Recap Korean Drama "May I Help You" Episode 11-12

We really went from cuteness overload in the first part of this week’s episodes to a semi-tear fest by the end. But first, the cute: a recap of last week’s kiss, the bashful new couple stealing pecks at every available opportunity, and the endless exchange of cutesy texts and emojis between them.

There’s the matchmaking uncles who arrange an informal meeting between themselves and their niblings, and as far as these two are concerned, Dong-joo and Tae-hee are already considered married in their heads. All that’s left is for Father Michael to conduct the actual ceremony. Heh. We also get foreshadowing of how Dong-joo and Tae-hee will grow old together based on the bickering-but-still-very-much-in-love elderly ghost couple. (This is my own interpretation, and I refuse to accept otherwise).

 

Dong-joo tells her friends about her new relationship, and they’re eager to know everything — starting from: “Did you sleep with him?” Lol. So-ra is such a clown, and she can’t help but wonder when a relationship will happen to her too. I mean, she even switched hospitals to the one affiliated with Dong-joo’s funeral home so she can be closer to Il-seob. But so far, all her advances have been met with stiff resistance.

As for Il-seob, I’m thoroughly confused as to whether that lady with the child is his younger sister or ex-girlfriend. She totally gave off younger sister vibes in that scene with his dad, but Dong-joo says she’s the ex? Sigh. It’s really the curse of the “oppa” title at play here.

Speaking of exes, Chung-ha and her mom get into yet another argument over Tae-hee, leading her to cut ties with her mom. And in an unexpected and almost contrived twist, her mom suddenly dies from a ruptured aneurysm. Chung-ha is riddled with guilt and grief, but she doesn’t give into her emotions until Tae-hee arrives at the funeral — after Dong-joo persuades him to attend.

I like that Dong-joo doesn’t pretend that she’s totally comfortable with the idea of him attending the funeral, but she knows it’s the right thing to do, and she tells him so. And in turn, I appreciated Tae-hee’s constant reassurance to Dong-joo throughout the proceedings that it’s all for formality sake, so she shouldn’t listen to the gossip of other doctors who think his presence at the funeral means he’s getting back together with Chung-ha.

Unfortunately, Chung-ha’s mom doesn’t get the memo even in death, as her ghost requests Dong-joo to put Chung-ha back at Tae-hee’s side where she belongs. Tsk. Chung-ha’s mom is like those annoying clients who keep coming back even after you refuse them service, and her wish to ease her daughter’s loneliness is quite the conflict of interest for Dong-joo’s wish-granting assignment.

To ghost mom’s disappointment, Dong-joo turns down the wish because she likes Tae-hee too — and just when we think the wish is going to be left unfulfilled, Chung-ha herself decides to give up on Tae-hee, and find a new source of happiness. And I hope for all our sakes she finds that happiness, and that this is the last we’ll be seeing of her.

We wrap up our light-hearted moments for the week with a fun visit from Tae-hee’s grandmother (and Vincent’s mom) — which also ushers in the sad moments, as she’s here just in time for Joon-ho’s second death anniversary. Dong-joo sees a picture of Tae-hee and Joon-ho on Grandmother’s phone, and she connects the dots at last. Finally, she gets to hand over the ring to Tae-hee although she’s very apologetic for running away from Joon-ho’s ghost, and not realizing he was Tae-hee’s brother sooner.

A part of me expected them to go all noble idiot on each other — K-drama style — but they don’t play by that rulebook, and I’m glad their relationship waxed stronger instead. It’s also thanks to Dong-joo that Tae-hee begins to get rid of his guilt, and muster up the courage to visit Joon-ho with his parents — for what seems like the first time they will go together as a family.

As though Joon-ho’s case wasn’t sad enough, they had to throw in the mother-daughter murder-suicide ghost case, which I’m not even going to delve into because that one was just unnecessarily depressing. But what’s even more heartbreaking is the confirmation of my suspicion that Hae-an and the truck driver are indeed brothers. That’s why he chose attending to his passed out brother over Joon-ho, who was still alive for a while after being hit.

I don’t know how to feel about this because everyone who was involved in the accident — except the drunk driver, of course — is really pitiful. Family comes first to most people and for someone like Hae-an who’s very loyal to the people he cares about, I understand his choice that night even if I don’t necessarily approve of it.

Hae-an is devastated when he also finds out that Tae-hee and Joon-ho are brothers, and his guilt doubles after Tae-hee buys him an apology gift for keeping the relationship with Dong-joo a secret from him. Hae-an cannot bring himself to confess that his brother was the truck driver, but he doesn’t need to any longer as he soon runs into Tae-hee outside the ICU on his way to visit his brother.

Oh well, the moment of truth couldn’t come anytime sooner. The question is will their friendship survive the outcome? Because it’s one thing to be relatives with the person who killed your friend’s brother. But to also be the guy who walked away when you could have made a positive difference in the eventual outcome? It’s hard to get past that.