Strong Girl Nam-soon: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

by mistyisles

We’re down to the wire, which means it’s time for secrets to come out, sides to be taken, lines to be crossed, and our heroine to face her nemesis once and for all. Our strong girl has come a long way since finding her way back to her family, but she’s going to need some extra strength from them if she’s going to save the day and ride off into the sunset.

 
EPISODES 15-16

In the wake of Shi-oh’s rampage, Nam-soon’s family holds Hwa-ja’s funeral. Though Bong-go admits that Geum-joo was right to give Hwa-ja another chance, Geum-joo can only lament that if she’d let Hwa-ja go to prison, Hwa-ja might still be alive now. But one thing is sure: Geum-joo and Nam-soon are determined to make Shi-oh pay. Nam-soon calls Shi-oh to tell him as much, coldly confirming that everything about “Tsetseg” was a lie.

Hee-shik and his team, for their part, wiretap Shi-oh’s phone and learn that the scientist who developed the super drug antidote is hiding nearby. Shi-oh is using the scientist as a bargaining chip against Pavel, but thanks to Nam-soon’s superspeed, the detectives nab him before Pavel agents arrive. When the scientist refuses to cooperate, Nam-soon ransacks Shi-oh’s office in search of the antidote formula.

That’s when Shi-oh calls: He’s intercepted her Mongolian mother on the way to the airport. If Nam-soon wants to see her alive again, she’d better come to the Doogo warehouse. Alone. Hee-shik begs to come with her, but Nam-soon won’t take that risk.

When she arrives, Shi-oh elaborates. Nam-soon’s mother is unknowingly carrying a bomb onto the airplane (I have questions), but Nam-soon can save her. All she has to do is take the super drug and resist drinking from the provided water bottle for one hour. That water bottle, you see, is sitting on the bomb’s trigger button. Enraged but cornered, Nam-soon agrees. Only after she’s downed the drug does Shi-oh reveal that such a large dose will easily kill her within the hour. Nam-soon falls to the floor in agony, and Shi-oh padlocks her in and leaves.

Elsewhere, Geum-joo also collapses. Just as they can feel each other’s power surges, Geum-joo can feel the life draining from Nam-soon. Shi-oh helpfully tells her that Nam-soon needs water to survive, but since Geum-joo doesn’t know where Nam-soon is, she tries drinking water herself (from a hose, while flopping around like a fish on land, which is… a sight to behold) in hopes that it will carry over their mystical link and give Nam-soon strength.

Enter Joong-gan for her one truly significant contribution to the plot. When she hears about Nam-soon’s plight, she realizes the only thing that can save her granddaughter is to deplete her own strength and essentially channel it to Nam-soon. She tells Jun-hee this would very well kill her, but that it’s enough for her that they loved each other. Then she lifts a gigantic Buddha statue into the air. Just as she predicted, it drains her completely, but gives Nam-soon the necessary strength to break out of the warehouse.

Shi-oh, in the meantime, has taken his own (much smaller) dose of the drug. This empowers him to toss Nam-soon around like a rag doll. Then he picks up a metal pipe and throws it like a javelin. Nam-soon catches it just in time to avoid being skewered, and throws it back, partially (but non-fatally) skewering him. Hee-shik rushes in, gun blazing, and Shi-oh distracts them just long enough to escape.

From there, it’s a desperate race to get the antidote in time. Thanks to a tip from Tae-ri and some help from the warehouse supervisor, Hee-shik finds the antidote and revives Nam-soon. He promptly faints from the stress. When he wakes, he’s in Nam-soon’s hospital bed with her, and she proudly tells him he’s saved them all — Geum-joo and Joong-gan have also fully recovered.

Back in his hideout, Shi-oh finally comes face-to-face with his old friend Bin Bin… who’s been sent by Pavel to kill him. Shi-oh says bitterly that he’s now been abandoned three times: by his parents, by the woman he trusted, and now by his oldest friend. Friendship wins out (sort of), and Bin Bin leaves his gun with Shi-oh. When the police and Nam-soon arrive, Shi-oh uses that gun to shoot himself, bringing his own story to a swift, tragic end.

All that’s left to do now is round up and arrest Shi-oh’s accomplices and wring the antidote out of the begrudging scientist. But wait! you may be thinking. What ever happened to Bread Song? Well, after Geum-joo catches him colluding with one of Shi-oh’s money-laundering partners, he up and vanishes.

Later, as the investigations run their course, Geum-joo’s Opulentia contact delivers shocking news. Bread Song is better known among Pavel circles as “Nozhe,” their most ruthless killer. He’s not all that financially literate, though, so Pavel sent him undercover to learn the economic ropes. Currently, he’s stowing away on a boat to Italy and slaughtering all the other passengers. Geum-joo vows to catch him someday, along with the rest of Pavel. Presumably, that’s the mission she has in mind when she seeks out the superhumanly strong son of an old acquaintance.

Joong-gan’s husband finally agrees to let her go, and Jun-hee helps connect her with a job rooting out scam artists who target the elderly. Nam-soon and Hee-shik get engaged (he proposes in Mongolian — a recurring gesture on his part that I adore). And when his team are awarded for their work on busting the drug ring, Nam-soon is recruited to join the force alongside them. She vows to make the world a place where the bad guys never win.

Overall, I enjoyed these final episodes more than a lot of the previous ones. But they also made me kind of sad, because there were some seeds of greatness here that could have made for a compelling story if they’d been developed well.

For example, imagine if Joong-gan’s husband hadn’t been in the story at all and she and Jun-hee had faced plot-relevant conflict that actually made us root for them. Then I’d have felt something when she said goodbye to him, and cared about whether she’d survive. Or, alternatively, she could have lost her powers because of how she treated her husband, only to earn them back in that last moment of self-sacrifice.

And then we have Bin Bin and Nozhe, who I really expected would turn out to be the same person. Whether or not that should have been the case, I do wish Bin Bin had been one of the characters we followed throughout the show, and that there had been more buildup to that final confrontation where he chose not to kill Shi-oh. So many conflicts in this show seemed to be resolved almost as quickly as they were introduced, killing both the tension and the emotional impact. Perhaps the intent was to keep things light(ish), but mostly it just made them dissatisfying.

But I’ll close with some things I did like, in spite of everything else. I loved Nam-soon and Hee-shik both together and individually, and the little investigative team that welcomed Nam-soon with open arms. I appreciate that Geum-joo and Bong-go’s reconciliation was left relatively open, and that the show paired Secretary Jung with that detective instead of Geum-dong. And, last-minute and abrupt as it was, I’m glad Bread Song did at least have some relevance to the story, because this way I feel like I got something out of sitting through all of his scenes. Basically what I’m trying to say is, it could have been much worse?

 
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