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Strong Girl Nam-soon: Episodes 5-6
by mistyisles
The plot thickens! As our heroes continue their investigations and forge new alliances, so do their enemies. With multiple (figurative) ticking time bombs at play, it won’t be long before something — or someone — explodes.
EPISODES 5-6
Nam-soon and Hee-shik sneak into the Doogo warehouse after hours. While Nam-soon zips about looking for the mask-shaped drugs, Hee-shik spends most of the time gawking appreciatively at her powers. As their allotted time runs out, Nam-soon loses her balance and falls into Hee-shik’s arms, accidentally taking him to the ground with the force of her momentum. To make up for it, she carries him back to the truck (which spares his sore hip, but doesn’t exactly soothe his ego).
Unfortunately, the masks they swiped for testing are just that — ordinary facemasks. Hee-shik gets pulled off the Doogo investigation, leaving Nam-soon to keep looking on her own (but don’t worry, she phones in her formerly homeless friends to help, and together they retrieve more potentially drug-composed items and dump them outside the police station).
Of course, it’s only a matter of time before Nam-soon runs into 1) Hwa-ja, whom Nam-soon informs that she and her mother are more than willing to forgive — but only once — and 2) Shi-on, who seems to be testing that new super drug himself. It grants him brief bouts of superstrength (and grotesquely pronounced veins), but it’s also lethal if you don’t have an antidote made from the blood of a specific sea creature.
Shi-on, of course, has this antidote. But it’s hard to come by, and he’s not the sharing type, so things are looking really bad for Hee-shik’s boss, HA DONG-SEOK (Jung Seung-gil). All Dong-seok did was touch a tiny bit of the drug powder to his tongue, but this is The Most Powerful Drug Ever Made, so that’s all it takes. It does, however, take longer to affect him than the other victims who are currently dropping like flies.
Eventually, Dong-seok collapses. But he forbids Hee-shik to take him to the hospital, knowing that if word gets out he knowingly sampled an illicit drug, his career is over. So Hee-shik takes him home, and has to handcuff him to the bed (no, not like that) to keep him from drinking water, which activates and amplifies the drug’s effects. The problem, of course, is the superstrength part — Dong-seok breaks free and attacks Hee-shik, completely out of his mind.
Despite being throttled, Hee-shik makes the conscious choice not to try reaching for the kitchen knife lying close by. Thus, the only reason Hee-shik survives the encounter is because Nam-soon happens to stop by with steamed buns and leaps to the rescue. Hee-shik begs her not to harm Dong-seok, so she pins (more like bolts) him to the floor with a chair, and they secure his arms and legs. Dong-seok eventually comes back to himself, and when Hee-shik returns to work, he makes sure to cut off all water sources in the house… except the toilet (oh noooo).
Meanwhile, Geum-joo’s investigations are yielding interesting results. The business card she received at Heritage Club granted her access to Opulentia, a powerful underground network whose purpose — according to its jolly vice-chairman who runs a food stall, because why not — is to use money for good and punish those who use it to harm others. That aligns with Geum-joo’s mission, and so a partnership is born.
From there, Geum-joo reveals herself to Hee-shik as his previously anonymous informant, making sure to also mention — casually, of course — that Nam-soon is at the age when women in their family are instinctively compelled to, in her own words, consummate. Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Then she continues investigating Shi-on, who has graduated from *looking ominous* to ominously ordering video surveillance on Nam-soon, ominously meeting with influential people (the camera lingers way too much on their drinks for it not to mean something), and ominously viciously stomping glass into a guy’s face because said face was caught on security cameras. Shi-on doesn’t know much about Geum-joo yet, but he likely will soon, because they’ve set a date for their next meeting.
Seemingly unrelated to the super drug mystery, Geum-joo also investigates an up-and-coming financial advisor named — I kid you not — BREAD SONG (Kim Ki-beom). He does appear to consider himself the best thing since sliced bread, so on second thought maybe the name is appropriate. In any case, Geum-joo can barely hide her disgust while posing as a prospective client. It doesn’t take her long to determine he’s a scammer, and she takes great pleasure in calling him on it. As a bonus, she gets a number puzzle partner (Bread’s assistant) out of the deal.
Fabulous as Geum-joo is, however, she isn’t without flaws, especially where family are concerned. Nam-in hasn’t initiated a conversation with her in five years because of the way she pokes fun at his weight, and she and Bong-go can’t be in the same room without sniping at each other. (She also has a disagreement with Joong-gan because she wants her mother to officially divorce her father before pursuing romance with someone new. But that one seems reasonable to me, aside from the fact that no one knows where Joong-gan’s estranged husband is.)
When Geum-joo announces Nam-soon is working on a super-special, super-meaningful mission, Nam-in snaps. He wants to move in with Bong-go, he says, because he loves Dad more than he loves Mom — just like she loves Nam-soon more than him. Ouch. But also, I get where he’s coming from. The jokes at his expense (not all coming from Geum-joo, to be fair) are uncomfortable at best, and I’ve only been dealing with them for three weeks. Unfortunately, Nam-in’s self-esteem has been taking constant hits for years, and that mysterious “diet pill” a strange woman handed him out of the blue is starting to look like a viable option to him…
And if that weren’t enough of an impending crisis, one of Hee-shik’s fears manifests right in front of him. See, awestruck as he is by Nam-soon’s powers, he also worries that she’ll become overconfident and pick a fight she can’t win by brute force. And wouldn’t you know it, the same day he returns to the Doogo warehouse, Hwa-ja rushes at Nam-soon and stabs her before anyone can react.
Hee-shik may not be as interesting and colorful as the other characters in this show, but in a way, that’s what I love most about him. In a cast of personalities ranging from quirky to larger-than-life, he’s the proverbial straight man — grounded, competent, and compassionate. He’s had a lot of craziness thrown his way over the past few days, but he’s getting pretty good at going well, that’s not normal and then filing it away to focus on the important stuff.
He’s also started making Nam-soon’s heart flutter in return. But whereas his magic words tend to be things like “I’ll protect you,” “I missed you,” and “you’re a good person,” the words that make her happiest are that she was a help to him and to others. As the fight with Dong-seok demonstrated, they already make a great team — and I’m sure they’ll only get better from here (stabbing notwithstanding).
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