You Drive Me Crazy: Episodes 3-4 (Final)

by LollyPip

You can’t erase the past, no matter how much you want to, and our lovelorn friends are beginning to understand that their attempt to forget their night together is not only futile, but actually making things worse. As their feelings start to resurface, each of them has to make a decision – is it worth risking their friendship to try being in love?

 
EPISODES 3-4

After sleeping together then deciding to go back to being friends, Eun-sung and Rae-won are both wrecks. Rae-won finds Eun-sung sleeping in on his couch on her day off, and when she gets up, he freaks completely out — she’s borrowed his prized, very expensive, limited edition, never-been-worn concert t-shirt. But when she starts to take it off right in front of him, he gives up and tells her to just keep it.

They head to the sauna together, and Rae-won is super twitchy whenever Eun-sung touches him. He tells her not to talk to him, touch him, or joke with him, and makes her walk on the other side of the street, hee. He sits in the water, complaining to himself about Eun-sung, while on the women’s side Eun-sung berates herself for bringing up That Night again by kissing Rae-won.

They meet back up at Hyun-ji’s bar, where Eun-sung makes Rae-won sit two seats away to “keep some distance,” lol. There’s a different waitress so Rae-won asks about Seo-jung, then relishes telling Eun-sung that he knows lots of women. They sit for a while, on their phones and not talking, more comfortable with each other than they realize, as long as they’re not paying attention.

At one point Rae-won looks over at Eun-sung and suddenly he can’t take his eyes off her. He absently draws her on a napkin, then hides it quickly when she looks up at him. She’s gotten a message from Hee-nam, Rae-won’s musician friend, who wants to come to his place and hang out with her.

Hee-nam asks if Rae-won and Eun-sung are really nothing more than friends, and Rae-won pouts at Eun-sung’s affirmative answer. Hee-nam asks Eun-sung when she last kissed a guy, and she does a spit-take while Rae-won changes the subject, both of them thinking about their recent kiss.

Rae-won is still annoyed later when Hee-nam continues to flirt with Eun-sung right in front of him. They commiserate over not being respected in their careers, and eventually Rae-won gets fed up and goes to his room “to work.” He can still hear them talking so he puts on his headphones to drown out their voices.

When Hee-nam leaves, he makes it clear to Eun-sung that he likes her and is interested in dating her. Eun-sung is flattered but she says she’s too tired these days to date anyone. Hee-nam tells her that nothing can stop him when he likes someone.

Rae-won finally talks Seo-jung into coming to his place for a meal, but when he serves the food, she only picks at it. She explains that her mother never fed her much, but at least it keeps her skinny, and she really does like the food even if it seems like she doesn’t. I already don’t like her for Rae-won, who loves to feed people.

After dark, Rae-won lurks in the street like a goblin, waiting for Eun-sung to come home. When she finally does, she’s got Hee-nam in tow, and they have plans to watch the scary movie by the director Eun-sung is working for. Rae-won offers to make Eun-sung dinner but she’s already eaten, so he shovels down leftovers alone in his room while eavesdropping, awww.

Hee-nam finds the scary movie boring and asks Eun-sung to speak French instead. He dictates sentences for her to translate, which get more and more flirtatious as he leans close, intent on kissing her. Nervous, Eun-sung shoves a gummi worm in her mouth, but Hee-nam just takes the end and eats it like Lady and the Tramp… which is when Rae-won starts blaring Buddhist chants and Hee-nam loses his mojo, muttering that he’s Catholic.

He leaves, and Rae-won seems happy that his plan worked. He tells Eun-sung not to let herself be manipulated just because Hee-nam is young and handsome, but she snaps that she just likes being around him. Rae-won backs down and wishes her luck with Hee-nam, admitting that he’s not a bad guy.

Eun-sung vents to her friend Ji-in the next day, and Ji-in’s take is that Rae-won is jealous because they slept together. She tells Eun-sung that pretending it didn’t happen doesn’t make it true, and asks if Eun-sung still wants Rae-won. Eun-sung vehemently denies it, blaming her body for kissing him again.

Ji-in advises her to sleep with Rae-won again, which may clarify her feelings. Eun-sung pouts that she can’t because they’re friends, and decides it’s best if she just leaves his place as soon as possible. She stumbles home drunk, not even noticing that she’s lost a shoe. Rae-won hurries to shush her, but she starts rapping loudly about her missing shoe, ha. Seo-jung joins them — ah, so she’s the reason Rae-won wanted Eun-sung to be quiet.

They all sit together for a drink, and Seo-jung immediately starts in on whether men and women can be friends. They’re joined by Hee-nam again, and is quickly the target of Seo-jung’s barbed comments regarding poor artists. Hee-nam takes it well and tells them that he’s written a song about Eun-sung called “You Drive Me Crazy.”

He brings out the sparkly club light projector for atmosphere, unaware that it was on the night that Rae-won and Eun-sung slept together and reminds them both of That Night. As he sings, Rae-won alternates between staring at Eun-sung and avoiding her eyes, until the end of the song when she meets his gaze and he doesn’t look away. Oof, my heart.

A tears falls down his cheek as Hee-nam ends the song, and Hee-nam says it’s the first time a song of his made anyone cry, though the wrong person is crying, ha. Rae-won walks Seo-jung out, and she tells him she likes guys who can cry. She takes his hand and asks if he’s interesting in becoming an “us,” but we don’t hear his answer.

Inside, Eun-sung looks through one of Rae-won’s old sketchbooks, which reminds her of the day they met. They’d been sitting across from each other on the subway, and Eun-sung had noticed Rae-won staring at her legs. She’d snatched his sketchbook and loudly accused him of being a pervert, until he’d yelped that he was drawing people’s legs as a school assignment. She’d found a picture he drew of her face and had been charmed.

Eun-sung pretends to be asleep when Rae-won returns home. He sits beside her and heaves a heavy sigh.

The next day, he goes to Hyun-ji to talk about his confusing feelings for Eun-sung. He says he’s always thought of her as a friend that he could show all his ugly sides, and that she always accepted him. He says he can be himself with her, and wonders if that’s love.

Hyun-ji tells him to just go confess his feelings, and when he balks, she snaps at him to just wait until after he dies and is reborn as Eun-sung’s pet hedgehog, hee. Seo-jung shows up for work and gives Rae-won the cold shoulder — well, that answers that question.

At lunch, Hee-nam tells Eun-sung all about his big plans for a trip to France. She just barely pays attention, more interested in the man sitting outside sketching.

Over dinner that night, Rae-won tries several times to broach the subject of his feelings for Eun-sung, but she keeps interrupting. She tells him her apartment is ready and she’s moving home tomorrow, then goes to the fridge for a drink.

She fusses that everything in Rae-won’s fridge has gone bad, until he snaps that it’s his fridge and he doesn’t have to clean it if he doesn’t want to. She even noticed the old can of Coke from That Night, and she tells him to throw it away, so that what they did can disappear, too.

She says that his fridge is like his heart, and that if he cleans it, he’ll come out of his slump. Rae-won counters that his slump started because of her — ever since they slept together, he can’t paint or date or do anything. He yells at Eun-sung to stop bossing him around, get her own life on track and her feelings under control, and stop confusing him.

The next day Eun-sung packs up her things, including her one shoe and the concert t-shirt that Rae-won gave her. She goes to the press conference for the director she’s translating for, and Rae-won secretly sits in the audience and draws her over and over again. Rae-won is about to approach Eun-sung after the presentation when he overhears her call Hee-nam and ask to see him, so instead he goes home and cleans out his refrigerator.

If he only knew that Eun-sung asked to meet with Hee-nam so that she could break things off with him. She says she’s just too busy with work to date anyone right now, and Hee-nam asks if this is about Rae-won. Eun-sung denies any feelings for Rae-won, but Hee-nam doesn’t look like he buys it.

Rae-won waits for Eun-sung at her bus stop and asks if she’s really leaving his place today. They head to the store so he can make her one last dinner, but Eun-sung decides she just wants to go home. Rae-won follows her out of the store as she half-runs to his place, almost desperate to be away from him, but she stops short when she sees her missing shoe, stuck in a new square of cement.

She tries to pry her shoe out of the street but the cement has already hardened. She laments what a mess her life has become, but Rae-won says sweetly, “Eun-sung, you’re fine. I like you as you are.” He tells her that cleaning his fridge helped, and he’s realized that he likes her.

It’s not welcome news to Eun-sung, but Rae-won insists that she likes him back. He points out that ever since they met, she’s always come to him first, even kissing him first and coming back to his place first after That Night. He yells at her to be honest, so she lets loose on him.

She says that after sleeping with him, she felt really uncomfortable around him because she did like him and wanted to do it again. She admits that the flood at her apartment was just a convenient excuse to show up at his place, but then she realized that what she really wanted was her old reliable friend back.

She begs him to go back to how things were before, but Rae-won says he can’t do that. Eun-sung argues that if they start dating and inevitably break up, then they won’t even have their friendship anymore. She even offers to stay one more night and take one for the team if that’s what Rae-won wants, then wails that she regrets ever sleeping with him in the first place.

With tears in his eyes and a wobbly chin, Rae-won says, “Eun-sung… I can’t get rid of your scent from my body.” Oof, my heart again. Eun-sung gets her things from his place and storms out, sobbing, “It’s all over because of you.”

It’s not until she’s all the way back at her apartment that she realizes she left Bok-go behind. Rae-won picks up little Bok-go and says sadly, “Your mom abandoned me and you. She’s so harsh.”

Time passes, and eventually Rae-won and Eun-sung stop thinking about each other so often. Hee-nam sends an autographed copy of his single, “You Drive Me Crazy,” to each to each of them. Eun-sung’s says To Eun-sung, I had a lot of fun thanks to you, and Rae-won’s says To Rae-won the crybaby, ha.

One year later, Eun-sung happens to pass the spot where her shoe got stuck in the concrete, but at some point it came out leaving only a footprint. Feeling wistful, she decides to stop at Hyun-ji’s bar, and the first thing she notices is a painting by Rae-won on the wall of her trapped shoe.

Hyun-ji slides her a flyer from a show that Rae-won held, having found his way out of his slump. All of the pictures remind her of their relationship — her legs on the subway, two people kissing while surrounded by apricots, even one of a man crying a single tear. But it’s the portrait of herself, lit by the club lights, that makes Eun-sung smile.

She goes to Rae-won’s house and finds that his passcode hasn’t changed, so she lets herself in. Awww, her slippers are right where she left them a year ago, waiting for her. She tiptoes to his bedroom, where he’s sitting and petting Bok-go.

Rae-won senses that she’s there a moment before she speaks, and he tells her that she can’t take Bok-go back. He sees her staring at the originals of his work and tells her that his exhibition was a hit. Eun-sung blurts out that he’s a fraud, that he used her shoe and her face without her permission, but Rae-won just says it’s called “being inspired.”

He stands to put Bok-go in his house, and Eun-sung suddenly backhugs him. Without hesitation, Rae-won covers her hands with his and murmurs, “I was worried you’d never come back.” Eun-sung admits that she was scared she’d lose him if they broke up, and that she was just too much of a mess last year.

But then she saw his drawings, and his version of her from last year was so pretty, and Rae-won says that’s how he saw her. Eun-sung asks shyly, “Can you keep looking at me like that?” Rae-won turns to face her and makes her look into his eyes, and he tells her, “Until you become a very beautiful grandma, I’ll keep looking at you that way.”

They kiss, and again, and then the kisses start getting more serious… which is Eun-sung’s stomach’s cue to growl. Rae-won offers to feed her, and they bicker over whether to eat or stay in the bedroom. Eventually Rae-won wins… for now.

 
COMMENTS

I don’t really have much to say other than AWWWW. I really enjoyed this drama, both watching and recapping it. Even though it aired two years ago, I decided to recap You Drive Me Crazy now for a reason — many dramas this summer have been very serious or quite dramatic, and the world outside is pretty much on fire while we’re all stuck in our houses trying to keep safe from an invisible menace. I really just needed something light, fluffy, and heartwarming to watch and recap, and this drama special proved to be perfect. No alternate universes or crime mysteries, nobody dying or betraying each other, just two friends falling in love and trying to figure out how to adjust their lives to make it all work.

Although the drama itself was short, I appreciate that Eun-sung and Rae-won’s story didn’t just happen overnight. They gave in to temptation, let it sit for a couple of months before trying to be friends again, then took a year to think about how they really feel. Taking all that time, on top of the eight years of true friendship that came before, makes their relationship that much more believable because they’ve tried not being together and were miserable. They even tried dating other people, but it only made them pine for each other that much more.

I can understand why Rae-won finally confessed to Eun-sung, and he had every reason to believe that she liked him back. He was right that she always approached him first, and over time he’d fallen for her without even realizing it. But I can also relate to Eun-sung’s fear of losing their friendship if things didn’t work out romantically. Sadly, their friendship almost ended anyway, so I’m glad that Eun-sung eventually realized that the smart thing to do was go back to Rae-won one more time and see if they could make it work. If it ends, they haven’t lost anything that wasn’t lost already, but if it works, they’ve gained something very worth the risk.

I think I’ll be covering more of these sweet little specials in the near future — they make a good palate cleanser between bigger, more serious dramas, and they remind me that life doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom right now. Sometimes it’s good healthy self-care to watch a little show about nothing much, and I find that the acting and plots of specials are just as high-quality as longer dramas. We could all use some more sweetness and love in our lives, especially right now, and I’m ready to take on the challenge.

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