Second Shot at Love- Episodes 1-2

Messy Breakups, Small-Town Drama, and a Spark from the Past

Second Shot at Love kicks off with a bang—and a bottle. Episode 1 wastes no time setting the stage for an emotionally messy, darkly funny, and deeply relatable drama about self-destruction, second chances, and the thin line between heartbreak and healing.

We open with Dr. Seo Ui-joon, cool and composed, giving a seminar on alcoholism. He drops a hard truth: in Korea, drinking culture is out of control, and anyone—even the smartest, most hardworking person—can fall victim.

Cut to Han Geum-ju. She’s exactly that person. A whip-smart senior engineer who, after one too many nights of heavy drinking, ends up embarrassing herself in public. The next morning, her fed-up fiancé, Ju-yeop, gives her a cruel ultimatum. She picks booze. The engagement? Over.

Her mom, Gwang-ok, flips. But Geum-ju claps back, accusing Ju-yeop of falling for her wild side, only to start policing her once marriage entered the picture. She insists social drinking is part of professional survival. Still, she loses her job, can’t make rent, and is forced to move back home to sleepy Bochun—her mother spinning lies to save face.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ui-joon is in Bochun too, playing rural doctor with charm and compassion. He checks in on the elderly, pitches in on farm chores, and makes house calls with a smile. He’s practically a countryside saint.

Back at the Hans’ house, Geum-ju walks into a family reunion of dysfunction: her dad and divorced sister Hyeon-ju are already drunk by noon. Gwang-ok lays down the law—no more drinking. Of course, that rule doesn’t last five minutes.

At least the kids love her. Geum-ju takes her sister’s twins to the park, vents about Ju-yeop, and accidentally sets off a gossip wildfire after a nosy neighbor eavesdrops. Enter Seon-wook, a childhood friend turned concerned buzzkill, who scolds her too.

Later, she visits their old friend Young-woong at the repair shop and impresses everyone by fixing a tricky car problem. But surprise—it’s Ui-joon’s car. Cue the awkward tension. Turns out, these two have history. Flashback to 2007: she helped fix his bike on his first day in town, called herself the “town genius,” and he looked at her like she hung the moon.

In the present, their reunion is frosty. She’s defensive. He’s sad but too polite to show it. When her grocery bag breaks and he offers help, she snaps. He lets her go, hiding his hurt with a fake smile.

Back at home, Gwang-ok overhears her friends dragging her daughters’ names through the mud. She’s humiliated. And then, she comes home to catch her husband and daughters sneaking drinks. She finally loses it and calls Geum-ju selfish.

But here’s the kicker—turns out Ju-yeop cheated first. His mistress is pregnant. Geum-ju only ended the engagement to maintain a shred of dignity. That night of drunken chaos at the beginning? It was heartbreak in disguise.

The next day, Gwang-ok tries a bizarre intervention, dragging Geum-ju on a hike to a temple and offering a million won donation in exchange for her sobriety. Geum-ju bails and steals her mom’s phone. Ui-joon stumbles upon the scene. Gwang-ok pleads for his help. He calmly says: no one changes unless they admit there’s a problem.

Later that night, Seon-wook and Young-woong plan a “casual” reunion to bring Ui-joon and Geum-ju together. It backfires. She overhears Ui-joon saying he hoped she’d be better by now. She runs. Drinks. Spirals. She wants to be better. She just doesn’t know how.

And then comes the family memorial. Gwang-ok bans alcohol, publicly blaming the family’s drinking culture for Geum-ju’s collapse—but still defends her daughter’s potential. That hope goes up in flames when Geum-ju shows up wasted and causes a full-blown scene. A bottle hits the floor. Gwang-ok snaps. Chaos.

The next morning, Geum-ju wakes up groggy, ashamed—and missing her top. Ui-joon gently begs her to stop drinking. It’s not romantic. It’s raw.

But the epilogue softens the blow. Flashback vibes return. She promises to fix his bike in three minutes. Hours later, she’s still at it. He teases her. She pouts. He wipes grease off her face. There’s a spark—complicated, messy, but real.

Faked Deaths, Real Drama, and a Cake-Throwing Face-Off

If you thought Episode 1 of Second Shot at Love was chaotic, buckle up—Episode 2 takes the dysfunction to a whole new level.

The episode opens with Geum-ju pulling a classic melodramatic move: she runs away from home, ends up near the river, and leaves her clothes and shoes scattered just so Miss Nosy can assume she drowned. By morning, the town is convinced she’s dead.

Plot twist—she’s very much alive. A flashback reveals that she stripped down because she stank, stepped in dog poop, lost her shoes trying to clean them, and accidentally flung herself in front of Ui-joon’s car. He crashes, breaks his leg, and has to carry her back home while silently fuming.

When the news breaks that Geum-ju’s not dead, her family is relieved… until Gwang-ok, exhausted by her daughter’s antics, tries to throw herself into the river. Drama runs deep in the Han family.

Ui-joon and Seon-wook are busy unpacking the chaos—Geum-ju broke Ui-joon’s leg and totaled his car. Naturally, Miss Nosy eavesdrops, and within minutes, the entire town knows.

To “make things right,” Geum-ju is assigned to be Ui-joon’s personal assistant. Cue a comedic montage: she’s driving him around, helping with his patients, and doing menial chores while getting increasingly nosy about why he ditched Seoul. He dodges the question and asks about her job instead.

Cue flashback: Geum-ju faced rampant sexism at work. So, she took all her unused PTO out of spite and was promptly fired.

Back in town, Gwang-ok has had it with the village enabling her family’s alcoholism. She claps back at the gossiping aunties and bans alcohol sales to the Hans. It hits hard—especially since every adult in the family has a boozy backstory. Hyeon-ju drank her way into a bad marriage. Jeong-su drank away his businesses. And Geum-ju? Still drinking through her denial.

With the whole town now enforcing Gwang-ok’s dry law, Geum-ju is irritated. When Ui-joon tries to claim it's all for her own good, she accuses him of hypocrisy—he drinks too. Oof.

Later, Seon-wook spills the truth: Ui-joon didn’t just leave Seoul out of noble intentions. He quit after losing his hospital tenure and being dumped by his fiancée. Rumor has it, he spiraled into alcoholism before relocating to Bochun. Young-woong even digs up an alumni forum post hinting at something darker.

Geum-ju finds Ui-joon sulking at a riverside spot—the same one she once brought him to after his grandmother died. She decides to cheer him up the way she wishes someone had done for her: with a fancy homemade meal and some aggressively supportive pep talks. His nurse warns her to keep it professional. Naturally, she ignores that.

When she learns about a huge job offer Ui-joon turned down, she urges him to take it—only to be told to butt out. He’s annoyed. She’s hurt. And it echoes a moment from their past when he once told her she’d crossed a line. Ouch.

Trying to make amends, Geum-ju plans to continue helping him but gets derailed by a painful reminder: it’s Ju-yeop’s birthday. Turns out she had pre-ordered a birthday cake—before the breakup bomb dropped. What follows is a full-speed chase to Seoul to stop the delivery, but fate intervenes. She runs into Ju-yeop in the elevator.

And here comes the bombshell: Ju-yeop confesses the affair started because he was drunk. Hypocrisy, anyone? Geum-ju drags him through the mud, tells him to clean up his act for his kid’s sake, and flings the cake at him for good measure. Iconic.

Then she drinks. Again.

Back home, Ui-joon is worried. He finds her, wasted and rambling about cake. Thinking she ditched him for a party, he’s fuming. Seon-wook sets him straight: she’s hurting, and she’s hurting him too. As they leave, Geum-ju breaks down in tears.

Ui-joon goes home and, for once, drinks too. That’s when he sees a new comment on the alumni post—and it hits like a gut punch: it claims Ui-joon killed someone.

Epilogue: Flashback to 2011. Ui-joon and Geum-ju are having a drunken showdown. She loses (grumpily), and he carries her home. He says he wants to win at everything—so he can always take care of her.

DramaZen's Opinion

Wow. Second Shot at Love came in swinging with its first two episodes—and I am hooked.

Episode 1 threw us headfirst into the chaos of Han Geum-ju’s life: a brilliant, messy, fiercely independent woman whose drinking problem is unraveling everything—her career, her relationship, even her dignity. But it’s not just a trainwreck for drama’s sake. The writing cuts deep, showing how addiction gets normalized, especially in work culture and family. And Dr. Seo Ui-joon? Calm, principled, with this quiet pain in his eyes—yeah, there’s history there, and I want all of it.

Then Episode 2 hits, and suddenly we’ve got rumors of death, slapstick-level mishaps (stepping in dog poop???), and an unintentional car crash that leaves Ui-joon limping. Still, between the chaos, the show sneaks in heartbreak, guilt, and some seriously raw emotional beats. Geum-ju’s not just flawed—she’s drowning, and everyone around her either enables or abandons her. Except Ui-joon, who’s just as damaged in his own way.

Their chemistry? Simmering. The writing? Sharp and layered. The pacing? A bit wild, but never boring. I laughed, winced, teared up, and by the end of Episode 2, I was completely invested in this messy, emotional, very human second chance story.

Give me Episode 3. Now.