Swallow the Sun episodes 14-15: drunk-calling your ex edition
I had all sorts of things to talk about and sum up about eps 14 and 15 but then the amazing shippy angst scenes with Jung Woo/Su Hyun and Jackson/Amy happened and I am afraid that sort of took over the post.
It was epic. It was Bollywood in its angsty yearning epicness.
When we left off, Su Hyun smacked Jung Woo and stormed out. Jung Woo tells Rich Boy - 'see, no feelings. No go after her!'
My insanely angsty OTP!
Just give it up, Rich Boy! Su Hyun basically tattooed on her face 'even if I am not in love with JW, you are not my type!'
Ohhh.
In the morning, Mob Boss has JW drive him to a remote grave, instead of his morning appointments. And Jung Woo sees, with shock, it's the grave of his mother.
He remembers coming here with Cop.
Have some fun misery! I honestly dislike Cop though we are supposed to like him - he is mooning over a dead woman when he has a live wife at home. And what kind of a sicko tells a kid that he's a product of rape, anyway. Even if he believes it true (and the only reason he does is his own obsession with Mi Yeon which refuses to believe she could have fallen for a con), if there were ever an occassion to keep your mouth shut! Seriously, he's frelled up JW worse than the Mob Boss ever did. As long as JW believes that, nothing is really fixable.
Back to the present. Mob Boss (oh, the irony!) asks about JW's parents. JW says he grew up at an orphanage but he found out about his parents - his mother died when he was little but his father is still alive but he's never contacted him. MB is 'why not?' and JW says because the more he learns about his father the more scared he gets as the man just leaves devastation in his wake. But he will meet him once he's proven himself to Mob Boss. (irony!)
He then asks Mob Boss whose grave is it, and Mob Boss says it is a grave of a woman who saved his life and made him want to live when he wanted to give up (OK, Jung Woo, I know you are way messed-up but shouldn't it give you a hint he loved her thus unlikely to have kidnapped/raped/etc her).
So hot.
I am enjoying Jackson and Mi Ran's friendship. I hope she doesn't fall for him because two dudes in a row who are in love with someone else would be a bad track record.
Su Hyun learns that Mob Boss likely had her parents killed.
Rommie and Amy run unto each other at the big casino gala.
EEE! EEEEEEE! Secondary OTP angst of awesomeness. I love Secretary noting it (for future advantage no doubt), Amy's father freaking out, Mi Ran coolly composed (and not too interested), and Jung Woo's unwitting sympathy (it's a little too close to his own present situation).
I love Jackson and Mob Boss interactions.
Time for some main OTP angst! I love that no matter what, his eyes betray him - he looks as if he's dying a little inside every time he sees Su Hyun and Rich Boy together. (Side Note - Su Hyun being able to keep her composure in front of Mob Boss is amazing).
She goes in for dinner with Mob Boss and Rich Boy and he is left outside, like the servant that he is.
He can just watch...
And dwell in his memories of her.
She asks him is that is what he wanted - to be Rich Boy's slave and just snap to it and do all his bidding and he has no answer he can give and walks away. He really is so tightly wound up, he's close to breaking.
This is here for amusement sake - this is a list of foreign gamblers. I laughed and laughed - someone on the production staff has a sense of humor.
Jackson had a plan to foil Mob Boss but Jung Woo stopped it using tricks he learned from Jackson himself. And his former friends look betrayed yet again.
Rich Boy gets yelled at by Mob Boss for screwing up and Jung Woo praised for saving the day. RB is all 'my Dad didn't have to know!' and JW (blandly) 'I am sorry, I didn't think of it' and RB loses it and 'is this your revenge?!' Ahahahahahaha, if you only knew.
Mob Boss is so pleased with Jung Woo he invites him over for breakfast and JW overhears MB's plans to get rid of Cop if he keeps noseying around.
He meets Cop and begs him to drop investigation of MB and tells him of his revenge plan. Cop is taken aback by all this - being a little sane, he can tell how messed up it is (hello, whose fault is it, Jung Woo went off the deep end, moron?)
My favorite scene is coming up! Su Hyun, Rommie and Amy meet up for coffee. They are delighted to reconnect and there is a good deal of chatting and good-natured teasing. Roommie cracks that if she knew Amy was so rich, she'd have been nicer to her :P
But Roommie has to leave for an appointment and Su Hyun (gotta love her) tells Amy they should ditch the coffee shop and just go drinking. YESSSS, that's my girl(s)!
They get pretty drunk and of course naturally the topic turns to the main thing bugging them - the fact that their guys are total idiots! Tipsy Su Hyun pours her woes into Amy's sympathetic ears - Jung Woo, whom she was friends with and then lovers, suddenly just told her that they should break up as they mistook their feelings. "What does that even mean?" demands Su Hyun. Amy's retort is that at least Su Hyun's boyfriend dumped her in person. Hers just treats her as if she's invisible.
Su Hyun (by this point super-drunk) is indignant on Amy's behalf and comes up with one of those ideas which seem brilliant when you have 3 bottles of soju in you and make you clutch your hair in horror when you are sober. Why doesn't Amy calls Jackson and tell him everything she thinks of him? Amy, being as drunk as Su Hyun, does just that.
But when she calls, she's not cursing, but crying and asking if she's a ghost that he treats her as if she's invisible and Su Hyun is all "Unni, you are doing it wrong, you should tell him he's a bastard. Let me show you!" And she calls Jung Woo.
She yells at him that he's an utter and complete bastard and then (half-yelling, half-crying) asks him what is wrong with him - she sees the way he still looks at her. She demands he come over and beg her to take him back and sobs what would he do if she married Rich Boy? They his begging would be too late! Of course, the sensible thing for JW to do would be to hang up but he can't do that - he wants to listen to her voice so badly.
Amy's still on the phone with Jackson and all he can say is her name over and over (he's still doing better than JW who doesn't say anything at all). She snarls at him not to say her name lovingly since he won't even see her. I love these girls!
They drink some more and totally conk out - the bar is closing and the owner is left with these two unconscious drunk girls.
So he does the reasonable thing and hits whoever is first on their speed-dial to tell them to come and pick them up. Guess who is first on Su Hyun's speed-dial? Guess. I love how JW doesn't even think of not going or calling Roommie or Rich Boy or anything. He just gets there as fast as he can.
Guess who was first on Amy's dial. Yeah. It gets a little awkward but I think the guys should bond - they are being idiots in an identical manner! Seriously. I actually understand where both Jung Woo and Jackson are coming from - "Hon, did you know my Dad whacked your parents?" is basically a relationship-killer even if there wasn't other stuff going on with Jung Woo. I can see why he thinks he can't. And as for Jackson, I can see why he thinks Amy is better off without him - when she was with him she was living in a rat-trap apartnment, working as a stripper, and shacking up with a guy who has major wanderlust (he tried hard to stay put but who knows how well that would work). At home she can be a rich and taken-care of lady who can pursue a proper career and have a proper husband (Of course, she doesn't have to be a stripper but I think she was as a measure of emotional control/payback for his adrenaline junkie tendencies and it's not so clear they won't fall back into that pattern if they hooked back up). But still, I feel for the girls even more! One day Amy is living with a guy, the next she's kidnapped by her Dad's thugs and her boyfriend, the famous mercenary and tough man of action won't even lift a finger to get her out but instead, when they meet accidentally, treats her as if she doesn't exist. And Su Hyun - she is friends with someone for a long time, they finally confess their love and act on it, and he promises her to come back for her, but when he sees her next he breaks up with her? WTF!
Love Jung Woo carrying out unconscious Su Hyun and her frilly pink purse.
Oh, you guys are breaking my heart. I especially loved that when he reached to stroke her hair, his hand was shaking. And he didn't touch her, not quite, as if not daring to.
Meanwhile Jung Woo is in a car with Su Hyun. He doesn't take her to either his house or hers, in part probably to avoid awkward explanations, but in part because he wants to keep her to himself for a little longer - that is the only time he can be with her, after all.
The two of them in his small car - the tension is palpable because he loves her and misses and wants to be with her so much, he can barely cope with it. And when he takes off his jacket to cover her, you can tell he wants so much to just gather her in his arms and hug her and hold her all night, he can barely stop himself.
He actually has to escape the car and go outside for a little bit.
Things aren't much cheerier in the Secondary OTP-land.
He sits the whole night with her and then she wakes up. I loved Su Hyun more than ever at that moment. If you think, it's the ultimate nightmare - getting drunk after your bf dumps you, drunk-calling him, then getting so blotto the management calls him and he has to come out and take care of you. But Su Hyun is not embarassed, she is just very grown-up. She tells him she is sorry but that it will probably happen again as she drinks like this until she forgets him. But next time, he should not come! (His face at that - it's as if someone cut a piece of him off).
In the other angstorama territory -
I love that he doesn't take her hand away because it's totally beyond his self-control.
He drops her off at the house and I love her rage when he tells her she should go in (implying that nothing has changed, of course). I love her yelling at him why did he bother saving her life (persumably during her suicide attempt?) if he was just going to cut her heart out for fun later.
And then she does the kdrama backhug EEEE!
And he is all "no, we can't do this" and slowly unclenches her fingers from his one by one. Oh God, why don't you and Jung Woo throw each other a masochist party!
And then the episode wasn't over but I turned it off to go to bed because there was only so much angst I could take in one sitting and I needed time to locate kleenex for my bawling anyway.
ETA: Found this OTPs-of-angst scene on youtube, yay!
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