Gaus Electronics: Episodes 3-4

by quirkycase

It’s all heartbreak, hilarity, and confusion this week as our characters stumble along in work and life. Our sunny lead puts his all into whatever he does, but his dedication and effort may not be enough to succeed in love. Meanwhile, our barely secret chaebol continues his quest to learn the ways of the common folk and finds himself more entangled with one such commoner than he’d like.

 
EPISODES 3-4 WEECAP

I’m really liking the 45-minute episodes for a comedy like this. It keeps things moving and doesn’t feel like we’re getting lots of filler to pad the episodes out. We get a theme for each episode – that includes fun little “commercials” in the epilogue for a related Gaus product – and a feeling of intentionality.

This week, we get a lot of focus on Ma-tan adjusting to what he believes is peasant life. He continues to hilariously act like a martyr for doing things like living in a studio and taking the bus to work, although he clearly doesn’t understand either concept. His “studio” is a multi-story glass structure that could comfortably house a family of five, and his version of taking the bus is to charter a VIP bus that ferries him to work like a personal chauffeur service.

We naturally get some misunderstandings as his coworkers try to make sense of Ma-tan’s odd behavior like when yells at the sky, telling his parents not to worry about him. That leads MANAGER GI (Baek Hyun-jin) to think he’s an orphan when, in reality, Ma-tan was talking to the surveillance drone his parents are using to check up on him.

Then, Manager Gi sees Ma-tan’s men pull up in a van, ready to take him home. Manager Gi thinks they’re loan sharks about to kidnap a poor orphan for late payments, so he runs over to save the day. The way he swoops Ma-tan up and princess carries him to safety is gold.

Manager Gi continues to mistake Ma-tan’s unfamiliarity with basic Korean foods and etiquette as evidence that he grew up in poverty. He treats him to meals and gifts him the stash of Gaus tissues he stole from the office, patting himself on the back for being so caring.

Only GEON KANG-MI (Kang Min-ah) – whose name means “healthy beauty,” a nod to her love of martial arts and exercise – is privy to Ma-tan’s actual social status through a series of mishaps. Their first encounter happened before he came to work for Gaus and involved a drunken incident where Kang-mi ruined his expensive clothes and traumatized him with her uncouth behavior. He demands damages, so they come to an agreement: he’ll knock off a portion of her debt anytime she assists him.

That’s how she ends up at his “studio” to help him unpack and runs into his mother. Thanks to both Ma-tan, his mother, and their driver being horribly unsubtle, Ma-tan is outed as the heir to the Power Group. I just love how Ma-tan takes his secret identity so seriously as if he’s some superhero saving the world rather than the out-of-touch chaebol he is.

Kang-mi leverages his secret for debt repayment and promises to keep quiet, but she’s almost as bad as Ma-tan at keeping the secret. Every time someone says the word “power” in the office, she flinches. Between her and Ma-tan, it’s amazing the whole office doesn’t know already.

Then, we have the other focus of the week: Sang-shik’s pitiful love life. After Hae-young sees Na-rae hugging Sang-shik for dear life thanks to her fear of spiders, Sang-shik panics that she’ll misunderstand him. He ropes Na-rae into helping him clear things up with Hae-young who clearly couldn’t care less.

One thing this drama does really well are the little moments like when Sang-shik and Na-rae are having an angry hallway conversation but have to keep waving to turn the motion lights back on, or when Ma-tan claps in his empty studio to summon his non-existent servants. It’s often these small beats that crack me up.

Despite Na-rae’s insistence that she hates Sang-shik, she’s awfully worried that he’ll get his heart broken. She has a hard time not getting involved when she sees him about to embarrass himself again by confessing for tenth (!) time to Hae-young who uses him but has no interest in dating him. But Sang-shik is so unfailingly optimistic that he thinks the nine previous confessions were simply failures due to circumstance.

Sang-shik ignores Na-rae’s half-hearted attempts to dissuade him and prepares for his next grand gesture that involves a giant cutesy bear costume. It’s painful to watch as Hae-young approaches, but once again his confession is crashed, this time by Hae-young’s current boyfriend.

Na-rae gets angry when she sees sad bear Sang-shik all dejected after his final, failed confession and rants about how unfeeling and selfish Hae-young is. And what’s heartbreak without a little rain? As Sang-shik sits alone and cries in the rain, Na-rae pulls the romantic hero move of waltzing up and covering Sang-shik with her umbrella.

I thought this would be the end of the Hae-young saga, but we’re not done yet. In a twist I didn’t expect, Hae-young reveals to Sang-shik that she’s polyamorous and sounds like she’s interested in dating him too.

Right off the bat, I was nervous that it’d be played for laughs, and unfortunately, that’s mostly what happens. Sang-shik’s colleagues call polyamory glorified cheating, while he imagines a harem and is grossed out by the idea that there could be multiple men in his relationship.

The problematic treatment of polyamory with a side of homophobia is pretty uncomfortable, but then Sang-shik calms down and takes the situation more seriously. He talks to Hae-young, saying they’re just wired differently – he’s the monogamous type. So he turns down her offer… only to realize she was never making an offer in the first place. She merely wanted to be honest in hopes that he’d continue to be friends with her, despite her preferences.

Rather than being a decent person and leaving it at that, Hae-young hammers home that Sang-shik is not up to her standards. To save his roommate from further embarrassment, Aziz intercedes and says that Sang-shik already has a partner anyway. He points to Na-rae, and we end on what looks to be the start of some reputation-saving fake dating.

While I was glad Sang-shik eventually took Hae-young seriously regarding the polyamory, I didn’t like that the drama treated it like an excuse for Hae-young to date a bunch of hot guys without consequence. It seemed like the drama was using the situation to show Sang-shik’s empathetic and kind nature rather than actually respecting non-monogamous relationships.

On another note, I’m happy that they toned down the bullying this week – it made Na-rae and Sang-shik’s interactions more enjoyable. Now that Na-rae is softening toward Sang-shik, it looks like they’re moving into the bickering-while-secretly-caring-for-each-other stage. We’ve even got potential fake dating in the mix to grow them closer. If they’re going to end up together, I want to see Na-rae fall for him first and have to work extra hard to win him over after hating on him for so long.

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