And we were right! Ha! In. Your. Face. {That is IF you disagreed with our last review. If you didn't disagree then I am sending you a great big High Five!!}
Hang Ah's plan is to burst into tears telling Jae Ha that she thought she'd get to live together with him happily. And that she just wants peace & for Jae Ha to give her peace which Jae Ha is agreeing with her & THEN she asks him, calming down, if he remembers what kind of man she said she wanted when they were doing WOC? And he flashes back {can I just say? I love the flashback!}
Which of course Jae Ha does remember, during flashback. Now you know, & I know, he was just about to announce abdication because he is terrified & tired & wants Hang Ah & his mom back safe & sound, not to mention; he didn't want to be King to begin with. Her saying this is, basically the same thing as saying, she won't respect him & would never want to be with him, if he just backs down & caves in to Bong Gu's demands. If it was me I might be thinking right about now, "Well crap. I was really looking forward to that island retirement." But Jae Ha is not in a kidding mood. Hang Ah, super smart chick that she is, gives him clues as to where Bong Gu's hideout is located. She reminds him of globe that he was spinning when they were talking about Bong Gu & the present he sent to him. That is where they are hiding. Bong Gu who is listening to her conversation w/ Jae Ha is starting to catch on to her hints & clues & tells the men surrounding Hang Ah to lock & load.
But our Hang Ah is not afraid of these guys & she answers Jae Ha's question. There is nothing here & no one that can hurt me. They are just pretending. At this point she screams out to Jae Ha, "If you accept their demand I will bite my tongue & die!" & Bong Gu disconnects them. But our Hang Ah is one strong North Korean soldier & reminds him of this. And explains that she knows with America & China watching him that she knows he cannot just kill her or the Queen Mother. Bong Gu acknowledges this but he reminds her, "we can mess you up in not so visible ways."
At this point Jae Ha knows where they are...
And then Bong Gu signals his men...
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| But Hang Ah can take these guys...no problem. And does... |
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| And makes sure they understand that she is NOT going to be their toy. Not if she has anything to say about it. |
She tells them she'll behave when they take her back to the Queen Mother. So they take her back to the Queen Mother.
Once they get her there the Queen Mother tells Hang Ah they should escape. Like Hang Ah said in the last episode they "should try everything". So a plan is formulated. And Hang Ah & the Queen mother escape...but not without some intense gun play first...
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| She was awesome as she shot the crap out of this bad guy. Hang Ah is seriously my hero! I think this chick is awesome!! |
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| Sorry for the blur our Hang Ah, kick butt woman that she is, moves exceptionally fast & it's hard to get good action shots of her. In this scene she gets shot in the left shoulder/upper arm by the guy on the floor behind her. |
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| Crap!! Is what I was yelling at the screen here, after which I added, keep going Hang Ah. |
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| Hiding from Bon Bon & the other bad guys |
Back home Jae Ha is coordinating a rescue team to get his mom & his fiance back. They can't go into China fully loaded w/ military personnel as China is refusing to cooperate. But they can send up to 5 men, on tourist visas, who do they send? The WOC guys, of course! If you're gonna send rescuers, they had better be the best of the best!
After Hang Ah & the Queen Mother make it through Bong Gu's maze of tunnels, they escape via a cave to a pool of water. Hang Ah, you can tell is worried about how the Queen Mother will be able to negotiate the swimming hole. She's already run ragged from the escape as is. So she tells the Queen Mother to stay there, that she'll go find some rope. The Queen Mother turns on Hang Ah & basically says after everything she's been through she refuses to just sit by & depend on her daughter in law to do it all by herself. That she is just as strong as Hang Ah.
I was so proud of the Queen Mother for being so strong. She is obviously out of her element but she doesn't let that stop her. That is the true strength of a woman. Refusing to be what everyone sees you as & instead proving you are far better than they think you are.
After Hang Ah & the Queen Mother make it through Bong Gu's maze of tunnels, they escape via a cave to a pool of water. Hang Ah, you can tell is worried about how the Queen Mother will be able to negotiate the swimming hole. She's already run ragged from the escape as is. So she tells the Queen Mother to stay there, that she'll go find some rope. The Queen Mother turns on Hang Ah & basically says after everything she's been through she refuses to just sit by & depend on her daughter in law to do it all by herself. That she is just as strong as Hang Ah.
I was so proud of the Queen Mother for being so strong. She is obviously out of her element but she doesn't let that stop her. That is the true strength of a woman. Refusing to be what everyone sees you as & instead proving you are far better than they think you are.
But Bon Bon is close on their heels & they NEED to keep moving. And somewhere out there the WOC team is looking for them. They just need to get to the WOC team. And they get so close but Hang Ah realizes that they can't make it to them together. So she tells the Queen Mother to just start running & not to look back. And then Hang Ah is alone & leading Bon Bon & her dogs in another direction giving the Queen Mother the chance to to the WOC team & safety.
The plan works. The Queen Mother makes it to safety & the WOC team. However Hang Ah is left out alone, shot, bleeding & in China, while bad guys are searching for her. Then to complicate matters even more, we see her slide down an embankment covered in leaves & honestly that is the last we see her till the very end of the episode.
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| Our last shot of Hang Ah till the episode comes to a close. |
In the next scene we see Jae Ha conferring with the Prime Minister who it seems thinks it will be impossible to get Hang Ah out of China. That the Chinese are not going to help. Weasel & slime bag politician that he is, he's refusing to put his neck on the line. And in one of my most favorite scenes Jae Ha shows him who the King really is....
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| The weight of the his world is resting on his shoulders. You can see the weight pushing him down but he is Jae Ha, our wonderful leader & his woman is out there waiting for him, so you know he won't give up. |
We next arrive in China, where Chinese soldiers are stopping the citizens & showing them Hang Ah's picture, asking if they've seen her. After one of the citizens says no & walks away, he stops on the other side of a tree & using a cell phone calls someone & identifies himself as "Morning Star no. 52". He explains to the other party on the phone that the Chinese government is indeed looking for Hang Ah & that they are calling her a North Korean Defector.
We find out in a phone call to Jae Ha from Hang Ah's dad that it was he on the other end of that phone call & he is freaking out! Rightly so. He says, "They are trying to catch my daughter first & are planning to use her for the North and South Korean Relationship." He then goes on to talk about the defector camp & says he's told them "I don't care about South Korea just show me my daughter." But they are still refusing. He's in a complete panic & Jae Ha does not know what he can do, who he can go to, to get her back. No one is cooperating. At this point it's all wheeling & dealing & politics. And because Kim Bong Gu holds the money & connections, he has the power.
Then during a meeting w/ Jae Ha, Eun Shi Kyeong recommends Jae Ha contact his father. That he would be able to give the best suggestions & information as to how to get Bong Gu & China to give up Hang Ah. But Jae Ha, for obvious reasons, is still not ready to forgive Eun Kyu Tae yet. When Eun Shi Kyeong asks, "What did my father do?" Jae Ha dismisses him immediately. As Eun Shi Kyeong is leaving he flashes back to what his father was saying to him & it clicks...he can go to the document repository & check out his father's resignation/confession.
As he was checking out the documents I kept thinking to myself, "no Eun Shi Kyeong, some things are better left unknown". The idiom, 'ignorance is bliss' is a popular idiom for a reason. But he has to know, he has to see. His father & then Bong Gu put the doubts in there themselves. He HAS to know what is the truth.
Fellow addiKts I have the screen shots of his expression as he is reading the document but I just can't bring myself to use them. It's so painful watching sweet, loyal, true, dependable, honorable Eun Shi Kyeong's father fall off the metaphorical pedestal his son placed him upon long ago. I can't bring myself to do it. This episode was truly so hard to watch when it came to Eun Shi Kyeong. He went through so much emotionally, & Cho Jeong Seok does such an absolutely phenomenal job portraying Eun Shi Kyeong in misery. When he meets with his father a short while later to confront him about what he read I cried heart broken tears along with him.
Then Eun Shi Kyeong goes 'off radar' & no one can find him for a while, even though Jae Ha, who discovered he'd read the file & knew everything has everyone searching for him. Finally the call comes in, he's been found. And Jae Ha arrives at the airport just in time to stop Eun Shi Kyeong from completing the plan he made up. What is that plan? Well as Kim Bong Gu made sure in the last episode to tell Shi Kyeong how much he admired him he decided to go get captured & let Bong Gu think he's turned Shi Kyeong against Jae Ha. Then Shi Kyeong will discover where the hideout is & help bring down Bong Gu from the inside. But Jae Ha refuses his offer to go undercover inside Bong Gu's world. That if he, Jae Ha, whose own fiance is missing somewhere in Chinese territory, doesn't get to freak out & bring down the government of South Korea, let alone the Royal Family, that neither does Shi Kyeong.
Then another WOC/Royal Guard comes in, at Jae Ha's push of a button, then Jae Ha tells the guard to take Shi Kyeong into custody and watch him like a hawk so he doesn't do anything foolish. But the guard interrupts, there has been a call from the palace...it's about Princess Jae Shin.
Jae Ha & Shi Kyeong arrive at the palace to discover that Jae Shin, who has found out about the Head Secretary too, from Jae Ha, has had enough of being afraid of whatever memory it is she is hiding. She wants to undergo hypnosis & bring out the memory. Of course the doctor & her family feel it's way too much for her to go through. They're afraid it will make everything so much worse for Jae Shin, but our strong independent Jae Shin, is not backing down.
The session begins & Jae Shin quickly goes under. And follows her doctors soft soothing voice back to the memory. Where we find out the real horror of THAT night. She was captured, that much we knew. But we none of us really knew why she jumped off that cliff, rather than go the way Bon Bon wanted. I think this memory helps explain another facet to the reason she jumped.
It turns out that when they captured her, Bong Gu was on the phone & telling her what he wanted her to do. He wanted her to grab the coals & place them in the fireplace herself. That if she didn't cooperate they'd blow a hole in her head. I can't even imagine the terror, even though I saw her face, I can't even imagine the trauma & terror poor Jae Shin had to face knowing that she'd either die brutally & bloody or she'd have to let go of the coals they forcibly made her hold, which would in turn kill her brother & sister in law. After a lot of struggling & fighting & trying to break free eventually a sobbing, terrified & broken Jae Shin weakly & slowly let go of the coals in her fist. She wakes up knowing she is technically the one who killed her eldest brother. That is the memory she buried so deeply into her subconscious. And I think it explains why she may have attempted suicide. Maybe she didn't want to go their way but I think that she also wanted to go to begin with. I don't know that I could have lived with that kind of guilt myself.
We also discover the reason she is so afraid whenever she hears, THAT, song. Because Bong Gu placed the phone right in front of the speaker playing it as she was forced to kill her brother.
Shi Kyeong goes into her room after she has been sedated...they don't tell us but I assumed Jae Ha filled him in on this development, because while Shi Kyeong is with Jae Shin, Jae Ha is with his mother telling her what they discovered.
Jae Shin had to be restrained & drugged & once again while she rests we see a distraught Shi Kyeong by her side, lovingly stroking her face & holding her restrained hand.
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| There she is. I told you she doesn't appear until the last frames of the episode. |
Each week, as we edge ever closer to the end of this show, it gets more & more exciting & terrifying & I am not sure how much more of this I can take. This show better have one heck of a "Happily Ever Freaking After SWAK" ending or so help me I will storm the writer's/director's/actor's homes & have them re-enact the ending MY way!! Do you hear me people!!! I am dead serious!!
After all this?!?! You betcha sweet aunt Bippy, I mean business darlings!! SWAK Ending!!!
And now I need to calm down, think rationally & calmly & pass the time over to Dongsaeng for her 2 cents.
I friggin' need some chocolate! Then I get to watch Rooftop Prince 18 & my review for that.
Sarang,
Dongsaeng's 2 Cents:
I have a teeny, tiny confession to make. As I was watching this episode and was about, oh, 15 minutes in to it, I received a text from Unnie who had just finished it. She made it clear in no uncertain terms that I had just embarked on yet another K2H emotional roller coaster. I begged her to tell me what happens, which I never do, but she didn't give in to my pleas. Stubborn Unnie. So, I did the next best thing. Or worst thing, depending on your perspective. Yes, I cheated. I fast forwarded to the last 10 minutes or so. I just had to know. I couldn't handle the strain and tension anymore - the stress and heartache. So I cheated. There. At least now I've come clean and my conscience is clear. I'd do it again. This was the 17th intense episode and as much as I love this drama, I need it to come to a conclusion quickly. And as Unnie said, it better have the best ending ever after what I've been through. There must be lots of happy, lots of love, and yes, one amazing SWAK ending.As far as the episode itself, I don't have anything really to add. I fell even more in love with Shi Kyeong. He is just something fabulous. Jae Ha too. And Hang Ah. And the Queen Mother. And Jae Shin. Basically the entire royal family really stepped up and rose to the occasion in their various challenges of the week. One thing I noticed though was how, at the end of the episode when Jae Shin was undergoing her hypnosis, everyone, well, at the least Jae Ha and one of the servants, seemed to be aware of Shi Kyeong's emotional involvement in the welfare of Jae Shin. As far as I can recall, their relationship and feelings for each other have never been revealed, yet it was very obvious that the king knew there was more than just a professional relationship between his sister and guard. Hmm. Wonder what gave it away? Was Shi Kyeong just that obvious? I hope so. That just was very romantic to me - not just seeing Shi Kyeong's agony at Jae Shin's suffering, but the fact that everyone could see his feelings clearly - no more hiding behind his stoic facade. Oh Shi Kyeong - you sweet, sweet, tortured soul. Your world and those you love most have come crashing in around you and you are so brave in wanting to do what you can to save Hang Ah and fix the problem and save your monarchy and country. You are, quite simply, the man. And that's why, Eun Shi Kyeong, I heart you so much dude. Stay strong my friend. I have a feeling it will all work out for you in the end. ;)
And now, time for 18! Let's get this show on the road and get some closure! Only 3 more episodes to go!
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