Second to Last Love Ep 2

Picked this up randomly and liked it, hence it’s here. Ji JinHee and Kim HeeAe never disappoints. It’s an episode of trouble for the troublemaker and heh, sometimes it overwhelms.

Second to Last Love Episode 2:

We rewind to the moment just before MinJoo jumps and of course, down she goes, hurtling into the water to the shock of the rest of her production staff. In the water, she chides herself for worrying about growing old when she’s just going to die like this, clearly thinking that this is the end of her.

Like shown in the last episode, SangShik throws himself into the water to save her. PWAHAHAHAHA, she recovers consciousness under water just in time to see him reaching out for her. She’s girl who doesn’t need a knight and struggles to push him off since she can swim very well herself, thank you very much. But when he pulls her back to shore, she needs him to administer CPR on her before puking a mouthful of water in his face and coming back to life.

 

Once the crisis is over, SangShik fingers her harness and sees that it was what caused her to plunge straight down. Back in the office, he tears a new one into his subordinate, Cha SooHyuk, who had forgotten to remove the faulty harness and shouts that they’re responsible for keeping things safe for the public as the environmental facilities department. A co-worker tries to remind him that they’ve merged with the local tourist department and that sets him off again, with him screaming about whether making money from local tourism is more important than protecting those tourists’ lives.

A call comes right then and it’s MinJoo calling in to scream at them from the warmth of her van. Hehehe, she has a minor fit when she matches the face to the person and realises that Go SangShik, the guy who saved her, is also the head of the department she just screamed at. Her co-worker gives her some clothes and she screams again when she’s informed that they’ve changed the scene to something else other than bungee jumping, meaning that all her efforts and pain were for naught. Oops, that sets off a bad back.

 

While the deputy mayor sends the requisite apologies for the accident over the phone, MinJoo has just decided to appear directly in front of the guy who should have prevented her accident from happening, in a bright pink sequined dress that’s definitely inspired by Secret Garden’s Kim JooWon. She’s sporting a back brace too, hee.

She tries to take them to task but SangShik isnt’ having any of it, since they were the ones who skipped past basic processes and forced their way into the site in the first place. She’s taken aback and starts ranting at him, accusing him of speaking in such a casual and flippant manner to an adult like her. The word “adult” has him taking offence and he retorts back that she’s no adult. She’s just a trouble maker who is no better than a child. Oof.

 

He insists that he’s not going to apologise for anything and demands that she disappears from his life because he’s sick of the shenanigans she keeps pulling. She of course gets angered by that and when her co-worker tells her to stop being so nasty to her live-saviour, she pushes him aside and corrects him. He didn’t save her life. She almost died because of him!

Heh, SangShik just huffs at her and leaves while his on-looking subordinates scamper away. Then true to SangShik’s words, MinJoo acts like a child, ripping her back brace off and moaning in pain afterwards.

The Deputy Mayor has SangShik brought to her and blames him for not doing his job, even though she was the one who had approved of the filming and hadn’t even had the courtesy to inform him. Still that doesn’t mean that she’s going to take responsibility for the incident and she threatens to make SooHyuk suffer for not checking the facility ahead of his schedule, since someone has to take the blame for this. SangShik proves to be a good boss as he offers to take the blame in order to cover for his blameless subordinate, but that means that he’s no longer eligible for the prime minister’s award. Even though he says that it’s fine, he lets out a helpless sigh and the Deputy Mayor makes him follow the drama filming to ensure that it goes well and smoothly as his punishment.

Once alone, SangShik heads to a toilet to wash his face, calling MinJoo’s drama a trauma.

 

Lol, the workers at MinJoo’s office are a bunch of gossipers and can’t get enough of the clip of MinJoo falling into water. She comes in to stop them from repeating the clip over and over again only to get teased for being saved by a handsome knight in shining armour. Heh, she barely stops them from zooming into SangShik’s face and when she leaves, fellow colleague HAN JUNG-SHIK (Park SungGeun) follows her to ask just what she was doing there. Apparently, it was a trip that was supposed to kill two birds with one stone, since she went all the way there to also check out what it would be like to live there.

He sighs to hear that she’s determined to live alone in her old age, which is when MinJoo stops in her tracks, having seen a familiar well-dressed writer-wannabe head in her direction. Gritting her teeth after hearing unwelcomed comments from MinJoo, the writer-wannabe hands MinJoo her edited script. MinJoo takes it and leaves, keeping it out of lusty JungShik’s hands.

 

SangShik heads to his favourite pub after work and meets with friend DeokGo who says that it’s great to see him, after having thought that he’d died, ha. He doesn’t give up and throws yet another pretty woman’s profile at SangShik, telling him to get married. Ha, when SangShik refuses the blind date yet again, he wonders if SangShik has problems down below.

In the safety and comfort of her home, MinJoo starts to read the writer-wannabe’s work but puts it down after scanning only the first page opting for a real book instead. She lies on her couch and reads off a sentence from it that touches her heart: “If you want to know if you’ve lived a good life, ask yourself. It’s not about whether your dream came true. It’s about whether you’re happy right now.” Maybe she’s not that happy, because she put it down with a long, deep sigh.

 

The next day, she drives to a picturesque house to check if it’s the perfect home for her, and is introduced to it by a very enthusiastic lady. Once the lady leaves, she wanders all over the grounds, meeting face-to-face with Park JoonWoo, the guy who gave her a ride on his scooter when SangShik had punked her with a kid’s cape. He recognises her with a smile and welcomes her with some tea.

He gives her a card, thinking that she’s here as a customer of his café, but is even more pleased to learn that she’s a potential neighbour. Meeting him makes the house even more of a yes in her book, because she’s sure that with such a good neighbour, she won’t be left stranded and helpless if anything ever happens to her. He asks what it means and she starts to ramble but stops when she realises that she’s speaking like a grandma. Hee, JoonWoo smiles and says that she still looks young, which is enough for MinJoo to decide that she’ll be a regular customer of his café. In other words, she’s moving in next door.

 

SangShik’s work-juniors have a gathering in the same pub that SangShik is lounging in and he manages to chase them away with his nagging. Haha, DeokGo chides him for driving his customers away but all the old fogey is concerned about is the loud and youthful music being played in the pub.

DeokGo reminds SangShik of the blind date that he’d set him up for (without SangShik’s agreement) and it gets overheard by SangShik’s colleague. One of them, Han SongYi (I am itching to make a pun with Chun SongYi’s name because Chun means one thousand and Han means one), get pretty upset to hear that and when he bumps into her, she covers her chest and squeals. Hur, he takes that as a sign of her disgust for him.

SooHyuk comes storming into the pub just then, looking for SangShik. He finds him in the toilet and is upset that SangShik is taking responsibility for his mistake. He knows what the award means to SangShik – promotion and a raise – and insists on taking responsibility for the incident himself. SangShik just asks him how he’s going to do that and waves his offer aside, telling him to just work well.

 

SooHyuk knows from a rumour that SangShik is like that, taking responsibility for everything, because of a prior incident. That makes SangShik defensively angry and he warns the young man to not pretend like he knows everything.

On the train, SangShik thinks back to when he’d first interviewed for a job with the government. He’d chosen a profession completely unrelated to his major and the interviewer had asked if he’d given up on his dream. SangShik had just replied, “Dream? My family is my dream.” Another flashback shows him in a flaming building, desperately holding the arm of a person who had fallen out of the window.

In the present, SangShik goes grocery shopping and while his back is turned, someone stealthily adds piles of snacks into his trolley. Hee, it’s his sister, GO MI-RAE’s (Kim SeulGi) work and even though he warns her to carry her bags of stuff (to which she replies that she can’t because her “golden hands” are too precious, ha), there’s no heat in his words. He scoffs at her and nags her for not getting a proper job, to which she very flippantly jokes about Steve Jobs, haha. While she pokes her nose into other people’s business, he puts an arm around her and steals her phone, making her run after him while calling him a fogey, shouting that she can’t breathe without her phone. She’s hilarious, hahaha.

 

MinJoo does buy the house outside of Seoul beside JoonWoo’s and moves in, which is when she gets a call from her girlfriends and she brags about nice guy next door. They mutter that all she needs now is a man but she waves all that aside and crows that she’s going to eat delicious things alone, take a walk and exercise alone in her new house.

A few hours of cleaning later, she collapses before her coffee table and puts on I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor and proceeds to dramatically dance her heart out, HAHAHA! JoonWoo catches her mid-dance and hides as he watches her do her thing until a particular move has her falling over due to back pain. Hee, he presents her with the cake he made for her and then her kitchen betrays her as it sends out the wonderful burnt smell that follows every bad cook. JoonWoo just tells her to come join him for lunch.

Oh! It looks like JoonWoo lives with SangShik and he catches the guy just before he leaves work. He tries to get SangShik to eat the lunch that he’s already prepared but SangShik declines, because he has to follow the drama production crew around all because of “that woman”.

The moment he leaves, “that woman” joins JoonWoo for dinner and is amazed by the spread he’d prepared. She takes a bite of a waffle/sandwich then asks if she can eat it, heh, and when she asks him how he made it, he gives her a flyer for the cooking classes at his café that he’s been spearheading. He wonders how it’s like in her new house and when she notes that it needs a few repairs, he lists down all the places that needs those repairs. He knows, because it used to be his house.

 

He moved into SangShik’s house because he likes SangShik’s house and the people there and they officially introduce themselves to each other.

In a cave somewhere in Korea, SangShik breathes down the drama director’s neck and insists that they have to clean everything and scram by six in the evening, sharp. He’s that insistent because they’re shooting in a place that’s still under construction.

The mayor pays the drama crew a visit with his wife and from her exposition, we learn that SangShik was the one who had suggested turning the old abandoned mine into a cinema. He starts to explain that construction is not yet done and the place is therefore dangerous but the Deputy Mayor cuts him off.

 

The Mayor’s wife pulls him aside to whisper that she’s a huge fan of the drama and when MinJoo comes along to see how the production team is doing, she sees him accepting a huge golden box from the Mayor’s wife and is convinced that SangShik just received a bribe.

Later on, when she’s officially introduced to the Mayor and his wife, she’s even more certain of her belief. She promises the Mayor’s wife her drama lead’s autograph and gripes when she learns that SangShik is being inflexible with regards to  how long they can use the cave for.

SangShik himself heads out and scoffs to see his subordinate relegated doing odd-jobs for the drama crew.  SongYi insists on him taking a drink that the Mayor’s wife had prepared for the drama crew and he accidentally spills it on her when he moves to reject it.

 

Ha, it’s yet another misunderstanding when MinJoo spots him trying to brush the drink off the girl’s legs, assuming that SangShik is sexually harassing SongYi. Pfft, she reacts as she believes and accuses SangShik of neglect of duty, demeaning dignity and accepting bribes, then announcing that her staff will be working past his deadline of 6 pm. Of course he gets into a snit and orders her to keep to the agreed timing. Otherwise, she can take responsibility for any mishaps like she said.

In his office and close to 6pm, SangShik tells SongYi to remind the drama crew that they have to get out by 6 pm before opening his file to see the profile of his blind date staring back at him, heh. SongYi wonders why MiJoo acts so imprudently towards him and laments about him picking up the slack upon the merging of their department while the other department’s head had gone on up the career ladder. She notes the blind date’s profile on his desk with interest.

Drama filming at the gate ends and SangShik is informed of that. Lol, troublemaker MinJoo ends up trapped in the cave when they lock the gates, sending her team and SangShik’s team into a panic.

While SangShik speeds over, violating every traffic rule in the book, MinJoo shivers in the cave and pitifully shouts for help. Pffft… this is not supposed to be funny.

SangShik finds her before she freezes to death and saves her from hypothermia. He covers her with his jacket and bickers about the time and whose fault this is. But he sees her with the bagful of post-its, understanding that she was late because she was cleaning up after her team. Therefore when the drama crew arrives, he’s incredibly annoyed and shouts at them, threatening to stop them from filming anymore, especially after the director pulls some bull shit about not being to clean up because of their tight schedule.

 

He even stands up for MinJoo but she tells him to go. He takes the bag of rubbish from her, sarcastically sniping that he’ll throw it all away because he receives taxes from them to do his job. Behind his back, MinJoo complains about him being so uptight and obnoxious. Really now, MinJoo?

After that harrowing experience, MinJoo has a beer at home and in a lull, she suddenly thinks of SangShik, thinking of how he’d saved her. Ha, she shakes herself out of her spell, back to disliking him and walks through her home, checking out all the little places that JoonWoo had told her needed fixing.

She falls onto her bed and gets a call from her mother and father who wonders if she’s really planning on living alone. Mom nags that even if MinJoo doesn’t get married, she should find a man who cares for her. MinJoo just repeats her mantra about living alone.

 

Ha, she finds it hard to sleep because the bed slopes due to the uneven floor and she goes to saw a plank of wood in the middle of the night, waking SangShik up. Heh, SangShik almost has his soul leave his body when JoonWoo soundlessly puts his hand on SangShik’s shoulders. Finally, SangShik learns that he has a new neighbour, though he doesn’t know who it is.

A new day at work means a new crisis for MinJoo to deal with and this time, her drama is accused of plagiarising a web toon.

This is no simple problem as the web toon writer threatens to leap to her death from a roof in the face of SBC’s disrespect and insult. Numerous reporters are filming her every move and when the lady climbs over the railings, MinJoo runs all the way to the roof, but is stumped by the locked door.

 

She heads downstairs, prepared to get some help when another lady appears from the lift and unlocks the door. Haha, it’s MiRae, who runs over to the web toon writer and amusedly asks what she’s doing up there.

MinJoo bursts into the roof top with two other policemen behind her. She declares her identity and the writer retorts that she won’t be settling or dropping any charges. She demands the station cancel the drama and put up a letter of apology.

The writer refuses to come down, especially not when MinJoo doesn’t confirm that the station will admit to its mistakes. MinJoo even makes matters worse by telling them that they’ve no way to prove that their work was stolen and only promises to support them in their future work.

That fires up the other web toon creators and when MiRae stomps in MiJoo’s way and screams to show her the what for, the web toon writer loses her footing and falls into the inflated balloon below.

Heh, even though the writer doesn’t die, it’s still a media-disaster for MinJoo and she knows it.

MinJoo visits the writer in her hospital ward and apologises, sympathising that it must pain her for her beloved work to be stolen. She knows that there’s no way she can compensate for it since there’s been too much damage already. She begs the writer to settle for money but the writer has had enough of the insult to the job she loves.

 

Writers lose sleep over their work, treat them like their babies, only for them to be stolen by others. She knows that many writers don’t have the means to go against such unfairness and cries that she doesn’t want her juniors to go through such insults any more.

MinJoo understands, but she can’t do anything except for settle with money because there’s no way the station’s going to  pull the drama that’s bringing in money that it hasn’t seen in a long, long while.

The honesty makes the writer burst into tears and after drying her tears with a towel, she admits that the web comic is MiRae’s creation and therefore, she’ll put the decision in MiRae’s hands. Ha, MinJoo looks at  the girl like she’s easy prey and after consulting her seven fans, MiRae pulls her hand out of MinJoo’s grasp and plays hard to get.

 

HAHA, she says that she has a problem with making decisions and even though she’d earlier declared that she’s an adult with SangShik, she now tells MinJoo to consult her legal guardian regarding this; the legal guardian who’s three times colder than her and has the ability to make quick decisions – her older brother. Heh. She just decides that she’ll do whatever her brother tells her to.

While MiJoo complains to the producer of the problematic drama, Han JeongShik, one of her car’s headlights go out.

A bright new day has JoonWoo inviting her over for breakfast and ooh, this time, SangShik joins in. Heh, a cold wind blows when they meet each other face-to-face and of course they start fighting early in the morning. Pfft, one by one, SangShik’s family members join in for breakfast and that’s how MinJoo learns that the person she signed the deed to her house with is SangShik’s sister, how she learns that JoonWoo is a close dongsaeng of SangShik’s and how she knows that the cold older brother of the web comic artist that she has to deal with is SangShik.

 

Comments:

There is no question that I adore Kang MinJoo and her strong womanly ways but I am a little annoyed by how she often steamrolls over SangShik’s orders to keep to the schedule and agreement. Clearly, she’s being unreasonable on this front because that’s how the people from her station are and that’s how she’s been able to climb up the career ladder to become a producer. It’s sickening to see them all talk like the comic writer’s the one who created a mess for them when they were the ones who plagiarised her work in the first place. Sure, Producer Han and MinJoo may not have known that the work was plagiarised but that doesn’t mean that they should treat someone else unfairly just to cover their own careless backsides. I’m going to watch and see how they’ll resolve this but looking at SangShik, I think it’ll be solved just the way I’d like it to be.

Speaking of SangShik, he’s been dealt an unfair hand by being assigned to a boss as uninspiring as the deputy manager. But that doesn’t make him any worse of a boss and I was impressed to see him take responsibility for the incident to cover for his subordinate who technically did not do anything wrong. That’s the kind of bosses that encourage loyal subordinates and in turn produce more effective workers, though his nagging does turn some of his employees against, him, heh.

Even though I am annoyed by how MinJoo treats SangShik, I still watch this for their interactions. And now that they’re entangled in their personal lives too, how much more delicious will this drama get?