Recap: I’ll Go To You When The Weather Is Nice, Episode 1
This is one a lot of us have been waiting for. I’ll Go To You When The Weather Is Nice stars Park Min Young and Seo Kang Joon in what looks to be a soft melodrama set in a small town. Let’s check it out!
Recap: I’ll Go To You When The Weather Is Nice, Episode 1
The opening scene is like something out of a coffee commercial or maybe a really high-end ASMR video. Close up shots of clocks and bookshelves and someone making coffee. It’s soft and slow and warm.
Outside
We watch as Park Min Young’s character, Mok Hae Won, struggles up a hill with her suitcase in tow. Her phone rings and the caller I.D. reads “President” but she rejects the call and continues her climb.
She arrives at a shabby-looking building and tries to look inside the small window panes. The sign on the building reads “Goodnight Bookstore”. Nobody appears to be there.
We see that our coffee-drinking bookstore owner is out for a walk. Seo Kang Joon’s character, Im Eun Sub, stares off into the distance. He is interrupted by a child who calls him “Uncle”. We see that he is watching Mok Hae Won walking up the hill in the distance. She approaches a building with a sign that reads “Walnut House”.
Walnut House
Mok Hae Won enters the house without knocking and calls out for her Aunt but there is no answer. She searches through the house and finds it empty. Opening a window, Mok Hae Won admires the countryside. She hears the door and goes downstairs to find that her Aunt has come home. Her Aunt doesn’t seem excited to see her. We learn that Mok Hae Won intends to stay in the countryside for a while. She has no intention to go back to Seoul anytime soon.
Later they roast chestnuts and discuss future plans. Mok Hae Won feels that she doesn’t have the right to be a music teacher any longer. Her aunt tells her not to quit her job so easily.
Flashback
Mok Hae Won confronts a student who has vandalized another student’s instrument. The student attacks Mok Hae Won who is then accused of hitting the student.
Present Time
Mok Hae Won goes out for a walk in the cold night air. She stares into the night sky as a bicycle approaches. It’s Im Eun Sub. They each say hello and then discuss nothing seemingly important.
The Next Day
The sights and sounds of a farm in the morning greet the day. Im Eun Sub stands outside of Walnut House as his father calls him through a handset. Mok Hae Won comes out of the house and helps him with his chores. He asks her how long she’ll be in town this time and she says she’s planning to stay until spring. Im Eun Sub seems happy to hear it and offers to lend her his car when she needs it. She asks to borrow it now.
Driving with her Aunt later, Mok Hae Won asks about Im Eun Sub stating that he seems to have changed. Her Aunt, Shim Myeong Yeo, says that she did notice that he hadn’t been around for a few years. Mok Hae Won wonders about the sunglasses her Aunt constantly wears and wonders out loud if she has had ‘work’ done.
Bookstore
We’re back to coffee commercial aesthetics as Im Eun Sub watches the coffee drip and his sister, Im Hui, sits watching him while she reads. Suddenly Im Hui reads a line out loud, “That day, Irene asked me.” Startled, Im Eun Sub grabs the book out of her hand. Im Hui asks him who Irene is and she chases him teasingly as he leaves the room.
Walnut House
After a trip into town to visit the hardware store, Mok Hae Won returns home to fix up her Aunt’s pension house. She fixes up plumbing and loose boards and even paints the outside a lovely mint colour. Her aunt chides her for painting outdoors in the winter but Mok Hae Won assures her that the weather forecast says there will be no rain anytime soon.
That night Mok Hae Won gets locked out of the house when she goes out in a thunderstorm to check on her paint job. Across the way, she sees a light on in the bookstore.
Goodnight Bookstore
Im Eun Sub sits down at his computer when he hears a knock on the door. He is startled to find Mok Hae Won at the door. He invites her in and gives her something warm to drink. Mok Hae Won looks around the store and notices that many books have bookmarks hanging from them. Im Eun Sub says they are from people who can’t finish reading the books in one sitting. They come back to read the book again later.
Mok Hae Won asks about the name of the store. Im Eun Sub tells her that he hoped his shop would help people to eat and sleep well in their lives.
Through the window, Mok Hae Won sees the lights go on in her Aunt’s place. She goes to leave and Im Eun Sub offers her a coat to wear on the walk. As she leaves him reading alone in his shop, Mok Hae Won gets lost in her memories.
Flashback
We see Mok Hae Won in a school uniform. She reads a poem about eating and sleeping well from another student’s notebook. As she leaves the classroom, Mok Hae Won passes by fellow student Im Eun Sub. It’s unclear how well they know each other.
New Day
Mok Hae Won comes down the stairs ready to work. She tells her Aunt that she is going to clean out the store room. She throws junk from the dusty room with a vigor that surprises her Aunt.
Down the road, Im Eun Sub eats breakfast with his family. His sister tells their parents that Eun Sub has a girlfriend which he denies. The family runs a skating rink outside and wants to go buy some tteokbokki to sell at the rink. Eun Sub tells his mother that he has lent his car out to someone.
The family starts discussing where this foreign girlfriend named “Irene” comes from and whether or not she has an international driver’s license.
Flashback
Mok Hae Won remembers being asked by her boss to pretend to be a student at another music school. Clearly uncomfortable, Mok Hae Won agrees and goes to spy on another school. She is praised for the quality of her playing.
She is caught by the other school’s teacher when she is out with some friends. She is berated by her school’s director for being caught and for being a boring teacher. Other teachers wear costumes and crack jokes to make lessons fun for the students.
Present Day
The phone rings and Mok Hae Won begins to take a reservation from someone wanting to rent a room. Her Aunt comes in and hangs up the phone mid-call. She tells Mok Hae Won that she has closed the pension down. They argue about it. Mok Hae Won wonders how her aunt could close down a business her grandmother had worked so hard to build.
The two continue to argue. Mok Hae Won leaves the house and goes for a walk. She sits outside the bookstore and drinks silently with Im Eun Sub. His sister rides by on a bicycle and stops to ask if this is the foreign girlfriend named Irene.
Flashback
This time we see Im Eun Sub’s memories from the time that Mok Hae Won has arrived back in town. We see him him typing his thoughts out to an internet support group called The Goodnight Club. He tells them that she has returned. The only good thing about winter, he says, is that she returns for the holidays.
He remembers back even further to when they were in school. And we see that their conversation on the roadside her first night in town was a repeat of a conversation they had in the past. She is Irene.
We go back through all of their interactions. Every scene is witnessed from his perspective now. How happy he has been to see her. How he wants to invite her to join The Goodnight Club, and how he watches for her to walk by.
Im Eun Sub remembers how she noticed all his copies of Wind in the Willows on the night of the rainstorm. He remembers how she asked about the name of the store.
We go back to their school days again and see him writing the Goodnight poem during class. Im Eun Sub tells the club how that day was important to him, but that he can’t share that importance with her.
Present Day
Im Hui guesses that Mok Hae Won is Irene. Im Eun Sub becomes flustered and chases her off. Mok Hae Won asks if that’s true and he says that the Irene in Goodnight Irene is just his little sister.
The phone rings and Im Eun Sub runs inside to answer it. It’s a call to a class reunion. Mok Hae Won and Im Eun Sub ride the bus into town to see their former classmates at a restaurant.
The Restaurant
The former classmates laugh and tease each other remembering their past. Mok Hae Won’s friend shows up pushing a stroller and they all switch seats so the friends can sit together. Lee Jang Woo has been getting the most teasing over a crush that he had and deflects attention by saying that he knows other people at the table who had a crush on someone there.
They push Im Eun Sub into admitting that he had a crush on Mok Hae Won in high school. Things get awkwardly quiet until the one friend suddenly notices that her stroller is empty. The former classmates search the restaurant for the wandering toddler.
Later that Night
Mok Hae Won returns home alone. She sits in her room looking at the fish she has drawn on her wrist while she turns her bedside light on and off.
Meanwhile in the bookstore, Im Eun Sub tries telling the Goodnight Club about what he’s done that night. He’s about to share that he has confessed his crush to Irene when he hears a knock on the door. He goes to answer the door and finds Mok Hae Won there. Im Eun Sub pre-emptively tells her that he doesn’t like her anymore and slams the door in her face.
A moment later, Im Eun Sub gathers his courage and goes back to open the door despite his fear.
Final Thoughts:
This drama is very slow and melo. The lighting is dim and warm and everything so far feels very relaxed. It feels like a perfect cozy drama for the cold of winter. The pace may not be for everyone, pretty much nothing exceptional happens, but I think the story is worth letting unfold slowly. I’m someone who enjoys a character-driven ‘boring’ story, so this one feels like it will be right up my alley.
Want to hear more thoughts on the first few episodes of this drama? Check out the Certified Noonas’ new Park Min Young podcast episode.
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