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Call It Love: Episodes 7-8
by Dramaddictally
This drama doesn’t disappoint. With wholly likable leads, fleshed-out side characters, and a deepening sense of conflict, it’s easy to root for (almost) everyone involved. At the half-way mark, the show ponies up the answers to some lingering questions and poses a few more, making it just as addictive as it’s been since the beginning.
EPISODES 7-8
I’m happy to report that all the nail-biting and bellyaching I did last week was unnecessary and undeserved. The drama did not go down the makjang path that I feared but set up a tried-and-true forbidden romance. I love the show as much now as I always have, even if (or exactly because) the characters have gotten more complicated.
We left off last week with Woo-joo outside her old house. Hee-ja is living there now and Woo-joo has come with a crate of eggs that will not be used for making omelets. Before she breaks too many yolks against the gate, though, she’s apprehended by the police and taken to the station. Dong-jin arrives too late and does not learn that Woo-joo is the person he’s been looking for.
To clear up Dong-jin’s stake in this situation, we get a flashback of him talking to his mother after she’s taken over the house. She admits that she kicked out some kids in order to live there, and he’s genuinely concerned about their welfare.
He goes to speak to the neighborhood realtor, who informs him that one of the daughters that used to live there continues to visit. He leaves his business card, asking the realtor to call him the next time she sees the daughter — he’d like to apologize on his mother’s behalf. Further, he wants to persuade his mother to give back the house.
Woo-joo learns all this information from her aunt, who comes to bail her out of trouble at the police station. Woo-joo is moved to tears by this revelation, and walks away remembering all the moments she thought badly of Dong-jin and how she intended to ruin his company.
Perhaps in an act of reparation, she waits for Min-young outside her building and demands that she move out of her apartment. Woo-joo informs her that Dong-jin has been staying elsewhere since he learned that Min-young is his neighbor again, and threatens to show up every day to bother Min-young until she moves out.
In one of the oddest ways to settle the matter that I can imagine, Min-young takes Woo-joo to play darts. The deal is that if Woo-joo wins, Min-young will ask Dong-jin if he wants her to leave — and if he does, she’ll go. Woo-joo, a former archer, shoots darts the same way she shoots angry looks: hitting her target every time.
Woo-joo ends up at Min-young’s apartment that night because she has to carry the passed-out drunk Min-young home. Woo-joo herself is in no condition to leave either. In the morning, Woo-joo runs into Dong-jin in the elevator (bound to happen) and they go to breakfast together. Woo-joo tells him the truth about why she’s there: she threatened Min-young and told her to move out. When he asks why, she replies that she wants him to be able to live comfortably in his own place. (Oof! A.k.a., she’s just confessed she lurves him.)
This confession of sorts moves Dong-jin in a big way. When Min-young tells him she’ll be moving out, he says not to do it if it’s because of him. It’s her house; she should just stay. The sentiment is similar to Woo-joo’s remark about being comfortable at home, and it marks the real beginning of him getting over Min-young. He even tells Min-young he no longer cares what she does — and he means it.
With so much love permeating the air between Woo-joo and Dong-jin, we might think they could just get on with their healing love story. But that is not in the cards for them (at least, not yet). One problem is Joon. I’ve been a staunch supporter of this character since the beginning and rallied behind him when he tried to stop Woo-joo from enacting her revenge. However, when Joon wises up to the fact that Woo-joo has it bad for Dong-jin — because she admits it — he turns on her (making me turn on him just a tad).
Joon’s issue, in a nutshell, is that he thinks it’s wrong for Woo-joo to have feelings for the son of her sworn enemy. (Am I the only one getting Capulet vibes?) So, he plays the lowest card possible, which is: I’m telling your mom. And, I need to interject here to say that I initially thought her mom had died of cancer. But, after the premiere week, there have been hints that her mother is alive, but sick, in Tongyeong.
Woo-joo understands Joon’s position and also feels it’s wrong for her to like Dong-jin. So, she begins to try to distance herself from him. One night when she’s pretty drunk (after the argument with Joon), Dong-jin tries to walk her home and she tells him not to like her. “I’m asking a favor,” she says, adding that there will be no problems if he has no feelings for her. Later, Woo-joo tells the realtor that she’s given up on getting her house back, and asks her to deliver the message to Dong-jin that her family is fine and he should stop looking for her.
At the office, they each work to maintain a wall between them, which is as painful to watch as it must be for them to experience. At first, I thought Dong-jin was only acting distant because of Woo-joo’s drunken request, but he later tells Sun-woo that, after his breakup with Min-young, he promised himself never to be hurt or abandoned again. He was swayed by Woo-joo, so he’s avoiding her out of self-protection.
Apart from our main thread, each of the side stories in this drama is interesting and lovable, adding to the overall greatness of this show. First, we have an amazing friendship/roommate situation blooming between Dong-jin and Ji-gu. After Ji-gu ran away from home last week, he bumped into Dong-jin on the street. Dong-jin, being the sweetheart that he is, invited Ji-gu to stay at his apartment — which has given Dong-jin a reason to start staying at home again. The two are checking in on each other and having heart-to-hearts from day 1, and now that I’ve seen it, I can’t imagine this show without these two together.
Second, we have Hye-sung dating a younger man who, at first, seems to be a mismatch for her, since she’s only pretending they have things in common. But this week, he goes on and on about the reasons he likes her and it’s clear he’s observed her enough to peg her exactly as she is. He understands that she acts easygoing and superficial to make other people feel comfortable but she actually thinks deeply about things. I love Hye-sung as much as I love Woo-joo, as different as they are, and I’m happy to see her get this kind of attention.
Hye-sung’s new loveline intersects with Joon when his mother pays him a visit and tells him he needs to go on some blind dates. He tries to sneak out of it by saying he’s already dating someone — to which his mother replies that he already used Woo-joo as an excuse two years ago (haha). He gives Hye-sung’s name instead and his mom now wants to meet her. At Joon’s request (and promise to wash all the dishes), Hye-sung agrees to pose as his girlfriend. However, we haven’t gotten to the meeting yet and he needs to watch his tongue and stop criticizing her dating habits or he’s going to find himself without a fake girlfriend.
Last up is Min-young and the show does an excellent job filling in some of her backstory and motivation for leaving Dong-jin. Surprisingly (or not) it has to do with his mother. The gist is that Min-young wanted to marry Dong-jin but thought he wasn’t serious about her because he wouldn’t introduce her to his mom. So, she goes ahead and sets up a meeting with Hee-ja, and the woman is every bit the shyster that we know her as today. Afterward, Min-young asks Dong-jin about marriage and he says he wants to marry her, which is why he’s giving her time to think it over carefully first.
In the present, Min-young thinks back on this encounter and goes to Dong-jin’s door to finally tell him the truth: she hesitated in marrying him because she was afraid her life would be turned upside down by his mother. But she also says he holds some of the blame for what happened, because he started to avoid her after their conversation about marriage. The only problem is, she’s saying this through the door to Dong-jin’s apartment and doesn’t realize it’s Ji-gu on the other side hearing what she has to say.
Our closer for this week has Dong-jin walking into his apartment building, with Min-young coming up behind to wrap him in a backhug. They’re seen by Dong-jin’s former boss and current competitor, CEO SHIN SUNG-MAN (Shin Moon-sung), who’s been tracking Min-young in order to obtain her falsely promised investment money. When CEO Shin sees Min-young with Dong-jin, he assumes the two are colluding to ruin his company. He starts to approach them when Woo-joo steps out of the shadows to cut him off.
I feel like I have a better appreciation for the bounds of this show and where it’s willing to go and not go. I’m totally satisfied with the direction we went with each character this week, and am thankful for the attempt to humanize Min-young. (Now it’s only Hee-ja that feels a little too Wicked Witch to be real.)
I don’t have to like Min-young or what she did to Dong-jin, but knowing what a lonely and closed-off person he was — even before — makes it easier to understand how she could get lonely in their relationship. The tragedy is that Dong-jin barely associates with his mother, so if Min-young hadn’t introduced herself, she might never have had to deal with the crazy lady.
Which brings we to a lingering question I have about motivations. Dong-jin has little to do with his mother’s affairs, so it feels a little strange that he would get involved with the house situation. Unless he has an inkling that Woo-joo is the daughter. The show planted a flashback to the grocery story scene — where Woo-joo tells Dong-jin she was kicked out of her house — in the same sequence as him talking to his mother about the house. Was he putting two and two together at that moment?
My only possible (teeny-tiny) qualm is that the self-imposed separation between our leads feels a little unjustified from Woo-joo’s side. She and Joon shouldn’t hold it against Dong-jin that his mother is terrible. Would either of them think that Woo-joo should be responsible for her father’s behavior? Why should the kids pay for their parents’ mistakes? …Except to set up a Romeo and Juliet story, where the kids are forced apart by their parents’ enmity. Which, to me, is what we have here.
I do understand the separation from Dong-jin’s perspective, though. He doesn’t want to get hurt again — which is reason enough to avoid most anything.
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