Spring of Youth – K-drama Episode 4 Recap & Review
Episode 4
Episode 4 of Spring of Youth begins with Tae-yang leaving home for the band performance at the school festival, despite his father's protests. Seo Min-cheol calls Cho Sang-heon, who assures him that the performance won't take place.
At school, Sa Gye and the others are excited to perform. But then a rowdy crowd of people claiming to be Sa Gye's fans turn up at the event and end up wrecking the whole place. The performance is cancelled.
Gyu-ri proves that those people were fake fans which makes Sa Gye suspect Sang-heon is involved. They suddenly realise Bom is missing and Sa Gye confronts Sang-heon about this but he says he doesn't know where she is. Ultimately, he finds Bom near the performance venue but she says she saw some men take Tae-yang away.
Thanks to Sa Gye's hefty donation to the university's hospital, he learns that Seo Min-cheol has admitted Tae-yang as a patient. He's even placed guards outside Tae-yang's VIP room. Sa Gye and the others go to the hospital, where they see a new patient being turned away due to a lack of space. The group makes a big fuss, claiming that Min-cheol himself will sponsor the patient's care. While Min-cheol is dealing with all the public attention, they get Tae-yang out and send the new patient to the VIP room inside.
Tae-yang appreciates this but tells them he's quitting the band because he doesn't want them to get hurt. However, the others convince him to stay on. They even conduct their debut by performing on the street.
Cho Sang-heon's next move is to publish a post that says Sa Gye doesn't value his fans and insults them. As a result, fans turn up outside Ja-young's house to protest. They end up storming inside and making a mess and Sa Gye is forced to jump from the rooftop to the neighbouring building to escape.
At J&J, Ji-na gets in trouble when someone realises The Crown's new song's chorus has been plagiarised from the chorus of an older song. Since the band's schedule is fixed, she has two weeks to find a whole new song. Sometime later, Ji-na realises that the song she stole from Bom has similar chords to The Crown's new song. She decides to use the melody from Bom's song on the new one.
Bom and the others find their band room at school in a mess as well, in protest against Sa Gye. Sa Gye then arrives with more bad news — their band has been suspended. He says the other band, Hanju, has complained against them. Tae-yang leads them to Hanju's band room to confront them and it turns into an all-out brawl.
The principal berates Two of Sa Gye's members for beating up the other band members and they are forced to post a public apology. Later, Tae-yang officially moves out of his house.
Meanwhile, Kim Ja-young makes Sa Gye do chores around the house to make up for the damage his fans did. He sneaks out later and finds a postcard from his mother in the mailbox as he leaves. She seems to be having a good time traveling.
Sa Gye then goes to the store where Bom works and says he wants to go on a date. But she is worried about others finding out. That's when two girls from Bom's old school in the US turn up at the store. They taunt her about her change in financial status and the death of her mother, but Sa Gye stands up for her.
After they leave, Bom agrees to go on a date. They wait in line at a bagel shop but the bagels sell out before they can buy any. However, when they get on a bus, a young student gives Sa Gye her bagel because of how much his music meant to her. It makes Sa Gye a bit emotional.
That night, Bom plays her melody for Sa Gye and says she wants him to sing this song. He describes the dream about the melody and says fate brought him to her. They drink beer under the moonlight and Sa Gye kisses her. Unfortunately, Tae-yang sees this and walks away.
Bom then asks Sa Gye to come visit her mother with her the next day. She also tells him that her mother was brain-dead and Bom agreed to donate her organs. The news sparks a headache for Sa Gye and he starts matching his dreams to Bom's memories around the house.
He later asks Ja-young if Bom was raised in this house and she says she was. Ja-young also tells him that Bom's mother died in a car accident during a typhoon and donated parts of her body, including her eyes. After learning that she died at the same hospital where he was admitted for his eye surgery, Sa Gye finally puts the dots together.
He also recalls accusing Sang-heon about a hit-and-run during the party in Episode 1. At present, Sa Gye goes after Sang-heon.
All this while, Bom is waiting for Sa Gye to show up so they can visit her mother. When a car crashes nearby, she recalls being on the phone with her mother when the crash happened. She gets worried about Sa Gye when she can't get in touch with him. She calls Tae-yang and then passes out at the end of Spring of Youth Episode 4.
The Episode Review
Spring of Youth Episode 4 turns the drama up. The episode is quite fast paced and pretty much rollercoasters through different events, from the school festival debacle to Tae-yang's hospital rescue to the malicious article about Sa Gye and his protesting fans to the brawl between both college bands. Rather than a streamlined flow, the story seems to be jumping from one event to the other and the editing definitely emphasises this.
Sa Gye and Bom's romance turns up as one of these random events and just like Bom, I was surprised to learn that they are officially together now. We never see the aftermath of their kiss from the previous episode and this development feels sudden and unearned. It almost feels like we missed something in the middle.
The show also continues to lean into its melodramatic nature, with decidedly evil villains and caricatures like the school principal. You can't expect a lot of things to make sense in a show where students can just barge into a hospital and do whatever they want. If there's a reason to stick around here, it's the heartwarming camaraderie between the band members. It's the one part of the series that actually taps into character and emotion rather than the plot. But with Tae-yang's desire to protect Bom, that might not last very long.
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