Our Sticky Love Episode 1 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Jung Hae-in as Jang Tae-ha
Ha Young as Go Eun-sae
Heo Sung-tae as Baek Sang-gil
Jeon Bae-soo as Hong Do-yeop
Kim Young-ok as Go Yeon-hong

Over the crackle of flames, a woman's voice asks what genre a person's life would be if it had one: noir, an underworld thriller, maybe a romantic comedy. Somewhere in the dark, a man asks his boss what they should do first. The voice wonders how her own life landed in this genre, and the answer begins in a hospital.

A patient with no name

At the hospital, a doctor tells the patient she has a textbook case of dissociative amnesia. She cannot recall her name, age or job. She was brought in two weeks ago, found unconscious and badly hurt, alone on a remote road with no CCTV. Her fingertips were already injured, so her prints could not identify her. If her memory does not return, she will be registered as unidentified and sent to a government facility after treatment. She sums it up as "a sticky situation," and the doctor praises how neatly she organizes her thoughts.

In front of a mirror, she likes what she sees, abs included, and scolds her reflection for not becoming a celebrity someone would recognize. Moments later, she wails over not knowing who she is.

One week later, the women in her ward tell her the government facilities are nice these days. She has a different plan: if a head injury took her memory, another knock might bring it back. She runs her head into the wall and knocks herself out. When she comes to, the women say she has terrible timing. A man came by while she was out, saying he is her boyfriend, and he is tall and handsome enough to be an actor.

A boyfriend she can't believe

A man walks in as a Celine Dion ballad swells, but he is another patient's grandson, a model. Then the doctor announces her guardian, and the man in the doorway is a scruffy, hungry-looking boxer. He calls her Go Eun-sae, introduces himself as Jang Tae-ha and, after a long pause, says he is her boyfriend. The ward women add that he combed every hospital in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province for three weeks. Eun-sae's only comment is that she was promised someone who looks like an actor.

Eun-sae recites what she has been told. She is 33, works part-time making taffy, and has dated him, a boxing coach, for two years; they live together and are supposedly engaged. She cannot believe any of it. Tae-ha adds that she wanted to write web novels and, when that went nowhere, started at his grandmother's taffy shop a month ago. As proof he offers a single photo, which she says could be two tourists who met by chance. He says their other pictures were on a phone he lost while hunting for her, and that she went missing after saying she was meeting a friend.

She also asks why he hasn't showered or shaved, and he blames car trouble. When she asks about relatives, he says she has none, because she grew up in an orphanage. That leaves her no family, no phone, no coworkers and nobody to trust but this man. The doctor clears her for outpatient discharge.

In private, Eun-sae asks the doctor how a stranger can be allowed to take her. The doctor says the police confirmed the man's description matched her exactly. Tae-ha even knew about a triangle of three moles on her right buttock, the top one slightly green, which the doctor considers boyfriend-level knowledge. Eun-sae checks, and they match. She agrees to go with him, hoping home will jog something loose, though she cannot believe she ever wore the tacky clothes he brings.

Welcome to Gujin Taffy Village

On the road, Eun-sae notices they are not heading for Seoul. Tae-ha says they moved two months ago to Gujin, his hometown. She protests that she may not know her own name, but she knows the Seoul subway map all the way to Line 9. The caption Gujin Taffy Village appears, and they pull up at a shop selling traditional rice taffy, the Korean candy called yeot.

Outside the shop, three village women look her over, and Eun-sae privately decides they look like mobsters. When she asks whether they know her, they say nobody has seen her once in the two months since the couple supposedly moved there. She tells them they are in her way, and they agree she is a rude Gen Z type.

Inside, she tries the staff. Tae-ha explains that Kim Song-wol, a woman from North Korea, has aphasia and cannot speak, though she can hear and read. An older woman tells Eun-sae to shut up, calls her grandma and tells her to suck on taffy. Tae-ha says his grandmother has dementia. The old woman bears it out by calling him oppa, the word a young woman uses for an older brother or boyfriend, and asking him to take this grandma outside.

At the house, a dog barks at her, which Eun-sae takes as proof she never lived there; Tae-ha says it is a stray that moved in a few days ago. Inside, everything is floral, and she announces that she likes nothing here, so she cannot have lived there. Her things are alone in the bedroom because, he says, he moved his out to be considerate.

She asks how they met. In his version, they met in the mountains, where he caught a toad bare-handed and set it free. After that, he says, she followed him around, swore she would die if he did not date her, moved in and got engaged because she could not live without him. Eun-sae refuses to hear another word, and Tae-ha leaves to return the car to his coach.

At Hong's Boxing Gym, Coach Hong Do-yeop is pushing a young boxer named Pil-seung through drills, telling him that sweat in training saves blood in a match. Afterward, Tae-ha admits that Eun-sae does not believe him. Do-yeop guesses a woman used to Seoul comforts finds the countryside hard to accept, then asks whether this will work. Tae-ha answers: as long as she never learns the truth.

Three weeks earlier

Three weeks earlier, outside the Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office, a new parking attendant tells a woman she cannot park in a reserved spot. She says the spot is hers; she has been coming there for three years. She introduces herself as Prosecutor Go Ji-won of the Anti-Corruption Department. Inside, she is presented to the chief as the office's ace prosecutor and promises he will see her work.

At a gala, her boyfriend, Gwak Chi-hyeon, an aide on the mayor's staff, introduces her to Mayor Ju as his girlfriend, and the mayor introduces Baek Sang-gil, chairman of the Mirae Eden Company. Gwak passes on a tip. The mayor and Sang-gil will leave between 10 and 10:10, officially for home, but in fact for a secret meeting.

At the meeting, in a thunderstorm, she records them with her watch. The mayor tells Sang-gil to be patient, because the contractor for the Irang-dong development project has not been chosen; Sang-gil answers with a veiled threat about thunder and storms. Then he finds her, greets her as Prosecutor and offers to take care of her, and of that watch, if she lets them make amends. She says she has enough money to live without bribes. Sang-gil tells her not to count on her investigators, because his men are about to meet them.

In a mostly wordless sequence, Sang-gil's men beat her. Sang-gil muses that he no longer watches movies because the endings are so predictable. A man shouts at someone to get over here, and a door slams shut. Then the mayor's recorded words play back as one of Sang-gil's men asks what to do now.

After a caption marks a landing at Narita, Tokyo, Sang-gil thanks Tae-ha, whom he calls Director Jang, for the sales report on their Tokyo pachinko business. Tae-ha recently asked to quit, and Sang-gil says he can, since Tae-ha turned the street gang Geukrakpa into Mirae Eden. There is one condition, a last job: "We need to bury a prosecutor." It needs someone Sang-gil trusts, and he tells Tae-ha to think of it as a final gift for his boss.

Tae-ha reaches the burning car from the opening, and one of his men asks what to do first. Tae-ha sends them off, saying the chairman wants him to handle this alone. Then he calls Do-yeop: there is someone they need to save. He expects Sang-gil to watch every step, even through CCTV, but he knows one blind spot on the route. Later, he tells Sang-gil his tracks are covered, and Sang-gil praises him.

At the hospital, a chart reads unknown, female, 20s. The prosecutor is the amnesiac patient. Do-yeop and Tae-ha agree a facility is too risky for a woman with no fingerprints and no family. She would be safer with Tae-ha, given a reason like being her fiancé. The doctor has said her memory will return, and once it does, they will send her to Japan on a stowaway boat; Kaito is finding local brokers. Until then, Tae-ha plays the fiancé, and Do-yeop assures him nothing has happened in this backwater for years.

The toad test

Back at the house, Eun-sae fumes that losing her memory has not erased her instincts, and everything down to the rice spoons feels wrong. She grumbles that if only her fingertips were okay, she would not be this frustrated. Then she spots something. Tae-ha asks, carefully, whether her memory is back. She asks whether that would scare him, then says it has not returned.

What she found in the yard is a toad. It does not frighten her at all, she says; she could even keep it as a pet. Tae-ha asks her to please put it down, and suggests she lost her fear along with her memories. Eun-sae says he cannot trick her anymore: "My boyfriend isn't you." When he insists he is, she tests him. If they really dated for two years and moved in together, he should not mind this, and she leans in to kiss him as the title card appears.

Up next: Our Sticky Love Episode 2 Recap. See every episode in the Our Sticky Love episode guide.