Woohoo Waikiki: Episode 7

by LollyPip

I will never understand how one show can simultaneously be utterly ridiculous, and one of the most endearing dramas I’ve ever seen, all at the same time. It’s just a perfect storm of funny, sweet, and heart-meltingly wonderful, and even though I can’t put my finger on exactly why, I’m just happy to watch and enjoy. This episode is all about love, and how you know when you’re in it, which is something I think a few of the Waikiki crew are going to be figuring out very soon.

 
EPISODE 7: “The girl we loved/When a man falls in love”

Before they even get home after their disastrous fake wedding, Dong-gu and Yoon-ah run into his ex-girlfriend Soo-ah, sobbing on a bench next to her suitcase. Soo-ah jumps up and hugs Dong-gu, wailing, “What am I going to do?”

At Waikiki guesthouse, the other housemates wonder where they’ll go when they get evicted for being unable to repay the landlady for the wedding. Seo-jin squarely blames Joon-ki for everything, but Doo-shik thinks that Joon-ki’s more immediate concern is the fact that Dong-gu’s about to come home and kick his ass.

Joon-ki shrieks in fear when Dong-gu walks in, but Dong-gu just calls to Soo-ah, who shuffles into the room looking like a kicked puppy. Dong-gu readies a room for Soo-ah to sleep in, insisting that she stay just for tonight.

He goes back downstairs to explain to the others that Soo-ah’s supposed boyfriend is really a professional swindler who stole all of her money and left her homeless. Seo-jin snarls that she deserves it for cheating on her brother, and she asks if Dong-gu still has feelings for Soo-ah.

He vehemently denies it, shooting a nervous glance at Yoon-ah. He turns his anger on Joon-ki, throttling him and barking that he expects Joon-ki to pay back the landlady.

The next morning, Dong-gu tells Yoon-ah that he had nightmares all night, and pours himself a glass of milk. Yoon-ah applies some lip balm, and Dong-gu is transfixed by the sight of her lips, remembering how she kissed him at their wedding. He ends up pouring milk all over the table, hee.

Yoon-ah offers everyone some tiny tarts, but as soon as Joon-ki takes a bite, he freaks out and asks if there are walnuts in them. He’s allergic to walnuts, and as he runs off to get medicine, Seo-jin explains that they give him rashes and make him sick for a week.

Soo-ah gets ready to leave with all her stuff, telling Dong-gu that she’s going to sell her designer bags to earn money and get her own place. Dong-gu seems sad to see her go, sighing that he bought her one of those bags.

She meets up with a woman at the park, who tries on all three bags at once then declares that she wants all of them. While Soo-ah calculates how much she owes, the woman ties her shoelaces, asking if Soo-ah can run fast. Uh-oh.

She says she used to be a national athlete in running, and strikes the starting position. She gets Soo-ah to count to three and yell “Go!,” then takes off at a dead sprint, taking Soo-ah’s bags with her. Soo-ah tries to chase her but she just falls and skins up her knee.

Doo-shik has a meeting with Director Tak, and on the way, he runs into an old friend from school, Mal-geum (cameo by Han Bo-bae). Doo-shik goes all shy and says that she’s still pretty, then heads into the cafe to find Director Tak. Director Tak announces that he’s cast the female lead for their erotic movie, and gestures over towards… Mal-geum. Awk-ward.

After their meeting, Mal-geum (whose stage name is “Cherry”) remembers that Doo-shik always loved to write, so she’s not surprised he’s a writer. He replies that she was always very mature as a kid, and now she’s… never mind.

At the house, Joon-ki calls everyone he knows to ask to borrow money, with no luck. Doo-shik comes home and pulls out his elementary school yearbook and finds Mal-geum’s picture, which has hearts drawn around it. He tells Joon-ki sadly that she was his first love, and that he ran into her today. He can’t bring himself to say that she’s a porn star now and just bursts into tears, sobbing on Joon-ki’s shoulder.

Soo-ah ends up outside the Waikiki guesthouse that night, shivering in the cold but too proud to ask to stay another night. Dong-gu finds her there and she pretends that she had no idea where she was because of her night blindness. He guesses that she has nowhere to go, so he invites her to spend the night. Soo-ah agrees, but only because Dong-gu is obviously so worried about her, ha.

Joon-ki and Seo-jin aren’t happy to see Soo-ah again, and Joon-ki accuses Dong-gu of still having feelings for her. He yells that he doesn’t, looking at Yoon-ah to make sure she heard him (the whole neighborhood heard him, heh). He changes the subject and asks if Joon-ki has the money yet, forbidding Yoon-ah to let Joon-ki eat until he’s paid back every penny.

Dong-gu wanders into the living room to find Yoon-ah napping on the couch. He grumbles that she doesn’t have a blanket, then wonders why he even cares. He covers her up, calling it the same as charity work, then reels back in horror when she lets loose a stinky fart in her sleep.

Soo-ah comes down with her things again, saying that a friend is going to let her crash with them. She promises not to trouble Dong-gu anymore, then leaves. Yoon-ah releases another loud toot, causing Dong-gu to wonder what on earth she’s been eating.

A friend calls Joon-ki to tell him about an opportunity to make some money, and Joon-ki despairs that he’s desperate enough to be considering it. Doo-shik is also distraught over the coincidence that his first love is the star of his erotic movie, wondering how he’ll face her.

Joon-ki snaps at Dong-gu for not caring how much he’s suffering to raise the money for the landlady, but Dong-gu just wants that money paid back. Joon-ki refuses to say what he’s doing to earn the cash, and Dong-gu jokes that he’ll call Joon-ki “Father” if he really does it. Joon-ki snarls that instead, he wants Dong-gu to crawl through his legs on his hands and knees when he pays back the money.

Director Tak, Doo-shik, and Mal-geum hold auditions to select the male star of their film. Doo-shik and Mal-geum can barely look at each other, but Director Tak wants Mal-geum to help choose her costar. They cringe through an embarrassing succession of half-naked actors strutting their stuff, and Doo-shik disqualifies them one by one, unable to stomach the thought of them getting intimate with his first love.

And then Joon-ki walks in, wearing a ridiculous amount of makeup. LOL, is this what he’s planning to do to earn the money? He and Doo-shik are startled to see each other, neither aware that the other was planning to work on an erotic film. They agree to keep this a secret between them.

But when auditions are over, Director Tak and Mal-geum agree that they liked Joon-ki the best. They steamroll Doo-shik’s objections and decide to cast Joon-ki opposite Mal-geum.

Joon-ki has gotten the news by the time Doo-shik runs home, and he’s already working out frantically to buff up for the role. Doo-shik tries to talk him out of it (Doo-shik: “What if your parents see it?” Joon-ki: “It’s fine, they like erotic movies!”), but Joon-ki says that erotic movies are a kind of art, and not even Doo-shik climbing him like a tree can get him to stop pumping iron.

Soo-ah ends up staying at a sauna for several days, but her wallet gets stolen so she can’t pay the fees, and gets the police called on her. Dong-gu is worried since he hasn’t been able to reach her, and Seo-jin asks again if he’s still hung up on Soo-ah, right in front of Yoon-ah.

He follows Yoon-ah into the kitchen to tell her that he definitely doesn’t feel anything for Soo-ah but pity. Yoon-ah just says that she has no reason to misunderstand and tells him to take good care of Soo-ah. She heads to the store to buy groceries, leaving him grumbling that he didn’t have any particular reason for telling her that. Suuure.

He rushes to the station when the police call him to pick up Soo-ah. He gives her his coat and leads her back to Waikiki guesthouse, but she insists that she feels too guilty over how she treated him to let him keep taking care of her. Dong-gu snaps that yes, she should have lived better after dumping him, but then he deflates and tells her to just come inside.

He leads Soo-ah inside by the wrist, as Yoon-ah watches them from the street, looking conflicted. She goes to the kitchen and sits there for a long time, just staring into space.

That night, Doo-shik sneaks into Joon-ki’s room while he sleeps to stand over him. He says ominously that Joon-ki brought this on himself, then slips a chunk of walnut into Joon-ki’s mouth.

Joon-ki wakes the next morning with his face covered in hives. Doo-shik plays innocent, saying that Joon-ki won’t be able to film the movie in his condition. Ha, he’s a little too happy as he offers to explain to the director that Joon-ki won’t be able to be in the film.

Dong-gu gets a look at Joon-ki and accuses him of playing sick to get out of earning the money he owes. His taunts renew Joon-ki’s determination to make this movie and get that money, to Doo-shik’s dismay. Joon-ki starts piling on makeup to cover the hives, screaming war cries the whole time.

He ends up wearing so much foundation that he looks like a clown, ha. Doo-shik keeps trying to convince him not to be in his movie, until finally Joon-ki asks why he wants him to quit so badly. Doo-shik wails at the top of his lungs, “Because it’s my first love!!”

Hilariously, Joon-ki thinks that Doo-shik means him, but Doo-shik explains that he’s talking about Mal-geum. Joon-ki suddenly makes the connection that Doo-shik’s first love is “Cherry” from the movie, but he vows to do the movie anyway, earn the money, and make Dong-gu crawl under his crotch. Doo-shik gets another idea, and he tells Director Tak that Joon-ki was unexpectedly drafted by the army.

At home alone, Dong-gu works himself into a snit over Yoon-ah, snapping that if she doesn’t care about him after they kissed in front of everyone, then he doesn’t care, either. Joon-ki swaggers into the kitchen and tosses the entire amount they owe to the landlady to Dong-gu (which Doo-shik gave him from his advance pay), and triumphantly orders him to call him “Father” and get on his knees.

Dong-gu does, reluctantly, then starts crawling through Joon-ki’s legs. Joon-ki squeezes Dong-gu with his legs a few good times for good measure, ha. Everyone is happy to have the debt taken care of, even though Joon-ki makes Dong-gu continue calling him “Father,” ha.

Soo-ah comes down to breakfast wearing a contraption that supposedly keeps her cheeks from sagging, saying that all models use one. Seo-jin mutters that she’s never even been on a runway, so Soo-ah asks if Seo-jin still has a mustache in a mock-concerned tone. She complains about breakfast, saying that she prefers Eggs Benedict, making the entire table glare at her.

Joon-ki and Doo-shik are afraid they’ll never get rid of Soo-ah, since Dong-gu signed a contract with her that she can pay them for her expenses later. Seo-jin calls him a fool, but Dong-gu defends that Soo-ah is a nice person, making Joon-ki joke that he doesn’t want a daughter-in-law like Soo-ah.

Dong-gu tells Yoon-ah that it’s not like that, and everyone else head-tilts at him for saying it to Yoon-ah specifically. Joon-ki asks if Dong-gu is interested in Yoon-ah, which just results in Dong-gu blowing up and stomping to his room like a child.

Doo-shik receives a text from Mal-geum and gets caught grinning at his phone. Joon-ki accidentally calls her by her stage name, Cherry, so Doo-shik fibs to Dong-gu that Cherry is his first love’s American name. He admits that he’s thinking about Mal-geum a lot, but he’s not sure if he likes her, or if it’s just because they’re old friends.

Joon-ki says that it’s easy to tell — when you like someone, your heart races, your hands and feet tingle, and you feel dazed. He says there’s a scientific method developed by NASA scientists that can tell him for sure. Ha, Dong-gu listens to all this, looking pretty interested while trying not to look interested.

Joon-ki shows them how to calculate the chances of Doo-shik liking Mal-geum using the characters in their name. He determines an eighty percent chance that Doo-shik likes her, then teaches them another method to determine if they’ll end up together using a mechanical pencil. Doo-shik stops him, saying that this is stupid.

As soon as they’re gone, Dong-gu takes the test and calculates a seventy-six percent chance that he likes Yoon-ah. At first he rejects the results, and uses a random name off a delivery menu to prove that the test is wrong, only to turn around and talk himself right back into liking Yoon-ah. LOL, the boy is toast.

Meanwhile, Seo-jin catches Soo-ah using all the milk in the house to wash her face. Soo-ah lies that she was going to drink it, so Seo-jin orders her to drink the entire thing right now or she’ll kick her out.

Soo-ah snaps and admits the truth, saying that all models do it. Their screeching draws the other housemates, so Soo-ah tells Dong-gu haughtily to put it on her bill. Everyone has to eat their cereal without milk, and they argue about Soo-ah over the breakfast table.

Doo-shik is still sighing over his insecurity about his feelings for Mal-geum. Seo-jin says that when she likes a guy, she’s so interested in everything about him that she can even recognize his footsteps.

As usual, she and Joon-ki end up fighting over which method is better for determining whether you like a person, the NASA test or knowing their footsteps. A woman walks past Joon-ki, and he’s struck by a feeling so strong that he falls to his knees, clutching his chest.

He gasps that he felt his heart pound and his fingers go numb when he saw the woman, and calls it the first symptoms of love. He decides to find out her name and do the test to prove that the NASA calculation works, and he follows her all the way to an office building, where he loses her at the elevator.

Soo-ah scares Dong-gu witless by popping up from the floor wearing a mask made of sliced cucumbers. She says she’s hiding from Seo-jin, and relaxes to hear that she’s out. They hear someone coming in the front door, and Soo-ah is afraid it’s Seo-jin, but Dong-gu says calmly, “No, it’s Yoon-ah.”

He freaks out when he realizes that he knew Yoon-ah by her footsteps, just like Seo-jin said. He tries to convince himself that it doesn’t mean he likes her, it just means he has sensitive ears. He correctly predicts that the next person walking in is a delivery person, then flips over the couch and hugs the poor guy in his excitement, laughing maniacally.

Doo-shik takes Mal-geum out for dinner, and she tells him that today is her birthday. He asks why she’s not celebrating with her parents or friends, and she admits that things are awkward with everyone since she started making movies. Doo-shik excuses himself, looking sheepish.

Dong-gu offers to go to go grocery shopping with Yoon-ah, and he invites Soo-ah along. She declines, saying that the rough weather is bad for her skin, which he finds odd considering that she just killed a huge bowl of ramyun. Soo-ah drops the bowl, shattering it and cutting her foot pretty badly. Dong-gu decides to stay home to patch up her foot, looking genuinely sorry to send Yoon-ah to the store alone.

Still clutching his chest, Joon-ki staggers up the stairs of the office building to find his “destiny woman’s” photo and name on the wall. His calculation reveals that they’re ninety-nine percent meant to be, which he takes as certain proof that the NASA theory works. He stumbles off to meet her, leaving Seo-jin wondering why this is bothering her so much.

Since she’s a cardiac specialist, Joon-ki’s destiny woman assumes he’s there for a checkup, especially when he says that his heart keeps pounding ever since he met a beautiful woman. She listens to his heart and decides to run some tests, scaring Joon-ki.

Doo-shik returns to Mal-geum with a cake for her birthday. A man at a nearby table recognizes Mal-geum, embarrassing her when he and his friends loudly announce that she’s a porn star. The drunk jerk wants to shake her hand, and he gets offended when she declines.

Mal-geum snaps that she’s not obligated to shake rude people’s hands just because she acts in adult films. The jerk jokes to his friends that it’s that attitude that makes her bold enough to take off her clothes for the camera, and Mal-geum nearly attacks him before Doo-shik pulls her away.

After all the tests, Joon-ki looks shell-shocked as he tells Seo-jin that the reason his heart races and his hands and feet go numb is because he has a heart condition. Luckily, it can be controlled with medication, and Seo-jin gently teases him for thinking it meant love at first sight.

As Dong-gu doctors Soo-ah’s foot, she watches a news report about a fire at a grocery store involving several casualties. Dong-gu realizes that it’s the same store where Yoon-ah was heading, and he runs out of the house.

He races towards the store, as we hear Seo-jin’s voice saying that when you like someone, you think about them all day and worry when you’re not with them. You hurt when that person has a hard time, and even if it means you get injured, you would do anything for them.

Once they’re out of the restaurant, Mal-geum collapses, sobbing. Doo-shik marches back inside, picks up the cake, and hurls it into the drunk jerk’s face. YES!

Dong-gu arrives at the fire, calling frantically for Yoon-ah. He hears his name and turns to see her behind him, perfectly fine. She asks if he’s okay, and Seo-jin’s voice tells us, “Just seeing the person you like alive and well makes you feel happy and grateful. Isn’t that love?”

Without a single word, Dong-gu pulls Yoon-ah into a relieved hug.

 
COMMENTS

I thought it was great, the way this episode started and ended with a hug. Both hugs had entirely different meanings for Dong-gu, who isn’t very in touch with his emotions unless they’re smacking him in the face, but which seem pretty obvious to onlookers. The first hug was initiated by Soo-ah, who cheated on Dong-gu then treated him pretty badly when she left him. You could see that her hug was more confusing for Dong-gu than anything, when not so long ago he would have taken it as a sign that she wanted to reconcile. But that hug at the end is the one that matters — it’s the first time Dong-gu has initiated physical contact with Yoon-ah, even including the kiss at their wedding, which says to me that this is where his heart truly lies. Hopefully he’ll stop denying his feelings soon, because I think that the only thing more fun than confused-in-love Dong-gu will be openly-smitten Dong-gu. I can’t even imagine how adorable that’s going to be.

You know, Joon-ki may be a hot mess who gets constantly himself into impossible scrapes, but I have to admire his dedication and willingness to do literally anything to get back out of them. He always follows through with the consequences whenever he gets in trouble, and he never tries to blame anyone else for his mistakes. He rightly took responsibility for the money that Dong-gu promised the landlady, then he was prepared to compromise his personal moral code and possibly even risk his professional career just to fulfill that promise. I mean, okay, so he was also motivated by the opportunity to shove Dong-gu’s superior attitude in his face, but Dong-gu sort of deserved it, and it’s still consistent with Joon-ki’s determination to do whatever it takes to make things right. He’s got a strange way of pursuing his dreams, but he never gives up or backs down, and that’s my favorite thing about him.

We still haven’t seen as much of Doo-shik, and we know the least about him of all the Waikiki tenants, but I really like what we do know about him. He’s so sweet and pure, a total cinnamon roll that you just want to protect from the harsh realities of life, but that doesn’t make him weak or immature. He’s every bit as ambitious about his dream of being a writer as joon-ki is about being an actor or Dong-gu about being a filmmaker, and although his career may not be where he wants it right now, Doo-shik just keeps doing what he can and searching for his big break. I also love that Doo-shik is almost always the one taking care of little Sol when Yoon-ah isn’t around, and how he tries so hard to act as the voice of reason when Dong-gu and Joon-ki are flying off the rails (not that anyone listens to him).

And as far as Soo-ah goes, I wasn’t sure how I would react to her being in the house with everyone, but I found that I don’t dislike her as much as I feared I would. She’s pretty clueless and has an entitled streak a mile wide, but I believe that she’s ultimately a harmless, if self-centered, person. It was sweet to see everyone else taking Dong-gu’s side, worried that he’d fall prey to her charms again, even when Dong-gu was the one letting her back into their lives. And Dong-gu doesn’t seem to be as conflicted about his feelings as I feared — he seems to be genuinely over Soo-ah and well on his way to being smitten by Yoon-ah. His treatment of Soo-ah does appear to be motivated more by compassion than any lingering feelings, which makes me feel a lot more relaxed about Soo-ah being in the house. I’d rather her presence serve the purpose of highlighting Yoon-ah’s growing feelings for Dong-gu, than to confuse Dong-gu even more about who he really likes.

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