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