So much goodness packed into this hour. This show just does things to me. I watch with my heart in my throat, and I love everything from the witty banter and the wordplay, to the swoony romance and silly hijinks, to the frightening darkness that comes out of nowhere and keeps me on the edge of my seat.
Ratings are still on the climb: Episode 6 came in at 17.8% (Mandate of Heaven recorded 8.9%, and Queen's Classroom brought in 7.9%).
SONG OF THE DAY
Every Single Day – "Echo" from the OST [ Download ]
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EPISODE 6: "Me, abandoned all alone at the edge of the world"
Su-ha drops the bomb in the middle of the street: Hye-sung was wrong about the twin double homicide case—they were in on it together. She pleads with him to say that he's lying, but she knows without him having to say it. He does it anyway. He's not lying.
She has a momentary freak-out and covers her ears like a child. He pulls her hands away to force her to listen, and says that Do-yeon was right. But the denial is strong with this one, and instead she flips on her bitch switch: "So?"
She asks if she's supposed to go back to the judge and say oopsie, and that Do-yeon was right and she was wrong? "I can't! I won't!"
He can't believe her answer, and refuses to let go of her hands. She struggles to break free which is a futile waste of energy if I've ever seen one, and he finally counters, "Then I guess you have to leave the courtroom. That's what you said ten minutes ago."
Only now does she recall her gloating words to Do-yeon that the worst kind of person in the courtroom is the one who doesn't admit her mistakes. She tries to hedge but he asks if she's not that person right now.
And then he reads her thoughts as she looks up at him: I thought this Gum-wad was my lifesaving rope, but he's a rotten rope that'll tie my ankles down. Gasp. What a horrible thing to think. Augh, why do you break his heart so?
She storms into the office pitching a fit that it is NOT the same thing at all. AT ALL! And then looks out her window to see Gum-wad just sitting there in the street numbly. She screams again and shuts her eyes, not wanting the reminder.
He sits like that in the same place all day until it's dark, and then as he walks toward the door to her office, the scenery changes around him and fades to a different building. As he crosses the threshold, he becomes Little Su-ha. Nice.
The police bring him back to his uncle after he was left at the amusement park, and Uncle takes him back with a sigh. We see that life really was tough for him, all alone with four kids to feed, not that it justifies trying to ditch one in a park.
But the thing Su-ha hears him thinking is: "This kid is going to grab our ankles." It's a turn of phrase that means he's a ball-and-chain, and of course the same one that Hye-sung used today.
Little Su-ha cries as he tells Uncle that he got hurt today, but gets no response. We fade back to Big Su-ha, with that same finger bandaged, and left all alone all over again.
Hye-sung finally comes back out. "Take it back. What you said earlier about me being the same as Do-yeon. Take it back!" Hee. He refuses, so she rants, "I'm going to admit I was wrong, okay!"
He laughs, and she takes issue with his flippant attitude, explaining how difficult it is to acknowledge your mistakes in front of your enemy and what a big person this makes her. Haha.
"So take it back." I love that she needs to hear him say that she's not like Do-yeon. He complies (while correcting her grammar to point out the difference between "wrong" and "different," which is often used interchangeably in Korean) and tells her that she's very different from that prosecutor.
It sort of makes her flustered, which is cute, and then she changes the subject to say that they have a lot of grocery shopping to do.
He gripes about having to go shopping with her, but totally loves it. She fills the cart with instant food, and he throws it out for fresh veggies, and so on in a loop.
She catches him staring at the goldfish in the pet section, which perhaps reminds him of his uncle's house (there was a small fishbowl in the scene just earlier), or even the last thing he was supposed to do with Dad before he died.
The next day Hye-sung goes to see Twin 2, who's as soft-spoken and polite as ever. She asks carefully if even one percent of anything he's told her is a lie, and asks if there's a chance he was in on the stabbing with his brother.
He denies it, but asks if his brother said anything, which she catches. "Why, if he did, would that change your story?" Suddenly the air in the room gets thick with tension, and he looks down at her hand, betraying a nervously tight grip on her pencil. He smiles. It's super creepy.
She glances sidelong at the guard on the other side of the window, and he clocks that too. He leans in close across the table and switches to banmal as he tells her this is a secret between them, because of lawyer-client privilege.
He says it isn't a threat, but a hope that she's smart and will do as he says. "I've studied the law and what I've found is, it isn't how you observe the law, but how you use it." Damn.
She goes for a spin in the revolving door, wondering what to do to put that guy away. Kwan-woo comes by and she grabs him to try and get him to listen to her. She all but tackles him while screaming that the twins were in on the murder together, but he just runs around covering his ears, insisting that they can't share information.
He breaks free, refusing to cooperate, but wonders to himself what he'll do if she's right. He shakes the thought out of his head, telling himself that his client Twin 1 comes first.
And then he notices when people walk by pointing and laughing that Hye-sung left a perfect face-shaped foundation imprint on his jacket from the tussle. HA. And then he swoons at it, "Hey, it's jjang-byun!" Pffft.
At home, Hye-sung tells Su-ha about Kwan-woo's reaction, calling it ridiculously childish and stubborn, while he tries not to bust a gut at the irony. (I love that he's always opening bottles and cans for her while they talk, very naturally.)
She wonders what to do, and he says he did read Do-yeon's mind as she was talking to her outside the courtroom. We see that in a momentary flash, Do-yeon wondered to herself, "Should I ask her for help?"
Do-yeon has an idea for how to put both twins away with Hye-sung's help, but Su-ha couldn't get a read on what it was. Hye-sung debates whether or not to call her and offer her help, and Su-ha decides to choose for her, and stealths her phone while she's busy weighing the pros and cons.
He starts texting Do-yeon, and she freaks out and starts climbing him like a tree to get at her phone. It's less piggyback, more bull-riding, with lots of hair grabbing and violence, and it's hysterical.
He manages to send the text (suggesting that they meet to make it a win-win), and she paces the room, horrified that it makes her look un-cool. You would be worried about that. But Do-yeon replies right away with plans to meet at scene of the crime the next morning.
She wanted to show Hye-sung the widow with three small children, left behind in the store owner's murder. Hye-sung doesn't outright admit that she was wrong, but she does ask what Do-yeon's plan is to get both twins.
Kwan-woo happens upon them as he's headed to the crime scene, and ducks for cover as he watches them from afar. He tells Lawyer Shin and Pretty the Paralegal about it, and they wonder if Hye-sung is teaming up with the prosecution to take him down.
Lawyer Shin says that's too makjang even for her, while Pretty thinks she's plenty capable of it. Kwan-woo's conclusion? "I was really moved! It was seven-thirty in the morning!" He totally glosses over the rest, impressed at Hye-sung's dedication to the case.
Hye-sung goes to see Twin 2 and offers him two folders with his two options: plead guilty and go free, and plead innocent and go down for murder. He doesn't see how that makes any sense, but she explains that if she can rule out all the evidence the prosecution puts out, he could walk away scot-free… if he confesses to the crime. What, now?
She explains that he can't incriminate himself with his confession if there's no other evidence, which means that if he were to take this route and confess to the crime, he'd be immune, while Twin 1 took the fall.
He asks why he should take the deal if there isn't enough evidence to convict, but she says the prosecution hasn't shown all its cards, and there's a second security tape that they haven't revealed yet.
She says that the prosecution may have been setting this up from the start, and suggests that he walk out the open door while there's still a chance, otherwise he'll be the one trapped inside. Basically, sell your brother out before he sells you out.
On their way home that night, Su-ha asks why there's a law that keeps a person from incriminating himself even if he confesses, and Hye-sung explains that it's to keep cops and prosecutors from torturing confessions out of people unjustly. He asks if one of the twins will go free then, and she says no—they have a plan.
Su-ha stops suddenly when he hears a pickpocket plan to rob an ajumma he followed out of the bank. He raises a knife to her purse…
Su-ha steps out in front of Hye-sung to make sure she's safe, and then loudly declares that the man's fly is open to everyone within earshot. It gets everyone to look at him, and the guy has to give up and walk away.
Once he tells her what's going on, Hye-sung sighs that they shouldn't have let him go because he'll just rob someone else, and Su-ha says they stopped him, so it's enough.
Mom calls to ask when Hye-sung's payday is, which he catches. At the store, Mom tells Joon-gook to circle the date on the calendar (and as some eagle-eyed commenters have noted, it's definitely 2012 in this dramaverse).
Joon-gook stands there staring at all the pictures on the wall of Mom and Hye-sung, and says ever so creepily that they look happy. Mom asks where his family is, and his expression empties out like he's suddenly dead inside: "They all died. A long time ago."
Court day rolls around and Twin 2 looks over at his hyung nervously, clearly shaken by Hye-sung's offer. In court, Do-yeon sticks to her double-guilty stance, while the defense pleads innocent and knocks down her list of evidence one by one.
I love the beat where Hye-sung asks the one elderly eye-witness whose picture she's holding up—it's Jung Hyung-don, and he says, "My mother?" Hee.
Pretty the Paralegal thinks Hye-sung and Kwan-woo are wiping the floor with the prosecution, but Lawyer Shin thinks she's being a little too easily defeated, like she's setting herself up to be knocked down. He's keen enough to know where this is headed, and says they're going for the prisoner's dilemma—basically pitting the twins against each other.
Sure enough, when it comes time, Twin 2 caves under pressure and confesses that they murdered the man together. Twin 1 looks like he's been struck by lightning, and it gets worse when the judge explains that Twin 2 remains immune, while the confession can be used as evidence against Twin 1.
Poor Kwan-woo is totally spun around, while Hye-sung and Do-yeon exchange conspiratorial glances. And then the thing they were really hoping for comes: Twin 1 stands up and says he confesses too, that Twin 2 was the mastermind and he did the stabbing.
Down they go, two twins sold up the river by each other. The courtroom erupts in a fight between them, and the whole time Twin 2′s girlfriend sits behind Lawyer Shin bawling her eyes out.
Lawyer Shin finds Hye-sung skipping out of the courtroom, and asks if she's really that happy to put the twins away. She doesn't see why she shouldn't be happy, but he says she wasn't a lawyer in there today—she was a prosecutor.
He asks if she never even bothered to ask WHY the twins killed that man. Seriously, it's been niggling at me from the start, but no one asked! He points out a possible revenge scenario and asks if she never saw the crying woman in the courtroom.
She admits that she didn't notice, not once. He tells her that if she behaves that way in the courtroom one more time, she won't have the right to be a public defender. It leaves her reeling.
At home, she tells Su-ha about it over dinner, and he asks if she regrets teaming up with the prosecutor to put the twins away. She sighs that she doesn't regret the outcome, but feels dirty about it, "Like I wiped my ass with paper covered in curry." Ha, and ew.
She slams her head down on the table and whines, "Will you tell me ten times that I did a good job?" and he calls her childish. They're so adorable.
Mom surprises Joon-gook with seaweed soup, saying that she noticed it was his birthday today, from his resume. Aw, he looks genuinely touched. Er, yunno, for a killer. He looks like he might actually be a little conflicted about murdering her.
Sung-bin approaches Su-ha at school with a math question decoy, hoping that he'll act like nothing happened and still be friends with her. I like that her actions are so blatant you don't really need to read her mind at all.
He hears her thinking that she'd hate it if he acted differently around her, and hoping that if they can pretend her embarrassing confession didn't happen, he at least won't reject her outright. Aw.
He does exactly that, because he's awesome.
His phone rings, and it's Joon-gook. Thankfully Su-ha has the sense to record the call this time, and he runs to the police station right away.
He plays the call, where Joon-gook says he moved and adds, "I won't ever forget you." Su-ha says it's a threat, and Nice Cop believes him, but Cranky Cop says he's overreacting.
Su-ha asks where Joon-gook moved to and reads Nice Cop's mind, and is horrified to hear that he should've asked where he was moving. "You don't know?" Cranky Cop tells him not to make trouble, raising his arm to hit him over the head again.
But this time Su-ha blocks it himself and glares back. "If you don't do anything, I might find and kill him first."
Hye-sung continues to get the cold shoulder from Lawyer Shin, who's reverted to jondae with her. She sees him being dodgy about lunch and declares loudly that she has plans with a friend, only to end up eating alone bitterly.
Of course the others end up walking into the same restaurant, so she hilariously grabs her bowl of food and ducks under the table to continue eating. Ha. She hears Kwan-woo tell the others that he went to see the twins, and found out that they killed the storeowner for revenge after all—he had raped Twin 2′s girlfriend and threatened to leak photos if she reported him. Scum.
Lawyer Shin says they went about it all wrong, and should've gotten the twins to confess together from the beginning, with all the contributing factors considered in the judgment.
They ask Kwan-woo if he isn't mad that Hye-sung went behind his back to team up with the prosecution. He admits now that he knew what was going on, but says that she must've had her reasons.
Lawyer Shin says Hye-sung was wrong, but Kwan-woo says, "I don't think she was wrong. Just different from me." I love the little wordplay callbacks on this show.
Hye-sung gets outed for eating lunch alone and hiding, which is even more embarrassing now that she's clearly been listening to their conversation about her. She walks out, and Kwan-woo chases after her to repeat that he meant what he said. She insists that she isn't sorry and that she wasn't wrong, and he agrees.
Now that that's out of the way, she asks if he wants to see a movie with her. She swears it's not a date, but tells him not to wear his glasses, his hair that way, or his black shoes with white socks. Uh-huh, not a date.
Su-ha passes by a street vendor selling teddy bears with a sign: "Let the girlfriend/boyfriend you love hear your voice." He plays with the teddy bear, and there's pretty much nothing cuter on earth.
He heads home, bear in hand, when suddenly that pickpocket from the other night comes charging down the street. He's holding a knife, and Nice Cop is on his tail with a gun.
Su-ha stands in his way, and of course between cop with a gun and kid with a teddy bear, he chooses to try and get past Su-ha. But it only takes Su-ha one glance at his thoughts to get the jump on him, and he tackles him to the ground.
Nice Cop drops his gun in the tussle to handcuff him, and Su-ha reaches to pick it up. Eee. Don't do that!
The cop stops him just in time and says they'll handle it. Su-ha quips that he's better at it than they are, and Nice Cop tells him they'll make sure to give him a reward. He doesn't care about that and would rather they do something about Min Joon-gook, which Nice Cop promises to stay on top of. Su-ha: "No you won't. You're lying. I don't trust you."
He comes home smiling at his teddy bear, just as Hye-sung is heading out in a red dress. He asks where she's going and hears her thinking that he'd tease her if she said she was going on a date with Kwan-woo.
He doesn't tease her, even as she gives the excuse that she's rewarding him with a date because he stood up for her. He hears her think: "He told me what I really wanted to hear—that I was right, that I did a good job."
He holds the teddy bear behind his back the whole time and smiles as she runs off on her date, and then when he goes home and pushes the teddy bear's speaker, his voice comes out: "Jjang-byun, you did a good job," over and over again. D'awwwww.
Kwan-woo struts down the street looking snazzy, per Hye-sung's orders. He stops to check himself out in a store window to make sure he did everything she asked, and then makes cheesy finger guns at himself. Pfft, can't hide the dork, even under that makeover.
Nice Cop turns the precinct upside-down and grabs Cranky Cop in a panic and whispers, "I think I lost my gun."
OHMYGOD. Park Su-ha, did you take his gun?! Nononononononono.
I'm too panicked right now to register the cute and funny in this next scene, but I'm sure in retrospect it'll be cute and funny: Hye-sung arrives for her date with Kwan-woo and debates whether or not to undo one of her buttons, deciding against it because he can't handle her hotness. But she sees him waving at her from across the street looking handsome (and waving his foot in the air to show her his non-white socks), and decides to go for the extra button.
Before she can un-button her way to date night though, her phone rings. It's Nice Cop, who calls to say that his gun went missing, and that he thinks Su-ha took it, adding that Su-ha said he'd kill Min Joon-gook himself.
Her heart lurches and she grabs the next cab she sees, leaving Kwan-woo calling out to her from across the street.
She remembers Su-ha hiding something behind his back when she was leaving the house, and thinks the worst. She calls him frantically, but he doesn't answer because he's in the shower. Mmm, shower. Wait, sorry. FOCUS.
She arrives just ahead of the cops, and darts upstairs barefoot, holding her heels and desperately trying to move faster. She dashes inside and finds Su-ha coming out of the shower, just as the cops knock on her door.
She shoves him into his room and tells him not to make a peep, and runs to the sink to douse her hair in water and wrap a towel around her head. Man, she's quick on her feet. Also, I'm so verklempt right now that her first thought is to cover for him. Really, it's so moving.
She comes outside, dripping wet and mascara running everywhere, and tells the cops that she was home all day and Su-ha isn't here, and that she's been keeping an eye on him and he hasn't done anything bad.
They laugh sheepishly and say they know—they found the gun after all, and came here to tell her so. What. Oh phew. Listen, you are the most bumbling pair of cops I have ever met, but right now, I just want to hug you for finding your stupid gun. URG.
Hye-sung collapses in a heap of relief, and then belatedly rips Nice Cop a new one for scaring her like that. She cries that Su-ha would never do something like that and screams at them never to come around with accusations like that again because Su-ha isn't that kind of kid.
He hears it all and asks if she really thought he stole the gun. She admits that she did, and then he catches her thinking, "Is he mad at me for suspecting him? What's he thinking?"
He says he's not thinking much of anything except that she must've been embarrassed with that face. She says she's not embarrassed at all and struts away.
Once she's in her room he adds, "And I was thinking… I have someone who worries about me now." Oh, the warm fuzzies.
Hye-sung goes to her room and finally gets a look in the mirror. She gasps in horror: "Who are you?" Kwan-woo calls and she apologizes for running out, and says that a dongseng of hers got into some trouble but everything's fine now.
She asks if he got home okay, and he hesitates before saying yes, and agreeing to see a movie next time. And then we cut to him down below in front of her building, drenched in sweat from running there. Aw.
He's so good-natured that he just wishes he'd gotten more ice for the chocolates he bought her because they're all melted now. He's about to go home when Su-ha comes out on Hye-sung's rooftop, looking very much like he just showered. Uh…
Kwan-woo recognizes him right away, and then they lock eyes, each looking at the other guy askance, like, What's this clown doing here?
When Hye-sung comes out, Su-ha keeps her from coming too close to the ledge to see Kwan-woo, and offers to gather the laundry for her. He watches Kwan-woo walk away and makes a shooing gesture into the air.
As they fold laundry, she says Su-ha isn't nearly as dumb as he looks, breaking out his grade report that she dug out of his stuff, and he totally climbs on top of her to get it back.
She wonders if he gets top-notch grades by cheating, but he swears it's not that—he just naturally picks things up in class faster than the others because he can read the teacher's mind.
He decides that her question is insulting, wondering why it's a surprise that he's smart. She doesn't hesitate to say that he looks like a slacker punk, and when he adds his laser glare he's downright scary.
Su-ha: "So you thought I stole the gun? Were you that scared?" Hye-sung: "I wasn't scared. I was worried."
She says that the twins murdered that man because they couldn't believe in the law. "There are people like that here—you and me." She tells him that no matter how much he wants to kill Min Joon-gook, not to ever kill him.
"If you do, then all the reasons disappear—what a terrible person Min Joon-gook is, why we hated him—those things disappear. The moment we kill him, we cease to be victims, and just become murderers."
She makes him promise not to ever kill him for revenge, and cups his face with her hands, "Answer me."
Su-ha: "And if Min Joon-gook tries to kill you?" She says not to kill him, even then, because she can defend herself. She takes another look at his report card and says that these grades are too good to be wasted on a murderer. Dude, he totally didn't answer you. Make him answer!
Nice Cop asks his partner to keep his secret about the momentary gun misplacing fiasco, and Cranky Cop asks why he suspected Su-ha in the first place. Nice Cop says he saw Su-ha's face the moment he reached for the gun earlier, calling the look in his eyes frightening.
Su-ha's wearing that very same expression in his room that night, and then the following morning, he seeks out a wiretapping specialist to trace Min Joon-gook's cell phone number.
He sits in his room and contemplates his grades… and crumples up the paper and tosses it away. No. Min Joon-gook sits in his room contemplating the birthday food that Hye-sung's mom made for him… and flushes it down the toilet. Damn, so it's war, is it?
And then, we see Su-ha sitting in the dark holding a switchblade, looking quite determined to make a terrible mistake.
COMMENTS
Man, they weren't kidding about the look in his eye. When he wants to be, he's downright scary, just like Hye-sung said. I really thought he took the gun too. He seems completely capable of it, though in hindsight he'd be smarter and buy his own gun, which is actually scarier. Gah, when Joon-gook was stalking Hye-sung with the creepy phone calls I wanted to put her in a bubble, but now I want to throw Su-ha in there and lock him up and throw away the key.
This turn in the story is terrifying, but in a really good way. We're already so attached to Su-ha, and when your hero is a teenage hothead, there's this nervousness and an edge to the darker turns in his character, because he could just choose the really dumb thing and throw himself under the bus to protect her thinking it's the best he can do. I love the tension that creates. You so want him to be smart and listen to her, but he feels like he has nothing to lose, which is really dangerous.
But that's also why the longer arc of him gaining a family is so great—because for Su-ha, it's literally his lifeline. Right now he'd throw his life away in a heartbeat, which is so sad it hurts my heart. He has no ties to anyone, and just a sense of responsibility to protect Hye-sung at all cost. But when she shows her concern for him in this episode, and when he says for the first time that he's gained someone in his life to worry about him—that was such a great moment of connection. That she had to ditch her date with Kwan-woo to come to his rescue was just a bonus (sorry adorable Kwan-woo, I do luff you, but my heart wants what it wants).
Mostly I'm just happy to find a new drama that hits all the right buttons for me. It's Biscuit Teacher Star Candy but with less art and more murder (a good thing, believe it or not), and a set of characters I root for and want to protect like tiny puppies in the rain. Sometimes the cases of the week can drag the momentum down, but overall they serve a story/character beat in each episode, which makes them feel purposeful, even if they're considerably less exciting than scenes between our main characters. The things we explore with Hye-sung through the cases is what wins me over each time, because she makes huge mistakes, and the people around her—Su-ha, Lawyer Shin, or even her nemesis Do-yeon—don't let her get away with it. It's the dynamic that you can't ignore. She was happy that Kwan-woo told her what she wanted to hear, but I was happy that Su-ha told her what she didn't want to hear about herself: the cold, hard truth.
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