"Secret Romance" Episode 5 recap

Increasingly "My Secret Romance" is getting into a holding pattern, where Jin-wook just acts generally inexplicably grumpy and is unsatisfied that his bad mood results in bad experiences. It's definite regression from the cool version of his character that we saw immediately post timeskip. Jin-wook does seem kind of cool, though, when he's rebuffing Hye-ri in about the most explicit possible terms and Hye-ri proves herself completely incapable of understanding his iciness.
Hye-ri is useful in that she's about the only possible rationalization, from Yoo-mi's perspective, to see Jin-wook's behavior as being about the surface value alone. What Yoo-mi is failing to process is that Jin-wook, by paying so much close attention to her in the first place, is expressing implied romantic interest because his time is valuable. Yoo-mi does not realize that the time Jin-wook spends with Hye-ri is compulsory, and he strongly rejects any implications otherwise.
Mind, Yoo-mi does have good reason to be skeptical of the idea of a man showing interest in her. Better exposition of Yoo-mi's backstory and the relationship she has with her mother shows that Hyeong-tae ties into all of this largely as Yoo-mi's protector. He feels sorry for her. And there are definitely aspects to Yoo-mi's personality that are pathetic. But it's little wonder that their relationship is so strongly platonic as a result. Respect is difficult to maintain in a relationship like that.
That's the main argument I can see for wanting Jin-wook and Yoo-mi to get together. Even if Jin-wook's behavior toward Yoo-mi at work is borderline abusive, he consistently shows steadfast faith in Yoo-mi's ability to follow through on his peculiar culinary demands. Jin-wook sincerely seems to believe that Yoo-mi is perfect, and his obsession over her paddings stems from the concern that the paddings prove Yoo-mi is obviously not perfect, since a perfect woman would not need paddings.
Of course perfection is non-existent, and for "My Secret Romance" to really work as a love story Jin-wook has to come to see Yoo-mi as beautiful in spite of her flaws, not because of them. All the same, the aforementioned holding pattern is making "My Secret Romance" move incredibly slowly, especially when we consider the relatively short run time of the overall drama. At present the drama's main strength remains in its just appearing generically cute, and lacking anything in the way of genuinely frustrating character stupidity.
Review by William Schwartz
"My Secret Romance" is directed by Kang Cheol-woo, written by Kim Ha-na-I and Kim Yeong-woon and features Sung Hoon, Song Ji-eun, Kim Jae-young and Jeong Da-sol.

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