Make Me Tingle Episodes 1 & 2 Recap and First Impression: A Conservative Heroine, a Sex Toy CEO, and One Very Awkward Contract

She was raised in a “slice of Joseon” in the middle of Seoul. Now Gong Yeon-su has to market sex toys. Here’s everything that happens in the first two episodes, and whether this rom-com earns its spark.

Make Me Tingle, the TVING original starring Nam Ji-hyun and Kim Jae-young, premiered on October 15, 2026, and its first two episodes set up a clash that’s easy to love: a woman raised on ancestral rites and early curfews versus a CEO who sells pleasure for a living. Below you’ll find a full recap of Episode 1 (“Yeon-su’s Big Break Up”) and Episode 2 (“Working with Sex Toys”), followed by my honest first impression, what works, what doesn’t, and a score.

Spoiler warning: both episodes are covered in detail. Make Me Tingle episode 1 and 2 recap.

Quick Facts Before You Dive In

Nam Ji-hyun and Kim Jae-young aren’t strangers. They previously worked together on 100 Days My Prince, and Nam has said she’d rate their on-screen chemistry “110 out of 100.” Big claim. Let’s see how the first two hours back it up.

Episode 1 Recap: A Slice of Joseon in Modern Seoul

An almost-thirty woman with a blind date she didn’t ask for

The episode opens with Yeon-su sprinting home for an ancestral rite, one of several her family holds every year. In voice-over she explains that her family is deeply conservative and lives in Joseon-style houses right in the middle of the city. Flashbacks fill in the rest: she grew up hearing that men come first, and she went to all-women’s schools from start to finish. Now she’s nearly thirty, so her grandmother hands her the details of a blind date for the weekend and expects her to show up.

What her family doesn’t know is that Yeon-su already has a boyfriend. Her friend and boss Se-ra knows, and so does the audience: Yeon-su and Seung-jun have been together almost a year, but she can’t introduce him to her relatives until he’s ready to talk marriage. Se-ra’s advice is a little sneaky. Mention the blind date to him and see how he reacts.

Seung-jun’s real problem

Over dinner, Yeon-su does exactly that, then brings up marriage. Seung-jun’s answer isn’t about commitment at all. He’s been hesitating because she has never slept with him, and every time he tries to move things forward, she says no.

Meanwhile, in a swanky apartment, a man named Dokgo Dal takes a call. He’s the CEO of a sex toy startup called Loand, and he’s also been set up on a blind date. You can probably see where this is going. His date is Yeon-su.

Sex toy shop, mistaken identities, and an aunt’s pep talk

Yeon-su vents to Se-ra, who drags her to a sex toy store to get her more comfortable with the whole subject. Yeon-su isn’t swayed, because she was taught not to sleep with anyone before marriage is on the table. Se-ra offers another angle. Maybe Seung-jun’s request is his way of showing love and commitment.

Inside that same store, Yeon-su overhears Dal talking with his colleague Yoon Ji-o and decides, with total confidence, that they’re a gay couple. (Hold onto that one. It keeps coming back.)

At home, she catches her aunt Mi-young smoking outside her bedroom. Mi-young tells her it’s better to choose your own path than to let others choose it for you, and it lands. Yeon-su calls Seung-jun and tells him she wants to prove her love.

The blind date that nobody wanted

At Loand, Dal and his team prep for a club event. One colleague jokes that his blind dates are a monthly routine. Across town, a gift from Se-ra, a Brazilian wax, gets Yeon-su ready for her big night. She tells her family she’s working late, then remembers the blind date comes first.

At the hotel, she spots Dal with Ji-o again, and her theory about them only gets stronger, even as he sits down at her table. She suggests a smaller restaurant so they can wrap things up fast. Dal barely looks at her and clearly isn’t thrilled. Yeon-su, tired of the whole thing, cuts the date short and tells him it’s polite to at least look people in the eye.

The motel, the street full of condoms, and a very bad night

She meets Seung-jun for drinks, and they end up at a motel. Things heat up until Seung-jun refuses to use a condom. He claims it’ll hurt her and points to her lack of knowledge about sex. She refuses. He accuses her of not really wanting him and storms out.

Nearby, Loand’s club event is a hit, with free condoms raining down on the crowd. Dal slips out to grab more from his car. A very drunk Yeon-su wanders the street, fascinated by the condoms scattered everywhere, and follows the trail until she crashes straight into Dal as he carries a box out of the car.

While he tries to collect his stock, she asks whether wearing a condom really hurts. His answer: break up with the man who told you that. She throws up on him, he calls the police, and she’s escorted away.

The morning after, and the twist you saw coming

Yeon-su wakes up sober at the police station and realizes her wallet is gone. At home, her mother catches her, and then her grandfather shows up, but the family covers by pretending she’s leaving for overtime. She actually meets Mi-young at a restaurant, where her aunt gives her a new piece of advice: do something crazy.

Elsewhere, Dal studies Yeon-su’s wallet. After sending a long string of messages to Seung-jun overnight, she’s about to text him again when his reply arrives first. He says they should break up.

At work, Se-ra announces a new client: Loand. Despite the product, Yeon-su follows her aunt’s advice and volunteers to lead the project. Then Se-ra walks her into the client meeting, and the CEO across the table is Dal.

Episode 2 Recap: Working with Sex Toys

Both leads want out. Neither gets to leave

Episode 2 begins with regret on both sides. Yeon-su tells Se-ra she isn’t the right person for the Loand project, but Se-ra points out that Dal specifically wanted whoever worked on the Horizon ad, which means Yeon-su. On the other side, Ji-o hears the same complaint from Dal and reminds him he insisted on that person.

At the office, Yeon-su apologizes for the night she got drunk. Dal asks whether she’s ever used a sex toy or plans to, and when she doesn’t answer, he says he can’t work with someone who’s biased against his product. She argues that plenty of people share her prejudices, so he’d be better off with someone who understands them. Then he asks what the Horizon ad meant to her. Her answer: the horizon is the line she looks at so she doesn’t lose sight of who she is and where she’s heading. Later, Dal stares at that same ad on a billboard outside his apartment.

Meeting the Loand team

Work officially starts. Yeon-su meets product designer Ma Mang-na and web designer Joo Min-young, and she’s surprised to learn Ji-o is the company’s VP, since she still thinks he and Dal are a couple. Over coffee, Ji-o tells her to come to him if she ever needs help, and he returns her wallet, saying he found it outside the club.

Then comes the tour: the Secret Room, where staff test products themselves (yes, during work hours), and the Development Room, where everything is designed and made. Ji-o also hands her a vibrator to take home.

The vibrator that won’t stay quiet

It goes off by accident on a crowded train. Later, it buzzes again at home during the ancestral rites when someone kicks her bag. She tries to grab it from her uncle’s hands, but the vibrator falls out for everyone to see. Mi-young jumps in and claims it’s her neck massager, and ends up in trouble for it.

That night, Yeon-su thinks about marriage and how everyone in her family sticks to their duties. She had always wanted to marry for love, inspired by her parents’ relationship.

Out of place at the weekly meeting

At Loand’s weekly meeting, the team discusses product feedback. Mang-na asks Yeon-su what kind of suction she prefers. She has no idea, so she says stronger. At the team dinner she still feels like an outsider, and she tries to learn about suction from an online resource until Dal catches her. He tells her to wear comfortable shoes tomorrow because he wants to show her something.

A factory visit, a motel, and an argument about pain and pleasure

The next morning, Yeon-su asks about Dal’s relationship with Ji-o, but he assumes she’s asking about their working relationship. On the way, he stops at a roadside van where a woman sells sex toys, and the two chat like old friends. At the factory, Dal is all smiles and charm with the managers. He later tells Yeon-su he doesn’t see it as sales but as collaboration between partners.

He then takes her to a nearby motel, where she notices a sex toy vending machine in the lobby. Stepping outside, she hears a woman slapping a man and confronts them about dating violence. It turns out to be bondage, and the man’s spilled bag makes that very clear. Dal apologizes and pulls her away.

She wonders how pain can have anything to do with pleasure and says love must not be part of this business. Dal dismisses love, saying their business is pleasure, and the argument escalates. He accuses her of thinking only about her own needs without considering a partner’s, and he calls her narrow-minded. Upset, she leaves on her own.

A flashback, a dead phone, and a rescue

A flashback shows a young Yeon-su getting her first period without knowing what it is. Her mother gives her sanitary napkins and whispers that she’s become a woman now, but she should keep it secret. In the present, Yeon-su reflects on being told to hide herself. When she calls Mi-young and admits she feels like an alien at work, Mi-young says being different is okay. Then her phone dies.

Dal, knowing they’re in a seedy area, goes looking for her and ends up crashing his car into another. Elsewhere, Yeon-su realizes a car is following her and hides in alleyways. The woman from the van finds her in time and offers a ride. On the drive, she tells Yeon-su she gave her own daughter condoms when she was 15.

Seung-jun returns

Back at home, Seung-jun is waiting outside, drinking. He begs to start over and then states what he really wants: to sleep with her so she can prove her love. She refuses and tells him to leave. He raises his hand to hit her, and someone stops him. It’s Dal, who asks Yeon-su what she wants him to do.

The final scene reveals he called the van woman to pick her up, because his own car was tied up in the accident.

My First Impression: Funny, Warm, and Still Finding Its Feet

I’ll say this upfront: after two episodes, I like Make Me Tingle more than I expected, and I’m also a little impatient with it. Both feelings come from the same place. The premise is strong, but the show keeps choosing the comfortable version of it.

Here’s what I tracked across both episodes, because first impressions are better when you can point at something:

• Yeon-su’s “Dal and Ji-o are a couple” assumption shows up in the sex toy store, at the hotel, and again at the start of Episode 2, when she’s still sure of it. It’s a running gag, and it’s working so far.
• Mi-young steps in at key beats in both episodes: the smoking pep talk, the “do something crazy” advice, the neck massager cover story, and the late-night phone call. She’s quietly the show’s emotional anchor.
• Se-ra drives the plot forward in both: the sex toy store trip, the Loand client announcement, and the explanation of why Dal wanted Yeon-su.
• Each episode ends on a “he’s here” hook. Episode 1 reveals Dal as the CEO. Episode 2 has him stepping in front of Seung-jun. That’s reliable structure, if not exactly surprising.

What Works

• The central contrast. A family that treats a young woman’s life as a schedule of duties, set against a company whose whole job is talking openly about pleasure. The structure plays it up too: Episode 1 is mostly Yeon-su’s world, and Episode 2 drags her into Dal’s.
• The flashback to her first period. This was the moment that landed for me. It explained her upbringing better than any amount of voice-over, and it made her far more relatable than the vibrator gags did.
• The Horizon ad. It’s a small detail, but it gives Dal a real reason to want her, and it gives Yeon-su a reason to believe she belongs there. Seeing him look at that billboard was a quiet moment I didn’t expect.
• The bickering. Nam Ji-hyun has said their on-screen debates drive the drama, and the motel argument shows why. Both of them have a point, and neither is a villain.
• Tone control. Director Kim Ye-ji has said the team wanted to avoid shock value and keep things grounded, and you can feel that. It stays light without turning cheap.

What Doesn’t

• Yeon-su’s obliviousness gets stretched. Not knowing what suction means is funny once. By the second time she bluffs, it starts to feel less like innocence and more like the writers needing her to be clueless.
• The line delivery in both episodes sometimes leans childish, and the scandalized reactions can wear thin. I’m hopeful this settles as the character grows.
• The provocative premise plays it safe. SCMP’s review called the show tame and said it struggles to deliver on its edgy setup. I wouldn’t go that far after two episodes, but I get the point. For a show about sex toys, it’s remarkably cautious.
• Dal is still a blank. We see him charming, competent, and defensive, but we haven’t seen why he believes what he believes. His speech about collaboration in the factory is the closest we get to a real glimpse.
• Seung-jun is a one-note antagonist. His condom excuse in Episode 1 and the drunken “prove your love” scene in Episode 2 both land in the same place. He’s there to be wrong, and the show doesn’t try to make him more than that.

My Score

7 out of 10.

It’s a charming start with a clear thematic spine and a lead pair who already argue like they’ve known each other for years. It loses points for predictable beats and a heroine whose cluelessness gets overplayed. If the next episodes give Dal more depth and let Yeon-su’s confident side take more of the screen, this could climb quickly.

Should You Keep Watching?

If you like opposites-attract rom-coms and don’t mind a heroine who learns in public, yes. If you want a bold, boundary-pushing take on desire, set your expectations lower. This one is a warm comedy first.

FAQ

Where can I watch Make Me Tingle? It’s a TVING original, and Viki lists it with a Thursday 8 p.m. KST broadcast slot. SCMP’s coverage also points to HBO Max, so availability may depend on your region.

Who stars in Make Me Tingle? Nam Ji-hyun plays Gong Yeon-su and Kim Jae-young plays Dokgo Dal, with Park So-jin as Jin Se-ra, Kim Shin-bi as Gong Nam-su, and So A-rin as Kang Si-eun.

Have the leads worked together before? Yes. Nam Ji-hyun and Kim Jae-young previously co-starred in 100 Days My Prince.