Frankly, this was NOT the episode I wanted to watch after a long crappy day.

The heroine GueRim was the kind of child I’d detest on sight. She was a doormat at work and a bootlicker to top stars. She looked ugly with her tangled brown hair. (Why??!!! Straight black hair is so elegant. Why mess it up with sewer rat coloring?) She couldn’t get her act together and would stoop to demeaning and endangering herself just to get a top star to appear on her radio show.

Then the second leading man was something obnoxious. He’s like a vagrant version of Mary Poppins. Do you know how Mary Poppins breezes in with her carpetbag and puts everything in order? Well, Gang Lee, the second lead, did the opposite. Despite calmly greeting everybody with a fake “Namaste,” he sauntered into the building with his ginormous backpack causing people to nervously scurry away.

There were only two highlights in the first episode for me: the elevator encounters and the cliffhanger. Both scenes hinted that there was a previous connection between GueRim and the leading man SuHo.

First encounter at the elevator: he was spellbound when he first saw her chatting on the phone outside the elevator. He even delayed the elevator door from closing so he could look at her longer, and made up an excuse that he thought she was getting on. But the next time they met at the elevator, he acted disgusted with the drunken pop idol drooling on GR’s shoulder and he behaved as if GR was somebody shamelessly chatting up to him. His manners were impeccable to others but with her, he behaved badly to attract her attention. In kdramas, attention-seeking from the leading male character is always a sign that the he likes her more than she likes him.

I always welcome plots where the guy is more besotted with the girl than she is with him. Because I’m tired of kdramas where the girl is chasing after the guy.

Also, I thought the finger of SuHo was hilarious but appropriate in the elevator scene. SuHo was annoyed (and jealous) that the pop idol was displaying close familiarity with GR. He loathed touching the pop artist so he extended only one finger to prod his head off GR’s shoulder.

However, the way SH touched his head — 

highlighted a disgusted God of the Entertainment World fastidiously touching the head of a mere idol.  Like the act was totally beneath him.  It was the complete opposite of God touching Adam in that famous Michaelangelo fresco in the Sistine Chapel. 

hahaha. Shhhhh… It’s amusing to compare DooJoon oppa to God!!! 

 

As for the cliffhanger, I thought the last image we had of SH and GR staring at each other was interesting.

For one, the landscape was pretty and appropriate.

Dead trees = long-dead and forgotten memories.
Dusty expanse, no grassy field between them = no connection and no love lost between the two.
Bridge going the other way = no bridges between the two.
He was standing under the roof = he remained safe in his word; he wasn’t taking a step forward.
She was shivering and floating in the cold water = she was on her own.

For another, there was this tension between expectation and reality. WE all expected the hero SH to come to the aid of GR. Of course, his instinct told him to dive into the water after GR. That was how heroes in kdramas normally responded to damsels in distress. But the fact that he hesitated for so long and he didn’t jump into the lake after her meant that he wasn’t going to admit anytime soon that they have a previous shared history.  There was a something holding him back and that “mystery” was meant to be the nucleus of the show.

To me, I find these dormant and suppressed feelings fascinating to unveil in these slow-burn, no-namebrand kdramas. Thus, despite the crappy opening episode, I stuck with this show just to see how – and if – this scriptwriter would develop something new from a very predictable love story.