How ’bout them apples?

Previously on Back to 1989… ep 6 recap

Anna’s Recap

Okay, I was cool with Zhen Zhen’s cutesy, damsel-in-distress act in the beginning, but not anymore. Grow up already. Is this her first crush on a guy or something? Honestly, her personality seems to be such a mismatch with Chen Che’s that their eventual coupling is going to feel so contrived. Like, would a guy like him actually go for a girl that desperate? I’m over their relationship already…and they haven’t even gotten together yet. Gimme more scenes and clues about Ya Juan’s future man/babydaddy instead!

Episode 7

Are these a bunch of moody teenagers or what? Zhen Zhen is so troubled by whether or not Chen Che is crushing on her bestie, Ya Juan, that she’s stress eating and asking Xiao Long of all people for relationship advice. Jin Qin is (drunkenly) moping around, avoiding Ya Juan at all costs. Zhong En tries to rile him up by saying that he’ll pursue her if Jin Qin won’t snap the eff out of this funk he’s in. He advises him to keep fighting for her…but if he does decide to give up, then make it a clean break.

The actual teenager in this drama, Zhen Zhen’s younger bro, asks Chen Che if it’s possible to like two girls at once. Playas gotta play. Zhen Zhen overhears Chen Che telling Guo An that if he can’t decide between the two, then that means neither of them is his true love. The kid has the nerve to ask if his sister is Chen Che’s true love. Where the hell did that come from? Nah; he says that they’re just friends. The type of girl he describes as his ideal type is basically Ya Juan. Womp womp. Cue the moping by Zhen Zhen.

Zhong En stops by Ya Juan’s place to drop off the books that she left at his restaurant. Unfortunately for him, it’s her super unpleasant mom that answers the door. She immediately interrogates him as to why Ya Juan was at his restaurant in the first place. Was it to see that scrub, Li Jin Qin?!? Lady’s seriously got zero chill. Then she tries to recruit Zhong En as her spy. LMFAO. She wants him to report to her first whenever the group of them hangs out together. LMFAO.

Zhen Zhen decide to take matters into her own hands…by writing a letter to the local radio station asking for relationship advice. She sneaks into Taiyuan early in the morning to fax her letter, but the manager sees her and calls her into his office for an impromptu employee evaluation. By the time she comes out, everyone else is there and discovers her letter in the fax machine. Of course, it gets read aloud for the entire office to hear. Zhen Zhen immediately denies being the writer. Oh yeah, you so fooled ’em. Ya Juan takes one for the team and claims ownership of the letter.

Since Zhen Zhen is too nervous and scared to ask Chen Che what his feelings really are, she resorts to the old fallback superstition: peel an apple in front of a mirror at midnight. If the apple peel doesn’t break, your future husband will appear in the mirror. Isn’t that more frightening than just asking the dude? Anyways, she succeeds in apple peeling, but manages to knock over the candles she had on the desk. She freaks the shit out about some papers catching on fire, and screams next door to Chen Che to “save her.” While he’s putting out the world’s smallest fire, ditzy Zhen Zhen is solely preoccupied with seeing Chen Che in her mirror.

Zhen Zhen asks Chen Che if he likes Ya Juan because he seems to be very interested in and concerned about her. He denies it, but she keeps asking what his feelings towards her are. Chen Che claims that he already knew Ya Juan from a long time ago (not entirely untrue), so he felt a sense of familiarity with her. And they’re all friends, so obviously he’d help her if she was in trouble. While Zhen Zhen’s happy, Chen Che is now worried about how he’s coming across to other people by paying so much attention to Ya Juan. If he’s not careful…what would Ya Juan think? Yikes.

The lobby fight with Ya Juan’s customer from last time is resolved rather quickly. Chen Che is able to talk his way out of it, and convinces the deadbeat dad/husband to go home to his family instead of gambling. After the incident with this guy providing false information to open an account, the manager implements a new rule that all customers must supply correct and adequate information. Xiao Long happens to come across Chen Che’s file and sees that he opened the account under the name, “Chen Guo Zhang” (Ya Juan’s dad/his grandfather).

Ya Juan thanks Chen Che for helping her with this situation. Based on the speech he gave the guy, she can tell that he must have a very close relationship with his own family. He tells her that he always believed that his mother hated him because she always treated him with indifference. Despite all the accolades and achievements he earned to please her, she never seemed to care. He wonders if she regrets having him at all. Ya Juan tells him that’s impossible. Just based on the fact that she cooks ginger soup for him, that already shows that she cares. After carrying him for ten months, giving birth to him, and then raising him all these years, she must love him. Dammit, tears.

During dinner at Zhong En’s restaurant, Ya Juan is slightly distracted because Jin Qin isn’t there. Not only is Jin Qin not there performing, his substitute isn’t either. In a last minute desperation move, they convince Chen Che to go onstage instead. His guitar playing and singing skills has everyone in the place mesmerized, and Zhen Zhen is legit swooning. Only then does Xiao Long realize that the person that Zhen Zhen likes is Chen Che.

On the way home, Zhen Zhen continuously asks Chen Che questions to find out about his love life. He quickly sees through her game because she’s just that unsmooth. Zhen Zhen receives a page from Xiao Long and wonders why he’s been acting so weird the whole day. Chen Che says that it’s pretty obvious why…he likes her. Zhen Zhen doesn’t believe him, but Chen Che is super confident in his detection skills. If that’s the case, she asks if he knows who it is that she likes.

Onboard the time machine:

Xiao Long tells Zhen Zhen that he’s planning on making a ton of money and buying a house before he’ll confess to the girl he likes. Always chasin’ the paper.

Zhen Zhen’s pen name is “Taipei’s Shredded Squid”….

Ya Juan helps Zhen Zhen massage the pressure point in her hand to alleviate stomach pains. The same way that Chen Che did for her before.

After the apple-fire-mirror incident, Zhen Zhen dreams that she’s Fung Ching Ching and Chen Che is Hui Man Keung from the HKdrama classic, The Bund. Sorry, but no.

You can watch episode 7 of Back to 1989 on drama streaming site, Viki, now!