One More Happy Ending: Episode 2

by LollyPip

Good news — One More Happy Ending made such a strong first impression, we’ve decided to recap it in full after all. I couldn’t be happier, because it offered one of the most fun first weeks of any show I’ve seen in a while, and I’m absolutely smitten. That very well could have as much to do with Soo-hyuk’s adorable face than anything else, but hey — whatever works, right? So let’s get started, because we’ve got some catching up to do!

EPISODE 2 RECAP

A cute little Breakfast at Tiffany’s scene plays out, with Mi-mo dressed as Audrey Hepburn. She narrates that ten years ago, she liked everything big, the bigger the better. But now she knows that the size of the diamond doesn’t guarantee a happy marriage, so a ring for a second marriage only has to be one she won’t tire of over time.

She walks down the street, and a knock-off Rolex seller tries to pawn his goods off on her. When she rejects them as fakes, he calls her out as a fake and points out her fake ring, and she screams to see the huge glass ring on her finger.

In reality, she wonders where this giant ugly thing came from, and suddenly recalls calling Dong-mi from the City hall to come be a witness to… something. Dong-mi had been busy, so she just gave Mi-mo her ID number.

A handsome, suave man had entered the building carrying roses, and Soo-hyuk had run over happily to greet him (after falling off the counter he’d been lying on, ha). He introduces the staggering Mi-mo to his best friend GU HAE-JOON (Kwon Yul), and Hae-joon seems fascinated by something about Mi-mo.

Mi-mo starts to dance around the lobby bellowing about how she’s getting married, and Soo-hyuk literally slides to her on his knees, and proposes: “Will you marry me?” She shrieks back, “Abso-fucking-lutely!” and leaps into his arms, and they twirl and laugh as Hae-joon watches the two intoxicated nutballs. I know they’re drunk off their asses, but these two were made for each other.

After the deed is done, Soo-hyuk asks what Mi-mo wants to do now, nudgenudge, and she suggests a honeymoon. He really likes the sound of that. They go skipping down the street together, stopping at a street cart to buy a wedding ring when Mi-mo pouts.

It’s a different story in the morning, as they both recoil in horror to find that they got married. Mi-mo’s apartment is filled with animal onesies, and she only now realizes that she’s wearing a cow suit. There’s also new animal-print underwear flung everywhere — what the heck were they doing??

We see Mi-mo and Soo-hyuk, still drunk, shopping for honeymoon undies. Mi-mo had liked the lacy sexy underthings, but Soo-hyuk was fascinated by the animal pajamas. OMG, does he have an animal fetish? That is hilariously awesome. Mi-mo had a hard time convincing the salesgirl that she’s a full A-cup, but lucky for her, Soo-hyuk confirms that he’s always gone for As.

Mi-mo pounds on Soo-hyuk’s door, still in the cow onesie, but he’s not home. She pulls out her phone, and only now realizes that she married the guy and never even got his number. Soo-hyuk drives home in a panic, since he didn’t get Mi-mo’s number either.

Frustrated, Mi-mo calls the city call center to ask if the marriage registration can be withdrawn. Unfortunately for her, it’s not possible unless it happened against either party’s will (she remembers begging and crying for the clerk to allow the registration, so… nope), if one of them had a serious defect, or if the man lied or forced her to get married.

Since none of those apply, they’ll have to get an actual divorce. Mi-mo is not thrilled to find out that she’ll be a twice-divorced woman.

Soo-hyuk has worked himself into a righteous lather by the time he arrives at their building, but they just miss each other at the elevators. Mi-mo runs to her car to find Soo-hyuk’s business card, but he left his phone in his car and misses her call.

Soo-hyuk leans on the wall, which triggers a memory of doing that same thing the night before outside Mi-mo’s apartment. He’d informed her that he was a very passionate lover, and she’d gladly accepted the challenge. Eep.

They finally find each other in the hall between their doors, and end up in Mi-mo’s apartment trying to figure out exactly what happened last night. They each blame the other for this nightmare — Soo-hyuk says Mi-mo served him way too much alcohol, but Mi-mo reminds him that she was vulnerable after just getting dumped. They trade insults at top speed, until Soo-hyuk notices the cow suit and goes suspiciously quiet. Something about it worries him, and he looks around to see the rest of the animal costumes strewn around the room.

Going white, he asks Mi-mo If they slept together. Neither of them is sure they didn’t, but Mi-mo exclaims that there’s no way, because she’s dressed as a cow and she’s absolutely NOT into that kind of thing. But by now Soo-hyuk is huddled in a guilty little ball in the corner, and his voice cracks as he yells, “But I am!!!” I’m dying over here.

Their only hope is the fact that they didn’t wake up together, but Soo-hyuk is alarmed to hear that they won’t be able to withdraw the marriage license. Mi-mo says they can, if they use his little fetish to say that he lied to her before marriage, but Soo-hyuk understandably doesn’t go for it.

They choose the direct route, and storm into City Hall looking ready to rumble. They end up in front of the same clerk from the day before, and fuss at him for marrying two obviously drunk people. The clerk reminds them how they begged and threatened, and even though he suggested they wait until they were sober, they’d produced a willing witness.

But… he had gotten their witness Hae-joon to convince them to wait one day, so they aren’t really married after all. Mi-mo and Soo-hyuk both look like they want to throw up in relief, but why am I disappointed?

We join Hae-joon at work and discover that he’s a doctor at a hospital, and he’s clearly something of a rock star there. We learn through a besotted underage patient’s poetry that he’s a neruosurgeon, but Hae-joon just reads the poem like this sort of thing happens all the time.

His coworker WOO YEON-SOO (Hwang Sun-hee) teases him about his popularity, and the nurses ask him what type of woman he likes. He says he likes a pure woman who’s been through a lot, and Yeon-soo gripes for him to pick one — he can’t have both. Jae-hoon just smiles and says that she’s out there.

Mi-mo and Soo-hyuk awkwardly sip coffee at a shop, and nervously agree that this isn’t a divorce, or even a breakup. Aww, Soo-hyuk actually looks disappointed. Mi-mo swears him to secrecy for the sake of her career and they part ways, though neither seems eager to walk away first.

Mi-mo hesitates, recalling that back then, the weather was just like today. As it turns out, this is the same coffee shop where she and her ex-husband SUNG-JAE had said goodbye after their divorce was final. She remembers that they had only had trivial differences, like eating habits and movie preferences, but they’d added up to a fundamental incompatibility. They’d both cried at the cafe, then parted ways.

As soon as Mi-mo gets home, Da-jung calls her, angry that she hasn’t shown up for work. They have to go to the wedding of a couple they matched, which Mi-mo completely forget about.

Meanwhile Soo-hyuk meets with his son’s teacher, and we learn that he’s been raising Min-woo alone since he was born. The teacher gives Soo-hyuk the googly eyes and gets all handsy with him, but he fends her off gently. She suggests he send Min-woo to an international school, but he’s firm with his No, because Min-woo has already said that he doesn’t want to go.

Ae-ran goes shopping for appliances with her fiance, DONG-BAE, clearly bored out of her mind though he seems like a sweet enough man. He’s much more interested in wedding planning than she is, and she asks him if he’s not getting cold feet like most men before their wedding. He just smiles and says that he’s excited.

Mi-mo steps out of her building elevator and crashes right into Soo-hyuk, and he reflexively grabs her waist to keep her from falling. For a moment it looks like he might kiss her, but then he lets go quickly. They exchange some super-awkward small talk, and Mi-mo hustles out of there.

She runs into a neighbor outside, a young woman who’s very fitness-minded and in excellent shape. Mi-mo says she wishes she had time for working out and skincare, and the young woman jogs on.

Mi-mo meets Da-jung at the wedding and fills her in on her previous day – finding her boyfriend proposing to Seul-ah, then getting drunk and almost maryring an old schoolmate. At the reception, Mi-mo is stunned when she looks across the room and sees… her ex. “The man who used to be mine.”

She collects herself and starts to head over to say hello, but before she gets there, Sung-jae is joined by an absolutely gorgeous woman. He introduces her to someone as his fiancee, and Mi-mo whirls around so he won’t see her there. Still, he frowns at her back as if it looks familiar.

Mi-mo hides and watches Sung-jae smiling and happy with his new lady, and later describes her to her friends (“Her aggressive breasts were mocking me!” HAHA). She’s upset that he’s remarrying, but none of her friends are feeling supportive, with their own worries to handle.

Da-jung’s husband is asking for a divorce, Ae-ran is scared to get married to a man who doesn’t excite her, and Dong-mi moans that it’s been over eight years since she was kissed. Ouch. Da-jung in particular is a thousand percent done with Mi-mo’s whining about her ex being engaged, reminding her that it’s been five years.

Ae-ran says sadly that she’s calling off her wedding today. She’s not happy about it, but she’s sure this is the right thing to do.

Back at the office Mi-mo interviews a man who seems more interested in a woman with a voluptuous body than any other feature. He compares his ex to a bag only half-filled with chips, only you don’t realize it until you open the bag and find that it’s filled with air. Mi-mo side-eyes him hard, telling him that real women aren’t like what you see on television. Then she remembers Sung-jae’s curvy fiancee.

She snarls to herself, and calls the client a pervert. Is he here to find a life partner, or just a sex toy? She yells that this is no hostess bar and kicks his nasty ass out of there.

Da-jung has has enough, and tells Mi-mo to go talk to Sung-jae and get all this hostility out of her system. Mi-mo agrees, and she meets him later for drinks. She tells him that she saw him at the wedding with his fiancee, her voice taking on an edge, but he defends that they’ve been divorced a long time.

Unsure what to say next, Mi-mo asks about their dog Ppoppo, and Sung-jae says he’ll be giving him away since his fiancee is allergic. That sends Mi-mo right off the deep end, probably feeling his rejection fresh, but it also angers her when Sung-jae offers to give her the dog. He dumped her, and now he’ll dump the dog on her?

Now Sung-jae is also upset, and says he’s too busy for this. Mi-mo says she called him because she wants to know the real reason they divorced, and Sung-jae says it was always just that he was unhappy. She asks for specifics, and he says that he always felt she was too self-sufficient, and didn’t need him.

Mi-mo laughs in his face, and informs him that he clearly knows nothing about her at all. She’s so flawed that men walk all over her. She begs him to just be honest and admit that he wanted a sexier woman, but Sung-jae just observes that she’s gotten more self-conscious. He doesn’t bother correcting her, since she’s already made up her mind about him.

He remembers now that this is why they broke up – she always had to be right. She believed what she wanted and that’s why he left her. That’s a painful thing to hear, but it obviously strikes a chord with Mi-mo. She thinks that this was a mistake, and now all the sweet memories she carried for the last five years are tainted with anger and resentment.

In the middle of a thunderstorm, Ae-ran kneels on the pavement in front of her fiance, having just told him she’s calling off the wedding. She’s truly sorry, but he seems more upset that she didn’t tell him sooner and avoid all the wedding plans. She apologizes over and over, not that it helps, and he screams that it’s too late.

Mi-mo does end up with the dog, and as she heads up to her apartment, she slowly realizes that there’s a crowd gathering in the lobby. A neighbor has died – it’s the young woman who she spoke to this morning, the one who was so health-conscious. Apparently she was indulging in some forbidden fried chicken and choked on a bone, and died alone in her apartment.

Mi-mo imagines something like this happening to her, and Sung-jae and his fiancee standing over her body tsking at her bad luck to live alone. And then moving into her place, ha.

Dong-mi spends her evening watching romantic movies, gulping at the racy scenes. She calls Da-jung and breathes that she wants to kiss someone (Da-jung: “Not me.”), and figured she’d call Da-jung because she’s also starved for lovin’. Da-jung and her husband sleep in seperate rooms, though Dong-mi is jealous that she even has that much.

All four of the friends sit up late that night, thinking about where and how their lives could have gone so wrong. Scared now of dying alone with nobody to help her, Mi-mo calls Dong-mi and begs her to call her in the morning to make sure she’s still alive. She decides to wear her sexiest red negligee to bed just to lift her spirits.

Soo-hyuk tells his son that he supports whatever he wants to do with his life, but now Min-woo says he wants to go to the international school after all. Soo-hyuk fusses when he finds out that the conference with the teacher was more of a setup, and that Min-woo thinks it’s time his dad dated.

He’s a little firecracker, this kid, and asks why his dad is so opposed to dating anyone. Ha, Soo-hyuk just croons at him, “I only need you!” They bicker adorably, and Soo-hyuk jokingly assures his son that once he meets the right woman, he’ll totally run off and abandon him.

Later Soo-hyuk looks at old school pictures of his son, but his mind is filled with thoughts of Mi-mo.

Mi-mo wakes in the middle of the night having some sort of panic attack, and falls out of bed trying to reach her phone to call for help. She hurts her back, and finally manages to call for an ambulance.

She ends up in the emergency room wearing nothing but that skimpy scrap of lace, and who should happen to be on call but Doctor Handsome, Soo-hyuk’s best friend Hae-joon. He immediately recognizes Mi-mo, and she’s quick to gasp out that she’s not actually his friend’s wife. Not that he hears her.

He examines Mi-mo and they both freeze when her blanket falls, revealing her racy underthings. HA, it’s hard to tell who’s more embarrassed. He fits some sort of device over Mi-mo’s head and leans in very close to look into her eyes, then takes ahold of her face to turn her neck.

He diagnoses her with otolithaisis, an inner ear issue that causes vertigo, plus she hurt her back when she fell out of bed. Noticing her bare skin, Hae-joon takes off his lab coat and buttons her into it, getting very close to her face again in the process.

She finally notices how pretty he is, and when he reaches to take the device off her face, it looks just like her dream of the man she’s going to marry. The room spins as she stares into his eyes, completely mesmerized.

Hae-joon calls Soo-hyuk out of a sound sleep to tell him that his wife is in the emergency room, and it takes a moment for Soo-hyuk to realize he means Mi-mo. Mi-mo waits to be released, and thinks to herself that she’s been in eleven relationships and one marriage — yet now there’s nobody beside her.

Yeon-soo’s voice carries a tinge of jealousy as she notes that Hae-joon has never given his lab coat to a patient before, calling it unprofessional and asking if he sees her as a woman. He evades the question, which frustrates her.

Hae-joon grabs a couple of cans of coffee and takes one to Mi-mo, telling her that Soo-hyuk is on his way to pick her up. Mi-mo stares at him long enough to make him nervous, but he sits a few chairs away to keep her company. She keeps staring as he drinks his coffee, and when he notices, she murmurs with a shy little smile, “There are butterflies in my stomach. I think it’s because of you.”

She doesn’t even notice his shocked expression and continues, “If I say I’ve fallen for you, would you think that I’m crazy?” She thinks to herself that she should get married again, to this man.

COMMENTS

Well, that escalated quickly. I didn’t expect Mi-mo to fall for her almost-husband’s best friend practically on sight, though I have to admit she’s got good taste. This is going to make things much more interesting, because it seems obvious to me that Soo-hyuk finds her very attractive, and he’s already insecure enough without having to battle his best friend, Doctor Hunk, for the first woman he’s liked in a decade.

I’m so excited about this show, because I haven’t had this much fun in a long time. The humor is quick and unexpected, and perfectly playing by Jang Nara and Jung Kyung-ho. They just sparkle together, and their witty chemistry easily switches to sexual chemistry — and then back again — at the drop of a hat and just feels completely natural. I really loved getting to know a bit more about the former Angels as well, and I get a bit of a Sex in the City vibe from the ladies’ friendship that should give an interesting backdrop to the main romance.

I really like the friends, because though they seem like stock characters at first glance, they actually have a lot of depth and heart. Da-jung is awesome as the straight-shooting best friend, always telling Mi-mo what she needs to hear instead of what she wants to hear. She’s got her own problems, and it’s obvious that her part in her impending divorce is not insignificant, but she’s a good friend to have on your side in a pinch. I particularly like Ae-ran, who’s easy to write off as a shallow person since her entire job hinges on her looks, but she’s really very empathetic. She didn’t break her engagement lightly and seemed willing to take the blame entirely on herself without making excuses, which really elevated her in my estimation. Dong-mi actually seems the best-off of the four, because if she’s a bit volatile, at least she’s in close touch with her emotions. And I don’t even think her frumpy look is that bad — she’s still adorable, and she should be able to find a guy who appreciates her pretty easily.

The problem of all four ladies, which I briefly touched on before, is that they’re looking for happiness outside of themselves. They expect to obtain what they want and find instant happiness — a happy marriage, a husband, to be successful — and that’s just not how it works. They haven’t found those things because they aren’t happy with themselves first, and that’s the big lesson I want to see them all learn. It doesn’t matter whether you have a partner, a family, or whether society sees you as a successful businesswoman. What matters is that you find happiness where you are, no matter where you are.

But the best part of this show is absolutely Mi-mo and Soo-hyuk and their weird yet hysterical relationship, and I can’t wait to see them fall in love. I honestly think that Soo-hyuk is already well on his way, judging by how reluctant he was to leave Mi-mo at the cafe. They’re both just so hilariously flawed in all the best ways (an animal fetish?! I can’t even), with so very far to go before they’re ready for a relationship. Mi-mo is so damaged by her previous marriage, and it’s almost worse that there was no one big event or thing she could blame the divorce on. She can’t move on, because until now she didn’t know why her first marriage failed or how to avoid it in the future. She never really asked, probably afraid to hear the brutal truth and preferring to believe it was just a romantic tragedy of fate. Even now, she wears rose-colored glasses when she’s attracted to a man, and tells herself he’s perfect, ignoring any and all signs to the contrary. And now she’s doing it again with Hae-joon, falling for him without knowing one single thing about him, just because he reminded her of a dream.

And Soo-hyuk is her polar opposite, having only had one relationship in his life, which failed before it ever started. We still don’t know all the details, but it sounds like he and Min-woo’s mother were never married and that she took off and left him with the kid. I suspect that he didn’t propose marriage and that’s why she left, judging by his comment in Episode 1 that he wanted to correct his mistake, and do with Mi-mo what he should have done before. So now he has no idea what to do around women, and just avoids them entirely. He tells himself it’s for his son, but he obviously has opportunity (I mean, look at his face). He just chooses not to go there out of fear of screwing it up again.

But watching them fumble and flounder towards each other is going to be half the fun, though I imagine it’s going to twist my heart up in the process. My only whine about this episode was that there wasn’t enough interaction between Soo-hyuk and Mi-mo, because that’s where this show really shines. Hopefully it was just a necessary sacrifice in order to set up the basics, and now we can move on and enjoy more adorable, painfully awkward but utterly endearing shenanigans.

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