Summary
“Catch Me If You Can” is about running away from one’s problems as Ung and Yeon-su realize that they’re rapidly running out of road.
This recap of Our Beloved Summer season 1, episode 7, “Catch Me If You Can”, contains spoilers.
“Catch Me If You Can”, the first episode of this week’s double-bill, kind of exists beneath the lingering specter of Ung’s outburst at the tail end of last week’s outing. It’s the old “morning after the night before” deal when sober minds have to do the accounting. When the episode opens with Ung explaining to the documentary crew that he was always been prone to running away from his problems, it isn’t immediately clear what purpose the flashbacks, funny though they might be, actually have. Then the penny drops. It’s to make a point of showing how Ung confronting his feelings is against his nature.
Our Beloved Summer season 1, episode 7 recap
Of course, Yeon-su sees things the opposite way – except she was the first to use her being drunk as an excuse not to engage with Ung and his points. It’s a nice reversal of the usual dynamic. From the park to the library, both Yeon-su and Ung try and fail to avoid each other and the matter at hand until they have no choice but to sit down and talk things out – at Ung’s family eatery, which perhaps isn’t an ideal venue given how much Ung’s family fawn over Yeon-su. But needs must.
Yeon-su is still keen to blame everything on being drunk. She’s refusing to really give Ung a say, which, I think, leads to the first time we’ve really seen the two of them directly confront their relationship and breakup in the present day. As Ung explains to her, he has always just blithely accepted whatever she wanted, including their separation. She has always been dominant. He has always been the one who runs away. Now, though, as an adult, he wants answers, openness, and candor. Yeon-su is shocked to hear it, and more shocked still when he walks away.
Fittingly, Ung walks right into NJ, who has spent the entire episode until this point suing everyone who has sexually harassed her online. There’s probably a bit of symbolism at play here, with this conversation taking place in a playground and revolving, mostly, around the lightness NJ feels around Ung, the way he brightens up her day when she sees him, which is a somewhat childlike version of human connection – reminiscent, perhaps, of how Ung and Yeon-su probably felt about each other back in the day, or at least how he felt about her until she left.
The comedic highpoint of “Catch Me If You Can” occurs right at the end when both Ung and Yeon-su are “abducted” by the documentary crew and taken on a winding, mountainous road to a remote house in the middle of nowhere where they’re staying for three days. Ung comments that perhaps this isn’t romance anymore, but a cliched horror-thriller film. It’d certainly be a fun change of pace if it was.
You can stream Our Beloved Summer season 1, episode 7, “Catch Me If You Can”, exclusively on Netflix.
