Bride From Vietnam, Episodes 39-40

Things are moving along. In this past weekend’s installments, In-kyong finally cracks! And not a moment too soon – this storyline really overstayed its welcome. Can you imagine your husband or wife’s coworker having an obsessive crush on them, and calling you every other day – not them, YOU – to tell you that you’re not good enough for them, and that you’re not being supportive enough of their career? Well, that’s what this character has been doing to Jin-ju for, I dunno, 20 episodes now. This bitch is crazy! I love how the actress who plays her shows that little gleam of madness in her eye every time she has a moment alone with her thoughts. While I was disappointed that a full-blown catfight never erupted, Jin-ju did have it out with her and forced her to confess that she does in fact have feelings for Jun-wu. Jin-ju finally said what I’ve been wanting her to say to In-kyong all along: you love him so much, where were YOU during the 3 darkest years of his life? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Oh, snap! That shut her up for a few minutes. In a last-ditch effort to win Jun-wu’s heart, she arranges a lunch with Director Min (the trash-talking lady) and gets Jun-wu to show up, hoping they will reconcile and Jun-wu will get his promotion. I wonder if In-kyong’s relentless drive to get Jun-wu promoted is not out of “love” so much as “well, once he leaves his lowly foreign mail-order bride for me, he’d better bring home more coin”. Predictably, it doesn’t work out – within about 15 seconds of Jun-wu’s arrival, Director Min makes some racist comment about Jin-ju. The best part is that after Jun-wu storms out, declaring that he’ll “never work for the likes of her”, In-kyong comes running after him and tries to placate him by pointing out that any “normal person” would be just as racist. Right? Not long after that, In-kyong snaps and confesses her love to Jun-wu – on the roof of their office, the traditional place for private conversations in K-Dramas. When he doesn’t go for it – did she really think he would at this point? – what does she do? She casually drops by Jun-wu’s house before he gets home, to find Jin-ju waiting outside for him (something I always found slightly creepy), saunters up to Jin-ju, and demands that she make her a cup of tea! WHAT?? This might be her craziest moment yet. For some reason, Jin-ju lets this crazy bitch in the house. After seeing Jun-wu’s treatment journal that Jin-ju kept (sure, while I’m here I’ll just go through all your personal things) and hearing Jin-ju talk about that period of their marriage, In-kyong finally starts to understand that there might be something to their relationship. Hopefully now she’ll get over it and move to New York by herself, and we’ll never have to see that pinched look on her face again. Good riddance.

In other news, Ji-young’s mother has done a real number on Se-mi to keep her mouth shut. She has Se-mi believing that the contract given to her father’s rice cake factory by Sung-il’s company was a kind of reparations, brought about by Ji-young out of guilt over what happened with Jun-wu. But if Se-mi blabs and Ji-young gets the boot, there goes her father’s business. In fact, the contract in question IS a kind of reparations – but not for the reason Ji-young’s mother is fabricating. Sung-il himself ordered it to try and help his illegitimate daughter Jin-ju’s family, but no one was supposed to know. Sung-il only recently discovered that Han-suk is Jin-ju’s mother-in-law, so just when everyone was starting to calm down and consider letting Se-mi and Young-su date each other, Sung-il did an about-face and is now totally against it. Now, maybe someone more familiar with Korean culture can fill me in on this, but based on other shows I’ve watched, I have a feeling that Sung-il’s “this can never happen” attitude is based not on a reluctance to get involved with Jin-ju’s family and risk being found out, but on a specific taboo against his daughter and his son becoming in-laws if Se-mi and Young-su were to marry. Is this about right? Anyway, Se-mi starts to give it up, and even tells Young-su to go ahead and go to America –they can always try and get married later. This is after Sung-il calls Se-mi to his office to have a friendly chat with her, and pleads with her to convince Young-su to leave Korea. She tries to tell him about Ji-young – with Ji-young freaking out right outside the door, of course – but she just can’t do it. They manage to get the despondent Young-su to the airport to send him off to Philadelphia (Philadelphia! I love it) but at the last minute he makes a break for it.

Annnnd…. Jin-ju may be pregnant! Or is she? Showing some telltale signs of TV pregnancy, Jin-ju is urged by Grandma to take a pregnancy test. It come up negative, however. This probably means one of two things. Possibility #1: she is pregnant, but it didn’t show up on the test (it happened on Degrassi, it could happen here!) Possibility #2: she isn’t pregnant, she has a horrible disease and will die in the second to last episode. This is a drama, after all. Although given the general tone of the show, #2 might be a little heavy. Let’s revise that – she has a horrible disease but will recover, OR, we’ll all think she has a horrible disease for a while, but it will turn out to be nothing. This happened on Get Karl, Oh Su-Jung (another really great show that I’ll write about another time) where for a couple of episodes everyone thought Su-Jung had cancer, and much rethinking of priorities was done. Since that show was a comedy, of course it turned out that she just had indigestion or something. I’m betting something similar happens here. Besides, how could Jin-ju be pregnant – those two can’t possibly do it. In every scene where they’re in bed, they’re wearing matching his-and-hers polka-dot pajamas, for crying out loud. In fact I can’t imagine ANYBODY on this show doing it with anybody else, married or not. That’s one of the things I like about Coffee Prince: actual acknowledgment that occasionally, real people screw. Except for Eun-chan, that is… so far.