Summary
“A Secret That Can’t Be Told” is a steady episode that leans into the love triangle cliche, dropping some needed humour in the process.
This recap of Our Beloved Summer season 1, episode 5, “A Secret That Can’t Be Told”, contains spoilers.
You can’t have a romance without a love triangle, it seems, and “A Secret That Can’t Be Told” spends most of its runtime developing that angle. But it does so decently well, utilizing its dual-timeline, genre-blending structure to build up the idea of Ji-Ung as a firm friend to Choi-Ung before positing him as a potential love rival. Their relationship begins in the year 2000 and winds through to the present day, and even if you can’t help but feel the weight of such obvious cliché in Ji-Ung’s fondness for Yeon-Su, it’s handled with enough lightness and earnestness that it’s hard to mind.
Our Beloved Summer season 1, episode 5 recap
As kids, Choi-Ung and Ji-Ung bonded over their shared name and loneliness, with the latter befriending the former but eventually coming to exist as his shadow, toiling away in the shade of his increasing attention and success. We all need a friend like Ji-Ung, one who quietly supports us, and who might even be willing to step away from the girl we like, despite him having an eye for her too. That’s a more fertile setup for a love triangle than usual and helps Our Beloved Summer not get overwhelmed by its more arch storytelling elements. This remains a show rooted in character, first and foremost.
In the present, and following on from the previous episode, Yeon-Su is disappointed to learn that Nu-a’s involvement was a deliberate effort by Mr. Jang to stir up drama, which Choi-Ung, somewhat understandably, blames her for. With more context for his relationship with Ji-Ung, his difficulty in opening up about his feelings even to his friend has a nice echo of the past about it. Ji-Ung is loyal enough that he reassures Choi-Ung that Yeon-Su would never do such a thing, despite it perhaps being in his best interests to let Yeon-Su see Choi-Ung acting childishly and unprofessionally. Again, that’s a real friend.
“A Secret That Can’t Be Told” folds this back into the main plot by having Ji-Ung and Choi-Ung turn up at the struggling pub being run by Yeon-Su’s best friend Sol-Yi, which puts everyone in the same place and allows them to hash out their various issues, including Choi-Ung deciding he’s going to work with Nu-A. He also apologizes for being childish, which is fair enough. Of course, the lingering matter of their breakup prevents the conversation from being too open, even if it is awkward for Eun-Ho and Sol-Yi, who’re also present.
Regardless, Our Beloved Summer episode 5 eventually leads to Choi-Ung deciding to draw for 100 hours, working out as roughly 19 a day, all of which will be filmed, while Yeon-Su’s efforts on the admin side of things are also chronicled. It’s a nice parallel of them working together despite not being in the same proximity. Not at first, anyway! Eventually, increasingly concerned about Choi-Ung’s wellbeing, Yeon-Su visits him at home to deliver him some tea, at which point he asks if she wants to stay over. Drama!
As if that wasn’t enough, the obligatory epilogue, shared between Choi-Ung and Mr. Jang, suggests that the latter might be fonder of Yeon-su than the level of a mere business partner, as he claims. A love square, maybe?
