Our Beloved Summer season 1, episode 13 recap – “Love Actually”

This recap of Our Beloved Summer season 1, episode 13, “Love Actually”, contains spoilers.

Life is a rollercoaster, or so that played-out expression goes, and the ups never last for long. Every high comes with a crushing low, life an endless parade of peaks and valleys. That’s the way a beating heart looks on a monitor, which is irony for you – the pattern is literally part of being alive. Yeon-su and Ung have never been happier, or at least haven’t been so happy for a while. And that means that both are worrying about what might go wrong.

Our Beloved Summer season 1, episode 13 recap

So is everyone else. Ji-ung has sequestered himself away out of grief, so he has nothing to offer, but Eun-ho wants assurances that things will be different this time, as does Yeon-su’s grandmother. Even Ung’s parents are intrigued. It’s a lot to handle, especially when these two have historically not handled anything all that well.

When Yeon-su reads a silly online article about couples who argue and break up frequently, she gets it in her head that she must show Ung a new side of herself, which only works to create further awkwardness between them. It makes for a funny string of scenes, but it also touches on something truthful about the fragility of relationships. Perhaps the fact that Ung is able to identify the façade and gently remind her that she doesn’t need one is evidence enough that they’ve both grown up plenty since they were last together.

Ung and Yeon-su get a good night together out of this and gain some understanding of where they both are. Fans will delight at Ung’s assurances that Yeon-su is new and exciting every time he’s with her and doesn’t need to be anyone other than herself. But their improved communication skills do little to assuage anyone else’s fears or problems. Ji-ung continues to hide away in the editing suite, and NJ drives herself bonkers trying to figure out how to respond to Ung’s deliberately platonic text message.

Eventually, NJ decides to visit Ung in person and is visibly stung by how awkward he suddenly feels in her presence. She handles the rejection in a funny way but reminds Ung that he can call her if he and Yeon-su break up again. What is it about this guy?

At the same time, Yeon-su goes to visit Ji-ung, mostly out of concern, but after having dinner together she asks to see the documentary footage, and her reaction to it only makes him more miserable, since all she’s interested in is the way she was looking at Ung. When she asks him to join the pair of them for dinner and he says he “needs some time”, she takes it as he’s just busy with work. At this point, I can’t tell if Yeon-su is truly oblivious to how he feels about her, but it certainly seems that way.

Of course, “Love Actually” closes by making things a little awkward between Yeon-su and Ung, when he confesses to having never graduated college. As it turns out, he only went in the first place for her sake, and never really saw the point. But the conversation leads Ung to ask outright why Yeon-su broke up with him all those years ago. That’s a question that has yet to be adequately answered, and it seems like it’s going to need an explanation before things can continue.

You can stream Our Beloved Summer season 1, episode 13, “Love Actually”, exclusively on Netflix.