Gaus Electronics: Episodes 5-6

by quirkycase

Dynamics are a-shiftin’ this week as our short-tempered lead finds it harder and harder to stay on the hater train in the face of her sunny nemesis’s earnest charm. Meanwhile, our parachute hire enlists help to fit in with the commoners as he tries to adjust to the mixture of chaotic and mundane that is office life.

 
EPISODES 5-6 WEECAP

It’s rare for a drama to make me laugh out loud, but Gaus Electronics continues to give me laugh-out-loud moments each episode. This week we get more Ma-tan shenanigans (my favorite) and some flailing from Na-rae as she pretends to still hate Sang-shik who is growing on her despite her best efforts.

After Aziz’s spur of the moment lie, Sang-shik and Na-rae do an atrocious job of pretending to be a couple. Hae-young can only roll her eyes as they insist it’s true while looking like they’d rather be anywhere else than near each other.

Sang-shik and Na-rae bicker even more than usual, if that’s possible, after the dating lie. But then Na-rae starts to see Sang-shik in a new light and has an existential crisis. It all starts when she overhears Sang-shik talking to a couple of coworkers about liking someone he used to dislike but has a lot in common with. Na-rae assumes he must mean her and becomes hyperaware of Sang-shik.

Although she sighs as if Sang-shik liking her is some massive burden, she doesn’t seem truly that upset by the idea. The more she watches him, the more she convinces herself he’s totally fallen for her. By the time he takes the blame when she embarrassingly farts in front of the entire team, she looks at him like he’s her knight in shining armor.

Despite her insistence that Sang-shik liking her would be the worst, Na-rae is awfully upset to discover he was never talking about her at all. He was talking about his ongoing appreciation for Elon Musk. Pfft.

Na-rae, without giving any specifics about who the man is, shares the gist of the situation with coworkers Kang-mi and SONG HYUNG-MI (Go Woo-ri) who both call out her overreaction for what it really is: a crush. Na-rae is horrified to realize her subtle body cues point to them being right and does her best to avoid contact with Sang-shik, which is a little difficult given that they work together and are next-door neighbors.

After a work dinner, Na-rae drunkenly trips and breaks her shoe, leaving her no choice but to let Sang-shik piggyback her home. As he struggles under her weight, he apologizes for involving her in his mess with Hae-young. Right as he says how totally over her he is, he spots Hae-young up ahead… and immediately dumps Na-rae off his back. She hits the ground hard and ends up with both arms sprained in a cast. OMG.

Na-rae is reasonably angry, but even so, she can’t help feeling a little lovestruck whenever Sang-shik tries to take care of her. Since she says she doesn’t want him around, Sang-shik delegates Aziz as her caregiver for the next week until her casts are removed and she can pick things up and feed herself again. In the meantime, Aziz uses the skills he picked up from working part-time at a veterinary hospital to train help Na-rae.

Elsewhere, Ma-tan is still struggling to figure out how to blend with the commoners, and it’s not helping that his coworkers all give different advice. Kang-mi tells him to keep his head down and be deferential, while Sang-shik is adamant he should hold his head high and show everyone his value. Hyung-mi’s practical advice for smooth sailing at work is my favorite: record all your sunbaes for easy reporting to the Ministry of Labor. HA. Poor Ma-tan ends up looking more ridiculous than usual as he tries to follow his sunbaes’ conflicting advice simultaneously.

To add to his woes, Ma-tan continually gets stuck with the office grunt work since he’s awful at the basic Korean games used to designate the loser. He’s so bothered by his failure that he promises to cancel Kang-mi’s debt if she trains him (which she does military style). Ma-tan puts in a ridiculous amount of practice only to find he’s stuck doing everything anyway since he’s the maknae.

And then, there’s his secret that’s always on the verge of being revealed. This time, he’s almost outed by AI. Gaus obtains rival Power Group’s newest AI speaker that is programmed to do just about everything, including recognize the Power Group chairman’s voice. (Despite being obvious where this was going, it still cracked me up.) The second Ma-tan speaks, it cheerfully greets Chairman Baek to Ma-tan’s panic. Kang-mi dramatically smashes it to bits to protect Ma-tan’s super secret identity.

There’s this sort of sad side plot with SENIOR MANAGER WI (Heo Jung-do) who constantly plays video games and doesn’t seem to care about work. He ends up having to spend a day testing the AI speaker and gets way too attached to it. He treats it like a substitute for his wife who lives abroad with their kids. It’s supposed to be funny how he’s treating this AI like a girlfriend, but I just found it sad to see how lonely he is with his family so far away.

Amidst their usual chaos that somehow never seems to actually involve working, Marketing Team 3 is finally given a mission. They’re tasked with putting on an event for a product launch. It’s a relatively simple event, so of course, things go majorly awry. Thanks to a printing mix-up, the Gaus chairman’s face ends up on a balloon that was meant to have a picture of the product. The team watches in helpless horror as an arrow sinks the balloon, going right through the Chairman’s smiling face for all to see on their livestream.

After that rough day for the team, Sang-shik comes home to an angry Na-rae. She found out that he’s been paying Aziz to take care of her for the week. But Na-rae can’t hold onto her anger in the face of drunk Sang-shik’s sad puppy dog eyes as he apologizes for hurting her in the first place.

That’s when Na-rae makes a bold move and kisses Sang-shik. Oho! Sang-shik is surprised but noticeably not mad at it. Na-rae even goes in for a second kiss before she gets ahold of herself. We end as she pushes away from him in shock and lightly smacks him for kissing her back, I guess, stunning him for a second time.

I don’t know how she’s going to spin that one. If she’d just kissed him briefly once, maybe she’d have an out. But the girl went in for seconds and even slipped her cast off for leverage. Her only potential way out of admitting her feelings is if Sang-shik forgets or pretends to forget since he was a bit drunk.

Although Na-rae clearly likes Sang-shik, and there are signs he’s starting to like her too, I don’t think either of them are ready to admit it. I foresee some more (potentially fun) denial and bickering before they’re willing to cop to their feelings and decide what to do about them.

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