Do Hyeon Joong (Lee Jun Young) lives for fitness. A former bodybuilding champion, he is now the passionate owner of a 24-hour gym. He lives by three principles: exercise, eat clean, and worship your body as a temple. Lee Mi Ran (Apink’s Jeong Eun Ji) is an office worker who enrolls herself in Hyeon Joong’s fitness program after a recent break-up. As their worlds collide, it seems there is more on the menu than barbells and dumbbells. Here’s what you can expect from the premiere of “Pump Up the Healthy Love”;!
Warning: spoilers from episodes 1-2 ahead.
Do Hyeon Joong’s fitness verse
Do Hyeon Joong eats, breathes, and sleeps exercise. He is overtly enthusiastic when it comes to working out. Obsessed with fitness to such a point and given his blunt character, he does not think twice before he starts listing everything that is wrong with a person’s body composition. He is gruff to the point that he is almost comical in how he tells everyone that their body speaks of the life they life.
Hyeon Joong’s claim to fame is his own transformation. Born as an underweight child who weighed a little over a 1 kilogram (approximately 2.2 pounds) dumbbell, it was by his sheer grit and determination that he became the proud recipient of the David of America Bodybuilding award.
However, Hyeon Joong, being who he is, had happily walked out of the competition after taking home the trophy since he had proven his point and there wasn’t much for him to do. The incident has become a lore amongst the bodybuilders’ association.
He now runs a 24-hour gym in Seoul, but with an iron fist, and when it comes to exercise, he doesn’t tolerate excuses. Hyung Joong also has an uncanny ability to sniff junk food from a mile. There are several comical sequences as he gets into combat mode whenever he sees a client cheating on their diet. If not running after people cheating on their diets, he is listing the macros and micro nutrients of food, much to the shock of people around him.
If there is a department where Hyeon Joong is unable to score, it is dating and relationships. Though good-looking, well proportioned, and with a chiseled physique, Hyeon Joong is not short of admirers. He is unsuccessful when it comes to the matters of the heart, and the fault lies with him. His relationships don’t last long since the object of his devotion is his workout schedule. As he is dumped yet again, he tells his girlfriend who is breaking up with him that he is not the one to cry since it would only mess his body composition. Tears lead to muscle loss, so he is not the one to waste his body salt on anything else.
But there is a side of him that people don’t get. Hyeon Joong wants to empower people. He is often heard mumbling, “What the fat,”; which for him is the ultimate insult.
Lee Jun Young gets the beats of his character. Though he is obtuse to the point of being rigid, he is cutely comical in his antics. His straight face as he delivers the funniest lines are bound to crack you up with laughter and even drop the candy bar in your hand.
Mi Ran, a relatable oddball
Lee Mi Ran (Jeong Eun Ji) is a bit of an oddball but is endearing in her own quirky way. We are first introduced to her as she pitifully pleads with her boyfriend in the middle of the street. Oblivious to the stares of those around her, Mi Ran wants to know why is she being dumped. There is no filter with Mi Ran—she is straightforward and has her heart in the right place. Yes, she is a people pleaser, but she thinks that’s what makes her likable.
Mi Ran works at a travel agency, and her boyfriend, who is also a colleague, tends to walk all over her. The final straw is when he doesn’t think it is important for her to know his decision to transfer to another department. Hurt, she asks him his reasons for not telling her as well as for rejecting her on their date. He dismissively tells her that it is because he finds her physically unattractive.
Mi Ran is shocked, and it seems everything and everyone around her are rubbing the same messaging in her face. Irritated after a rather funny goof up with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend, Mi Ran lands up in a club, thinking it is a singles bar. She lets her hair down and happily sways to the loud music, only to discover that she has landed up in the middle of a Zumba class in progress.
Embarrassed, she runs, only to run into Hyeon Joong, the gym owner, who tells her to enroll for his fitness program in his gruff way. Why is the world obsessed with her weight? This is perhaps the thought running in poor Mi Ran’s head.
Mi Ran has never worked out in her life, and the gym is certainly not the place for her relationship malady. A few days later, she is at the gym and signed up for Hyung Joong’s three-month fitness program. After all, how worse can it get than the situation already at hand?
Jeong Eun Ji as Mi Ran is real and relatable. She likes to help people and makes everyone comfortable, even though it could be at the expense of her own self-respect. But regardless, she is quirky, funny, and forthright.
Mi Ran’s journey at the gym
Hyeon Joong was a witness to Mi Ran’s humiliation, from her meltdown on the streets as she begs her boyfriend to stay with her for the night to the humiliating exchange when she is snubbed for her looks. His disgust is apparent, and in his typical way, he goes to her boyfriend and caustically tells him he should not palm off his insecurities onto another. It seems Hyeon Joong has figured something out which Mi Ran hasn’t.
But his aim is to get the distraught Mi Ran into the gym. He had pushed a flyer into her hand when he first met her. And it isn’t after a few meetings that Mi Ran decides to visit the gym. But there is an exorbitant price for Hyeon Joong’s “Director Do’s total life care service program.”;
Mi Ran does not think it is worth her time or money to invest in it. Pondering over her options, she makes a dress purchase on a whim, which has now become her raison d’être. This dress will be her combat outfit to wear to her colleague’s wedding, where her ex-boyfriend will be present.
Mi Ran informs Hyeon Joong that she is game for his exhaustive and intensive fitness plan, but he needs to guarantee that she will be able to fit into the combat dress, to which he confidently agrees, initially mistaking it for a combat outfit in the literal sense of the word.
Thus begins Mi Ran’s fitness journey with squats, push-ups, burpees, lunges, and presses under Hyeon Joong’s hawk-like gaze. Even though she gets stiff and sore, which any person who has been through the grind can feel, she achieves the ultimate reward. The pounds melt unbeknownst to Mi Ran, who has been so preoccupied with missing out on those little bites of her favorite food. And the dress which wouldn’t go past her ankles finally fits. Mi Ran is ecstatic. Excited, she comes up with a rather strange request.
She wants Hyeon Joong to accompany her to the wedding. Her colleagues at work have seen Hyeon Joong’s messages asking her about her diet and assume he is the new man in her life. Much to her surprise, he agrees. On the day of the wedding, Mi Ran discovers her sister has sneaked out with her combat dress. As Mi Ran hastily borrows something from her sister’s closet, Hyeon Joong warns her that she looks uncomfortable, as if pre-empting a disaster.
All is going well, and her former boyfriend even walks up to her and gives her admirable glances. But when the lights go off, the dress is emblazoned with something rather embarrassing. Mi Ran’s peak embarrassment is further amplified with the dress falling apart. And it is Hyeon Joong who comes to her rescue.
As we go through her journey of exercising, one cannot wait to see where the adventures of Mi Ran at the gym will finally lead her to. And will Hyeon Joong finally understand that oxytocin is not just what he feels when he lifts the shiny dumbbells at the gym? Only the next episodes will tell!
Start watching “Pump Up the Healthy Love”;:
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Puja Talwaris a Soompi writer with a strongYoo Yeon SeokandLee Junhobias. A long time K-drama fan, she loves devising alternate scenarios to the narratives. She has interviewedLee Min Ho,Gong Yoo,Cha Eun Woo, andJi Chang Wookto name a few. You can follow her on @puja_talwar7 on Instagram.
