Marriage Not Dating Episode 1

Marriage Not Dating Episode  1

 

In a courtroom, a judge calls JOO JANG-MI (Han Groo) to the stand. The charge: stalking. How does she plead? As a man runs down the street and races up the steps to the courthouse, she lets out a laugh that grows crazed, and then she finally speaks: “I’m a crazy bitch. I must’ve been insane…”

The man gets stuck getting through security, and he tells the guard he has to testify for someone. The guard asks his relationship to the person, and we cut back to Jang-mi: “I said to that bastard…” The man declares to the guard: “She’s the person I’m going to marry.” Jang-mi: “…Let’s get married.” As she says it, the man busts into the courtroom, and her eyes grow wide.

Rewind to the fairly recent past, as our heroine Jang-mi flits her way through preparations for the proposal she’s planning to spring on her boyfriend tonight. She goes totally overboard, with heart-shaped balloons, rose petals, too many candles to count, and the perfect outfit for her perfect day. This is going to be so disastrous.

She calls her boyfriend, and we see a call go unanswered in a plastic surgeon’s office. The clinic belongs to GONG KI-TAE (Yeon Woo-jin), who turns out to be the man who raced to the courtroom in the opening scene. After a procedure, he finally answers and sounds annoyed, but promises to be there.

He arrives in the hotel lobby, and says into his phone that a strange woman is waving at him. He sizes up the situation in about two seconds—he’s been blindsided by a blind date, and it’s only now that we see he’s been talking to someone else the whole time. His buddy LEE HOON-DONG (Heo Jung-min) cackles on the phone and says he couldn’t say no to Ki-tae’s mom—no one can.

Hoon-dong is actually upstairs in the same hotel, because he’s got a date of his own. He arrives at a suite, and there’s Jang-mi, who greets him with her namesake rose between her teeth. But as soon as Hoon-dong steps inside, his eyes dart around the room as the warning signals blare like neon lights: balloons, cake, candles… even a slideshow.

He starts to sweat bullets, and she lays down obvious hints about how she wants to be together all the time. Her words flash across the screen in happy pastel colors, only to be heard by Hoon-dong like a slo-mo horror death-knell. He’s scared witless, and scans the room for the nearest exit.

He runs to the bathroom and locks himself in, and texts Ki-tae for help. Ki-tae is unmoved by his plight, and works his way through his blind date in what can only be described as rote rudeness—it’s clearly a routine that’s been rehearsed and refined for maximum offense in minimal time.

He turns every question the woman asks into a barb back at her for only being interested in money, all while negotiating (via text) the terms of whether or not he’s going to help Hoon-dong get out of his mess. He’s a new tenant in Hoon-dong’s commercial building (or really, his mother’s building), and Hoon-dong finally agrees to give his clinic free rent for three years.

 

His blind date asks Ki-tae what he’s doing, and he says he actually has someone waiting for him upstairs in a room, and he’s currently weighing his options. Pfft. What’s even funnier is that he knows so well when the glass of water is coming at his face that he has time to put his phone and glasses down on the table before bracing for impact.

With Date #1 down, he heads up to Hoon-dong’s room to crash Date #2, playing the part of the clueless best friend who doesn’t know that he’s ruining a romantic evening. He pops their balloons, drinks their champagne, and eats their cake, all while Hoon-dong dances around in the background and Jang-mi strains to keep herself from wringing Ki-tae’s neck.

With excuses that he can’t possibly leave his bro hanging in his time of need, Hoon-dong escapes, leaving Jang-mi utterly deflated on her big day. As they walk out, Ki-tae warns his friend to end things cleanly. Hoon-dong swears he will, which I find hard to believe.

 

The polite way to break up No. 1: Submersion.

After a few days of no contact, Hoon-dong is sure Jang-mi will have gotten the hint, and for good measure, he changes his online status to: “Because it changes… it’s love.” But Jang-mi is nowhere near his passive-aggressive hint, and wonders when to propose next, deciding that this time they’ll go to an island so that no one can interrupt.

Jang-mi is a sales associate at a high-end department store, and she spends her whole shift calling Hoon-dong repeatedly. Her friend and co-worker NAM HYUN-HEE (Yoon So-hee) is appalled to see that she’s still using an old flip-phone and couldn’t stalk her boyfriend online if she wanted to.

After three days of “submersion,” aka disappearing and cutting off contact, Hoon-dong thinks it’s safe to turn on his phone. But as soon as he does, it rings again, and he finds over 300 calls from Jang-mi. Eep.

 

A week later she’s still calling, but Hyun-hee tells her that no response means he’s giving her clear signals that it’s over. Hoon-dong says that she must’ve gotten the hint by now, only to have Ki-tae point out that Jang-mi is headed towards Hoon-dong’s restaurant right this minute.

Hoon-dong goes running like the weasel that he is, and crouches behind the counter. Jang-mi walks in, and the tall handsome waiter gets his own entrance music as he struts over to greet her. Hello, there.

The waiter is HAN YEO-REUM (Jung Jin-woon), and he gives her a puzzled look when she asks for Hoon-dong, who owns the restaurant. Yeo-reum: “Most people come here to see me.” He assures her that the boss, while not doing much of anything in the workplace, is fine and well. Haha.

Ki-tae saves Hoon-dong yet again by running interference, and stands in Jang-mi’s way so she can’t see him. He gets a call from his aunt who nags him about embarrassing the family on his blind date, and asks about the woman he had waiting up in the hotel room.

He looks Jang-mi up and down as he says that woman was desperate to get married too, and shouts into the phone that he isn’t going to marry ever, so they should just give up. But it’s too late—Aunt is on her way with Mom right now.

He panics and runs to the door, but Jang-mi holds him back, wanting to know if something’s going on with Hoon-dong oppa. He tells her to stop because she’s becoming pathetic: “It’s over.”

The polite way to break up No. 2: Breakup news via third party.

She chases him all the way into his car, and demands an explanation—did she do something wrong? Is Hoon-dong oppa… terminally ill? Pwahaha. Ki-tae wonders how she could be so obtuse, and says plainly (and coldly, but at least honestly) that she reeked of wedding hopes and Hoon-dong cut and ran.

Poor thing finally hears the truth and a tear rolls down her cheek. He has to drag her out of his car, and Mom and Aunt arrive just in time to hear them arguing. Jang-mi asks if that’s just his opinion and wants to know where Hoon-dong is, and Ki-tae blows up at her, scoffing that he’s never felt sorry for Hoon-dong until now—who wouldn’t run away from a girlfriend so clingy? Ouuuuuch.

He leans in to twist the knife further, and says that just like she dated Hoon-dong for his money, he dated Jang-mi for her face and her body. Angry tears start to pool in her eyes, and just then, Yeo-reum comes out with the juice Ki-tae ordered. In one swift move, Jang-mi pops the lid and throws it with a satisfying SMACK in Ki-tae’s face. She surprises him even further with the tearful declaration that at least for her, it wasn’t money: “It was love.”

 

Mom and Aunt watch the whole scene unfold and jump to the conclusion that Jang-mi was the other woman Ki-tae had up in the hotel room, and Mom finds her crying down the street. When Mom asks if her son is running away from her while she has thoughts of marriage, Jang-mi naturally assumes she’s Hoon-dong’s mother, and accepts Mom’s invitation to dinner.

Ki-tae is pissed at Hoon-dong for being a weasel, and asks what Jang-mi was to him: “She seemed sincere about you.” Hoon-dong says that was the problem since he couldn’t handle the weight of her sincerity.

Hoon-dong is ever so quickly distracted by the entrance of a hot girl in a red dress, and is surprised when Ki-tae says Hoon-dong already knows her. When she comes out of the dressing room, his jaw drops as he watches Ki-tae walk away with her, and mutters aloud, “Are they still seeing each other?”

 

She’s Ki-tae’s ex, KANG SE-AH (Han Sun-hwa), a plastic surgeon who apparently gets her work done by Ki-tae. I suppose you can’t operate on yourself. For being exes they’re shockingly nonchalant about him examining her breasts, but she doesn’t really seem the shy type anyway.

She tries to coax him over to her hospital, but he says there are plenty of better doctors than him. She sighs that he said the same thing about finding a better man when he broke up with her three years ago.

Hoon-dong still isn’t answering any of Jang-mi’s calls, and she wistfully remembers the good times when they were first starting out. Hoon-dong seems like the class clown type, and though his faults are many, when he’s sweet he’s very sweet and he makes her laugh.

Hyun-hee sees her crying again at work and suggests she go see his mother if she really wants to marry him, but Jang-mi says it’s over. Cut to: her pacing back and forth at someone’s front door, changing her mind every two seconds about going in.

She gets spotted by a snooty ajumma who turns out to be Hoon-dong’s mother, since Jang-mi of course went to his house looking for the wrong mom. His mother calls her a stalker and regales her with the terrible things Hoon-dong said about her, including the hotel proposal that terrified her poor son.

It leaves Jang-mi mortified, but she stands her ground and retorts that the bastard is hiding behind friends and his mother, all because he can’t break up with her in person. Ki-tae arrives to apologize about the blind date, and happens to witness another of Jang-mi’s heart-crushing moments.

Meanwhile, Ki-tae’s mom sets out an elaborate dinner hoping for a houseguest. Grandma sighs that Ki-tae hasn’t been home in three years, so what makes them think his girlfriend will show?

Jang-mi’s parents run a little chicken and beer shop, and are currently going through a silent phase where they converse (abundantly) via doodling board and text message. When Jang-mi is around they talk through her, and she screams at them to fight instead. The latest trouble is because Mom worries that her parents’ bar will make Jang-mi look bad to her restaurateur boyfriend.

Jang-mi gets a text that suddenly sends her reaching for a bottle of soju, and to her parents’ shock, she downs the whole bottle in one go. She shows up at Hoon-dong’s restaurant drunk, and gulps down another beer.

Hoon-dong tries to run away like the rat that he is, but Jang-mi fiiiiinally corners him for the first time since the hotel proposal. He asks if she didn’t get his text, and she recites it for everyone including Ki-tae and Se-ah to hear: “Thank you. I’m sorry. Be happy.” Hahaha.

This time Ki-tae ignores Hoon-dong’s pleas for help, and Jang-mi rails at him for turning her into a fool with just three lines in a text and reducing her love to this. As the argument gets heated, she raises the beer bottle in her hand as if to strike him, and Ki-tae grabs her arm to block her and Hoon-dong cowers to the ground in terror. He flees to the bathroom and calls the cops to say that he’s being attacked by a stalker.

Ki-tae says he’s interfering this time for Jang-mi’s benefit, and she scoffs that she knows she’s hit rock bottom right now, “But I can’t be clean and cool and polite like you people!” I love how the words are positive but she says them like insults. She cries that she has to see the person she wants to see and say the things she wants to say—it may be messy, but that’s the right thing to do.

She stifles back sobs, and Ki-tae finally tells her to go ahead. Hoon-dong hides in the bathroom like a coward, and she accidentally knocks the beer bottle into Ki-tae’s nose while banging on the door. Jang-mi doesn’t even notice and cries for Hoon-dong to just show his face once—perhaps if she just saw his eyes, she’d understand. She whimpers, “We loved together, but do I have to break up alone?”

 

She finally gets the door open, and Hoon-dong cowers under the sink, terrified of what she might do. And the second she sees his eyes, she drops the bottle and the sobering tears come: “Now that I see your face I get it. I loved alone.”

Ki-tae is the one to accompany her to the police station, where the cop tries to explain the stalking charge to the drunk girl. Jang-mi slurs that she just wanted to see and touch him, and a drunk man nearby agrees wholeheartedly that the double standard is unfair and it’s romance when you do it and sexual harassment when someone else does it.

But when the cop explains that the ajusshi is here because he repeatedly groped a woman, Jang-mi cries in realization, “Ah, I see… I’m a stalker!” Lol. She wails and then suddenly asks the officer to find a person for her—the mom who invited her over acting like Hoon-dong’s mom, only she wasn’t his mom at all. She asks why someone would do that, and decides she’d like to meet her and find out. This whole drunken interrogation is priceless.

 

Sometime later, Ki-tae relaxes with a bath and thinks back to Jang-mi’s moments of heartbreak, calling her dumb for going there and having to hear it for herself. In flashback we see that when she fell asleep at the precinct, he lied and said he wasn’t a victim of the attack, and asks for the charge to be taken care of with a fine. But the cop says Hoon-dong’s mom wants her charged with stalking, so it’ll have to go to court. Ki-tae remembers that today is her court date.

Ki-tae gets a rude awakening of his own when a real estate agent starts showing his house unannounced, and he sits down with Mom for the first time in years. He refuses to give up that house, and she wonders why when it’s not like they had good memories there.

When she says it doesn’t look good for him to live away from home, he snaps back that she’s the one who lives for the outside world’s approval, not him. She lays down the law and says he has until 10:00 tomorrow morning—either bring that girl home to meet the family or have his bags packed to move back in. Now Ki-tae realizes what the heck Jang-mi was babbling about at the police station—it was his mother who invited her over.

With little time left to spare, he dashes to the courthouse, and we catch up to the opening scene. When he makes it inside the courtroom, Jang-mi mutters that it’s that bastard again, but he shocks her by testifying that his friend never once made his intentions clear. The judge agrees to drop the assault charge, but can’t let the drunken disturbance go, and rules for a low 50,000-won fine.

She holds the bill up as she pays her fine, and muses that the punishment for her love is somewhere between jaywalking and an act of violence. She walks out of the courthouse wondering if she’ll ever love again, and then two steps later, she finds her path blocked by Ki-tae.

She tries to walk around him, but he asks her to come to his house to meet his mother. She doesn’t see why on earth she’d do that, but he says with a sly smile, “The mother who invited you over was my mother.”

Marriage not Dating Episode 8

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Marriage Not Dating: Episode 5

Marriage Not Dating: Episode 5

 

Today’s cold open is soaked in dramatic angst: Ki-tae runs out to Jang-mi in the street, and she pleads with him not to come any closer. He asks if she’s okay, but she cries again for him to stay away. (Agh, Shin Seung-hoon’s “You Reflected in a Smile” is playing. My heart, it already breaks.)

Jang-mi: “It’s all because of you!” Ki-tae hangs his head and apologizes, but it’s no use; she tells him again to go, and this time tears trickle down her face. “Go. Please, go.” Lightning strikes and the wind kicks up…

Rewind to: One day before the typhoon strikes.

Jang-mi and Yeo-reum have fallen asleep in Hoon-dong’s restaurant, unaware that everyone and his mother, literally, are on their way. Yeo-reum is the first to stir awake and when he hears the door open, he runs for cover, leaving a confused Hoon-dong to find Jang-mi sleeping there on her own.

He shakes her awake and she screams bloody murder. He wonders what she’s doing here and she wonders the same, until she spots Yeo-reum hiding and motioning for her not to say anything.

Hoon-dong totally jumps to conclusions and decides she must’ve come to him for solace and waited all night to see him, and grabs her in a hug before she can explain. She gasps for air and reaches for Yeo-reum to save her, while Hoon-dong continues to overreact with promises to protect her now.

 

And of course, THIS is the scene that Ki-tae’s mom and Hoon-dong’s mom witness as they arrive for their brunch. Egads. Ki-tae’s mom is shocked to hear that Jang-mi is the stalker she heard so much about, and that these events were very recent.

Hoon-dong defends Jang-mi and declares that he loves her, and she sneers when he says that he’s having a hard time because of the pain he caused her. Hoon-dong’s mom whines for him to stop embarrassing her.

Ki-tae’s mom says there’s nothing shameful about love, and then turns to Jang-mi to add that the truly shameful thing is to lie. Jang-mi apologizes to Mom, but Ki-tae’s voice interrupts from the doorway and he snaps at for apologizing when she did nothing wrong.

 

He says he’s the one giving Hoon-dong a hard time ever since he fell for Jang-mi, and despite Mom’s insistence for him to drop the act now, he says he’s going to marry her. Mom walks away embarrassed, and he reminds her that she said love wasn’t shameful.

Hoon-dong tells his mother that it’s true—he’s about to get his girl stolen by his friend. Yeo-reum overhears all of this, leaving him even more confused about the guys Jang-mi is involved with.

Up in his office, Mom calls Ki-tae out on his ruse. Jang-mi seems ready to admit the whole truth, but Ki-tae swears up and down that Mom’s got it wrong. When Mom calls Jang-mi a stalker, Ki-tae tells her not to poke at her wounds, and repeats what he said at home last night: “If it’s not Joo Jang-mi, I won’t marry at all!” Oddly enough now it’s Jang-mi and Mom on the same side, wondering what the hell he’s talking about.

He says he knows it’s nuts, “But this must be what love is.” He declares that if Mom disapproves, he’ll spend the rest of his life as a bachelor. Jang-mi can’t even get a word in edgewise, and Mom counters that if she finds out he’s lying, he’ll have to marry a woman she picks out.

As soon as Mom leaves, Jang-mi hits him for putting the train back on course when they worked so hard to derail it last night. But Ki-tae is dead-set on getting justification to live the rest of his life as a bachelor. Downstairs, Hoon-dong whines that if his mom doesn’t help, he’ll lose Jang-mi, and he knows how much his mom wants everything that Ki-tae’s mom has. Yes, because daughters-in-law are just like purses.

Ki-tae asks now what the heck Jang-mi was doing at Hoon-dong’s restaurant, and realizes she’s still wearing the same clothes and therefore spent the night with Yeo-reum. As they drive home, he asks warily, “You didn’t… did you? Did you do it? Did you, or did you not do it?” She flails at the implication and swears she fell asleep. Ki-tae: “Did you say anything about us?!” Oh, THAT. She thinks probably not, though she might’ve.

 

He buys her a new cell phone and says he installed an app so he can track her at all times, which makes him sound like the crazy stalker now. She doesn’t see why she has to comply, but he insists they need it to keep tabs on the mom situation.

She hands the phone back and tells him to apologize for breaking her phone in the first place instead of trying to cover everything up with money. But just as she’s about to walk away with the upper hand, he reminds her that she’ll need a phone to call Yeo-reum. Damn, and you were so close to winning this argument.

Yeo-reum apologizes for putting her in a sticky situation and offers to buy her dinner. She’s about to make a date for tonight when Ki-tae interrupts, insisting that she have dinner with him instead, and then says he has a hostage to make her change her mind. He turns around and we see that her mom is at his clinic, and he approaches her ominously with a syringe at the ready, ha. (And seriously, are we stopping for facial injection PPL now? That’s new.)

 

Jang-mi begins the date pouting, seeing as how Mom was taken hostage just to get her here, while Ki-tae decides to spend the date taking couple photos to put online. She’s annoyed when he dabs her lips with ice cream, but then she gets her revenge with an ice cream cone to the nose, and he gets his cute picture.

They spend the whole day like this, drinking out of the same drink, or posing with a rose, stopping to take pictures at every turn and then dropping the smitten façade as soon as the shutter clicks. But then Jang-mi stops to smell the rose that he bought her, and he notices.

They pose for a picture in the movie theater and in no time they’re reaching for each other’s snacks and laughing at the same things, hands grazing in the popcorn tub.

By the time they get to cocktails, they already sound like an old familiar couple: That one’s weird! Take it again. You always look like that. Oh that one’s good. See, you look good in that one. They don’t even notice that they don’t look or sound like they’re acting anymore, and just giggle as they sit close and post pictures online.

Yeo-reum sees the pictures and sighs, thinking back to Jang-mi’s vague words last night about her feelings for Ki-tae not being real, and wonders what she’s getting herself into. He texts her to say that he’ll be waiting for her.

Ki-tae walks her to her door and she thanks him for the rose, which puts a smile on his face. She finds herself swooning at the flower and has to knock herself out of the reverie, and heads out to meet Yeo-reum at the restaurant (wearing a mask, ha).

At the same time, Ki-tae lies in bed flipping through their photos, smiling at the cute ones. He catches himself and shakes the smile away, and then checks the tracking app to see where Jang-mi is. When he sees that she’s at Hoon-dong’s restaurant, he bolts up in bed angrily. May the jealousy shenanigans begin!

Yeo-reum admits to stalking her date photos with Ki-tae all day and grumps about it cutely. Ki-tae interrupts with a call to tell her to leave at once and not to trust Yeo-reum, and she hangs up on him.

Yeo-reum asks about the expensive new phone and wonders if she’s dating Ki-tae for his money. She says it isn’t like that and grouses that she much preferred her six-year-old flip phone, and that she has a hard time throwing things away.

 

He asks why she likes Ki-tae then if it’s not his money, and she wonders why he’s so inquisitive about her relationship. I’m curious too—is it purely because you’re interested in Jang-mi, or are you fulfilling your nefarious mole duties to Se-ah, or both?

When she asks what kind of person he is, he answers with the vague non-answer that he likes to be mysterious. He reaches to throw away some soup he made with all the ingredients that would go bad by tomorrow, and Jang-mi stops him and insists on eating it.

She eats it heartily, and he watches her intently and starts to smile. She says she thinks she knows him a little now that she’s tasted it—he doesn’t like to throw things away either, and feels bad for things that get thrown out.

He says that’s silly and he made it to be thrown away anyway, but she asks if he wasn’t just throwing it out first before having it be thrown away. The observation seems to hit close to home. She says it’s in the taste, and he leans in close to her soup-stained lips: “Really? Then I want to taste too.”

He swoops in for a kiss that surprises her, and then pulls her close for another. Oh my.

Ki-tae runs out of his building on a tear, still wearing his pajamas and ranting about what he’s going to do if he catches them. He gets outside and then looks down at his feet, and he’s wearing two different shoes, LOL. He chastens himself out loud, “What’re you, going to catch your cheating wife?” He sighs and suddenly rain comes pouring down, and he runs back home.

Twenty hours till the typhoon strikes.

Yeo-reum takes the soup pot out of Jang-mi’s hands while they’re still kissing, and they wrap their arms around each other to make out some more.

At Ki-tae’s house, Dad comes home in the morning just to get a change of clothes. He asks Mom how Jang-mi found out about that thing they don’t talk about, since he’s been careful as usual, and worries that it’s like having a ticking time bomb in the house. Mom doesn’t say a word, though to me, she seems like the ticking time bomb around here.

Jang-mi bangs her head against a wall at work the next day, calling herself crazy. But then she starts giggling and tells Hyun-hee excitedly that she kissed someone last night. As soon as Hyun-hee mentions Ki-tae, Jang-mi’s stomach starts acting up (Oh noes! Nearly expired ingredient soup!) and she makes a run for the bathroom. Any romance development for Jang-mi and another man is happy news for Hyun-hee though, who’s got her eye on Hoon-dong and is happy to hear she’s moved on.

Jang-mi gets waylaid on her way to the bathroom when Ki-tae’s mother arrives to speak to her, and she sits uncomfortably just willing the conversation to go faster. Mom asks how much Ki-tae paid her to go along with this charade, and offers to pay her more. She turns on a recorder and asks her to admit that it was all an act.

Jang-mi says when she first met Ki-tae’s family she was truthfully a little envious, and it was the first time she thought that families she had only seen in dramas actually existed. But the more she gets to know them, the more she realizes it’s a makjang family. Ha. She tells Mom to talk it out with her son instead of doing things like this.

 

Jang-mi apologizes if it came out wrong, but her family’s cut off communication for some time now too, so she understands and feels bad for her. Mom scoffs at being pitied, and Jang-mi ducks for cover thinking she’s going to get hit again.

But Mom stops cold when Dad’s mistress comes walking into the department store, and Mom instinctively runs and hides behind a purse display. Agh, I feel so terrible for her. When Jang-mi sees what’s going on, she asks why Mom is the one hiding when it should be the other person, but Mom pretends not to know what she’s talking about.

Mom walks out against the wind like a heroine in a melodrama and goes straight to Ki-tae’s office to ask how Jang-mi knows about his father’s cheating. She reminds him that he’s being considered for president (of his university) soon and it could ruin everything if the truth came out.

 

Ki-tae scoffs at her concern for Dad, and is surprised that Mom is even bringing It up when it’s not a thing they talk about. She accuses him of giving Jang-mi ammunition against her, but Ki-tae lies that he told her for his own benefit—so that he could breathe and talk to someone openly. He says that he doesn’t even know how but he ends up telling Jang-mi everything.

He doesn’t think it’s so bad to have one person in the world he can speak to openly, and Mom warns him that that person could bring him crashing down. She swears she’ll get her definitive proof that they’re a lie, and storms out.

At the restaurant, Yeo-reum hovers around the head chef and begs him to try the soup he made last night, and the chef scowls after one bite and says it’s bad. But then as soon as Yeo-reum walks away he has more, wondering how the waiter made a soup this good.

Hoon-dong’s mom is still feeling the sting from the morning fiasco, and at the salon she snubs Ki-tae’s mom and goes running to Se-ah, eager to be friendly with her. She invites Se-ah to their wine club meeting tonight and moves the gathering to Hoon-dong’s restaurant so she’ll agree to come.

Hoon-dong tells Ki-tae about the wine party and Se-ah’s invitation, “To keep Jang-mi away from us.” Ki-tae corrects him: “You mean keep Jang-mi away from ME.” He takes off running, leaving Hoon-dong pouting that he was trying to play fair.

Jang-mi’s stomachache gets worse as the day goes on, and she finally has to ask to leave work early. But Ki-tae arrives to yank her away to dinner before she can even protest. Dude, let the girl go to the bathroom.

Yeo-reum is surprised to see his soup pot emptied and asks the chef if he ate it all. Judging from his rumbling stomach, he totally did, but he lies that he threw it away. Chef gets mad when he finds Jang-mi’s tub of kimchi in his kitchen, and tells Yeo-reum to toss it.

Yeo-reum goes to throw the kimchi out, but then remembers Jang-mi’s insightful observation about him not liking it when things get thrown away. He flashes back to his childhood, when his mother made him a kimchi pancake one night and then abandoned him while he was eating it. Damn, that’s cold.

Once Jang-mi sees that dinner is at Hoon-dong’s restaurant, she refuses to go inside, while Ki-tae argues that she’ll go there at all odd hours of the night but won’t go when he asks. She tells him to stop pestering his mother, and starts to tell him what happened at the department store today.

 

But Mom walks up just as she’s about to say it and snaps at her for being so loose-lipped. She tells Ki-tae not to mess around with her wine club because it’s important (one of the wives is married to the university’s chairman of the board, who decides Dad’s fate).

To Ki-tae, it’s just more reason to point Jang-mi the loose cannon her way—Mom’s free to officially disapprove right now if she doesn’t want them to attend. Ki-tae begs Jang-mi to go in with him, and her stomach starts acting up so badly that she decides she’ll at least have to go in to use the bathroom.

Two hours before the typhoon strikes.

 

Ki-tae introduces Jang-mi to the group as the woman he’s going to marry, and Hoon-dong’s mother has a field day with the gossip, pointing out that Ki-tae is sitting between his ex-girlfriend and his new girlfriend, who happens to be Hoon-dong’s ex.

Hoon-dong follows Jang-mi and tries to apologize for his mom, and she just shoves his face away, desperate to get to the bathroom. But the chef beats her to the door, equally desperate to get to the one working toilet in the restaurant. Agh, there’s only one working restroom? She stands outside the door crossing and uncrossing her legs, trying not to have a meltdown.

Meanwhile, because the chef is otherwise occupied and Hoon-dong is getting impatient, Yeo-reum decides to cook. He uses up the rest of Jang-mi’s kimchi to make kimchi pancakes and then turns them into little pizzas.

 

The ladies don’t really receive the fusion dish very well, and even Jang-mi is too preoccupied with her stomach troubles to speak up in defense of kimchi and cheese. Yeo-reum berates himself for trying and tosses the rest of the kimchi out, not knowing that eventually the ladies taste it and love it.

He grabs Jang-mi during her next attempt to get to the bathroom and asks a little judgmentally what she’s doing barely picking at her plate just to look good in front of those ajummas when she normally stuffs her face with food. He asks if she has two faces—one for kissing him by night and the other for playing a doctor’s fiancée by day.

She finally tells him the truth about her relationship with Ki-tae—that it’s all an act so that he doesn’t have to get married—and Se-ah rounds the corner just in time to overhear them. Yeo-reum doesn’t understand why Jang-mi is involved, but she un-complicates it for him: “I like you!” The confession startles him (or niggles at his conscience?) and she says there’s so much she wants to tell him.

 

Now that she knows what he’s up to, Se-ah returns to the table and whispers to Ki-tae that he’s being cute. Jang-mi tries to say her goodbyes and leave, but they insist she stay for the wine at least, so she sits back down.

The room starts to spin as her stomach grumbles more fiercely than before, and she breaks into a sweat just trying to keep it together long enough to drink a glass of wine. But they keep pushing her to eat and have another glass, so she stuffs her face as fast as she can.

Hoon-dong’s mom doesn’t waste the opportunity to backhandedly praise Ki-tae’s mother for being so open-minded as to accept a woman with a criminal record as a daughter-in-law, and Jang-mi finally reaches the limit of her stomach pangs. She stands up, declares that she did indeed pay a fine for being a stalker, and gulps down the rest of her wine before walking out.

 

As she limps out of the restaurant clutching her stomach, the caption tells us it’s time for the typhoon to strike. Oh noes! Is this the typhoon? The one brewing in her intestines?

Ack, her steps grow more frantic as her stomach growls with terrifying urgency, and she goes every which way looking for a bathroom. She gets as far as across the street… and then lightning strikes. OMG. She just pooped her pants. Nooooo.

She freezes like a statue, so shocked that she can’t even move, and then to make matters worse, Ki-tae comes running out to check on her. LOL, this is the opening scene? Hahahaha. I’m crying.

 

Things look very different than they did an hour ago, and now we see that Jang-mi wasn’t crying or upset—she’s mortified and desperate to make him go away before finding out that she just pooped her pants in the street. He doesn’t know this, of course, and apologizes sincerely for putting her through this.

She just begs him repeatedly to go away, but then the wind kicks up… wafting the scent of her accident right into Ki-tae’s nose. Gack. How can something be so sad and so funny at the same time? He makes a face and steps back, stammering that it couldn’t be. She screams for him not to say a word.

Now it’s his turn to stand there shell-shocked, and wouldn’t you know it—it’s Mom who comes to Jang-mi’s rescue. She puts her coat over Jang-mi’s shoulders and leads her away, ordering him not to follow. Se-ah comes out and asks if this was the sort of thing Ki-tae was angling for, calling him childish.

 

Jang-mi comes out of Ki-tae’s office wearing a change of pants, and she bows in gratitude for the rescue from Mom. Mom just says they’re now even on the secrets, and asks her not to go around spreading rumors about hers.

Jang-mi: “It’s like poop in your pants, isn’t it? Something that exploded without your consent or will? It’s scary, and shameful, and so painful that you can’t even look at it or talk about it, isn’t it?”

That is not where I thought this poop metaphor was going to go, but it’s strangely apt. Tears pool in Mom’s eyes, and Jang-mi assures her that her secret is safe. When Ki-tae comes in Jang-mi tells him that she wants to call it quits now, and says that she confessed her feelings to Yeo-reum.

Mom apologizes as she says goodbye to the wife of the board chairman, but the woman surprises her by saying that she used to think Mom was so rigid that she didn’t even go to the bathroom, and expected she’d have a daughter-in-law as robotic as her. But she finds Jang-mi so personable and was pleasantly surprised to know that Mom could be so open-minded and forgiving.

Hoon-dong gets drunk and calls Hyun-hee out to meet him, slurring that he thought he could tell her everything. At the same time, Jang-mi tells Ki-tae that she thinks Yeo-reum is someone she can tell everything to. He can’t believe she already told him about their relationship, and can’t help getting in the jab: “What about pooping your pants? Are you going to tell him that too?” HA.

She chases after him in protest when he threatens to tell, but they stop when they spot Se-ah and Yeo-reum outside the restaurant. She says that she finally knows what Ki-tae is up to now and hands over an envelope, and Yeo-reum smiles back at her. Oh no, poor Jang-mi.

Watch the next episode of the series Marriage Not Dating

Marriage Not Dating Episode 8

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