May 30, 2013

Monstar: Episode 2


Whew. Lots of things happening in this episode. And I mean that literally. This recap is almost twice as long as the previous one and the show itself seems longer. But it's all gratifying.

This episode brings us more misunderstandings between our main couple, some bantering between our possible bromantic couple, and a sense that there's more than just a handful of secrets waiting to be revealed. I, for one, can't wait for more. Why are we only getting one episode per week?!

EPISODE 2




We open the show with Seol-chan at dance rehearsals with the rest of his idol group, Men in Black. And then, of course, it's off to a gratuitous shower scene with all 5 boys. 

At the salon where the 4 other members get dolled up in idol hair and make-up for a performance, the camera pans towards the end of the pretty boy line up and ends with Seol-chan in his salon chair, fixing himself up... to go to school. Heh. And just as he's about to change things up with a little hairspray, Manager Hong grabs his hand. "Seol-chan-ah, let's go to school."

Seol-chan is still adamantly against going to school, but he relents and agrees to go no faster than it takes his manager to threaten him with a visit to the hospital instead. 

Manager Hong asks Seol-chan if he's found a seatmate yet. Seol-chan brushes it off, saying he can always just sit by himself. But Manager Hong tells him that's not the way to do it, they don't want people thinking he's a loner. Seol-chan tells him not to worry, he knows what to do. There's someone who is neither a fan nor an anti-fan...

And then we're back to where we left off the last time. Seol-chan stands before Se-yi and a befuddled Eun-ha. "Min Se-yi, be my partner."



Despite the handful of students trying to take photos of Seol-chan with their camera phones, classroom 2 remains quiet. We don't get to see Se-yi turn him down but when we return to the scene, Seol-chan is sitting beside Nana, across the way from Se-yi. Nana isn't happy about it.

Teacher Dok speaks in front of the class and informs them of the music performance evaluation scheduled a week later. She then asks class president Sun-woo to meet with her.

As soon as Teacher Dok and Sun-woo exit the room, Nana glares at Seol-chan. "You better move." He quickly agrees and transfers to the vacant seat beside Se-yi. Ha! But Se-yi doesn't want him there either. Double ha!



"Cut me some slack," he tells her. "We're in the same boat here." Because transfer students would never be asked to sit alone, and seeing as how Se-yi is seated between empty chairs, Seol-chan deduces, "You were told off by her (Nana) too, weren't you?"

Se-yi gets out of her seat and switches over to the one next to Nana, as text messages and status updates go out to social networking sites of how Seol-chan was just dissed by his new seatmate. 

But it doesn't take long for Se-yi to go back to her seat next to Seol-chan when she earns a death glare from Nana in answer to her question if it was alright for her to sit there. Se-yi sits next to Seol-chan and pouts. It takes a little teasing from Seol-chan before Se-yi is calling him a coward and asking for her phone back. "You checked the photos, right? Of when you two were ki-"



Seol-chan immediately covers her mouth with his hand but Se-yi pushes him away and he falls back. It's unfortunate that the group of students now hanging by the doors and windows to the classroom have their cameras ready and have captured everything. Seol-chan is about to fight back when he realizes that they've amassed an audience. He starts to walk out when he sees that he couldn't leave Se-yi at the hands of his fans, not after the way she had just pushed him. So he grabs her by the wrist and they run for it.

In the staff room, Teacher Dok asks Sun-woo to take Seol-chan and Se-yi in for the music performance evaluations. Since they're new students, they wouldn't know what to do.

Seol-chan and Se-yi are still on the run. She doesn't like that she's being dragged off but Seol-chan won't let her go and asks her if she knows what would happen to her if he did. She doesn't. Seol-chan admits that he doesn't know either but he sure knows they can't stay there. They don't even have time to look back as they continue running. Fangirls chase after them in droves. 



They finally find solace in the back of Seol-chan's van, surprising Manager Hong who asks after the identity of Se-yi.

And, indeed, news travels fast. Not only does it spread around school that Seol-chan had kidnapped a female student, Manager Hong receives the same news from CEO Go. Seol-chan is aghast by the exaggerated news but his manager reminds him that it doesn't matter if it's true or not, what matters is what people online are saying. 

Seol-chan argues that he only did it because he was flustered and what else was he supposed to do in that situation. Manager Hong tells him that if there is ever a problem, he should escape to the van. Seol-chan retorts that that's exactly what he did.

While this is happening, Se-yi attempts to leave but Seol-chan pulls her back, telling her that they need to talk. Se-yi asks what there is to talk about. (Manager Hong: "What can you talk about here? Do it in the classroom.") Seol-chan turns to Se-yi and starts to explain about the almost kiss between him and Ari. (Manager Hong: "Let's do it here.") But Seol-chan is distracted by his manager's quips and ends up repeating the same line to Se-yi, "Let's do it here." Haha. He exasperatedly turns to his manager, "Hyung!"

Manager Hong asks Se-yi what it is she wants. Is it money? To debut? So Seol-chan asks him to leave them for awhile to talk. Manager Hong balks at the idea, what with the window's tint that you can't even see in from the outside. 



Back in classroom 2, Sun-woo and 2 other guys are looking at Se-yi's now defaced desk. Though the students from classroom 2 didn't join in on the vandalizing, they weren't able to stop it from happening either. 



Jae-rok then approaches Kyu-dong and pulls him out of class. He and Do-nam bring Kyu-dong into an empty part of the campus and that's where Do-nam starts pummelling his fists into Kyu-dong. Do-nam gets in quite a number of kicks as well that I have to wince while watching this scene. Soon Kyu-dong is bleeding from the mouth.

Kneeling beside a slumped-over Kyu-dong, Jae-rok asks him if he doesn't want to sing anymore. And if Kyu-dong doesn't like it, then they can stop. Surely, he wasn't being forced into singing. "If you don't like it, then I'll tell the whole class not to make you sing anymore," Jae-rok says. This boy is so ruthless it's scary.

Back in the van, Seol-chan tells Se-yi that they should end it here. Should they continue to fight, it would only feed the gossip frenzy. So Se-yi tells him she knows that all this is about what she had seen. That he had also followed her the other day to get her to keep quiet about the almost kiss. He denies it but she presses on.

She tells him she’s really not interested and she has no intentions of telling anyone about it. So she’s surprised when he tells her he knows she won’t tell and that he actually doesn’t care if she does.



“What exactly was it that you witnessed?” he asks her. He suddenly leans over towards her until their faces are thisclose. “This?” he asks. Omo. “Or this?” he continues, his face moving in even closer. “Or even this?” he persists, his face so close to hers that she has to pull back a little.

But he tells her that they too were in the exact same position before and it didn’t mean anything. So, he really has nothing to hide. He also doesn’t have any intentions of blackmailing her as she seems to assume.

He moves away but she’s still clearly shaken by his proximity. He remains though that she should be his seatmate since the situation has come to this and that her face has been known to the public anyway. She still refuses.

“Even if I beg, you wouldn’t? You’re the only one who doesn’t know me. I’m begging you,” he says in all seriousness. But he then undercuts the solemnity of the moment by asking her if she’s acting this way because she doesn’t know what it means for someone like him to ask someone like her for a favor.

She continues to refuse and he finally gives up, so she leaves the van but not before a little tug-o-war using the phone he was going to return to her anyway. Boys.



Seol-chan returns to the classroom only to find the now-defaced desk beside him empty. The vandals must have been extremely rude that the comments had to be blurred out. But Seol-chan sees this.

Se-yi, meanwhile, is up on the rooftop with her mobile phone. She thinks back to when Seol-chan asked her in the van why she hates him so much. And she flashes back to when she called out for her mother that night in the dark alley when he followed her home. He caused her to call out for the person she hates the most and hates him for it.

She pulls out her earphone to listen to music only to find a handful of Men in Black songs in her music player. Three guesses as to who put them there.

Still, she plays one of his songs. She stands there listening until a paper airplane disrupts her.



She looks up and sees Kyu-dong on a higher level rooftop. She heads up and sits beside him. She asks him if the paper airplane was his and whose face was it that he drew on it. Was it Jae-rok? Was it for him to use as a sort of voodoo doll? To take the eyes out, spit on it, and set it on fire? “Those are useless. Just put poison in his drink,” she continues in that deadpan way of hers. Haha. The look Kyu-dong sends her is hilarious. Again, she has to clarify that she’s joking.

Kyu-dong thanks her for what she did before, helping him out with the song. And then he pulls out the paper airplane he had crumpled and explains that it wasn’t Jae-rok her drew, but himself.

Se-yi senses his mood so she offers him an earphone. They continue to listen to the Men in Black song together. He knows the song and is a fan of Seol-chan’s. He says people like Seol-chan are lucky because everyone likes them.

Se-yi then goes into flashbacks of Seol-chan being chased by a mob of fans that first day in school and of Seol-chan having to beg her to be his seatmate...

Kyu-dong says he hates himself and calls himself a jerk. He’s surprised to hear that Se-yi, too, hates herself. They sit side by side as Kyu-dong begins singing along to Seol-chan’s song.


Seol-chan gets a text asking to meet him outside. It’s from Sun-woo. When he asks Sun-woo how he got his number, Sun-woo explains he got it from Seol-chan’s mother. But... I thought his mom left? How does Sun-woo know Seol-chan’s mom? Hmmm...

Sun-woo asks Seol-chan to transfer seats but Seol-chan answers that that’s something Sun-woo can’t make him do. Sun-woo then asks if Seol-chan had already previously known Se-yi, and why he keeps pestering her, and why he was following her that night in an alley. He’s barraging Seol-chan with questions and Seol-chan answers them straight. He didn’t know her prior to seeing her at school, why is he acting like an elementary student, and he had something to give Se-yi that night. Ha.

After a back and forth of more words, Sun-woo tells him he hasn’t changed – that he’s still a brat. Seol-chan counters with the same – that Sun-woo still keeps up with the pretense of being nice.

Seol-chan tells Sun-woo not to worry about Se-yi, clearly she can manage her owns problems and that she’s better than all of them. But that’s not enough for Sun-woo. He brings up Se-yi’s defaced table and asks Seol-chan if he won’t stop until someone gets hurt.


Despite himself, Seol-chan is worried about Se-yi’s whereabouts. He heads to the rooftop saying that she’s the type of person to come up here. It’s funny how he runs up to the edge to see if she has perhaps fallen over.

Sun-woo returns to the classroom to see Se-yi back at her desk, reading all the hateful messages Seol-chan’s fans left for her. He immediately goes and covers the desk with his folder and asks her where she’s been.



This is the scene Seol-chan walks in on. Se-yi is even smiling up at Sun-woo. He complains that his legs now hurt after trying to find her. He also complains about Sun-woo loitering around other people’s desks. Heh. But he’s soon surrounded by students asking for his autograph.

Sun-woo hands over the folder to Se-yi telling her that it’s the teacher’s assignment for the musical evaluation. Sun-woo tells her that they can either perform in groups or individually and that the teacher had assigned them to be in a group together with Seol-chan.

Seol-chan then comes up to them, bumping into Sun-woo as he heads to his seat. Haha, so childish this one.

Sun-woo ignores him and asks Se-yi if she’s okay with the guitar. He asks to see her left hand and he takes it in his, lightly feeling the calluses on her fingertips. This, of course, eats at Seol-chan. His eyes practically bug out at their skinship. It’s awesome.

The two arrange to practice that night at Bukcheong Park at 7 o’clock. I don’t know why they’re not inviting Seol-chan on this supposed practice, but it successfully pisses Seol-chan off.

So when Se-yi faces him with a soft “ummm...” he immediately turns defensive. Only to have her tell him he can stay in that seat. He looks pleased as punch but then he tells her that only he gets to choose if he sits there or not. Okay, whatever, little boy.



At the All for One practice, we see that Jae-rok’s musical instrument is the cymbals. The freaking cymbals. But this also gives us a glimpse into Joon-hee’s scary side as he passive-aggressively asks a violinist if she’s been having problems at home that might be messing up with her playing.

Teacher Dok shows up to ask after their decision about the charity performance. Joon-hee turns it down and tells her that the students have too much on their plates right now what with all the studying they need to be doing. Gym Teacher Choi shows up to ask for the $10 she doesn’t really owe him for a bet he tried to make with her that she ignored.

Joon-hee and Jae-rok see Do-nam looking into a judo class. Jae-rok comments that it’s been a long time since Do-nam had quit the sport, is he still not over it? Do-nam denies it.

Teacher Dok breaks the news about All for One refusing to do the charity event to the vice principal and he complains in his weirdly childish affectation that this cannot be. Teacher Dok suggests sending the magic club instead. But the vice principal lets her know that the magic club requires at least $880 for materials alone. Is she willing to pay for this herself? This is why they need All for One to play at the event, or else she loses her homeroom teacher position.


Eun-ha and Se-yi watch from afar as female students flock around Seol-chan asking for his autograph. Eun-ha fangirls over his chic look and asks Se-yi if he doesn’t make her heart flutter. Se-yi doesn’t know.

As the two walk off, Eun-ha ponders on why Seol-chan was persistent about having Se-yi for a seatmate. Se-yi explains that it’s because she doesn’t know him. Then Eun-ha brings up an even more mysterious occurrence. Why is class president Sun-woo acting really nice to Se-yi? She tells Se-yi he’s not normally like that and that something weird is going on.



On their drive home, Seol-chan sees Se-yi riding the bus. At a stop light that positions the bus right next to Seol-chan's van, he stares at her from behind his dark tinted windows. Se-yi is listening to that one Men in Black song she had listened to earlier.

Se-yi looks like she’s staring back at Seol-chan, but with the van's heavy tint she’s probably just staring into space. All the same, Seol-chan wonders if the car’s tint is really that dark. His manager assures him that it is, no one can see from the outside. Seol-chan finds this unfair and that it’s hurting his pride – which again launches them into a discussion about the difference between pride and self-esteem.



Back at home, Teacher Dok’s actually happy about the possibility of losing her homeroom position as this leaves her with much more time for herself. As she makes a list of things she should try doing in her free time, Se-yi walks out with her guitar, off to practice with Sun-woo. Once Se-yi is out of earshot, Teacher Dok comments that if she leaves as well, then it would all be perfect.

Seol-chan lies in a couch while Manager Hong noisily plays games on his phone. Seol-chan is distraught over the practice date Sun-woo and Se-yi have set for that night. He caresses his own fingers thinking back to how Sun-woo had asked for Se-yi’s hand that morning.

He’s pissed that he has nothing to do but to think of Se-yi off with Sun-woo that he asks if he really doesn’t have anything on his schedule – no interviews at all?! He finally can’t stand it anymore so he gets off the couch and puts on a jacket and a pair of sunglasses. Sunglasses at 7 in the evening? Really?


Sun-woo is on his way out with his guitar as well but he gets a call from someone named Ha-reum who is supposedly crying. He begs her not to cry and to tell him what’s wrong. We don’t hear the other side of the conversation but Sun-woo has to call off on the practice with Se-yi to head over to Ha-reum. Unfortunately, Sun-woo doesn’t have Se-yi’s number. He tries calling Teacher Dok to ask for Se-yi number but she’s currently soaking in the bathtub.

Se-yi sits on a park bench waiting for Sun-woo. She decides to call Teacher Dok as well to ask for Sun-woo’s number but, of course, she meets the same fate and her call goes unanswered.



Seol-chan is slowly walking through the park trying to come up with a believable reason for being there (none of which are particularly convincing) when he hears Se-yi singing and playing her guitar. He finds her sitting alone and he curses Sun-woo for not showing up yet. But much like the first time he heard her sing, he’s frozen in his spot on the pavement, eyes (still behind stupid sunglasses) transfixed on her. He ends up internally cursing that very spring night.

Se-yi looks up to see a dishevelled man staring back at her. His hair’s messy, his sunglasses shine under the moonlight, his hands tucked into the pockets of his trench coat. She continues singing even as she recalls Eun-ha’s warning about Adam.

Seol-chan’s still off to the side practising how to deliver his alibi when Se-yi suddenly stops singing. He looks over to see Se-yi quickly packing her guitar, the rumpled older man slowly approaching her.



The man asks Se-yi to look at him but she refuses. He’s about to reach out for her when Seol-chan finally arrives to tell him off. He pulls Se-yi to his side and tells the ahjussi that he’ll let this go just this once but he should stop what he’s doing. He then turns to Se-yi and tells her this is because she’s singing alone at night in a deserted park. He starts to pull her away when the ahjussi calls after them, asking Se-yi where she heard the song from.

Seol-chan lies and tells him that he gave her the song. That he wrote the lyrics and the music. That he is Men in Black’s Yoon Seol-chan. He then pulls Se-yi away to safety.

As they walk home together, Se-yi asks him what he's doing there. He stupidly answers that he was looking around because he’s an artist. Right.

Seol-chan asks after that punk Sun-woo. Se-yi just confirms that he didn’t show up, then thanks Seol-chan for helping her out. She curtly dismisses him with a “see you tomorrow!” but Seol-chan wouldn’t have any of it. He pulls her back telling her that since Sun-woo didn’t bother to show up, who else has got her back? He means himself, of course.



He then invites her for some milk. At the coffee shop, Se-yi thinks back to the ahjussi, wondering how he knows the song.

And in a hilarious parody of the whipped cream kiss scene in Secret Garden, Se-yi accidentally gets milk on her lips after taking a sip from her cup. Seol-chan scoffs that even though she spent her time looking after sheep she clearly had time to watch dramas. He reaches over to wipe the milk off, but she gets to it first with her tongue.

She does it in a no nonsense way but to his raging-hormones-infected imagination, it’s all slow motion and sexy with her winking at him to top it off. He’s freaked out by this and jumps out of his chair. HAHA.

As they leave the coffee shop, Se-yi asks if he’s really not going to do the music performance with them. He reasons that she doesn’t like him and he doesn’t like Sun-woo, why then should they be forced to work with people they don’t like. She apologizes. This takes him aback but he’s looking mightily pleased when he tells her there’s no need to be sorry.

It’s funny how when she quickly says goodbye and just darts off, he calls after her yelling that she can’t leave first. He’s a star. A star! Haha.



Sun-woo is finally able to call Se-yi and he apologizes saying something had come up. They reschedule the practice for tomorrow at school. It’s strange that he’s calling her from the bottom of the steps that lead up to her apartment, staying hidden from her as she climbs up. He later comments on how she hasn’t moved. So Sun-woo knew Se-yi before she moved to New Zealand? Things are getting curiouser and curiouser.

At school the next day, Eun-ha comments that spring indeed has come if Adam is back on the streets. Se-yi asks if Adam is really that type of person, recalling the ahjussi she met the night before. But before Eun-ha can answer, Seol-chan arrives and Eun-ha darts out of his chair and back into her own.

Seol-chan’s initially in a seemingly better mood this morning but this soon fades once he sees Sun-woo enter the classroom with his guitar case. Se-yi has hers too. He slams his bag down on his desk.

Sun-woo performs president duty and notes that Nana is absent. He sends her a text message asking if she’s coming to class today. She’s currently in a dingy looking... bar?



The students from classroom 2 file into the music room for music practice. Sun-woo instructs everyone to find their groups. Se-yi and Sun-woo sit together and practice as Seol-chan sits alone at the back. Seol-chan comments that Se-yi smiles at Sun-woo while she’s never looked at him that way ever. Well, duh. Pissed off by the pair, he escapes to his van.

We are treated to a montage of Sun-woo and Se-yi working on their music, and to Seol-chan in a studio working on his own music.

The next day, Seol-chan suggests to the two that they do the performance as a group. He pins this sudden change of heart on the media’s negative remarks on his lack of school involvement. Right.

The three then head off to the music room and Seol-chan sets up his instruments which consist of his laptop, an electronic keyboard, and a digital hardware used for live looping.

After a short argument on whether these gadgets are considered actual instruments they proceed to give us my favorite sequence of the series so far.


Seol-chan suggests performing “Trouble Maker” and he starts making loops of his voice that goes onto the foundation of the song. He then puts in the beat via his electronic thingamajig and the next thing you know he has Sun-woo joining in with his bass guitar while he’s on his keyboard. Then Se-yi joins in on guitar and they start to sing along. It’s absolutely fantastic. Even Sun-woo thinks so and busts out a smile.

Later in the men’s restroom, Sun-woo tells Seol-chan that he had fun and that he’s happy to see him again. Aww. But Seol-chan undercuts the possible bromance with a curt dismissal.


The snooty members of All for One find Se-yi alone in the music room and they tell her to leave stating that regular students are not allowed in the room after classes are over. They clearly see themselves a cut above everybody else and it’s refreshing to see Seol-chan come in to stand by Se-yi. He agrees with what Se-yi said, that meat is meat and turns into poop no matter the cut. Whether premium meat, or regular meat, they all eventually turn to poop. This is the analogy Se-yi used to compare the way meat is classified and how All for One finds the need to classify students.

On their drive back home, Manager Hong informs Seol-chan that CEO Go suggested he return to his own home and move out of the dorm. This does not sit well with Seol-chan.



The next day, Teacher Dok announces that classroom 2 will do their music performance evaluation alongside Joon-hee’s class due to lack of time. This does not bode well for the students in classroom 2.

Se-yi receives a text message from her mom asking after her well being. That’s when she realizes that her call log reflects an answered call from her mom and this angers her. And, of course, she knows the very person who did it. She turns to Seol-chan and screams at him for answering the call.

It’s again to the van for the two of them. Se-yi is so furious that Manager Hong voluntary gets out of the van.

Se-yi tells Seol-chan that he has no right to be this nosy. She calls him a brat who probably had everyone babying him that he now has no sense of empathy and that everyone had to adjust to the whims of his moods. Seol-chan denies being this type of person but Se-yi’s is on a roll and doesn't stop. And right before she can step out of his van he tells her to stop the bickering and just call her mom.

Manager Hong slowly peeps into the van to inform Seol-chan that CEO Go had just moved all his stuff out of the dorms and back into his family's home. Seol-chan is mad and he makes Manager Hong to head for the agency.

This is bad timing since the music performance evaluation is about to start and the students from classroom 2 heads off to the music room.

Seol-chan confronts CEO Go and tells him that he should stop trying to control Seol-chan's life by making him do thing he doesn't want to do, like attending to school and going back home. He walks out upset.


The music performance evaluation has begun and most of the students from their class do poorly. Sun-woo and Se-yi nervously wait for their turn, scared that Seol-chan won't show up. Oh dear.

Of course, Joon-hee aces his performance to the applause of the entire class.

Teacher Dok informs Sun-woo and Se-yi that she will leave them for last so they can continue waiting for Seol-chan. Se-yi confesses to Sun-woo that she did something wrong to Seol-chan and that's why he hasn't shown up yet. She apologizes.

Joon-hee confirms to Teacher Dok that All for One will not be doing the charity event. And because Teacher Choi is always there to rub salt into the already hurting wound, Teacher Dok vents out all her frustrations on him. And he actually likes it. Ha.

Seol-chan sits on the rooftop of his agency, stewing in his anger over Se-yi's hurtful words. But one text from her with a simple "sorry" sends him flying back to school. This boy makes me laugh. And belatedly aww.



Se-yi paces back and forth out in front of the school as she waits for Seol-chan to come back. It's nice to see a sort of reciprocation of concern from her part. She's not totally there yet, but she's not totally oblivious to him either.

Unfortunately, no matter how fast Seol-chan tries to make Manager Hong drive, it's Sun-woo and Se-yi's turn and they head up to the stage. They revert back to the song they had originally practiced.

Off in his dark room, Adam ahjussi takes out a CD labeled "선잠" which means "to nap" by an artist named Min Kwang-ho. I wonder how this artist is related to our heroine Min Se-yi. He puts it into his CD player and hits play.



We shift to Sun-woo and Se-yi playing their piece on stage. They seem to suggest by the editing that Adam ahjussi is listening to the same song that the two are currently performing in class.

Seol-chan runs up to the music room but is too late, even from afar he can already hear Se-yi and Sun-woo singing. He's helpless and disappointed as he stands by the doorway to watch the two perform the last few notes of the song. They get a loud and prolonged applause from the audience. Joon-hee is not pleased.

Teacher Dok gets a call from the vice principal and she informs him that she's found the group who will perform at the event. She means Sun-woo and Se-yi.

COMMENTS

I'm not sure how I feel about the whole they're-all-childhood-friends bit. Sure, we don't know that for certain yet, but they're hinting at it. Sun-woo and Seol-chan are clearly more than just acquaintances. I could take a gander and guess that Seol-chan's mother left his father for Sun-woo's own father (ala Tae-hee's birth mom in Ojakgyo Brothers) but I sincerely hope that's not it. One childhood connection, I can believe. But to have Sun-woo somehow connected to Se-yi by childhood too? How convenient is that? Not.


Also, while we're up to the neck with clichés and whatnot, I still like how we're not totally in melodrama territory even as we touch on subjects like broken families and teenage angst. There are comedy-gold moments here and there that makes it all believable. And, boy, am I impressed with Yong Jun-hyung's comedic timing. Though he does well with the emotional scenes too, it's his delivery of Seol-chan's little witty remarks and comebacks that makes a scene. Usually in the scenes with Manager Hong.

Lastly, someone tell me they didn't watch that "Trouble Maker" sequence more than once? That scene was perfect! It wasn't over the top nor was it too plain. It felt organic in a way that Dream High 2 never was. There was no questioning things like "where did that beat suddenly come from?" or "why are they suddenly singing a song no one knows in perfect unison?" There was none of that. All those things didn't need questioning because the scene was perfectly self-explanatory and it was freaking awesome. If the drama provides more scenes like this one, I can deal with a whole lot more of the makjang.