Oh My Venus: Episode 5

by LollyPip

Things get a little more personal in this episode, and some questions are answered in regards to Young-ho’s past. He’s got a lot to overcome, and it’s no wonder he’s so withdrawn and unemotional. But his wall against the world isn’t completely impenetrable, and it could be something as simple as an adorable dimple that breaks through to him.

EPISODE 5 RECAP

Joo-eun’s stalker advances on her, crouching down when she falls to the floor and giving her this creepy smile. He seems to think she should recognize him, and her fear doesn’t faze him. Joo-eun gasps out a weak, “Please save me,” and right on cue, Young-ho bursts through her front door.

Young-ho stops long enough to ask if Joo-eun knows this man, and as she shakes her head, the stranger throws the first punch. Young-ho casually puts the stalker through a series of wrestling moves, stopping between actions to check on Joo-eun and ask why she didn’t answer her phone. Later as the police cart Stalker away, we see Woo-shik, watching everything from his car.

At the station they discover that the man is Joo-eun’s downstairs neighbor, and the police assume this is just a misunderstanding. Joo-eun is horrified that they don’t take her fear seriously, especially when the officer is all, Why would he stalk someone like you? She’s actually told not to be so sensitive when she asks why the cops are discounting her version of events.

A voice rings out, “Are you happy?” and Young-ho saunters over to point out a poster indicating that women are happy in their city. He turns to Stalker to ask if he remembers him. We see that this was the man who followed Joo-eun through the rain the day she and Young-ho first met, and that Young-ho had seen him. He’d also seen Stalker carrying the poinsettia up to her place tonight.

The cops point out that the only person with injuries is Stalker, and that it could be bad if he decided to get a lawyer. Joo-eun agrees the legal system is a joke, but her voice rises when she says that all that’s needed is a bit of sincere caring for what she went through tonight. She advises they be more caring with future victims, and walks out.

Young-ho follows her and she thanks him for remembering her stalker’s face, and helping her tonight. But he’s frustrated — that she didn’t tell those jerks she’s a lawyer, and that what he did was self-defense. Why did she become a lawyer when she won’t even defend herself? He’s still angry, and offers to go beat the stalker up and she can defend him in court.

But Joo-eun stops him, saying that it’s not worth him getting hurt or worse just to punish the man. She explains that the guy would get the bare minimum punishment, if any, and that it’s because she’s a lawyer and knows this that she didn’t have higher expectations. She does thank Young-ho for helping her again, joking that he must owe her major favors from a past life.

Young-ho is still more upset than Joo-eun, and counters that if he does owe her, he must really be in her debt. She says that she can stay at Hyun-woo’s tonight, and he puts her in his car. And again, we see Woo-shik watching from the parking lot.

Joo-eun calls Hyun-woo, but her household is in an uproar — Min-joon’s grandmother is covered in bruises again, and nobody believes her anymore when she says these bruises are an accident. Young-ho drops off Joo-eun, but she goes to a seedy motel instead of her friend’s house. But Young-ho is onto her and finds her checking in, deadpanning that her “friend” sure does have a lot of rooms at her house.

He drags her out, but Joo-eun is embarrassed for him to see her like this. But she admits she’s too scared to go home, so he offers to take her somewhere “out of your world.” It reminds her of his words outside his fancy hotel suite, and she jumps to the wrong conclusion, but Young-ho pretends maidenly horror — he only meant his guest room.

With one last warning that he’s done saving her for tonight, Young-ho leaves her alone (though awww, her stuffed sloth is in the room to keep her company). In his own room, Young-ho clutches his bad knee, which we see now that he twisted when he was running up to Joo-eun’s apartment, and again when he neutralized her stalker.

In the morning, all three boys coming running to Joo-eun’s screams of, “Save me, please save me!!!” Ahaha, she has leg cramps, and is stuck in bed. Young-ho accuses her of doing this because she’s too shy to just come out, and makes her say complimentary things to him before he tells the guys to “catch the mouse” (the words for “mouse” and “cramp” sound the same in Korean).

Ji-woong gets all worked up to hear that his Ma’am has a stalker, and Young-ho hilariously takes all the credit for saving her. Joon-sung apologizes for their bland, healthy diet, and Ji-woong shares a bite of his steak, but Young-ho refuses to let her have any salt. He does produce her medications from his pocket, surprising her with his thoroughness.

All three guys exclaim over the pretty girl who’s photo is in Joo-eun’s phone, though none of them recognize it as her. HA, Young-ho looks closer at the photo, then asks for proof. She just barks at them to wait and see — when she gets thin, they’ll all fall for her beauty.

Later Young-ho laughs at Joo-eun’s claim to have been “Daegu’s Venus” and that she was every Daegu boy’s first love, but he’s distracted by his sore knee and calls Manager Min to ask him a favor. He wants to go to Daegu, but he needs a guardian. Min asks if something happened to Young-ho’s leg, but Young-ho just says that he’ll find out by going to Daegu. Interesting.

Joo-eun talks about the stalker situation with Hyun-woo and little brother Jae-hyuk, though she’s reluctant to tell her mother about it. Hyun-woo offers to let her stay at her place, but Joo-eun declines. Hyun-woo tells Jae-hyuk not to get married, and to stop mooching off his sister — well, someone had to say it. But when she’s gone, Joo-eun says she’s going to sell her place, and tells her brother to buy a store in order to provide for his new family. At least Jae-hyuk feels guilty, and offers to pay her back double.

As it turns out, Woo-shik went into the police station after everyone left the night before, and the cops had shown him some CCTV footage of Joo-eun’s stalker the first time Young-ho saved her from him. He goes to Joo-eun’s where Stalker is again climbing the stairs to bring her another pot of poinsettias, and punches the guy, warning him never to come near Joo-eun again. Stalker has the nerve to say that Woo-shik has no right, since he saw them breaking up.

Woo-shik postpones a date with Soo-jin, and she responds by calling Joo-eun to her office. She recalls Joo-eun taking her out to celebrate passing the bar exam, and hinting that she has a gift for Soo-jin. Woo-shik had joined them, bringing Soo-jin chocolates and Joo-eun a blouse, which she’d complained was too conservative.

Soo-jin’s real gift had arrived, a nerdy boy from the engineering school. A surprise blind date? That’s a crappy gift. The boy had looked like he literally wanted to hide under the table, and had asked Soo-jin to “tell Joo-eun that I get it.” Apparently this date was a surprise to him too — he’d thought he was here to meet with Joo-eun.

In his upset, he’d told Soo-jin that Joo-eun obviously pities her, and that people like her should have some common sense. Soo-jin was so hurt, she’d burst into tears right there at the table.

Back in the present, Joo-eun refuses Soo-jin’s request to take on a case, saying that it goes against the agreements she made when she was hired. She will never take on sexual assault or rape cases, even when the accused is a woman, as in this case. Soo-jin makes it clear that this is a command, and that she outranks Joo-eun. She’s cold as ice, though when Joo-eun storms out of her office, she pops a whole chocolate into her mouth.

Joon-sung’s sparring draws a crowd at the gym, and everyone agrees that he’s good enough to be the welterweight champion. Young-ho tells a colleague that he wants to compete in the lightweight category instead, because there’s no current welterweight champion, and Joon-sung wants to win a title with a challenge.

Joo-eun sighs at her boring, healthy lunch, and dreams of fried chicken and jjajangmyun. Young-ho’s spectre comes to wave her dreams away, and she wonders if the hallucinations are a side effect of the diet. She whines when she’s hungry again soon after eating, but remembering how Young-ho didn’t believe her about her photo, she gains new determination.

The little CF queen, Yi-jin (Whoops, I got her name wrong last week, sorry!), comes to the gym to talk to Joon-sung, insisting that Ji-woong let them speak alone. Joon-sung reminds her that he agreed to do the commercial, but she’s upset that he’s donating his entire pay for it — it makes her look bad.

But she’s determined to donate her pay too, so that she doesn’t seem greedy, and warns Joon-sung not to say otherwise to the press. She’s curious why he donates to charities for unwed mothers when he himself is an orphan — why not donate to orphanages? Joon-sung just gives her his famous thousand-yard stare, and when she assumes he’s staring because he likes her, he says he doesn’t. “Are you gay, then?” ~stare~

Young-ho’s stepmom, her brother, and Young-joon have dinner, and it’s interesting how rude Stepmom’s oppa is to her when there’s no rich family around to impress. Oppa is upset that Young-ho will be appointed director of the company while Young-joon is basically ignored — but he’s not truly blood-related, since his father is Grandma’s son-in-law (Young-ho’s father was married to her daughter, Young-ho’s mother, who passed away). Stepmom insists that Young-joon is still family, but Oppa tells her to wake up before it all falls apart.

Young-ho’s father arrives with flowers, but he walks right past the room where his family is eating, and into the next room, where Young-ho waits for his marriage-date. Young-ho notes that she’s late, but guesses that she’s really not coming, and that his father set him up. He leaves angry, telling his father to eat alone.

Joo-eun goes to a coffee shop with her suitcase and starts to order something nice and sweet, but Young-ho pops up behind her and changes her order to something healthier. Ha, she pokes him to make sure he’s real this time, and he is. He notices her suitcase and she says she’s staying with him until she finds a new place — Ji-woong said it was okay. I notice that Young-ho doesn’t object.

He even drives her to his place, making her hold the flowers from his father, and he sees that she brought her pot of poinsettias from Stalker. She says that even if they came from someone she hates, she shouldn’t blame the flowers for their bad beginnings.

In turn, Joo-eun notices that Young-ho bought new sheets, and figures out that he gave her his last night. He teases that he might want to have girls over, and Joo-eun congratulates him — his scandal regarding Anna Sue seems to be dying down. She realizes they aren’t heading to his place, and he says he’s going to show her his ideal woman.

He takes her to a gym where they teach jiu jitsu, and Young-ho shows her his ideal woman — a woman who can protect herself. He and Joo-eun get dressed to spar, and Young-ho proceeds to teach Joo-eun how to protect herself against any stalkers or attackers she may meet in the future. This involves getting into some pretty intimate positions, which scandalizes Joo-eun, but she’s tempted by the opportunity to attack Young-ho as much as she wants. Can’t really blame the girl.

At one point, Young-ho wraps his legs around Joo-eun and pulls her down on top of himself, and she finds her heart beating fast at the close contact. He does it again, and it brings their faces close enough for their lips to meet. Joo-eun is clearly affected, but Young-ho’s expression doesn’t change. Ha, he even flips her over and gives her a warning for too much contact.

Things get betterworse for Joo-eun when Young-ho wraps her legs around himself and tells her to look him in the eye, and this time she pulls him down face-to-face. Somehow I don’t think he’s as unaffected as he’d like her to think, and he almost looks like he’s trying not to laugh at her discomfort.

In the car afterward, Young-ho clarifies that his ideal woman is strong, because strong women are sexy. Joo-eun thought his ideal type was women like Anna Sue, and Young-ho perks up at her interest in his tastes. He brings up the “kiss” from earlier, and Joo-eun changes the subject, telling him that she’s lost a few more kilos. He starts to disagree based on what he felt tonight (grrr) making Joo-eun say she’ll worry about her own body, but Young-ho reminds her that her body belongs to him. But he does congratulate her, and calls her Daegu’s Venus in a teasing, growly voice.

Joo-eun lays awake that night, remembering the accidental kiss — and interestingly, so does Young-ho. In fact, he tosses and turns more than she does.

Joo-eun wakes in a good mood and makes everyone a healthy breakfast, and Young-ho isn’t there to see her sneak the boys extra meat. He’s on his way to Daegu with Manager Min, though when Min mentions Sun-young (the girl they’re trying to get him to marry), Young-ho quips that he and Manager Min would be a better match.

Joo-eun hears from Hyun-woo that her ex-husband, the one who produces a celebrity gossip show, has gone to America to look for John Kim. She dutifully does her exercises and eats healthy even though Young-ho is out of town, though she has to hide her excited reaction when he calls to check up on her.

She lies and claims to be relaxing with a bottle of wine, though she’s caught out when he video-calls her back and he sees her in her workout clothes. He reminds her of some things to remember in her workout, making her complain about his nagging, and he teases that she misses him and has feelings for him. She asks if he’s in America, and he has fun making her think he might be there visiting Anna Sue, enjoying her reaction.

Awww, he’s really in the hospital — it’s cute that he didn’t want her to know. Manager Min says that his doctor will start testing tomorrow, and Young-ho nervously wishes Min a good evening. Later Young-ho goes through testing on his knee, and Joo-eun texts her friend’s ex, asking if he found John Kim yet.

She sends videos of herself exercising to Young-ho as he asked, so that he can make sure she’s doing them correctly, though he mostly just seems happy to be able to see her. He even tilts nearly off his bed trying to see her face when the video is unclear. Could you possibly be any cuter right now?

Young-ho gets his test results — his osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer that he’s been fighting all his life, has finally been cured. They figure that his recent knee pain is just phantom pain, and Young-ho can hardly process the good news. He remembers frightening, painful surgical procedures from his childhood, when he’d begged his father to save him.

But the doctor is still concerned about his psychoneurosis, which causes Young-ho a lot of distress, depression, and anxiety. He does compliment Young-ho on his general health, and Young-ho says he was just trying to survive.

Manager Min takes Young-ho to a nearby hotel to get some rest, and he texts Joo-eun more exercises to work on until he gets back. Min watches over him (even bringing him a rose — yellow for friendship, awww), and Young-ho sleeps through a whole day and night. He wakes up cheerful and perky, gives Min one of his adorable finger-hearts, and says he’s ready to head home.

He walks in on Joo-eun in the middle of a balancing exercise, and startles her so much that she tilts off-center. She crashes into Young-ho and they both fall to the floor, and Young-ho is struck dumb — Joo-eun isn’t wearing her glasses, and her face is definitely thinner. She says something to him, but the sight of her adorable dimple has him so mesmerized that he doesn’t even hear her. He can only smile and poke her dimple, while she wonders what’s gotten into him.

COMMENTS

It’s about time the attraction kicked in! At least on Joo-eun’s part, because seriously, how can she not notice that her trainer is so very attractive. I’m shocked it took this long. I do think Young-ho has found Joo-eun at least interesting long since, and it’s obvious that he thinks she’s pretty darn adorable now, because who wouldn’t. Even when he expresses disbelief that she used to be “Daegu’s Venus,” he seems to be internally laughing, like he actually can believe it but he’s just yanking her chain. His facial expressions are hard to read, but I feel like he does that a lot, teasing her to get a reaction because he thinks she’s cute. But his requesting videos of Joo-eun, and his enjoyment in watching her, are the most telling — he missed her when he went out of town, and wanted to see her. It’s adorable how he tries to make it about the exercise, but he’s having a hard time hiding how amusing he finds Joo-eun lately. And I love flirty Young-ho, so I hope that side of him kicks into high gear now that he’s seeing Joo-eun as an attractive lady instead of just a project.

At least now we know what the whole stalker plotline was meant for — to give Young-ho a reason to teach Joo-eun to protect herself. It just seemed to random and shoehorned-in, so I’m glad it wasn’t just there to create tension, and served an actual narrative purpose. I’m less irritated with her damsel-in-distress act now that she’s actively doing something about it. I know people — and characters — aren’t perfect, but I do get frustrated when someone has an opportunity to change something about themselves and doesn’t, relying instead on others to take care of them. On reflection, I think that’s what bothered me about Joo-eun constantly crying to be saved… if your life is that perilous, then learn to save yourself! Now that she’s being proactive (even if it’s because someone else is making her be proactive), I’m not so annoyed. That one thing about her just seemed so out of place, when she’s so kickass in nearly every other way. Not to mention the opportunities that learning jiu jitsu offers for more skinship. I don’t think anyone will complain about that.

Because aside from the occasional helplessness, I just really love Joo-eun. She’s such an interesting and optimistic person. She sees the world in a really positive way, even when terrible things happen to her. Even small things like the pot of poinsettias — even though they came from Stalker, she still loves them for the beautiful flowers they are, and doesn’t blame them because of where they came from. I think that attitude will come into play when she starts to learn about Young-ho and his past. He’ll probably expect her to judge him based on his health and his family, while she’ll only see him for the good, caring person he is now.

I also appreciate that in this show, Young-ho really does have reason to worry about his past affecting his present relationships. So often in dramas, the conflict over a character’s past seems blown out of proportion, but in this case I feel that the concern is warranted. Young-ho has been fighting a deadly disease his whole life, and there are very few people that wouldn’t be concerned about getting into a long-term relationship with someone who could either die, or pass on those genes to any future children. Not to mention his horrifically manipulative family, who don’t even mention their plans to him before just going ahead with them. Either one of those obstacles would make a woman pause and think before entering into a marriage with Young-ho, but I think Joo-eun is just the woman to dispel his fears. I know I’m projecting future events, but I can see her being able to see him for what he is, separate and worthy despite his health and family challenges. Let’s hear it for strong, independent women.

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