"Oh Hae-Young Again" Episode 7 recap

Jin-sang (played by Kim Ji-seok-I) is Do-kyeong's best friend, and symbolic of the greatest flaw in the love story between Do-kyeong and Hae-young. The foundation of their romance is a misunderstanding by Jin-sang that provoked an unnecessary and vindictive move on Do-kyeong's part, which neither Jin-sang nor Do-kyeong have been able to satisfactorily resolve. It's been easy to minimize that incident up until now. But with what we now know about Do-kyeong's mother Ji-ya (played by Nam Gi-ae), long-term psychological issues are becoming harder to ignore.
Now doesn't that feel out of place. The entire first portion of this episode is just about beautiful love- not even romantic love. Hae-young has to ask a favor of her parents and rather than question the context at all the whole family gets right to work. Deok-hee reminds me more and more of her daughter in that a prickly personality mostly just serves to hide a genuine passion and optimism that's well balanced by her husband Gyeong-soo (played by Lee Han-wi), a man whose passivity in everything except a crisis situation also reminds me of Do-kyeong.
But there are still dark sides to this. Note how when Do-kyeong does something really nice for his sound effects team, he doesn't even smile or act happy. At first this seems cute and very much in character. Yet Do-kyeong being so prideful he won't act nice- that's a problem. Do-kyeong can't even appreciate when his vision explicitly tells him that his relationship with Hae-young is in serious danger.
While Hae-young also has pride, it does help that her pride deals in more easily understood aggravations. By this point it's all too clear that the other Hae-young is more a state of mind than she is a real person. The poor woman only has a few scenes in this episode, and in one of them she somewhat incredibly says something that can only possibly be interpreted as a compliment to Hae-young proper.
It really is impressive how well every little facet of "Oh Hae-Young Again" is so well interconnected. Every single crippling insecurity appears to be based on largely inaccurate impressions created by or about other people. Which brings me back to Jin-sang. It's nice that he's trying to be a good friend, since Do-kyeong's reticence will only do more damage the longer he refuses to talk. But his plan still ends up being pretty dumb, and only an improvement over Ji-ya's attitude in that Jin-sang (as well as most of the other characters) are not actively being malicious.
Review by William Schwartz
"Oh Hae-Young Again" is directed by Song Hyeon-wook, written by Park Hae-yeong and features Eric Moon, Seo Hyeon-jin, Jeon Hye-bin, Ye Ji-won, Kim Ji-seok-I, and Heo Jeong-min

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