Perfect Family: Episodes 3-4

by starrygazer

This week’s episodes start with a not-so-shocking twist, and I am totally here for it. But like our heroine, we are left with more questions than answers. In the wake of last week’s tragedy, questions pile up left and right, and our poor female lead does not know which direction to turn in or whom to trust.

 
EPISODES 3-4

We pick up where we left off last week with Soo-yeon running over to see Sun-hee who is holed up at home. Sun-hee’s dad tries to stop Soo-yeon from entering claiming Sun-hee is sick but Soo-yeon insists. When Soo-yeon enters Sun-hee’s room the latter is in a catatonic state. Soo-yeon starts getting irate again, and asking why Sun-hee hasn’t turned herself in when that is what they had both agreed upon. Sun-hee snaps out of it when Soo-yeon asks if Sun-hee is trying to blame her for this fire too.

Soo-yeon turns to her usual tactic of emotionally blackmailing Sun-hee when she takes her wig off and grabs Sun-hee by the hair. Of course we get the rhetoric we’ve heard before about how Soo-yeon’s life is in the gutter because of Sun-hee, and how Sun-hee has a perfect family. In Soo-yeon’s mind this is the way Sun-hee can pay her back for the scars — by saying it was Sun-hee who killed Kyung-ho and getting Soo-yeon off the hook. Shell-shocked Sun-hee says she can’t because of her mum, and this irritates Soo-yeon even more. Soo-yeon tells Sun-hee that her famous lawyer father will get her off and her mother may be disappointed but so what! Soo-yeon nearly had a mum too but it’s all Sun-hee’s fault. Mean.

Soo-yeon continues to snarl at Sun-hee claiming that Sun-hee took everything from her but unfortunately for Soo-yeon, Dad is waiting on the other side of Sun-hee’s bedroom door (creepy smile in place) when she says she’s going to report Sun-hee herself and storms out. Dad offers Soo-yeon a lift as she’s leaving and she must have felt the creepy vibes like I did because she hightailed it out of there after politely declining.

On her way to the police station Soo-yeon remembers what happened the night Kyung-ho died and it fills in a blank for us. It looks like Soo-yeon was thinking about confessing to him when she came into his living room and saw his Sun-hee lovefest. Then Soo-yeon’s crazy switch in her head went off, and she started getting irate. Soo-yeon took out the bespoke keyring telling Kyung-ho how Sun-hee gave it to her because she’s not interested in him, and doesn’t care about his feelings. Ouch! Kyung-ho had said Sun-hee isn’t like that — and that Soo-yeon either found it or stole it — and he tried to take the keyring back. Soo-yeon finally boiled over and started destroying Kyuong-ho’s carefully laid out room, and in the midst of trying to stop her, her wig flew off.

Crawling along the floor towards her wig, Soo-yeon told Kyung-ho not to look at her and stay away, and that’s when she saw a kitchen knife on the bench. In the midst of her pity party, Soo-yeon acted rashly again and picked the knife up attempting to take her own life. Kyung-ho rushed at her and tried to take the knife away when Sun-hee entered — cut scene. Now the audience knows why they were wrestling with the knife, and it makes it all the more tragic what happened to Kyung-ho and his family.

Back in the present, Soo-yeon is being followed by a black car on her way to the police station, the car eventually pulls over and she gets in. (So it’s someone she knows.) Next thing we know, Soo-yeon is unconscious and wakes up in the car which seems to be parked in a wasteland, and her eyes grow wide as we see a hammer come up and it strikes her across the head. (Even having a feeling it was coming I was still surprised.) The driver is fiddling around in the boot when Soo-yeon comes around and she quietly opens the door and sneaks off leaving everything behind. Is Soo-yeon alive? Is she dead? I wish we knew! This is compounded by the fact that Sun-hee keeps calling her and her phone is off — and I’m getting that weird sinking feeling in my stomach again.

Meanwhile, the grief is too much for Sun-hee to bear at Kyung-ho’s funeral, and Dad comes to take her home. On the ride home, Dad tells Sun-hee it makes sense she won’t get over Kyung-ho’s death quickly as they were close – losing someone close to you is like carrying a wound for the rest of your life even if it fades over time. Sun-hee innocently asks Dad if he has ever lost a friend and Dad’s reply is weird. “Friend? I suppose you could call him that.” It’s surprising there was no creepy smile to go with this.

Dad continues to say that the important thing is your living family by your side — things won’t go back to normal straight away, but they will get back to the perfect past. Mum and Dad will help her if Sun-hee will follow along. Argh, I may need a hot water bottle to counter the amount of chills I’m getting watching this.

Still calling Soo-yeon continuously, Sun-hee isn’t having any luck getting through so asks Hyun-woo where Soo-yeon lives (since the boys took her home after the bullying incident last week). When Sun-hee arrives, she meets the older girl Soo-yeon was living with. This older girl is telling Sun-hee that Soo-yeon must be in trouble again since the police were looking for her and Soo-yeon hasn’t been home for a few days. This is bad. When Sun-hee returns home, she is thinking about which path Soo-yeon would have walked when a man (Yoon Sang-hyun) appears from the shadows. This man says he’s a relative of her father and hasn’t seen Sun-hee since she was little. He pointedly asks her if the room at the front of the house is hers. (That’s a little weird.) The man then apologizes and before he leaves he quietly tells Sun-hee to watch out for her mum and dad…

Barely making it through her front door, Sun-hee is ambushed by Mum and asked if she met a man outside (Dad had been watching from the window…). Mum asks Sun-hee what he said, and Sun-he replies that he said he was a relative. Mum confirms Sun-hee saw him a lot as a child and asks if Sun-hee remembers him — she says no and scurries off to her room. The trust issues building up for Sun-hee are really unsettling her; she doesn’t know who to trust, and right now neither do we.

Next up, the detectives are sniffing around Sun-hee now and they go to question her. Sun-hee is in the car with her dad when they arrive home and see the detectives outside. Dad tells her to wait in the car as he gets out to find out what they want. Sun-hee is so on edge that she can’t even make eye contact with the detective and happens to look anywhere but in his direction. This leads Sun-hee to a discovery she probably wished she hadn’t made: she finds the bespoke keyring down the side of the passenger seat. Wondering why it’s there, she looks up to catch a creepy smile off Dad and palms the keyring. Omo! We all thought it, but that seems to be corroborating evidence that Dad’s a psycho if you ask me!

Mum and Dad are like bookends on either side of Sun-hee when she is being questioned by the police; they probably think this is supportive, but it feels a little controlling to me — it made me uneasy. The detectives ask a couple of standard questions, and the senior detective cuts the questioning short, his gut is telling him Sun-hee is hiding something and they won’t get answers from her right now. When the police leave, Mum asks Sun-hee why she didn’t tell them Soo-yeon was at their house yesterday. All proud, Dad claims Sun-hee is her father’s daughter: the police didn’t ask about yesterday so she wasn’t lying. Placing a chilling and deliberate hand on Sun-hee’s shoulder, Dad tells her there’s nothing to be afraid of and he’s on her side. Chills – chills – chills – up and down my spine, and judging by Sun-hee’s maneuver to release herself from Dad’s grip, they’re going down her spine too.

With little pieces of this ominous puzzle plaguing Sun-hee’s mind, she wants to enter the room the strange “relative” pointed out. Through a flashback, we learn as a child she was told never to enter that room, but her curiosity is definitely getting the better of her now. Sun-hee nearly gets caught trying to get into the room when her parents are home, so she decides to change tact. The next day at school she asks Hyun-woo for help; she knows her parents aren’t home and they lie to get out of school early. Hyun-woo has no idea what’s going on but he wants to help, and as Sun-hee ransacks the house looking for the key to that room, Hyun-woo keeps a lookout.

Sun-hee can’t find the right key so she decides to go up a ladder at the front of the house and open a window into the room. Hyun-woo alerts her that Dad is back and she tells him to take the ladder and distract him while she keeps trying to get in through the window. In a rare but greatly needed moment of hilarity, all Hyun-woo can think of to distract Dad is busting a move — I scared myself at how loud I laughed, because I wasn’t expecting it, and the perplexed look on Dad’s face made it all the more funny. Hyun-woo leaves — bemused at himself — and Sun-hee makes it into the mystery room without getting caught. This secret room is a perfectly kept boy’s room with a perfect family photo of her mum, dad, granny, and a teenage boy. Sun-hee has no clue who this is but manages to get out with the photo, and Mum and Dad are only slightly suspicious of her.

While Mum is preparing dinner, Sun-hee asks her some questions, but this only leaves Sun-hee with no answers and even more questions. She asks about the “relative” and why they adopted her when they could have had a younger child or a boy… Sun-hee doesn’t understand because the elders in the family never accepted her. Why did Mum and Dad go against them? Mum is a little rattled and raises her voice to Sun-hee, which prompts Sun-hee to apologize and leave. Everything in Sun-hee’s life is not what it seems, and this poor girl is grasping at anything to find out what’s really going on.

Listening outside of Mum and Dad’s room, Sun-hee hears an unsettling conversation. Mum says to Dad that she thinks Sun-hee is asking because she knows something, and Dad replies that they need to hide it all till the bitter end, and that they may have to advance their plans. Advance their plans?! So there is a bigger picture going on in the background, and Sun-hee is most likely the biggest pawn. But what is it…?

Sun-hee’s resolve has been strengthened, and she decides to go and see Granny (from the picture). Hyun-woo tags along and this scene does not end well. Granny (who clearly has money) and is cold and dismissive of Sun-hee, calling her an “unlucky thing,” and telling Sun-hee not to call her grandmother. When Sun-hee produces the picture, the dear granny loses it and throws a huge vase at Sun-hee telling her to get out. (Why the anger, Granny?) In a very deliberately staged moment, we see Sun-hee, Hyun-woo, and Granny in the scene perfectly still. Making their positioning more impactful, Sun-hee is on the floor with a cut, Granny is lording over her, and Hyun-woo is the spectator. It’s beautifully shot, and speaks volumes about where Sun-hee’s “place” is.

After that very intense scene, we are rewarded with a sweet one. Hyun-woo looks after Sun-hee and tells her he wants to help her. Hyun-woo wants to know if Sun-hee’s not telling him what’s going on because she doesn’t think he can help. He suspects Soo-yeon has a part to play because everything changed when she turned up. Sun-hee says it’s not because she doesn’t think he can help, it’s just that she doesn’t really know what’s going on yet either. Hyun-woo gives her a piggyback ride and tells her that in an indigenous language friend means “someone who carries your sorrow on his back.” This reiterates what Hyun-woo had told her earlier about wanting to be there for her and listening to anything she has to say — on Kyung-ho’s behalf too. It’s very sweet and I’m probably being oversensitive, but his constant asking Sun-hee to trust him is starting to feel a little forced… Or maybe that’s just me?

Back at home, Sun-hee is writing in her diary that Hyun-woo consoled her today and she feels like she can tell him everything. In a flashback of Sun-hee’s memory, we see her getting her first diary as a birthday gift from Mum and Dad when she was a child, and they tell her that she needs to be honest in it… Little Sun-hee was being picked on in school and wrote about it in her diary, and of course her parents read her diary habitually. And with this set of parents, that’s a very dangerous thing. Because shortly afterwards it was rumored in school that this bully and her dad died… This makes me worry for Hyun-woo. Even though I don’t know quite how he fits in this little puzzle yet I don’t wish him to be eradicated.

That weekend, Sun-hee tells her parents she’s leaving to do homework with Hyun-woo, and surprise surprise her parents check her computer’s search history (all about death certificates and family registry questions) and her diary. Meanwhile, Sun-hee is telling Hyun-woo how Kyung-ho really died. Hyun-woo’s response is to report it — which makes Sun-hee shut down. Sun-hee tells him he won’t be able to see her anymore if he reports it, and walks away. Hyun-woo only has half of the story so I really hope he doesn’t do anything stupid; he’s potentially already in danger.

Our closing scene is another cliffhanger. Sun-hee is sitting in class and gets a series of texts, supposedly from Soo-yeon. Soo-yeon is saying she’s outside and she’s scared, and asks if Sun-hee can come out. Sun-hee goes racing out of her class and past the school gates, looking up and down the street just as her eyes widen and the screen goes dark. Really, Show?! That’s where we are leaving it this week? Since we have to wait a week to see who sent those texts, I’ll just say I sincerely hope it is Soo-yeon and she’s getting a chance at a redemption arc. In the meantime, I’ll just be waiting patiently twiddling my thumbs for the next episodes.

 
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