Shine or Go Crazy - Episode 5 (A Quickie Cap)

Things start to get quite interesting on all fronts. The OTP is falling in loves from both sides, the King is quasi a goner, and Wang Wook has a trauma. This is the episode that turned most people into SoGC fanatics, by the way.
Wang Wook can go suck eggs. He's irritating me, although I realize it's unfair. It's only because he doesn't like my So.
becca: I don't even mind that he dislikes So. I do want to smack him when he gets all weepy, though.
S@ki6: I like Wang Wook.  
Episode 5 verdict: Very funny. The humor in this show and I are going on a date tomorrow.
It'll just hurt you in the end, you know.

Episode 5

Behold the jade butterfly! He hasn’t forgotten her! By the power of the butterfly, believe, woman! He has been wearing it all those years: if that isn’t twu luuuv, I don’t know what is! She reaches for the pendant (and for him), but he suddenly extends his own hand, fumbling in the air, muttering “Chung-ok! Ryung-hwa! Where are you my pretties”. Haha. Seeing how he isn’t drunk at all, he was probably trying to fend off his seemingly gay friend. Well, it works, cause Shin-yool runs out (she thinks that’s these are the names of his two wives. Guess again, luv).
Kashi, I like Bori Bori better with Hyuk than Hoon.
Tbh, I don't really feel her chemistry with either of them. Maybe it's her acting style.
As soon as she’s gone, he starts searching for the ledger, which isn’t there at all, of course. He creates a huge mess and breaks I-don’t-know-what, the idiot. Because he is also damn noisy, half the Company comes running. Shin-yool is furious (and sad again, I guess because her illusion of him imploded), but only until she realizes what he is doing: searching for the necklace that he lost when he fell. It’s his good-luck charm, he explains to her. A treasure he wouldn’t trade with anything in the whole warehouse. Shin-yool is now as lost as ever.
Or for freaking Pete's sake. Stop with it, Yoolie. Just stooooooop.
This all doesn't make me feel they have chemistry. If anything, it made me want more of the hot bodyguards and the Lady Mishal-wannbe Princess.
Well, fact is he made a mess - and he has to pay for everything he broke. All he can do is work for it (no money, remember?). Niiiiice. So he will be trained at the Company for 5 days, after which he has to take the 1st level promotion exam. which would give him the opportunity to work for other Trading Companies. All of this makes Wang So totally happy, so happy that Eun-chun gets a bit suspicious.
But he'll be such a good king, even though he can only be king if his brother is dead and he doesn't want his brother to be dead. Why? Because he will learn so much about how regular people work.
Yes, he'll actually understand his subjects. I just wish the current king didn't have to die for it to happen. He's so sweet and pitiable.
Kill him.
 
We also get some useless backstory for the Hot Assassin. Nothing about the Hot Assassin is useless.
He has been the Princess’ “Shadow” ever since she was very little. Shadow means guarding her, most likely bedding her, but also reporting the Uncle Wang about everything she does.
Oh good. She's working on getting classifed as evil with me, but at least she's no idiot.  When God hands you a hot assassin,  you use that hot ass.
I'm going to put myself in the minority here and admit that I can take him or leave him.
I don't know about the bedding: virginity is rather a big deal in these traditional setups and she's too calculating to mess up things. 
Well, he also works as HER spy, of course, and through him, she hears that her Uncle tries to identify the leader of the assassins who killed Kim Jong-sik. She hears that that leader is a prince … and that Hot Assassin suspects that it’s Wang So. Who is nowhere to be found.
Crikey, Honey Lee's skin is smoooooove!

Because he is at the Trading Company, of course, learning the trade. Him, entering (show, you be very funny all the time):
Keabong is a vicious teacher (what else) and Wang So is completely talentless. Or at least so he pretends. All he is interested in is finding the ledger anyway, which, as he learns, is kept by the “assistant head” (who isn’t here, of course). As they tour through the Trading Company, he suddenly becomes much aware of Sin-yool's luscious lips.
I was going to add in the 'h' for you because I'm thoughtful like that but then I thought again. Considering everything, "Sin-yool" is pretty perfect.
Lucky for him, he has no time to develop any further thoughts because he has to sort goods by their value (or lift heavy cases) and fight against an imaginary pirate in the form of Kyeong. He fails spectacularly in everything. I actually like to see him suffer. So does everybody else.
Including us.
Hahahaha - this sequence was the best! Especially when Gang-myung gave him the answer because he couldn't bear to watch anymore.
We get tons of “is he really a man”? from Wang So in this episode and many a “he will find out she’s not a man” from the others. But a"little" something actually dispels all doubts he might have had as to Kaebong-aaaaaaas gender. He follows him to the bath section of the Trading Company and decides to check whether there's a wang or not. There most certainly is one ... and I guess it's a big one. What poor So So doesn't know is that Baek-Myo saw him and had Kyeong flash his dong at him.
I will never stop laughing at my memory of Kyeong's mortified face.
Heehee. Poor guy! When Baek-Myo patted his shoulder and said "good job" after, he just look so used. *dies laughing*
In the evening, the whole family is having a ball (from wangs to balls, too soon, I can't stop laughing) when they discuss Wang So's suffering. He is in his room, moaning about his hurt back and diverse other booboos. It doesn't seem all for show, does it? Still, he realizes the "assistant head's" room must be empty, but is prevented from going in by Kaebong who is coming up. The gentle soul has come to bring him some ointment! So So - who is very pleased that his friend is so well hung - insists he puts it on for him and takes his shirt off. Shin-yool does that maiden thing where women are toootaaallly shocked to see a man's skin. Well, if she had looked, she'd seen many interesting scars on his torso. When he mentions that his thighs are bruised too and starts to take his trousers off, she flees.
*shakes head in disgust* And my gosh, look how little Jang Hyuk is! He's all head!
Bwahahahahahahahahaha! But that may be just how Sinyool likes things. 
Remember “The throne needs to be empty first”? Yeah. Yeo Won, who knows a lot about all kinds of plants like the witch that she is, has brewed a poison to get rid of the king - in exchange for the exclusive rights to the sale of salt. She is so clever!!!!! I would love her if she weren't so evil.
She's just cold as ice, isn't she?
Yes.
Evil, schmeevil, I love her. I like awesome, not-annoying people who don't play Bob. 
Well, Wang So is certainly having the time of his life, but his wife isn't as happy as usual that he isn't around. She has become quite suspicious of him and tracks him down by following his sidekick (who knows where he is). He is still searching for the ledger and that bill of exchange copy when she suddenly turns up in front of him. You're so busted, buddy. He babbles this and that of doing a roleplay here but she just asks whether the Trading Company is his playground - or whether there are toys here. Uh-oh. Is she a bit jealous?
I wonder if he'd paid attention to her early on would she not be working for him, instead.
I actually think she might have. I also think there's still a tiny chance that she could further on down the road. She'd be a valuable ally, but I doubt Wang So will ever trust her. I certainly wouldn't.
They never really gave each other a chance, especially Wang So.
She should be, because man or not, her Wang So is getting really cosy with his Kaebong-aaaaa. He gets brutally kicked for that by Baek-Myo ("Don't 'namaste' me" is one of my most favorite lines ever) who comes to get (a reluctant) Shin-yool to meet with Wang Wook. The Goryeo elf is really well behaved and brings her back her shoe she lost back then at the river. They drink bellflower tea together and it's quite obvious how smitten he is.
He's a Ken doll dressed up like Goryeo Barbie.
Sometimes I wish this drama was set in the Joseon era because then he'd have a topknot and a gat, and I wouldn't have to look that horrible hair.
Elves rule. Or should, in a perfect world where I have his hair. 
 
Sadly for him, she isn't even in the least interested in him. Not even when he buys that blue plate from "Arabia", whose story touches him deeply. In that story, the craftsman's wife went with the king to protect her husband and later killed herself. In real life, the same thing happened to him (and he tells her that because the blue plate has magical powers to make sorrows disappear): He was very much in love with a woman once (her look-alike!!!) as she was with him, but then, his father married her. (*don't laugh, kakashi! don't laugh!!!!*) Tragically, she took her own life, too. At "their" special place. He vows to never lose his lover again.
Well that explains that. No mystical elf dreams, after all. I wonder if one of his brothers is also the kid who should have been his son... and you know what, fuck Yeo Won because clearly she saw the resemblance, and don't you think she'd protect her beloved elf brother from being hurt? No, she's like this: Hey, there's a carbon copy of your love, go pretend.
I feel for you Wang-wook, I do. That's awful. But please don't cry. I don't like you enough for that yet.
I think Yeowon thought, here's someone with skill and money who looks just like my brother's dead stepmom crush, so he and I will both be happy with her. 
look! The braids moved! The magic worked!!!!!!
Wang So knows his Kaebong is occupied elsewhere and since nobody else is to be seen either, he finally enters the assistant head's room - and is promptly frightened of his own image in the mirror. Seriously, show ... you make this up along the way, right?! Shin-yool's room is boiling hot, we learn. And he finally finds the ledger ... he thinks. But it's not.
Why tell us it's boiling hot in there if he's not going to remove his shirt, show?
This is the most important question I've heard all day!
In his usual clumsiness, he knocks over a bronze mirror ... which looks VERY familiar. It has the same patterns as that piece that Kim Jong-sik clutched in his dying fingers. Right then, Wang So is caught in the act of stealing by Baek-Myo and Gang-Myeong. Uh-oh.
When they're thinking about how to punish him for stealing, Wang So first lies that he took the mirror for his wife (who has none) and then says "The mirror stole me, I didn't steal the mirror". Luckily for him, they search him and find the bill of exchange he carries on him - only to find out that it is a fake one, issued by someone who had no authority to do so. It's one of the underlings, who sold cheap vases for a lot of money. And that person knows exactly whom he sold the goods to. Wang So now has all the names of the bad guys.
How conveeeeeeeeeeeeeenient.
It's too easy!

For helping to discover this sham, Wang So is pardoned - and Shin-yool even gives him the mirror as a gift. He gets a second chance and gets veeeeery drunk with Kaebong and Kyu-dal, who really, really REALLY wants So So to meet his sister. They carry him off to bed and continue just the two of them, and it seems Wang So got a bit curious about that sister. Of course, Kaebong praises her to the skies and adds "She's probably the best in the trading business". And he says: "Well, probably not as good as you".
She smiles like the real her, and for a moment, he sees the real her. "Goddess", he murmurs and leans over the table to .....

Comments

Alright, so he's in love now. Good! If we do cross-dressing, we need to get the suffering of the male lead to go with it too, or it is no fun. I also realized something about her in this episode. Rather than being hurt that he doesn't remember, she is of course devastated that he is married. Because that means she cannot have him. And even if he finds out who she is, they can't have each other. Unless they didn't care much about marriage back in Goryeo?
She's going to die anyway, so why not just let them have the affair? He's not sleeping with his sister, anyway.
And may he never!
Oh come on, this is Goryeo, land of polygamous unions.
I was talking about him sleeping with his sister. That's gross.

It's possible, it being the Wild West and all. There is no way he is going to easily or soon divorce his current wife, and seeing how they will become King and Queen sometime in the future, it's even possible he doesn't divorce her at all. I have no clue what that means for the OTP, but it probably involves a lot of heartache.
Right... would she settle for being a concubine? Somehow I think not.
He's going to have to reconcile, or just concile with Yeowon because they have lots of kids together.
The other interesting new revelation in this episode is Wang Wook's story, of course. The poor sod! That's seriously bad, having your girlfriend snatched away from you by your father. Too bad he has set his eyes on someone he can never have. I don't hate him (yet), but we need to see a bit more of him to lean either way. So far, he is an interesting (not) villain.
I wish he could be more interesting, less pine-y.
This is exactly what I'm saying, yes.
His dad sounds like he was a real manwhore.