The Grand Prize
The story of Homemade Love Story is advancing at a decent pace after 4 episodes thanks to its multiple character story arcs, full of dramatic and fun moments already. There’s some mystery behind their pasts too which adds some much-needed intrigue for this weekend drama. Episode 4 of Homemade Love Story starts with Jae-Hee confronting his father about the way he treats his mother and how selfish he is in every aspect of his life. Min-Jae joins them outside and tells them to stop. She asks her son what he is doing there and mentions that he left her all those years ago. Meanwhile, Chae-Woon returns home and finds her mother waiting outside. Soo-Jung tries to apologise to her daughter for coming to LX fashion but Chae-Woon berates her mother for always saying sorry. This frustrates her as she is the one who has been mean and feels bad for looking for her birth mother. The rest of the family comes out and Man-Jeong confronts Chae-Woon about how ungrateful she has been. Soo-Jung defends her daughter though and they all head back inside. Hae-Dun takes a dig at her sister as she thinks Chae-Woon wants to leave them. Fed up, Chae Woon admits that she has always felt like she was in prison and suffered a lot growing up. Her mother is so good-natured that everyone always took advantage of her. While she worked hard as a maid, Chae had to take care of her two siblings since a young age, worrying about them all the time. Soo-Jung suddenly stops the confrontation and tells everyone to disperse. All three siblings end the evening on their own and very upset. Meanwhile, Min-Jae is back home and heads into bed. Surprisingly, Jung-Ho acts concerned and promises to buy his wife more cakes the next day. She is not interested though and tells him to be quiet before falling asleep. Later in the evening, Hwak-Se and Man-Jung share some drinks. The latter laments what Chae-Woon said while back home, Ra-Hoon and Hae-Dun are feeling remorseful. Ra-Hoon tells Chae Woon that they had no idea how hard it was for her. She brushes them off just as their aunt comes back home very drunk with Hwak Se and causes more commotion. The next morning during breakfast, Min-Jae tells her husband that the maid has left and that she is not planning to replace her. She always thought it was a waste of money. This seems to please him as he even offers to participate in the household chores. In the villa, Chae-Woon realizes that she lost her phone. We then cut to the boy she had drinks next to as we see that he took it the night before. During breakfast, the family is in better spirits and Soo-Jung walks Chae-Woo out after they finish. She decides to blow one of her lucky petals for her and we learn that she kept those from one of the happiest day of her life. She believes that it will bring her luck. Jae-Hee rings Chae-Woo’s phone to offer her the job but it is the boy from the night before who answers. He ends up bringing the phone back and leaves soon after. He is almost seen by Chae-Woon who arrives at Jae-Hee’s house. She is grateful and surprised to get her phone back and learns that she is hired for a new contract. Meanwhile, Ra-Hoon meets Se-Mi in a coffee shop. The latter asks that they get back together but Ra-Hoon is only there to ask her to treat her sister better. He believes she is taking the grudge she has against him to her. Unbeknownst to him though, Hae-Dun happens to be at that same coffee shop. Hae-Dun walks to the table and tells her brother that Se-Mi treats her that way because she used to be more popular. Se-Mi shuts them up and tells them that they are both wrong and calls them losers before leaving. Hae-Dun then berates her brother for intervening but he defends himself as he wanted to help. After this, Hae-Dun takes Ra-Hoon to the university she thinks he is attending so he has no choice but to pretend. As he gets into a class, he sits next to a girl and already seems smitten with her. At work, Chae-Woon starts tiling the place and discusses the lost of her prize from the fashion company and the mistake they made. Jae-Hee is shocked and tells her she shouldn’t give up but seeks the reason why. His colleague comes in too and berates him after he finds out that Jae-Hee used his rent money to pay for some of their material. During lunch, Jae-Hee heads into another client’s house where Soo-Jung happens to be the maid for. She notices that he is hungry so she decides to make him some food while Min-Jae gets busy cleaning her own home. At LX fashion, Ms Kim tells her daughter that she has decided to give Chae-Woon the job after all and announces publicly that they made a mistake. Seo-A protests but Ms Kim insists and tells her daughter she needs to stop running away and face her past. Chae-Woon decides to fight back and returns to LX fashion. There, she is shocked to see Seo-A and remembers the past. This makes her realize she is the one who canceled her prize. She heads to see Ms Kim next who announces that they have reviewed her case and decided to give her the grand prize after all. Chae Woon is surprised and thinks that it probably is to make sure Seo-A doesn’t get in trouble. They tell her that the internship for New York is in one year’s time and will be working for the design team for now. Chae-Woon wants to be truthful though and tells Ms Kim that she knows Seo-A from school and had to drop out after the bullying incident. Ms Kim replies that it is from their private life and that it shouldn’t affect her employment. On her way out, Chae-Woon comes face to face with Seo-A and, after greeting her, shakes her hand and cleverly pretends that she thinks she is the one who cleared her name. Later in the day, Jung-Ho returns to an empty home and is surprised not to find his wife. He finds dinner ready with a goodbye note from Min Jae, which shocks him. The episode ends with Chae-Woon also returning home and as she heads into the bathroom, gets the shock of her life when she finds Jae-Hee naked and having a shower.
The Episode Review
The latest chapter of Homemade Love Story delves a little deeper in the past of the three siblings. We learn that Chae-Woon had a difficult childhood and had to grow up very fast as she had to be a second mother to them. This made her a very hard working and determined woman and it shows in how she deals with what life throws at her. After this episode, I still think there is more to the bullying story than we know and I really liked how Chae-Woon greeted Seo-A. It was a perfect example of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. The interactions between those two promise to be dramatic and fiery and I am looking forward to see it develop over time. The worst character award winner, Jung-Ho, seems to feel remorse this episode after his wife incident which I was quite surprised about. I thought he would blame her for spending time in hospital instead of cleaning the house! We have also seen hints that he had a past with Soon-Jung and I am wondering if something bad happened, which in turn made him the bitter man he is now. While some could say that many of the plots have been done before, Homemade Love Story is still an enjoyable drama if you don’t look too deep into it. The characters are likeable (apart from Jung-Ho of course) and the bond the family share is always a nice touch. This will make it easy to root for them as they go through the many ups and downs that I am sure the writers will throw at them!
