[KD] Scent of a Woman: Episode 2

Yeon-jae throws her resignation in her boss’s face, in what has got
to be the most satisfying job-quitting I’ve seen in a long time. As the
words “I quit, you son of a bitch!” come out of her mouth, the entire
office gasps in awe.

Her boss tells her that he’ll blackball her in the industry forever.
She laughs bitterly, “Forever? Forever for me isn’t much longer!” And
with that she turns to gather up her things.

I love that she’s so palpably fired up from her anger and fear and
excitement – it’s the way you feel when the adrenaline is still rushing
through your body but you have no outlet for it.

She starts to walk out and then turns back to grab the awful girl
Nari’s purse, declaring that she’ll repay her loan with interest… after
which she can retrieve her purse. HA. I love her newfound spunk mixed in
with the sheer awkwardness of her.



She makes her exit, and who should be out in the hall but Sae-kyung,
just after their second humiliating encounter. She turns to go with a
haughty smile and Yeon-jae looks like she might revert to her old ways…

But she musters up the courage to stop her. Aw, yeah! She explains
that she didn’t steal Wilson’s ring, but Sae-kyung refuses to give her
the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact that there’s no evidence on
either side.

Yeon-jae gathers up her nerves to say that if she continues to accuse
her like this, she’ll sue her for defamation (the term in Korean is
“dishonor”). Sae-kyung scoffs: “Do people like you even have honor to
reclaim?”

SMACK.



Yeon-jae slaps her right across the face. “How is it? Getting slapped
puts you in a so-so mood, doesn’t it? I was in a so-so mood too, after
being slapped. What? Is there some kind of law that rich heiresses are
the only ones who can slap people? Were you born with the right to treat
people any way you want?”

She says that she was raised as a precious daughter in her household
too, and people shouldn’t look down on others because they happened to
be born to rich parents. Sae-kyung takes a swipe at her but she ducks,
claiming to be quite athletic. Heh.

God, I love that she’s finally telling her off. I feel so redeemed
right now for watching her be the quiet suffering heroine for the entire
first episode. She walks off, head held high, leaving Sae-kyung fuming.



Sae-kyung goes straight to her future father-in-law to demand that
Yeon-jae be fired on the spot. The chairman starts to say that he
believe Yeon-jae wouldn’t steal, but Sae-kyung yells that she dared to
slap her.

Ji-wook gets word and seems amused at the matter, asking to see
Yeon-jae right away. But Sang-woo tells him that she already quit on her
own and walked out.

She wanders the streets in a daze and then ends up at the bank to
clean out her savings account. The clerk marvels at her savings – she
has upwards of $30,000 in just one of three accounts, and she asks how
she managed to save so well.



Yeon-jae answers dully, “If you don’t use it, don’t eat, don’t buy,
you can…” The regret comes over her in a wave, realizing that she’s
saved her pennies all her life, and for what?

Talking mostly to herself, she starts to name all the things she had
scrimped on: cheap t-shirts on the street, making a pair of shoes last
forever, never going abroad or buying one designer bag.

She starts to cry. “I was going to get married, and buy a car, and in
five years, maybe a house with a yard… That’s why I saved, and saved,
and saved… It’s so unfair. So unfair. So unfair.” The tears come rolling
down, in the most awkward of places, in the middle of the bank. It’s
heartbreakingly real.



Her friend and co-worker Hye-won calls in a panic to ask what’s going
on, and she just says she wants to drink. But not at their usual place.
So that night they meet at a swanky bar, gasping at the prices on the
menu.

Hye-won asks if she’s really okay, wondering what on earth is making
her penny-pincher friend suddenly want to treat her out to someplace
like this. Yeon-jae gets scared at first, letting Hye-won order two
beers, but then grits her teeth and changes the order to a bottle of
scotch and the finest fruit plate.



They happily learn the taste of expensive scotch and proceed to get
totally hammered. Hye-won notices Ji-wook walk into the bar and swoons,
saying that it’s her fantasy to date a man like that once before she
dies.

She says it like you would any pipedream, but Yeon-jae stands up and
puts her glass down with zeal. “Tonight, I’m going to seduce that man.”
Hahaha. She takes off her glasses, deciding that she’s going to be with a
man like that before she dies.

She makes her wobbly, squinty approach, as Ji-wook turns, realizing
that she’s coming straight for him. At the same time, Sae-kyung makes
her way up to the bar to meet him. He looks over at her curiously, and
Yeon-jae continues to walk toward him…



…running straight into a waiter with a flaming cocktail. It ends up
all over her, and she stings from the embarrassment more than the pain.
Ji-wook gives a chuckle as she runs off, mortified. To add insult to
injury, Sae-kyung sees her pass by with a snicker.

Hye-won helps her clean up in the bathroom, and asks how she was
planning to seduce Ji-wook anyway. Besides, she points out, even if she
HAD seduced him, what was she going to do wearing a tattered old bra?

She thinks the embarrassment was worth it since they got their whole
check comped and a free room on top of it all, but Yeon-jae just sighs
that nothing’s going her way. She almost tells Hye-won the truth, but
decides against it in the end.



Sae-kyung remains in a snippy mood (though I’d counter she’s never
NOT in a snippy mood) and Ji-wook fans the flames by saying that the
employee must’ve had a reason to slap her. But he hands over a present
to lift her spirits—a designer wallet with tickets to a show. She hates
both like the brat that she is, so he tells her to throw them away to
one of her employees then.

Yeon-jae saves Ji-wook’s number in her phone that night, and then
wakes up the next morning with a sigh. She opens up her computer and
starts to research cancer. Mom comes in unannounced, so she slams her
laptop shut in a panic, and Mom just smiles, “Were you looking at porn?”
Hahaha.

She lies that she’s got some time off from work, so Mom tells her to
stop by while she watches a friend’s store. She hugs Mom on her way out,
and just gets snapped at for smooshing her hair. Heh.



Nari calls to finally repay her debt and get her precious purse back,
and Yeon-jae makes her add the measly interest, just to make a point.
Nari asks why she quit, when she’s SO OLD, and Yeon-jae
counters, “If I’m so old, then why do you speak to me in banmal? Do you
think you’ll never age? You’ll turn thirty someday too.” She gasps,
horrified.

She hilariously tells Nari to become just like her and meet a
co-worker just like herself, as if she’s putting a hex on her. Yup,
karma’s kinda awesome that way.



Ji-wook meanwhile gives a presentation for a “Free Independent” line
of tours, and the board is startled to find that he’s actually doing
good work. He’s not though—he’s just parroting what Sang-woo has
prepared for him, and only because he feels obligated to.

They suggest that he goes to Japan to test out the proposed travel
places himself, and Dad tries to get him to show a little effort at
anything in life. But Ji-wook remains aloof, telling his father that
just because something is the most expensive doesn’t mean he has to like
it. He certainly seems to resent what money means, though he doesn’t
care enough to NOT take advantage of its luxuries.

Yeon-jae goes to meet Mom as promised, only Mom drags her to a
matchmaking service, despite her pleas. God, this is painful to watch.
Basically she railroads her and does what moms do, exaggerating
Yeon-jae’s position at work and her assets to try and cover up for her
lack of college education or her age.



She plays along at first despite cringing at the awfulness of it all,
but finally when Mom insists that she can give the company’s newlyweds a
discount for their honeymoons, she tells her that she can’t. Mom
doesn’t listen and she can’t take it anymore, blurting out: “I can’t do
that! I can’t do that because I quit my job!”

She runs out and Mom freaks out that she quit her job when she has
nothing else to stand on. All she can think about of course is that no
one will marry her if she has no job, which is the exact wrong thing to
say to the girl who desperately wishes she could even live long enough
to get married.

Yeon-jae screams that she won’t get married then, and asks if she was
so ashamed of her daughter to lie to that woman. She says sadly that
she worked really hard to live a good life, and of all people, Mom
doesn’t have the right to be ashamed of her. She outright blames her for
the fact that she ended up like this, sending Mom away in tears.



Sae-kyung arrives to meet her father, shocked to find her
ex-boyfriend leaving Dad’s office flustered. She stops and immediately
her demeanor softens, and she asks tenderly if he’s doing well. He
simply tells her that they can’t be caught together and leaves.

She storms into Daddy’s office up in arms about him continuing to
mess with her beloved when she stuck to her word to break up with him,
come to work at the company, and even marry someone he chose.

She threatens that if he doesn’t stick to his side of the bargain,
she’ll just go back to him and they’ll run away together. So Dad has no
recourse but to play her a recording of his conversation with her ex,
not five minutes ago.



In it, he clearly blackmails her father, asking for money to keep the
“pretty pictures” from surfacing. Oh, gross. Scumbag. She’s stunned,
not understanding the extent of it at first, but Dad quickly
disillusions her about her so-called love – he’s squeezed upwards of 20
million won from him thus far, going back as far as their first 100 days
together.

Dad determined it’d be nicer if she thought it was love, so he never
intended for her to know. He adds that “those people” only see her as
money and nothing else. Oy, so now we know where Princess gets her
attitude from.

It’s nice to see that she does actually have a soft side that’s
vulnerable to heartbreak, not that it changes my desire to smash a pie
in her face.



She calls the guy to tell him off, and then drowns her sorrows in
liquor. That much is fine. I’m with here there. But then she calls
Ji-wook over and then orders him to sing her a song, like he’s a puppet
boy. He refuses, of course, so her temper flares.

She calls someone there who WILL listen to her orders like a trained
dog, and proceeds to treat him like a slave. Ji-wook tries to intervene,
but she tells him that she sees no difference between that guy who’s
here to earn money and Ji-wook, who’s marrying her for money.

He gives the boy a few bills and asks him to be her designated
driver, and leaves. She immediately kicks the other guy out too, but not
before throwing money at him, of course. Wow you are insufferable. At
least now I get why, but it doesn’t change the insufferable part.

The next day, Yeon-jae goes to the hospital, freaked out the sight of
a cancer patient. Eun-seok tells her that they’ll start chemo right
away, and suggests a new trial drug. She refuses to be used for tests
despite his insistence that it’s a good opportunity, so he finally
relents to just the usual course of meds.



She corrects him – she’s not going to get ANY treatment. He tells her
that this isn’t something that she can remain in denial about, or put
off until later. She tells him that she watched her dad go through those
painful procedures for his liver cancer. “I’m scared. The second I get a
shot, I’ll become a real cancer patient. And that scares me.”

Eun-seok doesn’t skirt the issue, which I like about him: “You are a
real cancer patient now.” He tells her brusquely that if she’s not going
to get treatment, to stop wasting his time. Tears fall and her anger
finally spills out. “Choi Eun-seok, if your mother had cancer, would you
have told her like this?” She asks if this the only way he can talk to a
friend from childhood.

She spits out, “Even if I do get treatment, I won’t get it from a
doctor like you! If you talk this way to a friend, then how must you be
to other people? I feel bad for your patients.” She confesses that she’s
already scared to death, but feels like meeting a doctor like him is
REALLY the thing to make her truly pitiable. HA. How much am I going to
love this friendship?

She storms out, leaving him rattled, and heads to her father’s grave in a rage.

Yeon-jae: How could you do this to me?
How could you? Is there really nothing else you could’ve left me? Other
people leave their children homes and inheritances. How could you leave
your daughter cancer, Dad? Other fathers hold their daughters’ hands
while walking them down the aisle. But how could you do this to me? How
could you?!

I want to date, and marry, and have a baby. But now there’s nothing I
can do. There’s nothing I can do! This is all your fault! It’s all your
fault! I’m never coming back here again! I won’t! Just so you know.

She leaves in an angry fit of tears, but then she comes right back,
bottle of soju in hand. Aw. She pours Dad a drink and apologizes for
taking it out on him when she’s just scared and frustrated.

She tells him that she can’t tell Mom even though all she wants to do
is lean on her. Then she leans on Dad’s grave, like she’s resting her
head in his lap. In flashback we see that she spent her youth by her
father’s sickbed, trying to be his strength but watching him grow sicker
and more regretful of the life he’d led.

He wished he had taken her to more places said “I love you” more, and
told her not to live like him. She makes the decision to heed his
advice, and goes home to pack a bag and head to her dream island.



She starts packing and then stops as she looks at all her dreary clothes. She looks at herself in the mirror…

Makeover time! And how much do I love that this is no Cinderella
makeover given to her by some prince or fairy godmother? She just
decides that she’s going to do it up right and finally spend some money
on herself.

She goes on a shopping spree and heads to the airport a new woman,
turning quite a few heads on her way in. The only ticket left to Okinawa
that day is first class, and she says no, but then catches herself.



First class it is! She squeals in delight at the array of food and
champagne, and then even has some good luck at the hotel when they
accidentally double-book her in a room with a naked man. Hee.

So she gets upgraded to a suite overlooking the ocean and she swoons
at the view. She tells the concierge that this might be her last trip,
so she wants to enjoy the best of everything.



She lives it up and enjoys all the perks, and sighs that the only thing missing is a man…

Enter Ji-wook, who gets dragged along on the scouting trip with
Sang-woo, and happens to walk right into her hotel. She ducks behind her
wide-brimmed hat in shock at the sight of him, but follows him thinking
that she’s being stealthy.



He turns around to see a woman in a bright pink bikini following him
and pretending not to, but just laughs and dismisses it as nothing.

She sneaks up to her room without being seen, and then breaks out
into a giant smile. Haha. It’s like she ordered a dreamboat off the menu
and there he is!

She changes and then get back to stalking him, and follows him into
the marina. She hilariously follows him but refuses to actually confront
him, so she ends up running away onto a boat to avoid being seen.



He follows her onto the boat and introduces himself, thinking that
she’s the tour guide who’s supposed to show him around the island. The
guide’s name happens to be Miss Lee too, so she shakes his hand
confirming that she is Miss Lee.

Just then, the boat engine starts. They lurch forward, and he reaches his arms around her to catch her fall.




COMMENTS

Aw, how sweet. It kind of feels like an old-school romance in the
best way. I can’t wait to see more of Yeon-jae’s brighter side as she
continues to un-repress her true nature. The first episode drove me
crazy with her downtrodden pride-swallowing ways, but of course watching
where she starts out is what makes her turn so damn satisfying. A drama
that can make me feel so angry and then vindicated in two episodes is
certainly going to grab my heart in no time.

The everyday realism, finding drama in the mundane moments, is the Dr. Champ
team’s forte, and I think this plot serves that kind of storytelling
even better than their last project. Yeon-jae’s realization that she’s
lived her whole life denying herself to prepare for the future, only to
find that she has none? Is just achingly so true to life. I love that
this isn’t about cancer or even dying, but about a woman’s journey to
find herself for the first time.

It’s a fantastic setup because it has the best of both worlds – we
get the fantasy of her finally living it up in first class and getting a
chance at Prince Charming, but the cancer keeps it rooted in reality. I
like that tether. It’s tragic, yes, but it’s also the perfect
motivator, instigator, or whatever you want to call it. Death is just
her wake-up call, and I have a great feeling that it’s going to be just
as awesome to watch how that life-altering change affects the other
people around her.