We have heard good things about Extraordinary You and had quite a few requests to pick this one up, so we checked it out and immediately liked it. So, welcome to the line-up Extraordinary You (and thank you everyone for the recommendation)!
We are in catch-up mode at the moment, so we hope to post an episode a day until we are all caught up for live-ish recaps starting next week!
Caution: Be wary of typos!
EXTRAORDINARY YOU: EPISODE 1 (1&2) RECAP
We open on the outside of a high school on what looks like its first day or at least a day when everyone is walking or driving their kids to school. This place looks like it was created for the wealthiest kids in Korea. A female student, Dano, gets out of a car and every head turns to her.
VO – For the main female character, there are some things that are unavoidable.
She is stopped by a boy sitting on the fountain who asks her why she isn’t picking up the phone.
VO – You are the handsome guys’ obsession
Some other boys kick a ball and it goes to her.
VO – Things like this should come to her
They tell Dano to kick them the ball, she just shrugs and keeps walking. Then she sees a boy drive up on a motorcycle
VO – We should have a James Dean style character. He is the main character
He tells her that it is nice to see her again and throws his helmet at her. She shrugs and throws it back saying that she is not easy.
Everyone hurries to go inside but he drops his keys so she runs up to give it to him. He shrugs and keeps walking inside.
Inside, Dano talks with one of her friends about fate and how there can e a prince in a white horse. But then all the girls start to scream as the hottest boys in the high school walk up the hallway to their class.
Every girl in the hallway is screaming and squealing about these A3 boys, they are so handsome!
But then here comes a fumbling girl carrying a lot of items and tripping all over the place. She trips and falls right into the handsomest boy of all and accidentally kisses him as they tumble to the ground. Everyone gasps for a moment.
She tries to apologize and dust him off. Everyone grows quiet as he tells her that she ruined his uniform. Dano comes up to him and tells him to stop. Do you think you can do this because you are A3? She then starts to help the girl pick up her things. Do-hwa starts to help as well.
The handsome boy tells Dano that she is the first woman to tell that to him. She walks right by him. But then there is a glitch. She turns around and wonders what is going on.
Suddenly she kind of wakes up in a classroom where kids are talking and throwing things around. The teacher is not in the classroom. Her friends ask her if she studied? I know you did, look at your textbook, you studied so hard.
Dano does not know what is going on, she grabs her notebook to look at it and realizes that this is her writing. The teacher walks in and starts to hand out the text. Dano thinks that this must be a dream. She looks at the board, it is upside down.
Then she wakes up again and is in another classroom. There is an English teacher this time. The teacher tells them to put down their pens. She looks at her scantron and sees that everything is answered already. Everyone turns in their things and start talking about what happened earlier with the girl falling on one of the A3 boys.
Dano looks at the video and remembers that this happened. Yo-juda fell on Namgu, but she does not remember other things. Am I going crazy?
HOSPITAL
She goes to the doctor and talks to Juwha about her memory loss and if this has to do with her heart surgery and her drug and if this means that she is going to die! He tells her to calm down, you are just studying too hard.
She talks about time jumping and not remembering things. The doctor tells her that she is okay, after a long sleep everything will be normal. Also, read less comics. She tells him not to joke. He smiles and says that all Korean high school students experience the same thing.
Dano goes home to her huge fabulous house and looks up amnesia things and Alzheimer’s while relaxing in bed. She is really trying to figure out her time jump. But she can’t figure it out.
SCHOOL DAY
Outside the school, Baek Kyung’s father asks him if he went to the hospital? I told you that you should go to the hospital whenever Dano goes to the hospital. Baek Kyung says he did not know. His father tells him that her father has so many businesses, so don’t miss that chance.
Cut to Dano walking up to school, but then she feels another surge of something and looks around. But she shakes it off and runs up to Baek Kyung. She happily wants to talk to him, but he is bothersome and annoyed. She tells him that she was really sick, her memory was unclear and she heard hallucinations. He tells her to just make an excuse about her heart and then he walks away.
Dano is all like, what the F? I was sick! My memory was off and I was hallucinating! She makes a punching motion that makes all the other kids look at her and think that her arm looks strong.
Dano goes inside her classroom and talks to her friend who tells her that everyone in their classroom knows that she likes Baek Kyung.
But then time jumps again and she is in all new clothes as if it is gym time. She stands up and tells her friend that she was just talking to her. Why are we all like this now? Did something happen?
Then she time jumps again and is in class in her uniform with her love refrigerator on her friend’s desk and her desk showing all the things they love about their boys. Dano wonders why she is like this! Her friend tells her that everyone knows that she likes Baek Kyung.
Dano remembers her friend saying this previously and thinks something is wrong. Then she goes to eat and suddenly flashes to eat something else and then flashes to eat something else and then flashing to something else. She thinks that sometimes the flash is short, but sometimes it is several days later.
VO – I don’t’ know when I will open my eyes or where I will wake up.
She walks up in several different places until she is on her school’s upstairs breezeway bridge. She takes a few deep breathes to settle herself and thinks that her memory is definitely not normal.
Inside, we see a boy sitting from behind and looking at the light shining on his hand from the window. he is in the library. Dano goes into the library as well and starts to look around for books about losing your memory.
She grabs a bunch of them that explain total amnesia and partial amnesia but she can’t really wrap her head around it.
But then she sees a book moving on its own in the shelf, so she stands up and grabs it. On the cover of the book, the characters move around. The letters spell SECRET, but then the letters move. Suddenly, she starts to see things. Her heart races as she steps backward and falls into Baek Kyung.
He keeps her from falling over and asks her if she followed him there. Can you just stop? Dano starts to run away. Another girl comes up and wonders how Baek Kyung can be around her for all those years, it is so much like stalking. I am so tired of her.
But then the other boy walks by and bumps into Baek Kyung. We still do not see his face. This boy looks at Kyung and then continues walking away. But his face is completely lit with sunlight, so we don’t see what he looks like.
Dano goes to the bathroom to wash her face and waits for another time jump. But then she hears someone banging on the door in the bathroom. Dano lets her out to see another girl, Yeo Joo-da all wet and possibly crying. Dano asks if someone gave her a hard time? You just moved here, they should be nice to you.
She says that she is really okay, thank you for rescuing me. Yeo Jooda walks out so Dano looks in the mirror again and thinks that her own memory is disappearing.
She goes outside and thinks that her memory is disappearing, she sees hallucinations, and her personality is changing and now I am helping Yeo Jooda? Maybe I have a huge disease! I am super sick!
She keeps talking to herself which wakes up Oh Nam-joo (his name means Male Main Character). He tells Dano to stop talking. So he just leaves after complaining about how loud Dano is.
Nam-joo goes to his hang out place with his A3 people and talks about how Dano bothers him so much. he looks at a cute doggie keychain and asks Baek Kyung what he thinks about that girl because she keeps bothering me. But they don’t actually know what girl he is talking about (or at least they don’t mention her by name).
Elsewhere, Dano is going momentarily insane as she tries to figure out why she is so weird lately, is she like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide? ut then she thinks about her hallucination that actually happened and wonders if she can actually see the future? Or am I really going crazy?
Dano’s friends happily chat somewhere inside the school when Dano comes up to them, they start to talk about the cute boy that will serve the food today. JinMiche is serving the food for whenever they have jinmichae, so including the other 3, they are all like A4. Soo-chul says that he should be included as A5. Her friend tells him to just stop.
Then the very blond JinMiche comes out with the dried squid. All the girls go up to him to get some food. Sae-mi is so happy to get the food. Dano is less than happy because her memory is bothering her. She mutters as much which gets the attention of Jinmichae. It looks like he might know something.
Dano sees the curry and remembers her vision of all the curry falling on her, so she sighs and hopes that she does not get too much on herself. She goes to sit with her friends and asks them what they would do if they saw the future. They both say something about being YouTube famous or something else. Dano says that she would stop all the unfortunate things from happening.
Cut to three bad girls walking up to Yeo Joo-da and giving her a hard time for getting a scholarship to go to the school. But a teacher comes up and tells these kids to go to their own seats.
However, a lot of girls start to look at each other and give each other signals and smiles. Something bad might be about to happen. Dano tells her friends that she is going to stop the unfortunate event. She needs to keep Jooda from falling.
Jooda gets up to leave, which is part of the plan to get her to trip. So Dano runs up to stop her from getting tripped, but that only makes Dano get tripped as well as Jooda. Curry gets all over them both. All the students take lots of photos and chide them.
But then someone grabs one of their phones and throws it against the wall (It looks like it is Nam-joo). Everyone grows quiet as this kid asks them if they are crazy? he walks forward and helps Dano up.
CLASSROOM
Later on, Dano can’t focus in class as she thinks about hallucinations and also glances back at the mystery boy. He pretends like he is not looking at her. But, while thinking about things, she thinks that what is happening is that she definitely can see the future. So she hops up and tells the teacher that she has to go to the clinic.
She hops into the hallway and tells her brain, SHOW ME THE FUTURE. But it does not work, so she tries several different stances and ways to try and see the future as she dramatically holds her arms up or swings her body around and yells SHOW ME THE FUTURE.
All the kids from the classroom can see Dano looking all crazy in the hallway so the teacher tells Baek Kyung to take Dano to the clinic since everyone knows that she likes him (they are fiance). Nam-joo tells them all to shut up.
So Baek Kyung goes outside to the hallway and asks Dano what she is doing. She is now using her hands like binoculars as she tries to see into the future. She tells him to keep going his own way. But he just tells her to stop this one-sided love, it makes me tired. She tells him that this is true but you need to keep your manners! She tries to walk after him, but her legs stop.
He tells her to just stop, I don’t like sick women. Your one-sided love will not work. I will never like someone like you. he walks away.
Dano goes to the bridge and wonders why she didn’t say anything to him just then! What is this disease! She covers her face as she thinks this is so embarrassing, but then, suddenly sees a wormhole opening between her fingers.
The wormhole is just right in the distance. But no one else sees it. However, it looks like Jinmichae might see it? They make eye contact for a moment. However, she is distracted for a moment and Jinmichae disappears.
So she goes to find him in his cook area and tells him that he saw it! We saw it by the bridge! That big round thing! He plays like he does not know. She sighs, but then she sees that same book that she saw in the library. he notices her looking at it, so he hops and sits on it.
She runs out to the library to find it (leaving him to say that she is quicker than expected). She finds the space for the book which also has a wormhole in it. She reaches into it and feels a surge of something, so she pulls her hand out. But she thinks it is all connected. The space here and the bridge and the Jinmichae fairy!
She goes back to peek in on him and then finds a moment to sneak in and read the book. When Jinmichae leaves, she grabs the book to read it and sees the exact same scene that Baek Kyung told her about one-sided love. Word for word, it is the same.
Dano is shocked, is this – me!
She drops the book and we see all the comic book scenes with her conversations. They are the exact conversations. Jin Michae comes back in and tells her that she saw it. She asks him if this character is her? He tries to avoid it.
She asks if he sees the future as well? Only you and me see it. He tells her to calm down and listen to him. We are not human. We fill the void area in scenes. You know, you were about to take the Korean exam, but it is already the next day. And you don’t have a memory of coming to school, but you are already at school. And then a few days pass.
Normally, you don’t feel it, but when you are conscious of it, then you feel that void area. This is – the world of comics! She is all like, wow, um, you are crazy.
He tells her that he will live longer than the artist expects. She tells him that she is stupid to listen to him. But he pulls her close to tell her that she is a character in a cartoon book.
She starts to talk really fast about all that he said as she tries to figure it out. he says that is all true! So she tells him, thank you for your BS, and tries to leave. He stops her and says that it is hard to believe because they haven’t built their trust.
She basically tells him to get out of the way and hurries off. Jinmichae walks after her and tries to explain it. This leads to a mini chase around the campus both inside and out as he tries to continue explaining things.
He finally catches her on the bridge and says that he can throw her from the bridge to show her. But then he takes her phone and throws it instead. But the phone floats instead of hitting the ground.
She sees her friends running under the bridge and tells then that Jinmichae tried to push me off the bridge! Suddenly they appear on the bridge laughing. Dano has to explain to them again what happened. The friends tell her that she was with them and her cell phone is in her hand.
Dano looks at her hand and sure enough, the cell phone is there.
Cut to her inside the classroom with her friends as they talk about all the same things that they always talk about. Dano thinks that she remembers this because she has her consciousness now so she is remembering all of this.
She runs off and finds Jimichae who has lots of girls squealing after him as he happily walks past. She is able to stop him to talk, but then time jumps to the lobby where Nam-joo is walking toward them. The friend tries to fall into him but falls away so Nam-joo tells Dano that he will give her a chance to say thank you. But Dano cannot talk to him for a moment. She wanted to say thank you.
Nam-joo leaves wondering what is going on.
So Dano goes back to Jinmichae who is reading the book and tells her that the writer knows everything. They play tug-of-war with the book and break it. he tells her to just accept it, cartoon character Dano.
She takes the cartoon to the classroom and tells her friend that they are in a cartoon world. her other friend Soo-chul is all like, whaaaaaat, really? They all start to joke about that and talk about how Dano has a good memory. The most important talent for a person is a good imagination.
But then Dano wakes up again in the classroom on a different day. Dano tells her friend if she remembers what she said about the cartoon world? Her other friend is all like whaaaaaat? A cartoon world? It is basically the exact same thing as the other characters say and do the same thing.
Dano wakes up again and hears the sound of a page flipping int he book. She thinks that she is definitely in the cartoon world. The same thing happens again with her friend saying, whaaaaaaat cartoooon worrrrrld? And everything playing their same roles.
Dano reads the one page of the cartoon over and over again into nightfall and thinks that this might be true, maybe I am in a cartoon?
She goes home and looks through all her family photo albums to think through this nonsense. She thinks that it all fits the formula of the female character. As realization hits, she goes to the fridge and just looks at it. Her father comes out and asks if she is sick? She asks if she is Dano? He looks at her crazy and says that she is Dano.
Dano asks, what if this is a cartoon? He tells her that it is good to be a cartoon, I can do everything that I want to do. I can fix your heart as well. She says that it is a cartoon world, not like you are a cartoon. he tells her that it doesn’t matter. Stop playing with your imagination and go to bed to be ready for school.
Cut to the mystery boy drawing a picture of Dano.
MORNING
In the morning, Dano wakes up and thinks that her heart is pumping, nothing has changed, I am the real thing, Eun Dano. She gets let off at school and takes a deep breath as she walks in.
All the heads turn to her so she thinks that she is the main character. But then she sees Joo-da being super clumsy and also getting a lot of attention. Dano thinks that she is a poor girl that is ostracized, but she is bright, so that is good.
Dano does a little spin and thinks that she is 18-year-old Eun Dano, the main character in a comic. She goes to her locker and puts a new headpiece jewel in her hair. Her friends come up to explain how pretty it is.
VO – I am the only daughter of a rich family who gets all the love. I have a weak heart but had all the surgeries and miraculously survived. Most of all, I am the princess of Three High School who is sassy. That is me, the main character of a love novel
But then she is pulled from her thoughts when the three mean girls start to bother Joo-da again. Dano thinks that she should step up. So she goes to the girls and tells them to stop and to apologize. So the mean girl apologizes. They all wonder why she is getting in the middle of this.
Joo-da thanks her and says that she is so pretty and nice. Dano says, of course, it is bothersome, but this is my role! She walks away to cheer from the boys in the class and smiles as she walks out.
Later on, she sits outside and wonders which boy is the one that fits her. She looks at a few of the boys around and wonders which one she will accept. She gives a few of them a thumbs up but definitely does not like Baek Kyung.
The A3 starts to walk toward her so she stands as if she has to pick one, but then they all walk by her. She is upset and grows her rage, but then her heart alarm goes off so she faints on the outdoor steps.
She wakes up beautifully in the hospital with Baek Kyung there looking annoyed. He tells her that he will leave now that she is up and hurries off. This bothers Dano so much. She thinks that she is the main person! She can give them a break, but not like this! My heart is about to blow from all this stress.
She also thinks that Jinmichae is the only one she can talk to, so she goes to find him. he is happy to see her and tells her that she is not cursing him out now. And she won’t die from a heart attack because the scene will change.
Dano asks why this is happening, she is the main character. This is not good. The rich girl with the fiance is the big storyline. The weak girl with a lot of health problems does not match this generation’s storyline. I hate sick women, haha.
He tries to tell her something, but she is still talking about how she is the main, how come all of this is happening. Then he disappears.
NEXT DAY
Dano and her friends are all making cakes in class. Her friend thinks that she is making a cake for Baek Kyung. Dano says it is not for Baek Kyung. When I did not have my consciousness, it was like that. Now I am a new person, so it is not for Baek Kyung.
The A3 all come grouping around her desk and say that they like cake. She starts to talk about how she can cut it into several pieces. In the hallway, we see this mysterious boy looking in on them.
Outside, in the yard, some boys start to talk to Dano about breaking their phone. But actually, they are talking to Jooda. Dano thinks that her prince will come right now to save her.
Then a boy in a motorcycle starts to drive up. It is Namjoo. He drives all the way to the middle of this group and asks them what they are doing? Dano thinks he is not her style, but he is handsome.
The boys start to talk about how they are training her, they want to give her a lesson. Nam-joo asks them who told them to do that. He starts to walk toward Dano and Jooda. Dano tries to move her feet, but she can’t. She smiles at Namjoo, but Namjoo just looks at her and grabs Joo-da. He stands next to her and says that he does not like anyone touching his things.
Suddenly, the sun shines on the two of them. Nam-joo turns and tells Jooda that she can carry his bag. Dano has a revelation and starts to think back to all the times she thought Nam-joo likes her. He was actually looking and talking to Joo-da every single time. Every time Dano thought he was doing something for her, it was actually for Joo-da. We see a montage of flashbacks showing exactly this.
A rocket goes off in Dano’s head as she thinks, Nam-joo is the main character because he is Oh Nam-joo (which literally means main lead male) so that means Yeo Joo-da is the main character because her name is Yeo Joo-da! (Yeo Joo Da literally means main female character)
Dano is super stunned as the camera zooms away highlighting her shock.
Fade Out
COMMENTS
A deliciously cliche drama that is in on the gag right along with us. The drama they seem to draw the most inspiration from in this is Boys Over Flowers, so I love that I can spot quite a few references to that show. It actually almost makes me want to rewatch that show just so I can be even more in on the joke.
This first episode was great and had me just as confused as the main character was, though it leaned more toward intriguing than out right lost. For example, she had time jumps and was thoroughly baffled as to what was happening; similarly, I felt like I had the same time jumps and was also baffled to what was happening. It was nice to figure it all out right along side her.
We are in catchup mode for this show, so hopefully we can put up an episode a day until we are all caught up for live-ish recaps next week!
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