Love at Seventeen Episode 8 Recap

Love at Seventeen 8 Recap By Ninja
Unmoved at all by Alice's sincere plea for them to reclaim their friendship, Shu Lei tells a stunned Alice about her "betrayal" and stress again that they are not friends anymore.

The puzzle of why her friendship had dissolved finally answered, Alice stands in shock as tears starts to fall.

His heart breaking to see Alice overwhelmed with guilt as she whole heartily believes everything Shu Lei said, Hao Yi tries to convince Alice not to trust other people's memories of the past but his words seem to just deepen Alice's conviction that she is the source of everyone's pain.

Surprised by Alice's sudden appearance while he is lost in thoughts thinking about her, Hao Yi accidentally stabs himself in the eye with a pen. Too busy yelping in pain, it takes our hero a moment to notice Alice's closeness as she leans over him in concern to check on his eyes.

Finally realizing the sizzling awareness between them because of her closeness, Alice edges back and asks Hao Yi to take her to the secret meeting place to find their time capsule.
Filled with anticipation as they open the time capsule, both of our leads are stunned when it turns out to be empty. True to her 17 year old personality, after allowing herself a moment of disappointment Alice quickly gives Hao Yi a bright smile and assures him that she is fine.

Reporting to work bright and early the next morning, Alice readily agrees to an assignment change when she finds out that Peter had put in an request for her to transfer to his department. No where near as agreeable, Hao Yi has a confrontation with Peter but in the end was forced to relent once Alice makes it clear that she think the transfer is a good decision for her.

Obviously out of her depth as she sits in a meeting between Peter's department and Shu Lei's, Alice reverts to her old habit of being her friend's trusty sidekick by speaking up in support for Shu Lei's sales strategy despite Peter's declaration that Shu Lei's proposal was unreasonable. A bit surprised to see Alice taking her side, any good feelings Shu Lei might've had soon turns to distaste when Peter decides to accept Shu Lei's proposal just because Alice had supported it.

Frustrated by the feeling of being useless, Alice pleas with Peter to let her go out on field assignments. Dismayed to overhear the two's conversation Hao Yi jumps out to voice his opposition and soon we have another d�j� vu confrontation between the two men. Not surprisingly, Alice wins again and runs out of the company after assuring Hao Yi she will be fine.
While our heroine is out battling the world with her 17 year old memories, our two male leads are left feeling useless as they both struggle with the vast divide Alice has place between herself and them. 
Walking into the gym with Shu Lei, a rather board Xiao Fen perks up when her best friend points out a crowd of women all gushing around a good looking man. Her eyes widen in amazement when Shu Lei tells her the eye candy is none other than the school nerd they used to know, Xiao Fen quickly swallows all her gushing compliments after one look at her BFF's huffy expression.

Left with no choice but to sit at home staring at the ceiling after Alice tells him that she has a dinner party with Peter's department, Hao Yi listens with half a ear as Xiao Fen tells him about her sighting of Peter at the gym. Sitting up with alert when he hears Peter's name, Hao Yi realizes that Alice must've been lying about the department dinner and shocks his sister by running out of the door.  
Overjoyed when a store manager is impressed by her tenacity and gives her two full box of fliers with mistakes on it to correct, Alice sends Hao Yi home by fibbing about a company dinner while she is really eating instant noodle and working on the fliers. 

Completely alone at the office, Alice looks around hopelessly after she accidentally locks herself in the recycling room. Yelping in dismay when she gets a phone call from Hao Yi, Alice forces herself to sound impatient and assures Hao Yi that she is busy having dinner with her department...that is until she jumps at the sound of the door opening and sees Hao Yi's angry face. 
Furious at Alice's refusal to call him even when she was in such a dire situation, Hao Yi storms away as Alice follows behind desperately trying to explain that she just didn't want to trouble him anymore. Getting even more angry after hearing Alice's excuse, Hao Yi yells at Alice for doing exactly the same thing 10 years ago when she abandoned him and her friends. 
I sure hope our hero is going to admit his part of "abandoning" Alice all these years ago at some point. 

Walking home alone as the memories of everything Hao Yi has done for her replying in her mind, Alice is too busy crying to notice that our hero has actually been following her the whole way. 
Taken back when a kind street vendor suddenly thrusts two bags of cake treat in her hand to cheer her up, a rather confused Alice walks away while Hao Yi nods his thanks to the street vendor. 

Sitting down at a staircase, Alice is overwhelmed with sadness again as she munch on the cake treats but thanks to a timely advise from a homeless man Alice finally drys her tears and makes the difficult decision that she has to reclaim what she lost while she still can. 

Gaining courage from her new conviction, the first thing Alice does when she walks into the door is to formally apologize to both Xiao Fen and Hao Yi for disappearing 10 years ago. Turning back to Xiao Fen, Alice declares that while she knows she is overstaying her welcome in Xiao Fen's house but she is going to brazenly keep on living there since this is her last chance of reclaiming their friendship. 
Really a softie at heart, Xiao Fen sighs with frustration once she is alone with Hao Yi and accuses her brother of setting everything up. Smiling brightly, Hao Yi gleefully reminds his sister that using his skill of making the situation go the way he wants is after all how he makes his living. Stumping her foot as Hao Yi happily walks away, Xiao Fen yells "How am I suppose to face Shu Lei now?!" 
Woken up in the middle of the night by some sounds, Hao Yi opens his bedroom door just in time to have Alice jump into his arms. Standing in the dark while a scared Alice wraps her arms tightly around him, Hao Yi smiles as he remembers another familiar situation years ago. 
In an extremely good mood to know that he was the first person Alice thought of when she mistakenly thought there was a power outage, Hao Yi asks "So... I am important to you?" Looking into Hao Yi's face with all the innocence of a 17 year old mind, Alice replies with a strong conviction "YES, you are very important to me!" 
Yelling with pleasure the next morning when she see the dining room table filled with breakfast foods all cooked to perfection, Xiao Fen forces herself to pretend disinterest once she finds out Alice was the one who cooked it all. 

Laughing at his sister's obvious pretense, Hao Yi assures Alice that Xiao Fen is simply dying to eat the food and shows her the text he just got from Xiao Fen demanding that he save some food for her.  
Feeling more confident of his place in Alice's heart but frustrated at the same time that he  is apparently back being Alice's "best friend"... a rather familiar title he already struggled with 13 years ago, the 30 year old Hao Yi vows to not make the same mistakes.

Confused when Hao Yi insists on dragging her to a hilltop to see the night view of the city, our very clueless heroine finally picks up that something is afoot when Hao Yi takes her hand in his. 

Ninja's Thoughts

Yeah!!! Thank heaven! I was so scared that our hero would make the same mistake as he did 13 years ago and we would be stuck with watching him torturing himself with his insecurities. Thankfully, the 30 year old Hao Yi is not about play the game of "Guess what I am thinking?" and is ready to just lay his heart out in the open. 

To be fair, I think the young Hao Yi had dropped some VERY obvious hints for our heroine back in their school days but what can you do when that's just the age when self insecurities pretty much drown out everything else.
The writer is sure dangling us a long on this whole mystery of what exactly happen to Alice that made her change so much and had her working so hard to just forget it all. In this hour, Peter had a flash back of when Alice saved him from a bunch of bullies so it makes me wonder if the mystery event was something the bullies did to Alice as a revenge for spoiling their fun. The writer had used the heroine's fear of the dark a few times now so maybe it could be something like locking her in the school locker room? 
Up to this episode I have always felt kinda bad for Peter's one sided crush/friendship with Alice but after this episode it did occur to me that maybe from our heroine's point of view she really doesn't know Peter all that well. Back in the school days, Alice saw Peter as her BFF's admirer and kept his secret because of her strong conviction in keeping her promises. The two's subsequent interactions also all had something to do with Shu Lei so it is quite possible that after Alice became the "Robot Alice" and shut herself off from forming any new relationships, Peter is then stuck as the "guy who likes her ex-best friend and she helped out a few times." in our heroine's mind.  

Oh, well. At least all the signs seems to hint that Shu Lei is already in love with Peter and I am looking forward to see their reversal of roles as the school beauty pulls out all stops to make the school nerd fall back in love with her.  

Is Age Just a Number? (Part 2): K-dramas and Oppa/Ahjussi Romances

A long, long time ago, I wrote this post about the noona romance trend and what makes the difference between a decent romance and one that makes you feel all icky inside.

While noona romances definitely haven't disappeared in the last couple of years, now the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way, with several high-profile dramas casting older actors against much-younger actresses. Here are just a few recent or upcoming dramas off the top of my head that fit this trend:

• Marriage Contract: Lee Seo Jin (45) and UEE (28)
• Entertainer: Ji Sung (39) and Hyeri (21)
• Mirror of the Witch: Yoon Si Yoon (29) and Kim Sae Ron (15)
• Beautiful Gong Shim: Namgoong Min (38) and Minah (23)
• Doctors: Kim Rae Won (35) and Park shin Hye (26)
• Beautiful Mind: Jang Hyuk (39) and Park So Dam (24)
• Moonlight Drawn By Clouds: Park Bo Gum (22) and Kim Yoo Jung (16)
• Let's Fight Ghost: Taecyeon (27) and Kim So Hyun (16)

Given that we're bound to see the great age debate popping up again and again over the next few months, let's give the topic another look, shall we?

Noona Romances vs. Ahjussi Romances: Is There a Difference?

Basically, everything I said before about noona romances still applies here. I don't like it when viewers apply a double standard to age gaps in dramas, saying one or the other is more acceptable because it happens to align with their personal fantasies. When it comes to age gap for any gender, the biggest determining factors for me are whether the characters are in similar life stages and whether there's some sort of inappropriate power dynamic at play (like teacher/student romances, for example).

That's why, despite boasting the biggest age gap on the list at 17 years, Marriage Contract's casting bothers me least. Lee Seo Jin and UEE are both adults in real life, and they were playing adults on the series. They also seemed like they were in similar stages of life�if anything, UEE's character was the more mature one by far. The romance didn't make a big deal about the age gap, so as a viewer, I didn't, either.

How can you worry about silly things like age when you're crying your face off?

In contrast, the early scenes between Ji Sung and Hyeri in Entertainer felt so awkward and so much like an adult interacting with a teen that I decided not to bother watching any further. (Oh, yeah, and the plot was so boring that I had to prop my eyes open, so there's always that....)

Even though Entertainer didn't work for me personally, I don't find the age gap inherently problematic like I do with some other recent ahjussi romances. While I don't agree with a double standard in comparison to noona romances, I do find a few differences in the way they're executed, and some of those differences make me particularly concerned about the latest trend.

For one thing, I can't think of a single noona romance where the actor is a minor. Even in High School King of Savvy, Seo In Guk was 27 years old playing a teen. In three of the current or upcoming dramas, however�Mirror of the Witch, Moonlight Drawn by Clouds, and Let's Fight Ghost�the lead actresses are actual teenagers.

I guess for two of the three, you could argue that the historical setting makes sense for the age gap because brides were often younger than their husbands. Many historicals tend to be fairly chaste, anyway, so there's a good chance you're not going to get massively steamy scenes between the leads. From what I hear about Mirror of the Witch so far, it's all staying on the appropriate side of things, though I haven't seen it myself, so I can't comment there.

It seems as though the mindset going into the casting was to take these wildly popular child actresses who have been acting for years and give them a shot at their own leading roles. The problem here is that when you cast a teenage actress in a romantic role opposite an adult actor, it feeds into the Lolita schoolgirl fantasy that is already so rampant in the Korean entertainment industry. Even if the kissing scenes are chaste, it casts the actresses in a light that makes them seem more "adult" than they really are. Given that casting choices are often made in behalf of these young actresses by their managers/parents, it also raises the concern that they may take roles they will later regret.

I remember hearing an interview with Natalie Portman once where she was talking about her role in Leon: The Professional at the age of 12. She described how the fan mail she received from adult men made her uncomfortable, and how she wished that she had never taken the role.

In this vein, Let's Fight Ghost's casting was the one that elicited the most nope-ing of the bunch. Not only does it not have the excuse of historical accuracy, but the series is also based on a webtoon where the ghost is older than the male lead. It's not like they had to cast Old Man Taec in the role to make the story work. 

And that, my friends, is how you end up with pictorials like this one,
where the theme appears to be "16 is ALMOST legal, isn't it?"
Image source

I love the idea of giving this role to Kim Soo Hyun, but by pairing her with Taecyeon, you end up in this weird no-man's land where it can't be a sweet high school romance, and it also can't be a sexy tvN romcom either. In other words, you've hedged up the plot, you've put a minor in an uncomfortable position, and you've fed into pervy old man fantasies. Way to go, casting director!

Putting Female Leads to Pasture

I don't know if this is a fair critique, but the casting of established actors with the latest flavor-of-the-month ingenue also raises concerns for me about what it might do to older actresses. Fortunately, actresses of the 35�50 set have been headlining their own dramas lately (Twenty Again, Dear My Friends, etc.), but I do worry if the ongoing trend of ahjussi romances might eventually send the message that women of a certain age no longer belong in romantic roles, even if their male counterparts are still landing dramas right and left.

Give me Kim Sun Ah,* or give me death!
*in something that isn't Masked Prosecutor
Image source

I'm perfectly willing to be proven wrong�UEE certainly blew me away and carried the emotional weight of the drama in Marriage Contract�but I can't help but wonder what happens to the Ha Ji Wons and Kim Sun Ahs if rookies like Park So Dam are snatching up parts opposite veterans like Jang Hyuk. (Okay, bad example. For one thing, Beautiful Mind looks like a hot mess, so they probably couldn't convince any top actresses to take the part anyway, and for another, I kind of love Park So Dam, so I'm willing to give her a pass on a lot of things.)

What do you think of this latest trend? Are you concerned about casting teen actresses in romances with older men? Do you think this whole hullabaloo is still a big fuss over nothing and you wish I would shut up about age already? Let us know!

Refresh Man Episode 13

Refresh Man Episode 13 by Ninja

In spite of our two leads' valiant effort to keep their romance under wraps, they are caught red handed when the whole Department 2 catches them right in the middle of a date. 

Eager to hear how Yu Tang's romance with Wen Kai came about, all of Yu Tang's co-workers yelp in excitement when she accidentally let it slip that they have already kissed. Looking at everyone's expectant faces, Wen Kai finally takes one for the team and reveals that he has known Yu Tang for a long long time. 
Surprised to find out that Yu Tang is actually high school classmates with Wen Kai, Yu Tang's co-workers give a collective dreamy sigh when Wen Kai further admits that he has only ever had eyes for Yu Tang ever since their school days. 

Resigned to the fact that her whole department is in on her secret, Yu Tang nonetheless still insists that she and Wen Kai keep their romance undercover from the rest of the company for as long as possible. 

Surprisingly calm when he sees Yu Tang distressing over a text from Zhi Yu asking for a chance to confess his feelings to her in person, Wen Kai simply makes sure Yu Tang is wearing HIS hairband and encourages her to face the unavoidable. 
Coming back to the country triumphantly after his very fruitful trip overseas with his father, Zhi Yu preens under Wen Kai's speculative gaze as he admits that he has officially taken over his father's company. 

Zhi Yu gives a long and self aggrandizing speech about his ascension to power. This is also our (at least mine) first indication that Zhi Yu is not as harmless as he looks. 
Hoping that his recent good fortune in his professional life would carry into his love life as well, Zhi Yu's heart falls when he notices that Yu Tang is not using the hairband he gave her. 

Already prepared when his big confession is answered by an apologetic rejection from Yu Tang, Zhi Yu gives a sad smile as Yu Tang admits that she is indeed dating Wen Kai. Not hiding his disappointment but still putting on a smile, Zhi Yu promises Yu Tang to keep her new romance a secret and even gives her a standing job offer if she ever wants to change company. A bit confused by Zhi Yu's job offer and apparent desire to keep being "friends" even after her rejection, Yu Tang agrees to Zhi Yu's request to help him pick out a retirement gift for someone he knows in a couple days. 
Called back to the company urgently when Wen Kai suddenly summons Department One and Three for a joint meeting, Yu Tang and her co-workers are shocked once Wen Kai reveals that a member of Department One was caught on the surveillance camera stealing Department Three's document then sending the information to their company's competitor. 

Knowing full well that Team leader Jia (of Department One) was the real one behind the information leek, Wen Kai stays silent as he watches the man blames everything on his subordinate. Puzzled by Wen Kai's silence but trusting his judgement nonetheless, everyone at the Department Three decides to not worry about the matter but focus on their task at hand. 
Forced to admit Team Leader Jia's jeering prediction that their Mei Mei soap sale has already peaked is indeed happening, Yu Tang and her co-workers seem to be stuck in their dilemma. Turning to Jia Yin in amazement when she announces her recent private meeting with Wen Kai where he gave her the task of going overseas to open new markets for Mei Mei, everyone collectively agrees that Jia Yin is indeed the best candidate for this important mission. 

I am assuming Wen Kai had something to do with Jia Yin's ex also getting sent to Singapore by his work so she could take her baby there with her mind at ease. At least I am hoping he did...or else this whole thing would be too unrealistic. 
Accompanying Yu Tang the next morning to her mother's grave for Mama Zhong's birthday, Wen Kai comforts a crying Yu Tang as he himself remembers back to his last meeting with Mama Zhong. 

Taking Wen Kai to the location where she found her mother unconscious, Yu Tang slowly recounts the shock and the guilt she has felt all these years wondering if she could've saved her mother if she had simply insisted on going to buy those brown eggs for Mama Zhong. 
The words bubbling up inside him as he looks at Yu Tang's heartbroken expression, Wen Kai starts to tell Yu Tang about that fateful day and explain why her mother was going out to buy those dang brown eggs, but had to give up when Yu Tang asks him to not talk about the incident anymore. Interesting...I wonder if Yu Tang actually already suspected the truth. 

Breaking in a teary smile as Wen Kai promises to stay by her side, Yu Tang suddenly changes the subject and asks "I actually have one thing that has been weighing on me for a long time... Why did you disappear ten years ago?" 

Ninja's Thoughts 

Wow, I guess that's the end to the harmless prince charming?! Up to this point Zhi Yu has been your perfect second male lead who really seemed like the type that would either give up gracefully OR keeps loving the heroine from afar just to make sure she is happy. But what's this? It is starting to look like our prince charming is not so...charming after all but one who is quite skilled at destroying everything standing in his path of obtaining what he wants?? 

It's intriguing that the writer seem to be setting Elsa up as someone who will see through Zhi Yu's mask so maybe we might get a romance there...or is Elsa just going to get rid of Zhi Yu for our leads? 

The pacing of the story for the last two weeks feel a bit slower and the plot is starting to recycle between Yu Tang's department in crisis then it being solved thanks to some behind the scene help from Wen Kai but still, I guess I am just easy to please because I don't seem to mind too much as long as the writer throws enough cute scenes of our two leads to keep me smiling. 

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