Women in the Sun: Episodes 19-20

Tags

Han Jae Suk, Jung Gyu Woon, K-Drama, Kim Ji Soo, Lee Ha Na, Recaps, Women in the Sun

Do Young remained Do Young till the very end, and while I usually applaud consistency and firmness, I can’t do that when the character is a selfish monster, and really should change.  Even though punishment eventually came for Do Young, she managed to get in a few good swipes at the very end, which made her comeuppance a little anticlimactic.

I think what Do Young did in response to Eun Sub’s threat was typical Do Young.  She knew that Eun Sub was out to hurt Ji Young, and waited forever to do something about it – so long, that you almost weren’t sure she was going to do anything at all.  We watched as she let herself get dragged through the work day, her mind elsewhere, but her body still firmly in the studio.  This might not have been so bad if we hadn’t just seen her leave her radio taping just to hug Dong Woo.  So we know that she can hustle when she feels it’s worth her while.

Are we supposed to applaud her for eventually leaving, and getting money out of the bank before driving to Ji Young?  And yeah she left a message – at the very last minute.  I wonder how big a part of her was seduced by the idea of Ji Young once again taken out of the equation.  And her arrival wasn’t that greatly timed.  Eun Sub had already gotten in a few good hits with a baseball bat before Do Young threw money at him, and he left.  I think this was the scene when Lee Ha Na got injured, and it’s not hard to see that happening.  That was the end of Eun Sub, and I hope he didn’t get away with his rotten behavior.  He was so stupid, and most unforgivable of all, Kang Ji Sub was a really bad actor.

Following this beating, Do Young actually confessed the truth to Ji Young, of course emphasizing how she had gone back to look for her when it was too late (but leaving out the part about her relief at this).  This was too little, too late, and it didn’t help matters when she later still continued to lie to others, and tried to discredit her sister as much as possible.  In her anger, hurt, and betrayal, Ji Young finally did what she really didn’t want to do, but what had to be done – she went public with her unni’s story.  I kind of wish Ji Young had been more of a man about it, and not started to feel so upset and guilty, especially since her sister just took the opportunity to feel more sorry for herself.

I hated how everyone was pretty hard on Ji Young for this, except her mother, of course, with even President Jang telling her she should forgive her sister.  I’m sorry, old man, but why does Ji Young have to help you assuage your guilt?  The president met with Do Young and apologized, and maybe this would have had more of an impact if there were more episodes left to deal with the fallout.  I wonder how she would have acted if the president kept lying about it, and tried to cover up his sins.  I can’t believe the ultimate function of this character was just to be another voice harping on Ji Young to “do the right thing.”

I think even without the annoying peanut gallery of everyone telling her to forgive her sister, Ji Young would have, or she already had, but was still justifiably angry.  But she might never have had the chance to, since Do Young made a preemptive strike by trying to commit suicide.  Her attempt was classic Do Young – letting her car veer out of control which could have hurt a lot of innocent people.  As bad as I knew she was, I still can’t believe she tried to do something so cowardly, awful, and manipulative.  She literally would rather have died than apologize to her sister.  I think that says a lot about her, no?  Dong Woo almost made me as angry when he gave Ji Young a reproachful glare at the hospital.  Oh, so now it’s Ji Young’s fault?  Do Young wanted her final act to be one which ruined the Shins’ lives forever, and it’s Ji Young who gets the stink eye from other people?

There wasn’t really much to do after that.  Everyone was forced to come to terms with Do Young, and even Professor Choe visited her in the hospital.  And Do Young eventually woke up, even though her coma world was full of fun times with her birth mother.  Because she pulled this kind of trick, it didn’t even feel satisfying when she later publicly confessed to her monstrous behavior, and said she wouldn’t be working on tv anymore.  Took her long enough.  She also made plans to go with Dong Woo to Hong Kong – exile sounds about right for her, even if her family had forgiven her enough to take a picture together.

But just because she finally felt the teensiest bit of remorse (and I’m still not entirely convinced that she did at all) didn’t mean that she could still get away with her sins.  Her body was falling apart – it was almost as if she had been allowed to wake up at all just to make things right.  And it felt appropriate that right at the moment she finally had real reasons to live, her body betrayed her.  She asked Ji Young to take her to the sea, and play their song as they waited for the sun to come up.  But tears poured down Ji Young’s face when she realized that her unni would never see another sunrise.

Even though the last shot of the drama was one of Do Young and Dong Woo walking together on a sunny beach, I think Do Young died on the beach while she was with Ji Young.  I read that the director confirmed this, and I also read that Dong Woo was only with her later because his plane had crashed, and he also died prematurely.  Spooky how Do Young summoned him from the afterlife, right?  I think her death makes for a much more fitting ending, so even if the director had left the ending more open-ended, that would have been my interpretation.  And that’s the end of Women in the Sun.

I think Do Young’s outsized evilness was a main attraction of the drama, but also its biggest weakness, leading to an overall very frustrating series.  It’s hard not to get swept up in a story about something so awful (that whole train wreck effect, right?), but by the same token, it’s going to be near impossible to feel for the perpetrator of said awful thing.  I still don’t know why the screenwriter made her the leading lady, when you kind of hated her.  It would have been different if Do Young had ever felt sincere remorse, but I never got that from her.  I could never feel bad for her since what she did was just that level of terrible.  She was almost sociopathic in her total lack of feeling for Ji Young, and her selfishness and neediness were so unattractive.

Unlike in Man from the Equator, I never thought that Ji Young went too far with her revenge, since what could top abandoning a young child, and then preventing that same girl from reuniting with her family 20 years later?  I know that Professor Choe was also horrible, and had to be punished as well, but I think the minute Do Young abandoned Ji Young, she went from being the victim of the piece to the outsized villain.  I guess Kim Ji Soo was really good in this role, but, like with Shim Eun Kyung who played the young Do Young, it was a little too good, you know?  I don’t think I can ever see her in another role, especially a goody-goody one, since I’ll always think that she abandoned a child to get where she is.  I think she’s also known for her handful of DUIs, as well as dating a guy who’s, like, 16 years younger.  None of that really makes me want to see her other dramas.

She was way better than the guys in this drama, but since they were some of the lamest and grossest guys in drama history, that’s not saying much.  I didn’t know I could hate a character as much as I hated Dong Woo, and that distaste inevitably spilled over to Jung Gyu Woon.  If I had seen this drama before the others I’ve seen him in first (Again My Love and Romance Town), I would have totally skipped them.  I liked Lee Ha Na the best, and that’s even without her being morally in the right.  She could play the beaten down heroine, but also the mean girl pretty well, so she’s layered.  And I think they let her sing enough to satisfy even me.  Jung Ae Ri (Professor Choe) also stood out, but I wouldn’t want to be her friend.

I found this drama surprisingly engrossing, but it will never be a beloved drama since it was too ugly and frustrating.  I still wish Do Young had gotten hers more, and that’s the main reason I don’t even really like this drama.  Till the end, the drama took pains to give Do Young everything, no matter how little she deserved it.  I also can’t get behind the anti-adoption agenda of the drama, which seems really bent.

And I still wonder where the title comes from – is this a reference to the Icarus myth, with Do Young falling after trying to fly too close to the sun?  Or maybe it has something to do with being in the spotlight?  Or is it just in keeping with the screenwriter’s fixation on hot places you can’t really visit (sun, equator)?  I’m a little wary of the screenwriter now, after this one-two punch of Women in the Sun and then Man from the Equator.  Is she the Ji Young/Seonu of the story, or the Do Young/Jang Il?  I also wouldn’t want to be her friend, even to find out the answer, but I might watch her other dramas.  Maybe something in her rom-com oeuvre, though.

Related Posts:

Women in the Sun: Episodes 17-18

Women in the Sun: Episodes 15-16

Women in the Sun: Episodes 13-14

Women in the Sun: Episodes 11-12

Women in the Sun: Episodes 9-10

Women in the Sun: Episodes 17-18

Tags

Han Jae Suk, Jung Gyu Woon, K-Drama, Kim Ji Soo, Lee Ha Na, Recaps, Women in the Sun

Professor Choe is the one to watch as she has everyone on pins and needles, wondering what she’s going to do next.  No disrespect to Ji Young, but Professor Choe makes her youngest daughter look like a fluffy bunny when it comes to hatred and revenge.  Are we supposed to think she’s a vindictive psycho?  I hope not, because so far I’m totally behind everything she’s doing, now that she’s been reunited with her long-lost daughter.  Even though Professor Choe should never have adopted in the first place, since she was unfit as a mother in that respect, I still think she’s justified in her current actions.  No matter how much you try to spin it, there’s no way you can make the person who abandoned a 5-year-old sympathetic.

Since Professor Choe is in this for the long haul, she didn’t have any tacky blowout at her disgraced daughter, but plans to torture her as much as possible.  This means that she will make sure that Do Young lives with all of them for as long as is the cruelest.  For of course she brought Ji Young back home as soon as she could.  Their new dynamic contrasted nicely with the Fake Ji Young – while the imposter hated Professor Choe’s domineering ways, and commands to move back, this is exactly what Ji Young wanted.  This might mean that Ji Young is as insane as her mom, but at least she’s loved.

I’m kind of at a loss as to what to think of Do Young – I see no gray area with her.  How can she still see herself as the poor victim at this point?  When she gets all martyred when her mother and Ji Young discuss her time at the orphanage, are we supposed to feel sorry for her?  When she told Ji Young to be content with finding her parents and forget what happened, did she seriously think that this was a viable option?  Did she really think that someone like Ji Young was going to forget that her unni abandoned her, and then tried with all of her might to keep her from reclaiming her place?

And for someone who should be seeking forgiveness, Do Young is just racking up more debt, rather than paying for what she already owes.  She’s still trying to hurt Ji Young by insisting on marrying Junse, just because Ji Young loves him (and also because he loves Ji Young, I think), so I really don’t understand where she’s coming from.  She is monstrously selfish, and it was a dark day when she came to live in the Shin household.  I don’t think I have any more words to describe how awful she is.

And Junse is as lame as his jam sessions.  Does he love Do Young?  Do I care?  Well, at the last possible minute he realizes he doesn’t love-love Do Young, and is now kind of at a loss as to what to do.  Ji Young had planned to do the right thing and give him up, but he was totally sending her mixed messages, so of course she was confused.  He told her he loved Do Young, then said that he felt relieved about the whole Dong Woo thing because it made his own love for another person ok, and then he kissed her.  Men.  I totally agreed with mama when she told Ji Young to forget about Junse and find a much better man (and not to worry – she will make sure Do Young doesn’t have a happy life), but I don’t know if her daughter will listen to her.  She has never had a chance to rebel against her parents, so this seems as good a time as any.

Mama really had a chance to shine when the Wonder Woman crew came over to her house for a surprise, and terribly gauche, visit.  Because if they are going to do a special on Do Young, they have to film her bedroom – it’s, like, the law.  And I think it’s telling that for all of Ji Young’s threats, her instinct was to hide, which she poignantly did.  And I burned as Do Young actually thought she was going to get away with lying about her sister again, as she led her crew through the cursed Shin house.

But I should have known that her mother wouldn’t go down without a fight.  While wearing a big smile, she tells everyone that Do Young was adopted – it’s nothing to be ashamed of.  And it is nothing to be ashamed of, but Do Young obviously doesn’t think so as she cries at this humiliation.  But she’s a monster, so she manages to save the situation, but I don’t know how she’s going to spin Eun Bi’s sudden discovery of Ji Young hiding out in the locked room upstairs (very gothic novel).  Poor Ji Young didn’t know what else to do but go back inside and pretend not to be there, which isn’t helping dispel the notion that the Shins keep a crazy woman locked in their attic.  Very Jane Eyre.

And poor Si Eun.  She lives to burst in on the Wonder Woman meetings with the latest gossip, and I think half of her just wants to be their friend.  I think you can do so much better than this freaky team that’s still supporting Do Young after everything she has done.  And you can definitely do better than the thug Eun Sub, who is just a rotten person.  His girlfriend rightfully left him, and bled him dry after she discovered his hidden stash o’ cash, and so he threatened Do Young – if she doesn’t pay him, he’ll hurt Ji Young.  I don’t have a good feeling about what Do Young will decide to do, with only two more episodes left to go.

Related Posts:

Women in the Sun: Episodes 15-16

Women in the Sun: Episodes 13-14

Women in the Sun: Episodes 11-12

Women in the Sun: Episodes 9-10

When Spring Comes: Series Review

Tell Me “When Spring Comes”

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K-Drama, Lee Ha Na, Park Si Yeon, Review, When Spring Comes

I went into Women in the Sun already set on liking Lee Ha Na, but I didn’t always have so much Lee Ha Na love.  In the first drama I saw her in, the kind of strange When Spring Comes (Kkot-pi-neun Bom-i O-myeon – KBS 2007), I actually didn’t think much of her at all, at first.  But she, and the drama in general, soon totally won me over.  It didn’t sound very promising to me – did I really want to see a drama about a guy from a family of criminals who wants to become a prosecutor? – but I’m so glad that I watched it.  It was a really nice, heartwarming story about people trying to deal with bad parents, and wanting to forget where they came from.  Who doesn’t love a story like that?

Lee Jung Do (Park Gun Hyung, I Do, I Do) is a third generation criminal, by birth only – he wants to distance himself as much as possible from his unsavory family.  His father and grandfather have both been in jail for fraud and forgery, respectively, but he intends to buck the trend by becoming a lawyer (since no lawyers are ever crooks, right?).

He’s smart and driven enough to do whatever he wants, even with the handicap of a crime family.  I thought this was crazy – how the sins of his father (and grandfather) were literally visited on him since he was turned away from jobs because of what they had done.

Anyways, he eventually becomes a prosecutor, and sets about trying to fix a corrupt society, all while exploiting his long-suffering assistants (he was the worst boss ever).  He thinks he’s rising out of the mud of his former life, but what happens when the next person he has to prosecute is his father?  Has he not left his old life behind as much as he had thought?

Ok, that plot sounds pretty serious, and maybe even boring, but this drama had a nice light touch, so nothing ever felt that stuffy or painful, especially considering the potentially heavy and downery subject material.  This was helped in large part by the strong focus on family and romance – he can’t be a prosecutor 24/7, right?  And the drama’s called When Spring Comes, so you know that romance will be very important to the story.  Because Jung Do’s spring comes very soon in the drama.

Fittingly enough, he falls in love with a small-time crook, Moon Chae Ri (Lee Ha Na), who is also rebelling against her family.  He first meets her when he catches her trying to pick pockets in the subway station, and as their paths continue to cross (as they can only do in a drama), he realizes he has fallen very much in love with this girl, whom he likes to call Mango (I guess that’s prosecutor humor).  It might take a little longer for her to realize that she likes him too, but that’s what 16 episode runs are for!

Chae Ri doesn’t want to be a petty thief or con, but it’s hard out there for an aspiring musician, you know?  As kind of a reverse Jung Do, her dad, Detective Moon (Jung In Ki), is a copper, and her bad relationship with him (there are mother issues involved) might also explain why she takes to a life of crime, and why she becomes very attached to Jung Do’s father, Lee Duk Su (Kim Gab Su – this must have been a nice reunion for these Alone in Love costars).  And Romeo and Juliet alert: her dad actually put his dad in prison, and is still keeping a close eye on Duk Su lest he return to his illegal ways.  They were lucky that the dads didn’t take it personally, and actually got along pretty well, all things considered.

At first I thought the lame Chae Ri was totally not worth Jung Do’s devotion, and also didn’t have much of a personality (or a pulse, to be honest), but she really grew on you with her strange ways, and slow way of moving.

Once she started to like Jung Do back, she also became a lot more engaged in the plot, I think.  Even when her story took a pretty strange turn as it began charting her rise to super pop stardom, I still rooted for her, and would have totally bought her album.  Since Lee Ha Na has a nice voice, this wasn’t as bad as it could have been, though I wish the OST had featured more of her covers of old-timey songs.

One of the reasons that it took me so long to accept the fact that Chae Ri was the main girl was that I expected Park Si Yeon, who played Oh Young Joo, to get Jung Do at the end.  Since Park had been in the popular My Girl, I thought she would have graduated to first girl roles, but I guess not.  Young Joo is a local tomboyish police officer from an elite family who is partnered with Chae Ri’s dad.

She had joined the force to atone for her mother’s sins – for her biological mom also did time in the big house.  Before Lee Bo Hee was playing psychotic ahjummas (see Wild Romance), she was playing sketchy chicken ahjummas who went after guys like Kim Gab Su (it was uncanny how popular all of the Lee men were – even halabogi).  In some ways Young Joo was more of Jung Do’s soulmate, but you don’t always get together with the one you have the most in common with, I guess.  She was kind of sad as she mooned over him, and then watched both the man she loved, her work partner, and even her mom forget about her, and obsess over Chae Ri.

But she wasn’t so lonely, since she had her very own devoted man, who just happened to be Jung Do’s prosecutor rival.  Kim Jun Ki (Kim Nam Gil, though here he went by Lee Han) was pretty boring, but he served as a nice contrast to our sketchy hero.

He came from a good, wealthy family, was the top of his class (as opposed to Jung Do who barely scraped by sometimes), and had everything nice.  Since Young Joo had been adopted by a wealthy family, these two were set up, and even though Jun Ki liked her right away, it took a while for Young Joo to warm up to him.

Jun Ki also had family issues, since his dad was one of those evil, crooked businessmen, who pushed his son into becoming a prosecutor so that he would have contacts on the inside.  Like Jung Do, Jun Ki also faces off with his father under painful, and very public, circumstances, but I guess that’s what happens when you try to mess with the hero’s family.

I don’t even know why I ended up liking this bizarre drama so much, but I’m not complaining.  It was a little depressing that the message was something like, you can’t run away from your family even if they make your life super hard, so it was lucky that Jung Do, Chae Ri, and Young Joo didn’t really come from as bad of families as they had thought.  But it was still too bad for Jun Ki, because his dad was as bad as all that.

As manipulative and forced as they usually are, I can’t help but get drawn into depictions of idealized family life, and this drama presented an appealingly close-knit Lee clan, and all of its loyal retainers.   I didn’t like how they knew everyone in the neighborhood (I’m not as into that kind of stuff), but I liked how they looked out for one another, no matter how angry they were.  I think Jung Do’s father and grandfather were the first ones who realized that Chae Ri would be joining their family, and were as nice as could be.

I thought Kim Gab Su was super good as Duk Su (the prison record notwithstanding), and he really brought everyone together in this drama.  I remember one year when Kim Gab Su was, like, in every drama ever, but since he’s one of the better character actors, that was a pretty good drama year.  I think this was one of his better roles, or at least the one which provided him with a better showcase, and his scene on the stand, when he explains his motivations behind his criminal activity, was really dramatic and moving.

He totally reveled in playing this outrageous and slightly trashy man, so it must be hard for him to play such nice or reserved men in other dramas.  I don’t know if he’s ever played an outright good guy, and that’s probably for the best since those types are usually creepy.  The closest he came to that was in Cinderella’s Stepsister, and at least there he played it like a farce, and he and Lee Mi Sook were pretty funny together.  I’m ok if he has a secret marshmallow center, so long as the coating is a little mean and snarky.

I am not very familiar with Park Gun Hyung, but his Jung Do was pretty likable.  I kind of felt for him as he never gave up on Mango, even when it really looked like he should.  He was just in the latest Kim Sun Ah drama, I Do, I Do, playing her obstetrician, so he has now had a variety of drama occupations.

He was more interesting than the Jun Ki actor, though that might be because the Jun Ki role was boring.  I liked Kim Nam Gil in the KBS short drama (one of those “serious” and “deep” ones), Several Questions that Make Us Happy, where he played this pretty pathetic guy, but in a funny way (he was a man, you know?), so I couldn’t help but be disappointed by his non-role here.  He shot to popularity in the sageuk Queen Seon Duk, which I have had no desire to see, and was then in Bad Guy,which is only notable to me because he sported a ratty mustache that was so gross.

I don’t think Park Si Yeon has ever been a drama lead (I don’t really count Slingshot), and I wonder why she never gets the guy.  She probably gets them in movies, but I almost never watch those, especially since hers are usually on the scandalous side.  She’s set to play the femme fatale second girl in the upcoming drama following Bridal Mask, Nice Guy, and I can’t imagine her opposite little Song Joong Ki at all.  She’ll eat him alive!

Even though Lee Ha Na was the leading lady in this drama, Women in the Sun is, so far, a much better showcase for her.  For some reason she was kind of zombie-like in this, especially at first.  Maybe she wasn’t that comfortable playing a deadened, unhappy type like Chae Ri.

I’m thinking I might as well watch all of her dramas, so all that’s left are Me Ri, Dae Gu’s Attack and Defense Battle, which has another strange-sounding plot, and Triple, even though the reviews weren’t that good.  I wish she’d make another fun drama (maybe a rom-com, this time), instead of being in Rain’s movie that’s about to come out soon, which has something to do with planes, I think.  Boring.

Prosecutors are such a popular character in dramas (I swear they are, like, in every drama I’ve ever seen), and I wonder if that’s because these prosecutors in Korea are like detectives-martial arts experts-lawyers all rolled into one socially acceptable, and entertaining package.  The drama following Big, Haeundae Lovers, also features a prosecutor as its leading man, and his unique tool for justice will be his amnesia.  I read that Jung Do was supposed to be a “different” kind of prosecutor, and I guess that’s why he’s shown in promotional materials holding strange poses and props.

But his way of doing things totally jived with other depictions, so I don’t know what was so different, except his lowly background.  I remember being really confused when I first encountered a prosecutor in a leading role, in Rooftop Room Cat (so good – you should totally see it).  I thought I had been following the drama pretty closely, but when the prosecutor started doing flying kicks I begin to wonder whether I had missed something really important.  It wasn’t until a few dramas later that I realized that all prosecutors needed to be super good fighters to earn their keep.  This drama might not have added anything to the prosecutor arsenal, but When Spring Comes didn’t need to – it was still a good drama about a lot more than catching criminals, even ones who might be your dad.

Related Posts:

Women in the Sun: Episodes 1-2

My Girl: Series Review

Sassy Girl Chun Hyang: Series Review

City Hall: Series Review

City Hunter: Series Review

Women in the Sun: Episodes 15-16

Tags

Han Jae Suk, Jung Gyu Woon, K-Drama, Kim Ji Soo, Lee Ha Na, Recaps, Women in the Sun

Ok, these Sa Weol vs. Do Young episodes were a little more satisfying when it came to the vengeful payoff.  For now we understand that she had big plans, and that the play was just the beginning of her drawn out revenge plot.   I guess it would have been tacky for her to go in for the obvious kill, especially when Do Young’s had such a long run.  But Do Young still hasn’t been punished enough, I think, and I’m beginning to worry that she won’t even be that punished at all.  Maybe I’m missing the point of the drama.

Sa Weol’s play was destined to be a hit, even though Do Young still tried to sabotage its run by having Fake Ji Young buy out entire performances (so dastardly).  So it became the perfect time for President Jang to step in and promote the show – what are wealthy friends for?  So the play becomes a huge hit, big enough to get invited on the talk show circuit, including the Wonder Woman Show – just as Sa Weol had planned.  In a lot of dramas, many orphans have dreams of stardom, thinking that if they make it that big, their parents are sure to see them and recognize them.  I like how Sa Weol’s plan kind of perverts that – she knows who her parents are, and that if her mother were in her right mind she would recognize her, so this is mainly just to mess with her unni.

And mess with her she does.  This whole play thing has also totally frayed the relationship between Do Young and Eun Bi, since Do Young is determined to suppress her friend’s play, and gives lots of problems about putting it on air.  Was this also part of Sa Weol’s plan, to alienate all of Do Young’s friends, and to force others to see what she’s really like?  Anyways, the play’s popularity can’t be ignored, and so Sa Weol and her costar (a nice, clueless actress) appear as special guests.  Do Young even goes off-script to shut out Sa Weol as much as she can, but I don’t think Sa Weol’s going to be put off by something as lame as being ignored.  So she hijacks the show, all of a sudden putting Do Young on the spot by suggesting that they act out a scene together.

They totally go improv, as Do Young tries to scare her sister off, and here is when you see why Eun Sub was right to be more scared of Sa Weol.  Nothing scares Sa Weol, since she is fueled by self-righteousness and the knowledge that Do Young is wrong, and has way more to lose.  And Do Young does lose it – she reveals her true self, and it’s not calm and nice at all.  How could anyone have thought that was just acting?  I’m actually disappointed in Do Young – she’s so lame and weak that she can’t even handle a little bit of justice?  Now she decides that it’s time for her to jump off a cliff, when things stop completely going her way?  I don’t know how she managed to survive when she was so weak like this all this time.

And Do Young’s anger continues even after the show ends.  She actually slaps Sa Weol, but this one is captured on film by one of her team members, and also witnessed by Si Eun, who has taken a liking to Sa Weol.  Even if Si Eun hadn’t, this opportunity to destroy her rival would have been too good to pass up, and so she plays the tape while reporters happen to be around.  Sa Weol smooths things over, though I don’t really know why.  Does she need her sister whole in order to take her down more completely?  Anyways, Do Young is further in her sister’s debt, and I’m guessing she won’t be paying that back anytime soon.

The men in this drama are completely lame and useless, and it can be so frustrating.  Do Young actually confessed the truth to Dong Woo – how she abandoned her sister, and felt relieved when she couldn’t find her again, even though she “did her duty” and went back to look for her.  It was a little better learning that all this time Dong Woo had thought that Do Young had just lost her sister by accident, and now that he knows the truth, he knows how bad this is.  But since he’s still Disgusting Dong Woo, he can’t leave Do Young, even telling a betrayed Sa Weol that he knows he should kill Do Young for what she did to his “first love” (just words!), but he still loves her too much.  I wouldn’t call that love, but more like a sick punishment for him.

Junse also seems to be under the impression that Do Young couldn’t have been as bad to as abandon her sister on purpose, but he thinks pretty lowly of his fiancée, anyway.  He is determined to “do the right thing” and stay by her side, no matter how evil she is, which is just lame.  It looks like what will get him to leave is knowing that she loves Dong Woo, having seen them kissing in front of her house.  I was prepared to hate Junse just as much as Dong Woo, but then he did one thing which made me think of him more kindly.

He rather abruptly told Sa Weol’s dad that Sa Weol is Ji Young, and that Do Young has known about this for a while.  Ok, weird way to drop a bombshell, but it got the job done, so no harm, right?  The dad went to see the play, and of course cried when he saw Sa Weol’s masseuse scene – are these the kinds of part-time jobs she had to do, or was she just going for maximum discomfort with the play?  He then takes her out to a fancy dinner, and asks her about her father.  She tells him one memory from her past as the Ugly Princess, and that one memory is enough.  They are reunited, and already this drama feels more satisfying.  Was that so hard to do?

I don’t know what this jovial dad will do, but it looks like he’s going through some inner turmoil.  He was downright harsh with Do Young at home, and can’t even smile, or anything.  I’m glad that it’s finally starting to sink in, all those years of pain which were a present from Do Young.  He didn’t say anything when Sa Weol told him she could never forgive her sister, but I wonder if he can take this all the way like his daughter plans to.

I’m less into Sa Weol’s next plan, which is to become an MC, and compete with Do Young for a tv show.  This kind of thing just seems beneath her, and I think it’s better to expose the real Do Young rather than try to steal her shows.  Do Young is also facing another test in the form of an offer from Eun Sub – smelling the desperation, he’s switching sides, and offers to get rid of Sa Weol if Do Young gives him enough money to live with the woman he loves.  You know she’s thinking about it.  I hope that Sa Weol takes care of Eun Sub, too.  She’s scary, remember?  Eun Sub and Dong Woo have both warned Do Young about dealing with his unusual girl.

But Do Young might have the motivation to commit one more heinous crime.  Her mother has recovered her memory – all of it – and Do Young returns home only to find Professor Choe watching that highly rated Wonder Woman episode, and looking at her with hatred.  Please let this finally be the end of Do Young’s lies and torture of the Shin family.

Related Posts:

Women in the Sun: Episodes 13-14

Women in the Sun: Episodes 11-12

Women in the Sun: Episodes 9-10

Women in the Sun: Episodes 7-8

Women in the Sun: Episodes 5-6

Women in the Sun: Episodes 13-14

Tags

Han Jae Suk, Jung Gyu Woon, K-Drama, Kim Ji Soo, Lee Ha Na, Recaps, Women in the Sun

Payback’s a Sa Weol.  Or maybe I should start calling her Ji Young, now that our heroine has finally remembered who she is, and has loosed the arrow from her bow of vengeance.  We haven’t gotten to the completely satisfying comeuppance yet, and I hope that it involves a lot more than making everyone in the drama sit through a weird play-musical hybrid/theater experiment.  Because what Do Young has done deserves far more than a night at the theater.

Before Sa Weol (maybe until both her parents acknowledge her, I’ll still call her this borrowed name) could get started with her Vengeance Games, she had to endure just a bit more pain and humiliation.  My patience is totally starting to wear thin, and all I can say is that the last 6 episodes had better be super good.  For Professor Choe woke up, only to have a weird form of amnesia, which resulted in her forgetting that she had ever had a daughter named Ji Young, and treating Do Young like her only blood daughter.

How her husband can be ok with this personality change is beyond me, but maybe he actually prefers this oddly cheerful woman to the moody harpy he’s been living with for the past few decades.  Is this the mother’s mind protecting itself from the mega-pain of her discovery of Do Young’s betrayal, or is this period just another part of the mother’s punishment?  Do Young is of course ecstatic, and even hired bodyguards to rough Sa Weol up whenever she stopped by to try and see her mother.  And she still wants everyone on “her side.”  The side of evil?  Why is she almost getting rewarded for what she has done?

Since Sa Weol’s direct approach didn’t work, and at least she tried that first, she’ll have to use different tactics to take down Do Young, and reclaim her life.  The stress took its toll, as did her starving herself.  She even took time off from work, and it was kind of funny how her boss attributed her illness to extensive air conditioning.  I personally blame the terrible Dong Woo, who is like Man from the Equator‘s Sumi’s brother, only I think he’s actually more evil since he thinks he’s a good person.  By now he knows what Do Young did, but he still thinks Sa Weol should just suck it up.  I shouldn’t think about him too much since he makes me want to vomit.

Junse’s also pissing me off as he insists on humoring Do Young, and staying so stupid and useless.  He kind of knows that Do Young’s done something wrong, but he told her he’d stay by her side so long as she admitted her mistake.  Is conducting a secret investigation the best way to say that you trust someone?  His big plan to cheer Sa Weol up was to take her out for a healthy meal, during which he told her boring stories and then rejoiced when she spit food at him.

I’ll gladly spit at him, too, if he doesn’t get his act together.  But at least Yong Ja was there for Sa Weol, feeding her revenge-fueling kimchi bokkeumbap, and I think Sa Weol knew what she had to do.  Maybe she had to go through this dark time so that she doesn’t seem like too vindictive a person.  Revenge has to be her last resort, since if it had been her reflex, she wouldn’t be as sympathetic (to other people – I’d still like her).

But who needs useless love interests when you can form unlikely alliances with model wannabes?  For Sa Weol finally made contact with Eun Sub, who was kind of freaked out by her, and told her everything.  When he suggested that Do Young had done everything deliberately, Ji Young said she didn’t want to believe that her unni had done something like that, or else she would have to kill her.  I don’t think she’s kidding.  And as terrible as this must have been for her to realize, she had to know, so that she could start understanding what her unni is really like, and so that she can stop trusting the wrong people.

Her plan seems to be to drive Do Young slowly crazy, starting with a brief encounter at the department store.  Do Young arrived to pick up her dress, only to find it on a singing Sa Weol, who asks her unni if she’s been enjoying herself up till now.  She then lays it pretty much all out there: how this dress could have been hers if her sister hadn’t abandoned her twice, how she is the stronger of the two from how she grew up, and that she must have survived this long for a reason.  Do Young tries to keep calm, but she’s started to freak out, and I have to agree with Sa Weol – Do Young is weak.  Even though Sa Weol is the pampered princess by birth, Do Young made her into this scrappy orphan, too, and I hope that now she will have to reap what she has sown.

Even as Sa weol’s going through this emotional hell, she still found time to prevent her new buddy President Jang from killing himself.  He offered to make any wish of hers come true.  You don’t say those kinds of things to someone like Sa Weol, someone with a vendetta, lightly.  For now he’s been roped into producing the play.  But we learn that President Jang is probably the one who ruined Do Young’s parents and her life all those years ago, since he killed someone and pinned it on someone else.  So in helping Sa Weol, he will be further “wronging” that family – or would that be saving her?  Because someone, or something has to stop Do Young.

Her next big plan, besides messing with Do Young’s head every chance she can get, is to put on a play of her life story.  The screenwriter obviously thinks using artistic mediums to exact revenge is the best way to do things, and you begin to wonder who her dramas are attacking.  She’s already got the funding secured, so next she turns to Eun Bi as her scribe.  To that end she went on kind of a creepy date with Eun Bi – I guess getting allies wasn’t going to be easy.  But Eun Bi totally ate it all up, and Sa Weol actually got a leading role in Two Sisters.  We saw her whole training/rehearsal montage, and then opening night.  Junse was there, after Sa Weol told him that she only had a bit part (so modest), as well as Do Young and the entire Wonder Woman team.  So the curtain comes up, and we see the young sisters, the older one abandoning the younger one at a train station.  And scene.

I’m on the fence about the new Sa Weol.  She’s in so much pain, so you wish things would just resolve themselves quickly, but then you also wish she were more vindictive.  She’s pretty good at doing mean girl things, so I have hope, unless the drama wusses out at the finish line.  So far it looks like Do Young is getting away with everything; she doesn’t even seem to be going through any inner turmoil, either, so how is any of this fair?  And a hybrid play?  Really?  Let’s hope this isn’t the whole plan.

Related Posts:

Women in the Sun: Episodes 11-12

Women in the Sun: Episodes 9-10

Women in the Sun: Episodes 7-8

Women in the Sun: Episodes 5-6

Women in the Sun: Episodes 3-4

Women in the Sun: Episodes 1-2