by: Raine

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We get some heavy flirting from Joon-suk…schmexy. We get some new characters…I’m sure just to mess with our leads. They tried to make Evil human, but failed. And…I’m definitely super shippin’ Duk-gil and Mi-hee.

“Without You” – Just (from the How to Be a Perfect Neighbor OST)

episode 8 recap

Yoon-hee reaches out Joon-suk who stills in anticipation. Then, she slaps his face in order to catch a pesky mosquito. “I’ve caught it!”

He stares in shock, at a complete loss, and then bursts into laughter at how completely random the action was and how proud she is of herself.

They walk the grounds and he suggests that she rest in the hotel, but she has to go home because she has a matchmaking session. He immediately darkens and muses that such sessions are unrealistic.

Yoon-hee shrugs. She doesn’t want to die single and she doesn’t have much choice as she lacks the qualities to date. With a smile he replies, “Other than being a little eccentric, you’re not bad.” She’s unsure whether it is a compliment or an insult.

In either case, she has to go or her mom will beat her. He’s surprised that she still gets beaten because she doesn’t seem the type to willingly be beaten. Her mother can’t go a day without beating her and she is no longer a rebellious child.

Has he rebelled? Nope. He’s never been beaten, probably because his parents couldn’t be bothered to show concern. The matter-of-fact way in which he says it gives her pause and she watches him walk away, seeing him in a new light.

Joon-suk opens the car door for her and tells her to sleep, snore and grind her teeth well. She denies grinding her teeth but he, with a huge grin, expects to recall horror films while hearing the sound.

He watches her sleep as he drives her home.

The next day, Duk-gil has forced a grumbling Soo-chan to help him clean the comforters. Sun Woo and Yoon-hee come home, causing a ruckus because Yoon-hee ruined yet another matchmaking session much to Duk-gil’s pleasure.

“I even thought of pedaling such stuff!” Sun Woo screeches; Yoon-hee behaves just as she does at home.

Soo-chan smirks and wonders why Yoon-hee can’t seem to do well. She poured water on her date, Sun Woo replies. Yoon-hee had been faking, but apparently not well enough.

But optimistic Yoon-hee says that since she can’t seem to marry, she can be with her mother for a thousand years. Sun Woo will never be bored.

Sun Woo picks up a broom. “Why don’t you just kill your own mother!”

At work, Joon-suk “casually” asks about her matched date. She almost ended up half-dead thanks to her mother. He perks up and asks, “You didn’t go?” She went – to keep up appearances.

He sends her away and smiles. *squee*

After work, Byun Hee-sup and Yoon-hee travel home by bus. Hee-sup seems especially tired. He spent all night preparing papers to hire new employees.

Wait! We’re hiring? Yoon-hee asks, suddenly excited. She runs off, leaving a confused and sleepy Hee-sup behind.

Panting, she finds Soo-chan working at the nursery and he doesn’t seem to understand why she’s excited. They search for the requirements of the positions and discover he will get housing if he performs well for three years.

He is immediately interested. However, he’s a bit worried because although he was a professor, he’s never taken entrance examinations before. He. He. He.

Detective Kang is waiting for Mi-hee at her travel agency while pretending not to be waiting for her. When she arrives, he feigns surprise and she looks disturbed to see him until he mentions booking a trip.

And we finally get a cheeky female secretary in a show! Mi-hee’s secretary mentions that he waited a long time for the president whom he requested, which he denies. But it was THREE hours. Oh really? Time flies…

Mi-hee gets to business, uninterested and oblivious as to the detective’s true intentions. He mentions booking a group trip and she lights up again until she hears it’s a trip for the entire Nam San Police Department. Civil organizations never go on group trips. The smitten detective that they get together to discuss it more to work out all the details.

On the way home, Go Hye-mi AKA Evil has a pain in her stomach and when she stops the car, Soo-chan notices that she is in pain and takes her to the hospital. Turns out the miscarriage of her dead boyfriend’s baby is causing her pain. Her uterus could be completely ruined unless she gets treatment. But she won’t get it and disappoint her parents.

And now we have the soul-bearing of the evil second lead. She was abandoned by the person she loved and Soo-chan commiserates, knowing the feeling well. Also, because her sister had an unsuccessful marriage, Evil swore not to disappoint her father like her sister had. Even if she can’t have children, she WILL get married.

She is glad she can show this “ugly” side of her to Soo-chan.

Wait…if that’s her ugly side, what’s the Evil side? Hideously, monstrously ugly with warts and boils and sores? Oh yeah, the cold-blooded murderer.

Joon-suk calls for Yoon-hee who has just returned from collection examinations for the new recruits. Wait, does she want to take the examination? Is she not happy with acquiring her job through connections? She avoids his questions by asking what he wanted.

Time for lunch! Heehee.

During lunch, she continues to question him about the application process, much to his annoyance. He doesn’t have any experience with the hiring process. “That’s right! We both came in as parachutes.” (Parachutes are people who get their jobs through connections.) He smiles sardonically.

Yoon-hee has taken it upon herself to make sure her new friend Soo-chan gets a job. She brings him extra strong coffee and finds him fast asleep on his desk, exhausted from studying. But true to form, he picks on her, asking her why she behaves and speaks like she’s in a historical drama. Because her speech always changes towards elders. *snerk*

She also decides that they should do the National workout to wake Soo-chan up and give him energy to study. They all adorkably workout.

Yoon-hee is glued to Soo-chan’s side as she helps him study and he teases her more than he studies. At the office, she paces during the exams and he gives her vague answers about his performance. Then, in her neighborhood, she weasels the test results from Hee-sup, much to his chagrin.

Man, if she applied this kind of energy to her own life, perhaps she’d have money…

Anywho, she bursts into the storage room and declares that Soo-chan passed the exam. He still has to interview and he placed last, but he’s still in. Hooray! Cue happy jumpy dance from Yoon-hee and Duk-gil. Soo-chan smiles to himself. Something is finally going right for him.

Byun Hee-sup sits down with his wife and children to eat and his wife spreads the gossip that the whole neighborhood knows that Soo-chan passed the exam. I’m sure at this point he wants to strangle Yoon-hee.

Soo-chan sits in a row with the other applicants as they wait to be interviewed. Yoon-hee pokes her head out of the door and mouths “hwaiting”. Then, he heads in with two other hopefuls and they bow before a three person panel, two of whom are Joon-suk and Director Go, Evil’s evil father. Joon-suk remembers meeting him the night that he took Yoon-hee home and they got lost for three hours.

When asked why he wants to work for J Company, Soo-chan replies honestly: he wants a home. But in times of despair, he words even harder.

Over lunch, Soo-chan asks how someone so young can be as stern as Joon-suk. Also, why did Joon-suk kept asking, “Kurundeyo/so what?” She replies that it is his habit, but that he has also been cutting back on it lately.

Soo-chan admits that he was uncomfortable because he doesn’t really deal with men well and Joon-suk probably felt competitive with him over Hye-mi.

Ha. Yeah, right.

Yoon-hee snarks that Soo-chan isn’t competition for the wealthy, employed, housed Joon-suk.

After lunch, Yoon-hee finds Joon-suk’s untouched lunch and asks if he didn’t eat because she wasn’t around. She’s thinking too much he returns. But he said lunch wouldn’t be interesting if she wasn’t there to nag him. He just wasn’t hungry he says so she turns to leave.

And then we hear it, he was jealous and missing her over lunch: Is Baek Soo-chan the friend you were concerned about? Yoon-hee confirms it and says that they live under the same roof. By the way, if she were to ask if Soo-chan made it, Joon-suk wouldn’t tell her right? She thinks she had the wrong idea about them being close. When she leaves, Joon-suk smiles, extremely pleased.

There is a couple moving into Dae-shik’s house. The wife explains that her husband works in the planning department and Bo-kyung, Hee-sup’s wife, and Ha-ni, Young-jae’s wife, say that their husbands are there, too. The husband is moving everything himself, because he’s a perfectionist and he’s been very demanding of the movers. The wife resembles a ripe tomato.

When she brings drinks to the workers, her husband, the Jerk, hurries to hand them out instead. She decides to head to the market to get away and he informs her that her top button is undone.

Before she can get very far, Soo-chan appears and calls her name in surprise. “Jung-suk ah!” Jung-suk freaks and drags him out of sight. What is he doing there she demands unhappily? He lives there.

Ruh-roh.

They haven’t seen each other since college and he’s confused as to why she’s so hostile. He attributes it to her principle that women should be fierce to have charm. But he’s still confused. They were forever lovers. She is adamant that they pretend they don’t know each other. She’s married to a perfectionist.

He explains that the neighbors don’t act that way. They even know how many chopsticks are in each home. She agrees to a formal greeting but nothing else. Then she walks away, glancing over her shoulder nervously while he stares after her in utter confusion.

Jerky husband is yelling at the movers when Soo-chan comes to greet him, but Jerk is unfriendly.

Evil and her Evil father, Director Go, discuss Joon-suk. Evil dad heard that Joon-suk has been visiting the hospital lately but she didn’t know that – she thought that Joon-suk disliked his father. Apparently not and Evil dad says it’s not a difficult thing to win Joon-suk’s heart if she uses her brain. She apologizes for failing to win it.

Have you noticed in these dramas how people think you can auction off affections? It’s weird.

Evil dad invites Joon-suk to dinner. I don’t see that going very well.

At the construction site, Duk-gil has an accident and is sent home, limping. Mi-hee drives by and offers him a ride. When she hears that the company didn’t pay medical fees and neither did he go to the hospital (nothing to treat he says while limping and cut up), she pulls a wicked U-y and drives back to the construction site.

She gives them a piece of her mind and gets him some compensation. He looks at her, seeing her a bit different.

Okay, who’s shipping this possible romance? He’s a total ahjumma and she most definitely wears the pants. It’s poifect.

Mi-hee wants him to go to a Chinese doctor and take Chinese herbs, but he wants to spend the money on a book bag. He’s adamant about it. When she offers to pay for the book bag, he refuses, unwilling to owe her anything else.

They go to purchase the bag and when asked if he’s in pain, he says, “I have money to buy my kid a bag. I don’t know what pain is.” She notes that he sounds like a masochist. They laugh together. TOGETHER. I’m shippin’ here. Shippin’.

Here are more reasons: Mi-hee asks her mom to give Duk-gil some red ginseng because he spent his compensation on his son. Mi-hee pities Duk-gil for raising his son alone.

Evil visits the president and Joon-suk is unhappy to see her there, but he waits for her to finish. She smirks, thinking that because he’s waiting for her, she’s won some sort of prize.

Here’s a cookie.

This time when Yoon-hee bugs Hee-sup for the results of the interview, he wisely refuses.

Jerk shows up to work and is introduced as Wee Dae-han. (I know this is super immature, but in English, that name sounds retarded…’cause that man is not ‘wee’.) He attained first place in performance assessment four years in a row at his other branch.

Dae-han the Jerk sits down and starts acting jerky: he calls his wife and asks too many questions and gives her a time limit to go shopping. She looks ready for MadDino’s Asylum.

Evil’s mom, Young-ja, is busy preparing dinner for Joon-suk, replete with new painting, curtains and two company wives sucking up helping.

Jung-suk, the angry and stifled, brings Sun Woo rice cakes. The other ladies are over at Young-ja’s trying to get their husbands promotions. Actually, they’re not because they show up, hungry because Young-ja didn’t feed them. Fancy that, Jung-suk brought rice cakes.

Before anyone can enjoy them, WEE Dae-han calls and freaks out that she’s hanging out with a bunch of women and wants to talk to them.

Joon-suk drives Evil home from the hospital and they pass a surprised Yoon-hee. Evil glares and her mom comes down with a syrupy sweet smiling and greeting.

Young-ja tries to host well, but her husband keeps glaring at her. What is up with all the douchebag husbands?

Anyway, Joon-suk hightails it out of the stifling atmosphere as soon as he can and is greeted at the gate by the lurking wives. Sun Woo is there, too, come to ask him to forgive her unworthy daughter. The lurking wives offer after dinner refreshments at their homes but Joon-suk asks Sun Woo to host him.

RAWR! JUMP YOON-HEE!

*Ahem*

In the Jung household, Yoon-hee and Ye-seul are fighting over Octopus legs. Sun Woo and Joon-suk come in and he is immediately all smiles. Yoon-hee, however, is shocked to see him and let’s go of the Octopus leg, falling down. Mi-hee scrambles to her feet, but she has a cucumber on her face. Her mother points it out and she shoves it in her mouth. BWAHAHAHA!

Embarrassed by her short, short, short house shorts, Yoon-hee runs off to change.  (I’m SURE he didn’t mind, but whatever.) She emerges wearing a plaid granny skirt and he can’t help but smile.

As she and her mother prepare refreshments, Ye-seul explains that they don’t argue everyday and that her imo (aunt on her mother’s side) is not such a stingy person.

Oh, this kid.

Yoon-hee frets because Joon-suk doesn’t drink instant coffee, which is all they have. He calls out that anything is fine. Yes, yes it is. Sun Woo also makes steamed potatoes…yummy.

At the Byun household, Hee-sup is clipping his toenails and Bo-kyung is nagging. Her daughter comes in and she nags. Her son comes down and she nags. Seriously woman, how have you not been buried alive yet?

Anyway, she moans and groans about Sun Woo “luring” Joon-suk to her house. At Young-jae’s place, Ha-ni bemoans the same.

Sun Woo offers Joon-suk a potato and Yoon-hee says to stop feeding him so much, but he’s quite enjoying it. It’s his first time eating sweet potatoes – the women sit in stunned silence. Yoon-hee remarks that he’s picky and he shoots her a pointed look. Completely bowled over, Sun Woo asks if he’s had steamed potatoes or corn, but her daughters stop her. She rises to make corn but Yoon-hee grabs her skirt, almost yanking it down.

She gets smacked; she’s the kind to deserves a beating.

Grinning from ear to ear, Joon-suk replies that he heard.

Embarrassed, Sun Woo beats Yoon-hee more for speaking badly about her at work. Joon-suk is all kinds of amused.

Ye-seul calmly explains that Yoon-hee doesn’t get beaten up everyday – just once every two days.

Soo-chan interrupts them, to Yoon-hee’s relief, by bringing in flowers left over from work. Joon-suk is not happy to see him. Once Soo-chan leaves, Sun Woo and Mi-hee tell part of his sad story and tout how wonderful he is.

Joon-suk sighs and I have a feeling he’ll consider it because he already has an attachment to such lively, happy people.

Yoon-hee walks Joon-suk to his car.
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‬Yoon-hee: I’m sorry about my mom dragging you to my house.

Joon-suk: I was the one who wanted to go there.

Yoon-hee: I know what happened even if I didn’t see it.

Joon-suk: It’s true. I told her to invite me in for a cup of tea.

Yoon-hee: Forget it. You might have indigestion after eating food that you seldom eat. Remember to take some digestive aid before sleeping.

Joon-suk: I really enjoyed the sweet potatoes.

Yoon-hee: I already said its okay. That’s right. I understand that you’re being nice, Team Manager. Will that do?

Joon-suk: Why don’t you believe me? I really had a great time. Your family is really fun to be with and the sweet potatoes are really delicious.

Yoon-hee: Then, thank you.

Joon-suk: Who should be saying that?

He smiles at her reflection in the side view mirror as he drives away.

(He’s such a handsome brooder…but I bet it would be even better in, you guessed it, the shower.)

When he returns home, his mother wants to set an engagement date. He tries to tell he’s not ready for marriage or to take over the company, but she doesn’t care. She’ll settle everything.

He heads off to brood in his room and compare the time he spent with both the tense, awkward family of Evils and the lively, fun family of Jungs.

There is more trouble in Jung-suk’s life and she’s been crying. Soo-chan walks by as she fetches the paper and questions her red eyes. She begs him to pretend they don’t know each other and heads inside. But it’s too late, her jerky husband asks who the man was and she says just a neighbor who she greeted. Jerk questions her phone bills and she asks him to let her live freely. If he didn’t love her, he responds, he wouldn’t do such things.

Abuse. Abuse. Abuse. Jerk. Jerk. Jerk.

In the morning, Mi-hee is shocked to see that Yoon-hee woke up on her own. Sun Woo comes in with news that Duk-gil is ill – he is completely depressed.

Adorable Go-ni wants to stay home to take care of his father. Duk-gil wants him to work hard to be a doctor instead of skipping school to nurse him. The child is unsure because his grades are weak. But, Duk-gil tells him to be ambitious. When the boy leaves, Duk-gil sighs that his biological father was the same: near the back in school. He worked hard and got into university.

Mi-hee comes in to scold Duk-gil for not listening to her about going to the doctor. She also wants a resume from him but he’s never written one. Just try to write it! “Am I going to use it to make soup? Just do it.”

I see Duk-gil and Mi-hee babies running around…

Yoon-hee serves Joon-suk lunch and there are steamed potatoes.
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‬Joon-suk: What is this?

Yoon-hee: Potatoes. Don’t you know?

Joon-suk: How would I not know that these are potatoes?

Yoon-hee: I’m being a busybody. It’s all thanks to my mom.

Joon-suk: How does being a busybody and potatoes relate to each other?

Hahaha, he’s such a literalist.

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‬Yoon-hee: My mom feels that you’re pitiful because you’ve never eaten steamed potatoes. She placed them in my bag early in the morning.

Joon-suk: (Smiles at her babbling.)

Yoon-hee: What will you do if there isn’t an angel like your secretary around?

Joon-suk: (Gazing up gently at her.) Exactly…what will I do?

A.W.K.W.A.R.D. And CUUUUUUTE!

He becomes extremely embarrassed and shoves a potato in his mouth. She seems shocked into a realization or attraction.

‬Yoon-hee: The steamed potatoes are delicious right?

He smiles quickly and glances away.

She goes to wash the dishes and her cheeks are flushed.
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‬Yoon-hee: Why does my heart feel as if something dropped on it?

 Comments:

Omigosh! CUTENESS! Yay for heart palpitations. If he smiled at me like that, I might have a heart attack…

The introduction of Soo-chan’s ex is kinda lame. But I’ll go with it and see what is going to happen. I bet you her crazy husband is going to find out she dated Soo-chan. Poor Soo-chan, he never gets a break.

I’m so happy that Mi-hee is fussing over Duk-gil and that he’s totally oblivious as of now. He’s so nice that it gets to her after all the crap she’s been through.

Yoon-hee was so adorably oblivious to Joon-suk and his magnetism finally hit her. I can only imagine how she must’ve felt. But the way this marriage with Evil is being pushed, it can only spell disaster. Especially as he can’t seem to break away from his mother’s expectations.

For the recaps of episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 check out my recaps.

Character introductions.

How to Be a Perfect Neighbor Episode 8 Screencaps.