The thread is now open for spoilers, rants and raves.
Hey! He ain’t bad looking.
Let’s enjoy the show!
26 Comments On “Flower of Evil: Eps 14 & 15 Open Thread”
Comments are closed.
The thread is now open for spoilers, rants and raves.
Hey! He ain’t bad looking.
Let’s enjoy the show!
Comments are closed.
Thanks @pkml3. I hope to watch the episode tomorrow.
Yes, that’s uri Baek Hee Sung, all geared up to set Hyun Soo up. I like him better with his hair up. It was his hair, so similar to DMS’s, that got me thinking that he was truly a disciple of the master killer, right down to looking like him.
Some people on other forums are complaining as to why HS is not an actual killer or even a person with an actual ASD. I don’t know if these viewers have their expectations right from kdramas. Yes, few kdramas may have “unhappy/sad” endings but it would be extremely unusual for a mainstream kdrama to feature a popular A list actor as anything less than a kind and family oriented individual who is morally acceptable (may have debatable/grey actions but all must be motivated by correct intentions).
The second problem of these viewers is why HS and JW fight/suspect eachother/mistrust eachother from time to time/hide information/ quarrel often etc only to make it up, hug again, kiss again and cry about their unfortunate circumstances together. They feel this fighting and suspecting should not happen since they’re together since 14 years. And if they do fight/suspect then they should not make it up. Umm… I’m not sure if these viewers have their expectations right from a marriage.
Hee hee. I’m not saying this drama is perfect. But I find the Do couple convincing. They are flawed. Their marriage is flawed. But their love for each other is perfect. 🙂
So well said, @Arihsi!
@Arihsi, I totally agree with you! I found the Do couple’s loveline very convincing and I love the fact that they showed us their little fights and then reconcile again in the next second. That’s indeed what happen to many couples who have been together for long enough time. It’s kind of sweet and definitely intimate.
All in all I really enjoyed watching Ep14. Can’t believe there are only 2 episodes left though.
@snow flower I was wondering if you could conjure up another lovely melody that demonstrates the love behind a lifetime of deceit and lies. Because the truth is, he did lie. He did deceive her in more ways that what would be considered forgivable.
Just like @pm3’s Humpty Dumpty of hapiness, Ji Won finds it hard to trust him again or to imagine hapiness with him again…
Yet, most incredibly, he does love her with everything he has. So much so that he’s ready to die for her to trust him again. As for her, her love is much beyond his own.
How intriguing would this music sound !
@Arihsi, I have been thinking about writing a piece of music inspired by this show. Because of the twisty plot, I thought it was difficult to write something for every chapter of the story. For me, the heart of this drama is the love between Hyun Soo and Ji Won, a love so deep that it still flowers amid deception, lies, and secrets. That is my inspiration. Stay tuned!
Episode 15 summary
🥺😩😞😭
This episode ended with the show literally demonstrating how in his mind, she’s his safe heaven in every sense of the word and the only peace he has ever known. He is so tired of staying alive the way he has been that he just wants to give up and “fall asleep” in her arms.
It is a nice juxtaposition with the real world where she’s actually urging him with all her might to fight it back to her.
I found it fitting that the finale would begin with Ji Won desperately begging Hyun soo to breathe followed by her begging him to say something, anything at all… followed by her begging him to just be happy.
Pretty much sums up her love for him through out the show.
@Snow flower
“A love so deep that it still flowers amid deception, lies and secrets”
Ooohhh… I’m looking forward to your music!
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
All I hope now is for Do Hyunsoo to be alive and reunite with his family and start anew their life 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
@Arihsi
I finally watched until the end of Ep 15 and realise what you’re talking about. Yes, That dreamlike scene of HS resting in JW’s arms was what he really needed. And what JW as saying to him by contrast was so stark. You put it beautifully.
I’m confident though that he’ll want to be up and fully alive once he gets out of hospital (and possibly out of jail), and he’ll be the one to embrace wife and daughter. 🙂
Oh @GB I have been waiting for you to see the episode! I didn’t write to you requesting for a watch because I didn’t want to be a pest 🙊 but I need your keen eyes !!
1) was the bullet chamber of the gun BHS used, empty ? They show the contrast between a close up of the gun BHS used vs the gun the rookie used… They can’t really make that big of a production mistake.
2) if DHS indeed got shot in the head, it’d be pretty much impossible to survive that type of head wound. It was a fairly close range shot straight through the temple. Some viewers are annoyed that this will lead to amnesia. No, this will lead to frying of the brain. Nothing will be left. Kdramas rarely show shooting of the head, no?? Because there is almost zero chances of survival. Shooting of back/stomach, stabbing of stomach etc is more a kdrama thing rather than gory shots through the head. It might be that the rookies bullet grazed from there ? Sounds a long shot…hee hee.
3) there is a lot of confusion in that shooting scene. Usually kdramas show shooting/stabbing scenes of the leads with a lot of clarity because mostly they involve a romantic factor.
4) this drama has been doing the unexpected. You spend a week thinking he got shot and will end up with amnesia and bam. Umm… He wasn’t really shot you know…
5) “please say something… Anything is okay” is a weird thing for Ji Won to tell someone with severe brain damage or to someone who doesn’t remember anything at all about her. She has been demonstrated to be a very sensitive and sensible character. She won’t make such requests to a comatose/still recovering HS or an HS who has no recollection of her. Basically factoring in brain damage in both scenarios.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CFRPgdeJrfb/?igshid=14rb8d9p6piad
A pictorial evidence for the curious minds ! The barrel looks obviously empty.
@Arihsi
To tell you the truth, I really have to re-watch the show because I was in a hurry and was watching at super speed plus skipping a bit. However I did slow down the show and re-watch with stop-motion the parts you are asking about.
I believe the Props department didn’t expect the viewers to be so eagle-eyed and determined to stop-motion watch the shots fired. LOL. I believe that there was something in BHS’s gun because there was something that issued from the gun barrel, however the bullet chambers did not look filled. Bear in mind also that BHS was supposed to have shot the 2 silly cops who had tried to arrest him. There should have been 2 empty chambers at least.
As for Det Im’s gun, that one did not issue forth any kind of smoke or anything that I could see. It looked really empty. Even blanks can be dangerous and I believe there have been accidents on sets before. Props folks may have been really careful about NOT loading the guns. The problem might have been that director got cameras to zoom in on the guns, which was a mistake LOL.
It might have been a graze shot that went in but grazed part of the brain without exploding in the skull. The epilogue MV followed by the preview/dialogue on Hyun Soo’s condition says “It’s been 4 months already” … sounds like it’s his turn to be in a coma.
I was annoyed that it wasn’t clear. We see Baek Hee Sung raise the gun and HS grab hold of JW to shield her, then he’s on the ground with blood from a head wound. We don’t even know if Det Im’s bullet hit him or hit Baek Hee Sung.
Based on Ji Won’s voiceover that it was 4 months, I’d say he was shot.
– I’d take this as JW being desperate for any sign that his brain has recovered enough for it to enable speech. I have been told that as the hearing is the last to go (in a near death situation), it’s good for us to speak to a comatose person. Something we say can actually cause a reaction of some kind. I guess that’s all the more a good reason for her to keep prodding him to wake up, since he was not near death but in a coma. The hope is that it might compel him to wake up faster.
OK off to do some due diligence and re-watch enough to analyse reasonably. 😆 ☺️ 😇
I think because the one carrying them is a patrol officer, maybe that is why the pistol has empty barrel😅
Wahhhh… ep 14 and ep 15. I had fun watching with sn and parker 🤣🤣🤣 we got distracted with BHS sexiness, Jiwon’s perfect matte lipstick and the other ladies non-smudge make-up 😅
BHS keeps fixing his hair is such a comic relief for me🤣🤣🤣
Anyway, this can simply be the best TVN 2020 Drama – the storyline, the performance of those that matters, plot twists and cliffhangers.
@Arihsi, they complained about DHS personality? Tsk tsk tsk…
Oohh @GB thank you for your insights! Maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Somehow, I’m leaning towards shock/aphasia. It’s just been too much to handle for DHS since too long. A life time of truma, false blame, torture, coercion, forced identity, hiding so much from the only person he cared about, no emotional vent, no therapeutic support. He’s not even sure if the Ji Won he sees now is the real deal. Add to that the fact that he discovered that he is actually capable of murder.
If not that, it would be amnesia. People would be miffed since it’s a well worn troupe. However, I’m okay with that. Because after all, this drama is all about redemption. And if the ideal redemption for DHS is being granted an erase of all the misery that he’s known, so be it.
@miracle23 hee hee hee… Yes, I noticed the perfect eye liners too. I can’t manage that for even 3 hours in a normal situation let alone in a captive or comatose state 🤪
Episode 15 Random Thoughts
The unexplainable?Other than the trauma of getting kidnapped and seeing BHS kill DMS, there was no reason for Jung Mi Sook to lose her memory for 14 years. She’d run away and escaped being killed but was found wandering and Yeom SC found her for BHS. Why should she have forgotten what she was running from in the middle of running away? This was the part that I found unexplainable. And we see that she regained her memory well enough once she was in the cage.
Jung Mi Sook
In the end this peripheral character who comes in only at the end is someone worthy of note. Although she’d lived in a haze of not remembering for years, she was able to assess her situation, realise that HS loved Cha Ji Won, figure out her moral compass and realise that DHS should not kill BHS. That, I find amazing. I’d have liked to have BHS suffer at someone else’s hands for making me suffer, but she thought of DHS’s welfare when she grabbed hold of him and told BHS to run away.
HS had told her:
I liked that this scared BHS into running away.
Even after HS tells her to call the police and tell them this, she knew better than to do so. Instead she gives the important info: “… please come quickly. Please save Do Hyun Su. I’m begging you.”
However it’s interesting that her thinking changed from knowing that it was wrong to kill, to protecting DHS from the law. She told Ji Won that HS should not be held accountable for killing because he’d thought she (CJW) had been killed by BHS.
Although Ji Won is right that murder is murder and nothing can justify it, I felt it was rather too cold of her to say so. She had after all failed to answer HS’s phone calls (thinking they were from reporters) to assuage his concern over her welfare.
I’d be interested to see if Jung Mi Sook gets to reunite with her sick husband before he dies. He should have a couple of weeks left before his 2 months’ of being alive are up.
Kim Moo Jin
I’ve never thought much of him from the beginning and now that we finally do get to see the video that he’d kept for all these years, I cannot change my opinion of him. Granted he was maybe 17 or 18 years old, but he knew that the moving figure in that sack was not an elk. Even after DMS was dead, he’d never told anyone, as it would have painted him in a bad light.
I can’t blame him for not being there for Hae Su since she wanted to handle taking care of herself and Eun Ha on her own, however his behaviour from teenage years into adulthood has been that of a coward.
His only redemption, if we can call it that, is his confronting the Baeks with the lies that theyv’e been keeping that allows BHS to keep killing. He says to Dad Baek :
But will he reveal the truth of what he’d guessed as a teenager and never revealed even if it could have saved some lives? Hyun Soo had accused him of this in an earlier episode – that the video could have saved lives if he’d revealed it.
A pity that Hae Su will end up with him in the usual kdrama way. She deserves better.
Pot and Kettle
BHS watched DHS grieve over Ji Won, with strange and clinical interest, because he’s a real psychopath and does not know what it feels like. His only concern was that he had won the game of either getting HS to kill him or causing apin for HS.
I admit to vicarious delight in seeing BHS actually become fearful when HS approaches with the knife, and when BHS runs for his life. He’d never regretted causing harm to Jung Mi Sook or any of the victims, as if he’d been entitled to torture and kill them, and he’d not stop killing, no matter what his deluded parents try to believe.
I laughed when BHS challenges DHS and calls him a psychopath. That was the pot calling the kettle black, when actually the kettle was unable to recognise emotions, but was never actually psychopathic.
Pathos
Our little Eun Ha is an amazing little actress. Just looking at her face when JW gets her to open the door had me tearing up. She utterly convinced me that she’d waited, frightened, in that room, for her mother’s voice.
The other moment of intense pathos for me was Hyun Su not believing that Ji Won was alive. With his trauma kicking in, his father’s spectre stares at him.
HS to JW :
Poor HS has so many hurdles to get over. He has to gain the trust of so many people while he has difficulty trusting himself. His, is the character I feel the most for, and I applaud Lee Jong Gi for his stellar portrayal of someone who’s been misdiagnosed, misjudged and forced to hide his true self; who’s been traumatised and unable to figure out what he feels or what is real. His was a heart-wrenching performance that deserves kudos.
Dream Sequence
The dream sequence, I felt, was the mind giving itself permission to take a break. Hyun Soo needed to know it was ok for him to let go. It’s telling that it’s the figure of Ji Won and not Hae Su that he sees in his semi conscious or unconscious state, this time. Hae Su’s predicament had gotten him to always be on the run, but Ji Won’s solid presence and ability to protect him and herself, had been his mainstay. She had pledged to always be with him, to teach him how to deal with the world (because he’d been clueless about loving her) and she’d trusted in him and his care of Eun Ha, even after knowing his real identity.
From the preview, we know that Hyun Soo survives and is in Court. So we wait to see how DHS gets out of being indicted for all kinds of crimes that the law would like to saddle him with. I’d like to see if KMJ could help in anyway by testifying in his favour.
In the other Episode where he almost drowned, he’d pretended to forget Eun Ha. This time we’ll see if the words of dream Ji Won really means that he’ll forget. Yes, if ever an amnesia trope was warranted, maybe it’s in this show.
This can be juxtaposed against her words in the preview to Eun Ha :
This could mean being free from the guilt, from the law, from the stigma of being DMS’s son or a psychopath, and being free of the bad memories and the trauma. However he should also be free from running away, and amnesia is another form of the mind running from the difficult truth, so I hope he gets a chance to remember before too much time passes.
@GB, thank you for the analysis. I agree that LJK has been excellent in this drama, but his performance in Episode 15 was out of this world. This character deserves a happy ending. I believe that the writer will not let little Eun Ha be without her dad.
We still don’t know if the noona actually killed the village elder. She and HS believe this to be the case, but Hee Sung said that the elder died because he was too nosy. I hope this loose end is tied.
What happened to Mi Sook between 2002 and 2005? I assume that she ran away and ended up in a mental hospital because of her memory loss. Somehow Sung Chul found her and was planning to offer her again to Hee Sung but the deal fell through because of Hee Sung’s coma.
I am wondering why the police never look for missing persons in orphanages and mental institutions (in dramaland). So many mysteries would be solved if they did, but then where would the drama be?😀
@GB thank you for your wonderful analysis ♥️
One thing is certain, if they do go for “memory loss” due to head being shot by a blooming gun way, they’ll be taking a *major* creative license. There is no way such a shot to the temple can be survived… Let alone by a small disability such as memory loss.
Also, in real life or rather I should say real brain, lost memories never come back. 🙊
@Snow Flower and @Arihsi, You’re welcome! 😃
About Missing Persons: I guess to be fair, the policed didn’t expect that she’d managed to run away and that she’d end up in some home or other. They thought she’d have been dead. They were looking into the ‘grave site’ for a missing dead body, and her husband kept asking where she was buried.
As for the hospitals/mental homes,… it looks like while Jung Mi Sook’s husband ultimately printed a lot of posters, these never got into the news or to the hospitals/homes, otherwise someone should have been able to recognise her.
It is one of the simpler plot ploys, I guess, to make her lose her memory (for reasons unknown) so that she’d be conveniently missing until she should be needed.
On Memory Loss: Yes, in RL it’s unlikely for anyone to survive a bullet in or through the skull, or if they do, to have nothing worse than memory loss. I looked it up for fun and found these:
https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/gunshot-to-the-head-does-this-mean-instant-death.html
https://www.medicinenet.com/surviving_a_gunshot_wound_to_the_head/views.htm
Survival is about where the bullet enters and whether it passes through or stops short or ricochets in the skull. So it’s actually possible to survive a bullet in the head, but to survive unscathed, is less likely. 🤪
I just finished composing and typesetting my new piano piece inspired by Flower of Evil. I still need to practice it before recording it. Stay tuned!
Ahhh … Thanks for the heads-up @Snow Flower. You add a whole extra dimension to enjoying a show!!! 😄 🥰 😘