Recap "Our Beloved Summer" Ep 13-14

After the peak that was last week’s episodes, we have a much quieter set of episodes, mostly focusing on the old conflicts, history, and internal work that needs to be done. Or faced.

Woong and Yeon-su are in their dating bliss, and are beyond adorable. They clearly deserve every happiness and will make the best couple ever… but first, those pesky unresolved issues. Woong might have come clean about his — opening up to Yeon-su about his adoption and abandonment fears — but Yeon-su has yet to reciprocate.

It’s quite telling that their last breakup was built around, and crystallized thoughts around, both of their vulnerable points. For Woong, being abandoned, and for Yeon-su, not knowing how to love herself. While it feels like Woong has made so much progress in maturing, poor Yeon-su still has some growing to do.

It’s a bit on the heavy side, for sure, but it’s tempered with cute dating and other hijinks. Yeon-su asks her coworker how to date, and she gets some (actually decent) insight, but just can’t execute on it properly at all. The outcome is hilarious, Woong is confused, and he winds up confessing such great healing words to her — that he loves her for who she is. That’s exactly the sort of thing Yeon-su needs to believe about herself, so spot on, Woong.

Woong also knows their painful breakup is something they need to address, and he openly asks Yeon-su why they broke up. She runs away to avoid facing it (quite literally), but it’s touching, too, because in flashback we see the miscommunication that happened. That she did try to explain herself to him, but Woong was so completely drunk and fumbling with the phone that he missed it.

While Woong and Yeon-su don’t make much headway with their issues yet, they’re well on the way (with Woong well-informed thanks to granny, and in Wait Mode), and our attention turns to our supporting characters for much of the episodes this week. And that’s not a complaint, because I do love them — especially this amazing budding romance between Eun-ho and Sol-yi. Bring it onnnn. Their relationship has got such a fun balance of comic relief — and actual romance — that it’s super fun to watch unfold.

Eun-ho finds himself spending more time at Sol-yi’s restaurant, and their lives seem to overlap more and more. Whether he’s saving her forgotten clams, having a spit take over her blind date outfit, or wrangling with her ex in a pitch perfect and hilarious cameo by Kang Ki-doong — something is a’brewing.

Our other side characters are a little more serious, and shed light on the themes we’ve been exploring with Woong and Yeon-su. Ji-woong, like Yeon-su, needs to confront his issues instead of ignoring them. Just as Yeon-su’s voiceover tells us: The more you ignore the past the more you’re trapped in it.

Funny enough, although Ji-woong can barely help himself, he can help others, and he gives the dejected NJ some beautiful advice. This girl is at a serious crossroads in her life — much more than just being disappointed over a crush — and I really like the depth the drama is giving to her story. You can feel her isolation and her loneliness in the life that she’s living. Ji-woong’s advice that the quality of her life is about her mindset and attitude is, again, great.

I love Ji-woong so much, but I grow tired of seeing him suffer. The plot line with his mother is a weird mix of necessary, heartbreaking, and annoyingly predictable… but beyond that part of Ji-woong’s story, it’s that dang dinner with Yeon-su that killed me. Absolutely killed me.

Yeon-su visits Ji-woong where he’s “living” in the editing room. She’s so amazingly clueless that he’s in love with her — it fits her perspective of herself, but it also works to cause Ji-woong even more pain, I think. She’s friendly and thoughtful and the two share a meal — chatting until Yeon-su innocently asks, “Why won’t you look up at me?” Knife through the heart. You can literally feel his struggle to keep feigning nonchalance, and that battle to let go of this woman that will never even be aware of his feelings for her. I want to go cry in the corner.

At long last, the documentary is released, and is a huge success. Woong has a throng of new fangirls, while Ji-woong continues along with an insouciance that’s hard to know if it’s real or just another barrier he’s built himself. With these happy times comes shared lunches and teams dinners, and that means PPL and extraneous dialogue (but we’ll forgive them).

Finally, as our episode ends, we hit the clincher for both storylines — why we’ve been lingering on Woong’s pile of mail, and why Yeon-su’s dear grandma has been trying to make sure her granddaughter is taken care of. I’m all for stories coming full circle — and yes, this is dramaland and grandmas must pass and overseas trips must present themselves — but I don’t know if my heart is ready for all of this.

Yeon-su is going to have to deal with a lot. I’m sure it will lead her to a good place, but I can feel the pain from here. I’d love to go out of this drama on a lighter note, so hopefully the trauma and grief will be brief, and we’ll tie things up with the beautiful, bittersweet, and healing tone we’ve come to expect from this drama.