Secret Garden: Episode 10

by girlfriday

Apparently everyone woke up on the right side of the bed this episode, because every eligible bachelor in town starts lining up at Ra-im’s door, and fighting each other like the ten-year olds that they are. Oska wins for Best Smile, Jong-soo wins for Most Embarrassed, and Joo-won wins for Sparkliest Boxers. Yup. You heard me.

 
EPISODE 10 RECAP

Joo-won discovers Ra-im and Oska mid-flirt outside her apartment, where he’s clearly been waiting for her like the stalker that he is. The best part is that Oska and Ra-im gang up on him like a pair of older siblings, just to rub it in his face. Wait, scratch that. The best part is the new tracksuit, this time hand-stitched by French artisans. HA.

Ra-im: “Why are you wearing an ajumma’s long underwear?” Heeeeee. She adds that she told him quite clearly that she didn’t want to see him anymore, so he’s either got rocks for brains, or he’s REALLY REALLY into her. I just love her right now. She’s so much better as a sassypants than the over-apologetic meek girl.

She pointedly tells “oppa” to drive home safely, and walks right past Joo-won without a word. He follows her to her door like a little kid, whining that he didn’t get a proper goodbye. She slams her front gate in his face, and he screams, “My nose is higher than other people’s! It could’ve gotten hurt! Didn’t you think of that?” Haha. Even in his rants, this guy is all about how awesome HE is. It kills me.

She goes in without a word, and Ah-young gives her a package—it’s some books she ordered. She tells Ah-young that she went to someone’s house and it had a library filled with books, and it made her wonder if he had read them all, what he was thinking when he read them, and if she read them too, she might find some truth about him that she may have missed before.

Aw. How freaking ADORABLE is that? Trying to know a person (who is outwardly unknowable) by reading the same books as him? That’s the cutest and nerdiest thing ever. It hits me right here.

She puts the copy of Alice in Wonderland on her shelf, and we see that she’s started a little collection of her own. Next to her collection of action DVDs is the beginnings of her own mini library, with the likes of 1984 and One Hundred Years of Solitude. I love that juxtaposition of their two personalities sitting side by side on her shelf. Strangely enough, it looks a lot like my bookshelf, which perhaps means I have a split personality, but that’s neither here nor there.

Joo-won follows Oska home to ask if he really meant that stuff he said to Ra-im. He throws the question of sincerity right back at Joo-won, asking if he can really take responsibility for his feelings, and for Ra-im. Joo-won: “Responsibility? Did you take responsibility for all the women you dated?” Oska: “That’s why I get cursed at.” Heh. Point taken.

Oska tells him to be honest about himself—that he isn’t the type to give up everything for a woman because he doesn’t feel the need to. He couldn’t even handle the bag incident, let alone the wave of terror that’s bound to come from his mother. He points out rather correctly that Joo-won thinks of marriage like a business deal; hence he should just meet some girl more like him, and stop with Ra-im before she gets hurt. Aw, I sort of love Oska oppa coming to her defense.

He questions Joo-won about his motives with Seul too, citing the handholding incident from the golf course. He wonders if he’s planning to marry Seul and just have some fun with Ra-im: “Rotten bastard. Take your hands off of both of them. They’re both too good for you.” Dayum. And woot, Oska! I love that Joo-won has SOMEONE in his life that’ll tell it like it is.

Joo-won sits alone in his empty palace, brooding over his hyung’s words. He puts Ra-im’s map back together, and above his own name writes, “Cowardly.”

Ra-im stays up to read Alice in Wonderland, and this time the titles on her shelf form a little poem:

Alice in wonderland
Like a fairytale
The night that Eun-ha shot through the galaxy
A bad boy is standing there
This insignificant melancholy
She walked at the pace of memory

(I’m approximating on the third title, which is a play on the name Eun-ha, the same word for galaxy, or Milky Way—it could be The Night that the Milky Way Pierced the Galaxy, but that makes no sense. Hence, the pun.)

Jong-soo records himself reading the script for Dark Blood and gives it to Ra-im, the helpfulness of which I don’t really understand, as he’s reading a script in English, in English, but anyway, she’s touched, and she trains fervently for the role.

Both Joo-won and Ra-im go back to their daily lives, and as Joo-won gets ready for work the next day, he discovers a little memo that Ra-im left behind—a printout of instructions on how to tie a tie. Ha. Something about that stirs Joo-won, whether it reminds him of the body swap, or her.

Oska gets nagged to go to his fan-signing, which he’s afraid to do, given the current plagiarism scandal. Meanwhile, Seul is still brooding over being falsely accused for leaking the song, but when her friend points out that she’s still got the wherewithal to get her hair done, Seul reminds her that even if the world is crumbling around her, the one thing a woman must guard is her appearance. Ha, the fervor of your superficiality is astounding. Truly.

Oska holds his fan-signing, which is depressingly spare at first, but a small group of fervent fans show up to cheer him on. He decides to give them signatures as Choi Woo-young, and not Oska, for their belief in him as a person. Seul decides to show up in line, and asks for a signature addressed to her as his forever love, and without a reply, he writes, “To Yoon Seul, Thank you for loving me all this time. –Oska” She reads it with tears outside.

Joo-won goes to the opera, where he of course buys three seats so that he can use both armrests for himself. (Okay, I will confess to secretly wishing I could do this, but never having the gall. Or the money, let’s be real.)

He imagines Ra-im sitting beside him, and spends the entire opera thinking of her. The next day he tells Secretary Kim that he couldn’t concentrate at all; this time he’ll need an entire row of seats, to keep the riffraff at bay. Okay, now you’re just being crazy.

He leads a presentation for a new resort that he’s got in the works, which utilizes the natural mountainside surroundings as a retreat. Director Park steals some of his thunder as soon as he finds out that Joo-won’s grandfather is stopping by for a peek.

Joo-won comes home to find Dr. Lee waiting, having just stopped by because he strangely hasn’t been calling all the time, like he usually does. She asks if he hasn’t run out of his meds, which reminds him that he hasn’t taken his meds for a while now…how was it that he slept in that tiny apartment without them?

He shakes it off and says that it seems he doesn’t need them anymore, and doesn’t explain the rest since he doesn’t actually want to be committed for being insane. Yes, I would agree. Best not to tell your shrink that you’ve been running around in a woman’s body.

He asks if people usually need to give up something in order to get something that they really want. She says yes, since usually the thing you want so ardently is outside your means. He scoffs that anything, let alone “that woman” is outside his means, or above his social standing.

Just then, a delivery arrives, and it’s all of the stuff he had bought for Ra-im’s apartment. He stares down at all of the returned boxes, and rants that she has to be so righteous and proud. Dr. Lee points out that it’s not what most women would do, and tells him that she IS out of his league. HA! Damn straight!

Oska breathes a sigh of relief as the plagiarism scandal gets reneged, and when Seul meets with Tae-sun, we find out why—Tae-sun was the original songwriter of the copied song. She offers him a contract to do any music the way he wants.

On a snowy day, Joo-won sits at home and reads Alice in Wonderland, and then plays with a smurfs app that repeats everything he says: “Omo, Kim Joo-won-sshi, do you know how long I’ve waited for your call? I miss you like crazy.” Aw, such a lonely little boy.

He goes for a walk in the snow, and then comes upon a shiny new toy that’s fun in two ways—as a video game, and as a means of torturing Oska. Oska comes over fuming that Joo-won’s snaked the arcade game he’s waited three months to get, and when he tries to take it back, Joo-won threatens to out his scandalous pictures with his ex Chae-rin. They strike a deal for Joo-won to keep it for three months, after which he’ll return the game AND the original pictures. Ha. These two. Giant kids with way too much time and money.

Oska tells Joo-won again to be honest with himself about Ra-im: “Stop with your Lovers in Paris cosplay and go back to your normal self!” Hahaha.

Joo-won actually HAS decided to stop seeing her…but not right now. Pfft. He says that he likes her too much because she’s curious and new, but that he’ll eventually probably grow tired of her, and she’ll become like every other woman in his eyes—the typical nine out of ten women who are just common. Um, shouldn’t your obsession with her and her constant refusal of your advances tell you that she’s probably that ONE in ten that you’ve never encountered before? Moron.

He thinks a few months of seeing her will do. Gah. The only reason I’m tolerating you right now is because you’re just digging your own grave. A few months of seeing her will only make you more in love with her, genius.

Oska calls him out for being a bastard, and Joo-won just sticks to his ridiculous obsession with The Little MerMistress, refusing to face the fact that HE’s the one who’s in love with her, and not the other way around. He plans to date her for a few months and have her disappear, as per Operation: MerMistress.

To that end, he shows up to the action school day after day, with some new flimsy excuse to see her: first it’s that he gained weight while she was driving his body around, and now he wants his abs back. Next he gives her the boxers she wore and washed while she was in his body, telling her to wear them. One pair is actually SEQUINED. No, really.

He then shows up to complain that he’s constipated—what did she feed his body? Pwahaha. At each turn, she calls him crazy, and eventually perverted. Yeah, I’d have to agree. Finally, he shows up to complain that his department store’s profits are down, due to something she signed off on, heart-signature and all.

She tells him that she was just following Secretary Kim’s advice, to which he says he’ll have to fire Secretary Kim then. She doesn’t want him to get fired so he offers up a trade that he gets to come see her whenever he wants, and she’ll greet him with love and gratitude and joy. Pfft. Yeah, she’ll greet you with swearing, is what she’ll do.

She makes one motion with her latte towards his be-laced tracksuit, and he freaks out, “Get mad at ME, not the clothes!” Heh.

She takes a sip and ends up with foam on her lip, which he calls out as a typical coy maneuver when women are around men. She reaches to wipe it off, but he grabs her hand out of the way and leans in, getting up out of his seat. With a soft kiss, he licks the foam off her lips. Yowza.

How is it possible that you can be so unattractively metro about your tracksuit one minute, and then make my stomach do flips with a move like that, the next? Gah.

She makes a move to hit him, and he warns her that from now on, if she hits him, he’ll do the same thing (kiss her, not hit her back). Awesome. I see lots of hitting and kissing in their future.

The action school gears up for a sageuk shoot, and Joo-won manages to tag along, with help from Ra-im’s sunbae. His outfits as an extra are just…priceless, and he tries to get his sunbae to switch outfits with him claiming that “there must be something wrong.” Heh. Serves you right to play a lowly commoner.

He’s terrible, naturally, since he refuses to lie down on the dirt to play dead (choosing instead to lie down on TOP of another dead body), and using the opportunity to attack Jong-soo, who’s on the same side in battle. Keh.

Ra-im comes out, dressed in her Damo costume, and Joo-won goes gaga. So cool to see Ha Ji-won playing Ra-im, playing this role. She does a beautiful swordfight with Jong-soo in the snow, and Joo-won watches in awe from the sidelines.

In voiceover, he remembers a line from Alice in Wonderland, about looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars, so that everything seems like a fairytale. Joo-won: “I must be suffering from the same thing. Otherwise, why is every second with that woman, who means nothing, like a fairytale?”

At lunch, he asks why on earth Ra-im does this work, when no one will ever know she was in this film, or reward her with money or anything else. She says that he’s right, but that her fellow stuntmen will remember her as she’ll remember them. She asks him how many people will remember him, or break their arm in his place. Naturally, he can say nothing, the man with zero friends.

She adds that it’s the work they’ve chosen. “What are you to judge what we do? Who the hell are you?”

The action school goes out after the shoot for some gopchang (pig intestine lining) which you’ll remember Joo-won refused to eat the last time. Ra-im does the Korean thing of putting some on everyone’s plate around her, but purposely leaves Joo-won out. She reminds him that he doesn’t eat such things. He complains that she should still offer him some regardless of whether or not he’ll eat it, asking her not to treat him differently.

She counters that being treated differently is what “his people” pay for, remember? Ha. Awesome thing to throw back in his face. One of the guys calls him out for not being a man if he can’t eat this stuff, and Joo-won postures that of course he can, which is right when Ra-im pops a piece in his mouth. Heh. Ra-im: “Chew and swallow.” Joo-won: “NO! I’m gonna melt it down!” Everyone has a good laugh at his expense, including Ra-im.

The next morning, Joo-won wakes up…in Ra-im’s bed. He turns over to find Jong-soo lying next to him. HA. He screams and Ra-im comes running in from the kitchen, and he panics, “Did we swap again?” Heh.

He asks why he’s there, and she tells him to try a little harder to remember last night…which we find out devolved into a drinking contest between Joo-won and Jong-soo. Boys.

They match each other shot for shot, and Joo-won declares drunkenly that he’s going to have breakfast with Ra-im the next morning, and that he’s going to sleep over. Jong-soo says that he can’t. Joo-won: “I’ve slept over plenty of times! You don’t even know.” Haha. Ra-im’s eyes widen in horror, “Hey!”

They end up in front of her place, and Jong-soo stops Joo-won from going in. Joo-won: “What, this is my house! I’ve lived here. I’ve worn her panties. I’ve washed her body. I brushed her teeth three times a day.” OMG I’m dying. How can he say, “I’ve worn her panties” with a straight face??

Jong-soo wakes up, confused as to where he is, tipping Joo-won off that he’s never been here before. Well that shouldn’t be news, given his demeanor with her. As Jong-soo sits down for breakfast, Joo-won washes up, and he peeks out to ask Ra-im if she threw away his toothbrush, and if he can have the blue towel, because he likes that one best. Awkwardly awesome.

The three head back out, only to be encroached upon by a THIRD suitor. Hahaha. This is becoming like a clown car of eligible bachelors. Oska appears, wanting to kidnap Ra-im for a consult on some stuntwork, and she asks Jong-soo for permission to go. He obliges, and she heads off with Oska happily.

Left behind, Joo-won asks why he just let her go. Jong-soo asks why HE didn’t do anything to stop her then. Jong-soo: “Are we…on the same side?” Joo-won wonders why he doesn’t know: the-enemy-of-my-enemy…

Oska asks Ra-im for her help on a CF that he’s shooting, and they go back and forth with their usual level of overly cutesy play-flirting, but this time Oska betrays some sincerity. She’s caught off guard and says that she’s kidding. He knows that she is, but adds that he’s being careful, because he’s growing fond of her…Ruh-roh.

She gets a call from Joo-won’s mother, and heads over to meet her. Ra-im asks tentatively if Joo-won returned the money, and Mom has a fit over her gall, thinking she’s spent they money, and then told Joo-won to pay it back. She curses her for her daring to face off with her, and when Ra-im says that her words are harsh, she grabs her water and tosses it in Ra-im’s face…only Ra-im’s got the reflexes of a stuntwoman, and dodges it swiftly.

Hilariously, she realizes what she did and apologizes, passing HER glass of water over, saying that they can go again. Hahaha. Just then, Joo-won walks in to stop his mother.

You think for a moment that he’s going to be all gallant and noble, except this is what he says:

Joo-won: Why? What for? There’s no reason for you to treat her this way. You’re wasting your energy on something useless. I didn’t say I was marrying this woman. Why are you dragging her here and making her the star of some third-rate drama? If I happen to hang my life or death on her, stop me when that time comes. This is only for a moment. You can’t even wait one moment?

 
COMMENTS

King of Bastards, Kim Joo-won. My god, I don’t know how on earth you’re going to redeem yourself in her eyes after this. Part of the enjoyment of watching you be such an ass is the light at the end of the tunnel—that we know you’re bound to change, and grow, and STOP being such an ass.

Currently, though you are falling ever deeper in love/obsession/whatever you want to call it, you’re also not growing as a person, and it pisses me off. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t dislike the drama because of this, since I clearly enjoy any chance for Joo-won to get his comeuppance, and I do love his character for all his quirks and lonely isolation. But at this point I’m rooting for Ra-im to stomp on his heart and gleefully skip away.

I love that the momentum of this episode (until the last five minutes) is that Ra-im is gaining the upper hand. She’s free because she doesn’t have the same emotional attachment that Joo-won does, and even if she’s attracted to him, his off-putting personality is enough to nip some of that in the bud. It’s actually hilarious to watch all three men stumble over each other to gain her affections, however ineffectual they may be.

In the end Joo-won is the only one who really gets under her skin, but so far most of that is a beehive of negative vibes, so I don’t blame her for hating him. Theirs will probably go down as one of the great bickering courtships, which I love, but man, if I ever found myself in that kind of relationship in REAL life, it’d be cause for an intervention.

RELATED POSTS

• Secret Garden: Episode 9
• Ha Ji-won revisits Damo for Secret Garden
• Secret Garden writer not thrilled about rampant plot speculation
• Secret Garden: Episode 8
• Secret Garden: Episode 7
• Omo, omo! Awesomely awesome Secret Garden spoiler
• Behold, the tracksuit that would not die
• Secret Garden: Episode 6
• Secret Garden: Episode 5
• Ha Ji-won’s mini fashion show for Secret Garden
• Secret Garden: Episode 4
• Secret Garden: Episode 3
• Secret Garden: Episode 2
• Secret Garden: Episode 1