You Drive Me Crazy: Episodes 1-2

by LollyPip

This endearing little gem of a special aired over two years ago, but with the current crop of Very Serious Dramas airing, now seems like a good time for something short, light, and adorable. It’s a simple little story about what can happen when the lines between friendship and sex get blurred, and whether a friendship that’s suffered such a blow can recover.

 
EPISODES 1-2

Late at night, an artist named KIM RAE-WON (Kim Sun-ho) sits in front of a blank sketchbook, his earphones blocking the sound of the hooded intruder sneaking into his house. By the time Rae-won realizes anything, the intruder is standing right behind him.

He jumps up and yanks off the intruder’s hood to reveal HAN EUN-SUNG (Lee Yoo-young), his friend of eight years, who flops into his bed with a loud “Woohoo!” She flails at him as he tries to pull her off the bed, and she finally jumps up and flings off her raincoat to show that she’s in her pajamas, ha.

Eun-sung roots through Rae-won’s fridge, helping herself to his food and wine while Rae-won offers up a futile, “Hey… hey!” as if he already knows nothing he does will stop what’s about to happen. Eun-sung pouts that her apartment is flooded and begs him to let her spend the night, but Rae-won knows better — the last time something like this happened, she camped out at his place for two solid weeks.

They haggle over how long she can stay until Eun-sung pulls out the weapons-grade aegyo and scores five days. Poor Rae-won never had a chance. Eun-sung mentions that “it’s been two months,” and Rae-won starts to say something but he stops himself and goes back to work.

In the morning, Eun-sung heads out to a job translating for French presenters at a wine show. Her friend KANG JI-IN (Rye Hye-rin) asks why Eun-sung went to Rae-won’s house last night, of all places, after sleeping with him two months ago. Eun-sung yelps that it was an accident and insists that she’s not hung up on Rae-won, though Ji-in isn’t buying it.

Eun-sung’s translation job goes smoothly until one pretentious wine taster starts blabbering nonsense about how the wine reminds him of morning dew on water hyacinths and badgers and mountain ash. Eun-sung isn’t sure of some of those words in French, so she freezes up and ends up just saying that the wine is intense.

As a semi-famous painter, Rae-won is pretty popular in his neighborhood, but secretly he’s suffering from some pretty bad painter’s block. He puts down his brush without painting a single stroke and snarls at the canvas, “What did I do? Why are you glaring at me?”

He ends up at his sunbae’s bar instead, and she thinks he’s just in a slump. LEE HYUN-JI (Park Hyo-joo) says that the same thing happened to her which is why she opened the bar instead, then slyly notes that it’s been two months since “that night” with Eun-sung. Rae-won tells her that Eun-sung showed up again last night, acting like nothing ever happened (Hyun-ji: “Did she not have fun?” PFFT).

Poor Rae-won has lost his mojo in other areas, too… he tries to flirt with the waitress, Seo-jung, but she cuts him off saying that she’s heard he’s a player. He lives in a gorgeous house, but his fridge is a disaster, and just to make things weirder, he discovers that Eun-sung apparently brought along her pet hedgehog. HAHA.

While making dinner that night, Rae-won complains about the hedgehog, but Eun-sung just coos over cute little Bok-go (“He’s nocturnal and he loves baths, just like you!” LOL). Rae-won makes her put Bok-go on the floor while they eat, and soon they fall into their old pattern of teasing banter.

Eun-sung complains that her clients don’t see translators as humans, but more like transformers who can flip back and forth between languages. She says that Rae-won has it easy, a famous painter who lives in a nice house and drives a nice car, though he’s quick to point out that the house belongs to his parents and the car was left behind when his sister got married.

As Rae-won de-bones his fish, Eun-sung exclaims over how good he is with his hands and wonders cheekily if he’s ever thought of being an artist, ha. Rae-won asks how long the repairs will take at Eun-sung’s apartment, and she’s oddly evasive about answering (wanna bet there’s no flood?). Rae-won sighs in irritation, but not because of Eun-sung’s presence — it’s because hedgehog Bok-go is snorfling his foot, hee.

After dinner, Eun-sung and Rae-won have a few drinks. Conversation turns from Rae-won’s house to Eun-sung’s job, and it’s clear they’re making headway in banishing the awkwardness in their friendship. Then Eun-sung brings it screaming back by asking if Rae-won is dating anyone, and he says he’s focusing on his work, which leads to discussion of all his past girlfriends.

Eun-sung teases Rae-won for being a player who dates a lot. She shyly asks if he slept with all of them and he says no. She confesses that she slept with her exes, but Rae-won points out that she dated the same guy for five years, ha. Apparently that guy got his next girlfriend pregnant within a month and got engaged, and Rae-won says he unfriended him on social media for posting constant sonogram pictures.

Rae-won gets a little cranky when Eun-sung keeps talking about her ex, so she promises to stop. She pouts that Rae-won is her only friend, then starts to say something about That Night, but her phone rings with a job offer and distracts her (poor Rae-won, it’s killing him!).

Later, Rae-won is reading in bed when he hears Eun-sung shrieking from the living room. She has a job tomorrow translating for a horror movie director, so she’s watching the director’s movie and she’s scared witless. Rae-won reluctantly sits to keep her company and she latches onto his arm and won’t let go, and she doesn’t notice how she’s affecting him by her close proximity.

Rae-won’s arm is numb by the time the movie is over, so Eun-sung offers to massage it, which leads to an awkward-but-adorable tickle/giggle fest. When Eun-sung finally lets go, Rae-won gets all weird again and heads to bed. He comes back with a little disco ball projector thingy which flashes multicolored lights for Eun-sung to use as a nightlight. She gives it a weird look and complains that it will keep her awake, but she’s soon fast asleep.

In the morning, Eun-sung almost leaves the house with eye makeup on only one eye, so Rae-won makes her sit while he does the other eye. It puts his face all up close to hers, so she ends up either staring at his eyes or his lips, leaving her feeling as she travels to her job. Awww, even the director compliments how pretty her eyes look.

Rae-won visits Hyun-ji’s bar again and flirts with Seo-jung, who still isn’t having any of his nonsense (he asks her what she likes to do for fun and she says, “Eat, drink, and be alone,” a girl after my own heart!). Hyun-ji warns him to keep away from Seo-jung, who has very strict parents.

He heads home and procrastinates by cleaning every inch of his house. Soon it’s time to face his blank canvas again, but he only makes a few strokes before calling it quits. He takes a nap instead and gets woken up by Eun-sung’s hedgehog Bok-go snorfling his foot again, and by the time Eun-sung gets home from her translating job, Rae-won has built Bok-go an entire hedgehog house.

Eun-sung brought home the food she couldn’t eat during the day because she was busy translating, and when Rae-won says he’s out of alcohol, she takes down a jug of his father’s plum wine and they dip into it. The wine reminds Eun-sung of another time when Rae-won’s dad opened one of the wine jugs to celebrate her getting a job and she got really drunk.

Rae-won remembers it, too, because she got sick and clogged his toilet, HAHA. He laughs at how big and impressive the poop was, embarrassing Eun-sung, making her whine that he doesn’t see her as a woman. She asks if he has anything to say to her about That Night two months ago, and he says no, so Eun-sung chirps, “If you don’t, then I don’t, either.”

She gets a sudden wild hair to go pick apricots from a neighbor’s tree. She can’t quite reach the fruit with the stick she’s using, so Rae-won gets in close to help, but when they finally knock down an apricot it hits the pavement and goes splat. Eun-sung’s wails hilariously morph into shamanic chants, as Rae-won tries (and fails) not to smile.

Eun-sung goes back to reaching for apricots while Rae-won offers to just buy her some online, but she insists that she wants these. Rae-won boosts her onto his shoulder, then goes awkward again when he has to grab her butt to steady her, but she gets an apricot this time.

Eun-sung holds the apricot to Rae-won’s nose so he can smell it, then gives in to the moment and kisses him. She backs away, but he moves close and kisses her again before backing away himself. He blurts, “We can’t do this again,” and Eun-sung very calmly kicks him in the thigh, hee.

They walk back to Rae-won’s place, apologizing to each other and agreeing that it’s good they stopped when they did. Eun-sung gets annoyed that Rae-won downplays things a bit too much, so she asks if he’s embarrassed to have slept with her, and he throws a little fit that she actually mentioned it (they apparently swore never to talk about it).

He accuses Eun-sung of coming to stay with him just to seduce him again, and she busts out laughing. She says that That Night was just a mistake, but Rae-won orders her out of his house ASAP anyway. Eun-sung argues that she has nowhere to go and marvels that Rae-won seems so desperate to get rid of her just because they slept together.

She swears that she has no plans to lay a finger on Rae-won, but he says he doesn’t trust her anymore. Eun-sung thinks it’s himself he doesn’t trust, but he insists that he doesn’t want to sleep with her again, “Because you’re Han Eun-sung. You’re my friend.”

They continue home, keeping a careful distance between them. While lagging behind, Rae-won runs into a friend of his, YOON HEE-NAM (Kim Sung-joo). Hee-nam wrote a song called “The Bed You Were On,” and Eun-sung turns out to be a fan of his. She fangirls at Hee-nam, who finds her cute and asks for her number so he can send her a recording of a show he was on recently. This clearly bothers Rae-won, but he can’t exactly object, having just friendzoned Eun-sung mere seconds ago.

We flash back to That Night two months ago — it was Eun-sung’s birthday, but she was miserable because her ex-boyfriend, who had knocked up the very next girl he dated, had gotten married that day. She’d gotten very drunk and wailed that her ex no longer cared about her, while Rae-won told her everything she did wrong in the relationship.

Eun-sung had sobbed that Rae-won was saying the failed relationship was all her fault, and Rae-won had backed off and says she did fine, she just should have left him sooner. Eun-sung had agreed that she puts up with too much, and she’d vowed to act on her impulses from now on. Unfortunately, that impulse was to jump Rae-won’s bones, and after only a token resistance, he’d given in.

Naturally, things were super awkward in the morning. Rae-won had gotten up first and cleaned up their mess from the night before (awww, he still has that half-empty bottle of Coke in his fridge!), including neatly folding Eun-sung’s scattered clothing. Over breakfast, Eun-sung had suggested that they pretend last night never happened and go back to being friends, and although Rae-won hadn’t seemed sure that that’s what he wanted, he’d agreed.

 
COMMENTS

What a cute little drama! I’m almost sad it’s only two hours long, because I could easily watch Rae-won and Eun-sung not-flirt and be awkward and tapdance around their very obvious attraction for ten more episodes. Kim Sun-ho is a favorite of mine, but this is the first time I’ve seen Lee Yoo-young in anything, and I find her absolutely delightful. She’s cute as a bug, and she can aegyo without being cringy, and I love how her Eun-sung teases Rae-won out of all his moody funks and manages to always get her way with him. No wonder he’s already head-over-heels for her, and probably has been since well before That Night.

Friends-to-lovers is my absolute favorite romance trope, and You’re Driving Me Crazy hits all the right notes with me. Rae-won and Eun-sung are absolutely adorable together and I can’t stand it! Their chemistry is off the charts, but they keep getting affected by their feelings at different moments and missing each other’s cues. They gave in once, a couple of months ago, and despite their promise to go back to being friends, it affected them so much that they haven’t even spoken since then.

Watching them try to rebuild their friendship from the ground up is so much fun. It was so obvious that they’re still hung up on each other even before they kissed again. Those moments of attraction and awkwardness are just perfect, full of tension and Will They/Won’t They while they try to deny their emotions. Again, I wish there were a few more episodes — I almost don’t want them to get together too soon because the tension between them is so delicious.

That said, it’s understandable why Eun-sung and Rae-won are reluctant to revisit That Night, not even to discuss what happened and air out the weirdness. It wasn’t a case of realizing they have feelings for each other and acting on them… it was really a very bad situation in several ways. Eun-sung was recently out of a longterm relationship, and crushed because the guy met, knocked up, and married the girl so soon after their breakup. If that weren’t bad enough, she was sloppy drunk and pushed herself on Rae-won (not that he protested much, which is why I think he had feelings for her already). The whole thing was unhealthy and it’s no surprise that it took them two months to even see each other again. Okay, I changed my mind — I’m glad there’s only one hour left, because I want to see them fix what’s wrong between them and either truly remain friends, or become something even better.

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