Woohoo Waikiki 2: Episode 8

by LollyPip

Our pitiful displaced baseball player tries to find something to fill the void in his heart left behind when he loses his dream, as another housemate faces the fact that her dream may be forever out of reach. At least they have their friends, who try their best to be supportive… but hey, sometimes all you really need is chocolate, right?

 
EPISODE 8: “A Bittersweet Life/Dear My Friends

Woo-shik sees Soo-yeon taking out the trash at work, and she admits that she’s jealous of professional women who get to work doing something they like. Woo-shik asks about her dream of being a news anchor, but she says it’s not easy and classes are expensive. Woo-shik does some research that evening, and he sees that she’s right — the classes are pricey.

Ki-bong is on his way to practice before he remembers that he got kicked off the team for permanently injuring his arm. He laughs at himself and shuffles back to his room. But Woo-shik finds Ki-bong huddled in the corner trying — and failing — to stifle his sobs in his hands.

In the morning, Jung-eun tells the housemates that Ki-bong stopped eating, so Yu-ri decides that it’s time for her to get involved again. Woo-shik begs her not to, because she causes trouble every time she says that, but she tells him to trust her. Famous last words.

Woo-shik forgets his concern when he gets a call about playing an event that would cover a third of Soo-yeon’s class. He excitedly accepts, but the job turns out to be a birthday party for a gang boss’s wife at a lounge club.

He’s introduced to the boss, Kim Yong-pal (cameo by Kim Kwang-shik), who holds out a hand with bloody knuckles for Woo-shik to shake. Woo-shik blurts out, “Are you the Kim Yong-pal of the Yong Pal Gang??” Yong-pal yanks him close and tells him not to believe everything he sees on the news.

He says that he loves his wife more than anything, and asks Woo-shik to sing for her and lift her spirits. His wife Mi-young (cameo by Lee Hee-jin) arrives, and Yong-pal completely changes, going from gravelly-voiced mob boss to fawning aegyo puppy, lol. He’s also very jealous, ordering one of his men’s head shaved when Mi-young compliments his new haircut.

Yong-pal introduces Mi-young to a now-terrified Woo-shik, and she recognizes him from his days in idol group Taj Mahal. He was her bias, and he remembers her from their concerts. They hug excitedly, but Woo-shik notices Yong-pal’s dark expression and nervously peels Mi-young off his neck.

Joon-ki and Yu-ri are trying to snap Ki-bong out of his funk and convince him to eat, but he says weakly that he’d rather die now that he can’t play baseball. He tells them that he’s wanted nothing but to play baseball since he was eight, and they don’t understand how it feels to know he can never play again.

Yu-ri shows him the special chocolate she brought him, promising that it will help him feel better. He eats one just to get them to go away, but the moment he puts it in his mouth, it really does melt away all his stress. But he won’t admit it, so Joon-ki takes the chocolate and leaves.

They share the chocolate with Soo-yeon, agreeing that it’s the best they’ve ever had. Ki-bong wanders into the kitchen, supposedly for some water, and sees that there’s only one piece of chocolate left. He pretends to knock the water off the table and while everyone is distracted, he swipes the chocolate and disappears into his room.

Just as he’s putting it in his mouth, Joon-ki knocks him with the door and the chocolate falls to the floor. Joon-ki sees it and picks it up, asking if Ki-bong was planning to secretly eat it. Not wanting to admit that it did work, Ki-bong says no, so Joon-ki eats it himself and Ki-bong sinks to his knees in sorrow.

At the birthday party, Mi-young gushes all over Woo-shik and his idol days. Yong-pal tries to hold in his anger as he asks his wife what she liked about Woo-shik, and she says it was his singing. Yong-pal says he can sing too, but Mi-young says Woo-shik is better, so Yong-pal suggests they have a competition.

He says the loser will lose a finger, freaking Woo-shik out, but he backs off and says they’ll compete for a forehead-flick. Yong-pal goes first and sings Mi-young’s favorite song, and oh, he’s horrible. He only gets a 65 on the karaoke machine, and Woo-shik gets worried, knowing that he’s in trouble if he sings better than the mob boss.

He picks an old, boring song and does his best to sing off-key, but the machine gives him a perfect score. What?? Mi-young cheers, but Yong-pal glares at Woo-shik then forces him to give him the losing fore-head-flick.

Deprived of his chocolate, Ki-bong goes digging through the trash for the box to get the name of the store. Joon-ki catches him, so Ki-bong fibs that he wanted the chocolate box for keeping business cards in, snapping that he won’t be unemployed forever. A little scared, Joon-ki says that it’s trash day so the chocolate box has already been taken away. Ki-bong goes to his room to throw a tantrum, then he realizes that he can just ask Yu-ri the name of the chocolate shop, but he can’t reach her on the phone.

Woo-shik considers just running away from the party, but then he’d lose the money for Soo-yeon’s class. Mi-young brings up a fan club camping trip they went on, and how he never lost the pop-up pirate game. Yong-pal suggests another contest, this time for ten forehead-flicks, saying that he’s lucky too because he’s been stabbed forty times. Gulp.

Determined to lose, Woo-shik lets Yong-pal go first. But of course the pirate pops out of the barrel when Yong-pal inserts the sword, seeming to taunt Woo-shik as it flies through the air. He delivers Yong-pal’s forehead-flicks with a shaking hand.

By now, Woo-shik has decided that his life is more important than money. Yong-pal catches him sneaking out and says they have a matter to settle. He reaches into his pocket and Woo-shik runs for the hills — and misses out on getting paid.

Yu-ri comes home and gets the life scared out of her by what looks like a ghost… but it’s just Ki-bong, jonesing for chocolate. He asks in a creepy voice where she got the chocolate, but Yu-ri says she’ll just buy him a business card holder when he gets a job. He angrily demands the name of the chocolate shop, but Yu-ri says it’s closed, so he yells at her for coming home so late.

In the morning, Yu-ri and Jung-eun are having breakfast when a hand creeps up from under the table — HA, it’s Woo-shik, who looks terrified and insists that nothing whatsoever is wrong. Jung-eun mentions that Soo-yeon didn’t have an appetite and that something seems to be bothering her lately, and Yu-ri adds how strange Ki-bong is behaving.

Ki-bong is currently sprinting for the chocolate store, fantasizing about the deliciousness that awaits him. But when he gets there, there’s a line out the door. One man tells Ki-bong that they only sell a limited amount, then close down for the day.

Woo-shik is too scared to even go to work, worried that Yong-pal wants revenge for flicking his forehead. Mi-young calls, asking him to come over and get his money and his guitar that he left at the party. She can sense that he’s scared of Yong-pal and assured Woo-shik that he’s away on a business trip.

He shows up at her house, grabs his guitar, and tries to leave. Mi-young goes to get his money, and as he looks around the room he realizes that it’s full of photos and trophies of Yong-pal’s impressive archery prowess. As soon as Mi-young brings his money he says he needs to go earn more, but Mi-young just offers to lend it to him.

Woo-shik asks why she’s being so nice to him, and she says it’s her duty as the former president of his fan club to help him if he’s having trouble. He says he’s just a small-time entertainer (he uses the word ddandara, which has negative connotations) but Mi-young insists that he’s a star for life, cheering him up.

Ki-bong eagerly waits in line for his chocolate, but just as he’s reaching the front of the line, the store runs out of chocolate and closes. Woo-shik claws at the door, begging them to take pity on him, with no luck. But the man he talked to in line puts a hand on his shoulder, looking to Ki-bong like an angel of mercy.

Mi-young brings Woo-shik a drink, but in her excitement, she trips and flings the drink in his face. LOL. He cleans up and Mi-young brings him an old shirt and jacket of Yong-pal’s to wear, and he vows to get out of there ASAP.

Yong-pal comes home early, startling Mi-young. She tries to send him to his room to rest, but he sits in the living room to clean his bow instead. He’s still there when Woo-shik exits the restroom wearing his clothes and looking like he just got out of the shower.

Woo-shik and Mi-young try to explain, but Yong-pal doesn’t want to hear it. He’s sure he just caught them in the act, and he goes after Mi-young. She turns on Woo-shik, saying that he forced his way in and poured the drink on himself. Yong-pal picks up his bow and nocks an arrow, and Woo-shik somehow scurries out of the house to safety.

Having gotten his hands on some of the coveted chocolate, Ki-bong stops to eat it before he gets home. A baseball rolls into his foot, but when Ki-bong reaches to pick it up, his arm twinges. The boys’ playing reminds him of himself at that age, and suddenly the chocolate loses its appeal.

Yu-ri sees him and asks why he looks so sad. He tells her that the boys remind him of himself, and that back then he had no idea he’d end up like this. He wishes that someone would just tell him what to do with his life now. Yu-ri quotes “Forrest Gump,” that life is like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re going to get.

She tells Ki-bong that baseball was like a bitter chocolate that was hard to swallow, but that Kb has more chocolates left in the box. Even though baseball is over, his life isn’t, so she says he can try another chocolate and see where it leads. Ki-bong asks what happens if that one is also bitter, and Yu-ri says that he’ll just pick another one.

He asks what if that one is bitter too, and she snaps that she was just trying to have a nice conversation, geez. Ki-bong grins and says he was joking, and he opens the box and picks a piece of chocolate. Yu-ri asks for one, but Ki-bong greedily says they’re all for him and holds them up where she can’t reach them. Hee, these two are so cute.

Woo-shik runs into Mi-young on the street (I have no idea why she’s in a blonde wig), and he asks her why she betrayed him after promising to support him for life. She wails that she had to or Yong-pal would have divorced her, and when he yelps and calls her “ajumma,” she whistles and Yong-pal’s thugs chase Woo-shik away.

Not long after, Yong-pal is on the news, having been arrested along with his entire gang, and Woo-shik cries with relief. Soo-yeon changes the channel and lands on a show where Joon-ki is dressed in a dog suit. Joon-ki tries to grab the remote but Jung-eun sits on him, and they all laugh like crazy at the show.

Joon-ki whines that he had to take the stupid job because he’s behind on his bills. It’s a segment on a news show, and Jung-eun says she’s a big fan of the host and asks Joon-ki to get her an autograph. Soo-yeon asks what it’s like to be a reporter, and Joon-ki says it’s actually pretty interesting.

Jung-eun offers to do Joon-ki’s makeup for his next shoot, hoping to meet the show’s host, Jo Sang-woo. She goes all shy when she finally meets him, and Joon-ki offers to help her ask Sang-woo out.

Yu-ri has just about finished her business plan for her restaurant, but now comes the hard part — finding the money. Ki-bong returns from a job, feeling much better after Yu-ri’s peptalk and determined to start over. He says he still doesn’t know what to do, though, so Yu-ri throws out some ideas, but he has a reason why each one won’t work. She asks what he was good at before he started playing baseball, and Ki-bong says he wrote poetry.

Joon-ki takes Jung-eun to the gym where Sang-woo works out every day. He tells her to become a member, because then she can run into Sang-woo repeatedly and he’ll grow interested in her. She enrolls, then goes looking for Sang-woo and reintroduces herself to him. She tells him she just signed up at the gym, but he says it’s his last day, so she goes home to scream at Joon-ki for getting her stuck with the astronomical gym fees.

Ki-bong brings Yu-ri a poem he wrote, and he reads it very seriously. It sounds good, but he keeps stopping in the middle to give a detailed explanation of what it means (spoiler alert: it’s about baseball). He makes himself cry again and goes to wash his face, and Soo-yeon realizes that Ki-bong’s poem sounds like the lyrics to Yoon Jong-shin’s “Like It.” Yu-ri says not to tell Ki-bong and discourage him.

Joon-ki learns that Sang-woo is a member of a certain club and talks Jung-eun into joining. Unfortunately it’s a Swiss alphorn club, lol, and Sang-woo looks weirded out when he sees Jung-eun popping up again.

Ki-bong has another poem (LOL, Woo-shik’s face) which is, again, about baseball. It’s also the lyrics to EXO’s “Growl,” complete with howling (Woo-shik’s face again, I can’t). Yu-ri just tells him it’s amazing, so he runs off to write another one.

Jung-eun talks Sang-woo into teaching her to play the alphorn, and she eventually produces a tiny toot — but not from the horn. PWAHAHA. She’s humiliated, but later Sang-woo tells her that it happened to him all the time when he was learning. He says he thinks they have a special connection since they keep running into each other, and asks her to go for a drive with him tomorrow. Success!

Jung-eun gets dressed up the next day and poses excitedly with her alphorn (Joon-ki: “Are you cosplaying as a girl?” Woo-shik: “What’s the huge smoking pipe for?”). She says that Sang-woo is taking her to his villa, and Joon-ki forbids her to go on a trip when she just met the guy. Jung-eun says she’s coming back today, and Joon-ki calls her naïve, but she blows him off and leaves.

Yu-ri finds Ki-bong asleep on his desk with his pen in hand, awww. She looks at the poem he was working on, titled “Stylish Like Gangnam,” and she grumbles that she almost did the horse dance, PFFT. Ki-bong even plagiarized “Bohemian Rhapsody” (pretty cleverly, actually), and she wonders what to do about him.

Soo-yeon comes to the set to do Joon-ki’s makeup, and today he’s dressed as Tweedle Dee, lol. The PD asks Joon-ki who she is, finding her interesting. Joon-ki tells him that Soo-yeon came because Jung-eun is on a date with Sang-woo, and the PD warns him that Sang-woo has a reputation for taking girls to his villa, playing with them, then dumping them. Joon-ki frantically tries to reach Jung-eun by phone, and when she doesn’t answer, he runs off set.

Yu-ri is still thinking of how to break the bad news about his poetry to Ki-bong when she finds him staring at the TV, watching a video of Yoon Jong-shin singing “Like It.” Oddly, he says it’s the first time he’s ever heard the song. He’s never heard of the other songs she mentions, either, and Yu-ri realizes that he actually wrote those poems with no influence.

With Ki-bong gone, the PD wonders where he’ll find another reporter — then his gaze lands on Soo-yeon. Next thing she knows, Soo-yeon is in front of the camera wearing a Tweedle Dee costume, and she’s actually pretty good.

Woo-shik runs into Soo-yeon on his way home from a long, underpaid day of singing in cafes. He’s concerned about how long it will take for him to save up for Soo-yeon’s class, but she tells him that she got to fill in as a reporter today, and the scriptwriter liked her so much that she offered to help her get other gigs. Woo-shik says happily that this means he doesn’t have to sing at cafes anymore to save up money for the class, but when Soo-yeon asks what he means, he says it’s nothing.

At the villa, Sang-woo brings out some wine, but Jung-eun says he shouldn’t drink since he has to drive her home. He says casually that they can just sleep here, but instead of agreeing, Jung-eun sees right through him and storms out, saying angrily that she’ll get herself home.

Sang-woo grabs her wrist, but Joon-ki, still in his Tweedle Dee costume, runs over and smacks his hand away. Worried, he checks that Jung-eun is okay, and when she says she is, he yells at her for being too brave for her own good and coming here in the first place.

He leads her to Rebecca, but when Sang-woo sneers that he was just bored and wanted to have some fun, Joon-ki asks Jung-eun to give him a minute. He walks back to Sang-woo and says that he needs to punch him, then does just that.

Sang-woo threatens to get Joon-ki blackballed from show business, but Joon-ki says he wouldn’t take those jobs anyway. He goes back to Jung-eun, puts an arm around her, and leads her away while she gives serious thought to swooning.

 
COMMENTS

It’s interesting to realize that Ki-bong and Soo-yeon basically have the exact same problem, they’re just staring at it from completely different angles. They’re both at loose ends with no idea what to do with their futures, but for entirely different reasons. Soo-yeon always assumed she was smart and capable, but she never really had to worry about her future because she had a rich daddy, and she’s beautiful enough to land a handsome chaebol to marry and support her. But when it all fell apart, she had to face the fact that she has no skills, no talents, and there’s nothing particularly remarkable about her.

Ki-bong knows he’s not smart, but he had a marketable talent that was enough to give him his dream of playing major league baseball. But a fluke injury took it all away, and now, like Soo-yeon, he’s left with no skills and no other abilities to fall back on. The major difference between them is that Soo-yeon has a dream she can work towards, while Ki-bong just lost his dream, and is left flailing for something to do with himself. It’s no wonder he’s grasping for anything to make him feel like he’s not useless now, especially while he’s still grieving his loss.

After today’s episode, I’m fully on board all three of our ships, and there will be a reckoning if we don’t end up with three solid couples by the end of the show. Woo-shik and Soo-yeon seem like a done deal because of their past, but even though it’s fun watching Woo-shik twist himself in knots to do things for Soo-yeon, I still want to see more of them actually together. Yu-ri and Ki-bong are my clear favorites, as I’ve harped on before, and as I’ll probably harp on a lot more before it’s all over. Yu-ri is the only person Ki-bong has shown his true feelings to regarding losing his dream, and she’s the only one who cares enough to drop everything she’s doing and try to cheer him up. She’s the only housemate who doesn’t tease him for being dumb, and who worries about his feelings.

Thankfully we’re getting more togetherness between Jung-eun and Joon-ki, though at this point, feelings are still firmly in the “I’m not jealous, I’m just looking out for her as a friend” territory. But I think that’s starting to change, because Jung-eun looked pretty affected by Joon-ki’s defense of her honor back there (and by the way, how does he always manage to be so swoony even when wearing the most ridiculous outfits?). Joon-ki seemed extremely scared when he came to Jung-eun’s rescue, and we know already how he operates — once he develops real feelings, he’ll stop at nothing to make sure the girl knows it, and I’m looking forward to that very much.

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