Lie To Me: Episode 8 Open Thread

by javabeans

This episode in a nutshell (or, as I like to think of it, the weecap): Ah-jung takes care of Ki-joon when he’s sick (food-poisoned by her leftovers). She’s miffed when he doesn’t reply to her text, so Ki-joon admits that he didn’t know how to reply — if he said he was still sick, she’d worry, but if he said he was better, he was afraid she wouldn’t come to see him. Aw. He plays a joke on her by shaking her Coke behind her back, which causes it to explode, leading to a mini-food fight, pounding hearts, and an acknowledgement of their attraction. (Ah-jung: “Is this acting, or is this for real?” Ki-joon: “For real.”)

Alas, K-dramas never allow our happy couple to be happy very long before mucking up the works. Two complicators: Sang-hee and Auntie CEO. Sang-hee gets pissy to see the growing rapport between Ah-jung and Ki-joon, and tells her repeatedly that she’s misreading the situation. He tells his brother he’s really, truly over Yoon-ju and that hyung should be happy with her — his way of pushing his brother away from Ah-jung, whom he’s starting to like.

On the other hand, Auntie CEO steps in get rid of Yoon-ju, despite professing to liking her very much, because everybody in this drama thinks Sang-hee’s a poor, feeble-hearted child incapable of mature reasoning or of handling the disappointment of not getting the girl. DUDE. He may be your baby brother, but he’s still a grown-ass person. Let him deal. So Aunt calls them all together and reveals that Ki-joon and Ah-jung are secretly married. Ki-joon freaks out, chases Yoon-ju out (leaving Ah-jung behind), and reconciles with her. Phew! Boy gets around.

Ah-jung imagines the kissy reunion, is heartbroken and withdraws, blaming the lie on herself and telling the reunited couple that she’s happy for them, then bawls her heart out. And then she goes to So-ran — who has just heard that Ah-jung knows of her marital woes — and cops to the lie. Finally!

Comments: The lie is out — thank god! They’ve gotten about as much mileage out of it as can be reasonably expected, especially since the Chinese investors have now returned home. I actually think there’s a fun drama in here, but the problem is that it’s padded with so much useless filler material that the interesting stuff gets watered down and dragged out, thereby smothering what life the drama does have. (Triple-mixed-metaphor, woo!) It’s too bad that there’s so very little plot to keep the pace moving, and despite my great liking for the leads, there’s only so much dead weight that can be carried by chemistry alone.

I’m curious to see how the story changes after this — and hope that it doesn’t go off into a totally weird direction because the writer’s run out of ideas (I’m thinking I Am Legend, which turned into a different, much more tedious drama halfway through). I’m hopeful that with the lie now out in the open, we’ll finally make some narrative progress…although a part of me is nervous that it’ll just be angst city as the golden couple gets back together.

To be honest, I can’t even tell you what a relief it was to be able to watch Episodes 7 and 8 without the burden of recaps. It helps that this week’s episodes were better than last week’s, which at some points had me banging my head against my desk with frustration. But it’s also freeing to not be stuck having to recap the many boring filler scenes — the parental love triangle, the co-workers, So-ran’s tirades, which used to be fun but which are now getting tiresome, Sang-hee’s hot-and-cold angsting — because we all know that we’re basically just watching this drama for two reasons: Yoon Eun-hye and Kang Ji-hwan.

SONG OF THE DAY

As One & EZ Life – “Lovin’ Ice Cream.” Who knew this simple song would become such a prominent theme? [ Download ]

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