Ex-Girlfriend Club episode 4 recap

Side dish: Myeong Soo somehow manages to abandon a bowl of noodles halfway to help out Ji Ah. In case you felt the injustice of this sad moment, here’s a recipe from Korean Bapsang, to make your own bowl of noodles in anchovy broth.

Episode Recap

It’s a wonder how anyone has any hair left, as we’re right back into the hair-pulling mess from the last episode with cartoonist, Bang Myeong Soo (Byun Yo Han), his three ex-girlfriends, and film producer, Kim Soo Jin (Song Ji Hyo). The restaurant of ex-girlfriend #1, the cat, Ji Ah (Jang Ji Eun) is wrecked around them in the melee.

Fight over, Soo Jin and Myeong Soo are tempted to run away while picking up medicine at the pharmacy, but go back to the restaurant regardless. All three ex-girlfriends are still there, reading the real script, and none of them are happy. As the three ex-girlfriends start to get along, ex-girlfriend #2, the lioness, Hwa Young (Lee Yoon Ji) informs Myeong Soo and Soo Jin that they’re both fired.

Defeated, Myeong Soo and Soo Jin go to the banks of the river (where else would you go?) to get out their frustrations. Despite not feeling any better, they both leave in opposite directions.

Back at the restaurant, the door bell rings, but the ex-girlfriends are disappointed to find that no one’s there. It becomes clear from the conversation that Hwa Young and Ji Ah really just wanted an apology, and ex-girlfriend #3, the fox, Ra Ra (Ryu Hwa Young) points out that Hwa Young can’t fire them anyway. Ra Ra worries more about whether Soo Jin and Myeong Soo have gotten together, since she doesn’t want him to find someone before she does. Hwa Young wants Myeong Soo to suffer for the rest of his life, while Ji Ah is cool as a cucumber.

The next day, Soo Jin decides to go see Hwa Young, but ends up going to see Myeong Soo instead. When Myeong Soo is too busy working on his webtoon to come along, Soo Jin kills time by visiting her sunbae’s film set. She gets there just in time to help them put their equipment away in a sudden downpour, and has a flashback to her days of being a newbie on set. Soo Jin’s sunbae advises her to beg for reinstatement, since she’s in the lucky position of being able to make a movie without sponsors.

As Soo Jin considers this, Myeong Soo appears with an umbrella, and a change of shirt for Soo Jin. Unfortunately, the new shirt has a picture of a girl group on it, and Myeong Soo is dressed in the last of his clothes. They go to Hwa Young’s office looking like sloppy teenagers. Luckily, she isn’t there, and they meet with her fiancé, Young Jae, the director of the company, instead. He’s amused by their antics, and takes them out to dinner to meet Soo Jin’s idol, film director Jo Geon (Do Sang Woo).

Jo Geon is entirely condescending to them, but the awkwardness only gets worse when Hwa Young walks in. Faced with her worst nightmare, Hwa Young retreats to the washroom, followed shortly by Soo Jin, who takes the opportunity to secure Hwa Young’s cooperation in exchange for her silence.

Back at the table, Young Jae is all smiles, while Jo Geon makes snide remarks about everyone, Soo Jin and Hwa Young pretend to be the best of friends, and Myeong Soo looks sullen. The reason for Myeong Soo’s attitude becomes clear as they walk home, when he acts jealous as the director offers them a ride. Myeong Soo is disappointed to find that even Soo Jin finds Young Jae attractive, while Soo Jin enjoys the sight of Myeong Soo feeling hopelessly outclassed.

The next day, at a production meeting, Hwa Young takes Soo Jin aside to get the inside information about Jo Geon. Coming from a rich family, Jo Geon has a reputation for being difficult, but Soo Jin confidently puts her reputation on the line that everything will work out fine.

Soo Jin and her co-worker, Eun Hye (Kang Soo Jin) clean the office in anticipation of Jo Geon’s arrival, as Myeong Soo gets more and more annoyed. Finally, he confronts Soo Jin, who instructs him to keep his mouth shut around Jo Geon. Of course, he’s too annoyed to agree, and points out what a jerk Jo Geon was to her, just as Jo Geon walks into the office.

While Soo Jin and Eun Hye try to placate him, Myeong Soo continues to act up. Jo Geon isn’t much better, pointing out the shabbiness of the script, and then, the office. He picks up Soo Jin’s film award, and reminds her that he was on the jury that awarded it to her. Dramatically, and seemingly out of nowhere, Jo Geon tells Soo Jin that he loves her work. In the background, Myeong Soo loses his mind.

Later, Soo Jin, Eun Hye, and Myeong Soo go out to eat noodles, but it’s not long before Myeong Soo is called away to help out Ji Ah at her restaurant. It’s total chaos, and Myeong Soo points out as he helps that Ji Ah has no idea what she’s doing. As he walks her home later, Ji Ah tells him not to worry, but looks sad as she goes into her empty house. Moments later, she comes out to check if Myeong Soo is there, but he’s out of her line of sight, in front of her door. They end up missing each other entirely.

Back at home, Soo Jin is in seventh heaven from getting a compliment from Jo Geon. Her sister, Soo Kyung (Shin Dong Mi) brings her down to earth by threatening violence if she doesn’t pay her deposit money back.

The next day, Ra Ra and Hwa Young meet up in a café, where Ra Ra begs Hwa Young to introduce her to Jo Geon. Jo Geon, meanwhile, is meeting with a nervous Soo Jin, when he randomly decides to go out for some air. Just as Hwa Young indignantly tells Ra Ra never to speak to her again, Jo Geon and Soo Jin walk into the same café. Jo Geon looks pleased to have run into Hwa Young, but Ra Ra immediately steps in to introduce herself. Both Hwa Young and Soo Jin fall all over themselves to smooth out the situation, while Ra Ra takes advantage of Jo Geon’s sudden interest to take them all to Ji Ah’s restaurant.

At Ji Ah’s restaurant, the women try to prevent Jo Geon from learning the truth, but it seems clear he knows anyway. The timing is disastrous, so of course, Myeong Soo is the next person to walk in the door. Behind Jo Geon’s back, Hwa Young convinces him to lie and say he was there to meet someone in passing, but since no one else is at the restaurant, Hwa Young shoves Soo Jin at Myeong Soo, and tells Jo Geon that Myeong Soo and Soo Jin are dating.

Everyone holds their breath as they await Myeong Soo’s response. Finally, he agrees that they are dating, and the two of them awkwardly put their arms around each other and laugh.

Comments

This show really isn’t being nice to Hwa Young. Not only have they depicted her as a violent stalker, but she also just piled up a bunch of lies that other people will have to maintain, all so her fiancé and his family don’t find out that she’s nuts. Even given Myeong Soo’s earlier explanation that he kind of enjoyed her obsessing over him, it’s hard to see what attracted him in the first place. By comparison, Ra Ra seems self-absorbed, but harmless, while Ji Ah seems sad.

As for Myeong Soo, seriously, it is possible to be too much of a nice guy. Given how much his life has been turned upside down by going along with both friends and ex-girlfriends, you have to wonder whether he has some kind of compulsion to help everyone. Or maybe, he likes the attention? Regardless, I do like that both he and Soo Jin, and the other women have come more into focus over the course of the last few episodes. If we’d left them all as thin caricatures, this show would have been painful to watch. Instead, it’s getting better by the episode.

Anyway, with the crazy Jo Geon in the mix, the cat has definitely been set among the pigeons (yes, I used an animal metaphor, too. Why not? Myeong Soo did it first). I’m really looking forward to the next episode, since we seem to be done with hair-pulling, and we can just get on with silly misunderstandings instead.

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Ex-Girlfriend Club (구여친클럽)

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