Not Others – K-drama Episode 2 Recap & Review

The Neighbourhood Crazy Bitch

Episode 2 of Not Others starts with a young Eun-mi and her friends sitting outside a convenience store smoking. A passerby taunts the high schooler for smoking at a young age and wonders what her parents may think of her. Eun-mi tells the man that she’s an orphan, making things awkward.

The episode then moves to the present day where Eun-mi and Jin-hee are having an argument because Jin-hee kept the news about her demotion a secret from her mother. Jin-hee yells at her mum for going through her stuff and goes to bed. The next morning, she notices that all her underwear is missing from the closet.

In order to get Jin-hee to talk to her, Eun-mi had hidden away her underwear. Jin-hee takes the most normal one of her mother’s and goes to work, feeling uncomfortable. At work, Jin-hee sucks it up as she has to go on patrolling duty with Jae-won.

On their ride, Jae-won shows Jin-hee the ropes since she’s new and asks her to memorise the routes for the patrolling duty. The two have a minor disagreement but drive off. Meanwhile, Eun-mi comes back home to get her phone when she notices her underwear closet had been ransacked and someone had stolen all their underwear.

Jin-hee and Jae-won get an alert about a burglary and she is worried since it’s for her apartment. The two cops go to investigate the crime while Jin-hee tries to call Eun-mi but the latter has left her phone inside the house, as she waits outside for the cops.

Upon arrival at the site of the crime, Jin-hee tries to check on her mother but the woman starts flirting with Jae-won, telling him about the burglary. Eun-mi leans on Jae-won as they go home but Jin-hee is embarrassed. At their apartment, Jae-won is awkward about taking photos of the “scene of the crime” and while Eun-mi asks Jin-hee about the handsome man working with her.

The mother-daughter duo have an argument about her new job when Eun-mi gets a call from the hospital she works at. The physiotherapist receives a call about the number of elderly patients waiting and has to rush back home. Dr Park Sang-gu is instigated by the elderly female patients but when Eun-mi tells him that her house had been burglarised, Dr Park yells at her for being home.

Eun-mi claps back at Dr Park for not being considerate about her situation. The elderly patients Gang-sook, Ae-jae and Eun-shim go back home because Physiotherapist Eun-mi was not going to come in for work that day. Eun-mi asks Jin-hee to go and interrogate the neighbours instead of Jae-won and sends her daughter away. Jin-hee interrogates the neighbours one by one and talks to a male resident.

The male resident drops something and Jin-hee notices that he was wearing a red thong under his pants. She drags him by the thong and creates a scene outside. The neighbours show up and Jae-won tries to arrest the man but Eun-mi pushes him away, trying to teach the man a lesson.

The man is taken to the police station where Eun-mi makes a scene, intriguing the other cops. Eun-mi apologises to the cops and greets them as Jin-hee’s mother. Jae-won starts interrogating the man and learns that he had stolen the panties thinking they belonged to Jin-hee. The man is embarrassed when he learns that they are actually Eun-mi’s.

Eun-mi is angry and starts chasing after the man for trying to harass her daughter. The man is taken into police custody while Jin-hee takes Eun-mi back home after her superiors give her a day off. After the cops had gone back inside, Eun-mi asks Jin-hee to be thankful that she had hidden all her underpants out of her motherly instinct.

At home, Eun-mi and Jin-hee have drinks and the mother is glad that the culprit will be in prison until the time of trial. However, the next day, Eun-mi notices the man coming back home from prison. She confronts him but he is furious at her for wearing a thong at her age.

Eun-mi claims that she would take him to court and have him arrested but the man calls Eun-mi ahjumma, (aunty) claiming that a first-time offender like him had gotten away from a trial just by paying a fine. Eun-mi is pissed and yells at Jin-hee but the latter tries to explain to her mother that the law was not in her hands.

Jin-hee warns her mother from doing something stupid but Eun-mi is adamant about teaching the man a lesson. That day, the panty thief receives a bunch of packages at his house even though she hadn’t placed an order. That night, Eun-mi goes back home and waits for the man to show up at her place.

The panty thief yells at Eun-mi for sending thongs to his address and tries to get inside the house. Eun-mi records their conversation and screams, asking the man to stop trying to harass her. The man is shocked at Eun-mi for making up fake evidence and asks the pervert to stay away.

The man is embarrassed when other neighbours start coming in and rush back home. The next day, Eun-mi is at work when the pervert calls her. The next day, the neighbours scold the panty thief for filling up the hallway with all the delivery boxes. He is called the “panty thief” by other residents and is embarrassed she the women find out that the boxes had panties inside them.

That night, Jin-hee eats her meal all by herself while her coworkers eat together. She watches the news which reports of a man attacking senior-citizen women in the neighbourhood. After finishing her meal, Jin-hee goes back to work and finds Jae-won was still there. She tries to talk to him but Jae-won ignores her.

Jin-hee confronts her senior and asks why he was being so distant towards her when he asks her about an anonymous complaint she had filed. Jae-won claims that Jin-hee’s complaint upset his teammates and they were all demoted but Jin-hee argues that a girl was being abused and no action was being taken from the side of the law. The two have an argument about the case when the rest of the team comes back to work after their meal.

Later that night, Jae-won talks to the officers about the thug who was attacking old women on the streets. That night Eun-mi comes home to see that Jin-hee was organising things because her head hurt just like she used to when she was younger. Eun-mi gives Jin-hee her space to avoid talking to Jin-hee knowing how she gets when she is stressed.

Jin-hee drags her mother in to help her with the task at hand. Eun-mi unwillingly joins Jin-hee, helping her out as the two clean the house while Jin-hee does most of the work and Eun-mi watches.

The duo sit down after cleaning up the whole house when Eun-mi asks Jin-hee to go out and get batteries for the TV remote. Jin-hee yells at her mother for making her go out when she barely helped with cleaning the house. They have an argument after which Jin-hee gives up and goes to get the batteries and popsicles upon Eun-mi’s demand.

That night, Eun-mi and Jin-hee celebrate the fact that the panty thief is vacating his apartment. The next morning, Jin-hee talks to Jae-won, apologising for not thinking over what she has done carefully. A flashback shows Inspector Cha Soon-chul talking to Jin-hee about the female victim’s case and he reveals that the headquarters had asked them to stop investigating.

Present-day Jae-won tells Jin-hee that she should never have become a cop. He asks her to be a wallflower and not cause any trouble, just do as she is told. Jin-hee tells him that she won’t do that and talks back to Jae-won, claiming she will do as it pleases her.

At work, a male patient asks Eun-mi to massage his butt when she gets pissed off and uses all her power to massage him and teach him a lesson. The other patients at the hospital are shocked and Eun-mi tells the patient that she will be using more force against him if he comes back for a session.

The next day, Jin-hee is dreading going back to work after her conversation with Jae-won. At work, none of the cops want to go on patrolling rounds with Jin-hee and she is stuck with Jae-won. Meanwhile, at the police station, Dr Park wonders what drove the male patient away and tells Eun-mi that he would talk to the patient.

That night, Eun-mi and Jin-hee get together for dinner and Eun-mi tells her daughter that it was she who had attacked the man who was going out in the night, stalking and assaulting older women. The two are at the supermarket getting groceries and Eun-mi believes that she needs to be rewarded. Jin-hee asks her mother to give it a rest and stop trying to reveal her identity since the culprit hadn’t been caught.

Eun-mi and Jin-hee have an argument in public as Jin-hee asks her to be more careful. She promises to take her mother to get a reward once the culprit was caught. Jin-hee tries to cheer Eun-mi up and takes her out for a meal but Eun-mi is too upset to talk to her.

At the restaurant, the mother-daughter duo have another argument about Eun-mi not being a great parent to Jin-hee when she was a child. Jin-hee claims that Eun-mi never brought an umbrella to her at school when it was raining heavily.

Eun-mi replies that she doesn’t remember the things she’s done to compensate for that like running her a hot bath and making her hot cocoa after she got wet in the rain. The restaurant owner compliments Eun-mi for looking so young at her age and claims that the mother-daughter duo spoke to each other as if they were friends.

The episode ends with an epilogue of a man editing a photo of Eun-mi nabbing the stalker that attacked the old woman. The man unbars Eun-mi’s face in the photo to reveal who she really is.

The Episode Review

This show is so chaotic and hilarious. However, over the last two episodes, the show has an awful lot of mention of bras and panties. Since the last episodes did demand the mention and depiction of undergarments, I want to hope that the makers delve into other issues that women deal with.

I sense tension between Jin-hee and Jae-won and I would love to see Soo-young and Sung-hoon together because they do have palpable chemistry. It is clear that Eun-mi is the childish mother while Jin-hee has to deal with her mother’s tantrums. The older women are chaotic too but it looks like they will soon turn into Eun-mi’s saving grace as the episodes progress.