CEO-dol Mart: Episodes 3-4

by mistyisles

Running a mart isn’t nearly as easy as it looks, but it does tend to be easier when everyone is on the same page. Our ex-idols have a lot to learn — about business, about themselves, and about each other — but they rise to the challenge, determined to make at least one dream come true.

 
EPISODES 3-4

Now that Ho-rang has agreed to keep running the mart together, the Thunder Boys commemorate the occasion with a photo, and a cute sequence juxtaposes their nerve-wracked debut interview as idols with their more confident selves as mart co-owners.

All is not sunshine and rainbows, however, because the door remains unlocked, and someone is eavesdropping and reporting on their discussions to CEO Yoon. He’s banking on them to fail, because there’s a secret clause in the contract that says they’ll forfeit ownership if they don’t meet certain operational criteria — and CEO Yoon will get a nice chunk of change in return.

Ever the leader, Ho-rang creates a list of ten duties they must all fulfill or face the dreaded punishment of a full-force finger flick to the forehead. Most of the items are basically no-brainers — be on time for work, don’t take merchandise without paying for it — but Sang-woo worries that Ho-rang and Tae-ho will struggle with #8: Resolve all arguments by midnight. So they add a new punishment for failure to reconcile: holding hands and saying “I love you.”

The closeout sale may have been a great success, but now the wholesalers barge in to take back their merchandise, accusing the boys of trying to disappear without paying their debts. In the chaos, a glass bottle gets broken, and Sang-woo gets shoved so that he falls and cuts his hand on the shards.

Ho-rang is a pretty amicable guy, but mess with his maknae and he turns stone cold. He orders Yi-joon to start livestreaming and narrates to the camera exactly what just happened. Then he reveals that Yi-joon is only recording, not streaming. But if they don’t leave now — or if they ever try to pull this again — the Thunder Boys will spread the video all over the internet, along with the wholesalers’ names. The wholesalers leave with their tails between their legs, and Young-min takes Sang-woo to get his hand patched up.

With those debts still hanging over him, Ho-rang visits a supermarket where Ye-rim is manning a promo event and tries his luck at the dart wheel. He hits the supposedly impossible 1st prize slot, but asks only for a single bottle of soju — he’s just here for some liquid courage, because he’s decided to pay off the mart’s debts by draining his own savings account. (He has exactly zero alcohol tolerance, and spends the next day miserably hungover. But the mart is saved for now.)

Speaking of Ye-rim, she’s currently hunting for both a job and a tenant for her spare room. Ho-rang happens to be in the market for a room to rent, and I think we all know where this is going. First, though, he annoys her by insisting she submit an application instead of just giving her back her old job, and she decides to try for one more interview elsewhere. But when she gets laughed at for basing her interview answers on real-life experience at Boram Mart instead of academic papers, she walks out and doesn’t look back.

Yi-joon, meanwhile, decides to “go undercover” at neighboring marts to spy out their secrets. His outfit doesn’t exactly blend in with the scenery, but he does learn that customers choose this mart over Boram Mart because this one sells fish. Yi-joon doesn’t want to head up Operation: Source and Sell Fish, so he keeps the secret to himself. There’s just one problem: the rival mart owner mistakes Sang-woo for his own employee, and the boys play along for… reasons. So Sang-woo spends his days working at a different mart, and Yi-joon spends his in self-imposed moral turmoil.

A big reason the sweet potatoes sold so well before is that they were a featured ingredient on a popular food show. So Ho-rang and Tae-ho finagle their way on set to get the scoop on the next featured ingredient: mackerel. They sigh in defeat, figuring that’s too hard for them to pull off, and that’s the push Yi-joon needs. Claiming the task for himself, he marches right over to the other mart to collect Sang-woo — who, in just a few days, has 1) piqued the interest of an entertainment producer and 2) learned way more about the mart’s (real) employees than their boss ever cared to know.

Finally, it’s time for the grand opening of “Boram Mart: Season 2” (lol). The Thunder Boys and Ye-rim line up excitedly to greet their very first customer, but it’s not a customer. It’s Tae-ho’s older sister (Baek So-ryung) who runs the taekwondo school. She’s only just learned where Tae-ho has been disappearing to, and she’s not at all happy about his new career path. She’s constantly telling him he’ll never amount to anything, and though it’s clearly the only way she knows to try and motivate him, it has also done a number on his self-esteem.

After some internal reflection and successfully making friends with his most difficult customer, Tae-ho finally stands up for himself. He has a reputation of being selfishly money-driven, but he’s realized that what he actually craves is affection and companionship — and while working at Boram Mart, he’s no longer lonely. At the end of the day, he’d much rather be happy than rich.

(Re)Opening Day continues with an unexpected visit from Ye-rim’s favorite idol, GINA (Kim Sha-na). She claims she’s after a very specific ice cream that her manager can’t be trusted to pick out for her, but she’s actually here for Young-min… who hides in the back, fighting tears, while she screams for him to come out.

For me, this show’s biggest drawing card (aside from the absolute angel that is Sang-woo) is the guys’ journey to finding their second chance after a colossal failure, so I’m glad to see movement on that front for each character. They’re not just navigating a completely new job description — they’re also dealing with personal issues of self-worth, responsibility, and loss, all of which are rooted in the collapse of their idol dreams. Their decisions don’t always make sense, but I’m much more endeared and entertained than frustrated by them, because I want to see them make it work this time around.

Ye-rim is far from my favorite of the bunch, but she’s growing on me, and I do find her budding romance with Ho-rang sweet. (And I may have felt a few flutters when he remarked that he learns something new from her every day.) I wondered at first if he and Gina had been romantically involved, so it was a nice little twist to learn that she has history with Young-min instead — and now I’m impatiently waiting to find out exactly what that history entailed.

 
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