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Trolley: Episodes 11-12
by missvictrix
Every time our couple faces their next hurdle, there’s just another, bigger one waiting. And this time it brings broken trust, which slowly starts to seep through their entire relationship. It’s shocking and suspenseful and tragic all at the same time, and then it’s all trumped with another huge reveal.
EPISODES 11-12 WEECAP
We pick up with Hye-joo facing a throng of reporters… but luckily it’s just a nightmare. However, as we follow her along this week, there’s a cadence of red flags around Joong-do that get a tad alarming. Do we trust him? Does his wife trust him? Should his wife trust him? Trolley has a lot of fun making us answer these questions as we go, changing our minds a hundred times per episode.
During her day, Hye-joo meets some of Joong-do’s staffers and is surprised that they said he drinks coffee; she knows that he never drinks it, but is soon proven wrong (red flag #1). Then, she learns that the staffers know all about her story, meaning Joong-do told them all already, without her knowledge (red flag #2). Next, in an unsettling moment in Joong-do’s office, Woo-jae disagrees with a coworker, saying that “a perfect secret does exist” (red flag #3).
Then, the worst of all: Hye-joo learns that there was a plan in place for Joong-do to go public with her story before that heart-wrenching scene in our last episode where she gave him her permission. To her credit, Hye-joo confronts him on this; to his credit, he admits it right away, claiming he did it to protect her. However true or logical his explanation might be, Hye-joo is deeply affected. She begins to feel like her story (read: lifelong trauma) has become a political tool for his career. We see a slow shift in their relationship, and it’s agonizing to watch it happen.
While Joong-do is busy apologizing to his wife for breaking the trust between them, more trouble is brewing. Oh boy, is it brewing. To start, Ki-young changes his mind about giving Joong-do the evidence against his mother-in-law and Assemblyman Kang. This effectively removes Joong-do’s bargaining chip, and he tells Hye-joo that they must get her story out there now. He’ll go on live TV, and she must be there to add the legitimacy and authenticity they need. Poor Hye-joo is broken over this, but I guess the one nice thing is that it leads to her telling her daughter her story, and they have a really nice moment of bonding. (Poor Yoon-seo is also going through all of this with her parents, though we only see her story tangentially.)
If Hye-joo thought going on live TV and having her deepest fears and traumas broadcast into every living room in the country was bad, she has no idea what’s coming next. And neither did I. Here, the drama holds back some information on us, all for the purpose of letting us navigate this shock with only the information our heroine has. And so, Hye-joo gets a sudden and shocking call from Joong-do. He is distraught. He says that Soo-bin contacted him, has medical records proving Ji-hoon assaulted her, and that she’s blackmailing him or will go public with this information.
Hye-joo is devasted, and I want to both pat this screenwriter on the back for such deep and interwoven story elements, and also hit them for torturing Hye-joo so much. Indeed, she is a ball of PTSD and conflicting emotions: horrified over what Ji-hoon may have done, confused because Soo-bin previously told her she was not assaulted, plagued by self-condemnation after wondering if Soo-bin is lying about the assault… and on and on it goes.
Hye-joo begs Joong-do to wait for them to process what has happened, but before you can say Jack Robinson, he’s on TV confessing Ji-hoon’s assault, and then using it to formally announce his bill (which he names the Namgoong Sol Bill after Perilla Grandma’s granddaughter).
At this point Hye-joo is in Joong-do’s office watching the TV with horror and grief. When he returns, that horror and grief continue. She says just what I’m thinking — this makes no sense — and says she would rather have paid Soo-bin off. Joong-do says honesty and transparency are best; Hye-joo wants make sure it’s true and also prevent Ji-hoon from being thrown to the wolves. I see both sides. Either way, this is just galling, especially if we compare Hye-joo’s willingness to keep the supposed assault a secret — because this is exactly what we have seen Seung-hee’s mother do. (Still, to give Hye-joo the benefit of the doubt here, she is not convinced there was an assault, and actively wants to believe Soo-bin, whom she obviously relates to.)
A reporter outside accosts Hye-joo, claiming that her husband uses other people’s tragedies as a political tool — and thank goodness Hye-joo can’t speak, because I’m pretty sure those are the exact thoughts running through her own mind. Yeo-jin tries to fend off the reporters, but it’s Chairwoman Woo who does it. (Aside: We are still waiting for this long-standing reveal with Yeo-jin, who’s planning to move, and the longer they hang fire the more I’m dreading this one.)
In a stroke of random coincidence that was actually realistic, Yoon-seo’s friend’s mother is a doctor at a local OB-GYN clinic. She’s not only the one that treated Soo-bin during her miscarriage, but she’s treating her right now… so when Soo-bin — looking much more nefarious these days — pops out on the street in front of Hye-joo, it feels like it wanted to happen.
Like anyone would, Hye-joo bolts after her and they talk in an alley, although “talking” is not the correct word — Soo-bin stands there in her usual sulking manner, and Hye-joo cries and pleads for the truth. Hye-joo throws all the emotions at Soo-bin, from worrying over her, to asking whether she was really assaulted, to questioning why she’s blackmailing them now after all this.
Goodness gracious, the acting in this scene nearly killed me. We can see Soo-bin responding to Hye-joo’s genuine concern, and we can feel the full range of Hye-joo’s emotions. Finally, Soo-bin tells Hye-joo that she was not assaulted; she also says that she didn’t blackmail Joong-do. Wait, what?!
The breaking down of the Hye-joo and Joong-do trust continues that night when she tells him about her accidental meeting with Soo-bin. Joong-do is so absolutely crushed by this. He buckles under the weight of how Soo-bin’s lies have gotten right into Hye-joo and caused her to mistrust him for the first time ever. Here, I just sit back and gasp. Is that what this whole Soo-bin plot line was really about? Putting a wedge between them, all based on lies? It’s staggering to think about. But it’s not true.
It’s at this point that I must acknowledge the drama is getting a little cheeky with us. We only see the Soo-bin and Joong-do engagement after the fact, and each time we see flashes of it, it’s meant to validate what the character is saying in the present. So, when Joong-do says he was indeed blackmailed, we see Soo-bin in the van telling Jong-do she is blackmailing him. This was enough to convince me; I felt so bad for mistrusting Joong-do’s integrity.
And then the ball drops. We see Joong-do teary-eyed at Ji-hoon’s memorial, with Woo-jae behind him saying, “We took a lot of risks, but it seems to be working out the way we planned.” We then get an extended flashback to the scene between Joong-do and Soo-bin where she openly tells him the following: she was not assaulted, she lied about an assault to the doctor only so she could get an abortion, and the baby was not Ji-hoon’s at all but her ex-boyfriend’s.
My brain had trouble processing all this, because I was still caught on this idea of Soo-bin infiltrating their house and marriage and making mayhem. This still might be true, but the bigger betrayal is with Joong-do. He sat there, heard that there was no assault and his son had nothing to do with the pregnancy… and then he continued on with his aforementioned press conference. (I need a minute to collect myself.)
So, basically, the drama has taken us on a wild goose chase with Hye-joo. Mistrust Joong-do, feel guilty for mistrusting Joong-do and trust him again, and then repeat the cycle. But this time, it’s completely — and horribly — true. Joong-do says how guilty he feels towards his wife and his son, but that it was necessary for the greater good. We have seen him jumping at every opportunity to get this bill noticed and passed, but now we see how much he is willing to lie and manipulate to do that. If you have to lie and manipulate to accomplish “good,” is it really good?
This whole thing is such a quagmire, and so much more than a simple trolley problem of save A or save B. The trolley problem is about sacrificing one to save many; what we have here feels more like callously manipulating everything to advance a legal amendment that may or may not save people pain. Is it worth it if you’ve already destroyed your own family to get there? This is starting to feel more like Greek tragedy and less like an ethical dilemma. Not to mention, Hye-joo’s story isn’t out yet, but Joong-do is ready for a counterattack from Seung-hee, and I can only imagine what happens next.
In terms of our other traumatized family, we had a big reveal as well, and I am still banking on Ki-young to be the righteous person that Joong-do is clearly just pretending to be. Ki-young apologizes to Hye-joo for his previous request that she beg forgiveness from his mother-in-law. But guess who’s white-knuckling it through their Seoul neighborhood at that very instant? Scary mom. She’s in a rage after learning who Hye-joo actually is, gets in a car accident, and is soon unconscious in the hospital surrounded by Ki-young and Seung-hee.
Then it gets real. When she is coming to, she mistakes Ki-young for Seung-ho, and in her stupor she says aloud: “Don’t worry, Seung-ho. I will keep your secret forever.” So what we have now is Ki-young seeing that his mother-in-law is even more of a psychopath than he thought. She knows that Seung-ho did indeed commit the assault, but instead chose to make Hye-joo into a murderous villain, and elevate her son as an innocent angel.
I would like to say that’s the end of the trauma this week, but sadly, it is not. As we are closing out this week’s episodes with this crescendo of stress, we return to the scene between Hye-joo and Soo-bin in the alleyway. Before she left, Soo-bin turned to drop one final bomb: the last person to see Ji-hoon alive wasn’t her — it was Joong-do. And sure enough, we get a flashback to that night, where a grieved-looking Joong-do listens to Ji-hoon say he will make sure his father can’t stay in politics. Cut to: his body found in the river.
Present-day Hye-joo is now piecing together Joong-do’s whereabouts at that time, trying to figure out what is actually true and who is actually telling her the truth — and all the while that pesky National Assembly pin she keeps stepping on acts as a signifier. And an alibi. And it’s also a metaphor, not only because she keeps getting hurt by it, but because it stands for the burden of the political role her husband has taken on. And here we are, observing the havoc that has slowly wreaked on their family.
At this point, Hye-joo’s doubt in Joong-do is overflowing — and so is mine. His willingness to hurt his family to advance his political objectives, however noble, is too blatant to be taken back next week as a misdirect. And so, it goes on, and our heroine’s world continues to crumble. It’s a pity that Hye-joo is always forced into this reactive state. There’s so much getting shoved at her, and she’s had no reprieve. And now, it’s as if she’s lost the only place that was a safe haven for her. Way to go, Show, now I want to cry.
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