Let’s Eat 2 Episode 1 recap

Episode Recap

We open on a fishing boat at night, where the captain is yelling at his workers. One of them is sharpening a … wait, is that an unblurred knife? On TV?

The worker approaches the captain, wielding his knife, but when the captain yells at him to steam the squid, their stand-off is interrupted by fast-talking insurance salesman, Goo Dae Young (Yoon Doo Joon). After taking a moment to barf off the side of the boat, he explains to them why eating fresh squid raw is vastly superior to eating it steamed. Dae Young yells at them to bring him sashimi, and they promptly obey. He eats orgasmically.

In a cameo from the first season, Attorney Oh (Lee Do Yeon) and Choi Kyu Sik (Jang Won Young) look over Dae Young’s blog, and wonder at his travels. Attorney Oh bursts into tears as she recounts the troubles that led to Dae Young leaving Seoul, including a lawsuit over a bad food review on his blog, being beaten up by the husband of a handsy client, and breaking up with his girlfriend (last season’s Lee Soo Kyung). They stop short of revealing the reason for their split up.

Dae Young drives into his new city of residence, Sejong, where he explains his method of finding a good real estate agent. It’s not long before he locates Kim Mi Ran (Hwang Seok Jeong), and she shows him an apartment. A short haggle later, Mi Ran agrees to waive her finder’s fee, but is adamant that the rent can’t be reduced, because the landlord would not approve. It turns out that she’s the landlord.

Dae Young goes to the insurance company office to meet his former colleague, Im Taek Soo (Kim Hee Won), who takes him out to lunch. Dae Young informs him that Sejong, being full of single people, will offer him better opportunities for selling insurance. He then wonders why Taek Soo brought him to such a crappy restaurant, and is disappointed to learn that Taek Soo cares more about the attractive waitresses than the food.

Dae Young arrives at his apartment building to discover an unfriendly grandma feeding a super cute dog (sort of like Barassi, but with short hair), and a hostile neighbour, Baek Soo Ji (Seo Hyun Jin), who slams the door in his face, after seemingly recognizing him.

Later, after playing with the dog, Dae Young introduces himself to the unfriendly grandma, Lee Jeom Yi (Kim Ji Young), and when he discovers that she likes to eat out, he invites her to lunch. On the way, his clothes arrive, and they go to the closest dry cleaners to turn the establishment into his personal closet.

After Dae Young gets home, he’s repeatedly confronted by Soo Ji, who criticizes his separation of trash from recycling, his parking, and his singing of B2ST songs in the shower (ha ha). Dae Young gets upset, then blithely assumes that Soo Ji must like him.

The next morning, Soo Ji fantasizes about what the neighbours are eating, but ignores Dae Young when he asks if she’s hungry. Taek Soo, on the other hand, pesters Dae Young about having a house warming party, then is sad when Dae Young turns him down for lunch. Instead, Dae Young goes to the local government building to drum up business. While he’s being tossed out, he notices Soo Ji entering the building.

Soo Ji is in a meeting with government worker, Hong In Na (Jo Eun Ji), and department head, Lee Sang Woo (Kwon Yool). In Na artlessly manages to make Soo Ji look like a friendless loser, then bursts out laughing when Sang Woo forgets Soo Ji’s name. Sang Woo proceeds to forget In Na’s name as well.

Later, when Soo Ji goes to pick up payment for freelance work she had done previously, she discovers that she is being paid in seaweed. Downcast, Soo Ji goes home and cries as she eats rice with seaweed. Sang Woo goes home to an empty house (where he greets his robot floor cleaner), then sadly goes out for a bike ride.

Dae Young returns home to find Jeom Yi feeding the stray puppy. When he discovers that his neighbours know little about Soo Ji, Dae Young invites everyone out to dinner, but Soo Ji only agrees to come along when he agrees to pay. They end up at a fancy Chinese restaurant upon Soo Ji’s suggestion. Soo Ji orders half the menu, to Dae Young’s consternation, but when the food arrives, she barely eats.

Instead, Soo Ji engages in a heated debate with Dae Young over the proper way to eat sweet and sour pork, then finally proceeds to stuff her face orgasmically. With the meal finished, Soo Ji can’t resist ordering one more dish, to twist the knife of the expensive meal she forced on Dae Young. In the end, her delay makes him the 100th customer on the restaurant’s anniversary, and they are rewarded with a free meal.

A bitter Soo Ji attempts to cajole everyone into going for seconds, but no one is interested. Instead, she ends up alone with Dae Young, who suggests eating spicy rice cakes. Soo Ji finally loses it, and we discover the source of her vendetta against Dae Young: she was a fat kid at his school, and discovers that he was nice to her so that she would come and eat at his mom’s restaurant. This betrayal of her feelings for him ruined her life well into her 20s. Soo Ji kicks him as a parting shot, and goes home to tally the night’s calories.

When Soo Ji realizes that she’s eaten in excess of 5000 calories, she runs outside to skip rope. Of course, it is not long until Dae Young spots her, and has a laugh at her vengeful ways from his window. She tries to get him to come down so she can beat him, but only ends up hurting herself with the skipping rope.

Epilogue: As Dae Young sleeps, an anonymous eye creepily peers in through his apartment door.

Comments

I promised myself I wouldn’t spend this review comparing the current season of “Let’s Eat” to the first one, so I’ll only indulge myself this much: the new theme song is total crap compared to the original.

Moving on! This episode felt disjointed, and a little too frantic. It also didn’t do much to make the characters likable: Dae Young comes off like a smarmy jerk, Soo Ji seems like a lunatic, the landlady is an opportunist, and insurance man, Taek Soo is totally desperate. At least old lady, Jeom Yi and the dog look like fun.

On the upside, I’ve realized that I don’t like the first couple of episodes of any drama. So, if this follows the normal pattern, things will calm down, and our characters will seem less like unappealing caricatures, and more like humans shortly.

In the meantime, the food looked super delicious.

Raw squid

Squid sashimi from a fishing boat? Yes, please.

Korean-style Chinese food, including lobster (로브스터), buldojang (불도장), Kungpao beef, fried pork belly in soy sauce (동파육), glass noodles with peppers (고추잡재), shark fin soup, five spice sliced steamed pork (오향장육), stir-fried chicken with hot sauce (라조기), sweet and sour pork (탕수육)

The Korean-style Chinese food made me instantly hungry, even though I made sure to watch this after dinner. Though, I could have done without the shark’s fin.

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Let’s Eat 2 (식샤를 합시다 2)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 || series review