The Best Hit: Episodes 13-14

by gummimochi

How I adore thee, Kwang-jae. Hyun-jae may be the celebrity in the spotlight, but my heart lies with Kwang-jae, who works hard behind the scenes supporting the ones he believes has a bright future. Dreams will come to light as well as hit rock bottom this hour, making it hard for some of our characters to imagine better days to come. But if I can be sure of anything, it’s that as long as Kwang-jae knows how important those dreams are, he’ll work to the bone to see them be realized.

 
EPISODE 13 RECAP

Everyone is startled when a man falls through the ceiling and lands on top of Hyun-jae’s memorial table. Ji-hoon recognizes the gatecrasher as Hyun-jae, explaining that he’s a friend.

Kwang-jae rushes forward to clean Hyun-jae up and usher him out without letting his face be seen. But Hyun-jae doubles back to grab his phone, so the whole family gets a full shot of his face anyway.

Stunned, Bo-hee haltingly asks, “You’re not… Yoo Hyun-jae, right?” She can’t ignore his striking resemblance to Hyun-jae, but Kwang-jae denies it right away. He scrunches up Hyun-jae’s face, and Hyun-jae explains that he’s often mistaken for the famous ’90s singer.

It only gets worse from there because Ji-hoon confesses that his friend here has been living with him in his rooftop studio. He drags Hyun-jae away while Grandpa fumes over the ruined memorial service and how he’s been haunted by Hyun-jae’s doppelganger.

Kwang-jae changes the subject and suggests that they celebrate his birthday, so they take out the birthday cake. He exaggerates his enthusiasm to fend off questions about the Hyun-jae look-alike, and Mal-sook (who calls Kwang-jae “ajusshi”) playfully dabs frosting on his nose.

Everyone applauds when Kwang-jae blows out the candles, but then something peeking out of the rug catches his eye—Ji-hoon’s ID card from Star Punch. Without another word, Kwang-jae storms out. Uh oh.

Ji-hoon drags Hyun-jae to the stairwell, where he berates Hyun-jae for crashing his family gathering. Hyun-jae argues that Ji-hoon should be thanking him for trying to make sure his family didn’t find out about his double life as a trainee.

Both of them are too engrossed in their argument to register Woo-seung and MC Drill listening in (and those two keep clapping in a corner to keep the lights on, ha). Hyun-jae doesn’t get why Ji-hoon can’t come clean to his family about his dream of becoming a singer, and Ji-hoon tells him to move out because he no longer believes Hyun-jae’s excuse of being an amnesiac.

Their argument continues at the rooftop, but it isn’t long before Kwang-jae arrives and confronts Ji-hoon about his ID card. Learning that Ji-hoon has kept his idol training secret for the past three years, Kwang-jae orders him to quit the agency tomorrow.

But Ji-hoon doesn’t want to let Dad leave without knowing how he feels, and adds that he wants to keep being a trainee. Kwang-jae points out that Ji-hoon has been chasing this dream for three years now; if it hasn’t come true by now, he should just give up and pursue something else.

That’s when Woo-seung and MC Drill come spilling out of the front door, prompting a confused Kwang-jae to wonder what they’re doing here at this hour. But then he sees the friends in their comfy clothes, and Ji-hoon confesses that they also live here with him too.

He apologizes, saying that he didn’t mean to keep everything a secret from Dad. Kwang-jae says they’ll talk later and tells the friends to return to their homes tomorrow. He also repeats his firm stance on Ji-hoon putting an end to his trainee days before storming off.

Hyun-jae follows Kwang-jae down to the street and questions if his opposition to Ji-hoon’s trainee lifestyle is because of money. He doesn’t see anything wrong with Ji-hoon following in his footsteps and acknowledges that Ji-hoon must be his son, having inherited his talents.

Kwang-jae smacks him upside the head and declares that Ji-hoon is his son. He points out that nothing about their family situation is ideal, and Bo-hee can’t even publicly acknowledge that Ji-hoon is her son.

Hyun-jae asks why she can’t, but Kwang-jae doesn’t elaborate and orders him to get lost. But Hyun-jae refuses to leave because everyone who knows why he was sent to the future resides in this building. He asks for Kwang-jae’s help in tracking down the massive amount of cash he took from World Agency (at least two billion won) over twenty years ago.

Meanwhile, Bo-hee is still fixated on how much Ji-hoon’s friend looks like Hyun-jae. Grandpa grumbles that he can’t even remember what Hyun-jae looked like anymore and reminds her that she promised to move on after Hyun-jae’s memorial service tonight.

When Kwang-jae enters the living room soon afterward, he doesn’t explain his sudden exit and sends Bo-hee and Grandpa to bed. He then takes Ji-hoon’s ID card out of his pocket and holds it in his hand.

Up on the rooftop, Woo-seung fails to try and lift Ji-hoon’s spirits and asks if he wants to be left alone. She already knows that Kwang-jae isn’t Ji-hoon’s biological father, but she listens to the story of Ji-hoon’s birth father, who was allegedly a selfish man who abandoned him and his mother before he was even born.

Ji-hoon admits that becoming a singer was the first thing he ever wanted to do with his life, but it was also the first thing he couldn’t achieve through effort alone. He thinks his dream of becoming a star was his way of showing his birth father that he was doing fine without him.

Hyun-jae tries to recover his memories, lying face down in bed with his butt stuck up in the air. He’s convinced that the bagfuls of cash must be somewhere in the apartment because the last thing he remembers is bringing the money into this space.

He then orders MC Drill to leave so he can concentrate in peace. Next thing we know, MC Drill pushes Hyun-jae out the door with his forehead and cracks his knuckles for good measure.

So Hyun-jae lies down next to Ji-hoon and Woo-seung on the deck, where Ji-hoon asks, “Who are you? Who are you to barge into someone’s life and mess up their happy life?”

Hyun-jae says that Ji-hoon didn’t appear to be particularly happy. He wonders why Ji-hoon bothered studying at an elite university if he didn’t want a boring job. He pinpoints Ji-hoon’s own cleverness getting in the way of pursuing his dream of becoming a singer, then cackles that he must’ve gotten his smart genes from his father.

He believes that becoming a singer should be as simple as singing and dancing without all that rigorous extra training, and Ji-hoon says it must be nice to think the world is that easy.

But Woo-seung admits that Ji-hoon does live his life in a way that makes it harder for himself, and Hyun-jae cracks up because he got Ji-hoon’s longtime childhood friend to agree with him. Ji-hoon flashes a bit of jealousy at their camaraderie, saying that it seems like Hyun-jae and Woo-seung are the true friends here.

Kwang-jae can’t sleep that night, thinking back to when the World Agency staff went out for a celebratory dinner after Jay-2 won the Golden Cup, where Hyun-jae announced that he’d be moving agencies. Grandpa can’t sleep either, remembering how Hyun-jae went off the grid soon afterward.

At breakfast the following morning, Kwang-jae announces to the family that he’ll be putting the rooftop studio up for rent and that Ji-hoon can stay with him in his room.

When Ji-hoon says no, Kwang-jae asks why, and that quickly turns into a back-and-forth argument that leaves the rest of the family confused. Kwang-jae doesn’t explain why they’re arguing, so Ji-hoon confesses that he isn’t studying for the civil servant exam. He asks Mom to pack some food because he’s living with three friends in his rooftop apartment, then tells Dad that his friends are good people and that he’ll have breakfast with them upstairs.

MC Drill is confused when Ji-hoon eats in the rooftop studio, but his spidey senses tingle when he hears Mom’s voice outside. He jumps inside the closet before Mom comes in carrying food, but he’s soon found out when Ji-hoon opens the closet doors to reveal his hiding space.

Mom brightens when Woo-seung emerges from the bathroom. Turns out Woo-seung’s mother used to be her stylist, and MC Drill cracks up at the story of how Woo-seung and Ji-hoon used to bathe together when they were kids.

After Woo-seung and Ji-hoon exchange reassuring smiles, Woo-seung apologizes that she can’t stay for breakfast because she has an interview today. Mom looks her up and down and asks, “Like this?”

Cut to: Woo-seung getting dolled up by the idol girl group from head to toe. She heads down to the street donning a pink dress and in heels with her hair and makeup done, then calls out to Hyun-jae, who’s been trying to get a hold of Kwang-jae.

Woo-seung gets self-conscious when Hyun-jae walks up to her and examines her appearance, but then he says he’s a terrible liar and matter-of-factly comments, “You look pretty.”

Flustered, she tells him to head upstairs and clean the whole apartment, and when he complains, she shows him the video he recorded on her phone promising to act as her slave. He obeys, and she promises to treat him to barbecue if she passes her interview today.

Hyun-jae learns from MC Drill that Woo-seung is interviewing for an internship at Star Punch Entertainment. He smacks MC Drill upside the head when the latter prays that she doesn’t get the position.

Later, Hyun-jae takes a break from cleaning and wonders why his pager beeped earlier when it shouldn’t even work in this century. He holds the pager into the air as if trying to get a signal and spins around, only to find himself face to face with Bo-hee, who’s here to hang up the laundry.

He greets her with a casual “hi” before remembering to show her manners and bows with a respectful “hello.” He gets flustered when she asks what he’s doing and nearly shows her his beeper before stuttering that he was cleaning.

He offers to help her when he sees her struggling with the laundry, then brings up how he spooked her with his unexpected drop-in last night. He doesn’t notice her looking at him, but then can’t hide his excitement when she invites him to have some bread in the bakery.

Hyun-jae mutters to himself that Kwang-jae would disapprove, but he accepts her offer anyway and digs in. It isn’t long before he catches Grandpa and Mal-sook peer at him over their reading materials. They approach him after Bo-hee leaves, and Grandpa outright accuses him of being the same Hyun-jae he knew twenty years ago.

He prods Hyun-jae to admit the truth, and Mal-sook adorably echoes his words. Hyun-jae refutes the accusation, but he slips up by calling Grandpa his old nickname of “Soon-dae” (a play on words of CEO Lee’s first name Soon-tae).

Grandpa latches on to the slip-up and points that out to Kwang-jae when he arrives at the bakery moments later. But Kwang-jae has more important news to share: Bo-hee has just scored a commercial. Grandpa is pleased, but he scowls at Hyun-jae once more before leaving. And then Hyun-jae finally breathes a sigh of relief at the close call.

 
EPISODE 14 RECAP

Kwang-jae and Bo-hee sit down with a staff member to discuss her role in the commercial where a woman will get indigestion from eating a piece of kimbap. He assures the employee that Bo-hee will play the woman in the commercial perfectly… only to be told that Bo-hee will portray the role of the kimbap. Getting angry on her behalf, Kwang-jae calls an end to this meeting and drags Bo-hee away.

He gets an earful from Grandpa for causing a scene because news travels fast in this industry. Even though he knows that they’re about to lose their property, he refuses to accept a humiliating role for money.

That’s when Grandpa admits that he recently reached out to Young-jae and proposes that they appeal to him for a loan. He even suggests that Kwang-jae imagine Young-jae as a dog and go along with his “nonsense” (literally, “a dog’s bark”) if it helps him get through the conversation.

Speaking of Star Punch, MJ waits for Young-jae in his office while sitting in his chair. He asks his manager when his contract with Star Punch will expire, then whines about conducting a trainee interview with a rich man’s daughter who might be his fan.

Woo-seung happens to arrive for her interview when the manager heads out to collect the daughter at the receptionist’s desk. He naturally assumes that Woo-seung is that daughter and leads her to the CEO’s office.

Believing that this is her internship interview, Woo-seung is thrilled to hear that she’s scored an individual interview. The manager leaves to find MJ, not knowing that he was napping in the CEO’s chair.

MJ wakes up from his catnap and barely opens his eyes to acknowledge that his interviewee has arrived. He doesn’t look at her when he plops down in a chair to start the interview, his eyes glued to his phone, and instructs her to sing. Woo-seung initially thinks that’s an odd request, but then figures it’s normal for an entertainment agency, so she gets up to sing and bust a rhyme.

She doesn’t get far before MJ stops her and asks her to dance instead. She also thinks that’s a strange request, but then gets up to bust a move anyway. MJ momentarily glances up from his phone and does a double take when he finally recognizes her from the convenience store. He identifies her with his lame nickname for her “Second Place” before cracking up at his own joke.

Young-jae listens with an air of smugness when Kwang-jae and CEO Lee come to him asking for a temporary loan to prevent the bank from seizing the building where World Agency stands. He’s still bitter about how they only paid attention to Hyun-jae back when Jay-2 was active, and ha—his face is briefly replaced by a dog’s head to emphasize the “nonsense” he’s spouting. Remembering Grandpa’s advice, Young-jae makes sure to shower Young-jae with praise, saying that Young-jae’s the winner now, having made a success of himself.

An employee briefly interrupts their conversation, and Young-jae is annoyed to be asked to decide on the trainees on the chopping block. He throws the pile of names into the trash, and Grandpa and Kwang-jae keep currying favor with him until he agrees to the loan and asks for a bank account number.

Grandpa praises Kwang-jae for holding in his feelings to get the loan, but then Kwang-jae sees Ji-hoon’s name on the top of the elimination list. He marches up to Young-jae to give him an earful about how unpredictable life can be: “No one knows what will happen in the future. Just like how a loser like you can rise to the position you hold now, no one knows how far these kids you abandon will go!”

He feels bad that the names on this list are subject to Young-jae’s poor opinion and calls himself a fool for asking Young-jae for money. Ji-hoon happens to witness the tail-end of Dad’s rant as he declares that he won’t accept Young-jae’s money and storms off.

Once back at the bakery, Grandpa wonders what led to Kwang-jae’s outburst earlier, noting that his pride won’t save their building. Kwang-jae pulls him outside so Bong-hee doesn’t hear another word, while she takes out the staff member’s business card and considers calling him about that commercial.

The interview mix-up is discovered, and MJ’s manager apologizes to Woo-seung as she leaves. She runs across the building to make it to her interview, only to be told that she has been marked a no-show. Moreover, the last round of interviews has already taken place so she can’t go in now.

She happens to notice Young-jae getting off the elevator, so she stops him to ask for another chance. Young-jae scathingly wonders why he should reward her tardiness and walks away.

He’s approached by his secretary, who informs him that the part-timer who accused MJ of plagiarizing “Come Back Again” was in fact female. Young-jae finds that strange because that part-timer supposedly looked like Hyun-jae, but he has his secretary call her right away.

Neither of them notices Woo-seung answering the call behind them, and Young-jae asks how close she is to MJ. But Woo-seung sees Young-jae on the phone and asks if she’s talking to Star Punch’s president. Flustered, he denies it while she hops over and taps on his shoulder to confirm that she’s the one on the other end.

At home, Hyun-jae finally sees the welcome email for his online fan cafe. He clicks the link to gain access to the forum and reads a series of heartwarming messages from longtime fangirls who still remember him fondly, and that makes him think that he really must have died.

There’s also a long list of suspicious points regarding his disappearance, but before clicking on each of those items, Hyun-jae sees another link taking about possible suspects. He clicks on the post and isn’t surprised to see his fans point the finger at Young-jae as a suspect, but he is shocked to see Kwang-jae’s name also on the list.

Later that night, Kwang-jae calls Hyun-jae out for a chat regarding his presence in the bakery earlier that day. He cites that it took Bong-hee at least twenty years to forget Hyun-jae, even if he has no recollection of having any romantic relations with her.

Kwang-jae tells Hyun-jae to take the mountain of cash he’s looking for and leave them. Hyun-jae counters that he was transported to the future before he could spend a dime, which prompts Kwang-jae to ask if he doesn’t remember that he and CEO Lee came knocking at his door the night Hyun-jae went off the grid.

We flash back to that rainy night when Kwang-jae came looking for Hyun-jae and instructed him to return the money and beg then-CEO Lee for forgiveness. But Hyun-jae thought he did nothing wrong in collecting the money for a group he created and wrote the songs for.

He didn’t blink an eye at the possibility of being blacklisted from the industry, and then CEO Lee barged in and offered Hyun-jae one last chance to fess up. But Hyun-jae played dumb about the stolen money and CEO Lee threatened to cut all ties with him if he walked out that door.

But Hyun-jae left and Kwang-jae recalls that they searched every nook and cranny of that studio and found nothing. Hyun-jae doesn’t know where that money could’ve gone, so his next course of action is remembering where he hid that money.

Hyun-jae draws up a suspect board to assess the entire situation from how Kwang-jae and Bo-hee live together with his alleged son Ji-hoon to how Young-jae plagiarized his songs. For now, he names Kwang-jae as the current prime suspect in his disappearance in 1994.

He hides the board under the bed when Woo-seung returns home and announces that she got the internship at Star Punch. He scoffs when she confirms that Young-jae is the CEO, then reminds her of her promise to treat him to a barbecue dinner since she got the position.

Meanwhile, we learn that Young-jae intends to follow the adage of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” and find out Woo-seung’s true motives in becoming close with MJ.

As Ji-hoon reviews his own footage of his dance practice, he’s reminded of how well Hyun-jae and Woo-seung have been getting along lately. As it turns out, he’d witnessed Hyun-jae comment on how pretty Woo-seung looked today in her dress, and agrees that he makes his life harder for himself.

Hye-ri finds him sitting alone and invites him to have dinner together because she gets one cheat day a month. That spurs Ji-hoon to ask why she’s been so nice to him lately, wondering if she has no friends or if she’s bored.

Hurt, she retracts her invitation and leaves while Ji-hoon immediately picks up when Woo-seung calls. He agrees to her dinner outing until he hears Hyun-jae’s voice on the other end. Realizing that they’re together, Ji-hoon declines the invite.

Hyun-jae gripes when he hears that Ji-hoon won’t be joining them after all, then figures it’s for the best because that’s one less rival. In love or meat? She proposes that they buy some pork belly and bring it home so they can eat as a group, but Hyun-jae whines that he’s about to faint from hunger.

Ji-hoon runs into Hye-ri at a nearby convenience store. Noticing that she’s wasting her one cheat day to eat a paltry snack, he takes her up on her offer to have dinner together. At the restaurant, she assembles a wrap for him and asks him to eat it so she can live vicariously through him.

He declines, but she insists that she wants to see him eat the wrap she made for him. But before he partakes her offer, Ji-hoon draws a clear line with her. He lets her know that he likes someone else and intends to tell that someone about his feelings soon.

Hye-ri interrupts him and commands him to eat, so Ji-hoon eats the wrap. His mouth now stuffed with food, Hye-ri confesses, “I also think I like you, so what should I do?”

Just then a voice behind him calls out his name—it’s Woo-seung, who’s here with Hyun-jae, and asks him what he’s doing here.

Epilogue

Woo-seung is about to get ready for bed when a loose floorboard squeaks under her foot. Turns out Hyun-jae was in that same storage closet on that fateful stormy night, and he lined the space with magazines before stashing the bagfuls of cash inside.

He then topped off the hidden safe with more magazines and newspapers before replacing the floorboard to perfectly conceal its location.

 
COMMENTS

Now I’m confused—is our time traveling hero an actual amnesiac? Because what I remember is Hyun-jae leaving his rooftop studio with an umbrella, but according to Kwang-jae’s memory, Hyun-jae apparently walked out into the rain without one.

It’s quite possible that the events of the first episode were snippets of the whole story, though it is telling that Hyun-jae doesn’t even remember having an argument with CEO Lee/Grandpa that night. Could it be that time continued to move on without Hyun-jae until he allegedly disappeared in 1994? Or could Hyun-jae have returned to 1993 to live out his final months until he disappeared? I know that I asked these same questions last week, but now we’re being shown two sides of the story, and I’ve gotten so used to our hero’s point of view that I don’t know what’s real anymore.

So I’m willing to wait to see how the story unfolds and hopes that it converges into a logical story in the end than trying to rack my brains and posit one theory after the next. I hope that we’ll get more clues soon because I really do enjoy getting the ’90s flashbacks and the conversations that Hyun-jae had with Kwang-jae. Speaking of whom, Kwang-jae continues to be my favorite character in this series because he deeply cares for his family, particularly Ji-hoon.

I pumped a fist in celebration when Kwang-jae declared that Ji-hoon was his son because while he believes that they don’t share a drop of blood, he’s still the one who raised Ji-hoon to adulthood. He may have been firmly against Ji-hoon’s dreams of becoming a singer, but I loved how he stood up to Young-jae when he saw that Ji-hoon was up for elimination. His speech about how awful it was that Young-jae was the deciding factor for these kids’ success was downright amazing. His family devotion was also apparent in standing up for Bo-hee’s pride in that meeting about the commercial, and I love that he’ll choose the people he loves over being looked down upon any day.

I’m also glad that Ji-hoon was there to watch his dad rail on Young-jae, even if he didn’t know that his name was on that list. He has no idea that he’s got two dads looking out for him and telling him to do something with his life in their own ways. Not only that, Ji-hoon also has two good friends who will be by his side. I thought he was shooting himself in the foot again when he declined eating out with Woo-seung and told her to eat with Hyun-jae, but I also thought it was nice that Woo-seung wanted to eat and celebrate together as a group. Now that Woo-seung will be working at Star Punch, I can foresee multiple one-sided love triangles brewing in the near future. And maybe, just maybe, MJ might have a chance after all.

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