A tragic death sets off a butterfly effect of rapidly unfurling consequences, shedding light on concealed alliances and duplicitous machinations. Undefeated, our protagonists strike back with their arsenal of high-tech resources — but at what point does self-preservation cross the line?
EPISODES 7-8
While Chae-woon is mistakenly apprehended for Ho-seung’s stabbing, Sang-min beats a hasty retreat. Incinerating his car in a gasoline-fuelled explosion, Sang-min evades detection by peeling off his fake scar (!!!) and donning a woman’s disguise. Rather than a vested personal interest, Sang-min’s methodical preparation seems to suggest the expertise of a hired professional.
Now that the spotlight has fallen on Sang-min’s crimes, his co-conspirators are starting to feel the heat. The identity of the mole within BF is revealed, and it’s Hae-deun — not only had she directed Shin-gu to the welfare center for Sang-min to lead astray, but she’d also leaked Chae-woon and Ho-seung’s trip to the welfare center. Now, she reports the current situation to Geun. Despite her double-crossing, though, Hae-deun still has a shred of conscience left; she can’t entirely brush off the guilt of being complicit in her colleague’s death, however unintentional.
Meanwhile, our BF-enhanced bodyguard finds himself in a bit of a pickle. In his haste to chase Sang-min down, Chae-woon accidentally snapped his handcuffs and flung a police officer off him with his bare hands, thanks to the synthetic tissue inside him. He’s detained for assault, while the officers scratch their heads over his show of superhuman strength.
Putting on a high-tech pair of glasses, Ja-yoo transmits real-time footage of the police’s crime scene evidence to San. With the help of BF’s AI, San analyzes Sang-min’s face from CCTV videos, creating a disconcertingly accurate profile and swiftly linking him to the vehicle arson. San’s methods are far more efficient than the police, though this also begs the question — would law enforcement benefit from such technology, or would its precision inevitably lead to a panopticon level of surveillance and control?
Jae is determined to poke his nose into BF’s business, and he pulls strings to get Chae-woon out of detention and into his office. Insinuating that BF has modified Chae-woon into an android, Jae attempts to get a rise out of him, but Chae-woon turns the topic around. Jae’s interest in BF’s technology could easily drive him to drastic measures — say, bombing the former president so he can no longer pose a threat to BF with his opposition? Or perhaps it was ordered by someone even higher up, such as Geun?
Infuriated by the accusations, Jae incites a fight, except it ends with a waterfall of a bloody nose for him — it turns out he has hemophilia. As Jae nurses his injury (and wounded pride), Ja-yoo arrives, commencing a second confrontation after Chae-woon exits. When Ja-yoo calmly confirms the success of BF’s cultured organs, Jae brazenly urges Ja-yoo to share it with him, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice.
In contrast to Ja-yoo, who wants the revision of the bioethics law so that she can commercialize cultured organs for the masses, Jae desires to keep the technology exclusive. Only those in the upper echelons deserve to live forever; otherwise, it would simply be prolonging the pain of the poor. Calling out Jae’s elitism, Ja-yoo points out he’d merely be a mutation if he achieves immortality alone.
While our knee-jerk response may be to side with Ja-yoo, Jae’s stance isn’t entirely without reason (aside from his selfish greed, of course). Some problems such as socioeconomic inequality may be alleviated through improved policy and infrastructure, but resource scarcity will still pose an issue, not to mention the potential market monopoly that would mirror BF’s existing grip on the meat industry. Agricultural livelihoods have already been pushed out of the market — are healthcare jobs next? Synthetic immortality may greatly benefit the health of the populace, but it will also bring harm in other ways.
With neither side willing to back down from their conflict of ideals, Jae outright threatens Ja-yoo with a search and seizure of BF — he’ll dissect Chae-woon himself if he has to. “Ja-yoo, you are someone I cherish,” Jae implores, to which Ja-yoo responds with a scornful laugh in his face. Through his paper-thin facade of offering his help for her to cling onto, his scheming against her is clear as day.
There are benefits to keeping one’s inner circle small, and one of them is the ease of pinpointing a traitor. Hae-deun falls for the trap San set, and the team gathers to interrogate her. When she remains tight-lipped, Chae-woon reveals Jae’s maneuvering of both their marionette strings — such as having Hae-deun put Chae-woon on the bodyguard interview list — in order to bait her into a response. Putting his enhanced strength to use and crushing Hae-deun’s wrists in his hand, Chae-woon plies her for an answer until Ja-yoo puts a stop to it.
Outside, Ja-yoo demands an explanation from Chae-woon, who tells her he’d come to BF of his own free will to investigate her involvement in the bombing. Admitting his initial suspicions, Chae-woon emphasizes that he hadn’t known about her motivations and her pain back then. He entreats her for one last chance to catch Ho-seung’s killer, but Ja-yoo is tired of having her trust trampled on. Blindsided and betrayed by how orchestrated her encounters with Chae-woon had been, Ja-yoo fires him on the spot.
With pressure closing in from all sides, Ja-yoo decisively reasserts control of the narrative. Via hologram projections across the country, Ja-yoo publicly reveals BF’s culturing of human organs in an open call for clinical trial volunteers. Disclosing the death (of Shin-gu’s wife) in an unauthorized trial — so that her enemies cannot use it as a hold over her — Ja-yoo opens herself up to the legal consequences, then volunteers herself as the first test subject. She’ll replace every single organ in her body with BF’s cultured ones.
While Jae condemns the announcement as mere propaganda for BF, Chae-woon approaches Ja-yoo, offering to be her clinical proof instead. He asks why she’s going this far, putting her life on the line for BF. Does she even want to live? “I’m doing this in order to live,” Ja-yoo counters. “And I will.” To her, it’s the best method to shut the naysayers down. As for Chae-woon, he has a different optimal solution — and though Ja-yoo stops him out of concern, he tells her that he, too, has something he cannot give up on.
This week, the cracks in BF’s system are surfacing more than ever, from the fracturing of the core team to the increasingly disturbing methods they voluntarily employ. The physical intimidation forced upon Hae-deun was uncomfortable to watch, but the subsequent extrication of information was even worse — using Hui’s technology to feed images of Sang-min, Shin-gu, and Ho-seung’s death into her brain, while monitoring the associated memories her mind recalls. There’s really no other term for it than torture, and it’s deeply unsettling.
Although Chae-woon may have ultimately benefited from his enhanced hearing, the chip also affords its makers control over him; as San said, they can easily incapacitate Chae-woon with a sharp noise. We know that Ja-yoo has noble, if idealistic, intentions — but the same can’t be said for all of BF’s personnel, or its stakeholders, or its future successors. What started as a miracle may easily warp into a monopoly that can be manipulated with malicious intent.
The perspective that frames this drama predisposes us to be sympathetic to BF and its protagonists, yet if we take a step back and view their actions through an objective lens, they’re nowhere near as upright as their good intentions make them seem. Several times, the BF team has utilized illegal, unethical, and even unscrupulous means, ranging from employee tracking to human experimentation to psychological torture. These technological advancements vastly expedite the process of catching the bad guys, but do the ends justify the means? What are the ramifications if — or when — such methods are turned against the general populace?
Something I particularly love about Lee Soo-yeon’s writing is how not a single scene is wasted; each line of dialogue is meticulously crafted to highlight characterization and tie in to the bigger picture. Even a seemingly superfluous moment played for laughs, like Hae-deun flirting with Chae-woon over Ja-yoo’s video call in an earlier episode, comes full circle in Hae-deun’s wily emotional manipulation of San this week. Claiming to have hidden her unrequited feelings all this while, Hae-deun entreats him to avert his eyes from her at her worst. It doesn’t quite convince San, but it does get him to leave Hae-deun alone with the tray of food, allowing her to slowly saw away at her restraints with a broken plastic spoon.
As we head into our final week, we have two important hints to ponder upon: San recognizing the widow of the overpass man in Hae-deun’s associated memories, and Chae-woon realizing that Moon-kyu’s daughter — a.k.a. Geun’s ex-wife — had also known of the visit to the military site. Amidst all the cutthroat plotting, though, I’m glad for the tender moments of humanity that afford a brief respite before our final week. The reaffirmation of trust between San and Hui was a reassuring contrast to the broken bonds of late, and the flashback to that poignant early-morning conversation between Ja-yoo and her bodyguards felt like a balm to the soul. Such vignettes give me hope that despite all they’ve gone through, our protagonists’ moral integrity and empathetic hearts will prevail.