It is common for K-dramas to drop a melancholic bomb, like a family member dying or a murder in the town, to make us intrigued but also feel terribly sad, and then switch to comedy in episode 2. My Perfect Stranger does the same exact thing, and while the first episode was good, the second episode really sets the pace for the kind of fun this show is going to be. More Back to the Future and less Les Mis. 

Spoilers Ahead

Hae-Joon’s Big Plight

Hae-Joon swims to save himself in an ice-covered body of water. On top of the ice, he sees a couple of people walking, and one of them falls to their death. To his shock, it is Hae-Joon himself. Through voice-over, we hear a news anchor say that, via DNA test, it was confirmed that it was Hae-Joon’s blood at the scene with no body. Is it possible that Hae-Joon has created a glitch in time and saved himself from being murdered or he moved his own body from the site? In 1987, Hae-Joon got out of the car with a bleeding head and bumped into the same man as Yoon-Young in My Perfect Stranger Episode 1. Said man thinks he has been working out too hard and making heads crack (peak comedy). Hae-Joon finds Yoon-Young and informs her about the time-travel mishap. After he notices she’s laughing about it; she tells him that there is something important she needs to do in this timeline and pushes him against the wall to run away. But she pushes hard enough that he hits the wall and loses consciousness. While he sits in the middle of an alley, Yoon-Young rushes to the club she saw her mother walk into.

Yoon-Young’s Encounter With Her 19-Year-Old Mom

Soon-Ae (the mom) is a shy girl who likes to read and study, not go clubbing. Inside, she’s left alone, fidgeting with her too-short skirt, and goes to the bathroom to make herself feel better. Yoon-Young follows her there and begins to cry, calling her mother and pulling her cheeks to make sure this is not a dream. She asks her why she did such a terrible thing and left her all alone. Soon-Ae is very confused and scared at this point, and she wonders if a bleeding Yoon-Young might’ve sniffed glue and is going to hit her. She just wants to go home, and suddenly the club is raided by the police. The officer wants to see their IDs, and of course, Yoon-Young can’t present her 2021 ID; she wasn’t even born in 1987. Just in the nick of time, Hae-Joon arrives to save the day and rounds up his students from the school, who all flock to him like little chicks. He calls Yoon-Young too, but the police officer has a firm grip on her. Before there can be more commotion, the town’s school principal makes it to the club and apologizes to the police officer for having to spend a late night when he has a kid to attend to.

Hae-Joon And Yoon-Young’s Journey Forward

Hae-Joon takes Yoon-Young to his residence, where he tells her that he will provide her with anything she requires, but she should stay in so that the blunder, like the ID thing, will not happen again. She pretends to agree, but we all know she’s heading out the second he looks away. Hae-Joon is taken to be part of a town walking race, and this means Yoon-Young is free to go anywhere. As expected, she follows Soon-Ae into town and continues to call her mom. Soon-Ae is mature and kind-hearted, so she understands that Yoon-Young must’ve lost her mother recently, and maybe she herself looks like Yoon-Young’s mother, so she wants to be helpful. But she sweetly requests that Yoon-Young call her by her name, Soon-Ae, and endearingly calls her “glue-sister.” Soon-Ae is taking care of her parents’ shop because they are in the same town as Hae-Joon. Soon-Ae tells Yoon-Young to go away because now she needs to sell tickets to the customers, so Yoon-Young heads to the nearby convenience store. There, she does some math in her head and realizes her parents met in 1987, one year before their wedding. She is determined to eradicate her father from Soon-Ae’s life as soon as he arrives. Funnily, he’s already here, and it’s a “love at first sight” moment for him as he watches Soon-Ae reading her book with an old-school song playing on the cassette player. Yoon-Young comes back just in time to see Hee-Seob about to talk to Soon-Ae. Remember how we said the “strong shoulder” guy would make a comeback? Well, here is Yoon-Young’s father in the flesh. It’s funny how she recognized her mother immediately but not her father. Yoon-Young asks the man for his name, and he says Hee-Seob. She pushes her father away from Soon-Ae, grabbing him by the collar, in a very comical scene.

Yoon-Young’s Heckling Of Her Father

Yoon-Young wonders why her father speaks in “satoori” or with a dialect. She probably only heard him speak with a Seoul accent after her birth. She tells her father that she won’t let him near Soon-Ae, and the young man wonders why. Just because he cracked her head the first time, perhaps. Yoon-Young asks him to run in front of her, which he does comfortably, another thing that confuses her. She then tells Hae-Seob that she’s Soon-Ae’s best friend, so she can do anything, including keeping him away from her.

What Does The Note In The Matchbox Imply?

Someone is dying soon in 1987, as Hae-Joon’s calendar marks the date May 14th. He finds the matchbox that Yoon-Young took from the river in 2021 and compares it to the one he has. The piece of paper warns that the one reading a book is also in danger. This leads us to believe that the note was for Soon-Ae, and it is possible that Yoon-Young herself or Hae-Joon had written it down for their future or past selves to read and save Soon-Ae.

Hae-Joon observed the principal in 1987, and we’re transported to 2024, where the old man tells Hae-Joon that he’s looking for his grandson, who was lost in the water at Woojung-ri many years ago. It isn’t very clear just yet what he’s trying to say, but Hae-Joon tells the old man to stop pretending that he cares about his grandson because he can’t even recognize him. Hae-Joon seems to be suspicious of this man.

In the meantime, Yoon-Young notices Soon-Ae missing from the shop and reads her diary slyly. She’s shocked to read her favorite book in the form of her mother’s own diary. The book that Mi-Sook, the author that she assists, published first actually belonged to her mother, and Mi-Sook had stolen her work. Yoon-Young rushes to find Soon-Ae and notices her with the three girls from the club near the lake. Before she can reach them, Hae-Kyung pushes Soon-Ae into the water as a “joke,” and they don’t realize she’s actually drowning. Yoon-Young quickly jumps into the water and saves her mother. She rushes to Hae-Kyung and gets in her face, asking her if her name is Mi-Sook. To her surprise, a girl in the back who is helping Soon-Ae answers in reply, wondering how Yoon-Young knew her name. Mi-Sook is a new girl that Yoon-Young hadn’t seen before, and she, too, goes to Soon-Ae’s school.

At the end My Perfect Stranger Episode 2, Soon-Ae tells Yoon-Young that she hopes she doesn’t tell anyone what she saw today. Soon-Ae thinks the girls are her only friends and allows them to harass her because it’s “for fun” and she has nobody else to talk to. Soon-Ae is so sad that she admits to Yoon-Young that she wants to take her own life. Yoon-Young can’t believe her mother was depressed all the way back then. She still thinks her mother committed suicide in 2021, so she will do everything in her power to change the situation for her mom in 1987. By this time, Hae-Joon has fixed the car and is ready to take Yoon-Young, his liability, back to where she came from. But Yoon-Young has other plans; she tells Hae-Joon that she has some work here and will not be able to go back just yet. Mi-Sook looked innocent in the past, but she’s definitely got some tricks up her sleeve. So, is it really her who murdered all those people? Or is she a copycat killer so that she can make sure Soon-Ae never outs her for stealing her work? We’ll find out in later episodes of My Perfect Stranger.