Can you feel feelings for someone you have no feelings for? Confused? In “Make Me Tingle,” Nam Ji Hyun’s Gong Yeon Su is in a similar predicament. For her, there can be no desire without love; for an amorous relationship, love needs to be the foundation. And Yeon Su is still trying to figure what love is all about and what it means for her.
On the other hand, Dokgo Dal (Kim Jae Yeong), the CEO of Loand, a sex toy startup, has a nonchalant attitude toward love and relationships. He believes there is no formula or a set order to feelings. For him, relationship dynamics cannot be judged, since feelings very often are need-based and serve a purpose.
But when these two very different people come to work together, it opens a whole new world for Yeon Su, who, though at odds with Dal and his unconventional approach, cannot contain the tingling feelings she experiences when she’s around him. Here’s what you can expect from the initial episodes.
Warning spoilers from episodes 1-4 ahead!
When we first meet Yeon Su, she introduces her family as having retained a slice of Joseon in the heart of Seoul. They are conservative, and their traditional values clearly demarcate the roles of men and women in the family. It is a patriarchal household where her grandfather’s word is the law, and the rest of the family dare not argue or rebel against him. The only exception is her aunt, Gong Mi Young (Jeong In Ji), who is back home after doing the unthinkable: getting a divorce.
The Gongs have set up a blind date for Yeon Su, since she is nearly 30. But Yeon Su, a successful marketing executive at an ad agency, has been dating her boyfriend (in secret, of course) for close to a year. Their relationship has its own challenges, as she refuses to sleep with him, unsure about their love quotient. How does one know when love is enough to take that next step?
Dokgo Dal, on the other hand, comes across as a free spirit who doesn’t abide by the moral codes laid down by society. Is it because he is the founder of a sex toy startup, or are we as the viewer mean to judge him as those around him do? Aware of the prejudice and conclusions that come his way, Dal remains unmoved. For him, sex is communication, and his company’s products are tools designed to meet individual needs. He is frequently seen with Yoon Ji Oh (Kang Tae Joo), the VP of his company, and their closeness often gives people the wrong idea—though it might be intentional on Dal’s part to ward off unnecessary attention from women.
So, what are the chances when Yeon Su’s blind date turns out to be Dokgo Dal? She is horrified to see him, having spotted him with Ji Oh and overheard their conversation. She assumes they are a couple, and when Dokgo tells her he manufactures sex toys, her look of shock and surprise puts him off. It is hardly the start either of them would have hoped for, and the meeting ends with both wishing they would never have to see each other again.
But fate, or rather business, has other plans. Dal’s company hires Yeon Su’s ad agency for marketing. Yeon Su unknowingly volunteers for the assignment after yet another awkward date with her boyfriend followed by an embarrassing run-in with Dal. The second time Dal sees her, she is drunk, having walked into a street event hosted by his company, and throws up all over him.
Yeon Su needs to shake up her life and thinks, what would be better than taking up an assignment dealing with sex toys?
Walking into Loand, she calls herself a transfer student who has landed in a classroom where everyone seems to know what is going on except her. She has no idea what the products are all about, wearing a stunned expression, and Dal gauges her reactions, understanding how self-conscious she is.
As Yeon Su researches the products and decides to study primal human needs, she is flabbergasted. Her aunt Mi Young tells her it’s all about conditioning, especially with women who have made themselves conscious when it comes to their sexuality. Yeon Su’s relationship with her aunt is refreshingly cool. Mi Young has chosen to defy their family by walking out of her marriage. Though she still lives with them, she is carefree in comparison to her niece, who continues to be stifled by the rules laid down for her. Even as they take part in several rituals for the betterment of the family, it makes you wonder whether it would not be better to let the Gong women live the way they want to. After all, what is the point if people cannot make their own choices? Mi Young wants her niece to do just that, aware that her nephew, Yeon Su’s younger brother, gets away with a lot more.
As she works alongside Dal, Yeon Su begins to see him as a businessman who deals with the stigma and mocking attitudes surrounding his industry. When investors push him to opt for risqué packaging, he stands his ground, believing that his products are designed to meet human needs rather than titillate. His friends mock him for running what they consider a disreputable business, but he dismisses it as nothing but hypocrisy. Yeon Su starts to see him as a honest businessman who takes cares of the many who are engaged in the manufacture of the products as well as those who sell them.
But Yeon Su is still unconvinced that physical desire can exist without love. She continues to argue with Dal about this, even challenging him to kiss her because she wants to prove that, without feelings, it will have no impact. Except the kiss leaves her tingling and shaken. So much for proving a point! He tells her that sometimes sex can be the start of the process to know someone, but he does not reject her beliefs that sex is the ultimate culmination of love. For him it is all about perception—neither is right or wrong in what they think.
As she comes up with a clever marketing plan for Loand, designing mysterious boxes for clients, her strategy shocks everyone, since no one expected the flustered Yeon Su to come up with an idea like mystery boxes. She gets the idea when she comes across a random message which says that love and relationships are full of risks and surprises which make the journey interesting. No one is more shocked than Dal, who feels her bias towards the company’s products are easing. But she is still looking for a clue to solve the mystery regarding her own feeling towards Dal.
Dal, meanwhile, has had a lonely childhood in comparison to Yeon Su’s protective family. He is a man who believes himself unable to love, calling himself a door without a handle. Having seen his father in and out of relationships, he has attached little importance to commitment. But it seems he too isn’t immune to Yeon Su, who exasperates him as much as intrigues him with her ideas and thoughts.
Yet again, the overtly cautious Yeon Su cannot resist kissing Dokgo a second time, and his response making her deliriously happy. It is hilarious when she tells him he cannot do this because he is gay, only for him to reveal that he is very much into women. She is befuddled because a kiss with a man she doesn’t love cannot be that good.
Despite the sparks flying between them, the two have formed an easy friendship. She picks up his fear of the dark, sharing how she overcame own fear of the rain. There is an easy camaraderie between the two.
Her first streak of rebellion comes when she takes Dal home because her grandparents want to meet the blind date. She tells him to inform her family that he manufactures sex toys and does not believe in marriage, since she is exhausted by their template of what a marriage should be. Dal obliges, and his visit to the Gong home and his revelations shock everyone including the walls, except Mi Young, who is happy to see her niece finally rebelling in her own way.
Dal suggests to Yeon Su that since the blind date and the family relationship expectations are over, the two can start a neat professional relationship. But Yeon Su, being the most uncharacteristic version of herself, tells him that she would like to date him as well, taking him by surprise. So much for keeping things professional!
“Make Me Tingle” is a clever show with a quirky premise. It calls out hypocrisy around sex and the way societal gender dynamics shape our attitudes. At its heart, it looks at men and women as people with their own needs and wants, struggles, and challenges. Yeon Su and Dal are individuals whose upbringing and experiences have shaped their worldviews. Watching as those views and their own personalities begin to shift is what makes their story interesting. And though the opening episode relies to create shock value, putting an extensive line up of sex toys, it gradually becomes part of the show’s everyday visual vocabulary.
Nam Ji Hyun’s wide-eyed confusion when it comes to her feelings, along with her sense of comedic timing, lends Yeon Su a certain cuteness. She makes Yeon Su’s awkwardness endearing without losing sight of the woman beneath all that conditioning. And Kim Jae Young as the stoic and calm Dokgo Dal, who has his own scars, makes his character interesting.
One can’t wait to see what happens when Yeon Su and Dokgo Dal begin phase two of their relationship. Rest assured, the laughs and chemistry are promised.
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Puja Talwar is a Soompi writer with a strong Jing Bo Ran and Lee Junho bias. A long time K-drama fan, she loves devising alternate scenarios to the narratives. She has interviewed Lee Min Ho, Gong Yoo, Cha Eun Woo, and Ji Chang Wook to name a few. You can follow her at @puja_talwar7 on Instagram.