What a bunch of episodes! What starts off as a husband’s rescue mission of righteous anger ends on a huge bomb drop. And with said bomb drop comes broken trust, about a hundred unsettling thoughts, and a lot of questions around our favorite married couple.
EPISODES 7-8 WEECAP
I was fully planning to open this week’s coverage by talking about the husbands in this show, and how their devotion to their wives is so nice to watch. Joong-do, as we soon see play out, comes to his wife’s rescue in a way that made me swoon, and Ki-young was willing to live alone with his miserable mother-in-law so his wife could get some mental peace. However, as the episodes progressed, my plans went to pot, as there is now reason to doubt the integrity of Joong-do — and dang, that was literally the last thing I ever expected to say about him.
But before everything shatters, we have our hero swoop in to save his wife from Seung-hee’s unhappy clutches. They won’t open the door? No problem, I’ll just ram the car outside to get their attention. That doesn’t work? I’ll just drive my car right through their gate, nbd, broken rib and all. In other words, thanks to Woo-jae’s information gathering abilities, Joong-do learns about the incident from his wife’s past and refuses to let her be trampled on by Seung-hee and her family. At one point he even says what we’re all thinking: “Why would you apologize!? You did nothing wrong.”
There were so many powerfully acted scenes this week, but this confrontation between Seung-hee, Hye-joo, and Joong-do was definitely my favorite. Guilt, trauma, anger, grief — there are so many emotions layered into this story (and this scene). Joong-do and Hye-joo leave somewhat victorious (in that no apology was forced), and they face a long silent drive home. It’s not till they arrive that Hye-joo apologizes to her husband for the mess this will cause him. Ever the perfect husband (*please stay true*), he tells her he’ll take care of everything. He also says that he believes her side of the story — because it’s you — repeating his sweet line from a few episodes ago.
Joong-do believes Hye-joo — and so do I — but no one can actually prove the truth. And that’s the problem, right? We explore this issue through Hye-joo’s past and through the ongoing aftermath of the med student’s suicide: what happens to the victim of a sexual crime when the assailant commits suicides and effectively aborts the entire investigation?
The injustice of both of these scenarios riles up Joong-do, and he’s committed to proposing an amendment to the law to prevent this from continuing. We see him telling his staff Hye-joo’s story (off camera), and later winning the support of Chairwoman Woo. He’s warned by everyone how an amendment like this will never pass, but Joong-do’s desire to make positive change has him using all his wiles. He needs public support if he’s going to shake up the status quo, and he knows it. As he tells Chairwoman Woo: “Controversy will make what’s impossible possible.”
This same idea is hammered in again later on in another loaded scene with Hye-joo, where she begs Joong-do to stop using the media to elevate the case of Perilla Grandma, her granddaughter, and the deceased med student. For Hye-joo, the pain of these people is unbearable, but here — brace your hearts — we see the first splinters in our couple’s likemindedness. Joong-do’s very opposing opinion is this: collateral damage is inevitable for the greater good. And there it is. He basically gave us our trolley dilemma setup again.
Now, in all fairness, Perilla Grandma gave Joong-do permission to “use” her story to accomplish his noble goals. But I have a feeling Hye-joo isn’t going to agree when her own story comes to light. I mean, it hasn’t happened yet, but if this week’s episodes didn’t put a giant lump of dread in your stomach, nothing will. I also hate to remind us all of Woo-jae’s earlier question to Joong-do, trying to get him to say if he values his wife or the good he can do as a politician more.
While all this is going on, we are given more reason to doubt each of our supporting characters. This adds to the suspense, but is also making me feel a bit like Hye-joo, with a thousand broken pieces around me.
To start, Woo-jae is growing in shadiness, and he definitely leaked the news of the med student’s video upload to the press. He also meets secretly one night with Yeo-jin. Turns out Yeo-jin also suffered huge tragedies in her past and he had once tried to help her. But now, it looks like she wants to tell him something that she shouldn’t. Gulp. She doesn’t actually do it, but now I’ve got so many questions in my head. Mostly, though, I’m just sad for Hye-joo and how it’s going to feel if/when her trust in these people is broken, especially since this week we saw her break down and tell Yeo-jin about the assault in her past.
Rounding out our suspicious supporting characters is Soo-bin, who’s been sulking around the house for far too long. Outside of getting a bloody lip and selling off a designer bag, I thought for a second she was relegated to Dyson PPL… until we start to see more of her towards the end of the week’s episodes. Not only do we learn that she’s had a miscarriage, but she keeps it a secret from Hye-joo, and uses some (yet unknown) leverage to get Yeo-jin to help her. Ack!
Soo-bin continuous to baffle me. She lights up whenever Hye-joo is kind to her, and she’s so starved for this woman’s attention that I don’t understand it (and I really don’t think it’s her secret daughter; they’ll have to work hard to convince me of that). Why is Soo-bin in their house anyway? Why so many secrets? Why so much pouting? At the end of our episodes, Soo-bin leaves the house, possibly for good, but stops to stare at the business card of Joong-do. There’s a little red heart next to his name. Nooooo. Guess that “JD” tattoo was for him after all.
Intercut with this Soo-bin reveal is our poor heroine. She’s looking in Joong-do’s study for an envelope to mail some photos of Ji-hoon when she spots something hidden at the back of a desk drawer. It’s Ji-hoon’s very noticeable red cell phone. You know, the one Joong-do told her the police never recovered. And on said phone is (ostensibly) his final text conversation with Soo-bin. He begs not to break up with her (okay, at least we know they were really dating!) and threatens to commit suicide. It looks like his last message never sends, but we all know what happened after that.
Or do we? Because now everything I thought I knew I’m questioning. Just the fact that Hye-joo found the phone there raises a million implications — viz., how much more does Joong-do know than he’s telling Hye-joo? But this reveal being intercut with the weirdness that is Soo-bin only makes matters worse. In other words, this is where @DaebakGrits and I have an emergency chat, sharing questions and theories. There are many, but I think I can distill my own thoughts into one: Why can’t I just have one happily married non-lying K-drama couple? We were about to set a record.
Now, there is a chance that it’s not as bad as it may seem, and to back up this hope, I need only remember Joong-do’s brokenness when he went to his wife’s studio to mourn the death of the med student and, obliquely, Ji-hoon. That scene was the realest thing ever, and it speaks to their marriage bond as much as it does his integrity, and his love of his son. And then there are all those tender gazes he gives Hye-joo. I truly believe he loves her, and is doing all this politicking to prevent others suffering like she did, but… I have questions!
Trolley has spent its first half building all this tension and emotion through these beautifully interwoven scenarios. And now? Now that it’s all been built, it’s time for us to watch it all come down. The fact that the trolley problem was directly addressed between Hye-joo and her daughter made me realize this was definitely a turning point in the story. And though I care about this family and this marriage, I really care the most about Hye-joo. She’s been shown to be so kind and (overly?) empathetic — but also delicate and damaged. I don’t know how much more she can take until she shatters completely.