LTNS: Episodes 5-6 (Final)

by Dramaddictally

What does it mean to have an affair? LTNS goes out with a bang, toning down the crudity and piling on a little thing called Real Feelings. I expected to hate wherever the story was headed in the final leg — instead, I bawled my eyes out and then vowed to watch anything this creative team puts together in the future.

 
EPISODES 5-6

Who would have guessed this drama was about to get so emotional? Given that the comedy bits weren’t really that funny, I didn’t predict that the heartfelt moments would spear me in the chest. I was already a fan of the leads but they knocked it out of the park in these episodes. They made me feel all the hate when they fight — and all the love despite how difficult it’s been for them.

We ended last week with a phone call. Samuel was in the hospital, dialing up a woman named JUNG MIN-SOO (Ok Ja-yeon), who it was clear he had some sort of prior relationship with. As we come to learn this week, she’s Samuel’s “cleaning buddy.” (What now?) Yeah, she’s the married woman who lives next door and, over the past year, they spent quite a few days shining windows and de-molding bathrooms together.

Sound harmless? It’s not. They’ve spent a considerable amount of time in each other’s homes without ever mentioning the other’s existence to their spouses. We see them in flashback as they shelve books and stretch sheets over beds — they’re eyeing each other with lust, comfortable when they accidentally touch, and just a little too happy to be cleaning the freakin’ house.

But there’s a limit. One day when Min-soo’s husband comes home unexpectedly — and she and Samuel are cleaning in the bedroom — Samuel hides in a corner until Min-soo can feed her husband a sleeping pill. After he escapes without getting caught, Samuel calls the whole thing off. Min-soo wants to know why (“All we did was clean”). But Samuel says that lying and hiding isn’t right, and the two painfully part.

So, that brings us up to speed for when Jin goes to check on Samuel at the hospital and he’s not there — because he’s downstairs meeting Min-soo. Jin calls him, he tells an obvious lie, and she begins to question her trust in him. We learn that Jin has a history of cheating exes and she never suspected Samuel of cheating because they made a deal to be honest with each other when they started dating. If he never said his feelings for her changed, she trusted that they hadn’t.

Meanwhile, Jin finds a threatening message painted on their apartment door while Samuel is in the hospital, and so, she has a surveillance camera installed. This comes in handy later when Samuel says he’s going to work but instead goes home to meet Min-soo. Jin monitors the camera from her cell phone and sees him open the door to this woman she doesn’t know.

After that, Jin treats Samuel and Min-soo the same way she treated all the other cheaters they staked out and investigated. She rents a car and begins tailing his taxi and, one night, she films him going into Min-soo’s apartment. She then throws gas all over the floor outside the apartment and is ready to set it aflame — but (phew) she comes to her senses. Instead, she decides to blackmail Min-soo, using the same threatening letter they sent to all their other targets.

From this moment on, the drama is (in my opinion) pretty brilliant. We get a ton of information all at once and it’s interspersed with a lot of action. First, there’s a recap of the problems between Jin and Samuel but this time with more detail. We see them dating, starting to like each other, and thinking they’re a perfect match because they’re opposites (he’s cautious, she’s outgoing). They’re attracted to these qualities in each other.

But only three years into their marriage, they’re already not having sex. And it’s because Samuel can’t perform. At first, Jin is understanding and assumes it’s a side effect of his new meds. But by a year later, she’s had enough. She dresses up in lingerie and tries to put in some effort and he’s still not interested. By now, she’s hurt: “You don’t see me as a woman anymore, do you?” He says it’s not her, it’s his fault, but she gets really upset and leaves the apartment.

All of this information is crucial for the big blowup that’s about to happen when Jin blackmails Min-soo. At first, it all goes according to Jin’s plan. Min-soo leaves a backpack full of cash at the pickup spot, and then Jin brings it home and begins to tell Samuel about the new case she’s just cleaned up on. As she tells him the details about the couple, he realizes she’s talking about him and Min-soo.

He flips out, calls her crazy (yuck), and begins taking Min-soo’s side over Jin’s. He can’t believe that Min-soo actually paid because they didn’t do anything to warrant blackmail. Jin says she has proof of him entering her apartment at night and he counters that that’s not proof of anything. As things get more heated and they’re yelling back and forth, he asks what right she has to do this to him. He saw her — he saw everything — that night two years ago when they fought about not having sex and she left the apartment.

Holy punch in the chest. Yep, she slept with her ex that night when she left. She was feeling hurt and rejected by her husband, ended up calling her scumbag cheating ex, and they had a one-time fling. The thing is, there were no feelings involved and it only happened once.

And this is where the writing really shines because their argument becomes partially about what it means to have an affair. Samuel never hooked up with Min-soo, not even close, but he has feelings for her. He doesn’t consider that cheating and thinks he did nothing wrong. On Jin’s side, she knows she cheated — and she kneels and apologizes for it — but she also thinks that a one-time physical thing isn’t any worse than a lengthy emotional connection with someone else.

All the excellent dialogue that I’ve just boiled down to a few lines of exposition is encompassed in a long fight scene that’s worth the watch. They’re furious — yelling, screaming, throwing things, rolling around the living room in a physical fight — and it’s raining. The inside of their apartment is flooding from an indoor downpour, with the water rising up around them as the tension and tempers rise. More than just symbolic, there’s a sense of magical realism with the actors kicking and splashing the water at each other like it’s not weird at all.

They keep needling each other because they know where it hurts. When Samuel admits that he has feelings for Min-soo, he adds that he needed someone to talk to and Jin doesn’t listen. Jin throws an insult about being at work while he was moping around at home after his business failed. He continues to blame her for his actions. She keeps insulting him. And it’s very clear that being opposites (the reason they liked each other) is also what tore them apart.

The argument ends when Samuel takes the cash to return to Min-soo and Jin runs after him. He escapes in his car, she chases him down, and finally she nabs the backpack and tosses the money all over the road, where it blows around and random people pick it up — so he has no way to return it.

Then, seven months pass and our couple is now divorced. Samuel is working at his family’s strawberry farm and sleeping in his car. Jin is living in a singles apartment like the one she rented before she was married. And they’re selling their joint apartment. When it finally sells, they meet to sign the contract and end up going to lunch because Jin has something to say.

They haven’t seen each other in months and she’s having a hard time. She knows she needs to let him go for real, and to do that, she apologizes. She takes responsibility for her part by saying she thinks he was happy to just be by her side, but she wanted more from him — maybe she ruined him. She thanks him for the six years they lived together and says she’s going to live a good life from now on. So, he has to do her a favor and do the same. Everyone is sobbing (me the most).

We end with Jin at home alone on Christmas and Samuel unexpectedly at her door with strawberries. She invites him in, where he starts cleaning her place and asking if she has a man yet. (She doesn’t.) They think about old times, sit side by side on the floor, and accidentally touch hands. Then he kisses her and the next thing you know they’re all over each other. On the bed, she pauses, “We’re divorced.” He responds, “But we can still have sex.” And on they go.

I liked it. The ending is a cute punchline to the whole show. And these last two episodes had some really powerful writing, acting, and directing. Although, the sincerity we witnessed this week makes me wonder if we needed so much of the stuff that happened in the middle. For me, the humor didn’t always land. The sex was neither enjoyably sexy nor funny. And the violence just seemed gratuitous. Did we need all of that to get us to this satisfying ending? I’m not sure.

But from beginning to end, the central relationship was well observed, and the story carried out what it set up. As hinted early on, our leads ended up rekindling their romance — it just didn’t happen within their marriage. Both characters are flesh and blood, and their core personalities never shifted. They like each other, they have chemistry, but they’re not a good match in marriage. And that’s the other thing I like about the ending: there’s no moralizing. They seem to have forgiven each other. Stuff happens. It’s okay to let it go and move on. I’m not sure it means they’re getting back together, but there’s no reason to let it ruin their fun (now that they’re actually having some).

 
RELATED POSTS

• Premiere Watch: LTNS
• Undercover missions with Esom and Ahn Jae-hong in LTNS
• Esom and Ahn Jae-hong become blackmailing spies in LTNS
• News bites: December 27, 2023
• News bites: December 14, 2023
• News bites: March 22, 2023
• [K-Movie Night] Microhabitat
• Esom
• Ahn Jae-hong