Woohoo Waikiki: Episode 9

by LollyPip

Broken hearts are the theme of the day, with more than one housemate experiencing tragic disappointments in their love lives. They flounder aimlessly until the voice of reason pops up from the most unexpected place to help them out. But not everyone is so unlucky, and in fact, love may be on its way to surprise someone when they least expect it.

 
EPISODE 9: “A secret you can’t tell/My gangster lover”

When Soo-ah nearly blurts out the truth about Dong-gu’s crush right in front of Yoon-ah, he grabs her by the head and drags her to her room. He apologizes for using her, and asks Soo-ah to keep it a secret until he figures out his feelings, and she reluctantly agrees.

He also asks Soo-ah to give the coat he gave her by accident to Yoon-ah, since it was meant for her. He’s so pitiful that Soo-ah says she will, though she huffs at her stung pride.

To raise money for Mal-geum’s broken contract fee, Doo-shik goes back to work for the tooth-sucking contractor. He begs Director Tak not to tell Mal-geum about this, promising to pay him soon.

Joon-ki puts pain patches on his back at night and tells Doo-shik to ask Mal-geum out, but he wants to pay off her debt first. He’s surprised when she shows up at the house, and suddenly he’s like a bouncy kangaroo, forgetting all about his sore muscles.

Soo-ah brings the coat downstairs, where she offers it to Yoon-ah amid loaded comments to Dong-gu about how great love is. Yoon-ah balks at taking the coat she thinks was a gift for Soo-ah, but Soo-ah says through gritted teeth that they’re just friends and that Dong-gu is probably already in love with someone else.

She tosses the coat at Yoon-ah, and when Joon-ki fusses at her to be nice about it, she says she would, but baby Sol cries whenever she gets near. To prove it, she takes a step towards Yoon-ah and Sol bursts into tears, then stops when she steps back again. BWAHAHA.

Upstairs, Doo-shik and Mal-geum look through some old pictures of them as kids. Mal-geum asks Doo-shik gleefully if she’s his first love, pointing out the hearts he drew around her face in his yearbook. Doo-shik stammers that she’s not, only for Seo-jin to walk in and declare, Oh, it’s your first love! LOL.

Doo-shik accidentally mentions his construction job, and Mal-geum asks if he’s doing it for her. He denies it, telling her to focus on her drama auditions, and she looks a little disappointed.

The next day, Doo-shik starts to feel sick. He sees a flyer advertising for people willing to test a new cold medicine, and he gapes at the massive compensation amount. He takes the flyer to Joon-ki, who wants in on the deal. But he has to catch a cold first, so he takes a bath in ice.

While walking home from the store, Yoon-ah has trouble quieting a fussy Sol. A man and his young son pass by, and the man (cameo by Kang Kyung-joon) turns a plastic bag into a balloon to distract Sol and stop her crying. Yoon-ah thanks him, and he watches her walk away.

He tells his son that he was just like that when his son was a baby, confused and flustered by parenthood. But the boy saw the way his dad was looking at the pretty lady, and he chirps that Dad just fell in love at first sight, hee.

Back at the house, Yoon-ah wolfs down her food in between Sol’s crying fits. Seo-jin sighs that Yoon-ah is exhausted from lack of sleep because Sol is too bonded to her, and Dong-gu looks worried.

Joon-ki comes in from a walk outside dressed like it’s the middle of summer, determined to catch a cold so he can be in the research project. Poor Doo-shik is well and truly sick, so Joon-ki steals his lollipop then tries to convince Doo-shik to make out with him in the hopes of catching his cold, hee.

That night, Dong-gu shuffles into the living room to find Yoon-ah asleep on her homework. He watches her for a bit, a soft look on his face, then sits and lays his head down. With his face close to hers, he looks his fill at her.

The next morning, Seo-jin finds Dong-gu still at the table, having fallen asleep across from Yoon-ah. She wakes them up, and Dong-gu lies that he got drunk last night and has no idea how he ended up here. The ladies go to make breakfast, leaving Sol with Dong-gu.

A guest asks for hot water, and in her exhausted state, Yoon-ah accidentally puts the electric kettle on the stove. She yelps and grabs it, burning her hand, and Dong-gu runs over to her. She braces for his usual rant about how she can’t do anything, but he shocks her by telling her to take the day off and rest while he watches Sol.

Doo-shik and Joon-ki both make it into the research group, where they lounge in hospital beds with several other sick men. Doo-shik ignores a call from Mal-geum, saying that he doesn’t want her to worry about him.

Soo-ah sneers at Dong-gu for taking care of Sol for Yoon-ah, while he was totally self-centered when they dated. Dong-gu notices Sol eyeballing his corndog, and he coos that she can’t have any. He sits her next to him on the couch while he does some work on the computer.

After their first dose of the experimental drugs, Doo-shik and Joon-ki experience a strange side effect — their voices are suddenly high and squeaky. They find this wildly amusing, and make sexy faces at each other while pretending to flirt, ha.

Dong-gu goes to the kitchen for a drink, and when he returns to the living room, Sol is gone. Seo-jin helps him search for the baby, but when they don’t find her quickly, they really start to panic. Dong-gu gets an idea, and he grabs Soo-ah to help.

He uses Soo-ah like some kind of weird anti-baby dousing rod, pointing her in different directions and listening for Sol to cry. LOL, that’s hilarious, and also brilliant. Finally they hear Sol’s voice coming from the guest room where they originally found her, and Dong-gu is relieved to have her back in his arms. They wonder how she got herself all the way here, then Seo-jin notices that Sol is running a fever.

After another dose of cold medicine, Joon-ki and Doo-shik’s voices grow even higher. This time they’re alarmed, scared by what the medicine is doing to them.

Yoon-ah relaxes and stops for lunch at a street cart, where Handsome Dad from the other day also happens to be eating. He’s happy to see her, and asks if Sol is with her father, but Yoon-ah confesses that she’s a single mom. Handsome Dad mentions that his son is with the babysitter, and he tells Yoon-ah that his wife died six years ago.

He introduces himself as Song Hyung-joon, and he seems like he’s gearing up to ask Yoon-ah to do something together. But she gets a call from Seo-jin telling her that Sol is sick, sending her running to the hospital.

The doctor tells Yoon-ah that Sol seems to have eaten something that made her sick, and Dong-gu quietly confesses that he fed her some of his corndog. And some ham. Also abalone porridge. He apologizes sheepishly, explaining that he didn’t know she couldn’t eat those things, but Yoon-ah says it’s her fault for not telling him.

A little while later, Soo-ah finds Dong-gu moping outside Sol’s hospital room. He tells Soo-ah that he wants to go in and be with Yoon-ah and Sol, but he feels too bad about what he did.

Soo-ah asks if he’s considered Yoon-ah’s situation as a single mother, and whether he can handle the issues that come with that. She can tell by Dong-gu’s expression that he hadn’t thought about that, and she advises him that unless he can feel confident in taking responsibility, then he shouldn’t start anything that might make things harder for Yoon-ah.

Joon-ki and Doo-shik leave the medical study and go home, shaking their heads silently when Seo-jin asks if they got paid. She smacks Joon-ki in annoyance, and he yells at her in his squeaky chipmunk voice, hee. He blames Doo-shik for this, and they end up in the weirdest-sounding argument ever.

Doo-shik begs Seo-jin to answer for him when Mal-geum calls, but she says she’s here to talk to him in person. Joon-ki thinks she came to confess, and he and Doo-shik giggle together at the idea. They’re so cute, I can’t stand it!

Mal-geum takes Doo-shik to the park, where instead of confessing like he hopes, she tells him that she’s decided to work with her agent again. Doo-shik squeaks in alarm and asks if she’s going back to adult movies, but she says that her agent is making a drama in China and wants to cast her.

She says that she knows he’s been paying off her contract fees, and he offers to help her get more money if that’s why she’s doing this. But Mal-geum says that she’s moving to China to start over, and when Doo-shik asks her to stay, she says that she needs to take this opportunity. She leaves him with a smile and a handful of photos she found of them, but as she walks away, she starts to cry.

Doo-shik looks through the pictures, and in one, he sees that Mal-geum drew hearts around him just like the hearts he drew on her picture. He sobs, realizing belatedly that while Mal-geum was his first love, he was also her first love.

Sol recovers and comes home, and even though Dong-gu still feels terrible about making her sick, Yoon-ah seems to have truly forgiven him. Thinking about Soo-ah’s advice, Dong-gu wonders how he’d be able to take care of Yoon-ah and Sol when he can’t even take care of himself, and he slinks out of the room.

Seo-jin and Joon-ki get into another of their silly bickering sessions, and Yoon-ah complains that they do this every time they see each other. Soo-ah quips that people become close that way, but Seo-jin and Joon-ki both declare that that will never happen. Famous last words…

They fight again when Joon-ki almost answers Seo-jin’s phone, since they have the same model. Suddenly, they hear a chipmunk-y voice from upstairs, and they go up to find Doo-shik singing a depressing ballad with the karaoke machine. Seo-jin calls on Dong-gu to make him stop, but he just joins Doo-shik, and they croon about their broken hearts. Words cannot even describe how funny this is.

Some time later, Joon-ki rehearses his lines for a role he’s landed in a movie. He’s excited to be playing a prosecutor who punishes gangsters, but of course Seo-jin makes fun of him before heading to the stove to make ramyun.

She has trouble getting the burner to light, so Joon-ki leans over to help. Seo-jin turns up the gas, causing a sudden fiery explosion, and Joon-ki goes flying across the kitchen. OMG, the fire burned off one of Joon-ki’s eyebrows, lol! Seo-jin mumbles an apology, but that doesn’t help the fact that Joon-ki has a scene to shoot later.

Dong-gu slumps into the room, still depressed over Yoon-ah, but he gets the giggles when he gets a look at Joon-ki’s eyebrow. Joon-ki makes him stop, but Doo-shik comes in a minute later, and he also busts out laughing at Joon-ki.

He’s got a huge plastic model box, which he says will help him organize his thoughts about Mal-geum moving away. Dong-gu says he’s also got a lot on his mind and asks to help, then they dissolve into helpless laughter at Joon-ki all over again.

Upstairs, the guys lay out all the model pieces (geez, the thing is massive), and Doo-shik explains to Dong-gu how this works. He says that they can’t eat or sleep until the model is finished, and when Dong-gu accepts the challenge, Doo-shik mock-laughs that it’s not such an easy thing to do.

Soo-ah gets a kick out of watching Joon-ki try to hide his missing eyebrow with makeup or tape. She gives him a flyer for men’s toupees, and he snaps that she’s making things worse. Seo-jin heads out for another job interview, and Joon-ki, still angry at her, surreptitiously sticks the toupee flyer to her back before she goes.

Her interview goes well until she gets up to leave the room. One interviewer, who happens to have some hair loss, stops her and pulls the flyer off her back, asking if it’s for him. Horrified, Seo-jin insists that she didn’t know about it, and she mutters that this is all Joon-ki’s fault.

Joon-ki shows up on his movie set and gets reamed by the director for his missing eyebrow. He decides to make Joon-ki a gangster instead of a prosecutor since he looks so odd, but he’s not happy with Joon-ki’s performance. Joon-ki says meekly that he didn’t prepare for this role, and he grumbles that this is all Seo-jin’s fault.

When they see each other at the house, Seo-jin yells at Joon-ki for ruining her interview, and he yells at her for ruining his movie role. Seo-jin gets a text saying that she didn’t pass the interview, and she storms off to her room angrily. Soo-ah and Yoon-ah glare at Joon-ki, but he insists that he’s a victim, too.

Soo-ah wonders about Doo-shik and Dong-gu, who are still working on the model. They’re both hungry and exhausted, but unwilling to admit defeat. They’re not even halfway through with the project, and when Dong-gu mentions that it’s time for “Men on a Mission,” they agree to take a break to watch it. But Soo-ah informs them that the show was canceled today, so they reluctantly get back to work.

In the morning, Yoon-ah expresses concern for Seo-jin, who’s hiding in bed again. Soo-ah tells Joon-ki to apologize, even if it means letting Seo-jin win this time. He gives in and goes to sit on Seo-jin’s bed, saying that he didn’t think the flyer would still be on her back when she got to her interview. She tells him to go away, and he protests that it’s not entirely his fault that she didn’t get the job.

Seo-jin sits bolt upright, snapping that she knows that. She sobs that she decided this was her last interview, and that she’d look for a different job if she got rejected again. She screams at Joon-ki to leave, so he does, accidentally picking up her phone instead of his own.

Doo-shik and Dong-gu are barely conscious, having been up all night working on the model. Soo-ah tells them to go to bed, but Dong-gu slurs that he wasn’t sleeping, “I was just blinking slowly.” HA. Doo-shik insists he wasn’t sleeping either, he was only thinking really hard.

Internally, they both think that they want to sleep more than anything, but the other will look down on them if they admit it. Dong-gu realizes that he’s glued his fingers together and rejoices, seeing this as his excuse to give up on the model and save his pride. Doo-shik also discovers happily that he’d glued his fingers together, but Soo-ah uses her fingernail polish remover to free their hands. Aww, they’re so sad.

Joon-ki is too worried about Seo-jin to concentrate on his movie set. He gets a call and realizes he’s got the wrong phone when someone asks for Seo-jin. The person says that the rejection text was a mistake and that she’s got a second-round interview today.

Joon-ki calls Seo-jin on his own phone to tell her excitedly about the interview. She says that unfortunately, she’s on a bus on the way out of town, and there’s no way she’ll make it in time. Joon-ki tells her to hurry, and he’ll stall until she gets there. He runs off the movie set, ignoring the director calling after him.

At Yoon-ah’s cooking school, they get a new instructor, and Yoon-ah is surprised to see that it’s Handsome Dad Hyung-joon. He’s positively thrilled to see her, and says he wants to talk to her after class. Yoon-ah learns from a classmate that he’s one of the top pastry chefs in the country.

Joon-ki gets to Seo-jin’s interview location just as it’s ending. He runs into the room with the interviewers and performs the scene he’s been rehearsing for the movie, which looks like he’s threatening them.

One interviewer stands, and he’s so huge, it’s like he just never stops going up. He chases Joon-ki around the interview room, swiping at him as Joon-ki ducks and rolls and scoots through his legs. Finally he catches Joon-ki and tosses him over one shoulder.

Seo-jin runs into the building just as the giant man tosses Joon-ki out of the room. Joon-ki gives her a huge grin as he’s being dragged off by security, happy that he bought Seo-jin enough time to get there. Have I mentioned how much I luff him?

Dong-gu is at the end of his endurance and decides that he can’t work on this model anymore, but he also can’t admit it to Doo-shik. He realizes that neither Soo-ah nor Doo-shik are watching, so he slides a model piece under his butt.

He shrieks that he can’t finish without that crucial piece, and even Doo-shik looks hopeful that this is the end of it. Soo-ah suggests that Dong-gu might be sitting on the piece and tells him to stand up, so he does. He crabwalks out of the room, claiming to be sooo upset that he can’t finish the model, with the “missing” piece firmly clenched between his butt cheeks.

Left behind, Doo-shik wails that he’s much too worried about Dong-gu to work on the model anymore. He tells Soo-ah that it’s very traumatic to lose model pieces, and he stumbles after Dong-gu.

After her interview, Seo-jin meets up with Joon-ki at a restaurant. She says her interview went well and asks about his movie, and when he says he quit, Seo-jin asks if it’s because of her. Joon-ki insists that he just didn’t think he suited the role of a gangster.

They drink together, and soon they’re both pretty drunk. Seo-jin confesses that she was moved by Joon-ki today, making him giggle happily. Seo-jin promises that if she gets the job, she’ll buy Joon-ki an eyebrow tattoo, LOL.

Joon-ki jokes that instead of a tattoo, they should just transplant her beard onto his eyebrow, and nearly gets himself killed. OMG, these two idiots are so perfect for each other.

Seo-jin tells Joon-ki that when she saw him today, her heart fluttered a little. She wonders if she’s crazy, and she grabs at him, trying to get a good look at his face. She makes him look at her, and she wonders why she thought he was handsome.

And then she kisses him.

 
COMMENTS

Wow, I knew this was coming eventually, but I didn’t expect it quite yet or in this way. Of course, now Seo-jin and Joon-ki will claim that the kiss meant nothing while being unable to think of anything else, just like what happened to Dong-gu when Yoon-ah kissed him. I expect Joon-ki’s denials to be every bit as entertaining as Dong-gu’s were, and it will be particularly fun to see how Seo-jin justifies kissing Joon-ki to herself.

I love how Joon-ki’s willingness to go to any lengths for what he wants also extends to his friends. Not only did he risk his personal safety to stall the interview until Seo-jin could get there, but he also probably lost his part in that movie. I mean, how could Seo-jin not fall for him? He may be a seriously strange dude, not to mention difficult to get along with, but you can’t deny that he’s got a heart of gold. He’ll do anything for those he loves, even to his own detriment, and they can always rely on him for help when they need it. He and Seo-jin fit together perfectly in the strangest way, and I can’t wait to watch them pretending they’re not falling for each other and eventually giving in. My money is on Joon-ki figuring it out first and going after Seo-jin with a grand, yet ultimately very strange, confession.

I thought it was interesting that it was Soo-ah of all people who got Dong-gu to think about what it would mean to be with Yoon-ah, and how he’d have to really step up and be responsible because of Sol. Soo-ah hasn’t been my favorite character, because she’s self-centered and dismissive, but she showed a lot of insight in this episode. She knows Dong-gu pretty well after dating him for years, and she even broke up with him because of his immaturity. So it was appropriate that she be the one to point out that dating Yoon-ah would mean a lot more than just spending time with the girl he likes — it would also mean giving real consideration to whether he’s ready to be a parent figure to Sol. And it’s to Dong-gu’s credit that he sat back and gave the issue serious thought. It shows that his feelings for Yoon-ah are more than just a crush, because he’s thinking of a relationship with her as a long-term thing.

This show does a good job with giving the characters unique, weird, and downright freaky situations to deal with, while still following the typical rom-com structure at its heart. It was about time for a rival for Yoon-ah’s heart to show up, and Handsome Dad Hyung-joon fits the bill quite nicely. He’s polite, good-looking, successful, and interested in her, and he’s even a single parent so he understands what Yoon-ah has to deal with. In fact, other than the good-looking part, he’s everything Dong-gu is not. Dong-gu is naturally going to be jealous, and it’s going to send him into a real tailspin to realize that Handsome Dad is exactly what Yoon-ah needs, while he can’t even take care of Sol for an afternoon without sending her to the hospital. Dong-gu is either going to decide he’s not good enough for Yoon-ah and back down, or decide that she’s worth fighting for. I know which I’d rather see, and I’m all-in with Team Dong-gu.

[geolocator_show for=”SG”]

 
RELATED POSTS

• Premiere Watch: Woohoo Waikiki
• High comedy and colorful shirts at guesthouse Waikiki
• Kim Jung-hyun leads trio of friends in new JTBC youth drama