I wasn’t expecting to do this- but I was so charmed by Hye-Ri’s crush on poor Parking Lot Man, and I found it so funny, that I thought a recap of this show would be fun to do. This show is already in full swing with episode 4 airing today, so I’m gonna skip episode 1 in terms of recap and jump straight into the action.
Recap
We open with two little girls, and watch them blowing bubbles, playing in a kiddie pool, and playing piano together. Based on the height difference, one looks considerably younger than the other. We watch through a memory as one of the little girls injures her arm and is taken to the hospital. The other young girl watches through the window, and we learn that the injured girl was named Hye-Ri.. the name of Eun-Ho’s dissociative identity. We see further happy memories of the sisters, one of whom bears the healed scar on her arm.
Back in the present, we see what fully happened when “Hye-Ri” ran into Jung Hyun-Oh the other night. Hye-Ri parks her bicycle and begins heading into her house, when she hears, “Hey, Ju Eun-Ho!”
Hye-Ri immediately folds in half into a crouch (of course!), as Hyun-Oh berates her for taking her co-anchor with her to the off-site shoot the other day. Hye-Ri recognizes this as the events that occurred in her ‘dream,’ and doesn’t know what to make of her dreams intersecting with reality. Now, post-therapy session, she reflects on this with new eyes understanding that she has DID. In therapy, Hye-Ri had pointed to her scar as proof that she is who she says she is, but whoops! The scar is gone.
She goes home and makes this very cute observation in her diary- “I have Dissociative Identity Disorder. Oh my gosh!” lol.
At 4am, Eun-Ho takes over again and meets her ex, who helps her get inside their work building when she forgets her badge. He confronts her about her weird behavior the other night, before slowly realizing that Eun-Ho truly doesn’t remember any of it.
At work, Moon Ji-On is now ignoring Eun-Ho, and we see why via flashbacks: After Ji-On had kissed her, Eun-Ho had said, “Oh, wow! That was close! I almost fell for you! But- I can’t do this. It won’t work.” Huh? Kind of a weird way to turn someone down.
That evening, Hye-Ri takes over again, with her rigid movements and shuffling footsteps. At work, she tells her friend that she kissed Kang Ju-Yeon, her parking lot obsession, and her friend is understandably confused about how they went from 0 to 100 overnight.
Suddenly, Ji-Yeon himself appears- and asks for Hye-Ri! (Cue Hye-Ri diving into the corner.) Work Friend tells him that Hye-Ri won’t be there until 8, and at 8, Ji-Yeon dutifully appears once again, asking for Hye-Ri. Again, Work Friend turns him away. Undeterred, Ji-Yeon waits by the parking lot that night until Hye-Ri appears.
He asks her why she kissed him, but she’s unable to give him a straight answer, which frustrates him. At that moment, a coworker of Ju-Yeon’s interrupts them, and Hye-Ri clocks the immediate change in his demeanor. Realizing that Ju-Yeon speaks kindly to those he likes, she has a sudden realization that he doesn’t like her, and immediately dissolves into tears. This crying is completely inexplicable to Ju-Yeon, who gives up on the conversation and leaves.
That night, Hye-Ri decides (correctly) that she has done something wrong by kissing Ju-Yeon, and resolves to make up for her wrong-doing.
The next night, Hye-Ri dutifully finishes a jar of paper stars, which she leaves in Ju-Yeon’s workplace for him to find. The jar is given to him by a sweet coworker of his who clearly likes him; at his lackluster reaction to the gift, she mentions that someone put all their wishes into this jar, and then references a previous conversation of theirs when she says,
“You also had a wish. What was it for again? It was for an apocalypse. Sunbae, that’s a bit too much. Wish for something a bit more constructive.”
LOL.
At her insistence, Ju-Yeon retires to a private room where he opens the jar, and finds a letter written to him from Hye-Ri:
Hello, Announcer Kang Ju-Yeon. I’m Ju Hye-Ri from the parking office. I hope all is well with your household.
I really liked you.
Aw! And that’s it. This is her explanation for why she kissed him. He leans back and reflects on all the past strange (and thoughtful) behavior he’s observed from her, knowing now that it stemmed from a crush on him.
He goes to meet her in the parking lot, where he tries to talk to her more about the kiss. He explains that he wasn’t trying to make her cry; he was just trying to figure out his own feelings. “I was just really curious.. why you kissed me in that situation.” Trust me dude, we all were. But Hye-Ri begins catching on that her feelings are not entirely unrequited.
Ju-Yeon seems to want to prolong the conversation, but Hye-Ri cuts it short with a quick explanation, apology, and goodbye, and then heads to her bicycle. A little confused, Ju-Yeon heads back to his car, but neither of them leave, and when Ju-Yeon calls out to her, Hye-Ri instantly runs back to him and says, “Yes, playing hard-to-get is quite difficult.” (Ju-Yeon says, “Sorry?”). LOL. I just love that those ten-seconds were about as much ‘hard-to-get’ as she could take.
Hye-Ri then goes, “I like you! I really like you, and I like you even more now that I’ve kissed you, and I want to get to know you!”
This is the moment, while watching, that I decided I want to recap this show. I was just hook, line, and sinker completely charmed by Hye-Ri’s earnestness and complete lack of pretension.
Ju-Yeon responds with a very non-committal, “I’m also curious about you.” Hmmm.
But, now that she feels she has a receptive audience, Hye-Ri seems ready to air all her burning curiosities. She asks if that was his first kiss, and this 35 year-old man says YES! Now, call me a cynic, but I think most people have had at least had one or two failed relationships by then. They’re gonna have to give this man some real emotional hang-ups for me to believe he has disavowed romance his entire adult life.
Hye-Ri decides, for the both of them, that they need to go somewhere and talk, so Ju-Yeon takes her back to his apartment.
There, Hye-Ri immediately gravitates towards a picture of Ju-Yeon and his older brother. Ju-Yeon trauma dumps rather quickly that his brother is dead, and his mother resents him for being the one who survived. Hye-Ri dismisses this immediately as a silly idea.
They then share their ages, and Hye-Ri interestingly has aged herself down 9 years. I would say this corresponds to the age difference between the sisters, but they did not look nearly this far apart in age in the flashbacks.
Hye-Ri shares that she has no parents or siblings, but it doesn’t matter, because now she has him.
I cringed HARD during this line delivery, which means it was done well. Props to actress Shin Hye-Sun, who isn’t afraid of looking like a fool on camera. Anyway, a lesser man would’ve run away after hearing this (-I- would’ve run away), but Ju-Yeon merely smiles and says, “Is that so?”
Hye-Ri follows him as he goes into the kitchen and says, “I never pictured you smiling like that; that was so alluring.” GIRL CALM DOWN!!
Hye-Ri then says that she’s going to speak to his mother someday, and tell her to be grateful that Ju-Yeon is alive. Ju-Yeon is very touched by this, which is sweet, but to me it reflects the fact that Hye-Ri has no real understanding of emotionally complex problems. She has a very simplistic solution, similar to how a child would.
But anyway, Ju-Yeon is so touched that he asks her to stay the NIGHT, which she does in a separate room. Man moves fast for having never had a kiss in his life! Just kidding. I think the feelings on his side are more platonic.
In the morning, EUN-HO wakes up, and is understandably horrified to find herself in a strange man’s bedroom. While sneaking out of the apartment, she glimpses his badge, and seems extra scandalized knowing that this strange man is another reporter at a nearby station. She goes immediately to work, where she asks one of her coworkers to look into this man.
Back in the drawing-board room, Hyun-Oh turns down another expose and sends it Eun-Ho’s way. His coworkers are growing increasingly frustrated that he keeps turning down jobs and pawning them to his ex, who is distinctly disliked (although it’s not really justified). They begrudgingly offer this job to Eun-Ho, who immediately accepts, enticed by the idea of her face being on screen for ten minutes. She is also feeling quite tortured about her strange experience last night, and is desperate for some distraction.
The job turns out to be an expose involving fish being illegally caught and sold. Except..
It turns out that, rather than fish, Eun-Ho finds a dead body in this refrigerated truck. Hm. Okay. My only question is, why?
Please, show! No serial killers! South Korea has to have the highest proportion of serial killers per capita in the world.
Eun-Ho somehow locked herself in this truck, and she calls the camera crew to come rescue her, but they are very busy. (They’re drunk.)
She sends Mi-Yeon, the head of the crew a text. It goes,
“Mi-Yeon, you’re not picking up. I’m trapped inside a refrigerated truck, unfortunately. Someone should come and open the door for me. But before that, Mi-Yeon.. if you’re asking what this is, yes, it’s a dead person. I checked just in case he was still alive, but he’s dead. I want to call the police. But before that, I’m stuck in a refrigerated truck. So, Mi-Yeon, can you get me out of here?”
And then she attaches an image of the dead body to the message. LOL
As Eun-Ho sits there, contemplating her fate, she is suddenly struck by vivid memories of her asking her ex-boyfriend things like, “Would you save me if I were drowning?”
It has similar energy to the infamous, “Would you still love me if I were a worm?”, but I think this question had special meaning to Eun-Ho. Each time, Hyun-Oh would rebuff her and say things like, “You can swim, why wouldn’t you save yourself?” Finally, she remembers saying to him, “You should be honored– because even if I couldn’t swim, I would still try to save you. Because I love you.”
This is why I don’t like Hyun-Oh at all. That question has nothing to do with drowning. It’s saying, “Do you love me? I need your affirmation that you love me.” That’s what that question is really saying. In the refrigerated-truck present, Eun-Ho types his name into her phone and tearfully considers calling him.
As she’s contemplating these things, the door swings open- one of the cameramen has come and rescued her. She stumbles to the door and sits there recovering, and as she does, she sees a man walking towards her in the distance– Jung Hyun-Oh, mister distant ex-boyfriend.
Hyun-Oh, I guess, escorts her back to his car, by walking ahead of her as she stumbles along behind him. LOL. I’m sorry, what did he do that wouldn’t have easily been done by the camera crew? Was this supposed to be a Big Hero moment?
In the car, Eun-Ho asks him how he knew she was in trouble, when she hadn’t texted him. And more importantly, WHY he came for her. Dun dun dun. And then boom, episode ends.
Thoughts
This show has such an interesting feel. The atmosphere, fed by a really masterful directing and soundtrack, is extremely thoughtful and almost dreamy. There’s a very dreamy feel to the switches between Eun-Ho and Hye-Ri. A lot of the directing is very trippy, purposefully blurring Eun-Ho’s sillhouette to reflect the fact that there are two personas inside her.
What’s unfortunate is this show has not touched my heart at all. I feel absolutely no sense of emotional heaviness in Eun-Ho, which there definitely SHOULD be if this woman is traumatized enough to have Dissociative Identity Disorder. Rather, she seems mostly well-adjusted and light-hearted. The cover of the show gives the sense that Eun-Ho is heavy and burdened, while Hye-Ri is her lighter, less traumatized counterpart, but this is not the impression given by the actual story at all. Rather, Eun-Ho seems pretty high-functioning.
I am also a little unnerved by Parking Lot man Ju-Yeon’s quick acceptance of Hye-Ri’s feelings, when in reality, anyone should be able to tell that this woman isn’t well.
But, I guess I can’t really blame him for falling for her charm, because I sure have. Hye-Ri’s sweetness and sincerity is definitely the draw for this show, for me.
My current working theory is that the real Hye-Ri drowned when they were children. Eun-Ho’s constant, “Would you save me if I were drowning?”, and her hesitation before stepping into the ocean in episode 1, make me think this. As to why Hye-Ri has aged herself down nine years, I’m not really sure, but I do think it’s important.
What did you think of episode 2 of Dear Hyeri?
Philosodrama 
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