Grand Shining Hotel – K-drama Episode 4 Recap & Review

Chapter 4

Episode 4 of Grand Shining Hotel begins with a background to Ji-hye and Ah-young’s past. Both of them are assistant writers to a fussy and overbearing writer Seo Eun-Sook. Ji-hye quits after being incessantly scolded and degraded by Eun-sook. She opens a small bookstore in a small seaside town. Ah-young joins her and help her set it up while working on her writing. 

It’s through Ji-hye that Ah-young meets Myung-hwan. Ji-hye plans to quit writing for sure and settle down. She also likes Myung-hwan. On the day she plans to confess to Myung-hwan, Myung-hwan confesses to Ah-young instead. As a result, Ji-hye and Ah-young’s friendship falls through even though Ah-young rejected Myung-hwan. Ji-hye tells Ah-young that she suffered because her writing could never be at par with Ah-young’s and leaves.  

Back at the office in the real world, team leader Bae Han-sung cannot believe the project that Tae-min, So-jin and Ah-young is working on and even when they tell him about the whole scenario, he asks Ah-young to get Rebecca’s manuscript before Friday. Ah-young tells the team that the old lady is Rebecca, who is also her friend. 

Ah-young asks Myung-hwan to look for the body of Hyun-joo’s victim near the mountain. Meanwhile, Hyun-joo performs the role of Titania from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Woo-bin. She asks Woo-bin what his play is about and he tells her that it is about a woman killer. They share ideas for the woman’s character and her method of killing with Hyun-joo providing him with her personal killing methodology. She catches on to Ah-young looking at them from afar and kisses Woo-bin. 

Meanwhile, Ah-young searches for Min-woo but to no avail. Min-woo has disappeared. However, he receives a note which directs her to a location. She goes there to find Min-woo unconscious and Hyun-joo standing next to him, threatening to kill him. Ah-young asks Hyun-joo about what she wants and Hyun-joo replies, “You”. 

At the same time, Myung-hwan has found Hyun-joo’s burial grounds where a dog is digging the buried body. Woo-bin finishes him work called, “The Shining Hotel” and goes for a swim. The episode ends with Hyun-joo joining him.

The Episode Review

This episode was quite short in terms of its plot progression. The episode mostly focused on Ah-young and Ji-hye backstory which is quite simplistic. We don’t really know what happened to Ji-hye after her fallout with Ah-young and where did she get hold of the laptop just yet. 

We are slowly diving into the climax of the show. For a short series, Grand Shining Hotel is doing quite well with its storyline even though similar formulae has been experimented with in anime, manga, webtoons and literature as well. But it does manages to hold its ground and with a fast tempo, doesn’t bore the viewers. There is still much to be discovered and so, we will meet you in the next recap!