Kmuse was right — the previous set of episodes felt like a plateau. The formula of nail-biting legal fight with the Snake Yu Beom was carried through, but it was the extraneous events that held my attention. Let’s talk episodes 23 and 24!

Having your cake and eating too.

So we open on Jae Chan’s spectacular decision that combines both forks in the road into one road — since the injuries to that poor Teaching Assistant were to his neck and head, they could do the autopsy and the organ transplants at the same time. It seemed like an obvious decision to me, but I guess it’s a rare thing? Whatever. I rolled with it. And so our hero got the evidence he needed that Teaching Assistant was strangled and Prosecutor Son’s whip-smart little prince gets his much-needed kidney. Cheers and tears all around!

But even as Jae Chan makes that decision, he agonizes over it, knowing that so much could go wrong. Hong Joo finds him and comforts him, telling him that she had dreamed him winning the case. He seems to take her words to heart and goes off with a cheerful heart, but I could see that Hong Joo was holding something back. She totally was. She confesses to Woo Tak not long afterwards that she lied. WAIT. Our human lie detector didn’t catch that? What the heck?

A parent’s love

The interesting dynamic for me was watching the parents. As a parent myself, I felt really touched by their stories. Teaching Assistant’s Dad and his decision to allow the organ transplant and feeling guilty over how that might affect the trial was gut-wrenching. And then Prosecutor Son’s gratitude to Jae Chan for saving her son, even though he didn’t know that he was, totally tugged at my heart. And are we getting a little hint of romance between Prosecutor Lee and Prosecutor Son? I’d love to see that. I adored how he cheered her up in the elevator in the last episode by sharing the office gossip. When he’s not an overacting goofball, he’s a really good guy.

Even bad guys sometimes understand how ethically sleazy they are.

I wonder at Yu Beom and his constant need to put Writer Moon in his place, reminding him that he’s a murderer. Maybe this ties into the fact that he did some heinous things as a prosecutor and he’s covering his guilt with a power play. He obviously did something to get the doctor dad of Seong Won’s friend, Myung Dae Gu, sent to jail. And he’s getting positively OCD about washing his hands after a trial. Hey, Yu Beom, maybe you should mend your ways!! It’ll be easier on your hands, anyway.

Upholding justice is sexy!

The end of the trial was a great reminder of Jae Chan’s passion for his work. Sure, he’s a prosecutor because his dad encouraged him to do it, but he loves his work and gets emotionally invested. The part where he sacrificed his dignity to get a coherent testimony from the five-year-old cracked me up and made me so proud of him all at the same time. Plus, he knew about Hong Joo lying. Heh. Ok. So the lie detector isn’t broken. That’s good. I assume it’s gonna come in handy later.

Blame the bad guys and only the bad guys

It was good to see Hong Joo’s epiphany — that if she removes herself from the equation of the tragic events she’s dreamed about, they would still happened. Just as Jae Chan persuaded the judge, if you take out the element of the organ transplant or Hong Joo’s dreams, events would occur anyway. But in the case of the trial, if you take out Writer Moon’s actions, then Teaching Assistant would have lived his life happily. When Hong Joo explained her epiphany to her mom, I had more respect for Mama Joon’s taking the ring away. She wasn’t doing it to save Hong Joo heartache, but because she wanted her daughter to see that the things she dreamed weren’t her fault. I loved her apology to Jae Chan in the laundromat, especially for sacrificing someone else’s child to save her own. It made sense in the fact that she was giving Hong Joo space to learn and NOT trying to squash the relationship for superficial reasons. Faith in Mama Joon restored!

I feel some foreshadowing coming on

The last ten minutes were SO HEAVY with foreshadowing. We see Yu Beom’s green umbrella get transferred to Myung Dae Gu’s possession, Jae Chan taking Hong Joo to see the sea and his voice in voice-over saying he did it to give her comfort in the face of what’s to come, and the news about Myung Dae Gu’s dad committing suicide in prison. And then a confirmation of something insignificant that popped up earlier in the episode — Woo Tak is colorblind! And that fateful umbrella is green. CRAP CRAP CRAP.

My thoughts:

CRAP CRAP CRAP. It was a well-constructed episode with good tension, but that last revelation makes me want to bite my nails. The writer excels at planting hints and ratcheting up my anxiety levels, especially for the characters I adore. Oh boy. I’m gonna have to distract myself real good for the next few days!

Til next week,

Karie the Maknae

Dramas With A Side of Kimchi