Our heroine goes through it this week as her life devolves into a seemingly endless nightmare orchestrated by a fierce nemesis. To protect her daughter’s future and her own, she’ll have to make some tough decisions that might make her more enemies. But if there’s one thing we know about our truth seeker, it’s that she isn’t one to back down from a fight.
EPISODES 5-6
Things go from bad to worse for Moon-young who continues to get roped into other people’s messes. Seriously, the woman cannot catch a break. She already took down one baddie only to find out he was a pawn with a boss who is infinitely scarier.
Yeon-joo kicks things off by kidnapping Sung-jae and coercing Moon-young into taking over his former duties. At least she draws the line at threatening Bom – she’s no savage like Chief Ma (says the woman who gets positively tingly at the idea of ruining people’s lives). Moon-young doesn’t like it, but she can’t just let her husband die. She decides to save Sung-jae first and take down Yeon-joo later.
While she’s running definitely illegal “errands” for Yeon-joo, Moon-young does some more investigating and learns that Yeon-joo is a notorious lobbyist and connoisseur of shady deals who has managed to stay technically clean. She isn’t employed by companies like Geumshin but instead heads up their more delicate projects as a freelancer of sorts.
Yeon-joo may not be employed by Geumshin, but she’s very close to CHAIRMAN CHOI (Yeo Moo-young). In fact, he lives with her, and she’s his primary caretaker. He seems to be suffering from some sort of dementia and goes in and out of lucidity. But there’s someone else who’s well acquainted with Chairman Choi: Sung-jae’s father. It looks like Sung-jae isn’t the first in his family to be beholden to the company. Chairman Choi is funding Sung-jae’s father’s political campaign on the condition that his family is untouched. Whoops.
Meanwhile, Detective Baek is still on the case and complicating matters for Moon-young. He has been tracking “Tae-soo’s” phone – Jin-woo helpfully provided the cops with the number – which is now in Moon-young’s possession courtesy of Yeon-joo. There’s nothing he can pin on her, but it doesn’t look good that the phone seems to be traveling along her usual routes. Given how messed up her life has become, this is surprisingly one of her more minor issues of the moment.
Moon-young’s supposed final assignment before getting Sung-jae back is to represent an arsonist who is obviously guilty, so it’ll require some illegal creative lawyering full of lies, evidence tampering, and questionably sympathetic judges. The case pits her against her only real friend Shin-hwa who’s the prosecutor, leading to a falling out. Yeon-joo, however, is thrilled with how everything went. True to her word, she returns Sung-jae after Moon-young wins the case.
But she can’t resist throwing another bomb Moon-young’s way and sends her a video of Sung-jae and his mother beating and force-feeding Tae-soo alcohol. Nothing like some mother-son murder bonding. You’d think Yeon-joo was doing this as another threat, but nope, it’s for her own pleasure. She even deletes the original video, leaving Moon-young with the only copy, just so she can see what Moon-young will do.
Understandably, Moon-young is at her breaking point. Her tentative trust in Sung-jae is entirely shattered, and she’s even afraid to leave him alone with Bom. While a secret murder is by far the worst lie Tae-soo has told, Moon-young has learned it’s not the only one. She finds out from Jin-woo that the real reason he’s so caught up in all this is that he’s looking for his daughter who was born while he was in prison. Sung-jae has been the one bribing Jin-woo (not the other way around like Sung-jae claimed) by promising to find her.
I certainly hope Shin-hwa is as trustworthy as she appears because Moon-young tells her everything, even about the murder, and leaves Bom with her. As always, Moon-young immediately takes matters into her own hands. She gathers Sung-jae and his parents for a little chat and invites Jin-woo as the surprise guest.
And boy, do things get heated. Sung-jae shows his true colors and says he’d never planned to find Jin-woo’s daughter. He dares to say she’s better off without a murderer father, which is just rich. Moon-young is disgusted by all the hypocrisy and vindictiveness flying around, so she shares the murder video with the room. If she wasn’t convinced her husband is not the man she knew, his reaction seals the deal. He doesn’t even attempt to make excuses anymore and almost looks… bored. Instead, he blames Moon-young for ruining his fake death like she’s a spoil sport and attacks Jin-woo because he thinks he sent the video.
After Moon-young yells that Yeon-joo is the one who sent it, Sung-jae takes off. He goes straight to Yeon-joo’s house and viciously strangles her for daring to send Moon-young that video. The only reason he stops short of killing her is that Chairman Choi comes in the room. (How did Sung-jae keep up his nice-guy façade for so long?)
At least we know where everyone stands. The good guys’ team is pretty lean with only Jin-woo and Shin-hwa as allies. Jin-woo had been guarded with Moon-young, but she’s proved she’s nothing like Sung-jae, so he’s eased up. It certainly helps that Moon-young quickly locates his daughter’s name and adoption info for him, fulfilling Sung-jae’s promise in his stead.
Moon-young brings Jin-woo to Shin-hwa where they all exchange info. They decide to go after Sung-jae first and then the rest of the Geumshin people. Moon-young calls Detective Baek and arranges for the cops to arrest Sung-jae at his parents’ house, although she can’t bring herself to turn in the murder video (which will probably haunt her later). Sung-jae turns on her without hesitation and declares her a traitor, saying they’re done.
Of course, nothing is that easy. Thanks to Sung-jae’s father’s obsession with the optics of his son’s crimes impacting his campaign, he goes to Yeon-joo and Chairman Choi for help. Next thing you know, there’s evidence proving Sung-jae’s alibi, and he’s released. At least there’s still going to be a trial, although we’ve seen how likely it is that will be fair.
Does this hurdle stop our intrepid Moon-young? Of course not. To get to the bottom of this, she needs to know what Yeon-joo is truly after, so she tails her to a secret house. Moon-young peeps through the window and is horrified to see Yeon-joo and Sung-jae making out. In flashback, we see Chief Ma telling Jin-woo that Yeon-joo and Sung-jae have been putting on a show for a while. We end once again on a bang when Moon-young, who has reached her limit, crashes her car right through the window, heading straight for the stunned psychopathic couple.
This drama does not let up. I hope at least Jin-woo and Shin-hwa turn out to be who they seem because Moon-young is being put through the wringer and deserves an ally or two. I never trusted Sung-jae, but he’s even worse than I’d feared. With everything we know, it looks more like he faked his death to escape his family rather than protect them. He really seems to thrive being evil, and I can’t imagine a vanilla life as a family man would cut it for him. Add him to Moon-young’s ever-growing list of enemies – and we’re still only halfway through!