Hide: Episodes 9-10

by quirkycase

We’re in the final stage now as everyone readies for the inevitable showdown between our two formidable women. With the stakes higher than ever, our heroine prepares to end this fight once and for all. But her adversary has a few tricks up her sleeve that might just be more than our heroine can handle.

 
EPISODES 9-10

In the penultimate week, we finally unearth Yeon-joo’s mysterious motivations for this whole elaborate and violent game. And it turns out that underneath it all she’s, like so many villains before her, just a hurt child lashing out. Her hatred of Moon-young indeed stems from the relationship between their fathers and its tragic ending.

To make sense of it all, we rewind to the night Moon-young’s father left her. His friend HA JAE-PIL came to visit, but it wasn’t a happy occasion. It seems the money issues impacted him too, and they got into a fight. The man stumbled and fell off a Cliff of Doom. Rather than call for help, Moon-young’s father watched the man die and then planted his own wallet in the dead man’s pocket. And here’s where we learn Moon-young’s secret: she’s complicit in her father’s identity theft.

That night, he instructed Moon-young to lead the police to the cliff in two days and identify the dead body as his. The teenaged Moon-young, though reluctant, does what he says and lies that the body is her father’s. As luck would have it, the dead man was Yeon-joo’s father. She spent decades looking for him, but because his body was misidentified, she only discovered his death five years ago when she located Moon-young’s father masquerading as Jae-pil.

Moon-young comes clean to her sidekicks about her father and the deception she participated in all those years ago. Only Jin-woo, who has become quite the Moon-young cheerleader, is supportive of her decision to act as her father’s lawyer. She knows this trial is likely a trap, but she’s ready to put this all to bed. She and her father both feel guilty, and Moon-young decides it’s time for them to atone.

Once again, she goes for a dramatic court reveal. On day one of the trial, she announces that Jae-pil pleads guilty to the murder of Chairman Choi. She then discloses her father’s true identity, stunning Yeon-joo and the entire courtroom by baldly stating both her and her father’s role in what happened to the real Jae-pil. She promises to take responsibility and cooperate with any investigation.

There’s just one teensy problem here: as you may recall, Moon-young’s father did not murder Chairman Choi. Moon-young’s reasoning for having her father plead guilty is that Yeon-joo set the trial up as a trap anyway with evidence that’s difficult to refute – they might as well take the loss and view this as punishment. I’m with Shin-hwa that this feels like a cop out. By fixating on righting past wrongs, Moon-young is covering up the recent murder committed by Yeon-joo and Chairman Choi’s son. It feels like Moon-young is just exhausted at this point and hoping that Yeon-joo will see this as an acceptable ending.

Of course, Yeon-joo is not satisfied with this conclusion. Like any good villain, she wants Moon-young to suffer the same torment she did and that means leaving her alone and bereft. Her next move is to bribe Sung-jae’s selfish father to fabricate evidence that either Moon-young or Sung-jae were involved in corruption; they need a reason to suspend that phony redevelopment project, and someone needs to take the fall. Unsurprisingly, he chooses to spare his evil son and throw Moon-young under the bus.

Sung-jae is truly the product of his self-serving, victim-blaming parents. The minute he finds out about Moon-young’s father, he makes the whole situation about him. How dare she lie to him for all those years? He puts it on par with his own deception – you know, feigning suicide and having an affair – and acts like she has no moral leg to stand on now. His victim complex is truly astounding.

Determined to destroy Moon-young’s life, Yeon-joo teams up with Sung-jae and mommy dearest to help them fight for custody of Bom. They drum up a bogus abuse charge, accusing Moon-young of neglect and deeming her an unfit mother. The family’s money talks, and they get the police to put Bom in their custody during the investigation. Bom already told her father she didn’t want to live with him, but he’d rather traumatize her by forcibly separating her from her mother than lose to Moon-young.

Moon-young is naturally beside herself and comes closer to breaking than at any point so far. Thankfully, she’s got friends on her side to keep her from faltering. Jin-woo takes point, encouraging her to think like a lawyer and fight this legally. He reminds her that while she can’t contact Bom, he can. So he becomes the go-between, passing messages between Bom and Moon-young.

Bom is smart enough to know to keep her contact with her mom secret, and when Sung-jae sends her with his mom to the airport – their whole plan has been to use the neglect investigation to separate Bom so they can take her and run – she texts Jin-woo to ask if her mom is coming too. Moon-young and Jin-woo are too late to stop them from flying out, but Bom sends a photo of a school brochure which clues them into where her grandmother has taken her.

Rather than go after Bom immediately, Moon-young realizes her best bet is to put an end to this while Bom is out of harm’s way. She and her team decide they’re going to finish this within a week, and then Moon-young will go get her daughter.

With no time to lose, they get to work. They release a press article outing Moon-young’s father-in-law’s shady dealings and get his political nomination cancelled. Shin-hwa and Officer Baek stop Sung-jae from leaving the country by indicting him for kidnapping Tae-soo (murder didn’t stick, so they’re trying a new tactic). They infiltrate Yeon-joo’s camp by luring her right-hand minion to their side. We end the week as Moon-young and Chairman Choi’s son meet, looking like they’ve got a deal in the works.

This week was all about demystifying Yeon-joo and getting all the pieces in place for the final battle. You’d think at this point everyone would realize that the more you mess with Moon-young, the more dangerous she is. Taking Bom from her means she has nothing left to lose, and she will fight tooth and nail to get her daughter back. Not only that, but the very loose alliances on the baddies’ side have frayed at the seams. Moon-young, on the other hand, has a solid team that is ready to put everything on the line to win this. Even though I expect Moon-young to win in the end, Yeon-joo is wily and ruthless enough to make it a challenge and inflict some serious damage. With all this buildup, let’s hope the showdown delivers.

 
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