Brotherly Love
After a brief hiatus, When I was the Most Beautiful returns this week with more love triangle woes. As Jin continues to grow closer to Ye-Ji , Hwan shows an uglier side as his jealously threatens to spill over. All of this sets the foundations for quite the pressure cooker of tension as the relationship between these two brothers hangs in the balance. With less of the comedy from the first couple of episodes, this drama is really doubling down on the romance. Episode 3 of When I was the Most Beautiful begin with Seo Hwan moping on the bridge, waiting for Ye-Ji to show up. However, his friends arrive ready to go night-time fishing. After teasing him, Hwan is in no mood to joke around and he lashes out at one of the boys. Meanwhile, Ye-Ji and Jin go swimming together before sitting up on shore and admiring the view. As they talk, he reminds her that he has a name and not “Hwan’s brother.” In the morning he offers up a lavish hotel room in a bid to impress her and encourages Ye-Ji to get herself washed and ready in his room. However, he also leaves a dress for her to wear and an impressive lunch overlooking some breathless views. Despite his best intentions, Ye-Ji sees straight through his cool facade and reminds him she’s in no position to date. She then goes on to reveal that once he finds out about her past, he’ll want to run. He brushes off the concerns she has about him being a player though and continues to pursue her. However, she – and Sung-Gon too – are interrupted from what they’re doing with an urgent call. Hwan lashed out at In-Ho and now he’s in hospital. Even worse, In-Ho’s parents want to press charges. When Ye-Ji arrives at the hospital, she learns the truth from Da-Woon about what happened with the phone. She admits to deleting Hwan’s message and feels responsible for everything that happened. Hwan obviously doesn’t know this and he acts coldly toward Ye-Ji when she shows up. While they try to resolve their differences, Hwan’s Mother, Yeon-Ja, arrives and throws money at the situation. $100,000 to be precise. As an agreement is reached with In-Ho’s parents, outside the room Jin and Sung-Gon commend her for acting like a Mother should. In the wake of this, Ye-Ji is invited to work at Sung-Gon’s workshop and stay with him at the ceramics shop. As Jin excitedly calls her one of the family, she reminds him not to get the wrong idea surrounding what’s happening. That’s certainly not going to stop Jin though, who heads in and watches her create pottery items. When Hwan arrives, he notices Ye-Ji inside and Jin lean forward to kiss her. However, she tellingly doesn’t touch him back. Unfortunately Hwan has seen enough and races off, hurt and upset. Punching a tree, he breaks down and starts crying. Meanwhile, Jin acts like the real child here as he brushes aside his brother’s feelings like they’re nothing. Ye-Ji tries to get through to him but he tells her they don’t need to worry about Hwan any more. When she cuts her finger open, Jin tries to heal her up but she’s seemingly uncomfortable with his fussing. While she heads home, Hwan decides to take the bus across town and see his Mother. Only, she’s too busy doing yoga to answer the door. With nowhere else to turn, he sits on the bench outside. The same bench that the ginger cat Ye-Ji drunkenly spoke to was. The feline is still there too and they sit together in silence. When Hwan eventually heads home, he confronts Jin over what happened earlier in the night. Ye-Ji attempts in vain to ring him but he’s too busy fighting with his brother. Instead, she heads to her place and starts packing her things to leave. Go-Woon is not happy though and immediately starts shouting at her. Thankfully, Jin arrives just in time to prevent the situation from escalating. However, things back home aren’t getting any better. Jin and Hwan come to blows once again over Ye-Ji .As she interjects, Hwan and Je-In sit together and she deals a bitter blow, reminding him that she’s his teacher and he’s the student. Right now she doesn’t want to date. Hwan is not happy though and immediately puts his foot down, showing just how envious he is of other guys. The next day, Jin visits his Mother who warns him against getting involved with Ye-Ji . She has a newspaper clipping that seems to show more of the past issues Ye-Ji has. Meanwhile, Ye-Ji heads back to class again and greets the students. They ask her to stay on but she instead gives a touching speech about her time in school and what wonderful memories she’s made over the month. Just before she leaves, the students sit and take pictures with her.
The Episode Review
With lots of focus on the romantic melodrama and love triangle at play, the issues surrounding the big companies seem like a busywork sub-plot for now. That’s partly why they don’t show up in this recap but in truth, there really isn’t much to report on that front. However, the situation involving Hwan and Jin is definitely one that’s pretty volatile. It seems both brothers are ready to lay it all out on the line to try and win over Ye-Ji. To be honest though, Jin is pretty slimy here and he knows how much Hwan likes Ye-Ji. He originally asked if Hwan was okay with it and went ahead to pursue her anyway. Perhaps we’ll see more over the coming weeks that changes our mind about Jin. Right now though he definitely seems like quite the player and not exactly a trustworthy candidate to win over Ye-Ji’s heart. Visually though, the drama continues to show off some really beautiful locales and for that alone the show is worth sticking with. Whether it’ll be able to maintain interest with this level of melodrama however, remains to be seen.
