Strong Girl Nam-soon: Episodes 11-12

by mistyisles

Tragedy strikes close to home for our heroes, pushing them to act before it’s too late to save the people they care about. Meanwhile, our villain wrestles between his old allegiances and his own (equally violent) agenda.

 
EPISODES 11-12

While Nam-soon skirts around Shi-oh’s proposal that they date, our heroes are hit with two emergencies at once. Dong-seok, sadly, is dead. But he fought hard to the bitter end, and used his final days to compile notes and evidence about the drug’s effect for Hee-shik to find. Nam-in, on the other hand, is still alive, but without the antidote, it’s only a matter of time before the drug kills him, too.

Geum-joo stays by Nam-in’s side so Nam-soon and Bong-go can track down TAE-RI (Han Da-hee), the woman who gave Nam-in the “diet pills.” With some help from Nam-soon’s formerly homeless friend, they finally succeed. The only problem is that Hee-shik, grief-stricken, has since stormed into Heritage Club and arrested one of Shi-oh’s minions, putting the whole group on high alert. Tae-ri is now under strict orders not speak to anyone.

Bong-go frets that it won’t matter anyway — after all, Geum-joo thinks she’s a superhero, so she’ll prioritize the greater good over paying off the bad guys, even to save her own son. But he’s wrong. When Geum-joo finally succeeds in contacting Tae-ri, she gives her a suitcase full of cash in exchange for the antidote, no questions asked. The antidote works instantly, and Geum-joo sincerely apologizes to both Nam-in and Bong-go. From now on, she’ll encourage Nam-in to eat whatever he wants and won’t mock his appearance.

Meanwhile, Shi-oh’s superiors in the Russian mafia group Pavel berate him for losing the coat that Nam-soon stole. By interrogating (read: torturing) the truck driver with a golf club, he discovers Hee-shik’s part in the theft, which tells him that Geum-joo was behind everything. And since it’s clear Geum-joo survived the Truck of Doom, Shi-oh takes to swearing at every inconvenience that she won’t be so lucky next time.

His one consolation is Nam-soon’s presence (which he doesn’t get nearly enough of for his liking during Nam-in’s brush with death). He’s not very good at love or friendship, he tells her, but she makes him want to learn. And after so long under Pavel’s thumb, he’s sick of doing as he’s told. With Nam-soon at his side, he feels confident enough to “rebel against his parents,” as he puts it. But considering he outright tells Nam-soon he wants her entire family dead (without knowing she’s one of them, of course), her sympathy for him can only go so far.

Also on Shi-oh’s hitlist is the minion Hee-shik arrested at Heritage Club. He gets taken care of by a fake lawyer, which means Hee-shik has to find a new informant — someone who won’t get killed so quickly. Since Tae-ri is already operating against orders, it’s easy enough for him to arrest her and then send her back into Heritage Club as a spy.

Since Shi-oh controls everyone who’s in a position to do something about Dong-seok’s posthumous testimony, Hee-shik delivers the drug-filled coat to Geum-joo so she can run a special broadcast about it on her new TV network. (And by delivers I mean he wears the gigantic thing himself and waddles into her office like a huge, floppy penguin, and it’s my favorite thing in the entire two episodes.)

But this isn’t Geum-joo’s first broadcast of this nature, and Shi-oh isn’t about to just let it happen. Though Geum-joo has placed security details around the entire family, her faithful secretary-turned-news-anchor JUNG NA-YOUNG (Oh Jung-yeon) gets picked up by a fake taxi driver who sprays her with knockout gas. So much for the special broadcast?

If you’ve noticed that I haven’t mentioned anything about Joong-gan yet, it’s because she only featured in a couple of insignificant scenes to 1) reiterate that she and Jun-hee are going to fight for their love no matter what the rest of the family thinks (and this while Nam-in was potentially dying, no less) and 2) attempt to set her son up with his doctor.

On a slightly less irrelevant note, Geum-joo receives a visit from Bread Song, who’s now convinced she’s stalking him because she likes him. He’s not interested, but ever so generously offers to give her a chance (she could not be more disgusted by the thought). This scene also has Geum-joo choking Bread’s assistant for following her (she uses enough force to at least temporarily damage his vocal chords, to no perceivable consequences), and hints at a potential future relationship between his assistant and hers. But I say it’s slightly relevant, because it seems to confirm that Bread has no actual connection to Shi-oh.

In the meantime, Nam-soon has been staying with Hee-shik in effort to keep Shi-oh from discovering her connection with Geum-joo. Between Dong-seok’s death, Nam-in’s crisis, and the ongoing investigations, these two haven’t been able to spend much time together over the past several days. And when Nam-soon makes kimchi stew for Hee-shik, she has to leave it for him and his fellow detectives to eat after she’s left for work (the others grimace at her creative flavoring choices, but Hee-shik seems to genuinely enjoy it).

Finally, Nam-soon comes home one night to find Hee-shik napping on the couch, mirroring last week when their roles were reversed. She carries him to the bed so he’ll be more comfortable, and as she turns away, he grabs her arm. “Don’t go,” he says, and pulls her in for a kiss.

On the one hand, I feel like there was some progress this week in the areas of Geum-joo apologizing to Bong-go and Nam-in, Hee-shik plunging Heritage Club into chaos, Shi-oh embracing his rebellious side and spilling more secrets to Nam-soon, and of course Nam-soon and Hee-shik’s relationship. But on the other hand, I’m finding it increasingly hard to care about most of these characters, and Dong-seok’s death — and Hee-shik’s heartbreak over it — cast these episodes in a more depressing light than I was prepared for.

Nam-soon and Hee-shik are so sweet together that I really wanted them to have the chance to support and console each other during the Dong-seok/Nam-in crisis. Instead, they only had time for a few phone conversations until near the end, and Nam-soon had to keep reassuring Shi-oh while letting him tell her to her face that her mother’s death will fix all his problems.

I am, however, curious to see whether her conversation with Shi-oh about friendship will have a positive or negative result once all cards are on the table, and what happened to that childhood friend Shi-oh says he parted with because they made different choices in life. And whether certain marginally significant characters will turn out to have actual plot relevance when all’s said and done.

 
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