Sigh, I wish this show was as clever as it wanted to be. I wish it had actually been a thriller. I wish it was just better. Alas, I got my bean and the show ended. It is what it is, I guess. The end, like the show.

I finally managed to catch up in time for the finale.
It was a ride.
I think it would have been a much better watch if it had been 10-12 episodes as many plot points lost their "oomph" as they became repetitive and at the end I just didn't care.
The last two episodes really dragged.
PHS looks great in suit but Kang Tae-oh wears them better :)

Did Tae Yoon get severely injured or killed? Why was he pushed in the first place?

I was just skimming through the recaps but I must ask... does Eun-nam ever apologize even once, for what she did to him?

It kind of fizzled out for me after II Do's death. The 'urgency' seems to have been lost and I struggled to understand the reasonings behind almost all of DJ's decisions. Oh well looks like season 2 will need to happen and I will be there still when it does.

I needed Dong-joo to be an antihero. Almost every character in this show has tried to kill him (Yeom Jang-sun, Heo Il-do, Cha Deok-hee, Chairman Cha) or killed his family (Yeom Jang-sun, Heo Il-do, Cha Deok-hee, Sun-woo), and yet he forgave two of them (his biological father and a dementia patient) and let one go. When Dong-joo took out the gun on the yacht, I expected him to kill himself, and if he dies, so does Jang-sun as no one would know the vault code (unless eating a burger a day doesn't give Jang-sun a heart attack first).

Chairman Cha's favoritism of Sun-woo is so patriarchal that I can't feel sorry for him being taken advantage of by mother and son. He told Dong-joo a grandson's back is incomparable to your own son's back as if Tae-yoon doesn't exist. And Deok-hee murdered her own husband and an innocent child, so I can't feel sorry for her losing her son. She told Tae-yoon that she lives for him as if Eun-nam doesn't exist.

My favorite part of the finale was the return of Hee-chul! He's using his prosecutor skills to defend innocent clients like Won-bae, and I loved the good-natured ribbing between him and Dong-joo. I thought Tae-yoon was going to jump off the roof too when he looked at the ground. I also thought Jang-sun was going to punch the taxi driver in front of the kindergarteners. Hong Hwa-yeon is an excellent actress, but Eun-nam's voice in repeating his name "Dong-joo-ah" in every sentence put me to sleep.

Overall, Buried Hearts was very watchable but poorly written. Thanks for recapping the whole drama, @mistyisles!

The writing completely changed and ruined it with the finale with just one detail - Taeyoon's conclusion. I hope the writer knows that logically it doesn't make sense. His mother isn't the only person who will be hurt by his disaster, we have Eun-nam and Dong-joo will be hurt likewise and in almost similar heights, unless the writer wants to conclude with them both becoming unfeeling. I understand the need for his mother getting the worst reality check ever for the deaths she has caused, but this one just didn't make sense. There is Taeyoon walking away from the family for good. That'll hurt her too and the reactions from Eun-nam and Dong-joo will be acceptable to me. They'll accept. But we have Eun-nam painting and Dong-joo nowhere to be found.

This is the senseless reward for bad deeds of the year. Jang-sun got a more realistic one so why did the writer's braincells go on holiday for Taeyoon omma's? They didn't want to think anymore perhaps?
What a disappointing conclusion to ruin what was a good streak of a finale.

In my book, I'm rewriting that episode ending with Dong-joo returning abruptly thanks to news of Taeyoon's accident (He survives). As a result, he pushes Sun-woo and his mother out for good and gives Taeyoon omma the privilege of doing to Sun-woo what he did to her son. Alas! He didn't have the nerve to survive.

Taeyoon omma thinking all is now well is priming Taeyoon's future by preparing the way for him to succeed Daesan, except he shocks her by leaving the family business for good and instead gives his voting rights to his sister Eun-nam and she becomes chairwoman of Daesan. His mother's sacrifice(The first time she actually directly soaks her hand in blood) ended up for nothing.
Oh! Chairman Cha died immediately he learnt that Sun-woo died, by his daughter's hands.

Eun-nam and Dong-joo finally tie the knot.

This show was a big mess. At the beginning, it was entertaining but after the middle...

Tha fact Dong-Ju survived till the end was a miracle and he remembered everything!

Il-do was the most interesting character, way more than Yeom Jang-Sun who was just a stereotype of villain. So after his death, the story wasn't interesting anymore.

Dong-Ju really messed up with both Tae-Yoon and Seon-Wu. Both didn't ask for anything. But how Seon-Wu turned as psychopath as soon as he set foot in the family home was really weird. Dong-ju manipulated this young men like the other adults manipulated his life.

The romance was bad because Eun-Nam never assumed what she did and it brought her nothing. She hurt people and she didn't deserve any forgiveness.

Park Hyun-shik and Lee Hae-Young were really the interesting characters and actors.

@mistyisles, your recap did a better job at explaining what the intent of the last episode and show was than the episode/show itself! I understood what the show was trying to convey reading your recap more than I did watching the last episode.

I wish they had done a better job on the last episode. All that great acting and work on the first 15 epi down the drained with the rushed out last epi.

Thank you for the recap @mistyisles! I think the writer was testing the waters for S2 by killing Taeyoon. As this was a huge hit maybe they would go for S2.

Don't worry, folks, even DJ himself cannot overcome his bulletproof plot armor! I guess...

They should've end it either at that gloomy scene of DJ in Chairman's seat, making him live with the weight of that "victory", or allow him to ride into sunset on his yacht (with all the money he still has in his pretty head) in a more uplifting fashion. The actual route drama took was meh: everything fell into place (poor Taeyun, but it was expected), but still felt anticlimactic. Agree that Ildo's early exit made the show suffer - Yeom was never a villain good enough to fill in his shoes. I did have a morbid laugh at EN going "good job!" for DJ allegedly killing Yeom to his obvious horror, and while I personally agree with that stance, her believing it was probably the last straw for this long rotting "romance". Great touch to let Yeom get the taste of his upcoming jailhouse rock in Daesan's vault too.

However you spin the ending, our undying cat guy is finally free from that trash family - one way or another. Congrats to PHS and rest of the cast with a solid hit! Pls no Season2 tho, one was more than enough. Second kdrama bean for me as well.

Thanks for the wonderful recap. I enjoyed the show and the fact that the post credit ending made so many people upset probably means the writer succeeded in what she wanted to say- greed and revenge is an endless cycle with no winners. Karma is definitely harsh especially when it doesn’t always come directly on you but lands on the one you treasure the most.

As for the revenge SDJ created just for Yeom, it was poetic and powerful in its uniqueness for just him. Yeom’s treasure island was the power he held over others to make them do what he wanted at whim and also the hoarded money, prestige, and refined life he treasured like his gorgeously restored house, drinking only the finest and most expensive of wines, and only eating the freshest and highest quality traditional home cooked meals from his subservient and obedient wife. He lusted after all the money that Daesan had in the vault and in the end he was surrounded by it but it was useless to him. As an astute user on another site noted, it was likely a unique torture to be forced to eat the same fast food hamburger as the only meal every day for more than a year and drink only dirty tap water. To be forced to sleep near the area where you take care of business and not be able to groom yourself properly. By the time Yeom was broken enough to be willing to give it all up for his freedom to die in his own home, there was no more home to go back to or family waiting for him or people scared enough of his power to try to rescue him or keep him out of real jail. All his wealth and real estate holdings he had to give up were sold and redistributed to those he had unfairly abused and used. I think this was the best possible revenge which while harsh and probably crosses a line SDJ didn’t want/like to cross, it at least doesn’t sell his soul to the devil forever.

Even if this is the end for this show and there is no season 2 I think SDJ and the writer showed us that it is unlikely Sunwoo and his mom will be able to take over Daesan completely as the 2 new evils. When Yeom leaked the chairman’s dementia and the stocks were plummeting, SDJ and the chairman talked about how they knew it was a strategy for Yeom and his cronies to try to gobble up shares to take a significant ownership portion as a block. To combat that, SDJ arranged instead for a private selling (note I am not in business and this may be inaccurate as I am working with only partially translated info) to people like the hacker, Madame pi, and subsidiary owners who are SDJ friendly. So in addition to having them support his CEO nomination I think he arranged it so now the chairman’s shares may not be a supermajority. In addition during SDJ’s time as CEO when he merged the 2 companies and with YEN’s help was able to get Volt IPO which would therefore increase the scrutiny and oversight of the company. Will some kind of karma come back on them? Probably just like the dementia which has completely consumed the chairman so he...