Family and friends come in clutch for our couple in light of our heroine’s sickness, our hero’s false charges at work, and the search for the hidden slush fund. In addition to yet more drama from our villain side of the story, the week ends with another incident that rocks the Hong family.
EPISODES 11-12
After last week’s big press conference, Hae-in passes out and she’s rushed to the hospital. The devastated Hongs and Baeks rush down to Seoul, and Mommy Hong is especially gutted due to her ill-treatment and dismissal of Hae-in all along. Thankfully, Hae-in wakes up the next morning, and she can finally tell her husband to his face that she loves him. Hae-in also apologizes for not treating Hyun-woo better, and for leaving him all alone with her family, and the specificity of this apology means a lot to me. I thought the drama was going to gloss over this part, and I’m glad we circled back to it.
Hae-in then goes on to talk about her death, but none of us want to be reminded about this, so Hyun-woo tells her that he’ll give up on himself if she dies. “Cut the nonsense. You’re not going to die… I won’t let you.” I didn’t know curing cancer is one of Mr. Baek Hyun-woo’s many skills, but amen to that! In the spirit of apologies, Mommy Hong and Hae-in also have a tearful make-up session, but I’m the one who’s dehydrated from all the tears. Aigoo.
BaekHong spends the rest of their time in the hospital serving couple goals, and making everyone jealous. Lol. Eun-seong is firmly planted in Team Jealous, and he’s riled up when he visits Hae-in and she tells him that she cut ties with him back in university because he always reached out to help whenever she was struggling, but he was the reason she struggled in the first place. “Maybe you should have liked me back before I did those things!” Eun-seong retorts. Pfft. Maybe you should get the memo and stop comparing yourself to Hyun-woo. But does Eun-stupid do that? Nope. So Hae-in slams him once more with facts. Sure, Hyun-woo was going to leave her, but that is past tense. “He’s with me right now. Need I explain more?” No, dear, you don’t.
But to prove that his delulu brain is not capable of accepting the fact that he will never be an option for Hae-in, Eun-seong moves on to confront Hyun-woo for remaining by Hae-in’s side. He attempts to swing a punch at Hyun-woo, but our boxing champion is faster, and the entire Queen of Tears fandom erupts in cheers as Hyun-woo’s fist says hello to Eun-seong’s face. “I’m going to stay by [Hae-in’s] side forever. So don’t hold your breath and just get lost,” Hyun-woo says, before leaving Eun-screw-TF-off to lick his wounds in the corner.
Moving on to my least favorite part of this show: the business-y stuff. Grandpa Hong is out of his coma, and having tracked him to the hospital Eun-seong moved him to, Ms. Girlfriend takes him back to Queensville. Ms. Girlfriend and Eun-seong are on the hunt for Grandpa’s secret slush funds to make up for the Queens Group stocks that have plummeted since the press conference. But the bad news is that Grandpa has vascular dementia, so good luck trying to get any useful information out of him.
Thanks to Yang-gi and Hyun-woo’s other SNU lawyer friends, Eun-seong’s trumped up charges against Hyun-woo are proven false, and Hyun-woo lives to fight another day at Queens. Hyun-woo then tasks his friends to help track the flow of Grandpa Hong’s secret funds, and I loved how Hyun-woo and Hae-in got their hands on Grandpa’s shredded documents thanks to Secretary Na and the juice salesman Hae-in helped out a few episodes ago. Place your bets, guys — the race is on for which team will find Grandpa’s nine hundred billion won (!) first.
Team Evil is divided, and Grace has inserted herself back into their midst. But she’s playing both teams, and neither of them trust her. Heck, I don’t even think she trusts herself. On the other hand, Team Hong has never been more united. The Baeks and the Hongs bond over their joint effort to look after Hae-in, and even her white blood cell count rises in response to all that love. But I go from awww to oof when Hae-in tells Hyun-woo that she’s beginning to experience memory loss, and that she doesn’t want him to be next to her when her illness gets worse. Sigh. Girl, why not allow yourself to be loved through it all?
Back to the location of Grandpa’s funds, all of the hints point in one direction: Queensville! But the rain temporarily puts an end to BaekHong’s sleuthing, and Hae-in waits for Hyun-woo to bring the car over. Hyun-woo arrives less than a minute later, and off they go — until they get into a car chase. The chasing car cuts them off from the front, and the driver alights and walks up to their car. But wait, the driver is Hyun-woo! So who is in the car with Hae-in? From the reflection on her glass, Hae-in sees Eun-seong sitting in the driver’s seat, and it dawns on her that she mistook him for her husband. Damn that memory loss!
I knew something was odd the second “Hyun-woo” showed up. Everything from his expression to his body language was different and unsettling, and it all made sense with the Eun-seong reveal at the end. Kim Soo-hyun, the actor that you are! He nailed the Eun-seong mannerisms to a tee. Poor Mr. Delulu. The one time his crush gazed at him with eyes of love was when she mistook him for the man she loves. Serves him right for going along with Hae-in’s illusions instead of snapping her back to reality.
Now that the gig is up, Eun-smoke-and-mirrors locks Hae-in in the car, and tells her that it’d be better to lie to Hyun-woo that she was heading somewhere with him rather than admit that she mistook him for her husband. Hae-in insists on leaving the car, but when he unlocks the door, she steps out to assure Hyun-woo that she’s fine, and that she’s going with Eun-seong to see Grandpa at Queensville. I know that Hae-in has a plan up her sleeves, but it’s sooo annoying to watch Eun-smug look so pleased that she did as he said.
As Hyun-woo watches Eun-seong drive away with Hae-in, someone knocks him out from behind. Oh no! It’s Land Scammer, and he plans to kill Hyun-woo and stage it as suicide on Eun-seong’s orders. Wow! Not Eun-sinister sending a man to his death and going ahead to pick out wine and flowers for a romantic dinner with the man’s wife. What’s on the menu? A bowl of delulu, a dash of desperation, and a heaped ladle of audacity!
Eun-seong will do anything for a crumb of Hae-in’s affection including lying that he was the one who saved her from the drowning accident that killed her brother. But nothing he says penetrates Hae-in’s armor. She’s just here to see her grandfather — and give him a recording pen in case he gets his memories back.
Afterwards, Hae-in gets a little lost in the grounds at Queensville, but thankfully, Hyun-woo is by the back entrance to pick her up. Hae-in is hesitant to approach him because she’s not sure if it’s really him or her mind is playing tricks on her again. But those loving eyes laced with concern are undoubtedly Hyun-woo’s, and his “I don’t get beaten up,” arrogance — when she spots the injuries from his attack earlier on — confirms that the man standing in front of her is indeed her husband. That’s right, Land Scammer ended up not killing Hyun-woo after Hyun-woo opened his eyes to see that Eun-seong was going to abandon him after the murder.
BaekHong heads to Hyun-woo’s post-divorce apartment, and the door passcode is also 1031 — their baby’s due date. The drama didn’t even let me tear up at this before hitting me with bouts of laughter at Hyun-woo’s panicked cleanup when it suddenly hit him that his apartment is a mess. Lool. With no family interference, and no extra rooms for people (*cough* Hyun-woo *cough*) to run and hide in instead of confronting their problems, perhaps their marriage would have turned out better if they had made this apartment their newlywed home instead of Queensville?
Moving on, we’re treated to BaekHong being all domestic with cooking, cuddling, teasing, and flirting, and Hae-in tells Hyun-woo that even if she was reborn a hundred times, she’d still marry him every single time. Hyun-woo has to loosen his tie to ensure that he doesn’t choke from all her compliments, but my single ass cannot relate to any of these things.
On the drive back to Yongdu-ri, Hyun-woo hands Hae-in a “divorce cancellation” ring, but Hae-in breaks our collective hearts when she turns him down. She comes clean about mistaking Eun-seong for him, and she tells him that she can’t make any promises with her unstable memory. Hae-in returns to the car to cry, Hyun-woo stands outside battling with his own emotions, the OST plays in the background, and I’m bawling all alone in my room.
Back in Queensville, Ms. Girlfriend cannot stand to see her son heartbroken over a girl who used him, but Eun-seong replies that he has always known that Hae-in was using him. Using him to do what exactly? Mother and son must be high on cheap drugs. Eun-seong goes on to say that he’s used to people using him — after all, his own mother is part of the users squad. Eun-sob is quite pitiful since this “using” is the only form of love he has ever known, but I refuse to feel sorry for him.
Ms. Girlfriend replies that she never neglected Eun-seong. On the contrary, she arranged for the drunk driving accident that killed his abusive adoptive — non-drinking — parents, and the mysterious fire that killed the orphanage director who mistreated him. Whoa! Forget what I said last week about this woman not loving her son. Being a murderous psycho is actually Ms. Girlfriend’s way of loving Eun-seong, and she tells him that she won’t sit still if anyone — read: Hae-in — gets in the way of her goal of giving him everything from the chairmanship of Queens to the entire world. Pack up, people, it looks like we’ll have to vacate this planet for the mother-son duo.
Eun-seong is shocked by his mother’s revelation, and this is the first time I’ve seen him look so flabbergasted — a bit frightened by his mom, even. Ms. Girlfriend is the ultimate villain in this show, and now I wonder if she had something to do with the mysterious boating accident that almost drowned Hae-in and killed her brother.
In Yongdu-ri, Hyun-tae subtly brags about how his wife (cameo by Kim Shin-rok for their Reborn Rich reunion) overlooks his faults since Mummy Baek treats her daughters-in-law so well, and Soo-cheol gets depressed again thinking about his own wife. Meanwhile, said wife has run into trouble in the U.S. with the arrival of her baby daddy — the finance director at Queens Group who Soo-cheol knew to be her “brother.” Baby Daddy is a violent punk, and when he tells Da-hye that he set Soo-cheol up to take the fall for his illegalities in Korea, she feeds him sleeping pills and escapes back to Korea to inform Soo-cheol.
Soo-cheol doesn’t need any explanations to welcome the weary pilgrim to the Baek hotel, but Mommy Hong doesn’t care for Da-hye’s apology. But now that Soo-cheol has returned to his husband and fatherhood era, he stands up for his family. Biological or not, Geon-woo is his son, and Soo-cheol tells Da-hye that he doesn’t plan to let her and Geon-woo leave him this time. I chuckled when Da-hye reminded him that she’s his noona, but I totally melted when he told her to be quiet before hugging her. I still haven’t completely forgiven Da-hye, but at least she has repented and she’s making amends.
The week draws to a close with the Hongs concluding on the panic room at Queensville as the location of Grandpa’s funds. But the problem is that Soo-cheol already mentioned the existence of the panic room to Eun-seong when he first moved in. I made an offhand comment back then that Soo-cheol might as well just have handed the blueprint for Queensville over to Eun-shark, and I cannot believe that I was actually on to something. The partial good news is that dementia Grandpa is the only one who actually knows the location of the panic room, and the concluding part of the good news is that Grandpa has been faking his dementia the whole time!
Ms. Girlfriend finds out that Grandpa is of sound mind, but it’s too late for her to do anything. Grandpa records something on Hae-in’s pen, and throws himself down the staircase. By the time the Hongs arrive the next morning to report Ms. Girlfriend for confinement, Grandpa is already dead! OMG! Beom-ja is crushed, and the rest of the family is numb. But thanks to Grandpa’s death, Ms. Girlfriend’s power of attorney is now null and void. Not Grandpa sacrificing himself to atone for his mistakes to the family.
Hyun-woo and the Hongs take Grandpa’s ashes on a last tour of Queensville, and they end up in Grandpa’s private elevator — which doubles as the hidden entrance to the panic room. Hyun-woo discovers the entrance, and we freeze frame on everyone’s collective shocked face as the door opens and they behold whatever it is that is in the panic room. I honestly hope the room hasn’t been emptied out because Eun-seong was previously in that elevator, and he might have seen the entrance.
The epilogues reveal Hyun-woo as the dude who doesn’t care about netizens’ disparaging comments about him, but is ready to unleash his SNU lawyer side when he sees one bad comment about his wife. Lol. We also learn that Hyun-woo went to a marine corps camp as a kid, and he was the one who actually saved Hae-in from drowning that day. Oh! My BaekHong is so meant for each other, and Eun-salty can go kick rocks.
With Hae-in’s worsening symptoms and all her dark jokes, I’m worried about BaekHong’s fate — even though I try not to. Still, I chose to trust in Park Ji-eun writer-nim and her track record of happy resolutions to “impossible” romances. Besides, with Grandpa’s expiration, I think the Hongs have had enough with the death plague.