Hong-joo have different reactions to meeting each other again, the drama takes us back ten years to their high school days. Hoo-young was the top student, liked by teachers, handsome, every girl’s dream and all of that golden boy stuff. But Hong-joo, our little Oddball, was the opposite. She’d rather immerse herself in the pages of novels than her textbooks, and attending classes was more of a suggestion than a compulsion for her.
Hoo-young and Hong-joo’s meet-cute involved him reluctantly waking her up on the bus when they arrived at the stop for school, and him refusing to be used as an excuse for her late arrival. With his golden boy ticket and his leg in a cast, Hoo-young gets a pass, but Hong-joo gets punished for coming late. This is where her one-sided beef with him begins. Hong-joo is forced to put her beef aside and play matchmaker when her best friend, KIM HYE-JI (Dasom), announces that she has a crush on Hoo-young. But Hong-joo’s attempts to make him notice Hye-ji only serves to make him notice her. Thus, Hong-joo bursts into Hoo-young’s boring life like a ray of sunshine, and years later that sun has still not set.
In the present, Hoo-young waits on pins and needles for Hong-joo to contact him because she took his phone number at the food stall. But Hong-joo is still captain of the Hoo-young x Hye-ji ship, and she gives Hye-ji the phone number instead. Hoo-young is disappointed, but he cheers up when Hye-ji invites him for a welcome party because Hong-joo will be in attendance.
At the welcome party, we meet another of their high school friends, KWON SANG-PIL (Lee Won-jung), who runs the restaurant the party is held at — and it’s not a “party” in the real sense, it’s just Hye-ji, Sang-pil, and Hoo-young in attendance. Sang-pil and Hye-ji are happy to see Hoo-young again, but you can feel the ten-year distance on Hoo-young’s part. He doesn’t even recognize Hye-ji at first sight because she’s no longer the nerdy girl he used to know. Lol. Hoo-young is here for one reason: to see Hong-joo. But Hong-joo is running late due to a work errand, and it is on this errand that she runs into BANG JOON-HO (Yoon Ji-on), a famous writer. Hong-joo has been a Joon-ho fan since high school, but now there’s a tense vibe between them. And as we’ll come to learn, Joon-ho was Hong-joo’s first love and ex-boyfriend who ditched her three years ago before leaving for abroad.
Hong-joo arrives at the welcome party totally drunk, and by this time, her fellow lightweight, Hye-ji, is also drunk. Coincidentally, Hoo-young and Hong-joo live in the same area, and Sang-pil hands Hoo-young the responsibility of getting her home safe. Before they part ways, Sang-pil tells Hoo-young not to leave town without saying goodbye like he did all those years ago. And now I’m curious about this non-goodbye story.
On their walk home, Hoo-young and Hong-joo pass by their high school, and she recalls their meet-cute. But in her version, she’s the one who woke him up in the bus, and he’s the villain who left her stranded at the school gate. For someone who picked up on Hoo-young’s non-smiling and no-facial-expressions vibes in high school, we get a sense that Hong-joo might not have been totally indifferent to him back then. And now, she admits that she’s glad he’s back. “Nice to see you again, Kang Hoo-young.”
But lest we mindlessly fall into the squee-ing puddle of meet-cutes and first loves, Hong-joo brings up a quote from a Joon-ho book she read in high school: A first love is special because there’s only one lifetime. Hong-joo says that a first love is like frozen food. Once defrosted, the first love will reach the expiration date, and “We will never be able to remember our first love with the initial feeling we had.” Long story short, one should never see their first love again. Based on how she drowned herself in alcohol after running into her first love earlier that evening, I reckon that Hong-joo is speaking for herself here. But too bad, Hoo-young says, [my first love] has started to get defrosted already. Whoop!
Hong-joo and Hye-ji meet up for hangover soup the next morning, and Hye-ji scolds our heroine for showing up late and drunk to Hoo-young’s welcome party. Hong-joo apologizes, and Hye-ji tells her to send the apology to Hoo-young. You know, Hong-joo doesn’t even need to pay for delivery. She can just drop off her apology parcel at Hoo-young’s doorstep since she just so happens to live on the first floor of his house! Dramaland is a small town, after all. But Hong-joo isn’t aware of this yet, and Hoo-young just found out when he walked her drunk ass home last night.
The girls’ pause to trash-talk Joon-ho, before the conversation shifts back to Hye-ji and her delightfully delulu crush on her first love, Hoo-young. But sorrows, sorrows, and prayers for her, because Mr. First Love is currently roping his housemate and uncle, BAEK WOOK (Choi Dae-chul), into arranging for his first love to show him around town. Hong-joo agrees to this since she and Wook are neighboring besties and all. But for some reason, Wook assumes Hye-ji is Hoo-young’s first love since he somehow knows they attended the same high school. And he wonders why Hoo-young wants to spend time with Hong-joo instead of Hye-ji.
There’s a broad term for nephew and niece in Korean, and Hong-joo assumes uncle Wook was referring to a niece. Imagine her surprise when she shows up the following morning and sees a grown man instead of a little girl. And of all people, the grown man is Hoo-young! Heh. It’s too late to back out, so Hong-joo reluctantly rolls along with the situation. Hoo-young and Hong-joo have a fun date hangout at the theme park but he loses a bet and ends up as her servant for the rest of the day. Seriously, he’s the eunuch to her Joseon king when they go play dress up with hanboks. And while his job is to take pictures of her, he captures her more with his eyes than with the camera lenses.
On the ride home, Hong-joo admits that she had a great time, but she’s quite matter-of-fact about how they won’t see each other for a while when he goes back abroad. “About what you said the other day…” Hoo-young begins, and he’s referring to when she said he should never see his first love again. But Hong-joo assumes he’s talking about something else she said, and their different conversations in the same discussion almost leads to him blurting out that she’s his first love. Hehe. Hoo-young soon catches on that Hong-joo is in a different headspace, and his relieved laughter is the cutest thing ever. Seriously, Chae Jong-hyeop has such an adorable light-up-the-universe kinda smile/laugh!
Hoo-young himself is surprised by the huge grin on his face in the pictures they took while playing dress up. But that’s what happens when you’re with the person who lights up your world, and now he’s looking forward to their next outing. Similarly, Hong-joo is surprisingly looking forward to eating fried chicken with Hoo-young. But my good sis gaslights herself into believing that her heart flutters at Hoo-young’s attempts to shield her from the rain simply because she is sexually frustrated. Lool.
Speaking of frustration, producer Hong-joo lands her next assignment at work: the animation for their tenth anniversary. And of all the writers to come onboard the project, it just had to be Joon-ho. For someone who dumped Hong-joo without a backward glance, Joon-ho seems to have no problems acting all cool and civil around her. It’s pretty shameless how he thinks he can just waltz back into her life. But guess what, Mr. Writer, Hoo-young is back in the picture. My man has decided to extend his stay in Korea “because of work, of course.”
The week wraps up with Hoo-young running into Hong-joo with Joon-ho, and he hears from Wook that Joon-ho is Hong-joo’s jerk ex-boyfriend and first love. To his credit, Hoo-young exhibits no sign of jealousy; neither does he step up to “mark his territory.” But when a conceited Joon-ho attempts a “your refusal to work with me proves that you still have feelings for me” wrist grab, Hoo-young comes forward to hold Hong-joo’s hand to show that the ship has sailed. And indeed, it has. In your face, Joon-ho!
Serendipity’s Embrace may not be on its way to telling the greatest/most tender/most explosive and heart-stopping love story yet, but honestly, I don’t think it even plans to. The drama is shaping up to be a simple and stress-free watch, and I’ll always pick simplicity in romance over serial killers and stress. I find the “My first love has a first love who has another first love” complication interesting. And amidst the dozen “fated” connections in dramaland, it’s always refreshing to watch a love story where the leads are not each other’s first love.
I will never be tired of the “he fell first and fell harder” trope and now you give me a man who has been on the floor for ten years? I’m seated for this! It does beg the question as to why Hoo-young didn’t reach out all along if Hong-joo was this unforgettable. If he didn’t run into her on the blind date, what then? But I guess it won’t be serendipity if they didn’t reconnect with each other by coincidence. Like Hoo-young’s stay in Korea, this show doesn’t have much time to spend with us. Hopefully, it devotes the precious three weeks left strictly to the romance and keeps things light and cute to the end.