Flower of Evil 악의 꽃 - Episode 3 (Recap)
kakashi: For the entire length of this episode, my heart beat way too fast. Goddammit, what a ride! Things aren't what they seem or are they? The plot thickens but then again... not at all.
JoAnne: I love another damaged JoonGi creation. Is anyone even the least bit surprised?
He's a bit like your wolf here, right? Poor pup.
Yes! *sobs*
Episode 3
Flashback (cue yellow hair). Ji-won visits Hee-sung in his workshop. He feels threatened by her questions and the apparent interest in his person, thinking she must be checking his background to out him for who he really is. Well, he can be damn scary! But when she confesses that she is doing all this because she likes him, he spaces out, almost like he's having some fit.
His little robot brain was screaming Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!
Ji-won is thinking of that encounter now that she sees him looking so scary in his dripping black rain coat in the middle of the night (3.30 am to be precise). The tension is broken quickly though when he explains that he went to the studio because he couldn't sleep and bought some beer for her - it's the same beer she brought that time she confessed her feelings. Which, if we want to believe Hee-sung, was the very first time he heard "I like you" in his life. The poor boy.
Come snuggle me, Hee Sung.
Another flashback, this time from Kim Moo-jin. So Hee-sung turned up with Gimbap that he bought near Moo-jin's apartment. Like before, Hee-sung likes to scare Moo-jin (he says his body will be found with food from near his apartment in his belly). He also attempts to give Moo-jin a load of sleeping pills so he can drag him to his car more easily - when Moo-jin resists, the glass shatters on the floor (which, by the way, is covered with plastic. In an earlier episode, Hee-sung said that if he really meant to kill Moo-jin down here, he'd have covered the floor with plastic, pfffft). Moo-jing screams and screams for Detective Cha to come save him while Hee-sung just looks at him.
He's clearly fucking with him...I mostly laughed.
Then Hee-sung asks him a question about an online post from 2011 that he discovered was posted with Kim Moo-jin's phone. In it, Kim Moo-jin (who is posing as a girl) talks about helping to commit murder. Apparently, there is evidence: a video. In which he claims he "just did what he was told", all naive and unsuspecting. Hmmmm... who is it that was murdered?!
Do you think the girl is that girl in Hee Sung's memory? Is that the same girl Moo Jin remembers?
At the Chinese restaurant crime scene, Ji-won notices the MO of the serial killer immediately (dog leash, cut Achilles tendon, missing thumb nails). There's video footage of the murder - all that is visible of the killer is a dark raincoat (yes, Ji-won notices that this guy looks a bit like her husband did when he returned in the middle of the night). They soon know that the last person the victim talked to was Kim Moo-jin - who has his phone turned off.
What's Hee Sung trying to do, here? You know he didn't commit this murder.
Hee-sung is entering Moo-jin's apartment to get his hands on the video footage - for collateral. What he finds on the computer isn't it though... but it is something. It's encrypted and password protected (Moo-jin provided him with the necessary information). All the clips are labeled "HS" and then a number... does that stand for "Hyun-su"? No, because the clips are mainly about Do Hae-Su (H-S), the young woman we have met before, the one whose necklace Moo-jin has. She is an artist and Hyun-su's sister, maybe in some kind of relationship with Moo-jin though I find Moo-jin's filming of her super creepy. "You lied to me," Hee-sung says (meaning Moo-jin? His sister? We don't know) - when someone pounds at the door.
Kakashi: jumping at every noise
Me to myself: It will be clear eventually, Jo. Don' try to kill your brain solving everything right now.
It's the police, worse - Hee-sung's wife. Once inside, she realizes the laptop is still warm and has the whole place searched thoroughly... I die a thousand deaths and then a thousand more when we see where Hee-sung has fled to - he is barely holding on outside the balcony!! His shadow is visible, then clouds move in to cover up the sun - she very nearly draws back the blinds right where he is hiding, but he calls her on the phone in time to distract her, claiming he just spoke to Kim Moo-jin - a child sees him and shouts that there's a thief, but she needs to leave. Shiiiiiiiit.
Look at his hands. Barely holding on. How'd he make that call, with his nose?
Saved this time, yikes.
Hee-sung heads back home after this. We know from little inserts that Moo-jin managed to get his hands on a shard of the broken glass - yes, he has freed himself and attacks Hee-sung as soon as he enters the basement! Well, Hee-sung manages not to get killed (Moo-jin wields a hammer like he means it). But now Ji-won is at the door, worried for her husband who said he had a fever on the phone. Great, just great, let me have a heart-attack... she keys in the door code when it opens and out comes... a beaten up Hee-sung. With Moo-jin right behind him looking equally beat! Gaaaaaaaaah! (that was SO cleverly filmed)
I love this drama. So smart, and so many smooth fake-outs.
Ji-won is certain her husband is the victim (haha) but Hee-sung convinces her they settled everything between them. Which is kind of true because Hee-sung found the video with the murder evidence after all, "hidden" in a video camera. He took the tape. From the way Moo-jin plays along, even if grudingly, it must really be damning evidence on there. Of course, they don't shows us all of it, only the beginning... it's at the Do house. More precisely, in the basement... "If you had made a different choice, the serial murder would have stopped", Hee-sung tells Moo-jin.
Reluctant murder pals?
There is video footage of a man with a black raincoat getting into a taxi. The questioning of that taxi driver reveals close to nothing though - only that the passenger was let out in an area with very little CCTV coverage (and that the passenger said he does the same as his father did). More evidence emerges when they listen to the voice message left on Kim Moo-jin's phone. Nam Soon-kil first talks about that rumor that Do Hyun-su helped his father with the killings. And then, he screams into the phone that Do Hyun-su has come to murder him. The killer is identified!
Or so they want you to think!
Kim Moo-jin is obviously shocked to hear that name (and has no hard time believing it actually was Hyun-su) - but apart from telling the detectives that Hyun-su is the serial killer's son, he doesn't let on that he knows anything about Hyun-su's current whereabouts. Well, he is a damn bad liar, but he at least tries to keep Hee-sung's secret. For the moment. In the process, he enlightens us by naming Hee-sung's condition: Antisocial personality disorder. In Hyun-su, it manifested mainly as an extreme drive to get revenge for the slightest upset.
oooh, revenge! I like it! But revenge for what? For being tormented? For someone's death? For being blamed?
 |
| Ji-won's incredulous face |
Following more leads, Ji-won is questioning Hyun-su's previous boss (he used to be a delivery driver for him together with Nam Soon-kil), but it's a dead end. Hyun-su didn't have an ID, he was practically a ghost. Ji-won realizes something interesting though: Apparently, Nam soon-kil suddenly acquired a huge sum of money and opened a restaurant afterwards - while Hyun-su disappeared without even a word of goodbye.
Revenge for BETRAYAL!
Another flashback, this time it's Hee-sung... back to the knife attack in the forest. He caries a ghastly scar on his shoulder from it. Nam Soon-kil attacks and wounds him because of the money. Hee-sung manages to take the knife from his assailant. Nam Soon-kil pleads for his life but Hee-sung has a crazed look in his eyes. He lifts the knife, ready to strike... when a voice whispers "kill him". It's Hee-sung's serial killer father with entirely black eyes, holding a dog leash.
He wasn't really there, right? Also, that actor is allllllways creepy, isn't he?
Struggling oh-so-much, Hee-sung manages not to obey his father's ghost. He rams the knife into the forest floor and flees the scene in panic. He runs out of the forest and... is hit by a car. Hard. Oh you poor, poor boy :(
That's it. I'm on his side. Wherever that takes us.
When Kim Moo-jin learns from the news when Nam Soon-kil was killed
(at 3.30 am), he realizes it could not have been Hee-sung - he was with
him around that time, in the basement. Quickly, he goes to Hee-sung's house to tell him - in the process also revealing the fact that his previous name Do Hyun-su is the one publicly associated with the killer (great sense of privacy as always in KDrama). Moo-jin is very excited about all this, thinking they're in some kind of partnership now! He will write a grand story and Hee-sung will be able to clear his name.
Frenemies!
We see the real murder in his lair... coughing up a load of blood. Hm. Whoever he is, he doesn't seem to have long to live (another clue we get is a phone chain that end in a wooden badge with a golden carp on it) And while we see how Hee-sung's "mother" throws an angry fit about Do Hyun-su's name in the news, we see Hee-sung's "father" enter a hidden room (it seems their housekeeper is mute?!). He stares at the person on life-support lying in there on a bed and whispers "Hee-sung-ah". Ohhhhh fuck. It's the REAL Hee-sung.
Son of a bitch, how many more twists? This is the Tootsie-Pop of dramas!
Comments
Still very clever, drama, very clever... the writing is rock solid and the storytelling with the little reveals sprinkled here and there are excellently done. So suspenseful! The police are already so close.......
Which means they'll get it entirely wrong, right?
Alright, so we know for certain now that Hee-sung (should I start calling him Hyun-su? I guess I should) did not kill that restaurant owner. He is also not just a psychopath but has a personality disorder, though psychopathy and that disorder are closely related.
Now that we know there is a Hee Sung, we should call him Hyun Su.
We also know that the "parents" are not his - but the real Hee-sung's. Looking very good there, Kim Ji-hoon!
I didn't even recognize him.
Then you don't deserve to love him as I do.
We all know I'm all about Joon Gi here.
That's all we know though, haha. We don't know how Kim Moo-jin is related to this mess (apart from the fact that he liked Hyun-su's sister and that he witnesses a murder or rather - helped committing it). And we have absolutely no clue who that person who is doing the new killings might be though it's a fact the real killer knows an awful lot about the serial killings and Do Hyun-su. It could be... the father who isn't really dead, the sister who is the real psychopath, or anybody else from the past. Happy guessing!
I was thinking the sister. The other piece we don't know is how the real Hee Sung fits in.
He seems connected to the car accident guessing from the little flashback snippets - maybe he drove the car. Why the identity switch though... no clue.