Sunday 7 July 2013

You’re the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 35-36 [Open Thread]

Yay for cuteness, of which there is a lot in these two episodes. Huzzah! On the other hand, we do have an increase in the level of insufferability, which just proves that higher highs on this show come with automatic lower lows. If only it didn't have to be this way!

Lucky for you all, there's the fast-forward button. My general advice: Watch the first 20 minutes of Episode 35, fast-forward for one more Jun-ho & Soon-shin scene, and skip the blood-boiling rest. Episode 36 has a cute scene here or there, but you could probably just catch the last 8 minutes and not miss a lot.

 

 
The gist:

Yeon-ah is a bitch. The end.

Okay, I guess there are a few more points to be had. Soon-shin makes headway in her career and her love life, finally, though it comes at the expense of family stuff that is aggravating (so, the usual). At Soon-shin's continued coldness, Mi-ryung gets pettier and more manipulative, and so does Yeon-ah, proving that blood isn't always thicker than water. I'd actually argue that Yeon-ah's worse, since while Mi-ryung's motivation is selfish (love me, not your other mother), Yeon-ah's is malicious (I hate you, I will sabotage you).

Yoo-shin keeps working to win approval to marry Chan-woo, and finally Chicken Ajumma gives in, in the least gracious way possible (so, the usual). She draws up a "contract" for Yoo-shin promising to move in with the Chicken Family (horrors) so she can basically learn how to be a good little obedient wife from Chicken Ajumma, who is totally the epitome of all those things. Thankfully for us all, Chan-woo is smarter than his mother and comes up with a counterproposal.

And Yeon-ah is a bitch again. The end.

 
Highlights:

Soon-shin impresses at her audition, and Jun-ho is just as antsy (if not more) to know the results. He paces outside her studio like a stalker person, as you can see above. He tells Soon-shin not to be impatient about the results, which is hilarious since he's the one who can barely sit still.

Finally, he takes her to… wait for it… a fortuneteller. Pwahaha.

The tarot reader is supposedly famous, and he reads love in her cards, saying, "The man is very close by." Hahaha. She walks out wondering who likes her and tries to think of all the men who could be near her. Jun-ho actually steps closer and straightens up, only to have her guess Young-hoon.

Jun-ho gets word that she got the part, and Soon-shin literally jumps into his arms and hangs with her arms around his neck.

Soon-shin gets her hands on Jun-ho's old CD and asks him for an autograph. He gapes and mutters at her not to mock him, but she says it was really good and that she's his fan now. Then she promises to have faith in him and says earnestly, "Thank you for always giving me courage." It's adorable how happy these two are just to be around each other.

At one point Jun-ho video-calls Soon-shin, and the call has them both giddy afterward. Jun-ho leaps onto bed like a little boy on Christmas, and Soon-shin recites a line from her script about how she always thinks of one particular person in her most difficult moments. Isn't it such a coincidence how her script readings always happen to mirror her real life situations so closely?

Jun-ho gets cutely jealous whenever Soon-shin laughs it up with Young-hoon, like when the latter gives Soon-shin cooking lessons for her role. Young-hoon teases that Jun-ho has too much free time to be tagging along to everything and jokes when she goes to the bathroom about him following her there, too.

The whole Chicken Ajumma thing is a big ole bore, but it pays off in one funny way. Yoo-shin sighs that she may as well agree to the contract, which is so over-the-top that everybody in both families thinks Ajumma's demands are silly. But Chan-woo asks Yoo-shin to follow his lead, and makes his proposal: If Yoo-shin is going to honor her contract to live with the Chicken Family, then he's going to give Mom a contract of his own saying he'll live with the Lees. Marriage isn't about one side winning and the other side giving in, he says, and therefore they'll both compromise and the couple will live three months in each house. HA. Chan-woo for the win.

Jun-ho flips out to see a cut on Soon-shin's finger (from cooking lessons) and insists on bandaging it up. She remembers how he insisted on treating her the last time (with the raw beef, heh) and they have a cute session of being happy and giddy to be with each other.

And that, finally, is the thing to finally light that bulb over Soon-shin's head as she makes the conscious connection that maybe, just maybe, she might like him.

 
Lowlights

Mi-ryung's flirtation with Dr. Shin continues. It seems inevitable that an affair is impending, and its sole purpose is to give our main couple some angst when their parents get it on, which I groan at because aside from being a cheap storyline, it just feels so predictable.

Jun-ho's mother gets more suspicious at Dr. Shin's continued association with Mi-ryung, and while I have no affection for her, she does have the short end of the stick here so I'll give her that. Her intuition is right on, but Dr. Shin has a pretty solid defense (that Mom's complaint about him never talking to her is pointless since she never has anything to say worth his participation—it's just about shopping or gossip).

Finally she sees them with her two eyes, laughing it up and playing racquetball at the gym. And while there's been no sexual or romantic interaction yet, I don't think it's too far off for her to conclude that her husband's in the early stages of an affair.

Bread Man's thread is part highlight and part lowlight, but I'll put it here since most of it is aggravating. This entails a couple of screechy, ragey scenes with Hye-shin's mother-in-law, which I advise skipping entirely.

He tells Hye-shin he'll move out because he's sorry to have made her uncomfortable (with his confession of liking her). But when he sees Hye-shin being abused by her hateful ex-mother-in-law again, he asks why she takes it all the time. Sometimes you just have to let go, and enduring isn't the best solution. It's okay to yell, he says.

So when the mother-in-law orders Hye-shin to take back her cheating ex (who has broken up with the Other Woman), Hye-shin recalls Bread Man's encouragement and finds her spine. No, she won't take him back, and no, Mother-in-Law can't force her to.

Hye-shin confides to Bread Man about how relieved she feels, and asks him not to move out. She wants to be friends like before, and she recognizes that she hasn't done anything for him yet. So she'll resume tutoring him and they'll be friends, and for now the mood is restored. (I fear for the angst that will surely come of being "just friends," but that's a problem for another day.)

Mi-ryung deletes a text message to Soon-shin from Mom, which is a plot point I dearly hate. BAH! So Mom prepares a big celebration spread to congratulate Soon-shin on her first acting role, but Soon-shin doesn't know about it and doesn't show, and that pisses off the family.

But even worse is that Mi-ryung then plans a celebration party of her own, and makes it a huge fancy affair, and then purposely calls Mom over to see it. And she's pretty damn smug when Mom walks in to see Soon-shin singing for the guests. I admit it, when she pulled that stunt I yelled at my screen, "Oh, you BITCH."

Mom is so understanding, though, that she goes home quietly and tells the family that Soon-shin couldn't come because she was sick. Of course, there are no secrets in dramaland so the family hears about it later thanks to Chan-mi (who is now Soon-shin's stylist), and that makes them all assume Soon-shin lied on purpose. All the while, Soon-shin has no idea there was a party at home because her birth mom is a raging insecure manipulator who thinks everything is about her, her, HER.

You'd think she'd recognize that more in her surrogate daughter, because Yeon-ah pulls the same kind of stunt. First she talks up the director wanting to piss him off into un-casting Soon-shin, but has to swallow that pill when it backfires. And when Soon-shin does well at the table read and earns praise from the director and the senior actors, she fires off barbs about how her novelty will wear off soon enough and warns her not to ruin Mi-ryung's or her reputation. Because it's all about her, her, HER.

So then, Yeon-ah tells Soon-shin's side to go to the wrong shooting location on the first day of filming their drama, so that Soon-shin shows up to an empty set and Yeon-ah smirks to herself when the director fumes and fumes.

RELATED POSTS

  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 33-34 [Open Thread]
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 31-32 [Open Thread]
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 29-30 [Open Thread]
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 27-28 [Open Thread]
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 25-26
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 23-24
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 21-22
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 19-20
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 17-18
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 15-16
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episode 14
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episode 13
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episode 12
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episode 11
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episode 10
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episode 9
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episode 8
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episode 7
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episode 6
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episode 5
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 3-4
  • You're the Best, Lee Soon-shin: Episodes 1-2
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Tags: featured, IU, Jo Jung-seok, You're the Best Lee Soon-shin


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