#e12

Lee Chang Jin: That I’m not going to end my life in this shithole.

This is the scene that made me fully fall in love with Lee Chang Jin as a character and it still works so well on rewatches. I really like the version of his backstory we get from this because it’s perhaps the more honest - it’s still performative but it’s still performative to a subordinate he feels affection for and we see so well what Ji Hwa means when she talks about his raw honesty.

Also I really like what it confirms about Chang Jin’s bilingualism - he did pick up Russian growing up, but he did learn it along with Korean and he was equally committed to growing with both languages.  Ji Hwa did accuse him to use Russian to pass off as Russian Korean (I think she’s referring to the Koryo-saram?) and I don’t know enough to really consider the implications of this, so I’ll just say that I like that Lee Chang Jin is choosing to keeping its ties to where he grew up. He’s proud of all he is and all he did. 

???: Hyungnim! Lee Chang Jin: Get up and see yourself out.

Two things here: 1) Lee Chang Jin’s downfall, that he refuses to accept defeat and who would prefer to cling to the possibility of succeeding, even if it costs him the most, even if the alternative is something that he could actually be happy with, because he needs that success to prove something to the world. And it’s such a stark contrast to Han Ki Hwan too, despite them having very similar goals, because HKH is implied to have forcibly cancelled and repressed anything outside his dream of being Commissioner General, while Chang Jin kept all those human connections and passions and love for life.

2) This is really where we start heading into Kneeling As A Theme territory and here it's set up here as a voluntary gesture coming from a sincere place: sure, if everything fails is very bad for everyone, but we are crucially show and told that Lee Chang Jin’s subordinate was at his side for more than twenty years. He even brings up Russia. 

Do Hae Won: You are being fooled by Lee Dong Sik.

This scene kills me entirely because of what Lee Dong Sik says in the final episode - Park Jeong Je was always afraid of his mother. Dong Sik and Ji Hwa were defending him from bullies and other kids and presumably everything else that frightened him, but also from his mother, in the way kids (and later teenagers) try to do. We know Do Hae Won always hated Dong Sik for taking his son away from her.

And yet here, when Dong Sik asks Jeong Je to remember, he lets himself be consoled by his mother.

Han Joo Won: It’s because you don’t look like you are ready for it yet.

I’m so proud of him for being in a place where he can understand that, think like that and also say it. And then Dong Sik immediately has to tease him about it. 

Han Ki Hwan: It looks like he is investigating together with Lieutenant Lee Dong Sik.

I’m fully putting the ox before the cart here, but. HKH is keeping tabs on what is happening to Manyang, he is carefully trying to prevent any of what happened in 2000 it from coming out and his solution in later episodes is. “I’ll promote Lee Dong Sik to make use of him. I’m sure the guy who was my son’s partner and spent twenty years looking for his sister is the kind of guy on whom this will work”.

And that’s because he is surrounded by people like Kwon Hyeok (and, we find out later, Jeong Cheol Moon) who are easily cowed by him - but as we see in this conversation, that’s fully because they want to. Kwon Hyeok had already guessed the entirety of Han Ki Hwan’s plan, he only fell for HKH’s bullshit about a father’s love because he wants to. 

You really have to feel for Lee Chang Jin and all the dog food he’s forcibly fed on screen. Can the people around him go fuck it out somewhere else, he’s trying to work here.

Han Joo Won: He is still waiting. 

Aside from the very obvious “Submissive like a guard dog is submissive” and “Oh my God I can’t believe how this scene mirror inverts the same scene as the previous episode where Jeong Je sends Joo Won to help Dong Sik because he’s the only one who can” : I can’t  believe Joo Won was like, no more dancing on a blade. Park Jeong Je, go stay in Dong Sik’s basement where Yoo Yeon was buried, there is no way this is going to afflict your mental health in any way, so this is perfect. I am definitely making a choice here that cannot backfire in any way whatsoever. 

But also oh my God, this speech. Joo Won really has put his heart into this speech and it shows.

Oh Ji Hwa: Oh, I’m tired already. [...] Hwang Gwang Young: Where are you going?

I love the setting of this scene because Joo Won is clearly hovering, feeling an outsider and unsure, and so he does take to heart Hwang Gwang Young’s complaints that he wasn’t let into it while Joo Won, the new guy, an outsider,  was - and then Hwang Gwang Young himself is like no, where are you going. You belong here. I’m not done complaining yet. 

Also I love that it’s over something so mundane. Joo Won is part of the group now, and that means that he gets to hear Hwang Gwang Young’s rant that he’s clearly said millions of times while everyone lets him know exactly how bored out of their mind they are. Belonging is not a thing reserved only for big, life changing moments or murder investigations - come here to have barley tea and be bored with us. 

Im Seon Nyeo: It wouldn’t be right if I did nothing.

And we got back here to the theme of what we owe to each other and how Joo Won hates inappropriate familial relationships because he believes in them but people around him only use them for their own benefit and for their personal gain - WELL NOT HERE IN THIS BUTCHER SHOP <3

Yoo Jae Yi: That burner phone number, he knew it was his mother’s and didn’t tell you.

I love this conversation and that it’s Jae Yi leading it. We are shown before that she and Ji Hoon are the ones more willing to stick publicly for Dong Sik and who don’t accept that this is just “how things are” and that feeling has persevered through the whole series and once again Jae Yi is the one putting her foot down to have a conversation that is only possible at this point of the story.  

It’s also such a necessary conversation and I’m glad the series didn’t glaze over it or approached it from a more “rational” angle but instead keeps its focus on human relationships: Ji Hwa and Dong Sik can’t bring themselves to be harsh to Jeong Je, no matter what he does, because they love him and because that’s how their dynamics has been since they were children, for more than thirty years now. And it wasn’t an easy friendship - they stuck to Dong Sik through everything, and he stuck back with them in return. There must have also been rumours when Ji Hwa returned with her divorce to the shadiest guy she could find, or when Jeong Je kept very obviously being mentally unwell and being brownbeated by his mother, and none of them cared. For all we know sticking together made those situations worse and they still didn’t care.

And Jae Yi is pointing out the very real truth that Jeong Je hasn’t been (fully) reciprocating the love, care and affection that they showed him despite so many opportunities to do so. 

Yoo Jae Yi: Unnie and Ahjussi Jeong Je saw it all. 

And I like that she keeps it very focused on Dong Sik, even if it would have been arguably easier to make her point by using her own personal experience. She and Dong Sik have gone through the same thing, and if Jae Yi pointed out that they would have never Jeong Je off the hook that easily if he was hiding information about her mom, Ji Hwa and Dong Sik would have been quicker to accept that they need to confront Park Jeong Je. But she doesn’t want to do that. She doesn’t want Dong Sik to do any kind of transference - she wants to focus on him, on how it was unfair to him.

This conversation also is way worse when you remember the monologue Dong Sik gave to Ji Hwa and Jeong Je in Episode 3 : Dong Sik isn’t generally very open about his feelings unless he’s with people he fully trusts, so he was able to be raw, honest and actually talk about it because of how much he loves and trust them. And Jeong Je betrayed that trust.

I love that we focus on Joo Won’s face here too, who in these episodes is making a lot of quietly observing and thinking about Dong Sik now that he understands him. He’s getting a full crash course on everything that has happened to his partner across the years, things he easily suspected but are now fully confirmed and in such a visceral way. Dong Sik’s unjust arrest was even more unjust than he thought. Dong Sik’s nebolous, desperate search for Yoo Yeon is now being colored in and filled with details. 

Sergeant Jo Gil Goo: Dong Sik, you know my daughter. You adored her.

I’m just keeping in this detail because it’s adorable but also what the fuck. I like that they never fully absolve him and give even him a darker dimension - Gil Go wasn’t accidentally framing Dong Sik, once he guessed it had something to do with Jeong Je he was consciously doing it and giving into his worst instincts explicitly for money. And Dong Sik was someone involved enough with the family that Gil Go can invoke his daughter to move him. Just like Gil Go had no problem interfering with the case 2000 despite having seen the family of the victim crying their heart out in front of him.

Lee Dong Sik: You know me, right? You know I’ll bite you and tear you apart, right?

This is how a conversation about ripping someone apart for justice sounds when you are not actually flirting with them, Joo Won.

Dong Sik: But you never told me a single word while chugging down your meds.

THE KNEELING AGAIN (or close enough). Dong Sik very tellingly starts this conversation bringing up Min Jeong and Yoo Yeon, that his trust in Jeong Je was so complete that he didn’t only trust him with himself, but with the women he loved the most, his almost daughter and twin sister, and Jeong Je must have loved them too, but he never said anything neither for them nor for him.

And it’s heartbreaking to see Dong Sik not only kneel and plead and beg but even bring evidence, very specifically bringing up suffering that Jeong Je was witness to and still wasn’t enough to get him to help. 

And it still - doesn’t work. We know Jeong Je had some fragments of memories, that he at the very least remembered enough to have lived through hell and even give Joo Won advice about it - but he couldn’t say anything to his best friend of thirty years and he doesn’t do it now either.

Lee Dong Sik: To all these questions, you just answered, “No, I don’t know.”

And that’s what makes this scene even more heartbreaking (and very pointedly now Dong Sik is not putting himself at Jeong Je’s level in a pleading position) when he’s just. Quoting from the report. He’s quoting from the report of twenty years ago . He’s pointing out inconsistencies he noticed since twenty years ago and he never said a word about because Jeong Je would have never. Because the trust was so strong that he dismissed it - sure, it was suspicious, especially when Park Jeong Je claimed to not know well the twin sister of his best friend, sure Dong Sik might have even guessed that they were in a secret relationship, but surely it couldn’t have anything to do with her disappearance. Because if it had, Jeong Je would have told him. 

Lee Yoo Yeon: How can you call me when Dong Sik Oppa is here?

Maybe it’s just me, but I like how the clear implications of this scene is that she thought they were going to have sex and instead she gets there and it’s. Jeong Je being drunk as fuck and therefore deciding this is a great moment to... let Dong Sik know they are dating. And then acting like it's ridiculous that Yoo Yeon is “scared” of her brother's opinion when he had to get drunk as hell to find the courage. Horror plot twist, having sex would have saved her.

(Oh Gods, was Jeong Je scared because his first reaction is to fear to everyone's judgement due to his mother?)

The other thing I like is that we see Jeong Je chugging meds. I have some reservations about the way mental health is depicted in the series too, but I do like that they do establish that Jeong Je did have an untreated mental illness even before any of this happened - that this was a real and known problem and not just a convenient plot thing and it's relevant to the story but it's not meant to be the reason why Jeong Je did something wrong. 

Han Joo Won: Those two people are family. Family.

I find it interesting how this builds up on the theme that Joo Won is always feeling like an outsider, which is why he has no issues here saying that despite notoriously not being a fan of his own family- other people believe in families so it’s unthinkable this wouldn’t be a problem. I don’t because I'm built different, but they do.

Han Joo Won: Even after knowing the truth, why isn't that trust broken!