People With Flaws: Episodes 3-4

by LollyPip

This episode allows us to learn a bit more about the people around our leads, and why they do the things they do. Sometimes this is flattering and sometimes not, but at least their odd behavior starts to make a bit of sense. Our insecure hero decides to get a little revenge on the woman who he believes caused all of his problems, but she’s not going to fall for his tricks as easily as he thinks.

 
EPISODE 3

At their middle school reunion, Kang-woo gets upset at Seo-yeon for interrupting his attempts to impress his former bullies. He storms over to ask who she is, and she says blandly, “I’m your first love.” He realizes with shock that she’s the girl who rejected him so cruelly that to this day, he still gets an upset stomach whenever he’s nervous.

In fact, his belly objects loudly to this revelation, so he very carefully tiptoes out of the restaurant, trying not to have an accident. He can’t find a restroom, and tragically, he ends up having an accident in his pants. His friend Hyun-soo drives by, having decided to go to the reunion when he learned Kang-woo was there, and he ends up driving home a dejected and completely pants-free Kang-woo.

When the reunion breaks up, everyone wants to go for round two, but Seo-yeon’s best friend Mi-kyung says she has to get drunk Seo-yeon home. HAHA, they were only faking, having only attended for the cheap food and with no interest whatsoever in their former classmates.

Won-jae is at a club, and while he waits for the valet to bring his car, Kang-woo’s older sister, Kang-hee, arrives. She assumes he’s the valet and waves some cash at him, snapping at him to park her car. He doesn’t say anything until the real valet turns up with his vehicle, then he tells her to show some manners, because actions speak louder than words.

Mi-kyung posts selfies with her beer online while Seo-yeon marvels at her absolute dump of an apartment. Mi-kyung asks if Seo-yeon was really Kang-woo’s first love, and Seo-yeon says that he did confess to her. She asks why his nickname is “Butthole” and Mi-kyung says it was because he pooped himself during a field trip, but Seo-yeon remembers that she couldn’t go, and they both get quiet for a moment.

Meanwhile, Kang-woo can’t sleep, so he shows up at Doctor Kim’s place in the middle of the night. Oddly, when Doctor Kim sees who’s at the door, he takes a picture down from the wall. He tries to keep Kang-woo out, but another envelope of cash gets Kang-woo in the door.

He shows Doctor Kim his finished sketch of Seo-yeon, yelping that she’s the cause of all his problems. He tells Doctor Kim how she rejected him, calling him fat and ugly, and that afterward he’d completely stopped eating. Then one night, Seo-yeon had contacted him and said she wanted to talk to him, but she never showed up.

Upset, Kang-woo had eaten everything he could get his hands on. The next day was the class field trip, and when the restrooms at the rest stop had been full, he’d ended up having a very embarrassing accident on the bus. Kang-woo yells that it’s all Seo-yeon’s fault he stopped eating, then binged and was humiliated.

Doctor Kim extrapolates that this caused Kang-woo to distance himself from women. Kang-woo reluctantly admits that he’s never dated, though he claims he’s just waiting for a woman who deserves him. But Doctor Kim says that Kang-woo has a fear of being rejected, and that the solution is to make peace with Seo-yeon.

Seo-yeon leaves Mi-kyung’s place and walks home, arriving just as Won-jae steps out of his car. She assumes he drove drunk and overreacts, but he reassures her that he had a driver bring him home, he was just sleeping in the car for a few minutes. He says that she’s not the only one who suffered a loss, and that he would never do such a thing.

They head inside to find Seo-joon panicking at having been left home alone at night, every light in the house blazing. Awww, the maknae is scared to be alone. He stomps and pouts at them, whining that Seo-yeon didn’t answer her phone when he called, and Seo-yeon apologizes. She asks if he’s heard anything else about Joo-hee, her track student who hasn’t been coming to school, but he says he hasn’t.

He does have some gossip regarding Seok-min, his fellow labelmate at Hyun-soo’s talent agency — apparently he’s a regular at the gay bar where middle brother Won-seok works. Seo-yeon warns Seo-joon not to mention this to anyone. She takes off her socks, and when Seo-joon complains that they’re stinky, she does exactly what you’d expect from a girl who was raised with three brothers — she tackles him and rubs them in his face, hee.

Over at Won-seok’s bar, the young man he previously saw lurking around ventures to come inside. The look on his face is as if he’s entered Mecca, but when he sits at the bar and orders a beer, Won-seok is curt with him. He accuses the guy of being a reporter looking for a scoop or some hidden camera footage (probably regarding Seok-min?). The kid looks crushed, and later he’s gone and his beer is left untouched.

The next day, Kang-woo is haunted by mirages of Doctor Kim telling him to settle things with Seo-yeon if he wants to get better. Doctor Kim even shows up during Kang-woo’s shower, hilariously gurgling at him to make peace, so Kang-woo decides it’s time to get some revenge.

School physician Min-hyuk adorably tries to get Seo-yeon’s attention by pretending to randomly run into her. She eyes him suspiciously when he offers her a candy bar, distrustful of his attractive looks, but he just says that sharing is nice. Seo-yeon gives Mi-kyung the candy bar, thinking Min-hyuk was mocking her, and Mi-kyung sighs that she completely missed Min-hyuk’s interest.

Kang-woo is cornered by his mother and grandmother, who still insist that he take a job with the family company. When he continues to balk, they offer him Plan B — he’ll work for the family business for one year, then after that, he’s free to do whatever he wants. Kang-woo caves, and after he leaves, Mom and Chairman Han discuss the real plan… to find Kang-woo a wife within the next year and make him stay in Korea.

Seo-joon is with one of his fellow trainees when he spots a familiar-looking girl making fried chicken deliveries on a scooter. It’s the elusive LEE JOO-HEE (Joo Hae-eun), and when he tells her that Seo-yeon is looking for her, she snaps at him to mind his own business. Luckily he thought ahead, and he texts a picture of her scooter’s license plate to Seo-yeon.

Joo-hee’s next delivery is to a park, and the customer is the scruffy woman who got kicked out of Won-jae’s car dealership. She invites Joo-hee to have some chicken, but Joo-hee declines, startled by the massive bag of cash the woman carries around.

Suddenly, Seo-yeon flies at Joo-hee, having located her through her employer. She tries to drag Joo-hee back to school, but while she has Joo-hee in a headlock, the scruffy woman knocks out Seo-yeon with Joo-hee’s helmet. When Seo-yeon wakes up, the woman apologizes that she didn’t know she was Joo-hee’s teacher.

EPISODE 4

Eventually Seo-yeon gets Joo-hee to follow her, and she asks if Joo-hee wants to keep running and go to college. Joo-hee says that she can’t make a living running, but Seo-yeon points out that she’s doing exactly that. She asks what happened to Joo-hee’s family, and Joo-hee explains that her older sister was taking care of her, but she met a guy and ran off with all their money.

On hearing that Joo-hee is staying in a sauna, Seo-yeon takes Joo-hee to her house and offers her a spare room. Joo-hee asks if Seo-yeon’s parents live here, too, so Seo-yeon plasters on a forced smile and says that they died when she was in middle school. Joo-hee worries that Seo-joon will object to her staying there, but Seo-yeon waves away her concern, and tells her about her two other brothers as well.

Seo-yeon group-texts her brothers and asks them to come home for dinner and meet their new houseguest. Won-jae and Won-seok both ignore the message, and Seo-joon is in dance rehearsal and doesn’t even see it.

Kang-woo fills in Hyun-soo on his Seo-yeon problem, though Hyun-soo doesn’t even remember Seo-yeon from school. When Kang-woo shows him his sketch, Hyun-soo recalls that she’s Mi-kyung’s friend. Kang-woo says he wants to meet with Seo-yeon and asks Hyun-soo to set them up, so Hyun-soo calls Mi-kyung and invites her to dinner, telling her to bring a friend.

She calls Seo-yeon excited, but Seo-yeon isn’t interested in going out with some rando guy. Mi-kyung threatens to drink too much and get herself into a compromising position without supervision, so Seo-yeon reluctantly agrees to go.

When they arrive at the restaurant, Mi-kyung insists on gussying up Seo-yeon a bit, hoping she hits it off with Hyun-soo’s friend. Hyun-soo is the only one in the reserved room, and he and Mi-kyung immediately begin flirting heavily. Since Hyun-soo wasn’t at the reunion, Mi-kyung tells him that Lee “Butthole” Kang-woo was there, and that he’s now fit and hot.

Seo-yeon snaps that he’s a fraud who showed up then abruptly left without pitching in for the meal. Having stepped in unnoticed, Kang-woo sneers at that, then sits next to Seo-yeon. He stays completely focused on her, making her uncomfortable, then he leans in veeery close and whispers in her ear that they should step out leave Hyun-soo and Mi-kyung alone.

She only agrees because Mi-kyung kicks her under the table, and she finds herself sitting across from Kang-woo in the main part of the restaurant. Kang-woo alternately poses and shoots Seo-yeon what he believes are irresistibly seductive looks, assuming that her stares are proof that she’s entranced by him, when she’s actually cringing internally at his attractive features.

Eventually Kang-woo stops making weird faces and gets to the point — he tells Seo-yeon that he’s interested in her. He claims that he’s spent the years since she rejected him becoming the kind of man she’d want to be with, and he asks her to date him. He’s utterly confident that Seo-yeon is going to fall at his feet in gratitude, but instead she asks if he’s been in the States all these years receiving psychiatric treatment, ha.

She yells loudly that he must be nuts to ask out a woman he barely knows, and stomps out of the restaurant with a final, “Cut the nonsense and go poop!” Flustered, Kang-woo yells back, “I don’t even have to poop right now!” Yeah, that’s not helping him look any saner, and it sets off his upset stomach again.

Seo-yeon drags Mi-kyung out of the restaurant and tells her how Hyun-soo orchestrated this whole thing so Kang-woo could ask her out. Mi-kyung remarks that Hyun-soo seemed strange too, refusing to tell her what he does for a living. They head out to finish their evening together, sisterhood intact.

Kang-woo goes home frustrated, unable to understand why Seo-yeon would reject someone with his perfect looks. Hyun-soo decides that showing up without a car but dressing rich was a mistake because Seo-yeon would assume Kang-woo is pretending to have money, so his solution is for Kang-woo to buy a new car immediately. Then Kang-woo can take her out, make her fall for him, then cruelly dump her like she dumped him.

Seo-joon arrives home to an empty house again, so he runs around nervously turning on every single light. He goes to the bathroom to wash his hair, but he remembers a ghost story he saw about a ghost in a bathroom mirror and starts to freak out. Still scared, Seo-joon gets twitchy when he hears what sounds like a woman’s voice humming from upstairs.

It’s just Joo-hee doing yoga wearing headphones, but when Seo-joon creeps up the stairs to investigate, he screams when she pops up in his face and falls down the stairs, knocking himself out. He wakes on the couch with Joo-hee sitting nearby, and his first concern is his imminent idol career being ruined by a scandal if anyone finds out a woman is living in his house.

Joo-hee pouts that she’ll just stay in her room upstairs so he doesn’t have to feel uncomfortable. Seo-joon grumbles that he has no reason to feel uncomfortable, though he’s clearly extremely uncomfortable. But when Seo-yeon and Won-jae get home, Seo-joon is sleeping like a baby, so they conclude that having Joo-hee in the house makes him feel safe. Awww.

In the morning, Seo-yeon tells her brothers that Joo-hee will be staying with them. Won-jae and Won-seok barely care, but Seo-joon continues to object. Seo-yeon points out that Joo-hee’s presence helped Seo-joon sleep so her presence is helpful, so Seo-joon informs Joo-hee that he’s going to think of her as a dog there to guard the house.

At the high school, Min-hyuk finds Mi-kyung sitting at his desk and looking out the window, which affords him a great view of the field where Seo-yeon holds her P.E. classes. She flirts with him pretty heavily but gets no response, which confirms her suspicion that he’s got a raging crush on Seo-yeon.

Hyun-soo drives Kang-woo to the car dealership to shop for a car — the same dealership where Won-jae works. He advises Kang-woo not to tell anyone what family he’s from, and says that he never tells anyone what he does for a living. They spot Seo-yeon inside collecting money for Won-jae’s share of the household expenses, but the siblings are so affectionate that it looks like she’s visiting a boyfriend.

It’s funny that Kang-woo’s main concern is whether Won-jae is more handsome than he is as he storms off. Later, Hyun-soo and Kang-woo are driving when Hyun-soo gets a call about Seok-min, his most famous idol, that has him making an emergency U-turn. They end up at Won-seok’s bar, and Hyun-soo goes inside to look for Seok-min.

Kang-woo follows him inside, and he’s startled to see Seo-yeon there, talking to Won-seok. Again, they’re only discussing household expenses, but it looks to Kang-woo that she’s dating two men. He goes a little catatonic, causing Hyun-soo to grab his face and lean in close to ask if he had another accident. This is how Seo-yeon sees them, and considering that they’re in a gay bar, she draws the most obvious conclusion.

Once he’s home again, Kang-woo topples into bed, wondering why Seo-yeon (he thinks) dates such gorgeous men but refused him. Meanwhile, Seo-yeon tells Mi-kyung that she saw Kang-woo and Hyun-soo in a gay bar looking like a couple, stating this as further proof that good-looking guys are untrustworthy.

They’re out walking, and Seo-yeon stops when she sees the scruffy woman from earlier sleeping in the park. She offers to help if the woman needs a place to stay, but the woman says she’s fine. She says to herself that Seo-yeon is a kind person and offers her the bag of cash, but Seo-yeon vehemently refuses to take it.

She takes Mi-kyung’s face mask and writes her phone number on it in lip gloss, giving it to the woman in case she ever needs anything. Looking touched, the woman asks Seo-yeon her name, and introduces herself as BAEK JANG-MI (Shin Do-hyun). After Seo-yeon and Mi-kyung leave, Jang-mi wanders to the yard of an expensive house and puts on the mask with Seo-yeon’s phone number.

The next morning, Kang-woo shows up at the high school to visit his cousin Min-hyuk. He asks what it’s like working at a school, and Min-hyuk says he likes the flexible schedule and vacations. Min-hyuk asks if Kang-woo is thinking of coming to work there, but Kang-woo says he hates kids… then he spots Seo-yeon holding class in the field.

Kang-woo goes to see Doctor Kim, still cackling with glee at his new, evil plan. He tells Doctor Kim that instead of overcoming his issue with Seo-yeon, he’s going to get revenge. The next day, Vice Principal Park introduces the school’s new chief director to the staff — and it’s Kang-woo.

He saunters in all confident, until Seo-yeon makes I will kill you gestures at him, setting off his stomach yet again.

 
COMMENTS

After seeing this episode, I liked all the characters much better once we got to know a little more about them. This show has so many characters that we were only able to get the broad strokes about them in the premiere, but with more information, their quirks seem a lot more understandable, if not entirely relatable. Hyun-soo may be a bit clueless and self-absorbed, but he’s an amazing friend to Kang-woo, helping him whenever he has an accident and always telling him it’s no big deal. Doctor Kim is definitely hiding something, possibly even his identity. He keeps hiding pictures from Kang-woo, he only agreed to treat him when Kang-woo offered cash, and his demeanor during their sessions is… less than professional. And Jang-mi is straight-up mysterious — she dresses like a homeless person, carries around what looks like hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in a bag, possibly lives in an expensive house, and seems to be developing a strange fixation on Seo-yeon. I want to like her, so I hope she doesn’t turn out to be a scary person.

I wasn’t even sure if I would like Seo-yeon’s brothers after the first episode — they seemed mostly vain and not much else. But in this episode, we got to learn more about them, and I find that there’s actually quite a lot to like about them. Eldest Won-jae particularly impresses me… he’s a gold-digger, but I wonder if that’s because he wants financial stability after raising three younger siblings from a young age himself. He’s got a solid moral center, and chastised Kang-hee for her high-handed behavior when she thought he was a valet. Won-seok seemed judgmental towards the kid who came to his bar, but I think he was protecting a famous regular (or maybe Seok-min is more than that?) from someone who was acting like a reporter might act. And little brother Seo-joon, despite his grown-up looks and self-confident swagger, is actually just an insecure little kid who lost his parents at a very young age. I’m already looking forward to him and Joo-hee getting to be friends, so that she can help him grow up a little and he can teach her that it’s okay to relax and be a kid sometimes.

Seo-yeon and Kang-woo are both pretty self-righteous and judgmental of others, but it doesn’t make them bad people, they’re just a little damaged and stunted. It’s kind of sad how Kang-woo believes that his looks are all he has to offer a partner, yet he’s never dated because although he affects a lot of swagger, he’s still extremely insecure and scared to put himself out there. I think that Seo-yeon is a kind, caring person as evidenced by her championing of those who need help, but she genuinely believes her own prejudices against attractive men, and she takes it too far by not giving any good-looking men a chance to prove her wrong. She’s very invested in being right because admitting that attractive men can be kind and loving would make her vulnerable to getting hurt again. Kang-woo and Seo-yeon’s biggest challenge will be in admitting that their core beliefs are misinformed — a handsome man can be a good, loyal partner, and a girl who was once cruel can be the way to healing.

Putting together the clues, it sounds like Seo-yeon and the guys lost their parents in a drunk driving incident, based on the way Seo-yeon reacted when she thought Won-jae drove home intoxicated. I’m assuming that’s what she called Kang-woo to talk about that night back in middle school, though why she chose him to talk to, and why she never showed, are still a mystery. But I’ll bet that incident is at the root of their misunderstandings, and that if they can untangle what really happened back then, it will go a long way towards healing them both.

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