Episode 02 Recap
Zhong Yu Tang wants to prove she can be a competent salesperson after the transfer to Sales Team 3. But, she only finds herself bringing back a report of Sales Team 3’s largest client wishing to terminate their contract for their classic brand, Mei Mei.
Before the meeting with their client, Di Shi Kang, Zhong Yu Tang looks to see where the product is displayed in their store. Looking and asking around, she comes to find their Mei Mei products displayed in a low traffic location near the fire exit and on the lowest of the lowest shelf where eyes do not catch sight of the product. She takes it upon herself to move every box of Mei Mei to a shelf around the corner at eye-level.
Zhong Yu Tang doesn’t find this as indication of Mei Mei performing poorly in the store. She is surprised when Di Shi Kang’s manager wishes to take it off the shelf and terminate the contract with them. “But it’s a classic of a classic brand!” Zhong Yu Tang says to him. Unfortunately, the manager doesn’t care one bit for the product in their store. He tells her he has another meeting and for her to head out.
Zhong Yu Tang’s want to do well in this contract with Di Shi Kang is not only to prove she can be a great salesperson. It seems Mei Mei also has a special meaning for her. A flashback scene following and whilst Zhong Yu Tang walked back to the office deflated, we find out that back in her childhood days, Mei Mei was done Zhong Yu Tang liked a lot and her mother made Zhong Yu Tang promise to work in Mei Mei when she grew up.
Zhong Yu Tang is part of a group of highly skilled people who needs to utilise their skill and reach their potential.
The transfer to the sales department to the under-performing Sales Team 3, Zhong Yu Tang feels it’s a 10-year-grudge Ji Wen Kai is holding and he’s getting back at her.
Ji Wen Kai goes to Zhong Yu Tang’s place in the morning on her day off with his friend. In a truck and with a megaphone, Ji Wen Kai announces Zhong Yu Tang’s transfer to the sales department to the entire neighborhood where she lives. When he comes by, Zhong Yu Tang is asleep and dreaming of the time she rode on her bicycle with a megaphone with Ji Wen Kai running after her wishing for her to stop announcing his secret crush to everyone in the neighborhood. Zhong Yu Tang wakes up from Ji Wen Kai’s announcement. It takes her a moment to realise what she was hearing was not a dream, but real. She gets out and runs after Ji Wen Kai in the same fashion as she had made Ji Wen Kai do back in the past.
Ji Wen Kai gets Zhong Yu Tang to visit another event in the past. Zhong Yu Tang’s chase takes them outside a shaved ice shop owned by the father of Zhong Yu Tang’s friend, Wang Hai Di (Yin Fu). Ji Wen Kai asks Zhong Yu Tang if she felt like shaved ice after he stops playing around. They go to her friend’s father’s shop. In the past, Zhong Yu Tang and Ji Wen Kai were always asked by the shop owner to show their report cards to determined who’d pay. Their first time back to have shaved ice together in 10 years, it is a comparison of credit cards that determine who’d pay. It was always Ji Wen Kai who’d pay back in the past; his report card always had more red marks than Zhong Yu Tang’s. Fifty-six times he had to pay. But this time round, Ji Wen Kai wins Zhong Yu Tang with his higher, black charge card over Zhong Yu Tang’s regular credit card.
And Ji Wen Kai plays one more time. He decides to have everyone have an incredibly expensive dish when he accepts the invitation from Zhong Yu Tang’s dad to join him, his daughter and his son to celebrate Zhong Yu Tang’s new position at a high class restaurant, knowing the outing was Zhong Yu Tang’s shout.
Ji Wen Kai’s actions seems to pay back Zhong Yu Tang for all the playing around she did in the past; but, it seems it’s got good intentions behind it. Ji Wen Kai reveals he isn’t teasing Zhong Yu Tang when he transferred her to Sales Team 3. It is to have her reach her potential. “You are destined to stand at the top of this incohesive organisation,” he says. “But I’m very curious, how long can you keep it up? If there are no problems, your abilities are strong. But if there are problems…”
Zhong Yu Tang’s team members are also those he sees has potential, but needs shaping up. Ji Wen Kai describes Sales Team 3:
- Meng He (Sara Ding) – she is the team leader of Sales Team 3. She is told to be one of the company’s start up employees and is the only regular employee owning 20% of the company’s stock. Her skill is the ability to automatically store the previous years’ amount of items sold and its sales numbers.
- Huang Jia Yin (Cherry Hsia) – a 30-year-old single mother who used to hold the title of ‘Fashion Apparel’s Best Salesperson of the Year’; but, now she is a regular employee who treats her child as the sky.
- Zhu Liang Yu (Zhang Luo Ti) – a twenty-six year-old who has good text analysis skills. He is a creative genius and an expert in making reports and contracts. But he is lazy towards making sales. He just wants to be a famous romance fiction writer.
- Jiang Hui Xin (Jenny Huang) – a twenty-one-year-old who only revives during lunch break. After work she becomes a super model.
- And Chen You Rui (JR) is a new addition. He is extremely good salesperson—”a Sales King” from the VIP counter. He sees himself as the person to rescue Sales Team 3. However, he has a weakness: he chokes when speaking to men. He only does well when speaking to women.
Ji Wen Kai gives Sales Team 3 the Yours project—a brand without social class and without national boundaries. They must think of ways to get the Yours everywhere. The termination of contract for Mei Mei is also a project Sales Team 3 must get back. Failure to succeed within three months is termination of employment.
The announcement Ji Wen Kai makes to Sales Team 3 has little impact. After Ji Wen Kai and Miao Ai Sha leaves the room, Meng He, who was giving out a plan of attack, stops and breathes a sigh of relief. The Sales Team 3 resume as normal—thinking about what to eat and concerned over their child. It’s not until later on when it’s almost home time and when Zhong Yu Tang shouts out the termination of contract for Mei Mei, that gets the attention of her Sales Team 3 team members. Mei Mei is the team’s biggest client and they remain for a moment, concerned that this loss of contract will severely cut their team’s performance that will see the team gone. Huang Jia Yin—the salesperson who is in charge of the Mei Mei product—immediately gives a call to the nanny looking after her son to ask her to watch her son a little longer.
But, after a while, one by one, Sale Team 3 heads home. Huang Jia Yin is the last to give up. She gives up when she isn’t able to contact the nanny and her worry that something is wrong takes over her concern for the contract they lost. Huang Jia Yin apologises to Zhong Yu Tang. She tells Zhong Yu Tang she will take care of the case the next day. Zhong Yu Tang tries to bring Huang Jia Yin and the others back to stay behind and discuss the situation with their Mei Mei product, but they continue leaving.
Miao Ai Sha sees the scene where Zhong Yu Tang attempts to stop Huang Jia Yin from getting off work and going home. She enters to attempt to get some sense into Huang Jia Yin: a cut in Sale Team 3 and loss of employment for her means no ability to hire a nanny to look after her child. Miao Ai Sha tells Huang Jia Yin a likely scenario where her ways may see her struggling to take care of her child because her only choice of supporting herself and her son might be setting up a night market stall where she works with her child in hand. This gets Huang Jia Yin to stop and think for a bit until a call comes through and she is informed that her young son is in the emergency room for high fever. Miao Ai Sha has no choice but allow Huang Jia Yin leave. Zhong Yu Tang offers to accompany her there. Ji Wen Kai watches all of what was taking place a level above.
Thoughts
This episode was another great one. We are loving the humour. It actually reminds us of Office Girls (very popular 2011 Taiwanese drama, starring Roy Chiu and Alice Ke). That subtle and quirky humour like in the scene where Ji Wen Kai and Miao Ai Sha walks as they discuss down the corridor after visiting Sales Team 3, a ladder left there had both Ji Wen Kai and Miao Ai Sha both turn to the side and slide through till they got through and resumed normally—it was so funny! We’d imagine if the scene was a normal one, Miao Ai Sha would gesture Ji Wen Kai to go first and she’d follow. The other scene was when Zhong Yu Tang brought Chen You Rui out to have a talk with him after he was introduced to the sales team. When Zhong Yu Tang was telling Chen You Rui off for saying he was her boyfriend, the scene suddenly brightened up for a moment before going back to being dim. The camera dead pans. Funny!
The scene where Ji Wen Kai drives by announcing Zhong Yu Tang gets transferred to the sales department, we love when he said, “Bu wan le (I’m not playing anymore).” The way he said it was so cute! :oP :oP.
Hmm, we said that Ji Wen Kai must have liked Zhong Yu Tang back in their high school days because of the scene where Ji Wen Kai was on the phone, annoyed with the person on the other end of his call and Zhong Yu Tang mistook it as talking about her in the last episode. But then the flashback of Zhong Yu Tang riding on the bicycle with the megaphone and the shaved ice scene at the shop Zhong Yu Tang’s friend’s dad owned in this episode made us remember that the person Ji Wen Kai was told to have had a secret crush on was actually Zhong Yu Tang’s friend. This means maybe it’s just admiration and respect back then.
Ji Wen Kai looks to not have any sort of like towards the friend now, though. Zhong Yu Tang is looking more like the one he has a chance of liking! He’s doing all these not so nice things for her success.
Ji Wen Kai is always observing Zhong Yu Tang from afar. What is he thinking in his head? What’s the plan for the story? We can’t see the direction yet. We’re just seeing that Yours and Mei Mei are what’s driving the character and relationship developments and it will be the thing to get Zhong Yu Tang and the Sales Team 3 in shape.
We’re not so sure how the entrance of Chen You Rui will effect the story, either. Chen You Rui looks like a love rival. Ji Wen Kai already shows he’s curious about his relationship with Zhong Yu Tang. When Chen You Rui announced Zhong Yu Tang as his girlfriend two years ago, Ji Wen Kai looked surprised. We feel Chen You Rui isn’t going to be a really strong love rival, though. He looks like just a character to bring in jealousy, but not really be a threat when Chen You Rui is put forth as a character who has a personality of a player who will most likely give up easily because he’s a player.
We thought Zhong Yu Tang was going to be a team leader to her oddball colleagues in the last episode. But, Zhong Yu Tang is looking like someone who’s there to get the under-performing team to try harder.
We’ll see how all develops. Episode 2 was great and we’re looking forward to seeing the next episode!
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