I Need Romance 3: Episode 3

by girlfriday

The romance sets sail, thanks to a case of mistaken identity and a heroine who’s not so sleuthy. In her defense, she assumes Sweet Potato grew up to be some horribly disfigured man who has a vegetable for a face, and not, say, the hottie who keeps showing up and making her swoon. He’s disappointed when she can’t connect the very obvious dots and remember him, but I suppose making her fall in love with you is as good a retaliation as any?

 
SONG OF THE DAY

Namolla Family – “어떻게 널 잊어 (How Can I Forget You)” [ Download ]

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

 
EPISODE 3: “That’s not discomfort, it’s a flutter!”

In the aftermath of the car tussle where Joo-yeon attacked Wan’s car thinking it belonged to her frenemy, Wan patches her up and leans in close to say that he wants to go to a hotel. She takes the obvious leap that he means with her, and asks if he’s trying to seduce her.

He laughs to himself, but by now he’s enjoying messing with her, and asks if she’ll be seduced if he is. She’s flustered, but she has enough presence of mind to straighten her hair inside the car, and asks curiously if she appears pretty to him right now.

Wan: “If you do?” Joo-yeon: “Do you like rough girls? Ones that hit you?” Haha. She accepts that he might have weird taste, but doesn’t see how that would convince her to go to a hotel with him—doesn’t a date come first?

He says that they can go on a date next time, but today, he MUST go to the hotel. He loves letting that simmer for a beat while she fidgets, and then follows it up with: “Because I live there. I need a ride.”

She drives him there in awkward silence, her mind racing as she wonders if it’s better to apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusion, admit she’s embarrassed, or just remain silent and mysterious. She chooses silence.

He confirms that he’s moving to her neighborhood soon (if only you knew just how close), and she takes issue with the fact that he keeps calling her dangshin, which she points out means “you,” but is used between couples.

He gets out at the hotel and then comes around to the driver’s side window just to lean in and send her off with another “dangshin.” He reaches out to smooth her hair and she shrinks back, so he just brushes her shoulder and walks off, leaving her scowling that he makes her uncomfortable.

Frenemy Se-ryung takes a look at the necklace Ex Alex bought for Joo-yeon, and it’s the exact same one that she was wearing. She sighs that Joo-yeon arrived at the obvious misunderstanding.

It turns out that she’s here to recruit Alex as a PD to her company, and didn’t even know until the fight that he was dating Joo-yeon. She asks why he didn’t give her the necklace, and he says he never felt secure that she loved him, so he tried tossing out that they should break up. Se-ryung: “And she didn’t hold on?”

At home, Joo-yeon finds herself thinking about Wan’s “dangshin” at the car every time her mind wanders, and she shakes him out of her head each time, reminding herself with a clink of her wine glass filled with couple rings that she doesn’t need a thing like love.

She heads up to her attic workspace and gasps to find it totally redecorated as a bedroom. She calls Mom in an uproar asking what she did to her home office, and stomps her feet that she WILL NOT live with Sweet Potato.

Mom sends Wan a picture of the redecorated room, and he smiles when Sing Sing calls on cue. He knows she’ll be yelling, so he holds the phone away from his ear, and points out that for someone who doesn’t want to see him, she calls him an awful lot.

He figures all that’s left is moving in now that the room is ready, and Joo-yeon grits her teeth: “You try and move in here. You’ll find out what hell is.” Sweet Potato: “You try living with me. You’ll find out what heaven is.”

She asked where he learned to talk back like that, and he says she’s the one who taught him how to talk. He changes his tone for a minute and says sincerely, “Sing Sing, if we live together, we’ll be happy.” Aw. He knows what’s coming, and she barks at him to hang up on cue.

I still can’t tell what his relationship to Se-ryung is, because the next day he’s helping her put a necklace on like he’s a boyfriend, while they chat about Joo-yeon and the ex-boyfriend misunderstanding.

He asks why she doesn’t clear the air, and Se-ryung figures it doesn’t make her not the bad guy in Joo-yeon’s eyes, and won’t really change things. She admits that the day she stole that first boyfriend, she realized that she cared about feeding her own ambition and desire more than she cared about any relationship.

At work, the team is still scouting a new stylist, and Joo-yeon pounces on Hee-jae’s repeated mistakes during the presentation. The best prospect in the field is none other than Oh Se-ryung, but everyone cringes knowing that Joo-yeon has some sort of ugly past with her.

Min-jung points out that she can’t be the only one who’s heard the nasty rumors surrounding Se-ryung and how she sleeps her way to the top. She eyes both Joo-yeon and their boss Tae-yoon warily, but Joo-yeon does that thing she does so well, and masks everything behind her pride, insisting that if Se-ryung is the best for the job then she’s the best.

After the meeting, Min-jung asks Tae-yoon if he can really handle working with Se-ryung: “You’re still not over her. That’s why you’re not dating, isn’t it?” Oh. But he plays it cool, and Min-jung tsk-tsks at the pair of them acting like it won’t bother them to see Se-ryung every day. She calls them bombs, which seems pretty accurate.

Meanwhile Joo-yeon rips Hee-jae a new one for slipping in her work, and Hee-jae crumbles in tears, crying that she hasn’t slept for days. Joo-yeon doesn’t show an ounce of sympathy, and tells her this isn’t school and she isn’t her unni, so stop crying and just be better.

Hee-jae apologizes and then sneaks out to the fire escape where she’s got juice packs of soju stashed away, and takes one to the roof. She drinks and curses at Joo-yeon at the top of her lungs, and Tae-yoon overhears her and laughs. Woo-young comes up with coffees to make her feel better, and is startled to witness the display. But he just gapes with admiration that it must feel really great. Ha.

Tae-yoon goes downstairs and tells Joo-yeon with a smile that he just saw Hee-jae doing exactly what she used to, when she would curse at him. Joo-yeon swears she only ever called him a son of a bitch, and he says Hee-jae is calling her worse. Heh.

Min-jung asks why she’s always so harsh on Hee-jae, and both Joo-yeon and Tae-yoon answer in unison: “Because she shows promise.”

Min-jung gets a text from the guy she’s seeing to meet at the hotel again, and she leaves work early (after arguing that her job doesn’t leave her enough time for a proper relationship), and gets all dolled up to go out. But this time we see that her date is living next door to her, and they miss each other by two seconds at the elevator.

Sweet Potato goes to the house and calls Joo-yeon, who half-heartedly asks if he wants to meet where she is, on the other side of town. He turns the tables and says he doesn’t feel like meeting her anymore and hangs up, figuring he has twenty minutes before she gets home.

He lets himself inside and goes from room to room, smiling to find things just as they were. He sighs at her messy room and her fridge full of nothing but ginseng packets, and frowns to see that most of the plants are dying.

But the old piano makes him smile, and he talks to the picture of young Sing Sing, asking if she knew “unni” would turn out this way. Ha. He stretches out in his new room and tells the picture: “I’m back, Sing Sing. We’re going to live together now.”

He comes back out and calls Joo-yeon again, and she fumes at him for calling. He points out that she’s the one who keeps answering, and when she asks why he left her hanging on the last call, he breezes that he wanted to know what it felt like. I so enjoy their Sweet Potato-Sing Sing dynamic.

He asks where the old playground is, and she gives him directions as he walks, like “ten steps past the stone wall” and “just past the sweet potato ajusshi.” He lights up when he gets there, and sits on the swings.

Min-jung’s not-a-boyfriend Hotel Guy says he recently moved, and she declines to come over, insisting she likes their current arrangement. She’s dated enough to know she dislikes the possessiveness and the pain that accompanies love, and finds this a much happier middle ground for her.

Hee-jae calls her boyfriend after work and gets angry when he tells her where he is. I was totally expecting him to be at a club or something, but he turns out to be doing volunteer work. Lol, that’s what you were mad about?

She goes over there and gets mad at him for wasting his precious study time, wondering when he’s going to pass his exams and when they’re going to get married and when things will stop being so hard for them.

He’s sweet about it and apologizes, but it devolves into an argument and he asks why she can only think of money, wondering if she isn’t going to marry him if he doesn’t pass the civil service exam.

She gets a call from Mom nagging her to come home, and suddenly gets all smiley when she hears that Mom’s going out on a delivery. Aw, they’re so excited that he gets to come over.

They wait till Mom leaves and sneak inside, and Hee-jae shows him all the savings accounts she’s started with the various things she’s scrimped and saved on, like “When I wanted to buy clothes but didn’t,” and “When we didn’t go to a motel.” He realizes how hard it’s been for her, and they make up.

Joo-yeon gets home and then wonders if Sweet Potato got home okay. She decides to swing by the playground just in case, and he’s still sitting there on the swing. He lights up to see her and walks over expectantly.

Her eyes flicker with recognition… but then she calls him Allen and his face falls. She wonders if he already moved to the neighborhood, and it doesn’t even occur to her that they could be the same guy. She asks if he saw anyone here, “An ugly kid who reminds you of a boiled sweet potato?” Pwahaha. He shakes his head no.

He walks over to buy roasted sweet potatoes, and Joo-yeon texts Sweet Potato to ask if he left the playground. He laughs and doesn’t waste the opportunity to tease her for going there when she claimed not to want to see him.

She guffaws at the idea that she’d want to see him, but then mutters aloud that if he came all this way, he should’ve stayed a little longer.

Wan comes back and asks for her hand, and she says they don’t have a handholding sort of relationship yet. He pulls her hand out to check the wound and put warm coffee in it, nagging her to just admit she’s cold when she’s cold instead of always enduring things.

He puts his scarf and hat on her, and the hat is basically the size of her entire head. He says hesitantly that someone used to always do that for him, and when she can’t remember, he scowls to himself that all she can remember about him is that he’s ugly. I love the little looks of annoyance he throws when she’s not looking.

At work, Wan is especially tetchy with the idol group he’s working with, and Se-ryung comes by. Ah, she’s working with him to style the group. During the meeting, her assistant comes in with the proposal from the home shopping channel, and Se-ryung dismisses the meeting on the spot.

Woo-young volunteers to seek her out himself, and finds Se-ryung out at lunch with Wan. Wan recognizes him from that run-in with Joo-yeon, and that finally piques Se-ryung’s interest. She says that if Joo-yeon comes herself, she’ll take the meeting. Wan asks if she’s going to take the job, and she says no but it’s fun to mess with Joo-yeon, and he shakes her off his arm.

Joo-yeon isn’t scared off, and marches into Se-ryung’s office with her team in tow. Se-ryung cuts straight to the chase and asks to have a drink one-on-one, so the frenemies find themselves sitting across a table, icily refusing to pour each other drinks.

Se-ryung turns down the job offer flatly, insisting Joo-yeon should be apologizing first for the Alex Incident. She tells her to find out why they really broke up, because it wasn’t about her. Joo-yeon is surprised, but takes her words at face value.

She finally asks why she stole First Love John Park, and Se-ryung smirks, wondering what else she was going to win at, when Joo-yeon was always the best at everything. Se-ryung spits back that Joo-yeon technically stole him first, when she knew Se-ryung liked him.

Joo-yeon argues that Se-ryung said that about EVERY guy, wondering how anyone is supposed to take her seriously when she’s so easy with her words. Yeeeouch. By “easy” she means easy.

Se-ryung counters that she got dumped by Alex because she’s never been sincere about anything a day in her life, and that if they were really friends, easy or not, she would’ve considered Se-ryung’s feelings.

Joo-yeon decides that they should just leave the past in the past, and Se-ryung challenges her by holding out her glass. Joo-yeon swallows her pride and pours her a drink, and says they should work together so that Se-ryung can beat her at work.

Se-ryung counters that she could win right now by turning her down, and relishes the snub. It leaves Joo-yeon screaming and tearing her hair out, mortified that she let her win a round. Notably, it’s more emotion than she showed after being dumped by her long-term boyfriend.

She wails about it over the phone with Tae-yoon, who lies that he’s at home when he’s really out having a drink at a bar. It’s an old haunt that he hasn’t been to in years, and he asks after a dog named Eve, for Christmas Eve.

Se-ryung goes over Joo-yeon’s words again in the car ride home, and it reminds her of an argument she had with ex-boyfriend Tae-yoon. He tells her not to go somewhere, knowing exactly how people see her and what they say behind her back. He calls her easy, immediately wanting to take it back, but she tells him she wants to break up.

She goes to that same bar just as he’s leaving it, and orders the exact same drink. The new owner comes in with a dog (Eeee! It’s Kim Ji-suk!) and she recognizes Eve immediately.

She says she and her boyfriend found the dog in the street and they both had allergies, so they left her here with the previous owner. Strange that the bar comes with the dog, but anyway the bartender puts the pieces together and tells her that the boyfriend was just here earlier tonight. He hands her the business card that Tae-yoon left behind.

Joo-yeon is startled when Se-ryung calls her the next morning to say that she’ll take the job, and she rushes to record the call so there are no take-backs, and does a ridiculous dance of joy when she confirms it. Hee.

Suddenly she’s back to playing it cool and tells Se-ryung she’ll have to come to their office to sign the contract on Monday, and Se-ryung agrees. Joo-yeon hangs up in disbelief: “What happened? Why suddenly now? Is she on drugs?”

Her stomach growls, so she rifles through her takeout menus, and then texts Sweet Potato to see if he wants to meet up and grab lunch.

He tells her he’s busy, but then immediately calls her as Allen, lowering his voice an octave as he tells her something is gravely wrong with his car.

She meets him at the playground and he tells her to get in the car, belting her in and handing her food to eat. He tells her that the car shuts down every two hours, which she points out has little to do with the side view mirror that she kicked, but he insists on showing her.

He drives all the way to the beach—the one he went to as soon as he arrived in Korea—and she recognizes it. But she’s still too caught up in his antics, wondering why he played all these games to bring her here.

He asks her why it isn’t obvious, but she grumps that it makes her uncomfortable, and that she dislikes going in circles with murky talk. He does exactly what she used to do, and schools her on what she’s feeling:

“Something’s bubbling up to the surface in your heart, but you don’t know what it is. You dislike feeling like you’re not in control of your emotions. That’s not discomfort, but a flutter. I like you.”

She asks why, how, when his first impression of her was pretty crappy and she’s not exactly agreeable or lovable. He asks if she always starts relationships this way with so many questions, and she asks how she’s supposed to begin one without being sure of these things.

He takes a step closer, and pulls her in.

Wan: “I start with a kiss.”

Kissssssssss.

 
COMMENTS

Rawr. I’m actually shocked that he went that far without outing himself. Is he really going to date her without telling her he’s Sweet Potato? I don’t actually think he’s being malicious about it, in that he clearly wishes she’d remember and recognize him at every turn, dropping all these obvious hints and pouting when she can’t make the connection. On the other hand, he knows full well she wouldn’t date him if she knew who he was, so he’s definitely playing with fire in that sense. But at some point she’ll find out and bite his head off, so I’m not exactly worried that he won’t serve his time for the crime.

In the meantime, it makes for some hilarious developments in both relationships, and I especially like that Joo-yeon is coming around to the idea of seeing Sweet Potato the longer he holds out on her. She’s gone from dismissing him to calling first and checking to see if he’s eating, and being disappointed when she can’t see him. That makes me happier than her fluttery feelings with Allen, though of course those are extra satisfying because we know they’re the same guy.

I know it’s wrong that he’s hiding his identity from her, but she’s so guarded that he’d never get her to admit feelings if he just showed up on her doorstep as Sweet Potato, so I’m really enjoying the fact that she only sees him as a man. Now she can’t argue that an age gap is the problem or lie that she’s not attracted to him. Of course, she’s also going to be pissed, but it’s not the kind of angst-filled blowback that I dread. Plus, roommate shenanigans are nigh!

I’m loving the antagonistic-but-not-hateful friendship between Joo-yeon and Se-ryung the more we see of them, and I especially enjoy that Se-ryung isn’t just a cardboard cutout villain. She’s smart and confident and has the same weaknesses as Joo-yeon, and my favorite thing is that they like and respect each other deep down, even though they’ll fling mud and want to win more than anything. Joo-yeon’s squealing rant when she gets rejected, and then her shock and dance of joy when Se-ryung comes around—it’s delightfully childish and honest, and it makes her feel so real and relatable. I think I’m going to like the workplace drama now that Se-ryung is around to keep Joo-yeon on her toes.

 
RELATED POSTS

• I Need Romance 3: Episode 2
• I Need Romance 3: Episode 1
• Kisses and sleepovers in I Need Romance 3′s extended teaser
• Ex-boyfriend cameos galore in I Need Romance 3
• Romance (and fighting) in posters for upcoming tvN rom-coms
• The romance revs up for I Need Romance 3
• Teasers for upcoming Season 3 of I Need Romance
• Sung Joon and Namgoong Min confirm I Need Romance Season 3
• Kim So-yeon headlines I Need Romance Season 3
• I Need Romance comes back for a Season 3