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Call It Love: Episodes 3-4
by Dramaddictally
Secrets, red herrings, backstabbing, and a whole lot of loneliness run through our show this week. Yet, in the midst of it all, our leads are already sensing the stirring of feelings. While our out-for-justice heroine tries to toughen up our meek hero, it looks like he’s got a thing or two to teach her about toning it down as well.
EPISODES 3-4
The big theme this week is loneliness and we get lots of snapshots of how it manifests in the lives of both our leads. Luckily, we’re also getting glimpses into how these two might just turn that around for each other.
After learning so much about our heroine last week, we spend some quality time getting to know our withholding hero. We learn that Dong-jin feels betrayed by his mother, as he watched her go through three marriages (after his father), each time wishing it would be the last.
We also get the story about Dong-jin’s relationship with his ex-girlfriend, whom he dated for seven years, and the terrible way that went down: she cheated on him for a year (and he knew about it) and then dumped him one month before she planned to marry someone else. (And the worst part of that news is that she’s showed up again and we are going to have to deal with her as a character. But we’ll get to that.)
We see Dong-jin think back to the day his ex-girlfriend broke up with him. They were camping (his favorite hobby) and she told him she was leaving for the U.S., where she’d get married. (Oof. And there went that hobby.) He replies, “Why are you doing this to me? I let it slide for you. I pretended not to know for you. You shouldn’t have done this to me.” And we get to see not only the crack that’s about to form in his life, but also the foundation of his personality, which is that he holds himself back.
Dong-jin’s restrained manner — in opposition to Woo-joo’s bluntness — is at the center of the interactions between our leads this week. Last time, we ended with Woo-joo knocking a man to the ground when he ran up on Dong-jin as if he were about to hit him. Dong-jin immediately goes googly eyed for Woo-joo. But she tells Dong-jin he’s not being nice by just standing there ready to take a punch — he’s being stupid. And this is a conversation that repeats.
The two end up with lots of time to argue about their worldviews when Woo-joo decides to accept the offer to come back to work at Best Fairs. It’s pretty clear (to us, not to Woo-joo) that Dong-jin already likes her. One day he sees her going to lunch at a nearby restaurant and follows her inside. Woo-joo is standoffish and doesn’t want to talk but Dong-jin starts letting down his bounds, even confiding that his girlfriend cheated for a year and he didn’t say anything. Woo-joo shuts it down, saying, “I’m not interested in other people’s misery.”
But when they walk out of the restaurant together, she plucks him out of the way of an oncoming bike (in a lovely little reversal that fits their characters so well). As it happens, Hye-sung is there to witness Woo-joo’s unexpected rescue move, and gets overly excited about the prospect of her sister dating. (She calls Dong-jin “Neil Armstrong: the first man to ever woo the moon” haha).
Hye-sung, in an ill-advised plan, traps Dong-jin and entices him to come into the neighborhood bar with her (where Woo-joo and Joon will soon arrive). When Woo-joo sees Dong-jin talking to her siblings, she freaks out, grabs him by the arm, and walks him out of there.
Hye-sung misreads the whole thing, thinking her sister is grabbing him out of affection, but Woo-joo tells Dong-jin outside that she doesn’t want him around her family. In this encounter, he finally speaks up for himself, saying that the reason he holds back isn’t because he’s stupid, it’s so he doesn’t have to see others hurt by his words or actions — making it clear she’s hurt him. There may be friction, but these two have a lot to learn from each other.
At home, Hye-sung explains to Woo-joo that Dong-jin must like her — he agreed to come into the bar after hearing Woo-joo would be there. Hye-sung can tell he’s a lonely person and guesses he must have been hurt badly by a woman (well, she’s clearly perceptive when it comes to men she’s not interested in). Woo-joo continues to act like she doesn’t care, but when we see her thoughts, she’s thinking about him in random moments the same way he’s thinking of her.
On to the business side of things, we find out that Best Fairs is on the verge of collapse. And it’s not just because they have no money, but because there’s a plot against them. First, we see Dong-jin’s mother, Hee-ja, asking for her money back. The show likes to throw red herrings, so I won’t make any pronouncements, but it appears that Dong-jin gives back the money — which he was never comfortable taking — and it’s left the company in dire straits.
Second, Dong-jin’s former business partner is actively out to get him. We learned last week that he has a spy inside Best Fairs and Dong-jin knows who it is. But Dong-jin is worried that if he fires the spy, or lets anyone know he knows, another employee will take his place. So, he allows the spy to continue working, and promotes Woo-joo to the business team to keep an eye on him. Woo-joo, though, is out to ruin the company and says no, she won’t do it (yet she’s still promoted somehow).
One day, while Woo-joo is working, Hee-ja comes to the office to see Dong-jin. She’s got a gift for him — and a new boyfriend to tell him about. He’s disappointed (as he is every time she has a new man) and she counters, “I’m lonely too.” This is a callback to earlier in the episode, when we hear Hye-sung say, “Truly lonely people are the ones who can’t even say they’re lonely.”
Outside Dong-jin’s office, Woo-joo has been tasked with getting the coffee that Hee-ja ordered. She carries it into the office, expecting to be recognized, and stands firmly as Hee-ja turns to look at her. The confrontation is worse than Woo-joo imagined, though, because Hee-ja doesn’t know who she is. It’s only been two months since her father’s funeral (since she made a scene) and Woo-joo can’t understand how this woman doesn’t remember her.
Hee-ja talks down to Woo-joo, and Woo-joo uses it as an opportunity to confirm, asking, “Do you know me?” Hee-ja says they just met now. Woo-joo is almost shaking with rage and says, “If we’ve just met then don’t talk down to me.” She then leaves the office and Dong-jin tells his mother to go.
Woo-joo goes outside and sees Hee-ja leave the building and get into a car with her new squeeze (Lee Jun-hyuk). She thinks back on the day in high school when she discovered her father and Hee-ja coming out of a motel together. That day, she was so emotional, she ran out in front of the car that her father was driving (with Dong-jin’s mom in the passenger seat) and got hit by the car. I mean, what a way to make sure they got caught! When her father ran out of the car to help her, she screamed, “Why her of all people!” (Hee-ja was evidently a friend of Woo-joo’s mother.)
Woo-joo considers stepping in front of Hee-ja’s car again, but decides against it. She goes back inside the office and Dong-jin apologizes on his mother’s behalf and tells her not to do coffee errands anymore since she’s on the business team now. Woo-joo is blinded with anger and says, “You don’t even know what it means to be truly sorry.”
In her fury, she waits for the company spy in the parking garage and tells him that Dong-jin knows what he’s up to. “If you really want to ruin this company, try harder,” she says. And with that, the spy notifies the former business partner and they decide to carry out their plan ahead of schedule. They’re stealing the clients for Best Fairs’ upcoming trade expo and, now that Dong-jin has spent all his resources on it, the company will have to fold if they have no clients and can’t recoup their money. (Yikes. This is the real revenge story of the drama.)
Just as Dong-jin is finding out his clients are backing out of their contracts, that’s when his ex, KANG MIN-YOUNG (Hani), appears in front of him. She’s recently returned to Korea and has already found out about the plot against Dong-jin’s company. She goes to his office and, when he sees her, he walks by and into the stairwell, looking like he’s about to have a panic attack. But he quickly changes direction and goes back out to confront her, telling her she can’t just show up like this. She should have enough respect to run the other way when she sees him.
Min-young tells him she’s returned to her old apartment — which is across the hall from his — but that she’ll try to avoid him. (Except, we’ve already seen her knocking on his door drunk on two occasions. Luckily, he missed her.)
Afterward, Dong-jin gets drunk alone. He calls his co-CEO, CHOI SUN-WOO (Jeon Suk-ho), who we first got to know as Dong-jin’s long-time friend and business partner, but who we’ve also come to learn is a liar. On one hand, it seems like Sun-woo is trying to protect Dong-jin — like when he finds out the clients are leaving Best Fairs and tries to get a loan before informing Dong-jin of the problem. On the other hand, Sun-woo knows that Min-young is back in Korea, living next door to Dong-jin again, and not only does he not tell Dong-jin — he’s already been out to dinner with her.
The minute Sun-woo and Min-young see each other, it’s clear they had something going on in the past. So, when Dong-jin drunkenly calls Sun-woo after seeing Min-young, he asks right away how long he knew she was in town. Then he cries and goes on to talk about the wedding invitation he received from Min-young right after she broke up with him. He’s sort of babbling and doesn’t fill in all the details but Sun-woo apologizes.
When Dong-jin hangs up, he walks into the street and in front of an oncoming car. Woo-joo (out of nowhere) pulls him onto the sidewalk and screams that he scared her. She raises her arm to hit him but he defends himself, grabbing her arm to stop her.
What is going on? Is Sun-woo the one that Min-young cheated with? She doesn’t appear to be married now. Did they plan a wedding and then call it off? And why would they send an invitation to Dong-jin? That’s more cruel than even cheating for a year and telling him a month before the wedding. But the horribly heartbreaking part will be if it’s true and Dong-jin just didn’t say anything to Sun-woo all this time. That can’t be the case, right? That’s too crazy.
The thing that stands out most to me in this drama is how much I am loving our heroine. Her lack of filter is so likable and it’s been a while since I cared so much about what happened to a character. And the friendship between her and Joon is also refreshing. He’s a true friend — ready to go to battle with her when he thinks she’s making a big mistake, and totally not into her (though definitely into her sister, whether he knows it yet or not).
Now that I see the storytelling method is to plant false information and try to shock us with it later, I feel like there’s not much I can say until I know more. The upside is that the drama has me hooked, and there’s no question I’ll be waiting around for next week to find out what happens.
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