Oh don't mind that puddle right there. That's just my heart. This drama leaves me feeling like a punching bag after a heavyweight's workout, but don't you know—I'd still come back for more. It's a twister of an episode, upending everything we thought we knew, about the good guys, the bad guys, and the things we took as truth.
A note about the possible 2-episode extension: the network jumped the gun to announce that it's been confirmed, but so far the decision is still pending. Producers say they're still considering it and working out actors' schedules, but nothing's final and the stories are still conflicting. I'll keep you posted.
SONG OF THE DAY
Nell – "Beautiful Stranger" [ Download ]
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EPISODE 12: "A study in memory"
After Hye-sung goes back to fetch the puppy she left out in the rain, she brings him back to her apartment, and he wonders why it feels more familiar than his own place. She tells him it's just until he regains his memory, and then he's never to come here again. Uh-huh.
She makes him answer, so he agrees reluctantly. He also notes that it seems cleaner than he expected since she told him he hated her messiness, and she sighs that she cleaned because he was such a nag about it.
She tells him that she won't be able to defend him in the appeal, and tells him his priority is to recover his memory—if they can puzzle together the fragments, that's their way out of this.
She wonders why his eyes are so bloodshot, and he says that he can't sleep at night, thinking that it might be some kind of side effect. She turns away as she says he always used to sleep so well… and when she turns back two seconds later, he's knocked out cold. Aw.
She tucks him in for the night and lets her hand linger near his face again, but pulls away just like before.
She goes to bed and wonders who'll defend Su-ha in the appeal, and then remembers that Kwan-woo has a private practice so he'd be best, but quickly realizes how horrible it would be of her to ask him that. She slaps herself for even thinking of being that shameless, and hahahaha—she calls herself a little shit.
Su-ha wakes up after the first good night's rest he's had in months, and finds another of Hye-sung's apple sticky notes on the fridge telling him to eat. He finds an entire basket of them (that she took shamelessly from the free sample lady in the first episode), and decides to begin recreating his memory one post-it fragment at a time.
He starts out with just a few things—Min Joon-gook by the river, the car accident, and Hye-sung at the aquarium. But little by little other fragments come up and soon he's filled half the back of his door with stickies.
Meanwhile Hye-sung stands outside Kwan-woo's office going back and forth between This is too shameless even for me, and What if Su-ha gets stuck with some weirdo for a defense lawyer?
She goes back and forth about a million times, when finally Kwan-woo comes up and sends her a picture of herself: "What're you doing?" Heh. He can tell she wants to ask him something, but she hedges, so he says it for her: she's here to ask about Su-ha's case, right?
She says no, that it's too shameless to ask, but he says he'll do it. Aw, knowing how heartbroken he is, that's really big of him. He puts on a bright face and says that he'll defend Su-ha, and he'll make her all kinds of grateful, so much that she'll be indebted to him and more likely to get over her feelings for Su-ha.
But once he's alone the heartache is all too evident. He buries himself in work to get through it, and starts reading from the beginning, about Su-ha's father's case.
He pictures the courtroom as he reads, and this time we see him sitting there as Little Hye-sung runs in to testify against Min Joon-gook. He watches the moment that Little Su-ha reaches for her hand and it instantly reminds him of the moment last night at the coffee shop, where he reached for her hand to beg her to stay.
He wonders aloud: "Can I win this battle?" We're left to wonder if he means the trial, or Hye-sung's heart, or both.
Hwang Dal-joong gets released from prison (due to his terminal medical condition) and Lawyer Shin comes to pick him up. Dal-joong marvels at how much the world has changed in twenty-six years, and says that seeing his daughter once before dying is his only wish.
He clutches a set of pastels that belonged to her, returned to him with his belongings upon release. Lawyer Shin sighs that he's so sorry for all of it, but Dal-joong thanks him for being the only person in the world who believed in him.
Do-yeon is back at the fruit stand yet again, with more pictures for the perp line. Fruit Ajumma insists it isn't any of those men, but Do-yeon remains dogged about doing this until the man is found.
She asks a general question: "How was the man's hand?" and the ajumma answers, "It was fine!" It's not a glaring neon sign, but she says it like you would about a hand not being injured or irregular, which is curious.
Hye-sung comes home that night and Su-ha races to greet her like an eager pup, wondering if she wants to eat dinner with him. She refuses to look him in the eye and says she ate already, and then hands him Kwan-woo's card.
She says that he'll be defending him, and Su-ha clearly doesn't like that she had to do the asking. She reasons that Kwan-woo is the best lawyer for the job (while pulling away at his touch).
She snaps at him to be polite when he meets with Kwan-woo and goes to bed. It's only when she's alone that she wonders what's wrong with her, and grabs her growling stomach in hunger. Heh.
Su-ha stays up that night pondering Kwan-woo's business card, and remembering the way he escorted Hye-sung away from the coffee shop the other night. He chucks the card away in annoyance.
Suddenly he hears a rustling outside his door, so he quietly gets up to check. He cracks his door open… and there, squatting in front of the open fridge, is Hye-sung, halfway into a box of snack sausages with chili paste all over her mouth. Hahahahaha.
There's just this silent gape-freeze-gape-horror exchange, and then Su-ha just closes his door without a word. LOL. She buries her head into her knees, utterly mortified.
The next day Su-ha goes to meet Kwan-woo, dressed in a suit. Aw, his intent is so obvious that it makes me cringe. Oh, growing pains. He insists on paying for his own coffee and then thanks him politely for taking the case. Kwan-woo makes it clear this is for Hye-sung, and not for him.
Su-ha insists on paying him for the lawyering, but Kwan-woo counters that he's very expensive, so he should just accept the free services when he's offering. But Su-ha swears he has money and an apartment left to him, so he'll pay. As in: Don't burden Hye-sung with this.
Kwan-woo argues that Su-ha's the one burdening Hye-sung, and says that he should stop playing an adult and act like one. "Wearing a suit doesn't make you an adult. You're a high school dropout, a murder suspect with no memory, no future. That's why Hye-sung is taking you in. Don't mistake that for something else."
Augh, Kwan-woo. Why'd you have to do it? I was fine with you until you just said that. What the hell?
Su-ha storms out, yanking off his tie in the street. Kwan-woo chastises himself for sinking that low and sighs that his desperation is making him hit rock bottom. Yeah, I'd say. I'll give you forty minutes to redeem yourself, buddy, or we'll have words.
Do-yeon sits in front of her computer staring at the appeal request. She thinks again about the ajumma's answer to her hand question, and goes to test the same question out on her colleagues.
When she asks each of them how so-and-so's hand is, they all answer with descriptors, which is the normal response in her eyes. She decides that the only reason someone would answer "fine" the way that ajumma would is because she's hiding the truth about someone with a hand that isn't fine… someone like Min Joon-gook.
Her partner wonders why they wouldn't have found any trace of him if he were really alive, but she says it's because they haven't been looking—not really. She decides it's time to put their resources toward finding Min Joon-gook.
Yeeeeesss. Go, Do-yeon, go!
Kwan-woo calls an old buddy on the police force to ask about Su-ha's accident, and he finds that there was a truck who hit a pedestrian that fits the time. Kwan-woo perks up at the driver's name, and knows where he lives.
Su-ha stares at a poster for the police academy while waiting for Sung-bin and Choong-ki. (Ooh, you should be cop! You'd make a better one than the yahoos in your dramaverse, anyway.) She complains about always being called in tandem with Choong-ki, and he agrees while smiling off to the side. Su-ha asks them to help him piece together his memory, and tell him anything they can about him and Hye-sung.
Sung-bin notes the police academy poster and Su-ha brushes it off as just a fleeting thought. Sung-bin says he always got good grades in high school so he'd get in, and swoons at the thought of a man in uniform. Choong-ki mutters that the car center has uniforms too… and then picks up a pamphlet for the police academy. Ha.
Hye-sung comes out of work that night wondering if she should eat before going home so she doesn't have to eat with Su-ha, and then looks up in surprise to find Lawyer Shin whirling around in her revolving door.
Hye-sung: "Hey, that's my thing!" Hee. He hobbles out and asks why she does that, when all it does is make him dizzy. She says it clears her head and helps her think, but looks over at him and adds, "but I guess I shouldn't do it when I get old."
They both head over to the new pojangmacha outside the courthouse, where they run into Judge Kim and Do-yeon. The guys note that Do-yeon is totally fine even after two bottles of soju, so of course Hye-sung sits down and orders three bottles, complete with hair flip.
Cut to: this. The petty competition rages on, with Do-yeon insisting that she's cool and Hye-sung slurring that she's fine, bottle after bottle. Judge Kim says he's always been curious about something—why did Hye-sung say that she regretted testifying, in that story she told at her job interview?
She says that she went to testify that day because she wanted to show up an arrogant girl and her father (she says while shooting Do-yeon a look) but she gained nothing from doing so. Judge Kim says she upheld justice, which she outwardly mocks.
She sighs that she became a dupe because of that damned cell phone. And then in flashback we see her after the case, when Judge Seo returns the phone to her. He thanks her for being brave enough to testify.
She asks if he saw what was on the phone, and he says it was nothing. Huh? Oh there's nothing but a fuzzy picture on the phone. She takes it back, head hanging, and asks if it's okay that she lied. He says she did the right thing—a killer was about to wriggle out of their grasp, and she helped put him away.
OH. This is what he was talking about when he said they have to make up evidence to catch a killer and exchanged knowing looks with Hye-sung. She did it once before, to put Min Joon-gook away the first time. Crazy.
She can't fight her urge to tattle on Do-yeon, and says that she was there too and witnessed the whole thing, but ran away when it came time to testify. She says that Do-yeon is a liar, about this and about the fireworks too.
He tells her that he knows Do-yeon lied: "But because of it I knew you were the culprit." Oh, is that how he interpreted it? That she lied about seeing the firework, but that Hye-sung was guilty anyway?
She starts to argue but he says he doesn't consider that stuff as lies—Do-yeon's lie about the fireworks, or Hye-sung's lie to put Min Joon-gook away. She asks what it is then, and he says it's like an aerial bomb, necessary to catch the culprit.
She asks now if Do-yeon is satisfied, and all the guys look back and forth between them with their jaws hanging open. Judge Kim cracks me up: "You're the awful girl?"
Do-yeon's just as drunk, and wails that she regretted that moment for the last eleven years of her life, and says that's why she can't stand Hye-sung: "Because you're the person who witnessed the most pathetic moment of my entire life."
We see her wait at the bus stop after running away from the trial, when Judge Seo pulls up across the street. She gets up when they see each other, but he just rolls up his window and drives away.
She says now that she regrets her choice every day, wishing that she had gone in and testified. She says that from that day on, she quit drawing and left all her friends to do nothing but study so she could become a prosecutor, so she could show Dad and Hye-sung: "that I wasn't me that day. That I made a mistake." Awwwww. I'm actually getting a little teary-eyed. For Seo Do-yeon.
Both girls stumble away, and Judge Kim muses that those two have such an interesting fated friendship. Lawyer Shin says if two people are fated to meet again, there must be a reason.
And as he says those very words, Dal-joong scoots along the hospital corridor and stops cold at the sight of a woman. She drops a vase of flowers as soon as she sees him, and then we see that she's got a prosthetic hand. Omo. Is this the victim (or culprit) of his Left-Hand Not-a-Murder?
The ridiculous coincidental run-in is total WTFery, but eh, it's a tangential side plot so whatever. I won't waste more brain cells on it.
Su-ha ponders his memory post-it puzzle some more, and then heads outside for a breather. He's surprised to see Hye-sung's bag and shoes, and even her coat on the railing, laid out neatly.
He turns around to find her sleeping on the patio, reeking of alcohol. Ha, did she think this was her bedroom? He reaches out to smooth back her hair and she uses his hand as a pillow, muttering in her sleep that Do-yeon is an awful girl.
He picks her up and carries her inside, and as he tucks her in, he notices the scar on her abdomen.
In the morning, he prepares breakfast for her but she gives him the brush-off yet again and runs out to work. But! He made breakfast. This time he chases her down and blocks her path to make her face him. He asks about the scar, and she thinks to herself that it'll be hard on him to know the truth, and says it's just from a surgery.
He tells her that he's going to get an acquittal no matter what, and that afterwards he's going to go to college and make friends and get a job and live busily—so that she doesn't worry and so that she doesn't feel burdened.
He says that he won't nag or make things hard on her… "So don't avoid me. Don't come home late to avoid me, or skip meals. And don't hate me." Ohmygah.
She finally looks over at him and makes eye contact for the first time in days, and then he lets her pass. She stops to look back up at him smiling down at her from the balcony and sighs. I know, he's not helping. But maybe Operation Denial was a flawed concept from the beginning, eh?
Her day doesn't get any better when she arrives at the courthouse and runs into Do-yeon carrying the same purse (their twin reactions are priceless) and then shares an elevator with her after the mortifying drunken confessions last night.
They each cringe silently, but manage to save face, thanks to plausible deniability via liquor.
Fruit Ajumma laughs to see that Do-yeon has officially called her out for questioning, and tells this to someone in a very friendly, familiar tone. The person sitting across from her pours her another drink… with his one good hand. Eep.
It's Min Joon-gook. He calls her "boss," so he's either working for her or just a customer who's made friends with her, and she tells him not to worry—she won't say anything about him.
She hands him a bag of fruit, and it actually makes him think of Hye-sung's mom with a pang of—I don't know—remorse? Regret? Sick nostalgia? It's this aspect of him that chills me more than anything. Like he misses her or something.
He wonders aloud if he should stop here or keep going, and the fruit ajumma thinks he means he's on a trip. He goes with that analogy, and she figures that once you've started, you may as well finish a journey. Don't say things like that to a killer! He smiles, "That's true. I have to see it to the end. I think so too."
Kwan-woo goes to see the grandpa who housed Amnesia Su-ha, and finds a truck in the driveway. It's white, not blue per Su-ha's memory, but he keys it to check the paint color underneath, and it's blue.
The grandpa is defensive at first, insisting that he told the cops and prosecutors everything the first time around. But Kwan-woo asks him about the accident, and the grandpa jumps, wondering if Su-ha regained his memory.
Kwan-woo lies that he did, and asks why the grandpa didn't say anything about it if he initially reported it. He admits that he was planning to do everything by the book, but Su-ha couldn't remember anything and… "That person told me not to." Kwan-woo: "Who?"
Suddenly Do-yeon gets a call: Fruit Ajumma was found dead. Ack. She races to the crime scene, and she's told that it was a drunk driving accident, and the security camera in the area stopped working an hour before.
It's too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence, and Do-yeon declares that the manhunt for Min Joon-gook begins now. *fistpump*
Su-ha gets dressed in his room, and notices that the scar on his shoulder actually looks pretty similar to Hye-sung's scar. He ponders it in the mirror, and it brings back a flash. And another. And another.
Suddenly he's remembering whole chunks of that night when Joon-gook attacked them, and how he stabbed Hye-sung by mistake, and the things she said to him before passing out in his arms.
His legs give out and he falls to the floor clutching his shoulder, and then his head starts to crack with searing headaches… It's a great shot, of the two Su-has in the mirror as he's caught between remembering and not.
Piece by piece the memories come flooding back. Dad's accident. Hye-sung. The stabbing. His promise.
And then a fragment of Min Joon-gook by the river: "You think your father is a good person, don't you?" GASP.
Su-ha goes tearing out of the house, clutching his head in pain but running like mad. Another flash makes him stop in the street. It's his meeting with Joon-gook by the river. "Just as I killed your father, your father killed my wife."
WHAT.
Su-ha stands there in the street, shaking. "No, it can't be…"
He says the same in the flashback, and Joon-gook says that he should know that he isn't lying. "The one who started all of this isn't me—it's your father!" Su-ha screams at him to shut up, and they struggle.
Joon-gook puts the knife in Su-ha's hand. "Kill me. Go ahead. Kill me. What makes you different from me eleven years ago?"
Joon-gook shuts his eyes, prepared to die. Su-ha raises the knife… but then he remembers the promise he made to Hye-sung.
He drops the knife and steps away: "I'm different. I won't live as a beast like you. Ever." Oof, it's an amazing moment, both for Su-ha and for Joon-gook.
He runs, leaving Joon-gook screaming for him to come back. As he runs, both in past and present, we hear him think: "Please, Father, tell me it isn't true!" In the past, we see him run into the truck, and then in the present he barely avoids running into a scooter.
It triggers something, and suddenly he hears the deliveryman's thoughts. AAAAAH, his powers come back too!
He's frozen there, as people's thoughts come rushing back in. Suddenly, a drop of blood hits the ground. NO. And then another. It's a nosebleed, and then a second later, he drops to the ground in a dead faint. That had better be a one-time nosebleed, and not a sign of things to come. OR ELSE.
Kwan-woo comes running into the office to declare that Min Joon-gook is still alive, but Hye-sung totally deflates him with a matter-of-fact, "Yeah." Do-yeon's already told her the news, and then he adds what he found out from the grandpa—that a man with only one hand advised him to keep Su-ha hidden.
Hye-sung is silent for a while, and then turns to Do-yeon to ask what happens to Su-ha's case then. She's flabbergasted that that's her first concern, but Hye-sung says it is and prods her to answer. Kwan-woo notes it with a frown.
Do-yeon confirms that she's dropping the appeal, and Hye-sung runs out to call Su-ha and let him know.
Su-ha is conscious now, and cleaning up his bloody nose outside her office. He realizes now that it was the truth about Dad that he was repressing. "That was it—the memory I wanted to erase. It's not like it would go away if I erased it."
He sees her run outside as she's calling him, and wonders to himself: "What should I do? If you knew this, you'd hate me more. And if you knew that Min Joon-gook was still alive, how scared would you be?"
But then he hears her thinking ecstatically that Min Joon-gook is still alive. He answers his phone and she tells him the news, deflating at his nonchalant reaction. I kind of love the chain of people running around to say this only to get an Eh.
She asks why he isn't happier, when this means that his case gets dropped and he's free. But he says (now back to banmal) that not-dead Min Joon-gook means that she's in danger again. He starts to walk over to her.
She calls him an idiot (using one of her familiar nicknames for him—ricepot) and says that's to be dealt with later, but the more important thing is that Do-yeon is dropping the appeal and the acquittal stands.
Suddenly he comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her in a back-hug. She's startled, and even more so when he starts to cry on her shoulder. He says through his tears: "You're the idiot. Your life is in danger again. How does my innocence come first? How?"
He buries his head into her shoulder, and she smiles. She raises a hand to pat him on the head and says, "Thanks. For keeping your promise."
COMMENTS
He's BAAAAAAAAaaaaaAAAACK!
And not a moment too soon. Listen, I was this close to ordering a lightning rod or something. I was half expecting another car wreck just to justify the return of his memories, but fragmented memory recovery via deus ex machina is fine too. It's not actually that nonsensical, given that he's been having the dreams and bits of memory flashes for a while now. And I rather like the idea of the amnesia being helped along subconsciously because of the horrible truth that he wanted to repress. It's a very realistic, trauma-related explanation, for a very supernatural condition. No one knows why he can read minds and we still don't know how he managed to suppress his powers along with his memories (that's the thing I'm curious about) but mostly, I'm so glad he's all back, powers, memories, and all. The amnesia arc itself was used well in the story, but let's be real—nothing beats Original Recipe Su-ha.
Not that I didn't love all of the stuff in the episode leading up to his return. Amnesiac Su-ha's connection to Hye-sung really tugged at my heart in all the right ways—because she couldn't let herself get close to him, because he felt safe and secure with her even though he didn't know why, because she could lie, and because he could see through her lies even without superpowers. Now that we've established how deep their connection runs, it's what comes next for their relationship that has me clamoring for more.
I'm annoyed that Kwan-woo's taking a detour into meddling second lead territory, because he's been such a stellar, atypical character up until now. I think I can forgive him for his outburst IF he stops being a spoilsport, because he does seem self-aware enough to be ashamed. I don't necessarily want him to stop vying for Hye-sung's affections, but I want him to be his sweet, earnest self, and try to win her over on his own merits. Somehow I doubt he's going to stop being a thorn in Su-ha's side, at least for a little while.
Do-yeon, on the other hand, is just getting better and better. I started to like her when they let a little bit of her petty schoolgirl streak show, but since then she's since grown into a pretty interesting character. She's still prickly and says hateful things regularly (okay, daily) but the more we see of Hye-sung's petty rivalry with her, I just like her more. I like the fact that they made opposite choices that day outside the courtroom, but they both regret that choice to the bone. They're really two sides of the same coin, despite how much they'd hate to be compared. And that seems to be the source of Hye-sung's angst regarding her testimony at Min Joon-gook's trial—not only that it was a lie, but that Judge Seo compared her lie to Do-yeon's, and said they were the same. She's spent her whole life trying to prove that that isn't the case, while Do-yeon has spent her whole life trying to prove that she's just as good as Hye-sung. It makes you wonder—if every time Hye-sung mutters that Do-yeon is an awful girl, she isn't secretly thinking that she might be the same.
As for the mind-blowing (possible) truth about Dad killing Joon-gook's wife, it's a fantastic twist at this point in the story. It leaves the field wide open for so many possibilities: Dad was a killer; Dad accidentally killed someone; Dad did something that inadvertently led to her death; or Joon-gook is a lying sack of hammers. I don't think the last is a real possibility, given Su-ha's mind-reading ability, so at this point we have to trust that in the very least, Joon-gook believes this to be truth.
I didn't expect to be this invested in Min Joon-gook's past, but with this twist, I'm chomping at the bit to know who he was and how he ended up this way. The moment when Su-ha refused to give into his vengeful rage was striking because you could literally see Joon-gook's face crumble to see that it's not an inevitable conclusion. He must've spent years telling himself that it wasn't his fault—that anyone would become a killer given those same circumstances—but to find that Su-ha chooses differently… It proves there IS a choice, and that nobody forced him to become a monster. He chose it himself.
What gets me about the closing scene is really that their concern for each other outweighs everything else, and now that concern is on equal footing. Of course they still have a mountain of things to overcome, like an age gap, horrifying revelations about Dad, and I'm pretty sure Hye-sung's got a season pass to Denial Land. But we've seen time and again that they'll come back to each other, so I'm just going to hold onto that, until the rollercoaster starts all over again next week.
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