Strong Girl Nam-soon: Episodes 9-10

by mistyisles

After weeks of brooding ominously, our shadowy villain finally gives us a glimpse of his troubled past. He hasn’t let down his guard completely (he’s too smart for that), but he is letting our ever-sunny heroine worm her way past some of his defenses — much to a certain police officer’s apprehension.

 
EPISODES 9-10

Despite nearly getting caught by a security guard, Nam-soon successfully steals Shi-oh’s computer. Unfortunately, Shi-oh is too smart to save copies of sensitive files. In fact, he doesn’t store much of anything on his computer, aside from a photo of two young boys and an audio file of his favorite violin music.

While Nam-soon and Hee-shik go back to the drawing board, we finally learn something about Shi-oh’s dark past. He was raised in a group of child soldiers, who were forced to fight each other for meals and to execute traitors with their own hands. Shi-oh appears to have had one friend in the group (hence the childhood photo), though we aren’t told yet what happened to him.

When Shi-oh discovers his computer has been stolen, it doesn’t take him long to connect the dots between the gravity-defying thief, Nam-soon (whom he knows by her Mongolian name Tsetseg), and Geum-joo. So he offers Hwa-ja protection from jail if she’ll confirm his suspicions that Tsetseg is Kang Nam-soon.

But Hwa-ja has recently received a better offer from Geum-joo: if Hwa-ja repents and atones for her wrongdoings, Geum-joo will take her back in as a second daughter. Family is what Hwa-ja really wants, so she lies to Shi-oh that Tsetseg has no connection to Geum-joo. She blames the stabbing on feeling insulted because Tsetseg spoke to her in banmal, and channels enough malice into her glare to convince Shi-oh for now.

Meanwhile, Hee-shik and Geum-joo waltz arm-in-arm into Heritage Club, pretending Hee-shik is an important business connection so they can plant recording devices in the VIP conference rooms. Shi-oh welcomes them personally… with Nam-soon in tow. Though momentarily stunned, the three do their best to pretend this is their first meeting. Then Geum-joo interrogates Shi-oh about his Russian mafia past, getting so aggressive that Nam-soon has to intervene.

Later, in private, she scolds her mother for pushing Shi-oh’s buttons. She’s seen enough of him to know he’s dangerous when provoked, and provoked is exactly how he feels right now. So provoked, in fact, that he takes out his anger on shelves of merchandise in his own warehouse. And then orders a hit on Geum-joo.

…Which is exactly what Geum-joo wanted. She intentionally provoked him, hoping he’d make a mistake. So when his Truck of Doom comes for her, she stages a horrific accident and only lets immediate family (Hee-shik included) know that she’s perfectly fine. Geum-joo does, however, let Bread Song visit her decoy’s room, confident he’s too dumb to catch on it’s not actually her under all the bandages. Turns out, he can recognize any woman he meets by her nostrils alone. (Yep.) But he’s too baffled by her in general to expose her secret, at least for now.

In the background of Geum-joo faking her own near-death, Joong-gan has been dealing with the problem of her newly returned husband — and not very well, either. When she picks him up from the airport, he declares happily that he’s ready to stay by her side for the rest of their lives. In response, she shoves him across the room, fracturing his tailbone so he has to have emergency surgery on his spine.

She asserts that he deserves it for abandoning the family, and since she still has her superstrength, she’s certain her actions were justified. But it turns out he only left to look for Nam-soon, and has been living with Tibetan monks ever since. Will Joong-gan belatedly face consequences for hospitalizing him before he even had a chance to explain himself? It remains to be seen. But her boyfriend, barista SEO JUN-HEE (Jung Bo-seok) vows never to give up on her, no matter what.

As one might expect, staying close to Shi-oh has gotten harder for Nam-soon since he tried to have her mother murdered. Still, she assures him she’s on his side — enough to kill for him, even, if necessary — and accepts his invitation to dinner.

Afterwards, she has him take her to Hee-shik’s place so he won’t know where she actually lives. On the way, their conversation turns to matters of figurative light and darkness. Nam-soon muses that there’s a difference between “fake light” and “real light,” and when Shi-oh asks which kind of light he is, she says carefully that he’s somewhere in between — but he could become “real light” if he tries. That seems to give him pause.

Nam-soon is napping on the couch when Hee-shik gets home. As he leans over to inspect a crumb at the corner of her mouth, she jolts upright, straight into an accidental kiss. They try to shake it off, but one teasing comment leads to another, and finally, when Nam-soon asks for a taste of his ramyun, Hee-shik goes in for another quick peck on the lips — this one intentional.

Through relentless flattery of a coworker, Nam-soon finally procures details about the next drug shipment from Doogo’s warehouse. When the day arrives, Nam-soon hides in the truck. Then Hee-shik distracts the driver while his partner and Nam-soon smuggle one box’s contents — a winter coat — out of the truck. Back at the police station, Hee-shik tears the coat apart. And sure enough, its “feather” stuffing disintegrates into drug powder when placed in water.

Elsewhere, Hee-shik’s boss, Dong-seok, has spiraled and collapsed due to the drugs’ effects. And so has Nam-in, because guess what was in that mysterious diet pill? (Perhaps this will serve as a wake-up call for Geum-joo that she needs to take her son more seriously.) And when Nam-soon returns from intercepting the shipment, she has tons of missed calls from Shi-oh. She goes straight to his office, but he only has one question for her: “Will you go out with me?”

Normally, I love Kim Hae-sook, and I liked the concept of three generations of Strong Women working together to fight crime. But this show makes me want to take all of Joong-gan’s screen time and give it to Nam-soon, Hee-shik, and Geum-joo working as undercover investigators. That scene in Heritage Club was the highlight of the week for me, because I’ve thought from the beginning that Hee-shik and Geum-joo make terrific partners (plus the future mother-/son-in-law angle is unusual and fun), and adding an undercover Nam-soon and Shi-oh to the mix made it even better.

Speaking of, Nam-soon is walking a dangerous line in some of her interactions with Shi-oh, so I’m curious if she’ll “agree” to date him for the sake of getting more intel. And what he’ll do when he inevitably finds out the truth about her. I think he is genuinely growing fond of her, and if there’s anyone who can appeal to the humanity of a supervillain with a traumatic backstory, it’s probably Nam-soon. But she’ll have to be careful, otherwise she might end up being the next person to make a mistake and tip her hand.

 
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