After spoiling us with one of the sweetest and most tender of falling in love stories, You Are My Spring hits us where it hurts this week. While our hero comes face to face with some truths he was ignoring, it sets off a chain reaction for our heroine, who must react. Past pains are echoed as new ones are felt, and this drama has a way of hitting us right in the gut.
EPISODES 11-12 WEECAP
As ever, You Are My Spring balances darkness and light with a lightness of foot that always surprises me, but makes the story that much more satisfying. So, while we have almost two episodes of straight giddy cuteness between Da-jung and Young-do, we’re also served darkness in the shape of Ian Chase’s mystery.
But this week we’ve hit the point in the story where that darkness also comes for our couple. And it hurts. Whether you roll your eyes at the noble idiocy, or feel like you got stabbed by the heartbreak, you can’t deny this breakup was a rough one. Necessary for the story? Maybe not, but definitely written well enough into our characters that I could see why it was happening even while I was busy hating that it was happening.
Young-do is such a precious character, especially this week, in his sweet Mr. Rogers cardigan and his last-minute drive to support Da-jung after she found out about her father’s passing — he’s so precious that I can almost forgive him for deciding that it was best to break up with Da-jung.
Seems like things haven’t been quite right ever since that fever he had, but I don’t really like how the drama is handling his sudden health crisis. I will believe for the story’s sake that he has bacterial pneumonia and needs to be cautious due to his heart transplant, but here in real life someone very close to me has had that same surgery, so I can’t really get behind the dramatization I’m seeing here. But I’ll forgive them, because I love this story.
Young-do is on the mend, but he knows that his health is a problem, and that Da-jung won’t be able to depend on him. He goes all the way to the hotel for a (last) 5-minute meeting with her, and says how his father used to do that for him when he missed him.
In a drama full of touching moments and stories, this might be one of my favorites, and even reminded me of the beautiful point about the “half look” that was in last year’s A Piece of Your Mind. For Young-do, this is his last moment with her, because he’s going to break up with her.
Por Da-jung has had to face a lot of pain and heartbreak this week. When her family gathers to deal with the debt her father has left behind, the moments between them were so touching and so real. This drama! From her little brother finally opening up about his memories, to Da-jung realizing the weight her mother has long lived under, it was all beautifully told.
But Da-jung is also emotionally exhausted, so finding out from her well-meaning friends that Young-do has been keeping his illness from her — she’s in pieces before long and overhears (ugh) the breakup that is coming. She narrates that she’s decided to be angry at him instead of sad, but it doesn’t go as planned. Young-do uses that anger to make the breakup even more horrible.
They’re both sobbing by the end of the episode, Young-do alone in his kitchen, and Da-jung in the arms of her mother who has come to comfort her (that killed me!).
Our little drama-within-a-drama echoes the pain of their parting, and I love Ga-young’s drama so much I both want to watch it IRL, but also want to see more of her own story with Patrick! They have to deal with a dating scandal this week, and while she quickly laughs it off and convinces the reporters it’s wrong, Patrick comes running to her, and he’s clearly heartbroken that she doesn’t want to go public with their relationship. I love them together, but it seems clear Ga-young has a little bit more to go until she has the confidence to move forward.
But in the midst of all these relationships, whether budding or broken or burgeoning, we also have our mysterious side story about Ian Chase. I’ve warmed up to him suddenly, I think because the first thing he did when he woke up in the apartment was to call our favorite detective. Though no one believes his innocence, he’s pretty upfront about what he experienced that night, and the plot around him has surely thickened.
As we might have guessed, the man responsible for the murder was the creepy not-homeless guy that had been previously investigated. We see the scene play out from his perspective, and the facts are laid out: from the brutal murder of the woman in the apartment, to the helpful monologue that gives us his intentions, we know that this guy has been connected to Ian Chase and Choi Jung-min since their teenage years.
We’ve seen flashbacks that hint at what went on, and how one of the twins played this guy — and that seems to be the aim of his game now: to get revenge on the twin that tricked him. And right now it looks like since he doesn’t know which twin is which, better to attack both? I’m not sure how involved he is in the wider story, but the deeper it gets the more we learn.
There was a hidden camera in Ian Chase/Choi Jung-min’s bedroom, there’s a whole lot of powerful people involved, and more, but what I’m really dying to know is which twin is which. Did they know each other? Is one “normal,” and the other a sociopath? I don’t know where the line is between them, but with all the talk of the line where one crosses into that dark psychological space, I think we will find out before our drama is over.