Boys Over Flowers: Episode 4

I have so much love for this episode! It’s packed full of treats and SO much happens. A lot happens in every episode, but I guess that’s what you get when you have episodes that are over an hour long.

Let’s talk about Frick and Frack first: THEY ARE SO THUGLIFE. I love that they ‘tried’ to protect Jan Di (via her friend, who I also loved because she didn’t fall for Frick’s overwhelmingly cute smile!) and then they went about trying to find who was really responsible for the scandal pictures! I know that this was more for Jun Pyo’s sake, but still. At first I was confused as to why Frick was suddenly playing the saxophone and Frack was dancing with the ladies, but then when the scene flashed to a back alley where the club owner (?) was getting beat up, it all made sense – why dirty their hands punching him themselves? They’ll provide the distraction while their minions take care of the dirty work. This was a really great episode for them because they got some more face time!

SS501…I completely forgot that they were supposed to make a cameo in this series, and I’m so glad it was THIS episode! Of course it’d be Baby Joon who would point to Jan Di out of the crowd. I’m kind of sad that Jung Min couldn’t be a part of it (what was he doing at this time? I know it was something…) but I’m glad our other three boys were able to showcase ‘UR Man’ and look so darn good while doing it!

Jun Pyo: I love him. Is there really anything else I need to say about him? Well, yes, because I love talking about him. I felt SO BAD for him when he waited the entire time out in the cold for her, and I really felt sad for him when he came to school, looking great with straight hair (although the man may be the only Korean idol I’ve seen so far who can pull of really curly hair) and a nice school uniform, all dolled up for her, and then he sees the photos and jumps to conclusions – who wouldn’t? – and is just so angry and insulted. Can we also talk about how he went Edo Japan on us with the random demonstration of swordpractice? I’m thinking this episode may have been trying to appeal to a lot of different people: the Green Peas (for SS501), girls who love Edo period anything, and those who want the more musical side to come through (for Frick and Frack). He ended up throwing stuff again. Which I loved. Is that bad? He also looked. so. fine. Just about everything looked amazing on him. Oh no…am I turning into one of the F4’s fangirls?! But I don’t want to wear super short skirts and white knee highs and high heels!!!!

Jun Pyo: there were also a few moments that I did NOT love about him this episode. Mostly one recurring one – why do you always have to grab for the girls’ throats when you want to talk to them? ‘Cornering’ Jan Di against a car is one thing, at least that’s sexy, but grabbing at her tie to make her tell you the truth? Throwing her Fake Friend to the ground after grabbing HER throat? Do not like. This second part I don’t like mostly because he did have a lot of reasons to be upset with her, and he’s not one to hold himself back, but I think it could have hurt her a lot more if he had just straight up ignored her.

Fake Friend: I will say that at least in the TV series she made more sense. In the manga, she’s almost bipolar – at school she’s ridiculously sweet and ‘naive’ (like a unicorn threw up a rainbow kind of sweet), but at the club, which by the way is supposed to be one of those ‘practically a stripper club but anyone can come on stage and shake their stuff’ kind of clubs, she’s overly sexualizing herself while being a complete flirt to the guys and a venomous snake to the girls. At least in the series they toned that down a little bit, and I think future episodes should reveal more things about her. I did believe her when she was asking Jun Pyo “Why is Jan Di okay but not me?”, but we’ll get to that in later episodes.

I tend to like those self-searching questions, ‘Am I really that loathsome?’ and ‘Why is she okay but not me?’ mostly because they are such honest and realistic questions. It’s as if I’ve stumbled onto some recorded diary entry of these characters, and these questions make them suddenly very human. I mean, these are questions that any person who has had a crush can relate to, but they were said so realistically (yep! I’m claiming that they were NOT melodramatic, which is usually the case for TV shows) that for a second I almost feel like they’re real people, too. You know, not just amazingly attractive models who are acting these specific roles in a staged television series.

Jan Di: Believe it or not, although most of the time I really, REALLY do not like her, in this episode she redeemed herself (to me) because of her interactions with, you guessed it, Jun Pyo. They actually have a real tete-a-tete going on in this episode! I love that she took care of him while he was sick and they were stranded in the cable car (?), maybe this time their interactions are more significant though because she wasn’t drunk and could actually call him ‘stupid’ or ‘punk’ back!

Fun Observation (although there’s a lot more in this episode to unpack, I need to leave something for my unni to write about!): Just how did they set the bicycle on fire so fast?!