Maestra – Strings of Truth: Episodes 7-8

by mistyisles

Time is running out for our heroine to continue the work she loves so much — and the people around her certainly aren’t helping. Instead, they keep putting problems in her path and making it difficult for her to draw out the very best from her orchestra. Can she push through, or has she finally met her match?

 
EPISODES 7-8

Following her mother’s passing (for the record, Se-eum did call the nurses despite her mother’s protests), Se-eum refuses to take time off work. She’s more determined than ever to make the most of every second she has left. She’s also harsher than usual with her criticism of the most recent orchestra performance. In fact, she’s so dissatisfied that she announces a blind evaluation of the entire orchestra. Normally, these are used for recruiting new musicians, but this one is for weeding out the weak links among the existing members.

The evaluation confirms what Se-eum already suspected: two of the wind instrumentalists have terrible breath support that’s ruining their sound. The breathing issues turn out to be from illicit drug use, and the ex-musicians are arrested that very night at a club. They accuse Se-eum of being their supplier, and to everyone’s shock, detectives find a bag of pills in her office and arrest her, too.

Remember Bong-ju, the ex-oboist who leaked the initial photos of Pil and Ah-jin’s affair, and whose assemblyman father locked him in his room because Jung-jae told on him? He’s since escaped confinement and learned that Jung-jae bought the orchestra “because of Se-eum.” As revenge, he’s set this whole staged drug bust up.

Se-eum, of course, doesn’t know this, but she keeps her cool even though the detective clearly has it out for her. She bides her time — and even gets some work in between interrogations — waiting for the requisite holding time to run out. Meanwhile, Jung-jae pulls every string he can to try and get her released, from sending her a lawyer she never asked for all the way to pressuring police officials with the threat of escalating his complaint higher up the chain of command. He finally succeeds in finding a witness who can swear to Bong-ju’s manipulation, and Se-eum is released. This time, when Jung-jae offers her a ride home, she accepts.

Less than two days have passed, but already people are demanding Se-eum’s termination. Se-eum being, well, Se-eum, wants to hold rehearsal anyway, but the generally affable and perpetually stressed CEO JEON SANG-DO (Park Ho-san) finally puts his foot down. Musicians are quitting on them as it is; it’s time to take a break and wait for the dust to settle.

False accusations and arrests Se-eum can handle. But indefinitely canceled rehearsals when she already fears she’s running out of time is just too much. She drinks herself into a stupor, and when Bong-ju calls and asks to meet, she gets right up, never mind that she can barely stand. The next thing she knows, it’s morning, she’s in her office instead of at home, and detectives are calling to tell her that Bong-ju is dead and she was the last person he contacted. Oh, and her hand is covered in blood.

Considering that she was thinking Very Dark Thoughts about Bong-ju last night and that Remington’s often causes violent outbursts, Se-eum freaks out. The blood turns out to be hers, from a cut on her hand that could be explained by the broken glass on her living room table. And her blackout and memory loss could likewise be explained by all the alcohol. But just in case, she visits her mother’s doctor (who, by the way, REPORTS THE VISIT to Jung-jae) and finally decides to get a blood test. She won’t know the results for a few weeks, but at least she’s taken that first step.

Then Se-eum personally meets with each orchestra member who quit and persuades them to come back. Not only does she know exactly what each person needs to hear to change their mind, but she also requests a pay cut for herself so she can offer the musicians a raise. Finally, she pitches an idea for a new documentary about Han River Orchestra, with Pil as the interview host. She plans to announce their divorce just before the documentary’s release, knowing the resulting scandal will be too juicy for the public to resist.

Jung-jae, being his meddling self, tries to dissuade her. He can’t understand why this specific orchestra is so important for her to salvage, so she spells it out: Han River Orchestra might be her last orchestra. The documentary filming continues, and so do rehearsals for the next concert. Ticket sales, on the other hand, are at an all-time low.

Pil can’t quite figure out what Se-eum is planning, but he knows she’s planning something. So, taking a cue from her description of the conductor’s podium as a battlefield, he wages a bit of psychological warfare right before she walks out on stage. Turns out, he saw her the night Bong-ju died and can tell she doesn’t remember. He taunts that this could be her last concert, unsettling her enough that she has to actively brush it aside while conducting. Then, mid-concert, she hallucinates Bong-ju and her mother standing among the orchestra, and collapses to the floor.

Even though a murder weapon was found with Bong-ju’s fingerprints and a woman’s blood on it, I’m neither convinced nor even suspicious that Se-eum killed him. But I’ll tell you who is pinging my radar and inching closer to Pil and Jung-jae levels of obsession: Ru-na. She was the first person to realize Bong-ju had planted the drugs in Se-eum’s office, and she’s also one of the few people who know about Pil’s affair. And while she was very sweet about taking Se-eum home after Bong-ju’s funeral and nursing Se-eum through a fever all night, there was also something unsettling about the way Ru-na panicked when she couldn’t find Se-eum the next morning. And the way she said her goal was to work alongside Se-eum for a very long time (and only belatedly added that she meant working together in the *orchestra*).

I’d like to think Ru-na simply idolizes Se-eum to a normal and healthy degree, but let’s face it: Se-eum seems to naturally attract possessive people who think they know what’s best for her life and career, no matter what she may say or think. I shudder to think what Pil may do if she can’t divorce him before he get to use her Remington’s diagnosis to his advantage.

And speaking of bad news, I was afraid that the show might take the route of having Jung-jae wear down Se-eum’s defenses instead of changing his ways, and unfortunately that does seem to be the direction we’re heading. I notice that whenever Jung-jae is pushing to get his way, it’s always framed as him being worried about her and underscored with gentle music, whereas Pil’s manipulative moments are portrayed as ominous (as they should be). But Jung-jae is still trying to control her decisions and dismiss her opinions, and no amount of “good intentions” can change that. “Less overtly threatening than Pil” isn’t a very high bar, and I hope Se-eum isn’t forced (by writer or circumstance) to settle for it.

 
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