[Drama Recap] "Because It's the First Time" Episode 7

In the this episode's first segment (eighteen by the drama's internal counting mechanism) Tae-oh makes a concerted effort to push his romantic advantage with Se-hyeon. What makes Tae-oh's efforts so adorable and endearing is that he still lacks confidence. This is mainly because Tae-oh never sees the way that Se-hyeon smiles when he makes overtures. The expression on Se-hyeon's face as she meets Tae-oh's friends for the first time is priceless. It's obvious that for all her being a coy mistress, Se-hyeon really does enjoy spending time with Tae-oh.
This light tonality is turned inside out come episode nineteen. While we'd seen evidence in episode eighteen, episode nineteen fully confronts Tae-oh with the fact that he deliberately lied to Se-hyeon. Or at best, neglected to tell her some pretty essential information. The fact that Tae-oh had a good reason for behaving in such a way is besides the point. Pay attention to Se-hyeon as she goes down the stairwell. The lie isn't what bothers her so much as his behavior afterwards.
A major story point in "Because It's the First Time" has been how all the characters are young, dumb college students. A lot of the time life is fun, but equally often, it's painful. Se-hyeon is an attractive enough young woman that she can afford to be choosy about potential romantic partners. Tae-oh had to go to a lot of effort to bring her guard down. And what Se-hyeon is left with at the end of this episode is that her initial impression of Tae-oh was, in fact, more or less the correct one.
The situation is awful for Se-hyeon because she had been trying to avoid a situation like this, and ended up failing. She feels like an idiot, and the fact that Tae-oh wasn't trying to be hurtful doesn't help matters. Se-hyeon is left with the unalterable impression that Tae-oh can't, or more accurately won't change his personality flaws even as he is aware of them. Tae-oh may not think that Song-yi is his girlfriend, but he continues to treat her as such even when Seong-yi herself directly tells him to knock it off.
It all makes for pretty harrowing stuff- or maybe I just think that because I've had similar relationship experiences. In any case, I can definitely confirm is that this episode "Because It's the First Time" is very true-to-life when it comes to, well, first times, and how they can so quickly go from magical to heartbreaking. Right now I'm just hoping the modeling storyline works out.
Review by William Schwartz
"Because It's the First Time" is directed by Lee Jeong-hyo, written by Jeong Hyeon-jeong and features Minho, Park So-dam, Kim Min-jae-I, Jo Hye-jeong, Lee I-kyeong, Eugene Jung, Yoona and more.

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