Oh! Young-shim: Episodes 9-10 (Final)

by Unit

Our final week brings the story of our PD and her childhood crush full circle. Misunderstandings are cleared, wounds of the past are healed, and our characters move on and find their places. Of course, it won’t be a finale without the makjang. But hey, isn’t that already on-brand for this show?

 
EPISODES 9-10

In our final week, Love Mark takes on two teenage guests whose story mirrors Young-shim and Kyung-tae’s. The nerdy boy (played by one of my favorite child actors, Moon Woo-jin!) who’s basically Kyung-tae 2.0, followed his love interest around throughout their middle school days, but he went abroad without a word when she was just beginning to open up to him. Now he’s back for high school after shedding his nerd skin, and he has made it a point of duty to ignore his love interest — even though she likes him now.

The Love Mark team decides to set up their teenage guests on a double date with Young-shim and Kyung-tae in the hopes of mending the relationship between the teens. But the dates don’t work because Kyung-tae 2.0 cannot forgive his love interest for being nasty to him and throwing away a gift he bought for her. On the bright side, the dates serve as an avenue to get Kyung-tae and Kyung-tae 2.0 talking, and 2.0 directs Kyung-tae’s attention to one of the books in the Young-shim series which explains the story behind the headphone gift incident between him and Young-shim.

Kyung-tae learns that Young-shim didn’t thoughtlessly give away his gift as he’d assumed. Rather, she briefly lent the headphones to the guy Kyung-tae saw them with. He also learns that Young-shim had waited for him to show up on his birthday with a gift as promised, but he was a no-show thanks to his emigration. “How come didn’t she tell me?” Kyung-tae wonders. But how come didn’t you ask her before jumping into conclusion? Tsk.

Speaking of Young-shim, one of her dates on Arrows of Love asks her out on a real date, and Wol-sook’s voice is the loudest when it comes to convincing Young-shim to go on this date. Young-shim dolls up for the date, and while she’s determined not to mess things up, she can’t stop thinking about Kyung-tae. Her date gets the memo that there’s someone else, and things between them end just as abruptly as they began.

On her way home, Young-shim runs into Kyung-tae who — needing to “untangle the 20 years of my life that’ve been royally messed up” — is on his way back from re-purchasing the birthday gift Young-shim bought for him. The first step to resolving our OTP’s 20-year old misunderstanding: an “I missed you” kiss. The second step: an actual conversation, where Kyung-tae asks why Young-shim treated him so poorly back then.

“I must have wanted to know if you’d continue to like me even if I treated you like that,” Young-shim replies. This is such a terrible excuse for her nastiness, but then, that’s why I’m not Kyung-tae because he accepts the excuse. And according to him, the reason he’s successful today is in part because of Young-shim. Yunno, since there’s no bigger motivation to succeed than being rejected by your childhood crush.

“Since your success was thanks to me, grant me a wish,” Young-shim says, and we flashback to Kyung-tae’s wish at the wishing rock. His wish was for Young-shim’s wish to come true. What does Young-shim wish for? Her wish is for them to become 100% sincere with their feelings. And that said, they move to the third step of their resolution: another kiss.

Now that our OTP is official, they begin to act like kids again (but did they ever stop?), sneaking around at work and coming to meetings with a love mark hickey. But it’s not like anyone would suspect that they’re dating, because rumors soon begin to fly about Kyung-tae’s “relationship” with a YouTuber. Our OTP knows straight away that this is all Wol-sook’s handiwork, but Young-shim says to keep the rumors alive because Love Mark also benefits from the publicity.

In private, though, Kyung-tae clears the air with Wol-sook. He can see right through her schemes, and he has no interest in dating someone who only likes him because he’s now a hotshot CEO. But when CEO-nim drops by the broadcasting station to see Young-shim, he overhears her term her relationship with him as “just business” for the sake of Love Mark.

You’d think that after everything they’ve been through, Kyung-tae would give Young-shim the opportunity to explain that she was trying to hide their relationship from her colleague — which isn’t even a new development because it’s something they’ve jointly done since they started dating! Instead, character development flies outta the window, and Kyung-tae assumes that Young-shim values the program over him.

Since there’s nothing like last-minute noble idiocy to spice up a rom-com, Kyung-tae prepares to leave for the States. Romance aside, there’s a problem with Kingvely’s headquarters in the U.S., and he needs to sort out the issue. But hey, he doesn’t leave without a word like he did in middle school. He sends Young-shim a “let’s end it here” text if that counts for anything. Newsflash: it doesn’t! Kyung-tae also sends Kyung-tae 2.0 a goodbye text, and 2.0 decides to take matters into his own hands with the help of his love interest — who he has now made up with.

The teenagers send Young-shim on a wild goose chase to the airport just in time to see Kyung-tae before he leaves. But despite their best efforts, and Young-shim’s threat to never see Kyung-tae again if he leaves, the airport reunion trope doesn’t work for our OTP.

We skip ahead to two months later, and everyone seems to be doing okay. Chae-dong left Love Mark to create Lust Island (heh), an R-rated dating show for adults — which ends up being a hit and defeating Love Mark in the viewer ratings race. The drama also couples him up with Wol-sook, and I’m surprisingly indifferent about this pairing.

Back to our OTP, Kyung-tae returns to Korea looking every inch the nerd he was back in middle school. Apparently, he ended up selling all his Kingvely shares and subsidiaries, and after giving his employees their severance pay, he went flat broke. Ermmmm… *Scratches head* I actually have no comments on this, so let’s just move on. Our OTP gets back together, Love Mark gets renewed for a second season, Dad resumes the Young-shim series as a webtoon this time around, and they all live happily ever after.

Does this drama go out with a bang? Nope. But I’m neither disappointed nor surprised. From the beginning, the drama promised us nothing and it delivered exactly that. In a way, I dare say it’s better than watching a drama that promises heaven and earth but instead, ends up on an unknown planet. Oh! Young-shim is a very forgettable watch, but at least I enjoyed seeing Lee Min-jae, and I will be on the lookout for his next drama.

 
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