'Boyfriend On Demand' K-Drama Episodes 1-10 Recap

Boyfriend On Demand is Netflix’s latest bingeable show that’s been released on the 6th of March for our consumption. The 10-part K-drama stars Blackpink’s Jisoo in the lead role alongside actor (and singer) Seo In-guk. The show tells the story of Mi-Rae, a 29-year-old who suddenly finds herself experimenting with virtual reality in the form of, you guessed it, a “Boyfriend On Demand.” What follows is a series of events in which Mi-Rae finds herself questioning reality. Why is she scared? Does she really want to experience love again? What got her so averse to love in the first place? Let’s find out in the recap of the K-drama.

Spoiler Alert

Why Does Mi-Rae Get a BoD? 

Boyfriend On Demand opens with an introduction to Mi-Rae, who seems to be quite popular at work. She lives independently and has a virtual assistant who greets her every day after work. Wow, it almost feels like she’s living in our near-future. Mi-Rae is a webtoon producer, and she’s great at her job, so when it comes time for the superstar writer Yun Song to make her return with “The Man To Know,” Mi-Rae is forced to work with her, because she’s already done it once before. Yun was a terrible writer to work with, and she’s been a pain for Mi-Rae for 3 years. So much so that her boyfriend of many years at the time, Se-June, broke up with her because of it. On his birthday, Mi-Rae was meant to meet him for dinner after having baked some muffins for him. Because she’d been working so hard and staying up all night for the past few days thanks to Yun, she ends up falling asleep, burning the muffins, and not showing up to dinner for hours. Se-June feels betrayed and breaks up with Mi-Rae.

In the present timeline, Se-June is getting married, just like he told Mi-Rae he dreamt he would. In a flashback, we also see her get mad back then, because he always said “I,” and not “we,” when he spoke about the future, so really, he never expected to have her in his future. All of this left her sour, and she’s stayed out of the dating game since. All she cares about is work and surviving. When Yun has a meeting with the creators of “Boyfriend On Demand,” a VR device with fake boyfriend scenarios, Mi-Rae has to join as her PD, of course. They want to introduce Si-Woo as a character in the game, and Yun is delighted to sign off on that. But after hearing that Mi-Rae isn’t the romantic kind and even bursts out laughing at the idea of a virtual boyfriend, Mr. Min offers her a free device in return for an authentic review. 

The first boyfriend Mi-Rae works with is Si-Woo from “The Man To Know,” and it even helps her give Yun a classic storyline to go back to when her comic drops down a spot on the weekly top 10. She’s always been number 1, but Hwany, a new writer, has been competing for the spot recently. Every 50 hours, you have to change your boyfriend, though (if you have the basic subscription, that is), and if you upgrade to the premium package, you can create your own virtual boyfriend suited to your tastes. Also, it’s like a really expensive affair, but apparently, women are okay with spending that much because that’s how expensive dating would be anyway. 

Does Mi-Rae fall in love with Eun-Ho? 

Later, Mi-Rae moves on to a college boyfriend called Eun-Ho; it’s okay, though. She’s a college student too, so it’s not weird or anything. This is after she’s run through all the “first love” concepts. The thing about Eun-Ho that really works for Mi-Rae is that he plays hard to get, which means she has to pull out all her old tricks to get him to fall for her. He’s also big into kumdo. Mi-Rae takes Eun-Ho on and is surprised when she absolutely destroys him; it turns out being in the BoD makes you super good at everything. This is the thing that finally gets him interested in her, and they start sparring on the regular and spending time together. On one occasion, they recreate the rain scene from 2003’s “The Classic,” and it’s adorable. When they’re out on a field trip, they end up finally finding some alone time sitting on a hill, and just as Eun-Ho’s about to lean in and kiss her, Mi-Rae’s Boyfriend on Demand subscription ends, and she doesn’t get the payoff she’s been waiting for, leaving her frustrated. She hasn’t felt this way about a man in a very long time, after all.

Later, after seeing a display in a mall and then even hallucinating Eun-Ho’s presence after she sees an ad for BoD, she decides to give in and just get a subscription for a whopping 500,000 won a month. The trouble is, it’s a basic plan, meaning she can’t pick her boyfriend; she has to date around, and she has a bunch of duds (doctors, secret agents, firefighters, etc.) before she finally finds her Eun-Ho again. This time, it’s been 10 years, and he thinks she just dropped out of college and disappeared. They end up having a fun time on several dates afterwards, and she starts feeling feelings again. She even ends up turning down Kyeong-Nam when he asks her out because she feels “taken.” But then she overhears some girls talking about the exact same scenarios and lines of dialogue she’s been experiencing, and when she looks it up, she finds out Eun-Ho is the boyfriend of choice for some 12,000 women, making her feel used. She ends up breaking up with him, though it was never really his fault. The thing with Eun-Ho is that this story reminds her so much of her real-life ex that she keeps going back to it. The difference is that Eun-Ho will never change or break her heart. 

What Happens With Writer Yun Song? 

You already know Yun Song’s a nightmare, but she gets even more unruly after her rival webtoon author, Hwany, has his new webtoon, Plan C, shifted to have the same release day as hers. The possibility of this upstart becoming more successful than her really gets to Yun, and she ends up backbiting at every occasion. She ends up obsessing over success and submitting her manuscripts far too late every time, to the point that on one occasion, sleepy-eyed Mi-Rae ends up not noticing a character saying, “Sorry to bother you,” before publication. On the day of the webtoon awards, when Plan C wins the most prestigious prize, while The Man to Know only wins the popularity award, she flips her lid during the celebration dinner, accusing Hwany of having a crush on her and conspiring with Director Hwang to sideline her. She ends up humiliated when he reveals it’s not Yun he’s crushing on; it’s her assistant, So-Yeong.

When her comic drops below Plan C in the leaderboard, she ends up introducing a new male character that brings the comic shooting back up to number one (this is the second time after Mi-rae helped her out the first time). It turns out, though, that the character is plagiarized from her Boyfriend on Demand, Jjong, a chef at a 5-star hotel (of course, she tried it too). This controversy gets her in trouble, and Hwang ends up cancelling her contract, even after she comes into the office and threatens to smash his fancy cups. She ends up wallowing in her misery for a good long while until Mi-Rae manages to talk Hwang into downgrading the dismissal to a mere hiatus. She sticks to Jjong in the VR, even though she briefly considers selling her set, just because he tells her that the only thing that makes him happy is seeing her happy, and that’s the kind of energy she needs in her life right now. 

Who Is Yeong-Il? 

After her disappointment with Eun-Ho, Mi-Rae initially distances herself from Boyfriend on Demand for a while. The whole idea of sharing a man with thousands of other women, with him even using the same pickup lines and moves on her, is upsetting to her and turns her off the entire idea. That’s when the dating manager comes and makes her an offer she can’t refuse: boyfriend number 901, a completely unique, custom man designed for her own tastes, who she won’t have to share with anyone else. She agrees, and 2000 or so questions later, she finds herself driving down a beachside road in a chic little hatchback, and when her scarf flies off, a hunk of a biker in a leather jacket catches it and returns it to her. Only when he takes his helmet off is it revealed that Yeong-Il, her “perfect” match, has the exact same face as Kyeong-Nam.

This freaks her out, given she’s trying to distance herself from Kyeong-Nam now that things are awkward after he tried to ask her out. Immediately, she tries to tell the dating manager that she’s got things wrong and they have to try to redo the whole perfect match generation thing, but apparently, it’s a one-off process, meaning she’s stuck with Kyeong-Nam except with cherry red hair. But she tries to let herself get used to it, and she discovers that he’s a pretty cool guy; after all, he ticks all her boxes. To get over her confusion between the two men, she tries to see if she feels her heart flutter when it’s just boring old Kyeong-Nam in the office, and she feels nothing, but things are different when she’s got the headset on, and it’s her custom-tailored perfect boyfriend acting cutesy.

Things get even better when she finds out her virtual boyfriend can now text and call her on the phone as if he were a real man. One night, after a lot of drinking, when everyone’s out in Busan for the webtoon awards, Mi-Rae ends up leaving the party to sit on the curb talking to Yeong-Il on the phone, and he says he’ll come and see her if she wants. Except Mi-Rae hasn’t packed her Boyfriend on Demand set, so she can’t make that happen, but all of a sudden, Kyeong-Nam shows up and squats down to talk to her. Drunk and out of it, Mi-Rae simply reaches out and touches him on the cheek, remarking that he ended up coming after all, until Kyeong-Nam gets her to snap out of it. She’s embarrassed by the whole affair, but she lets him walk her back to the hotel and then plays it cool once the trip ends.

What Does Ji-Yeon Do? 

Mi-Rae’s bestie, Ji-Yeon, brings a lot of brightness to the show; the girl’s just trying to find true love and happiness. While Mi-Rae’s struggling with getting over her ex and then with her Boyfriend on Demand troubles, Ji-Yeon’s going on as many dates as she can, but having little luck. Half the time, she ends up ghosting them; the other half, she’s the one who’s ghosted. It gets to the point where she has to end up taking cover behind a rack while she’s out shopping for a vacuum cleaner because she ghosted the salesman before. One thing leads to another, and Ji-Yeon ends up finding herself in possession of a Boyfriend on Demand set. On her very first virtual date, she ends up making her (contradictory) demands very clear, letting the virtual jazz singer “boyfriend” try to sweep her off her feet.

But being a girl with experience in serial dating, she’s not looking to settle down just yet. She wants to scope out her options, so she ends up moving on to the next boyfriend. And then the next one, and then the one after that. Eventually, she starts basically speedrunning virtual boyfriend dating, and even Eun-Ho, who took forever to crack for Mi-rae, ends up basically falling at the feet of this goddess of dating. After some of her early experiences, Ji-Yeon ends up writing a review for one of the boyfriends, and she’s astonished when it quickly cracks 10,000 page views. All of a sudden, she’s addicted to the attention, and she starts writing more and more reviews, becoming a recognized voice in the online community surrounding Boyfriend on Demand.

Some of the time, she has to deal with negative backlash for treating BoD as a video game instead of proper dating, but a lot of people appreciate her walkthroughs where she describes the most efficient way of handling every boyfriend scenario. Ultimately, people at BoD, Mr. Min in particular, notice her talents and bring her in for a meeting, where she blows them away with her in-depth advice and, Mr. Min in particular, with her stunning looks. At the end of the meeting, he gives her his card and literally stumbles over his own feet trying to talk to her, leaving her confident in her beauty and maybe hinting at the potential for a romance between the two. 

How Long Has Kyeong-Nam Been In Love With Mi-Rae? 

Kyeong-Nam’s feelings for Mi-Rae didn’t emerge as love at first sight, but one encounter after another, he started to see how adorable she was, and past a certain point, he was in love and couldn’t help it. Their relationship at work is kinda hostile-looking from the outside, but maybe in Kyeong-Nam’s head, it’s all banter. On the night of the company retreat, when he’s drunk and obsessively looking for a missing bottle cap, Mi-Rae’s the only one who doesn’t laugh at him and actually helps him out. Though he’s tried on several occasions to suppress his feelings for her, he gives in and tells her the next morning, as he’s dropping her off, that he likes her. We later find out that he’s been interested in her for a long time, memorizing her coffee order and her various interests, and even gifting her the charm for Secret Santa that she loves so much. Their romance was a long time coming; Mi-Rae had just left herself closed to the very idea of finding love again. Maybe Boyfriend on Demand helped open her eyes to how much she really liked him, too.

Who Does Mi-Rae Choose In The End? 

For a long time, Mi-Rae tries to brush off Kyeong-Nam, and things get frosty between them at work, but it all comes to a head one night when it’s snowing and Kyeong-Nam tries to make Mi-Rae take his umbrella, but she refuses. When he gets offended and keeps insisting, she finally breaks and asks him why he doesn’t understand how difficult this is for her, betraying that she might feel the same way about him, too, and they end up kissing. Right after, Kyeong-Nam gives her a gallery pass to a one-man show by one of her favorite artists, and they end up going together. They also start doing lots of cutesy things over the course of their relationship, but then one day he ends up discovering her BoD and also seeing that her virtual boyfriend looks almost identical to him. He’s honest about what he’s discovered with Mi-Rae and opens up about how he doesn’t know yet how he feels about it.

This causes Mi-Rae to consider going back to Yeong-Il for a bit, but ultimately, he just gives her useful advice to check if Kyeong-Nam’s still attracted to her. Even though the entire thing’s really cryptic, with both sides having a lot of misunderstandings, we know it couldn’t really go on forever. Finally, after a talk with the BoD team, Kyeong-Nam learns that Yeong-Il is actually based on the perfect man for Mi-rae’s preferences. He realizes after a conversation with Hwany that he should feel honored to be so close to the perfect man for her and rushes off to find her, and they finally drop all pretenses and embrace each other. The accident at the end leads Mi-Rae to realize that she can’t sabotage her relationship just because she’s afraid her colleagues will see them together. She finally lets go of all her inhibitions, and it turns out the colleagues don’t even believe it. So really, there was nothing for her to stress about. Mi-Rae and Kyeong-Nam might not have felt super endgame early on, but they end up wanting nothing more than each other, and Mi-Rae cancels her BoD subscription, saying one final goodbye to Yeong-Il.

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