Unlock Your Love Episode 3

No, we are not on a date...

In the beginning, they’re worrying about customers – a day after their online promotion. A little early isn’t it. Love decides to hand out flyers at the mall, and of course takes Rain with her who reluctantly agrees after over a minute of debate among the four friends.

Afterwards, they return to the shop where is all “Where are my customers?” Apparently, she has no idea how advertisements work. Then, the first customer makes an appointment via text. If they’ll always need four employees to get a single customer, this is doomed to fail.

All this time, Love Is doing even the smallest thing like opening water bottles for her – this could get annoying really soon, especially when she takes all the agency away from Rain. Deane, on the other hand flirts with Pat, but tries to keep thing casual, non-committal. As Pat is pretty much the smitten kitten, who only pretends to be okay with that, this is surely going to work out great …

Love openly flirts with Rain, who misinterprets this behavior is joking – or at least doesn’t want it to be serious. They eat ice cream together, and Rain slowly thaws up, though she still thinks Love is just joking with all of her childish ways of hitting on Rain, for example by sending her sweet texts on the phone.

We get another talk with Love and her mother, who recommends just asking Rain when her feeling are.

The next day, customers start appearing! Pat plays the assistant for Deane, how this business ever could be profitable is beyond me. Pat must have made tons of money in whatever she did before this. Later, Deane wants to send her home, as turns out to hide her appointment with the former co-worker of Rain (I don’t think we heard a name yet) – now Pat of course stays till the “customer” leaves. Deane once again cautions her this she isn’t looking for love, and getting attached to her will only head to pain. Deane drives her home, with Pat inviting her to come in, but Deane doesn’t think that is a good idea.

(Gagaoolala subscribers get a cut, but ultimately meaningless montage of scenes where Pat arrives at the store of different dates.) Deane thinks about love in the car, reiterating that “without pain, disappointment, or heartbreak, it’s not really love. I’m not ready to be in love” (The uncut version added one sentence to this: “Maybe I’m already in love, but I just don’t know yet”).

The next day, Love meets up with Bowie who complains that Love all but disappeared over the last days, she suspects Love has fallen in love, and she admits it right away, but doesn’t tell her anything about her crush other that it’s a girl (well, at least the subtitles do). Later that night she’s text flirting with Rain again, and invites her to a meal - at 10 a.m. Must be the weekend, then… Rain says she doesn’t want to come, but she doesn’t text it. 😊

This is followed by another ultimately meaningless exchange between Bowie and Wawa.

The next day, Rain is getting ready for the meal date – which is definitely not a date, or is it? They drive to a restaurant where once again Love does everything for her, she even offers to cut the food for her. This clearly does not sit right with Rain but for now, mothing come of it. Deane and Pat are also going out, having closed the tattoo show for the day; they are looking for a restaurant, but Deane is surprisingly picky for someone claiming to be “fine with anything”. The two couples spend the day at the arcades and by painting figurines, respectively.

The four eventually meet by accident in a row of grabber machines and after an awkward exchange where neither of the couples wants to admit they are on a date, Deane and Pat leave, why Love is angry that Rain denied the two were on a date together. Rain claims Pat and Deane would have interpreted this as having feeling for each other. Love finally admit that she’s into Rain, but Rain still doesn’t believe her. Rain has been so unlucky in love that she fears she can’t even love herself let alone someone else – but Love offers to love her if she can’t love herself.

And that’s it for this week; work dropped way into the background leaving room for the first toward love for our two mismatched couples. I’m not sure yet either Deane/Pat or Love/Rain are really compatible; Deane claims to only want a casual fling while Pat is obviously interested in more; Love is in Love, while Rain doesn’t believe in love anymore. Pat too easily gives Deane the benefit of the doubt, while Love comes across as naïve to childish.

But the episode was all in all entertaining, though some of the scenes could have been shortened or left out altogether. Bowie was only present to give the milk tea sponsor of the show a shoutout, the scenes with her and Wawa served no purpose whatsoever. And all the other GL shows of the year – “The Loyal Pin”, “The Secret of Us”, “Affair”, “Blank” and even “Reverse 4 You” are way more dramatic and have higher stakes, whereas this one runs the risk of putting me to sleep at times.

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