Backstreet Rookie – K-Drama Episode 3 Recap and Review

Your Horoscope For Today

To say last week’s set of episodes caused some major divisiveness in the community would be an understatement. From the cultural issues surrounding Dal-Sik through to the questionable way of presenting the main romance of the drama, Backstreet Rookie has not got off to the best of starts.

Despite some initial promise in the main plot line when things settled down a bit, this week only seems to reinforce that this show doesn’t have an awful lot of depth with its story, relying heavily on tried and tested tropes and seemingly going down the cliched love triangle angle now as Yeon-Joo is given more screen-time.

Episode 3 of Backstreet Rookie begins with Saet-Byul daydreaming about dancing with Dae-Hyun. When she awakens, she’s immediately startled by a big star from Sky Castle arriving whom she asks for an autograph from. After catching her composure again, she continues to go about her job before heading home and checking her horoscope.

The next day, Saet-Byul tries flirting with Dae-Hyun, putting on make-up and starting to get closer to him but he misinterprets her signals, believing she’s trying to stir up trouble. As he hurries off during their shift change, Saet-Byul sits with her friend Geum-Bi and they discuss her sister Eun-Byul, until she notices a couple shoplifting and rushes off to track down the bullies and teach them a lesson.

While she does, Dal-Sik hides in the shadows and watches, shocked at her abilities. However, when Saet-Byul spots him and they sit together, he thinks twice about telling Dae-Hyun.

When Saet-Byul returns to the store, so too does Dae-Hyun who has a delivery and admires the clothes within. Yeon-Joo rings though and it immediately annoys Saet-Byul. However, Dae-Hyun is distracted when his Father walks past drunk, begrudgingly forcing him to bring the man home.

In the morning, Dae-Hyun’s Father has quite the hangover but Dae-Hyun leaves and heads to the convenience store for work, where the horoscope-obsessed Saet-Byul asks him to cover for her the following night.

After seeing Yeon-Joo at the office getting closer to Seung-Joon, Dae-Hyun drowns his sorrows in alcohol and tentatively asks Saet-Byut for the name of the horoscope app so he can download it himself and check what it says in relation to Yeon-Joo.

It turns out the day off Saet-Byul wanted was to visit the site of her Father’s grave with Eun-Byul to pay her respects.  While she does, Dae-Hyun continues to take pictures with the schoolgirls but when Yeon-Joo rings inviting him out, they realize he may have a girlfriend and hurry away, much to his Mother’s displeasure.

As they sit together and eat in a restaurant, Dae-Hyun immediately feels awkward in regards to her closeness to Director Cho. It turns out they were close friends in the past and his jealousy was misplaced.

While they begin eating together, it just so happens to be the same restaurant Saet-Byul is eating at with her friends. As they discuss Eun-Byul and how she’s sleeping at home, in actual fact she’s out singing karaoke with her friends in a bid to save them from a group of thugs. Unfortunately they snap a photo of the group, with Eun-Byul standing up and towering over the girls as blackmail for when she becomes a big star.

Unfortunately, Yeon-Joo barging past this bully causes her to run into problems in the bathroom. Thankfully, Saet-Byut walks into the toilets at the same time and saves her inadvertently, beating down the bullies. As Dae-Hyun arrives to check on Yeon-Joo, he spots Saet-Byul there too and the truth around who they all are comes out into the open, leaving things wide open for tomorrow’s episode.

Despite some slightly better drama this time around, as mentioned earlier the plot-line feels very paper-thin and there isn’t a lot of meat to the main narrative. The love triangle angle is pretty formulaic but there’s enough to enjoy some of the humorous scenes that are dotted throughout this series.

Quite what the rest of this series has in store for us though remains to be seen.