Trolley: Episodes 9-10

by missvictrix

The plot thickens as we deal with big themes like betrayal, sacrifice, and trust. With a big decision made — and a lot of foreshadowing around impending betrayals both large and small — just how much trust is between our couple, and are we wrong to count on it?

 
EPISODES 9-10 WEECAP

We open up with the big reveal from last week, and see Hye-joo utterly distraught. The death of Ji-hoon was tragic enough, but now that she’s learned it was a suicide, her heart breaks even more. When she passes out and winds up in the hospital, Joong-do runs to her rescue and they’re forced to confront the truth.

I hate seeing them grieving yet again, but I’m glad there was a simple explanation to everything. Joong-do lied about the lost cellphone and kept it hidden simply because he didn’t want Hye-joo to find out that it was suicide (I say “simply” because I was worried there was something more nefarious going on).

The photos on Ji-hoon’s old phone confirm that he was dating Soo-bin (well, enough to convince me), but now that they finally have proof that she wasn’t lying about their relationship, she’s gone. Soo-bin disappears from the house. Hye-joo is more anxious than ever to connect with her, but it’s not hard to see that everyone else is a bit relieved.

Woo-jae says they’ll be able to spin the situation well even if Soo-bin returns to blackmail them later. Joong-do — whose strong antipathy now makes sense — is more than glad she’s gone. He tell Hye-joo that he blames Soo-bin for their son’s suicide, and then in the same breath says that it’s nothing like her own case, where she’s definitely not responsible. This scene troubled me, and this recurring theme in the drama also troubles me.

Soo-bin might be out of their house and our main plot, but we now follow her more closely and learn a few important things: her mother cruelly abandoned her as a child (and now works at Innisfree lol); her mother was the one that gave her that lip balm (*my heart*); and as Woo-jae once suspected, she was indeed some kind of escort. Or, at the very least, involved with a shady group that offers call girls to politicians. Lovely.

It’s a small world in this drama, though, and the only thing closer than all the interwoven characters is the interwovenness of their stories — and that only continues this week. The prostitution ring (although I don’t really know if we can call it that yet) is also connected to our story in another way besides Soo-bin: Perilla Grandma’s granddaughter SOL is revealed to have been a part of it as well.

This, of course, is a huge bombshell, and we hear it from the med student’s grieving parents. They’re ashamed their son was involved with a sex worker and they don’t want it to get out — they’re weary of the public’s rancor and I can’t blame them. When news of this gets to the press anyway, it turns the tide of the story again, and Joong-do loses not only his hero status but the leverage that particular case was going to give his amendment.

There are two important consequences of this. The first is that Woo-jae releases the footage he “secretly” took a few weeks back when the med student’s father was beating on Joong-do. The oh-so-timely leak of this video gives Joong-do some points back with the public — and he gets so much heartfelt sympathy and affection from his wife and daughter. It’s quite touching to see how much they adore him. But this is Trolley, and nothing is as simple as face value. Indeed, we see that Joong-do knew full well that Woo-jae took that footage, and they planned to keep it if they needed it.

It’s not exactly a heinous act, but it is another question mark hovering over Joong-do’s character. We’ve seen how manipulative Woo-jae is to work every situation to their benefit, but now we are seeing just how much Joong-do has been privy to this as well. How much is one’s integrity at stake when you start playing politics… even if it’s for the greater good? This is another ethical question our drama loves to tease out.

The second consequence of the granddaughter’s story losing its “worthiness” is that with it goes Joong-do’s hope of his amendment gaining traction. Even his team recognizes that they need another story if they are going to get their bill the attention it deserves. *Cue the trolley*

Joong-do eventually approaches Hye-joo, gently asking for permission to tell her story to the public first. They both recognize that it’s for the greater good, and the timing is right, since ASSEMBLYMAN KANG (related to Seung-hee’s family) now knows about Hye-joo and is more than ready to blackmail Joong-do.

Our heroine makes the incredibly brave decision to give her husband the okay to go public with her story. As when he first turned to politics, he makes her a solemn promise to always protect her, and agrees to her one condition: that she doesn’t have to appear in public. This is what makes our ending scene this week so very sad: Hye-joo is heading out the door one morning and there’s a crowd of reporters accosting her at her doorstep with cameras and questions about the “murder” she was involved in. And poor Hye-joo, it looks like PTSD all over again. My heart is breaking for this woman.

Sadly, that’s not the only hardship she will have to face, because we are also getting a pretty strong setup for the impending betrayal of Yeo-jin. Sigh. Yeo-jin’s own story comes out this week, and we learn that her [insert adjective] husband once murdered their child and tried to kill her too in some sort of forced family suicide. This was the case that got Yeo-jin acquainted with Joong-do, Woo-jae, and Hye-joo — and somewhat ironically, it also led to Joong-do getting into politics.

As we see Yeo-jin suffering unthinkable pain when her husband turns up at the columbarium after serving a tiny seven-year sentence, we see the two women finding comfort and strength in each other. I love the support they provide each other, but I’ve always got one eye opened, as the drama is not being subtle about the fact that Yeo-jin’s hiding a huge betrayal. We haven’t gotten any closer to learning what that is, but between the thread of adultery (in Yoon-seo’s plot line) and the fact that Soo-bin despises Yeo-jin for the unthinkable betrayal she’s hiding from Hye-joo… yeah, I’m worried.

There’s also Seung-hee to worry about. I haven’t had that much to say about her because I find it a little hard to get into her head — outside of sympathizing for the way her mother treats her – but she is definitely a wild card. Especially since “running errands” in her personal dictionary means plotting to ruin someone’s life.

The drama leads us to believe that Seung-hee was responsible for the leak to the press about Sol being a sex worker, only to prove us wrong later. But Seung-hee is definitely reaching the end of her rope, and so is her husband. She refuses his offer to run away to Australia together (girl, go!), and this causes Ki-young to turn against his mother-in-law and Assemblyman Kang. He gives incriminating evidence to Joong-do, who’s more than ready to use it.

With everyone getting a little more desperate — and Hye-joo’s past revealed to the press — it feels like it’s going to be open season. But more than the betrayals, manipulations, and questions of trust that are an integral part of our plot, the drama is also asking some poignant questions about sacrifice. How right is it for one or two families to suffer in the name of the greater good? Will Hye-joo taking the metaphorical hit from the trolley be a worthy deed and actually lead to law-making that better protects victims? Or will she just be a pawn in a political game that she never wanted to be a part of?

 
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