Take Charge of My Heart Episode 1 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Kim Young-kwang as Baek Ho-rang
Chae Soo-bin as Na Bo-bae
Cha Woo-min as Ji Eun-ho
Shin Do-hyun as Han Seol-hee
Kim Ah-young as Cho Seo-jeong
Gong Min-jung as Na Ji-hye

Na Bo-bae is living a slow-motion romance. The man sworn to protect her says he would rather make her his. She grumbles that he is taking forever to kiss her, and then she wakes up. She was dreaming her own script, and even there the kiss slips away.

At home, Bo-bae introduces herself the way a drama would: nearly 30, future uncertain. Her older sister, Na Ji-hye, is a former national taekwondo champion about to marry. Her older brother, Yong-gi, is a former national judo athlete who runs his own dojo. Bo-bae, the youngest, is the lone writer in a clan of athletes, and her contest award is for a one-episode drama, Wistful Youth. She runs out late again and skips breakfast because her stomach hurts. She once vowed to move back in with her parents if she had not made it as a writer by 30, and that deadline looms.

On the bus, she spots a strikingly handsome passenger and casts him as a male lead, on paper only. Someone asks if she is okay. In a drama, she notes, that line would spark a romance, but in her life the genre is horror. A yelp at a sting follows, and Bo-bae scrambles off the bus, apologizing.

Bo-bae's deadline

Her script plays out on screen. The heiress Hye-ju scolds her bodyguard, I-hyeok, for trailing her onto a bus. He hauls her into a hard kiss, and they trade lines about honey-sweet lips. Bo-bae's boss asks whether the characters are bears. He also asks why a two-week bodyguard would grab his chaebol employer, the heiress of a family-run conglomerate.

Then he guesses she has never dated. She brags about kisses and theme-park dates, while privately admitting she would bolt if a man tried to hold her hand. He praises her dialogue, stories and characters, but says it all falls apart once romance arrives. Her contract ends in three months, and to renew it she must deliver a steamy, grown-up love story by then, even if that means dating a stranger.

Ho-rang cleans house

On Jeju, the island off Korea's south coast, a typhoon lashes the TS Resort there. In Seoul, TS Resort executives argue over who has to brief the boss, until Baek Ho-rang walks in. An executive credits his foresight for the buildings coming through intact. Canceled flights and wrecked roads, though, have triggered cancellations that threaten the 30th-anniversary sales target. He half-listens, picking at the menu.

When an executive boasts that guests who would not pay were made to check out, Ho-rang asks who decided that: Heo Ji-hwan, the Jeju general manager. Ho-rang has Mr. Yoon change the landscaping company again, then has a director named Jang phone Heo, who takes credit for his firm hand. A team bursts into a canceled suite in Jeju and films Heo hosting a golf get-together there for free. Ho-rang has him fired and charged, orders apologies to the evicted guests and opens every vacant room to typhoon victims for free. The anniversary target, he says, now looks reachable.

The news praises Ho-rang, TS Resort's senior managing director, for turning the resort into a shelter, and the stock climbs. Next, he wants a new face for the resort. The first choice is actor Ji Eun-ho, who tops the brand-reputation rankings, just won Best Actor and has a Hollywood offer. Nobody can reach him.

Ho-rang tears into Mr. Yoon, asking whether he is the only one doing any work. When Yoon startles him, he complains about his weak heart. Yoon notes his heart rate is over 100 and talks him through slow breaths. Calmer, Ho-rang decides to find Eun-ho and sign him himself.

A crowd, a push and a kiss

At work, Bo-bae's friend Cho Seo-jeong guesses she was scolded over the kiss scene again. She wonders aloud what Director Yeom expects from someone who has never dated. When something Seo-jeong needs stops working, she begs Bo-bae for help, bribing her with the story of a man she met recently, kiss included. Bo-bae gives in despite the cameras, it works, and Seo-jeong calls her the human Pikachu, a nickname Bo-bae hates.

Then her narration reveals a secret. A flashback opens on voices bidding up bowls of sundae, Korean blood sausage, and tteokbokki, spicy rice cakes. It gives way to her account of the lightning strike that left her charged with electricity. She was told never to touch anyone outside, and the stronger her feelings, the stronger the current. A boy she liked, whom she never let hold her hand, turned on her and asked who would want to date her. The power has left her alone.

A crowd gathers for what looks like a celebrity. Seo-jeong tells Bo-bae to put her gloves on and heads off. Ho-rang arrives with Mr. Yoon, who assures him the crowd is not reporters. Fans surge, shouting for Eun-ho, and shove Bo-bae straight into Ho-rang, lips first. She says she was pushed, and he says he knows it was an accident.

Nothing passed between them, so she chases him to ask whether he felt a tingle or a spark. He felt nothing. She grabs his hand again and again, begging for one more try, while he calls for Mr. Yoon. "Like a human rubber glove?" she wonders.

Ho-rang tells her he is not interested and asks her to stop. Then her stomach seizes. As she is taken to the hospital, she resolves to find him again.

Ho-rang chases Ji Eun-ho

Meanwhile, Eun-ho and Hee-chan, who seems to manage his schedule, see a woman being carried off. Eun-ho thinks she looked like Bo-bae, the writer. Ignoring Hee-chan's pleas that the director is waiting, he calls her, gets no answer and runs.

Ho-rang has spent half an hour with Director Yeom, his college senior, who promised him Eun-ho. Yeom begs for a good word at TS Resort, where his production found half the location off-limits. Ho-rang tells him to file a shooting plan with Plans B and C. He also reminds Yeom that meeting Eun-ho was his price for helping. Alone, Yeom rants about his heartless junior and his endless alphabet of plans.

Later, Ho-rang watches a clip of his cousin Choi Do-yoon of TS Hotel, drunk at a club and cursing at people filming him. The scandal has dragged TS Hotel and TS Resort down the rankings. "What is this, a seesaw?" Ho-rang asks. His Plan C is to see Eun-ho in person today, which is why his surgery is set for tomorrow. Plan D, if that fails, is to postpone the surgery.

At a temple, Ho-rang says he came to tell his parents that this will be his last surgery. Their names, Baek Gyeong-seok and Ryu Min-seon, appear on screen. An older woman there calls Do-yoon a lost cause and asks if Ho-rang will be normal afterward. He says he already is. She tells him to come back healthy, since any hint of frailty could muddy the succession.

At TS Resort, Ms. Baek, Ho-rang's aunt and the CEO of TS Hotel, berates a staffer who will not reveal his schedule. Do-yoon flirts with the staffer and blames his mother's mood on menopause. Mr. Yoon reports that Eun-ho is at Taesung Hospital, visiting a patient.

In a ward there, Bo-bae and other patients watch Eun-ho on a talk show. He calls his debut, Wistful Youth, his favorite work to this day, then adds a message on air: "Ms. Writer, are you watching?" Soon he walks in, claiming to know everything about her. She mentions her appendix, and when he asks whether it burst, she says yes. He rushes off for a doctor.

In the corridor, Ho-rang intercepts him. Eun-ho realizes Director Yeom set up the missed meeting, and Ho-rang admits he asked Yeom to keep it quiet. Noting that TS Group owns the hospital, Ho-rang offers Eun-ho's friend a VIP room in return for his time. Eun-ho refers him to his agency, but Ho-rang hands over his card and asks for the friend's name and birth date. Afterward, Eun-ho tells Bo-bae something urgent has come up and promises to return tomorrow. He accuses Hee-chan of knowing about the meeting and repeats that he does no commercials.

Bo-bae tries again

Ho-rang tells Yoon to find out who Eun-ho visited. Then Bo-bae, in her hospital gown, spots him. She asks whether he felt a tingle later, calls him the first rubber glove she has ever met and begs for his number. Once she gives her name, he calls her approach the most pathetic flirting he has heard. One accidental kiss with a rich, handsome man and she thinks it is fate, he says, when he felt nothing at all.

Ho-rang scolds Yoon for not stopping her. Yoon mentions a static shock when he touched her, then lets it drop. He has never seen Ho-rang so harsh with a stranger. Ho-rang insists she talked about fate, Yoon heard her say rubber glove, and Ho-rang decides she misspoke.

At the hospital, Ho-rang scoffs under his breath at Professor Jang's kissing gouramis. Jang shows him a brand-new artificial heart from the US. Replacing the whole device means opening his chest wider, but he will not need another operation for a hundred years, so this will be Jang's last surgery on him. Afterward, Ho-rang says, he will start preparing to take the reins at TS Group.

At a wine party, guests toast Han Seol-hee, director of Hanlim Advertising, which has won the TS Resort account. Do-yoon mocks Si-hun, a cook, for a stingy pour, and Seol-hee refuses to ride with him because he has been drinking. Outside, she tells Do-yoon she sees no difference between a loser who cooks and one who lets out hotel rooms. Only TS Group's heir, she says, gets to talk about someone's place. He snaps that Ho-rang has no intention of marrying her. She tells him to call a driver and avoid another drunk-driving headline.

The lights go out

As a surgery begins, someone touches Bo-bae bare-handed and gets stung, and she reminds them to wear gloves. The power fails. The backup will not start, the generator needs a few minutes, and someone orders the hand crank turned. Frightened, Bo-bae wonders whether she could die during an appendectomy in the dark. When the emergency power returns, she thinks it came back because of her.

In an operating room, a patient goes into cardiac arrest. The team pushes another dose of epinephrine. The vitals settle at 120 over 80, and the surgeons close the chest.

Bo-bae runs into Ho-rang yet again, to her disbelief. Her electricity does nothing to him. If he really is her rubber glove, she wonders, maybe he is the one man she can touch, and even date.

See every episode in the Take Charge of My Heart episode guide.