Sold Out on You: Episodes 9-10
by Unit
We spend our penultimate episodes further exploring — but not quite getting the full picture of — the incident from five years ago. In the meantime, our characters clear up different misunderstandings between themselves, and an old friend returns to town…
EPISODES 9-10
The week opens with a flashback post-morning cream incident. The cream company’s CEO, WOO-SU (cameo by Seo Hyun-woo), told Matthew he’ll take care of everything, but he ended up taking his life in responsibility. Afterwards, Matthew’s lab partner, SON CHANG-HO (Chae Dong-hyun), informed Mathew and Mu-won that Woo-su switched the raw materials and fabricated all the clinical test results of the cream due to his greed. As it stands, the cream incident is solely Wu-soo’s fault and Matthew isn’t at fault for anything — other than being a noble idiot and triggering Ye-jin’s abandonment issues. After Ye-jin leaves for Seoul, Mathew picks up the sleeping pills baton and it almost feels like the show is a PPL for sleep meds. Smh.
In Seoul, Ye-jin returns to host duties. Meanwhile, Eric is fired from L’Etoile. Refusing to return to France, he moves in next door to Ye-jin — totally coincidental on his part, by the way — and starts investigating Michelle’s role in the La Fin essence microbes. Eric’s assistant/Michelle’s stooge, CHA JOONG-HOON (Kim Joong-don), has always been grateful to Eric for hiring him after Michelle fired him, so he switches sides in order to help Eric bring Michelle down. In the meantime, Michelle has one last thing to do in Korea before returning to France: negotiate L’Etoile’s mushroom supply contract with Gojeuneok bio. Pressure Gojeuneok bio’s domestic clients to cancel their contracts with the company so that the client-less Gojeuneok bio will be forced to sell their mushrooms to L’Etoile.
Mu-won books a sales meeting with a foreign buyer — and of all places to meet, it just had to be a hotel that Ye-jin is vetting for vacation package sales. Mu-won notices the chill air between our OTP, and he calls his friend out immediately because Matthew can’t break up with Ye-jin in order to “not hurt her,” when the break up is exactly what’s hurting her. Preach! Ye-jin and Matthew didn’t even date long enough for her to realize she doesn’t have his real phone number. (He gave her Kwang-mo’s because she sleep-calls his real number.) The jig is up when Kwang-mo texts Matthew’s number to Ye-jin, and she realizes she has been sleep-calling Mathew when she listens to the recordings in her call history.
The most recent recording has Matthew confessing he was happy while he was with Ye-jin (as opposed to his “I feel suffocated when I’m with you” lie), so she fakes a sleep-call to lure him out. Matthew insists on dying on the Hill of Noble Idiocy, but Ye-jin refuses to let him rest in peace. Matthew was her solid ground when the world was sinking beneath her feet, and she’s determined to play the same role in his life. Matthew gives up on being an idiot after Ye-jin talks sense into his head, and our OTP’s relationship is back on track. Phew! This was quite the nice payoff for the sleep-calling plot point.
Moving on, Michelle interferes with Gojeuneok bio’s deal with the foreign buyer. But Chang-ho — who now runs his own cosmetics company abroad — reaches out to Mu-won and offers to buy the mushrooms. Hmmm. There’s a lot to go over before signing the sales contract with Chang-ho, so Mathew temporarily moves in with Ye-jin to save on Deokpung–Seoul commute time. And the fact that Eric is Ye-jin’s neighbor has absolutely nothing to do with this decision. *wink* Matthew runs into Ye-jin’s dad at the supermarket, and the salty side dishes at home come up in his small talk. But the budding friendship hits the rocks when they meet in front of Ye-jin’s house and Matthew realizes he called Ye-jin’s dad’s side dishes salty to the man’s face! Oops! Ye-jin and Eric return from a morning jog around the same time, and Eric gets a breakfast invite and Dad’s new bestie-ship status. Heh. But don’t worry, Matthew, you’re still Ye-jin’s fav.
Ye-jin’s dad tries to persuade Myeong-hwa to reach out to their daughter first, but she refuses. She strongly believes the morning cream incident was Ye-jin’s revenge on her, but Dad tells her to think again. Myeong-hwa finally does what she should have done five years ago: look into the incident herself. Myeong-hwa is shocked to hear from Hyun-ki that Ye-jin was brought on as a last minute replacement host for the morning cream broadcast. Hyun-ki — who has been friends with Myeong-hwa for over 30 years — knows the relationship between the mother-daughter pair even though they never told her, and she lets Myeong-hwa know that Ye-jin was eager to do the broadcast because of her. Myeong-hwa is sorry for believing Ye-jin tried to sabotage her, and hopefully it doesn’t take too long to mend her relationship with her daughter.
Supportive boyfriend Matthew buys a bunch of hotel vacation packages after Ye-jin’s broadcast. And just when she’s thinking they’re about to embark on a romantic hotel getaway, they’re joined by Sang-geum, Kwang-mo, and the other Deokpung villagers. Lool. It’s Ye-jin’s turn to play host in Seoul, and she takes the villagers on a tour of the home shopping network. Kwang-mo fills in as a model for a men’s suits broadcast, and the suits sell out quickly thanks to his quirky demonstration. Sung-mi re-falls in love with Kwang-mo from the control room, and she invites him to use his vacation package with her. Haha. I love how she’s always taking the lead in their relationship and leaving the man dumbstruck. As for Kwang-mo’s erstwhile crush, Ae-ra, she finally drops her “rich people” prejudice against Mu-won when he helps an incontinent Deokpung grandpa without making a fuss about it.
We get the makings of another ship after a Ki-hong and Jin-yi meet-cute at the network. He noticed her top-notch marketing skills at the village festival last week and thinks she’s here to apply for an open recruitment for new home shopping hosts. Som-yi previously mentioned the recruitment to Jin-yi since it was her dream to be a show host, but Jin-yi’s main focus at the moment is her sister. It’s why she decides to move to Seoul to be closer to a bigger hospital for Som-yi — and before Som-yi finds out that Matthew made the morning cream. But Som-yi overhears Matthew saying he should be the one to leave, and she runs away from home.
After a village-wide search, Matthew finds Som-yi in his house. Som-yi reveals she already knew he made the morning cream. But that’s not the point. The real question is, is he going to leave the village and abandon her and Jin-yi like their parents did? Ouch! Not Matthew triggering yet another set of abandonment issues. I mean, Som-yi was on her own when Matthew came into her life doing everything he could to make up for the morning cream issues, and she has come to rely on him a lot.
But to be more accurate, Som-yi walked into Matthew’s life first. She was his first friend when he came to Deokpung, and she brought him out of his morning cream-induced funk. She even named him Matthew after the protagonist in her fav picture book. In the present, Matthew promises Som-yi he won’t leave Deokpung, and Som-yi tells Jin-yi she wants to remain in the village. Matthew also decides to resume cosmetics development and make the perfect cream this time in order to keep his promise to Som-yi. But next thing you know, Chang-ho is smiling at Michelle and offering to team up with her against Gojeuneok bio. Da-dun!
I just knew Chang-ho was sus. I bet he’s the one who tampered with the morning cream and blamed it all on Woo-su. He must find his partnership with Michelle entertaining since they’re both unscrupulous humans who delight in screwing over the people closest to them. But I do not find their last-minute baddieship entertaining, so I hope Show quickly gets rid of them so we can have more time to focus on our four (!) ships and everyone’s happiness in next week’s finale.
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