Our goddess is saved from potentially revealing her bare face at school, but a cake in the face is not the only drama she’ll have to deal with. Our heroine will do whatever it takes to protect her secret, but where she finds herself is more wild than she ever expected: caught in the middle of the war between our two heroes.
EPISODES 3-4 WEECAP
Reeling from the emotions of the cake-face near disaster, it takes Joo-kyung a second to realize what this really means: that Soo-ho has somehow stitched together the truth she’s been trying so hard to hide. How did he figure out that “ugly” manhwa Joo-kyung is the same as “goddess” Joo-kyung at school?
A flashback shows us that a second before Joo-kyung stole back the incriminating bag with manhwa and blazer, Soo-ho took a peek inside. He saw the items, saw her post-it message, and boom: the truth is out.
Poor Joo-kyung, for all her desperate attempts to hide the secret, there’s no going back now. (Importantly, she still doesn’t know that Soo-ho is the savior from the rooftop, so that should play out nicely later). But, in the meantime, what we have is a hilarious new dynamic between the two, where Joo-kyung practically becomes Soo-ho’s servant, hoping to convince him to keep her secret.
Joo-kyung scurries around in servitude so much that I was actually exhausted just watching her, but the dynamic is pretty entertaining, with so many funny dramatizations and graphics. What Joo-kyung doesn’t realize is that Soo-ho couldn’t care less about her bare face, and has no intention of revealing it — instead, he’s just getting a kick out of teasing and playfully tormenting her (like so many tsundere heroes before him).
Joo-kyung’s desperate errand-running and wish fulfillment reaches its peak when she does a sexy stage dance (to Hwasa, mwah!), thinking she’s at the school talent show — but is actually performing for all the teachers. Ack! Turns out Soo-ho watched the performance secretly from the back, and that pretty much sealed the deal. He’s a goner.
I worry about Joo-kyung, though. She can barely keep up the pace, never mind the charade, and the cruelty of people still follows her wherever she goes. When a group of boys torment her for her looks, Joo-kyung finally cracks. She’s drenched by the rain, her glasses are all fogged up, and she’s at her most broken, crying to Soo-ho that, “It’s not my fault I’m ugly.” This is when Soo-ho finally sees that what he has been doing was unkind to her, and we get a moment of wound-tending tenderness, which will always be a favorite expression of dramaland affection to me.
But the Soo-ho/Joo-kyung relationship isn’t the only one that deepens and undergoes change this week — we also see a lot more of Seo-joon this week, which calls for a giant “Yay!” The more we see of his character, the more I like him, and the backstory about the death of the boys’ idol friend, and Seo-joon’s devotion to his mother, colored in his character perfectly.
Also, as an aside, Hwang In-yub is reminding me soooo much of Lee Jun-ki in his classic bad boy role in My Girl that it actually feels like a callback of sorts — and I love everything about it.
So, Seo-joon witnessed the rain/bandage moment between Soo-ho and Joo-kyung, and quite rightly sees that Soo-ho has feelings for her. First, Seo-joon uses this as leverage, feigning interest in Joo-kyung at school just to press all of Soo-ho’s buttons (and press them hard). It works all too well, because if your bestie can’t read you, who can?
This gets even more fun, though, because Seo-joon and Joo-kyung are suddenly thrown together in what I’d almost like to call Jane Austen fashion — their mothers are acquainted, so Seo-joon and Joo-kyung immediately have a whole new level to their relationship. Between their mothers obviously shipping them as a couple, and Joo-kyung’s promise to keep Seo-joon off of his motorcycle, the two are bantering and friendly in no time.
This banter quickly turns to romantic interest for Seo-joon, though, and it’s super fun to watch him go through this quick transition from eye-rolling her, to being amused by her, to being interested in her. Seo-joon handing Joo-kyung the keys to his motorcycle was quite the swoony moment — it was as if he was saying that her wishes matter more to him than his own (which is incidentally the opposite of her relationship with Soo-ho this week).
In fact, the new cuteness between Seo-joon and Joo-kyung is so much fun that when they’re on screen together I forget about Soo-ho completely (oops!), even though he’s so clearly end-game, since he already accepts Joo-kyung in all her forms and was never once interested in her as a brainless “pretty girl.” (Another end-game clue: the fact that the two knew each other as kids at the manhwa shop.)
The love triangle has revved up at an alarming speed, and I couldn’t enjoy it more. The over-dramatic and high-pitch of these three characters’ interactions is loads of fun, but I think what makes it work the most for me right now is Joo-kyung’s utter cluelessness. She has no idea, or expectation, that they’re fighting over her, and her attempts to get the two not to meet, and to scurry off any time she can, is the icing on the cake. What a great heroine.
The love triangle pinnacle we end on this week is awesome and cheese-tastic, but hands-down my favorite moment was the epic cameo of Lee Jae-wook and Kim Hye-yoon. The two stars of Extraordinary You not only make an appearance as a couple in the drama, but they are in character as Dan-oh and Baek Kyung. And not only that, but there’s the token stage/shadow switch, and we see Dan-oh come to her senses and then run off the scene looking for her Haru. *Clutches fangirl heart*
I didn’t need another reason to love True Beauty, but if I did, that meta-licious cameo would have done it. Props to the PD here for not only making my day, but for creating such a fun, colorful follow-up to one of my favorite dramas.
