Yumi’s Cells 3: Episodes 7-8
by Dramaddictally
Rules are made to be broken, as the final season of our story closes with a situation that shatters the Yumi’s Cells mold. We move on from confessions and kissing to quick changes in our characters that cause a lot of inner conflict. But after some secret office dating and a sudden unanswerable question, our leads find themselves happy, and very much on the same page.
EPISODES 7-8
We ended last time with Soon-rok confessing to Yumi at her door, which was a surprise to the cells on both sides. We come back this week with Yumi shooing him away, since Na-hee is there with her, and it’s a quick excuse to get our leads apart so that Yumi has a chance to think about what she’s just heard.
That thinking takes the form of a trial, where Soon-rok’s love cell is charged with a series of offenses. First, he confused Yumi and disrupted her writing. Then he smiled and poured on the charm — going so far as to invite her to a movie and give her an umbrella in the rain. All of this made her heart flutter and race, but then he drew a line by going on a blind date. And worst of all, he went on a date with Yumi’s friend and hurt her feelings too! This is clearly the pattern of an inconsiderate person. And so, the verdict is rejection.
Yumi texts Soon-rok to say she’s going to act like she didn’t hear his confession. She accuses him of being immature and reckless in his behavior and then she calls it a day. On her side, the inner chaos has calmed and she’s back to writing. But on his side, he feels deflated and like he can’t regain his energy. He also realizes that he needs to contact the date he blew off and end things with her properly.
But lucky for everyone, the date calls him to say that she’s reconnected with her ex-beau and they’re getting back together. It all happened suddenly, and she hopes no one is hurt, but of course Soon-rok is just happy to be off the hook. And when Yumi hears this news, she questions her decision to reject Soon-rok since he didn’t really hurt her friend. Running with this (faulty) logic, Emotion Cell gets a surge and wants to go straight to Soon-rok and spew her feelings.
Reason Cell puts the kibosh on this idea, arguing that those unregulated emotional spurts have an age limit. Maybe they worked for Yumi in the past, but she’s in her mid-30s now, and the ability to run full throttle on her feelings isn’t okay anymore. The thing that Yumi isn’t banking on is that she’s not the only one with emotional surges — and Soon-rok is still in his 20s.
The buttoned-down Soon-rok has never experienced this sensation before in his life, but his emotion cell is telling him to go to Yumi. With energy at 100%, he bikes over to her place in order to try again. When she’s not home, he second guesses himself, but then, the thought of her marrying someone else makes him double down his efforts and try her studio, where this time she answers the door.
We get a replay of his last confession, but this time, as he stammers on about being reckless and immature, like she said, he tells her that no matter how he thinks about it, he still has feelings for her. And now, he realizes that he liked her from the start. He’s feeling humiliated by this whole thing until Yumi asks him inside for lunch, and then his energy is converted to nervousness.
She goes about preparing a meal, but Soon-rok wants a response. Finally, Yumi admits that she likes him too and says, “starting now, let’s make this work.” He looks happy and relieved, and just like that, these two are dating. For Soon-rok, this means he can start calling her “noona” immediately, which makes Yumi’s heart echo off the walls — and brings Naughty Cell out of his deep sleep.
The tension builds as they move around the kitchen and almost smack into each other, and Yumi’s Naughty Cell wants to move things forward right away. Reason Cell keeps her in check, as Soon-rok institutes dating rules around their professional life. No handholding near the office — they have to remain a secret — and also no skinship near her studio.
But then, we meet Soon-rok’s naughty cell, who is legions larger than all his other cells, as well as more distinguished. The next thing we know he’s sitting next to Yumi at the table and breaking his own recently instituted rules by leaning in for a kiss. Yumi calls out that he just broke a rule, and he counters that it’s the weekend so it doesn’t count. And this is the beginning of the end for the regimented Soon-rok, who’s about to throw all his rules out the window for the woman he loves.
He truly tries, but while he’s upright at the office, he invites her over at 9PM after work. Yes, it’s laundry day, but he can get it done by then, so she should just come over — tomorrow is a holiday after all, so they have the entire night to hang out. And Yumi, at this point, is thinking that her own rulebook is outdated if this is how the kids are dating these days.
She goes to his house to find he’s a total nerd (my interpretation, not hers), who wants to play video games, talk about superheroes, and pretend they’re at the movie theater when it’s just the two of them at his house. Yumi likes this playful side, which is a contrast to his work persona, and she likens him to Superman and Clark Kent — when the glasses and suits come off, he’s a totally different person.
When Yumi has to leave suddenly due to her parents’ arrival at her home, Soon-rok is sad to be alone. But when her parents leave early, she invites him over, where he can’t pay attention to her stories because all he wants to do is kiss. Finally, he cuts in, leaning into her on the couch — until he’s carrying her off to the bedroom.
After all the spice is set up, the final stretch of our show is about how our characters change. Yumi wants to go public with their relationship at the office, but Soon-rok has been against office dating up to this point. The problem with his principles is that he’s made it clear to their boss, and so, if he starts dating one of his writers, he’s going to be in trouble.
We’re given a visual of Soon-rok’s principles as a Jenga-like tower, where each block is being tossed out the more that he goes against his own rules. That tower is on the verge of collapse, since everything involving Yumi makes him go against his prior ways of living. His golden rule has been not to date at work, but he’s already doing it. And getting caught would mean he’s totally changed.
Yumi understands this, so when he invites her on an impromptu birthday trip to Japan, she has to make a call between getting caught or going on the trip. It happens when Dae-young and Ju-ho end up on their same flight, so Yumi doesn’t get on the plane. She knows how important the secret is to Soon-rok, which is how he ends up in Kyoto alone, sitting in the hotel room that was supposed to be for two.
By the time he returns, he’s changed his mind. Yumi picks him up from the airport and on the way home, he calls Dae-young to inform him of their relationship. It wasn’t Yumi’s intent to make him break his rules, but he kisses her, letting her know it’s his choice. His tower of principles has crumbled to the ground, and now he needs something new to do with all the energy that once went into protecting them.
Quite suddenly, he decides that he wants to spend his days protecting Yumi instead, and he finds himself looking at engagement rings. He’s scheduled to go on a business trip, but beforehand, he takes Yumi out to eat. At first, he tries to pull her into a tteokbokki place that turns out to belong to Bobby’s family (no Jinyoung cameos, sorry). But when it’s closed for vacation, they go elsewhere and Yumi admits why she knows the place, and who her ex is.
Soon-rok doesn’t seem bothered by the talk, but remembering that Yumi was hurt by her ex (who “fell for a young intern”) seems to strengthen his resolve in wanting to protect her. After their meal, he pulls out a diamond solitaire as her belated birthday present. Reason and Emotion cells are both shocked into silence — and even Hunger Cell loses his appetite — as Yumi starts to question the gift.
Yumi understands this is a proposal, but she isn’t prepared to answer right now. Soon-rok has to leave for his trip, so she thinks back over the earlier proposals in her life and enters into a deep inner struggle. She remembers that she brought up marriage with Woong after nine months together, and he didn’t respond. This hurt Yumi and was the beginning of the end for them.
She also thinks of when Bobby proposed after a year and four months, and how Yumi had accepted but then called it off in the end. Now, Soon-rok is proposing after less than a month together. It’s too soon. It would be reckless to say yes. But Love and Emotion argue that if she misses the timing — or hurts Soon-rok by saying no — the question may never come around again. The cells in Yumi’s village are literally at war with each other, and in the middle of all that, Yumi is thinking about how bad Soon-rook must feel for not receiving a response.
This gives her compassion as she thinks about Woong, and how he didn’t respond to her right away. She felt it as a betrayal then, but she sees now that it wasn’t that he didn’t love her. He just had too much weighing on him. She also knows that him not responding right away ultimately killed her hope in the relationship. Still, it’s worse to say yes and then take it back. All of this is floating around her head, when Soon-rok returns, saying that his flight was canceled.
Yumi still hasn’t decided what she wants, but she invites him over and then they talk. He wonders if he should return the ring, if it’s too much pressure. He was swept up in his feeling, but he’s sure they’ll get married, so he can wait. And as says he says all this, Yumi wonders how he’s so certain about them when they hardly know each other. But Soon-rok answers that he’s never felt this way before in his life, and he just knows.
Yumi realizes that no two loves are the same and Soon-rok is a different person than anyone in her past. She shouldn’t be projecting what she went through with prior loves onto him. She responds that she really likes Soon-rok right now, but she needs more time to think. She feels a responsibility to get it right. But when the time comes, she’ll be the one to say it.
Soon-rok seems disappointed, but it’s nothing that some kisses can’t fix. And yet, his regimented personality wants an end-date for her decision time. As they kiss on the couch, Yumi’s parents show up and she hides Soon-rok outside. But when her mom finds the ring on the coffee table, it’s a wrap and Soon-rok emerges to introduce himself. We see Yumi’s cells discussing that they’ll probably be married within the year — or maybe six months now that the parents know.
The end scenes give us Yumi and Soon-rok in wedding attire posing for pictures with each of their cells lined up and ready to be wed to the cells across the aisle. And it looks like happily ever after for our girl Yumi and her lively cells.
Our tale comes to an end after three fun and thought-provoking seasons, and I suspect we’ll be having some mixed reviews. I am personally torn about Season 3, since happily ever after sounds nice on paper, but all the heartbreak of the prior seasons is what made them work for me. I fell in love with the Yumi character in Season 1 not in small part because of Yumi’s realization that “there’s only one lead here.” It has always been Yumi’s story, independent of who she dated, and a little part of me wanted to end it at Season 2 with her growth as a writer on the horizon.
That being said, the final two weeks of this show put us back in the magic of the Yumi world, and I loved watching the romance unfold in surprising ways. Soon-rok turned out to be a likable character, able to stand on his own, even if, in my opinion, he wasn’t given enough time to develop to the level of the men from prior seasons. I was also disappointed with the lack of cameos, which made this season feel disconnected from the earlier ones.
And yet, do I believe these two are end game? Am I satisfied with the result? Yes. The strength of this drama is its subtle understandings of the human psyche and how two psyches interact. Here, it does what it does best, showing us what happens to Yumi when her cells butt up against those of an entirely different person — different from her and different from her exes. She changes, in relation to him, and this time, he also changes in relation to her.
It’s not only that Yumi is older and wiser here that makes this final relationship work, but that Soon-rok hasn’t experienced any of this before, while Yumi has. It’s the first time he’s had a total collapse for someone else, making him certain she’s the one — and that certainty is what Yumi has always wanted. She knows this about herself precisely because she didn’t have it in the past. Which makes the timing of these two right on target.
I am sad to see these characters go once and for all, but I’m happy to have been on the journey. And if I ever feel uncertain, I know I can always go back to Season 2, pull out my Yoo Bobby Fan Club t-shirt, and experience all the love and heartbreak again — which, come to think of it, might just leave me rooting for Soon-rok.
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