As we learn more about the accident that wrecked our heroine’s youth, we get a better picture of her in the present day, and understand a little more what makes her tick — and what separated our pair so many years ago. Our lovers are becoming more and more closely knit, but the more they rely on each other, the more the outside world leans in to attack.
EPISODES 9-10 WEECAP
Our drama continues to hum along this week, first showing us the growing closeness between Jae-hyun and Ji-soo. It doesn’t take much for them to get right back in sync with each other, especially when Ji-soo finally cracks open the door of her heart and lets Jae-hyun see her pain. Both how she’s living now, and how she lived when they parted in the past.
Jae-hyun is in hook, line, and sinker. The life he was living when we met him wasn’t the happiest, and this week we see him all but ready to divorce Seo-kyung so he and Ji-soo can get back the life together that was taken from them in their youth.
But it takes a train trip and claustrophobic tunnel moment for Ji-soo to finally crack. We’ve been seeing it in little flickers, the things that upset her — rain, the scream of an ambulance, birthdays — and this week we get the full reveal. On her birthday may years ago, Ji-soo’s mother and sister were in the local department story when it collapsed. Hundreds of people died in this tragedy, and they were two of them.
I could throw a stone and hit a K-drama with a commercial building collapse, but I decided just today that they’re all the same accident. The timeline fits. So, in my mind, the building that collapsed in the 90s is responsible for the trauma in Just Between Lovers, Chocolate, and especially here, in When My Love Blooms. The widespread devastation of that accident is why it spawned so many stories. I’m not sure if this is really true, but it is to me.
Jae-hyun is the best at comforting Ji-soo during her breakdown because he knows exactly what she went through as a girl when the accident first occurred. She was visiting him during his military service when she saw the news on the TV, and knew that her mother and sister were there. I don’t know if it was more heartbreaking to see her realization of their passing in the phone booth, or to watch Jae-hyun seeing that agony from just outside. Once again, the drama brings us beautifully full circle, because he couldn’t console and be with her in the past, but he’s able to now.
Our couple is healing each other’s wounds and love is a’blossoming, as the title of this drama suggests, but there’s no end to the forces that try to keep them apart. And sometimes that means the ripple effect that their relationship starts to have on their children.
The awful mothers at the school gossip their heads off, which gets to the kids, which gets to Jae-hyun’s son, who then brutally attacks our little Young-min for the second time. Again, the school cruelly sides with the wealthy and powerful family, ignoring the truth — actually, not even looking for it. And as if this wasn’t bad enough, Young-min’s sweet-spirited character makes it even more painful to watch. He is so precious I want to cry when I see him onscreen on a good day, never mind when he’s being victimized, beaten, and then blamed as the aggressor.
Ji-soo and Jae-hyun are called in to put out another fire, and I really liked how the drama handled this moment. Rather than have these parents gloss over the gossip that started the whole thing, each parent talks to their son honestly and tells the full story. It’s a lot for a child to hear, but the honesty and truth goes a long way for both parent/child relationships.
At the end of our episodes this week we’re treated to a nice reveal which is basically the icing in the Jae-hyun cake at this point. We know he was the scapegoat for his father-in-law’s shady business dealings, and we know that what we’ve heard Jae-hyun has done doesn’t match up to the kind and principled young man we met. And it turns out, that’s all for a reason.
We learn that after Ji-soo and Jae-hyun parted ways in the grief of her family’s death, Jae-hyun met with his own tragedy. His father, previously active in the unions, was manipulated and scapegoated and eventually committed suicide. The clincher? The company that abused this man and used him for their purposes was none other than Hyung Sung, Jae-hyun’s father-in-law’s company.
And now it all makes sense. We suspected that Jae-hyun had some secret plot going on, but I have to admit I didn’t expect that it ran this deep — or this personal. I was fine with him just bringing down this cruel and corrupt company (and the man behind it), but now that Jae-hyun’s father was a victim of the same? Bring on the takedown — I’m ready!
