Ron Does Stuff

I know, I know, late again! But my work life has been keeping me so busy that I often just fall asleep right after. I haven’t even been keeping up with my physical journal! Life’s been hectic!

But now I have a day off and it’s raining outside so I have all the time in the world to sit in front of my computer and watch the new episode of Secret Ingredient!

In the previous episode, we had Ha Joon stumbling onto Maya and Arif hugging each other because Arif just promoted Maya to…a higher chef position. Ha Joon also had some of Maya’s boxed lunches with him, spilling it onto a white guy who I guess is pretty important to the hotel. Not as important as Ha Joon, though, since Ha Joon technically owns the place.

Of course, the two of them are raked over the coals by Arif, who wants to know who the brains behind the operation is. Both Ha Joon and Maya claim responsibility like your good little show leads Ha Joon quits his job which really isn’t much of a sacrifice because he’s a chaebol but Maya still gets fired even after his ~sacrifice~. There’s a whole thing where the other chefs give Maya their knives but I have no idea of kitchen crew etiquette and traditions so I don’t know if this is touching or they’re just encouraging her to murder Arif. Julia’s a good cryer though!

Ha Joon and Maya have a heart to heart outside and Julia really does so well in this scene! She’s got the more obviously showy acting work in this scene and she does well! If there’s anything to nitpick about it it’s that the chemistry between her and Sang Neon isn’t really crackling? There’s something but it’s not enough to give me kilig.

Now that she doesn’t have an actual job to think about, Maya dives right into preparing for the cooking competition with the $35,000 cash prize. That’s P2,037,157 my fellow poors! She also has more time to notice Ha Joon and the cut he has on his hand after he called that Filipino a puta.

Maya asks why Ha Joon wasn’t in the kitchen the whole day yesterday and obviously he can’t say that he took a four-hour flight from Jakarta to Manila and another four-hour flight back without having to worry about delayed flights or anything. Also there’s another product placement but they’ve already shown that product before so I’m not including a screenshot.

While Maya’s dressing Ha Joon’s wound she gets a text telling her that she got into the competition and I’m a little confused because if the competition has an entry fee shouldn’t you get in once you’ve paid it? So why be surprised you got in?

The show conveniently skips over that and has Ha Joon talking with his butler, who is telling him that it’s time to go back to Korea, take over the company, and perform his responsibilities. Ha Joon is hesitant though because he still hasn’t told Maya the truth and to paraphrase Trixie Mattel, who wouldn’t dodge professional responsibilities for some action?

But it looks like Ha Joon really is responsible after all because it’s Arif who shows up first at the competition and not him. Arif even remarks that if he’d known about Maya’s financial troubles he would have helped her out. BUT, when Ha Joon finally arrives he pulls a solid and dashes over to Maya’s apartment to get all the knives the chefs gave her earlier because the competition misplaced her original knives. Which really I would have sued because isn’t that sabotage?

The cooking competition starts while Ha Joon is still on his way back and I gotta say…it’s not shot in a very exciting way? I couldn’t really feel the tension! It didn’t help that the announcer was so clearly dubbed and not in the best way. The script is kinda cringe too. Or it sounds cringe because the dubbing is not it.

Anyways, Maya makes it to the second round but because her sous chef is injured, she might not be able to actually participate. But OF COURSE Ha Joon is going to step up and be the sous chef. So he does dodge professional responsibilities for pumpum!

But before he even gets to do that, some random Filipino dude that’s never been introduced in the previous episodes runs into Maya. Apparently word has gone around about her having a rich Korean boyfriend who paid off her debt and her entrance fee to the competition as well and Maya is pissed. If it were me I’d just say “Oo, nakaahon na ako sa lusak.”

The competition proper starts again and my golly that dubbing is really bad. It really saps the tension for me because it’s just so distracting. There’s even a scene where Ha Joon runs away from the competition because he recalls a traumatic memory of her mom apparently killing herself and it should be tense but that fucking. voiceover.

Maya finally confronts Ha Joon about his lies after she loses the second round and to Julia’s credit she really is acting. She’s so good in the scene it kinda makes me want to see a new Philippine project from her that doesn’t involve Aga Muhlach. And that’s where we end the episode!