Our news anchor returns to work with very little fanfare and finds himself at a crossroads. Will he continue to live a lie to appease those who undervalue him, or will he open his mouth and tell the truth? It’s a tough choice, but our variety show writer is there to help him through it.
EPISODES 3-4
We begin this week’s episodes with Ki-baek’s origin story. As a wee boy, his family was even worse off financially than they are in the present, and when the loan sharks came a knockin’, his mother would take Ki-baek and his brothers to a nearby playground to distract them and keep them safe. Because Ki-baek was young and innocent, he was not fully aware of the threat the loan sharks posed, so he didn’t understand why he should lie — something he’d been previously taught was bad — to avoid the men looking for his family. That’s when his mother explained to him that sometimes lies could be good, especially if they were used to protect you.
Time passes, and we see Ki-baek using more lies to fit in with his peers and to passively cultivate an image that’s outwardly more appealing to others. He mostly skirts the truth with lies of omission, failing to correct his classmates and coworkers when they make false assumptions about his life. Case in point, after a night out drinking with his coworkers, he truthfully tells them that he lives nearby in a fancy high rise, but he fails to confess that he’s housesitting for his sunbae who actually owns the apartment. (Yeah, the very sunbae that we learned last week is returning to Seoul and kicking Ki-baek to the curb.)
In the present, we join Ki-baek and Woo-joo on the beach where they’ve washed up after their impromptu cliff diving excursion. As they cough up sea water, they bicker back and forth until Woo-joo finally realizes that her good intentions were entirely misplaced. Ki-baek walks off in a huff… only to realize Ji-hoo has returned to Seoul without him. He humbles himself in order to beg Woo-joo for a ride back to the city, but because she doesn’t want either of them to get sea water on the interior of her new car, they both change into some rather embarrassing Men on the Run outfits.
These are the kind of outfits that scream “look at me,” so of course our OTP can’t simply enjoy their car ride in peace. The drama gods must interfere so that Ki-baek’s “RUN BRO” butt cheeks get some much needed exposure, and that is how our characters end up at the hospital after Woo-joo passes out from a mild case of hypothermia. While this series of scenes sets the audience up for a good laugh, it culminates with Ki-baek coaching a child to lie in order to gain the attention of the hospital staff who’d been ignoring his pleas for them to check on his unconscious brother — a somber reminder that lying not only protects but gets you ahead in this unfair world.
And speaking of things that are unfair, when Ki-baek returns to work after his forced hiatus, he’s ostracized by his co-workers and not assigned any work. And to add insult to injury, Manager Kim still gives Ki-baek the opportunity to interview for the coveted news anchor position — but only as a formality since the station has already picked the guy they want to fill the role. Even though he knows he’s just there to round out the numbers, Ki-baek attends the interview as a matter of pride.
At the same time, Woo-joo has been going through her fair share of workplace woes, too. For starters, no one likes her new variety show idea, claiming it’s outdated and unoriginal, and to make matters worse, her former hoobae, LEE HA-YOUNG (Lee Bom-sori), has now joined the team. Ha-young was completely hapless when she was a newbie under Woo-joo, but somehow she managed to become a head writer first and surpass Woo-joo in success. Woo-joo is still the head writer for their upcoming project, but Ha-young has a higher salary.
Dejected after another day of overhearing others doubt her abilities, Woo-joo wanders into Ki-baek’s interview, and it’s not going well. The switch has been flipped again, and he’s struggling to maintain his composure while the film and production crew openly ridicule him through his earpiece. He’s just itching to give them a piece of his mind. Woo-joo realizes that he’s in trouble, and — claiming that she’s his stylist — runs onto the news set to give him a last minute pep talk. She pats his chest and tells him to protect his heart, a reference to one of their earlier conversations when she told him that he needs to cheer himself up during tough times.
Her words have a calming effect on Ki-baek, who tamps down on his panic and delivers the sample news script perfectly. Even the naysayers behind the cameras compliment his delivery, but they also assume Ki-baek is another willing participant in the “shit show” the network is putting on to keep up the appearance of fairness in their hiring process. As Ki-baek listens to their conversation through his earpiece, he’s reminded of when Woo-joo asked him what the news means to him, and he chooses this moment to answer the question and reveal that he loves the news because he wants to speak the truth.
Given what we know about Ki-baek’s habitual lying, this reveal elicits another round of sympathy for his character. Poor guy spent his whole life cultivating a facade to fit in with society and prove he was worthy of nice things, but he was so burdened by the weight of his lies that he chose a career that would enable him to be unabashedly truthful. His recent experiences, however, have taught him that, while the news may be truthful, the network and his coworkers are not. And so, after waxing poetic about never wanting to lie to his viewers, Ki-baek quits his job in the middle of his interview.
Manager Kim comes bursting onto the scene because — heaven forbid — Ki-baek quits on his own terms instead of waiting for Manager Kim to drag it out slowly. Ki-baek uses Manager Kim’s presence on set as an opportunity to unleash all his pent-up frustration, point out Manager Kim’s foul smelling feet, and to deliver a truth bomb so big it must be censored with animal noises. On the way out the door, Ki-baek gives Woo-joo a wink, and she’s clearly impressed.
After quitting his job, Ki-baek debates with himself — literally, thanks to more CGI — whether he did the right thing. He’s now jobless, and because his sweet house-sitting gig is over, he has to move in with his family and occupy the space that was previously their storage closet. And, in another case of it’s-a-small-dramaland-after-all, Ki-baek’s family just so happens to live in the same building as Woo-joo. When the two reconnect on the shared rooftop garden, Ki-baek admits to her that — as crappy as his situation is now — he’d still make the same decision.
However, the burden to provide for his family is stronger than ever, and the living situation is a constant reminder of how far he has fallen — a truth bomb he delivers right to his brothers’ faces. With tensions in the family home running high, Ki-baek is desperate to find a new job. Unfortunately, his new penchant for revealing the truth — the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — makes finding a job rather difficult.
He begins to gain a new perspective, though, after reuniting with a respected sunbae who, since retiring from the news station, became a freelance announcer. In his new position, he’s an host and performer at small community shows attended mostly by ajummas. It’s the kind of work Ki-baek finds demeaning, but he’s surprised by the genuine happiness on his sunbae’s face. Either he loves this new line of work or, as Woo-joo later suggests, he’s learned to make the most of his new life and situation. His parting words to Ki-baek are to assure him that he will do better once he finds his place.
While the jobless Ki-baek struggles to find gainful employment and a new purpose, Woo-joo decides to set aside her personal feelings for the sake of her career and formally accepts Jung-heon’s offer to be on her show. He’s ecstatic, but Woo-joo is not happy that she has to partner up her ex in order to recoup some of her honor. It’s still unclear why Woo-joo and Jung-heon split in the first place, but Woo-joo alludes to the fact that Jung-heon is a liar, something we’ve already picked up on. Like Ki-baek, Jung-heon’s public persona is different from the real him; however, unlike Ki-baek, the real Jung-heon is mostly self-serving and manipulative.
After suffering through a team dinner with Jung-heon, who pretends to enjoy spicy food to maintain his public image, Woo-joo runs into Ki-baek on her way home. He saves her from nearly getting run over by a moped, and she falls into his arms post-rescue. It’s a classic rom-com moment that ends when Woo-joo runs off to avoid the awkward embarrassment. Too bad they live in the same building and neighborhood, which means she runs into him again almost immediately.
Resigned to her fate, Woo-joo joins Ki-baek for drinks and an impromptu picnic on a park bench, where they both share what’s grieving them. This time, though, it’s Ki-baek’s turn to comfort Woo-joo, and he hands her his old inspiration journal he found while unpacking. He offers to let her borrow it, as he often found himself reading it when he was down. And sure enough, when Woo-joo flips through the pages, she finds the inspiration she needs to give her variety show a new edge.
At the same time, Ki-baek has made a breakthrough with his condition. Earlier, he’d already figured out that sneezes trigger his bouts of uncontrollable truth bombs, but the action that turned them off had eluded him. That is, until he realized that his ability to lie returned every time Woo-joo touched his chest. And if you’re keeping track, that means Ki-baek was 100% in control when he quit his job and gave Manager Kim a verbal dressing down.
Now that he knows how to turn off his truth-bombs, he goes rushing to find Woo-joo. However, because she’s also looking for him to excitedly tell him that she found the hook for her new show, they keep missing each other until they finally meet on the rooftop of their building. As they both compete to fight over who tells their good news first, an empty can rolls into a soccer ball and triggers a live-sized Rube Goldberg machine that culminates in a city-wide blackout. Ki-baek takes advantage of the momentary silence to take Woo-joo’s hand and place it on his chest. When the lights come back on, he tells her, “Let’s give this a shot.”
I think it’s safe to say that Ki-baek’s seemingly romantic confession was actually him expressing his desire to use Woo-joo as his personal switch flipper, but we will have to wait until next week to see how he clears the unintentionally romantic air. The rooftop scene is abruptly cut short so we can jump ahead in time to when Woo-joo’s show begins filming. Her new-for-her show has yet to be revealed, but whatever it is, she needed Ki-baek to be a part of her cast, too. And as we see him arrive on set, we get a nice wide angle visual of Woo-joo caught in between her ex and her soon-to-be love interest.
To be honest, I’m not looking forward to this love triangle. So far, Jung-heon isn’t very likable, and given his alluded history with Ki-baek, I have a strong suspicion he’s going to be more like a villain than a second male lead. I expect lots of pettiness in our future, and the only way for him to pose as even a mild threat for Woo-joo’s affections is if he turns out to be the father of Woo-joo’s (maybe) son, GU-WON (Park Jae-joon).
Personally, it feels like the drama wants us to believe that Woo-joo is Gu-won’s workaholic mother who works at a television station, but his real mother has yet to be revealed. For Gu-won’s sake — and my own desire to like our leading lady — I sincerely hope Woo-joo isn’t Gu-won’s mother because if she is, well, I’m all sorts of judgmental. Gu-won is starved for his mother’s time and has explicitly mentioned several times that he wished his mother would come home earlier. Woo-joo, meanwhile, has demonstrated that she’s not someone who rushes home — not even after she gets off early — to spend time with Gu-won.
Then again, there’s a lot this drama is not sharing about Woo-joo, and like last week, I ended these episodes feeling like I know way more about Ki-baek and his family than I do about Woo-joo. I’m not a fan of this imbalance, and if the writer is intentionally withholding this information instead of it being a symptom of bad acting or writing, then I sincerely hope that there’s a good payoff for it. Given the rom-com genre, though, I’m leaning towards poor writing.