Motel California – K-drama Episode 1 Recap & Review

Episode 1

Episode 1 of Motel California begins with a small girl named Kang-hee being teased by other kids in the woods. She stands in front of her friends and pushes them behind her. As she expected, lightning strikes a tree near one of her bullies and strikes him down. Little Kang-hee smiles.

We then shift to a store, where a middle-aged man named Ji Chun-pil is sitting by a window and eating. A younger man named Yeon-soo comes by and sits next to him. Chun-pil gives Yeon-soo an envelope full of cash and tells him to give it to Kang-hee. After some persistence, Yeon-soo agrees. Chun-pil then leaves to meet someone.

Yeon-soo is about to go meet some friends when he gets a call from Kang-hee, who says she is taking the last bus to Seoul and vows to never come back “here.” “Here” happens to be Motel California, owned by her father. Yeon-soo goes to meet her and finds her sitting in the dark. The electricity has been cut off, she says, because they haven’t paid the bill.  

She takes Yeon-soo to her room where a giant teddy bear is sitting on the bed. Her father bought this insanely expensive teddy bear for her birthday (she turns 20 the following day). She then asks Yeon-soo if he’s really not going to Seoul for college. He says he isn’t and that he has no ambition. Suddenly, she asks him if he’ll sleep with her.

She says she wants to be his first and begins to kiss him. He asks if she won’t leave if he sleeps with her but she says she will. Internal monologues from both of them reveal that she wants to go somewhere people won’t know she’s different. She tells him not to lose weight and to not let anyone see him without his glasses.

They indeed sleep with each other and afterwards Yeon-soo gives her the envelope her father sent. Funnily enough, Chun-pil has sent her a note telling her to use birth control. Yeon-soo then takes Kang-hee to the bus station. She tells him to sell the teddy bear and use the money for Charlie (a pregnant cat), after she’s given birth. Kang-hee draws a small house on a soda can and leaves it behind for Yeon-soo, as she gets on the bus and leaves.

Fast forward to 2023, an older, thinner Yeon-soo is a veterinarian. We see him help a cow give birth to a calf. The farmer offers to find a match for him in return for the help but Yeon-soo says he already has a girl he’s going to marry. He says he goes up to Seoul every weekend to see her.

Meanwhile, Kang-hee is working at a construction site. When the manager messes with her, calling her weak and mocking her fancy degree, she twists his arm to prove her strength. When he doesn’t stop harassing her, she flips him off and quits the job.

A woman who had come to visit the site watches Kang-hee. She approaches Kang-hee and introduces herself as Hwang Jung-goo, the new site manager who works at a company named Moment. She knows Kang-hee used to be an interior designer and tells her to interview at Moment. Kang-hee has been disillusioned by all the rejections she received for having a degree from a lower university. Jung-goo convinces her to trust her.

Kang-hee goes to the Moment office but the receptionist looks down on her and talks about her rudely to someone else on the phone. Kang-hee leaves the office but sees a vision of Yeon-soo staring at her. She agrees to go back.

A flashback shows the two of them in their high school days. Yeon-soo convinces Kang-hee to go get ice-cream with him. She realises that every time an incident happens at the motel and the police are called, Yeon-soo does this. She asks him how he knows and he says he doesn’t, he just looks at her.

At present, Kang-hee barges into the Moment office and gives the receptionist a piece of her mind. She then storms into Jung-goo’s office and speaks to her directly. Jung-goo takes her to the company’s CEO and convinces him to take her on for a project. He agrees to do so as an internship, before taking her on as a full-time employee.

Kang-hee later asks Jung-goo why she is going to such lengths. Jung-goo says it’s because the day they met at the construction site, Kang-hee thought she was a co-worker and gave her useful information about the shady goings-on at the site. She is now repaying that debt.

Yeon-soo comes to Seoul and meets his friend, Han-woo, who ridicules him for coming to Seoul every time he gets a day off. He knows Yeon-soo is only visiting because of the small chance of him bumping into Kang-hee.

At work, Jung-goo makes sure the CEO takes Kang-hee with him for the client meeting. The client turns out to be Geum Seok-kyung, a rich man who is commissioning a house for his friends. The CEO soon leaves but Kang-hee stays to meet the friends who will be living in the new house.

While they wait, Kang-hee and Seok-kyung head out for coffee which coincidentally turns out to be the place where Yeon-soo and Han-woo are having coffee. Yeon-soo sees her but freezes. She’s gone before they can look for her.

Kang-hee and Seok-kyung meet the couple who will be living in the house and she gets an idea of what kind of space they want. She makes her designs accordingly but the CEO insults them in front of everybody. He essentially fires Kang-hee and says he’ll reach out if he needs part-timers.

As Kang-hee packs her stuff, Jung-goo speaks to the CEO and tells him she likes Kang-hee’s design. But the CEO insults her as well and says this is why she was demoted from the design team. Kang-hee overhears the CEO calling her a B-grade designer and finally loses it. She enters, yells at the CEO, and leaves. She once again sees a vision of Yeon-soo on the street but walks past him this time.

On the train, she muses that she didn’t leave Yeon-soo and come all the way to Seoul to live like this. As she walks home, it begins to snow. A flashback shows Yeon-soo and Kang-hee as little kids walking down the street. She tells him if he eats the first snow ten times, he can marry his first love. He does so and then asks her to marry him.

Back in the small town, Yeon-soo stands on the roof watching the snow when a man urgently calls him. He rushes to the hospital and bids his ailing grandfather goodbye.

At the funeral, nobody expects Kang-hee to show up because she’s been away for ten years. But she does show up and Yeon-soo is the first to reach her and hug her. It takes her a second, but she recognises the man hugging her as Yeon-soo at the end of Motel California Episode 1.


The Episode Review

Motel California Episode 1 starts off quite well! It’s light and breezy but spans so many years and so much between our two leads, that it doesn’t feel slow at all. We get a good sense of who these people are, particularly Kang-hee, her ambition, and all the disappointments that came with it.

On the other hand, Yeon-soo seems sweet and kind even if most of his personality seems to be made up of pining for Kang-hee. No complaints here though, this is an enjoyable dynamic. Both, Lee Se-young and Na In-woo are doing a great job and their relationship comes across as familiar and comforting.

It’s definitely not conventional to have the main leads sleep together in the very first episode, which makes me hope that this is not a conventional small-town story.

As much as we can expect the opposites-attract and best-friends-to-lovers tropes, there’s still a lot unknown about Kang-hee’s life at the motel and about Yeon-soo’s family, whom we barely know anything about. The information gaps are just right. And that heartfelt reunion at the end of the episode really keeps you wanting more!

 

Next Episode

Expect A Full Season Write-Up When This Season Concludes!

  • Episode Rating
    (4)
4

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