Recap Korean Drama "Crash Course in Romance 2023" Episode 7

Episode 7 of Crash Course in Romance begins with Chi-yeol showing up for his evening session at Haeng-seon’s. Unfortunately, he’s unaware of Su-a and her mum outside watching him. Haeng-seon spots Su-hui from afar while she’s out and hurriedly rings Chi-yeol, telling him he needs to casually walk past and not make it obvious that he’s there to tutor Hae-e.

So instead, he puts on his best “acting”, which completely oversells that he wants to buy food. He turns and gets back in his car. Despite this hilarious segment, it seems to work as Su-a and her mum head home. Chi-yeol resumes his normal tutoring sessions while eating melon slices.

During the school’s mock exams, Hae-e gets top honors while Su-a comes up short despite being top student back in June. Haeng-seon is delighted to learn her Hae-e is doing so well and rings Chi-yeol to tell him the good news. Chi-yeol is pretty nonchalant about it… until he learns Haeng-seon is going to whip him up a special meal and then he’s all cheers and smiles!

During lunch, Su-a ends up with bad stomach cramps and is taken into hospital. Su-hui shows up and tries to comfort her daughter, telling her to focus and use her willpower going forward. However, Su-a’s real pain comes from Hae-e beating her out in the mock. This girl just cannot hack that someone else is working just as hard and she ends blanking her mother.

Su-hui takes drastic measures to get back in her daughter’s good books and ends up meddling, trying to get Sun-jae’s mum involved to see her way of thinking.

Elsewhere, Detective Bae relentlessly pursues this metal ball bearing case, checking out the footage from the nearby street and also the shop, where the same hooded figure he chased from before is spotted following Young-min. We know that this was Sun-jae’s brother but whether he’s actually responsible for killing the student however, remains to be seen.

While this is going on, the group head out to play some sport, but in doing so Chi-yeol notices something in Haeng-seon and ends up distracted. Whether it be her tenacity, passion or just plain ol’ attraction, he struggles to focus and ends up hurting himself on the astro turf. Haeng-seon is thoughtful though and drops off some goodies for him. When he looks outside, he notices Haeng-seon downstairs and his heart starts fluttering.

Naturally, Chi-yeol heads to his therapist and tries to understand his feelings. She smiles knowingly and reveals gently that he’s clearly got feelings for her. So to try and stave that off and see if his feelings are true, she suggests he expand his social circle and get to know new women. Unfortunately, he’s completely and utterly useless when it comes to social cues and chit chat.

After a disastrous encounter with a couple of women in the hallway, Chi-yeol decides to take the plunge and agrees to go on a date with Ms Jung’s friend. While he’s distracted with personal issues, Detective Bae shows up and questions Haeng-seon about the ball bearing incident at the shop. It’s a brief chat in truth, but Detective Song tells his colleague he needs to be quiet and cover this discretely, especially given how easily this whole case was wrapped up by their superiors.

Back at school, Su-a almost has a complete psychotic break, seeing the letters popping out of her page and struggling to socialize with any of the other kids. While they’re all outside playing cheerleader to Geon-hui’s amazing basketball skills, she’s stuck inside and starts to lose control.

After ringing her mother, Su-hui naturally decides to stir things up further while she’s out for lunch and points out that Sun-jae was leaking exam work and shared all of it with Hae-e. They also deliberate over whether she’s got a private tutor. Of course, we know that she does but the mums are adamant on finding out and exposing this.

After Chi-yeol heads for his date, he seems to think he’s attracted to other women and even suggests they meet up again. However, it’s nothing compared with the way his heart flutters when he sees Haeng-seon again. He can’t even string a sentence together or think straight! In fact, at school the next day he lets his guard down, not realizing that there are people listening as Yi-sang overhears him talking about tutoring materials for Hae-e.

Back home, Sun-jae’s mum (Jang Seo-jin) heads into her son’s room and wonders just what he may be hiding from her. She gets paranoid, rooting through his desk and finding a whole bunch of ball bearings in the top drawer. The same ball bearings she heard the detectives talking about outside Haeng-seon’s shop.

She shows Hui-jae when he turns up and wants answers. Instead, she pushes him out his room, grabs her wrist until it hurts and then slams the door in her face.

Chi-yeol gets all dressed up for the doctor’s, where he arrives with Haeng-seon. He learns from the doctor that he has Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. He also bemoans Chi-yeol, telling him his body is a “piece of junk” and from his weak pulse alone, can sense a whole bunch of issues. He’s also encouraged to do acupuncture too.

After this session, the pair head out to a restaurant together, called Su-ja’s Chueotang. Only, this happens to be somewhere that Chi-yeol recognizes, as a brief flashback to the past hints that he may well have been a regular there.

The Episode Review

Crash Course in Romance continues to deliver the narrative goods, with a nice balance between the darker elements and the more lighthearted and romantic segments. Seeing Chi-yeol try to make sense of his feelings, evading the fact that he’s actually smitten with Haeng-seon, has a good deal of comedy around it and his character development has been great to watch.

This is also balanced out by the ongoing mystery around the ball bearings which I genuinely don’t think is Sun-jae’s brother. I’m guessing he probably has some sort of social disorder, hence why he’s so reclusive and alone. He may have seen something on one of the nights and is doing his own research into who the real culprit is. And who better to fit that role than Dong-hui, Chi-yeol’s manager? We know that everyone who has been attacked here has ties with Chi-yeol and have badmouthed him so it could well be in retaliation to this. Then again, take this theory with a pinch of salt!

The situation at school is another intriguing development though, playing into the slice of life drama with Su-a managing to wrap her mum around her little finger. She’s clearly jealous of Hae-e and what she has, which has a lot of similarities to the story in Sky Castle, which had a very similar narrative thread with the kids. For those who have watched that show, they’ll know that Chi-yeol is nothing like Coach Kim!