One crisis leads to another, but if we know anything about our heroine it’s that she can take care of herself, thank you very much, and she’s passionate about her career. Where she’s less sure-footed is in her unrequited (?) love for her friend, but hey, wobbling your way through is okay too sometimes.
EPISODES 7-8
We have a couple of packed episodes this week, and thankfully, some much-needed definition to the relationships the drama’s been purposefully vague about. We’ve been kept from the truth not only around Jae-min’s relationship to Yi-jung, but also the truth about the “friendship” between our leads, and both arcs progress nicely this week. With only two weeks left in our drama, this slow burn pacing has been quite a delight, but I’m also ready for more.
So, we pick up where we left off last week: Yoon-jo getting confronted by the super-fuming marketing director and an all-out war over the Celltics branding. A jump back in the timeline shows us how we got to this confrontation: sales projections for Celltics were abhorrent, and Yoon-jo proposed the risky step of rebranding it now, before it’s an abject failure for Seyong.
If there is anything we have learned about Seyong, though, it’s that it’s a patriarchal nightmare ruled by “how it’s always been done” instead of what’s actually good business practice. The drama doesn’t shy away from making the male executives in this story quite terrible and without much redemptive capacity. The women, on the other hand — from the CEO to Yi-jung, Team Leader Ji, and Yoon-jo herself — are portrayed as the smart warriors that have to fight a fortress of discrimination, harassment, and general assholery.
I really like the female characters in this story, so I’m refraining from complaining that the lines here are a little too cut and dry for me. Not all men in a big leadership positions are pigs; not all women have each other’s backs and join forces. But, in the world of Race, it is such, and the women rally together and it’s great fun to watch. In short, Yoon-jo’s proposal eventually gets through, and the rebrand gets support from the top. It’s another fun way to see Yoon-jo’s worth come shining through. I mean, she even has an expensive lunch with Yi-jung and her CEO!
All the work politics and discrimination aside, the other part of our story is the internal world of our characters, and that’s coming out mostly in their love lines. For Yoon-jo, we get a totally awkward and sudden confession to Jae-min in the break room of all places. The scene is just brutal though, and beautifully understated. Yoon-jo asks him to date, Jae-min thinks she means fake-date (he much be watching too many K-dramas), and then she says she means it in earnest. Yoon-jo: “I can’t believe I’m finally confessing my feelings for you in the break room.” Jae-min: “Then don’t. Don’t do it.” Ouch. Ouuuuuuuch.
While Yoon-jo spends time trying to process what she’s just done (i.e., a multi-decade crush revealed abruptly and immediately rejected), we see what’s been happening in Jae-min’s heart. His friend Chul-joon literally does a wiggle dance after Jae-min mistakenly refers to Yoon-jo informally, thinking it means they’re dating like he suspected. But Jae-min then reveals the secret that they’re childhood friends, that they know each other too well to date, and, well, he’s into someone else. (*My heart shatters*)
But what I love about this whole new awkwardness between Jae-min and Yoon-jo is that they still care about each other deeply. So after Yoon-jo’s break room rejection, Jae-min actually seeks her out at the bus stop (much to her displeasure) and blurts out that the woman from Santiago is back in his life. And then the real killer line: I get goosebumps every time I think about her. (But interestingly, the drama also gives Jae-min the sense to know that he’s not in love with Yi-jung, but is just in the infatuation stage right now.)
They talk more on the bus ride, and awkward though it is, Yoon-jo is able to get her whole-hearted confession out to him. It’s a lovely scene in many ways, but so well-layered because it digs into the earlier questions about the perceived “social divide” that’s been between them. While Yoon-jo previously saw herself as out of Jae-min’s league, now that they’re working together and are peers, she feels like they’re finally in the same world.
As for Jae-min, it comes time to confirm that Yi-jung is indeed the woman he fell in love with so many years ago in Santiago, and who’s currently giving him goosebumps and blinding him to Yoon-jo. Jae-min calls Yi-jung one night in the heat of passion (again), and turns up at her door (!). The drama cuts the scene and makes us wait ages to learn what happened, but when we do return, we see how Yi-jung clearly, kindly, and without any nuance whatsoever, told him they were never getting together again.
For the little she is onscreen, wow I love Yi-jung and her confidence! Every time she walks into a conference room or a meeting or welcomes someone into her office, she’s got this amazing poise. I can see why both Jae-min and Yoon-jo are taken with her. (In the words of Yoon-jo, “There’s my mentor looking radiant as usual!”) Of course, Yi-jung has a hidden vulnerability like the rest of our characters — the now-teenaged daughter she once abandoned — so Yi-jung has more on her plate than facing off against executives and dealing with unwanted noona romances.
Jae-min smokes many a cigarette of sadness (aside: I still can’t get used to seeing actual smoking in a drama) and realizes that he felt about Yi-jung the same way Yoon-jo did about him: they were finally in the same world. But being in the same world hasn’t worked for Yoon-jo any more than it has for him.
Yoon-jo avoids Jae-min at work for a bit, and buries herself in a new project — the culture task force spearheaded by Yi-jung — only to be blindsided by a few factoids. Not only is Jae-min on the same task force, but she learns from Eun, and then sees firsthand, that Yi-jung is the woman Jae-min was talking about all along. Wow, talk about complicated emotions. The man you’ve liked your entire life only has eyes for the mentor you see as walking perfection? That has to hurt her self-esteem deeply. Indeed, it does — so much that it looks like Yoon-jo is going to force herself to move on. As our episodes end, she accepts Dong-hoon’s date invitation while Jae-min (dining with Chul-joon a few tables away) watches on.
This is clearly not going to work out well for Dong-hoon. And while I don’t mind the function of his character in the story, I expected we would get more of him, as he was featured as a leading character after Yi-jung. However, he’s been one of the most underutilized characters in the show, and falling into some roses is all he did this week.
But for the weak characterization of Dong-hoon, all the other characters more than make up for it — each one is far more rich than just a person filling a chair in the office, and I love the drama for that. Of course, front and center is still this friendship between Yoon-jo and Jae-min, and the delightful fact that we keep seeing Jae-min think one thing (that he doesn’t like Yoon-jo) and then act the opposite way (come on, slow burn!).
Rather than wait ages for an elevator, he runs up a million flights of stairs to meet with Yoon-jo and have a private conversation at her request. He’s concerned when he sees the scratches on her hand. He respects Yoon-jo’s need to keep her distance while she deals with his rejection. And then, even while respecting her boundaries, he lets her know how much she means to him when he pokes his head back into the stairwell after leaving her alone to brood and says, “Don’t take too long, though. I want you in my life.” More of this coming next week, I hope! *Chul-joon self-satisfied swoon*