The Practical Guide to Love: Episodes 3-4
by Unit
Our leading lady goes on a frog-kissing quest in order to find her prince. But fate/the plot circles her back to her two major prince-hopefuls — both of whom are very much interested in her, and desire to take things past the blind date stage.
EPISODES 3-4
We resume with Eui-young almost getting swallowed in a pile of blind date requests. Turns out she drunk-texted a bunch of friends, asking to be set up. Loool. Eui-young barely spends a moment in the Hole of Embarrassment before scheduling all the dates on her calendar. After all, she’s in her blind dating era, and she can’t let this golden opportunity go to waste. I love it for her! Eui-young goes out with a bunch of dudes (I was especially amused by the Yoon Park and Yuk Jun-seo cameos), but none of the men are her type. If only there was a way to get a customized boyfriend on demand. Heh.
Moving on, Tae-seop didn’t buy Ji-soo’s “cousin” introduction last week, and he wonders if Eui-young hasn’t contacted him — as she said she would — because she hit it off with Ji-soo. After a dog adoption gone wrong, Tae-seop and his fellow animal shelter volunteer, Jung-suk, meet up. Their conversation naturally drifts to Eui-young, and Tae-seop is still hopeful things will work out even if Eui-young is going on other blind dates. For him to be completely sure, though, he says he has to see her again. There’s a hundred and one excuses to visit a hotel and “run into” an employee, according to Jung-suk. So if Tae-seop is really serious about wanting to see Eui-young again, he knows what to do.
Tae-seop’s opportunity comes when his studio, HOME, is considered among the vendors to pitch for a pop-up event at Eui-young’s hotel. Eun-ho is the primary recipient of the hotel’s mail, and he almost turns it down because their studio already has a packed schedule, plus Tae-seop doesn’t even like doing pop-ups. But “we are doing this one,” Tae-seop declares. Lol. Unfortunately, Na-ri can’t be bothered with the stress of vetting multiple vendors, so she pressures Sae-byeok into selecting a bigger studio, Homage. Sae-byeok is forced to lie to the team that HOME dropped out of the selection, and then lie to HOME that the pitch was canceled over internal reasons.
Speaking of lies, Eui-young’s next blind date is at a restaurant where Ji-soo is a part-time waiter. Ji-soo is unfazed about deceiving Eui-young, and he seemingly mocks her for blind date-hopping. But then he gets into a fight with her date for talking smack about her in the bathroom. *rolls eyes* Pick a side, buddy. Eui-young feels the same way, and she calls Ji-soo out on the ridiculousness of his attitude. He follows her after she storms off, and tells her his real name because he doesn’t want to be completely fake with her. K. He also clarifies that he has never looked down on her. Again, K. I’m still in the process of side-eying Ji-soo when leans in to take off the price tag that Eui-young forgot on her dress, and I… sigh. I know junk food is bad for my health, but I can’t help it, okay? By the way, Ji-soo is an actor, and he gives Eui-young a ticket to his stage play.
Eui-young decides to take a break from blind dates — and the timing couldn’t be any better, because Homage is hit with plagiarism accusations. Apparently, their design for the hotel’s pop-up exhibition is a copy of HOME’s previous design. Tsk. It’s always the egotisic braggarts who do the most. After promising to take responsibility for the vendor selection, Na-ri leaves Sae-byeok to deal with the mess. Smh. Sae-byeok comes clean to Eui-young about Na-ri’s underhanded ways, and Eui-young has to skip Ji-soo’s play in favor of going to apologize at HOME studio. After getting directions from one of the staff, Eui-young proceeds to a campsite outside of Seoul to speak with Eun-ho — who’s on a trip with his daughter, LEE SU-AH (Kim Ro-ah), and Tae-seop — but she bumps into Tae-seop’s tent, hits her head on the lamp, and learns he is Eun-ho’s co-CEO all at once. Lol.
Eui-young thinks it’s tacky to bring up the hotel’s new proposal so soon after her apology, so she stalls with presents and small talk. After dinner, Eui-young and Tae-seop end up star gazing and reflecting on their interactions so far. Tae-seop explains that his marriage talk was his way of saying he’s interested in Eui-young, but he assumed she wasn’t interested in him when she brought up her second blind date. Mind you, she only brought it up to gauge his interest in her, and his gentlemanly “it’s your choice to go or not” reply made her assume he wasn’t interested. Loool. Tae-seop admits the more he tries to ignore Eui-young, the more he can’t help but notice her. “I tried to be professional all day, but you’re still all I can think about,” he says. *swoon* Su-ah chooses this moment to come in with roasted marshmallows, but she’s cute, so I’m not mad.
While clearing out his tent for Eui-young, Tae-seop sees her pop-up proposal among Su-ah’s sketched-on papers. Then he goes on to overhear a phone conversation with her team leader, and now it looks like she stuck around purely for business reasons. A disappointed Tae-seop confronts Eui-young, and she has no excuse. He changes his mind about asking her to spend the night with them, but it’s late and she has already missed the last bus. Her phone battery also dies and she can’t book a cab, and to top it off, it starts to rain heavily. The rain dilutes Tae-seop’s disappointment, and he dashes out in search of Eui-young. He finds her stranded at the bus stop, and wonders what side of her is real. Eui-young replies that there’s more to her than the proposal schemer, and she asks for time to show him the other sides to her.
Tae-seop and Eui-young take shelter at a nearby church, and they go from him drying her hair with his shirt to kissing. Ouuuu. But they have the good sense to respect the sanctity of their environment and not go any further. Eui-young and Tae-seop wake up the next morning surrounded by the amused parishioners for morning mass. The priest is curious about the nature of their relationship, and Eui-young is slightly miffed when Tae-seop says they’re acquaintances. Hello, acquaintances don’t kiss each other! But they’re not exactly friends, and they haven’t defined the nature of their relationship yet.
The week wraps with Tae-seop asking to see Eui-young. But lo and behold, her fav coffee shop just hired Ji-soo as a part-time barista. Eui-young and Ji-soo are in the middle of a friendly-ish banter when Tae-seop walks in for the meeting. “We meet again, Cousin,” he says, casually brushing past Ji-soo — who is starting to get all territorial. Pfft. Tae-seop intentionally brings up the kiss, and says he was so jittery about seeing Eui-young again that sleep completely escaped him. Ha! “Did you sleep well?” He asks, and now I cannot sleep well until next week. We’re currently at Tae-seop 1:0 Ji-soo on the territory scoreboard, and I need Ji-soo to fight back. Loool. Just kidding.
Our main characters happened to catch each other in different pockets of lies and misunderstandings this week, and I appreciate Show for making them come clean rather than stew longer in dishonesty and misconceptions. I’m also glad Sae-byeok turned Do-hyun down. Her number one priority is to secure a permanent spot on the purchasing team after her internship, not to date or be subjected to unsavory office gossip about using Do-hyun to advance her career.
On a lighter note, not Do-hyun getting turned down by his first love AND the second! Third time’s the charm, though, so maybe he needs to sign up for blind dates — or on a secondhand market, because that’s where folks are meeting these days. Lol. Seung-joon and Hyun-min go from meeting up for his comic book collection, to haggling the price over arcade games, to falling into bed together — in one night! Whoa! I didn’t NOT see this ship coming, but ahoy!
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