The Potato Lab: Episodes 5-6 » Dramabeans Korean drama recaps
The Potato Lab: Episodes 5-6
by DaebakGrits
There’s finally a strong whiff of romance in the air, but for every two steps our potato couple takes towards each other, they take another step back. However, some setbacks are to be expected when one person’s heart — and job — are in the hands of her new boss.
EPISODES 5-6
It was a dark and stormy night when Baek-ho followed Mi-kyung to Potato Lab and surprised her by gallantly offering his assistance while she battled wind and rain to protect her precious potatoes. The non-life-threatening rescue is totally romantic, so it’s understandable that our OTP is brimming with curiosity (and attraction) after they retreat inside to dry off and have a thematically appropriate midnight snack of potato flavored ramyeon (Mi-kyung) and boiled potatoes (Baek-ho). Mi-kyung is surprised that he would brave the storm to help her, and Baek-ho is intrigued by her work ethic.
Having also realized that Mi-kyung lied and covered for her co-worker who insulted him after reading the group chat message on his home laptop, is baffled that she tries so hard, performing tasks that aren’t in her job description, when her effort goes largely unnoticed. “Why do you make choices where you lose more than you gain?” he asks, and she explains that she believes hard work and earnestness will pay off in the long run. But the question on everyone’s mind — including Mi-kyung’s — is: will her work ethic be enough to save her job?
Instead of answering the aforementioned question, our story poses a new one for Mi-kyung and Ong-ju: who is the random woman shacking up with Baek-ho in his guesthouse? That’s right, Hee-jin, who was forced to leave her hotel because Ki-se canceled his credit card that was paying for her hideaway, lets herself into Baek-ho’s temporary home, and her presence instantly turns Mi-kyung and Ong-ju into a pair of overly nosey peeping potatoes. We’re talking binoculars-and-camouflage levels of snoopiness here, but Hee-jin being — well, Hee-jin — immediately spots the besties hiding in their sniper’s nest and comes over with an invitation to the barbeque that she (and Baek-ho) are hosting.
Over dinner, Hee-jin and Baek-ho’s obvious familiarity and relaxed comfort with one another causes Mi-kyung and Co. to come to the unmistakable — but completely incorrect — conclusion that Baek-ho and Hee-jin are a couple. This naturally makes Mi-kyung feel some sort of way that she isn’t ready to acknowledge yet, so she latches onto the fact that Baek-ho must be a cheating jerk — the audacity of him to ask her out when he’s has a girlfriend that he’s known since he was sixteen! Mi-kyung sidles up to Baek-ho as he’s manning the grill (despite being a vegetarian) and low-key tells him off. But, of course, because he’s oblivious to the fact that Mi-kyung has misunderstood the nature of his relationship with Hee-jin, he’s extremely confused by the conversation.
But then Hee-jin abruptly switches conversation topics and starts pestering the group with questions about the mystery woman who has captured Baek-ho’s interest, and Ong-ju, who doesn’t have a shy bone in her body, asks what they’re all thinking: aren’t you dating Baek-ho? If I didn’t love Hee-jin already, I definitely would have after she laughed in their faces and proudly identified herself as a free spirit who would never, ever date a slave to capitalism (a.k.a. Baek-ho).
With the air cleared, Mi-kyung’s emotional roller coaster starts its ascent again as she wonders if she is the mystery woman Hee-jin is talking about. Ong-ju, the queen of romance and tropes, is silently and smugly confident that Mi-kyung is Baek-ho’s mystery woman, but Mi-kyung is doubtful. There’s no way a man who likes her would also fire her… right?
After Mi-kyung becomes a last minute addition to the PMI Task Force, a hybrid group of Wohan Retail and Sunnyeo Food employees charged with streamlining the merger, it would initially appear as though Baek-ho is taking steps to save her career — but no. That fantasy is tossed out the window the moment Ki-se introduces himself as the head of the task force, which not only reports to him but also meets once a week in Seoul. After the task force’s first meeting, Ki-se asks Mi-kyung to follow him to his super swank office (obvious power move) and reveals that he is her secret benefactor.
Mi-kyung is not pleased with his handout and wants to know why he keeps butting into her business. He has a logical rationale for adding her to the team locked and loaded (she’s the only employee who’s worked for both Wohan Retail and Sunnyeo Food), but the real reason — or so he claims — he added her to the task force is because he pities her. Oof! In response, Mi-kyung chooses violence and begins chasing Ki-se around his office, fully intending to beat him to death with her shoe, but her attempted murder is thwarted when Baek-ho stops by Ki-se’s office.
Baek-ho clocks their labored breathing and suspicious behavior, but his main takeaway after catching them together in Ki-se’s office is that Mi-kyung claims (re: lies) she was there to express her thoughts and ideas about Potato Lab. Later, when Baek-ho is coincidentally seated next to Mi-kyung at a nearby restaurant during their lunch break, he asks why she didn’t come to him with her thoughts. It’s evident — to the audience, at least — that Baek-ho is hurt she would rather talk to Ki-se, an executive director he presumes she doesn’t know, than him, but Mi-kyung jumps to the wrong conclusion and assumes he’s offended she went over his head and spoke with his boss. (Insert Mi-kyung’s completely inappropriate but totally within character public rant here.)
The next time Mi-kyung encounters Baek-ho, she’s still a bit riled up, so when the opportunity to pull a harmless prank on him presents itself, she takes it. Instead of identifying the real source of the strange noises he’s been hearing at night, she suggests he’s being haunted by the ghosts of wronged employees. And for some reason — I’m choosing sleep deprivation over the silly events established by the show — Baek-ho believes he’s actually being haunted. He’s so desperate for some sleep that he hires a shaman to rid him of the vengeful spirits.
At this point, Mi-kyung comes clean and apologizes for lying, and Ong-ju breaks the fourth wall to explain that the strange noises were simply the sound of the native white thrush, a bird known colloquially as the “ghost bird” because of the eerie call it makes on summer nights. Baek-ho concedes that his own gulliblity escalated the situation and refuses to accept Mi-kyung’s apology. And that, Dear Beanies, is how week’s filler scenes continue into a montage of Mi-kyung trying to demonstrate her repentance through acts of service, only for them to be negated and one-upped by Baek-ho.
Personally, I found the whole haunting and apology montage more draggy than humorous, but narratively, it diffused the earlier tension between Baek-ho and Mi-kyung as their competitiveness became slightly — emphasis on slightly — more playful. Eventually Baek-ho accepts her apology because, according to him, he’s worried the ongoing feud will affect her work performance, and the silence that settles between them as they gaze at each other from their respective windows is palpable — a I-enjoyed-rubbing-up-against-you-while-we-competitively-washed-vehicles-but-it-would-be-too-pervy-to-admit-that-aloud kind of palpable.
At Potato Lab, Baek-ho continues to be the only person who seemingly does any work between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM, but in light of recent events, even he momentarily forgets to keep up his no-nonsense facade when Mi-kyung enters his office and asks him to sign off on the latest potato report. However, instead of approving the lab’s plan to plant the same variety of potato (Jangsaeng) that they’ve planted in the past, he introduces a proposal for them to switch to an imported variety (Marshall) moving forward. Mi-kyung and her team are reluctant to comply, despite the Marshall variety being the superior spud, because the Jangsaeng variety was developed in-house at Potato Lab, and they all feel a sense of loyalty to their domestic potato and its creators.
It’s at this point in our story that Mi-kyung finally steps up and shows her worth to the lab. The team has been developing a new variety of potato, the Maroo, that matches the Marshall in all the relevant tests, and, because it is a domestic variety, it is better suited for domestic growth. There’s just one problem. The Maroo potato is not an officially acknowledged variety, and — best case scenario — it will take another two years for it to undergo and pass the necessary tests for it to be declared legit.
Baek-ho isn’t instantly willing to sign off on the Maroo, especially when there’s no guarantee it will become an official variety in only two years, but Mi-kyung worked with some sweet potato farmers to plant a test crop of Maroo potatoes, and initial reports indicate that they are thriving. If he would just wait another month, then — oh wait. Realizing she won’t be a member of Potato Lab in a month’s time, Mi-kyung offers to drive ten hours round-trip to personally measure and check on the Maroo’s current growth to prove that they would be a better long-term investment than the Marshall potatoes. Baek-ho agrees to consider the idea and volunteers to accompany her on her overnight road trip — for reasons. (Ahhhh, nothing like a good ol’ fashioned road trip to add a little intimacy to an enemies-to-lovers romance that’s been a little too heavy-handed with the enemies part.)
With five hours of driving ahead of them, Mi-kyung decides to fill the awkward silence with music and is surprised to discover Baek-ho is a fan of the rock genre. He responds by insisting he’s not the robot she’s made him out to be. He has emotions. In fact, he cried during the movie Coco. (Ok, but who didn’t?) Mi-kyung is amused by his confession, declaring it prime blackmail material, but it’s a shame she won’t be around long to hold it over his head.
Realizing she’s ruined the mood, she explains that she’s not trying to make him guilty. She no longer blames him for doing his job and firing her. It’s the same as her pruning her potatoes to ensure they grow, but she admits that she hopes the next month gives him time to see her value — the things that can’t be found in a resume. Maybe, then, he can decide for himself if she deserves a chance.
While Mi-kyung and Baek-ho out measuring potatoes and getting their flirt on, Ong-ju realizes that she’s jealous of Hee-jin, who’s been spending a chunk of her abundant free-time with Hwan-kyung. As soon as she defines the emotion that’s been plaguing her, she confesses her feelings to Hwan-kyung, but a she rationalizes aloud that maybe she’s not jealous in a romantic way but in a fearful-she’s-going-to-lose-the-guy-who-feeds-and-shelters-her kind a way. Although I applaud her top notch communication skills (hey, OTP, take note), Hwan-kyung is not receptive to her casual, off-handed confession.
He’s had a long-standing crush on Ong-ju, and over the years he’s confessed to her numerous times. But aside from a drunken one-night-stand — which she told him to forget about the next day — Ong-ju has never expressed a mutual interest in him. He’s understandably frustrated and vents his feelings to her — again, I love that these characters are having this conversation so openly and passionately, and it’s Hwan-kyung’s vulernability that has Ong-ju asking him to kiss her. So he does, and when Ong-ju decides she likes it, she kisses him again. Annnnnd… sexy times are had.
The next morning, while Hwan-kyung and Ong-ju are defining the relationship — spoiler: they’re a (secret) couple — the Potato Lab employees are shocked to find Mi-kyung and Baek-ho taking a little post-road trip power nap in his car…with their hands nearly touching. The suspiciously intimate scene has Team Potato Lab gossiping — and then scrambling for cover when the pair wakes up. Mi-kyung takes a half-day to get some more sleep, while Baek-ho goes straight to his office, where he gets a surprise visit from Ki-se.
You see, Ki-se has found out that Hee-jin and Baek-ho are staying at Hwan-kyung’s guesthouse, and he’s extremely uncomfortable with the idea of his ex-wife and professional enemy being in such close quarters with his ex-girlfriend. It’s a potentially toxic mix that’s bound to blow up in Ki-se’s face once they all figure out he’s one degree of separation connecting them all together. At first, he tries to convince Baek-ho to stay somewhere else, and when that doesn’t work and only raises Baek-ho’s suspicions instead, Ki-se suggests that Baek-ho is slipping professionally because he forgot a deadline for an important project. It’s a sign he should wrap up things at Potato Lab and return to headquarters.
The thing is, Baek-ho did more than forget the project. He intentionally ignored a related phone call because it would wake a sleeping Mi-kyung, and it’s clear he’s never allowed his personal life to affect his work performance in the past. While he mulls over his feelings, Hee-jin wakes up from a 22-hour cat nap, and the first thing on her mind is conveniently Baek-ho’s love life. Doubling down on her cat-like mannerisms, she starts pulling books from his bookshelf and wrinkling his clothes to get his attention and coerce him into having a discussion, and when all else fails, she threatens to put her disgusting shoes on his pristine bed.
Bake-ho’s OCD can’t handle any more, so he caves and admits he’s interested in someone from work. Hee-jin has a romantic version of his love story painted in her mind, and Baek-ho dashes her fantasy. It’s not as simple as she envisions, and, to use her analogy, if he was standing on the opposite side of a crosswalk from her, the sign to cross the street wouldn’t be red or green. It would have just turned yellow, and he doesn’t know if he should stay on his side of the road or sprint towards her.
For the time being, at least, it’s clear Baek-ho has decided to treat the light as though it’s red. Overnight, he’s instantly aloof. He declines Mi-kyung’s offer to drive them to Seoul for the next PMI Task Force meeting, and he ignores her in the company cafeteria. His cold shoulder is hurtful and isolating, especially since Wohan Retail employees have started recognizing Mi-kyung, and their whispered conversations dredge up old memories. Although the timeline is still murky, we can infer from the rampant gossip that Mi-kyung experienced when she was last employed at Wohan Retail that Ki-se’s relationship with Hee-jin was made public shortly after he broke up with Mi-kyung.
To make an already bad day worse, Ki-se calls her up to his office to let her know Baek-ho formally submitted her dismissal paperwork. All hope that she might have saved her career with her suggestion that they begin using Maroo potatoes, is dashed, and she’s in an extremely melancholy mood when she returns home and tries to figure out Baek-ho’s hot-and-cold attitude. And that’s when she notices the false goat’s beard — her second favorite flower — on Baek-ho’s balcony.
She bangs on his door until he answers. She asks about the flower. Is it for her? Has she been misreading the signs? Why has he abruptly pulled away from her just as she started to feel things for him? Her every word is infused with her frustration and need for answers until she finally asks: “What am I to you?” And he answers, “A line I want to cross.”
And with that single panty-dropping line, I’m willing to ignore any previous reservations I had with this drama’s first four episodes and start over with a clean slate. Ok, maybe I won’t go that far, but overall I did find this week’s episodes the most enjoyable to date. It’s almost like the drama gods heard my plea and toned down the comedy (going to ignore those filler scenes) in favor of concentrating more on the romance and — as an unexpected bonus — the complexities of having a romantic relationship with a work superior.
Most office romances tend to focus on the positive and thrilling aspects of dating a coworker. You know, all the things Hee-jin gushed about when she found out Baek-ho was interested in a woman he works with. If there are any downsides, it’s usually because the couple is chaebol and a commoner and either society, the chaebol’s parents, or both disapprove of the relationship.
However, I can’t recall ever watching a K-drama where the person in the position of power fires their love interest because they’re genuinely expendable. Say what you will about Mi-kyung’s incompetency, but if she’d been obviously good at her job and fired unjustly, her termination — and Baek-ho’s resulting moral and emotional dilemma — would have hit differently. Do I think the writers intentionally set up Mi-kyung and her co-workers to be extremely unprofessional for the sake of adding depth to Baek-ho’s character development? No, they 100% did it for the LOLs, but I’ll take this happy little accident and count it as a win.
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