Trolley: Episodes 1-2 (First Impressions)

by DaebakGrits

An assemblyman with a loving family and a genuine compassion for his constituents is thrust into a controversy after his daughter goes missing and the search ends with a tragic twist. More trouble lies ahead for this couple, though, as an unexpected visitor shows up on their doorstep at the most inopportune moment.

Editor’s note: Coverage will continue with weecaps.
 
EPISODES 1-2 FIRST IMPRESSIONS

SBS’s latest drama gets its title from the “trolley problem” — a famous philosophical and ethical thought experiment that poses the question: would you sacrifice one to save many? The conundrum certainly seems on brand with a K-drama that promises suspense and melodrama, but Trolley doesn’t immediately wave the reference in our faces. Instead, our premiere episodes are used to slowly introduce us to our main characters and build our anticipation for what’s to come.

Our story begins with KIM HYE-JOO (Kim Hyun-joo), who’s anxiously answering the police’s questions about her missing daughter, NAM YOON-SEO (Choi Myung-bin). She admits to having a fight with her daughter before her disappearance, and then we flash back to earlier in the day. On the surface, this storytelling device is intended to tease us with the promise of something more exciting and get us through the slower introductory exposition, but as we follow Hye-joo as she goes about her daily routine, there’s a surprising undercurrent of tension despite her mundane actions.

Hye-joo has a career as a book conservationist (dream job alert!), but she also embodies the perfect housewife, making her husband smoothies before work, providing food for children in need, refilling the cooler of energy drinks for the delivery man, and attending lunch gatherings with the other mothers at her daughter’s school. She’s courteous and humble, too, and when she finds out that JO GWI-SOON (Won Mi-won), the ajumma she buys her perella oil from, has closed down her shop to mourn her granddaughter, Hye-joo is the only visitor at the funeral. Hye-joo also refuses to sign the guest book, which is one of many signs that she prefers to live in the shadows and let her husband, ASSEMBLYMAN NAM JOONG-DO (Park Hee-soon), stand in the spotlight.

Joong-do seems to be just as perfect as his wife. He meets personally with his constituents and gives them the number to his direct phone line, claiming that lending them an ear so they can vent their frustrations is the least he can do. His modesty, however, does not detract from his ambitions, and while he intentionally chooses to keep his current unpretentious office, he has his eyes set on the Blue House.

Hye-joo and Joong-do, surprisingly, have a healthy marriage. I say “surprisingly” partly because K-dramas have conditioned me to believe that middle-aged couples with school-aged children are (more often than not) trapped in loveless marriages where the husband and wife are relegated to their duties as the proverbial homemaker and breadwinner. On the surface, this very much appears to be the case with Hye-joo and Joong-do, and when you add in the fact that they have a 22-year-old-son who has only been mentioned in passing, one starts to wonder what skeletons this couple has in their closet.

For me, this is where that subtle tension I mentioned earlier started to come into play, as I began to look for symptoms that their marriage was far from Instagram perfect. Instead, all I saw were signs that they genuinely love one another. Their texts are sweet and a bit flirty, and we’re led to believe that they have a healthy sex life — until Joong-do is called away in the middle of the night to attend the funeral of the mother-in-law of someone rich and important.

After he leaves, Hye-joo realizes that Yoon-seo is missing, and we return to our opening scene at the police station. Hye-joo admits that it’s possible that Yoon-seo ran away, since they’d fought — Hye-joo told her 14-year-old daughter that she could not participate in a college study and get a co-author credit on a paper like her peers.

The police treat Yoon-seo’s disappearance as they would any other runaway case, until they recognize Joong-do, at which point they bend over backwards and offer to delegate additional officers to the search. Joong-do knows all too well that accepting the preferential treatment would be seen as an abuse of power, but Hye-joo begs him to set aside his political hat and think as a father. This is the first time we see Joong-do’s carefully maintained political codes of conduct falter, and when he reluctantly concedes to the increase in police resources, it almost feels like he’s doing it more out of love and consideration for his wife than concern for his daughter.

The search for Yoon-seo comes to a tragic end when a body is pulled from the river, but it’s not Yoon-seo. It’s NAM JI-HOON (Jung Taek-hyun), Hye-joo and Joong-do’s son — and this is the point where we get our first inkling of how this drama will use the theme of the trolley problem in its plot. Earlier in our story, when we were following Hye-joo’s day-to-day activities, a (rather nosey) client (cameo by Baek Ji-won) asked her if she secretly had a favorite child. Although Hye-joo did not humor the woman’s inappropriate question, she now feels that her unspoken answer has manifested in reality. Her biological daughter returns home safely — but seemingly at the divine expense of her step-son.

She never explicitly states that she favors Yoon-seo over Ji-hoon, but he’s obviously the “problem child.” Not only was he recently released from prison, but a baggie of methamphetamine was found on his body. The last time Hye-joo saw Ji-hoon, his surly attitude frustrated Hye-joo to the point that she admitted that she wished he’d get his act together because he was a stain on Joong-do’s political ambitions. Despite these harsh words, though, it’s clear that her disappointment stems from love, too.

But now that Ji-hoon’s death — and drug possession — has caused a scandal, Hye-joo and Joong-do are forced to temper their pain and navigate the resulting public outrage and decline in Joong-do’s ratings (which his opponents are eager to exploit). It doesn’t help matters that they’re thrown another curveball in the form of KIM SOO-BIN (Jung Soo-bin), Ji-hoon’s pregnant girlfriend.

Soo-bin’s sudden appearance on Hye-joo’s doorstep predictably brings about the usual tension and additional worries about how her existence will impact Joong-do’s political career — but it also gives us some small insights to Hye-joo’s past, which is an intentional mystery. Unlike her husband, who is justifiably suspicious of Soo-bin, Hye-joo is sympathetic because she knows firsthand what it’s like to be an orphan and to come to Seoul without any friends or family to support her.

There’s also a particularly interesting moment between Hye-joo and Joong-do when she first tells him about Soo-bin’s pregnancy. He’s immediately distrustful that the baby is Ji-hoon’s because the timeline is extremely suspect, but Hye-joo counters by asking him how he’s so sure that Yoon-seo is his child — which is a pretty bold and loaded question to ask one’s husband. He responds by professing his profound trust in her, which is admirable, but the fact that she would even casually toss out such a question is highly suspect. Just what are you hiding Hye-joo?

While Hye-joo and HYUN YEO-JIN (Seo Jung-yeon), the family’s live-in friend, watch Soo-bin and keep her out of sight, Joong-do finds an unexpected way to rebuild his public image. Through sheer coincidence, both Hye-joo and Joong-do attended the funeral of Gwi-soon’s granddaughter. Their altruism endeared them to the Gwi-soon so much that she went to bat for them when a reporter tried to use the circumstances of her granddaughter’s suicide as fodder to fan the flame against Joong-do.

After a video of Grandma Gwi-soon goes viral, Joong-do appears on live television to address his recent controversy. He admits that, in a moment of crisis, he forgot that he was an assemblyman and reacted as a father, but he also states that the recent backlash against him has provided him with a stage to highlight an issue that needs to be addressed. Joong-do is referring to the circumstances that led to the suicide of the Gwi-soon’s granddaughter, who was being blackmailed by a med student threatening to post private photographs of her on the Internet. Joong-do promises that he will make it his mission to change the laws so that perpetrators of digital sexual violence will be punished.

Almost immediately the public opinion shifts, but Joong-do’s decision to redirect the public’s ire comes at the sacrifice of the med student, who jumps to his death after becoming public enemy number one. In the short term, Joong-do’s choice protects his political aspirations, but in the long term, if you perceive him as being one of the few “good” politicians, then his decision could go on to benefit many people in the future — especially if he became president and had the power to enact more change. Thus, our trolley problem comes into play again.

The thing about the trolley problem, though, is that it is never as straightforward as it seems, and the variables are often changed (e.g. What if the one person tied up on the tracks is a relative?) to see how a person’s ethics adjust and adapt. So while it may have been “easy” for Joong-do to place blame on a guilty party and sacrifice the med student, I suspect that there is an unknown consequence that will come into play as a result of his suicide, especially when sole contents of the med student’s suicide letter was to call Joong-do a murderer.

But even in the unlikely event that our story doesn’t continue to build from here, there are still two more wild cards at play. The first is Soo-bin. Even if we believe Joong-do’s trusted aide JANG WOO-JAE (Kim Mu-yeol) when he says he can spin any story about Soo-bin’s pregnancy — whether she chooses to keep the baby or get an abortion — to earn public favor, Soo-bin can’t be trusted. We already know that she lied about having lost her phone (and any proof she was dating Ji-hoon), which makes her highly suspect. Her role in the overall story, however, is still to be determined, but my gut is telling me her pregnancy is the least of Joong-do and Hye-joo’s problems.

And speaking of Hye-joo, she’s our other wild card. Although the story did a superb job of demonstrating how she’s a genuinely good person and loves her husband, there’s an undercurrent of mystery that was subtly woven into the larger tapestry of her characterization. While I don’t get the feeling that she’s hiding anything sinister, I just have this general sense that, despite her domesticated home life, she has the potential to become feral if she’s backed into a corner. If I’m right, I’m curious to see how that side of her personality will come into play in protecting her husband’s political career.

I honestly have no idea where this story is going, and that excites me because it’s rare for a drama so steeped in politics to gain my interest. I think the appeal largely lies in the rich characters and the added trolley problem metaphor, which has me re-examining how I perceive the political decision-making process. I mean, I’m still of the opinion that all politicians are bloodsucking lizards, but I’m curious to see if the (mostly) genuine Joong-do will also become a lizard as he continues to make decisions for the “greater good” at the expense of others.

 
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