Episodes 15-16 (Final) » Dramabeans MGG

Crash Course in Romance: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

by mistyisles

Our story is coming to an end, meaning it’s time for our characters to graduate into the next stages of their lives. Despite the dark turn things took last week, this finale takes a somewhat more hopeful approach, allowing most of our characters to grow, break free of old expectations, and step into a wide-open future.

 
EPISODES 15-16

Though ready to admit something’s shady about Dong-hee, Chi-yeol plays it safe, wanting to be certain before outright accusing him of murder. His worst suspicions are confirmed, however, when he investigates Dong-hee’s home and finds evidence that 1) Hae-yi was held here the night of the kidnapping, and 2) Dong-hee was Su-hyun’s younger brother — the latter of which he hadn’t yet realized. The final pieces fall together just in time for Chi-yeol to stop Dong-hee from a second attempt at killing both Hae-yi and Haeng-ja.

Chi-yeol chases Dong-hee to the roof and urges Dong-hee to turn himself in, if only for Su-hyun’s sake. Ignoring Chi-yeol’s pleas, Dong-hee says in defeat that he has nothing left to protect. Then he steps off the roof and plunges to his death. The complete, tragic story of his life is revealed to the public, with excessive competition over education named the true culprit behind it all. It’s very sudden, but from there the show is able to focus on resolving the other characters’ stories.

For starters, Hae-yi’s biological mother, HAENG-JA (Bae Hae-sun), has been making a general nuisance of herself, breezing in to take over Hae-yi’s care while demanding everyone else cater to her every whim. When Hae-yi finally wakes up, though, she makes it unmistakably clear that the mother she wants taking care of her is Haeng-sun.

Once Haeng-ja gets wind of Haeng-sun’s rich boyfriend, her eyes practically light up with dollar signs. She’s scheming to get as much as she can out of Chi-yeol, but Hae-yi overhears her plans and threatens to kill herself if Haeng-ja ever asks Haeng-sun or Chi-yeol for money again.

After wrestling with conflicted emotions, Hae-yi decides the best thing she can do to protect Haeng-sun from being taken advantage of is to draw clear line between the two sisters. So at her own welcome home party, Hae-yi announces that she’s decided to move back to Japan with her mother.

This is a disappointing shock to literally everyone (myself included), but as Haeng-sun stubbornly keeps taking care of Hae-yi and Hae-yi stubbornly keeps rejecting her, Haeng-ja’s eyes are opened to just how much these two love each other. So, Haeng-ja decides to bow out and return to Japan alone, leaving behind a genuinely sweet letter for Haeng-sun and taking with her only a few of Hae-yi’s baby photos.

Following Sun-jae’s confession about the leaked exam, Su-hee rallies the other moms to stage a protest demanding his immediate expulsion. But Sun-jae is ready to move on anyway and willfully drops out of school. With a little encouragement from Haeng-sun, he finally works up the courage to face Hae-yi again and apologize. He also works up the courage to (clumsily) confess his feelings, which Hae-yi puts off answering until after the college entrance exam.

As for Seo-jin, her estranged husband steps in to defend her in court. Since Sun-jae confessed and neither he nor Seo-jin ultimately benefitted from cheating, Seo-jin is let off with a hefty fine and a suspension from her job. For the first time in a very long time, their whole family shares a meal together, marking the beginning of reconciliation for all four of them.

On the opposite end of the reconciliation spectrum, Su-hee catches her husband cheating and physically attacks him in front of all the other moms. This makes her an object of public disgrace. Su-hee still tries to keep a lid on the scandal at home so it won’t affect Su-ah’s grades, but after hearing her parents scream at each other about it, Su-ah asks her mother to back off — she doesn’t mind if they get divorced, and she’d like some space herself.

As all the loose ends start to tie up, one more (tiny) scandal breaks: Chi-yeol is photographed having coffee with his former pianist blind date. It was nothing more than a friendly goodbye, but online commenters use it as an opportunity to make elitist remarks against Haeng-sun.

Chi-yeol takes his new assistant’s advice to hurry up and propose… but Haeng-sun beats him to it. They both show up with rings, and she lets him blunder through a hurried explanation of what really happened before matter-of-factly saying, “Let’s get married.” She wants everyone to know once and for all that she and Chi-yeol are together. They happily wear both sets of rings and agree to hold off the wedding until Haeng-sun earns her sports instructor certification (her longtime secret dream).

Two years later, Jae-woo and Young-joo have quietly gotten married, while Haeng-sun is still studying for her certification. Hae-yi and Sun-jae are in university together, and so is Su-ah, still pursuing academic excellence but looking worlds happier (and potentially getting romantically involved with Geon-hu). When Sun-jae points out Hae-yi still hasn’t given him an answer, she rolls her eyes and then shyly pecks him on the cheek, and they run off hand-in-hand.

On the day of Haeng-sun’s next exam, Chi-yeol is so nervous he can hardly concentrate on teaching. He rushes out as soon as it’s over to call her, and then bursts back into the classroom and screams in celebration — she passed! As they walk down the crowded street together later, they decide to throw caution to the wind and kiss right there in public. After all, they’re getting married, so who cares about scandals anymore?

Despite a few questionable decisions along the way, I’d say Crash Course in Romance ends on a decent high note. Episode 16 especially felt like a return to form after the whole kidnapping and coma incident, and there was a lot I loved about the various characters’ resolutions — so much so, in fact, that I wished they’d had just a little more time to be developed.

I think if I were to make some changes, I might keep Dong-hee being manipulative and controlling of Chi-yeol behind-the-scenes, but without ever resorting to murder. Then there would be more time to focus on the core families — our leads, Hae-yi and her two mothers, Su-ah and her parents, and Sun-jae’s family — with their individual but interconnected journeys. And we could still have the parallel between tiger moms and someone who wants to personally engineer his idol’s “success” even if that means keeping said idol in constant misery.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed Crash Course in Romance despite its flaws. I loved Chi-yeol’s genuine passion for teaching, Haeng-sun’s warm, caring nature, and the contrast between “traditional” but dysfunctional family units with heavily skewed priorities and a nontraditional, unconditionally supportive family that understands the importance of a healthy school/life balance. And, best of all, that we got to watch that family’s sincerity and kindness slowly rub off on almost everyone around them.

Because, as Sun-jae said, we can’t choose the family — or the system — we’re born into. But we can learn to do better than those who went before us. And while sometimes that can mean inspiring others to change, like Hae-yi with Haeng-ja, other times it means breaking free and doing what’s best for ourselves while knowing the other person is unlikely to ever truly change, like Su-ah with her mom. But if no one’s brave enough to risk a scandal by defying oppressive social norms at a smaller level, then larger systemic changes may never happen, either.

 
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