Cinderella at 2AM: Episodes 9-10 (Final)

by DaebakGrits

With only one obstacle preventing our OTP from finding their happily-ever-after, you’d think it would be smooth sailing for our lovebirds. But one does not simply convince a chaebol momma to let her son marry whomever he wants — at least, not without any strings attached.

EPISODES 9-10

Now that Yoon-seo and Joo-won are officially a couple again, Joo-won is eager to make up for all the lost time by spending every possible minute he can with her. If that means driving her home and then weaseling his way into her apartment after hearing that Ji-seok will be out late, then so be it. Yoon-seo puts up a half-hearted fight in response to Joo-won’s intrusion — because heaven forbid her adult-aged brother be scandalized by his noona having a gentleman caller — but it’s clear that getting caught by her brother in a compromising position isn’t her only reason for tapping the breaks after their reconciliation.

She has a few loose ends that she wants to tie up before committing fully and accepting Joo-won’s proposal — beginning with Ji-seok’s future. He’s an adult now, and before she officially makes Joo-won part of their family, she wants to see her younger brother become a little more independent and start his own journey. So when he officially decides his dream is to be a chef and take culinary courses, Yoon-seo gives him the money she’s been setting aside for him since she was in college.

Although I struggled to visually accept Kim Tae-jung in the role of a teenager, I liked his portrayal of Yoon-seo’s younger brother, and in general, I found their sibling relationship one of the better storylines in this drama. From exploring their shared childhood trauma, to witnessing Yoon-seo’s gentle but firm parenting style, to experiencing their complex and emotional reaction to their mother’s death — I’m willing to overlook Kim Tae-jung’s physical incongruousness in order to have Ji-seok’s character shift from being a child in Yoon-seo’s care to becoming an independent adult. Obviously, Yoon-seo and Ji-seok will continue being close siblings, but his transition into adulthood also signifies that her role as pseudo parent is over and she’s more free to think about her wants more than their (her and her brother’s) needs.

Unfortunately, Yoon-seo gains a little too much freedom all at once when she’s unexpectedly cut loose from her job. Although she’d already submitted her resignation with the intention of quitting, Chairwoman Kim expedited the process without giving Yeon-seo a heads up because Yoon-seo had the audacity to return the money to her. So Yoon-seo had to awkwardly discover her unemployment status via the security guard who explained why her company ID was no longer valid. (Dang, Chairwoman Kim, you petty AF.)

On the bright side, Yeon-seo now has ample time to work out the perfect scenario for her surprise proposal acceptance — and she could really use the extra time because her first rough drafts were atrocious. However, the downside to her unemployment — you know, aside from a lack of income, of course — is that it indirectly instigates one last eye-roll-inducing pissing contest between Seong-min and Joo-won.

It begins when Seong-min lures Yoon-seo to his studio under the false pretext of being upset that she’s no longer a part of the AL Group team collaborating with him. Of course, he actually sees her expedited termination — and reconciliation with Joo-won — as a cause for celebration, but Joo-won does not like the two of them having a party without him. Seung-min makes a bet with Yoon-seo over how fast her chaebol boyfriend will arrive at his studio, and Joo-won beats Seong-min’s expectations with a time that’s impossible in Seoul traffic. (Did he charter the company helicopter again?)

Joon-won’s arrival initiates another tug-of-war session with Yoon-seo substituting as the rope, and I found the physical roughness extremely unnecessary, especially since Seong-min no longer has a dog in this particular fight. At this point, he’s just being petty in order to get under Joo-won’s skin, and you’d think a man abused as a child would at least hesitate to grab a woman’s wrist and roughly jerk her back and forth.

Then again, I suspect the writers didn’t think too much beyond their need for plot filler when they shoehorned this love triangle into the plot. Such a shame, too, because Seong-min was an interesting character, and when he and Joo-won make their peace over dinner and an excessively long noraebang scene, I could see glimmers of the bromance that could have been — had the writers toned down the jealousy and childishness of their male characters.

At this point in our story, the only remaining obstacle between Yoon-seo and Joo-won is Chairwoman Kim, and even though things didn’t go so well for Yoon-seo when she returned the money, a drunk Joo-won manages to soften her up. You see, after getting wasted and dueting with Seong-min, he stumbles home in the middle of the night and pleads his case. For the first time in a long time, he wants something badly enough to voice his desires, and he tries to appealing to his mother — not the chairwoman. Thankfully, this time Chairwoman Kim softens, and gives him permission to be with Yoon-seo.

Once Yoon-seo hears from Joo-won that his mother has given their relationship her stamp of approval, that’s her cue to officially accept Joo-won’s proposal. She plans out a nice camping trip for the two of them, and just when everything reaches peak romance, she pretends to burn her finger while grilling. She asks Joo-won to remove her glove so they can look at the burn and — boom — engagement ring! Aww, Joo-won’s happiness upon seeing the ring is infectious, and I had a huge grin on my face the whole time.

Come to find out, though, Chairwoman Kim’s approval came with one caveat. She wants to appoint Yoon-seo as the head of their charity foundation and use her real-life Cinderella story as propaganda for the company’s image. On the one hand, running a charity foundation seems like a perfect fit for Yoon-seo, but on the other, the whole PR stunt is exploitative and would expose her and her brother to all sorts of gossip.

When Joo-won catches wind of the clause attached to his mother’s approval, he’s immediately incensed on Yoon-seo’s behalf. His hackles rise, and he prepares to go to battle with his mother — but then his father’s long-term overseas affair becomes public knowledge. Yoon-seo explains to Joo-won that now isn’t the time for him to fight with his mother. His anger can wait. Instead, she and Mi-jin encourage Joo-won and Shi-won to comfort and distract their mother from the gossip. And this is why the brothers band together and kidnap — and I mean that in the literal sense — their mother so she can have some fresh air a change of scenery.

Their diversion turns into the kind of road trip that would make the National Lampoon franchise proud, as mishap after mishap plagues their little adventure. But where I’ve often found the humor ineffective or misplaced in this drama, I have to applaud this particular series of scenes for successfully using comedy to not only underscore how out of sync the brothers are with their mother — and without their hired help to fill their gas tank — but bring them closer to one another through a series of minor calamities.

By the time they’ve pushed their car to the lookout point and downed their roadside instant coffee, it’s apparent that they’re slightly more in sync as a family. Most importantly, though, for the sake of our rom-com plot, Chairwoman Kim admits it was unfair of her to want to use Yoon-seo’s Cinderella story to cover up her divorce scandal, and she gives Joo-won her full blessing — this time without any stipulations. She genuinely hopes Yoon-seo can give him the loving family that she was unable to give him growing up. (And methinks there’s also still a chance for her to loosen up and become the loving mother-in-law Yoon-seo needs.)

Our story skips ahead two months into the future. Joo-won and Yoon-seo have already taken their wedding photos, but they’ve yet to officially tie the knot because they’re still very much in the late planning stages. Well… Joo-won is still planning. He’s the one signing the paperwork for their future home (with Ji-seok) and picking out new furniture (with Mi-jin) and finalizing their wedding invitations (with Seong-min). Yoon-seo, much to Joo-won’s disappointment, is working overtime for AL Group’s charity foundation.

Instead of managing the whole foundation, as was Chairwoman Kim’s original offer, she opted to work as the lead of a smaller division, assisting teenagers with histories like her own. This way, she works for a cause she’s passionate about while also learning more about the foundation before, presumably, taking over one day. Although Joo-won is proud of her, it becomes a point of contention for him that he seems to be the only one enthusiastically planning their wedding. Yoon-seo gets defensive, insisting that she’s been helping him when she has the time, and they part ways for the night without resolving their dispute.

And speaking of lovers’ quarrels, Shi-won and Mi-jin are officially crowned the king and queen of miscommunication (and reconciliation) during our finale. Before the time skip, Shi-won stuck his own foot in his mouth and brought up the topic of his first love, which angered Mi-jin’s green-eyed monster. She resorts to her own brand of petty when she introduces her attractive cousin (cameo by Lee Ha-yul) as her oppa — without further context or clarification. This particular argument is eventually put to rest after Shi-won admits he has feelings for Mi-jin but doesn’t know how to express them because he’s confused about what he is and isn’t allowed to do. Technically they’re married, but they aren’t, like, a real couple. So, he asks to date her and figure things out as they go along.

After time skip, we see more hurt feelings as the result of another failure to communicate their priorities. The date of their wedding anniversary arrives, and while Mi-jin put a lot of thought and time into the matching makgeolli cups that she personally crafted as her gift for Shi-won, he forgot their wedding anniversary. So the necklace that Mi-jin had been excited to receive (and had painstakingly matched her outfit to) had been a perfunctory gift picked out by Shi-won’s secretary.

Mi-jin is understandably hurt, so when Yoon-seo (in an equally forlorn mood) calls Mi-jin to thank her for the furniture she bought her and Joo-won for their wedding, Mi-jin invites her future sister-in-law out for a drink. Predictably, they get totally wasted, but I rather enjoyed seeing these two hang out together and commiserate over having Chairwoman Kim as a mother-in-law. Even more amusing was watching their significant others scramble to intercept them before they had the chance to air their grievances directly to Chairwoman Kim’s face. (Chairwoman Kim calmly drinking wine and being completely oblivious to the chaos outside the window behind her is a whole mood.)

The next day is full of hangovers and apologies. Shi-won explains that his earlier faux pas was because he didn’t place much significance on their wedding anniversary because their marriage was arranged. Instead, he’d been more focused on celebrating their 100th day as an official couple, and he’d been planning to renovate their house so that they could start sharing a bedroom together. Mi-jin is so happy to clear the air that she sees no reason for them to wait until their 100th day to share a bed. (Cue: suggestive eyebrow wiggles.)

Meanwhile, Yoon-seo attempts to kill apologizes to Joo-won with a home cooked meal and acknowledges that she’s been more focused on work. But by this point he’s already been mostly appeased, having heard from his mother how she’s gone above and beyond to make the charity successful and assist all the children in need. Yoon-seo further demonstrates her desire to be more involved with the remaining wedding planning by asking Seong-min to put a rush on their wedding invitations, and given how few people are in attendance at their small but elegant wedding, it’s entirely possible that Seong-min managed to make all their invitations in less than twenty-four hours. The wedding may have been small, but it was still gorgeously fitting for our Cinderella and Chaebol Charming.

Each week, as I’ve covered Cinderella at 2AM, I’ve struggled a bit to articulate my opinion of this drama. It’s one of those weird shows that I’m entertained by in the moment while watching it, but when the time comes for me to actually think about what I watched, the shine is gone. After our finale, I think I’ve finally figured out why I have such mixed feelings about his drama. It all boils down to the fact that I love these characters — but not in this story.

Cinderella at 2AM began with the question: What would happen if a K-drama heroine accepted the proverbial envelope full of money? In my opinion — and according to anecdotal evidence submitted in the comments section of a recent Would You Rather post — if the leading lady takes the money, logically one of two things is going to happen. She’s either going to follow through with the breakup and use her new windfall to disappear someplace more tropical or — loophole! — she and her chaebol boyfriend are going to run off and spend the money together because no one wants a parent/in-laws who gives ultimatums.

Cinderella at 2AM, however, is a third option that the writers cooked up because they wanted the breakup to happen (as that’s the biggest subversion of the trope) without it actually killing the OTP’s romance. The resulting problem is that the nearly eight-episode quasi-breakup arc that occurs after Yoon-seo takes the money is not integral to Yoon-seo and Joo-won’s character growth. It’s merely a prop used to sustain the writers’ subversion of the trope, whereas all of Yoon-seo and Joo-won’s conflicts — internal and external — could have just as easily occurred in a more traditional — albeit formulaic — rom-com format where our characters meet, have Joo-won’s chaebol identity exposed, and then tackle each of Yoon-seo’s misgivings together as a couple.

So, if given the choice, in this case I would have preferred a paint-by-numbers rom-com where our OTP and secondary OTP breathe new life into a tired old formula. As for the subversion of the Separation Bribe trope, well, I believe that should have been saved for a leading lady who would have taken the money, invested it, quadrupled its value, and absconded to Jeju Island, where she has to hide the initial source of her wealth from her new chaebol boyfriend who runs in the same circles as her ex. But, you know, that’s just me.

 
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