Mom and Dad are officially dating, which shifts the dynamic between mother and daughter a bit. While Mom continues to put herself at the center, our new third wheel takes some pressure off our overburdened cop. And with all these well-observed relationships tugging at my emotions, I’m forgiving any of the interjected nonsense that takes place in between.
EPISODES 7-8
When we ended last week, Jin-hee had just discovered that her mother’s new flirtation (none other than Jin-hee’s dad) would be joining them on vacation. As I had hoped, the drama treats the situation with respect and doesn’t take it lightly when Jin-hee is super angry at her mother.
Eun-mi, though, steps up her self-centered routine and basically tells Jin-hee to get over it. She’s brought Jin-hong along to seduce him — and also because he’s paying. But being there puts Jin-hong in an awkward situation, wanting to please both Eun-mi and Jin-hee, which is impossible because the two never get along or agree on anything.
At the start, Jin-hong takes Jin-hee’s side when it comes to decision-making about the trip. When she wants to eat lobster as their first meal, and Eun-mi doesn’t, he chooses the seafood place – even though he’s allergic to shellfish. Everyone finds out about this self-sacrificing decision when he breaks out in hives after accidentally eating something he shouldn’t.
All around, Jin-hong is easily embarrassed, very sensitive, and overly eager to please. All of this annoys Eun-mi, who’s starting to regret inviting him. Not only do they have nothing in common (he goes to bed early and gets up before dawn to read books), but she really can’t stand that he’s not taking her side about all the petty things she and Jin-hee argue about. His presence there is actually making things a lot worse between the women.
Things start to change when the three are waiting in line at a tourist attraction and a man collapses nearby. Jin-hong dives into doctor mode immediately, diagnosing a possible stroke and taking charge to keep the man alive until the medics arrive. Both Eun-mi and Jin-hee look impressed and each follows his command to take the man’s pulse and call an ambulance (which is cute because it uses each of their skills as a physical therapist and a police officer).
Afterward, Eun-mi criticizes Jin-hee when Jin-hee wants to move on and see the sights they came to see. Jin-hee goes off on her own for a little while and continues to feel guilty and sorry for her existence, while Eun-mi threatens Jin-hong for attention. She doesn’t want him getting close to Jin-hee and she won’t date him if he continues to try. Jin-hong ends up apologizing to her (just like Jin-hee always does).
Later, Jin-hee talks to Jin-hong (who she calls ahjussi) and tells him to just focus on taking care of Eun-mi and not her. His main concern is whether or not this would really make Jin-hee comfortable, and when she says that it would, he agrees. And this is where the real turnaround happens.
The women start following his suggestions for sites to visit and they love every place he takes them. And Eun-mi gets off Jin-hee’s back because she’s happy with all of Jin-hong’s attention. She’s so happy in fact that she asks him to officially start dating, and he can’t contain his smile. Finally, the women have a buffer between them that’s working.
The only problem is that Jin-hee gets so comfortable with Jin-hong escorting her mom everywhere once they get back to Seoul, that she decides not to put her mom on police protection. The murderer is still walking around somewhere but Jin-hee worries that if Eun-mi enters formal protection, her identity will be further exposed. So, when Eun-mi gets attacked one night while she’s walking home alone, Jin-hee blames Jin-hong for not being there.
Of course, Eun-mi was alone because she has an independent personality and she didn’t want Jin-hong to meet her. But Jin-hong guesses that at the root of the whole thing Jin-hee is really angry because Eun-mi called him first (instead of calling her) after the police arrived and arrested the attacker. He doesn’t take it personally when Jin-hee flips out on him and later tells her that he’s glad to see she’s so protective of her mother.
We’re not done with the killer plotline, though, because even though the attacker confesses to the murder in the park, it turns out they’ve got the wrong guy. The dude who attacked Eun-mi is the same one that’s been following her around in a baseball cap, but it seems he’s not the killer.
We end this week when Jin-hong enters his apartment to find Eun-mi and another woman yanking each other by the hair and telling him he better stay right where he is. We saw earlier that Eun-mi felt jealous when she saw a framed picture of him with a woman, and then noticed his fridge full of banchan.
We learned this week that Jin-hong hasn’t had contact with his parents for the past decade (a thing he’s not proud of but that paves the way for him to date Eun-mi without disapproval). He swears he’s not married and has no other kids, so Eun-mi wants to know who’s dropping off the side dishes? The final scene is meant to make us question Jin-hong’s background, but I don’t buy it for a second. No one could fake this level of adorable nerdiness.
The progression with Jin-hee and her sunbae Jae-won is moving at a glacial pace and feels mostly uneventful. The two somehow always end up together when one is drunk and the other is sober and that’s how they’re finding out a lot about each other. It’s clear there’s at least a mild attraction already and Jin-hee is interested to know more about why he’s been ostracized at headquarters. But Jae-won is very closed off and even when she tells him her story about why she became a cop (to protect her mom, physically and financially) he’s still not ready to offer up his own story.
One of the major threads I’m looking forward to in the coming episodes is how Jin-hee will come to terms with having her father in her life. Various times this week both she and Eun-mi mentioned that Jin-hong was Eun-mi’s first love – and that’s it. Neither of them seems to think that Jin-hee should, or will, have any independent feelings about her dad.
But one of Jin-hee’s friends acts as the voice of reason when she asks, “Don’t you care at all that he’s your father?” Jin-hee doesn’t think she has any feelings about it – she never knew him, so how could she care about him? Yeah, I suspect there’s a lot buried under the surface that we’ll get to see develop before the drama’s end. And with a show that handles its main characters with such care, I can’t wait to see how it plays out.