The thread is now open for closing remarks, final thoughts and goodbyes.
Take a bow, Moon Chae Won, Lee Joon Ki, and the supporting cast! Good job! You did well!
Let’s hope that everybody will get the ending that they deserve.
Gifs from sofarawayfromthemilkyway’s tumblr.
Let’s enjoy the finale!
Thanks @pkml3.
I’m still debating whether I want to watch this finale with or without the subs. I may well choose to wait and watch it tomorrow. We know from the preview that he recovers well enough to end up in court. With or without his memories, is the question.
Then only thing to wrap up is how Hyun Soo gets out of being unfairly judged:
The crimes that he committed:
– lied that he committed a crime he that he hadn’t to protect his sister,
– was an impostor, but at the acquiescence of the Baeks, who wanted his help to maintain their image
– did some bodily harm towards Baek Hee Sung
Did he do anything else that the law can take issue with? 😀
🙂 You’re being sneaky, @ Growing_Beautifully!! And I’m not falling for your trap.
I’m sure you noticed that I stopped commenting after Ep 8. I couldn’t continue discussing the drama without questioning the (il)legalities of his and Jiwon’s actions. Burning Do HyunSoo’s bag was the last straw for me.
This blog is meant to be my non-political, non-legal, non-work, all-fun, all-artsy-fartsy, all-bitchy escape. It’s okay with me if y’all analyze the emotional, legal, and marital ramifications of Hyunsoo’s and Jiwon’s actions. And I’m truly glad you’re here to lead the discussion, GB.
But I had to recuse myself because of peptic ulcers. hahaha.
Hahahahha!! @pkml3, Didn’t think you’d read my comment, but glad to know you did. Thank you for your warm words, kind acceptance (and tolerance) of my usual nonsense. 😆
I did think some bitches would remember other illegalities that our main leads came up with, … should have known you’d be first to notice and cringe. 😂
Yeah, I know what you mean. For me, what gets my goat is when shows insult us viewers: by giving us crappy dialogue, by spoiling a good plot with inanities and plot holes, by wasting time on fan service, … by losing focus. I tolerate a certain degree of it, but when it goes on for more than a couple of episodes, I reach the level of annoyance that makes me stop watching it properly or altogether.
I’m fast approaching this with ‘Alice’ and may bail at any time.
With FoE, most of us can ignore the procedural irregularities, and just go in for the emotional and other aspects that are well done.
As you can tell from the time I’m writing this, I’m not watching the finale yet. Maybe I should get to it with a brain refreshed from sleep!
Catch ya later!
lol. I usually check the first few responses to a thread I open, then I let it be.
I may catch up with Flower of Evil later and simply focus on the love angle. I like the raw acting of Lee JoonKi. He makes “desperation” appear sexy again. But I just wasn’t in the mood to watch a show with more of the same stuff I’m escaping from.
As for “Alice,” what bugs me most in that show is the Female Lead’s growing affection for the the guy. SHE’s distracting me from the police ineptness and inefficiency, oddly enough.
The focus of the shows are also different. “Flower of Evil” is realistic; “Alice” is science fiction.
With “Flower of Evil,” the movement of the plot is how to fool the police and/or how to circumvent the law. I can’t remove the police from the story because the wife is supposed to be the enforcer of law and order.
With “Alice,” the focus is how to make the time travel work. I can remove the police bureaucracy (because they’re THAT irrelevant to the plot, lol), and view the story simply as a struggle among scientists/physicists vs corporate people vs ?? (I don’t know what Director Seok and Officer Go are).
But yes, “Alice” is a car wreck of a story. sigh.
I congratulate the production team of Flower of Evil. They’ve done a fantastic job of wrapping up this series on a superbly satisfying emotional note, while keeping the characters consistent and true.
Show has generously given us characters who have overcome their flaws and flawed pasts, to begin again in a way true to character and fitting. I appreciate the script where character awareness and sincerity shine through so beautifully. No more deception, no posturing or hiding. The conversations of Hyun Soo and Ji Won, of Hae Su and Moo Jin shone with sincerity. These dialogues will be a tough act to follow in any other serious show with good character development.
Kudos of course to all the cast, and especially to Lee Joon Gi who’s raised to an art, the ability to evoke deep emotions in me (or can I saw in viewers generally?) with just a twitch or a crinkle on his face. I applaud him again and again for an uplifting and authentic performance that gave the best catharsis after weeks of tension.
Legal irregularities aside, this show has been truly one of the best in marrying a crime detection tale with a serious human interest story, in balancing the weightiness of ravaged youth with future sanguine hope, and suffering with honest humour, that was not at all inane.
I look forward to more works from this production team! 😃 🥰
I agree with every word, @GB.
Same I agree with everything you said @GB
I’ll miss Eun-Ha’s scenes. Probably the most adorable baby girl I’ve seen in a kdrama so far. Some Korean egg tart company needs to sponsor her.
Agree, @John L! I like her chubby cheeks!
Here is Flower of Deception, my piano piece inspired by Flower of Evil. I thought that a dark and romantic tangofull of twists and turns was a perfect fit for the relationship of Hyun Soo and Ji Won.
https://soundcloud.com/user-858010722/flower-of-deception
And now I have to look up egg tart recipes!
@GB, thank you for your write-up. I agree with you totally.
Although there are flaws in the show, I really enjoyed watching the finale a lot! Great cast especially Lee Joon Gi – he’s such a master in his job! Moonoon Chae Won portrayed her role really well also, especially in the finale! She really made my heart ached.
@Miracle23, I have to agree with that this gotta be the best show of TvN in 2020.
I miss this show already and I’ve just started watching Alice. Seems like I might regret after reading you ladies conversations above, @GB & @PM3
Even when I already saw clips of the ending scene, I can’t help but cry after I properly watched the finale. Temporary amnesia is such a tiring trope but I guess it really worked here, what with having your head shot by a gun, there’s a greater chance of amnesia happening. I wished tho that he should’ve/could’ve forgotten about his life before Jiwon, but it really sucks that you would feel incomplete when you don’t know your history. Oh well, the pain our characters have to go through 😭.
Anyway, I agree with what @GB said. The legal irregularities may be jarring to some but as what the cast has stated in one of the interviews, this drama is more on the melodrama side. But I love that somehow, FOE team balanced the melodrama and crime genres in this drama. One of the best out there really.
@Snowflower you created yet another great masterpiece 😃. Though I think I would prefer for the last seconds to fade out instead of a strong ending. (I hope you can understand what I mean here, I’m not really good with expressing thoughts)
All in all, Flower of Evil is such a nice rollercoaster journey. Onto the next one 😃.
LOL, thanks for agreeing with my thoughts, dear @Snow Flower, @BeingWritten, @Au0101, @LeeDale9198 it was fun putting them down.
I’m slowly re-watching and beginning to notice more and more gems in this show. I like the bookend-ing of the first Episodes kiss and the last Episode’s couple kiss, plus the lovely family hug!! The image of a dance comes readily to mind.
And @Snow Flower your music perfectly complemented that image of our OTP dancing their twisty tango, in each others’ arms and sealing each section with a kiss at every few bars. LOL. It was a fun listen (and re-listen) … thanks @Snow Flower!!
Yes @GB, the finale was like a movie itself. I was able to ignore the flaws and enjoy the beautiful story. I also like the scene Hyun Soo went back to the alley where their first date took place according to Ji Won and that was when he was attracted to her initially. That was shown after the scene the two of them stood outside of the witness’ apartment ,also raining at the time, and he was once again attracted to JW.
I love the details Kdrama offers in small things. Definitely love the notes HS wrote about JW in his diary.
Random Thoughts
On the Edge
The Baek Hee Sung and police shooting scene, I thought was very appropriately shot near the end of a cliff. We may recall that Do Min Seok had told a young 10-year old HS : “HS, listen carefully. You could die if you lose your way out here. Because over that hill is a cliff.”
HS was precariously near the edge in a few ways. He could end up falling off the cliff edge, he was precariously close to committing murder and losing what made him human, he was hanging by a thread emotionally and mentally because he could not trust what he was seeing. He did not trust himself that Ji Won was alive because he still saw his dead father (the result of trauma from the forced, barbaric exorcisms) and he could tip over the edge and lose his family and himself.
The transition from so much stress and horror to the clinical MRI machine was a shocking contrast. From the outdoors of killing, chaos and confusion, we come to cold, silent, order, where one seeks to preserve life.
Little Irony
KMJ is depressed that Hae Su wants to go abroad to study.
KMJ to HS : “Should I wait for Hae Su?”
HS : “Do whatever you want.”
KMJ : “Nevermind. I’m going to forget about her. I’ll just erase her from my memory.”
The irony is that KMJ can’t forget and he’s talking Hyun Soo who can’t remember.
The Change
The most observable change in Hyun Soo after the crack in his skull, was his ability now to read the emotions of others effortlessly, whereas in the past he had never been sure of it, and he’d check the video instructor on facial expressions.
He had boasted to the Baeks that Ji Won only believed what she saw and that he could manipulate her because he could see right through her.
This was less true in the past than in the present. In the past he’d had to check with her what she felt and he couldn’t figure her out when she became cold and distant.
In the present, he was really able read the emotions and to manipulate others by saying what they wanted to hear.
Ji Won Takes Hyun Soo’s Advice
Ji Won plays the Yang Jin Tae conversation recording and hears HS’s voice saying :
She appears to take this to heart because when Eun Ha asks if mum and dad are divorced, JW tells her ‘No’ and :
Prefiguring Scenes
There were several scenes which remind us of earlier scenes that prefigured them, and show is great with giving us the flashbacks to help. Looping back shows that the writer took the trouble to plan the story out properly and deliberately left us clues and a foretaste of what was to come. Here are just a few.
Start of Ep 16 – At the studio wedding photos, Ji Won is upset that Mum and Dad Baek won’t come for the wedding. Hyun Soo consoles her with a promise that he’d have 2 weddings then (both with her.) True enough the show ends off with his wedding ring placed on his hand 2 times. Once when he was unconscious, and at the end when they reconciled. That was a second wedding of sorts, sealed with kisses amidst many tears.
Side Note: It’s telling that without the ring, HS ends up hurting himself. If the ring means connection to Ji Won, then removing the ring is a nice metaphor for HS’s breaking the connection that actually hurts him both physically and emotionally. Only with the ring and Ji Won, does he have balance in his life.
A great bookending and with contrast, is the first couple scene in the first episode where they are enthusiastically making out in the workshop, and then Ji Won runs off to prepare for birthday but gets the cold reception of the Baeks. And we come to the end, full circle in the same place, with our OTP reconciling with sweet kisses and then going off to meet Eun Ha who gives HS the warmest of smiles and hugs.
Det Choi Jae Sup tells Ji Won to :
At his birthday, in Episode 1, Eun Ha had declared that she was HS’s birthday gift. In the last scene of Episode 16, she declares that Daddy is a gift to her.
Hyun Soo Who Loves
The trauma of their youth and upbringing by their father had caused Hae Su and Hyun Soo to be ‘lost’. They’d not lived freely as themselves, or liking themselves, for a long time. Hyun Soo, had in addition been pegged to be more of a sociopath and possessed by the evil spirit of his father.
It is perhaps not surprising that Hyun Soo was not able to trust himself that he was good and able to care for others sincerely. It took the assurances of at least 3 persons and even then he was not fully convinced that he was able to love.
Compared to when he was Baek Hee Sung. there are more signs now that he was truly caring.
1) Besides the fact that he kept the wedding ring on with an excuse, (and he said he wasn’t used to not having it), and besides how he kept buying egg tarts out of some compulsion because he missed Eun Ha, there were repeated signs that he was still loved his family.
2) KMJ and HS were in the car talking and it becomes clear that Hyun Soo bothered about JW.
This is the 1st time someone told HS this. It did not convince him yet, but it started him considering that he might have loved JW.
3) As they waited outside Yang Jin Tae’s apartment, and it rained, he smiled when Ji Won smiled at the rain, and he was able to recall the first ‘date’ in the rain. When he realised that he was reading her emotions easily, he suddenly drew back as if he did not want to intrude and because he felt that he should keep a distance from her, so as not to hurt her again.
4) He risked losing Ji Won by telling the truth about how he manipulated Yang Jin Tae by lying. She was right that he was doing this deliberately. It was a kind of noble idiocy to show her that he might be unlovable, so that she’d run away and save herself. This in itself is a sign of sacrificial love. He was more upset about hurting her than about hurting himself.
I’m guessing she thinks he’s trying to hurt her so that she’ll not try to get close to him. And I agree that that’s what he is doing. Which paradoxically shows that he cares about her.
5) HS refuses to lie to her, in fact he’s truthful to a fault. HS tells JW in the car :
@GB,
I agree that this was a well planned and well paced drama. Good point on HS being EH’s gift in Episode 16, just like she is his gift in Episode 1. I liked how the show came full circle in the end. HS ended up in his own house and workshop (I was wondering where was he doing metal work while living with MJ? He mentioned that he tried to work but kept getting injured because he did not have the ring on.) The exchange between HS and JW (“I will be good to you”) was also an echo from an earlier episode.
The rings looked very cool!
Coming Home
A lot of things had to be brought home to Hyun Soo. For one thing he was still lost without much memory, so he was ‘homeless’ in a sense. It had to also be brought home to him that he was not as despicable as he feared he was. And he had to be convinced that he had loved JW genuinely before and therefore that he could do so again. And in the end, he literally found himself being led to his own home and workshop.
What Hae Su had advised was right :
And HS did know the answer. In the flashbacks where he found he could recall significant moments with Ji Won, the memories proved where his heart lay. He walks the narrow lane of their first date and has a memory flashback of JW saying :
The thought probably occured to him that he’s the same now as then, that he did love her still but did not know it for sure.
Although HS had separated himself from JW, in the end, he finds that he hadn’t actually forgotten everything about her or Eun Ha, and that he hadn’t changed what he liked and how he cared for his family. Despite not seeing Eun Ha for months, he was buying egg tarts (for her) enough to scare Kim Moo Jin. When looking for a property to match his requirements, the estate agent brought him right back to his own workshop and his home. I believe that just as he had never changed what he loved, so too he confirmed that he had never changed whom he loved.
And the name of the workshop brought home to him how much he identified with the Greek metalworking god who loved his Morning Star wife, Venus. Like the god, HS had spent a lot of time in that workshop but he’d been thinking of Ji Won. This is borne out by the number of notebooks filled with notes about her. If the words of KMJ, JW and Mum Baek were not enough to convince him, his own notes should have done the trick.
He had come to see that his real self wasn’t too different from the person his family and friends knew him to be, and that with Ji Won, he had come home.
Heheheh! I was just writing about what you said @Snow Flower! I really love the writing of this show, that respects the audience.
He said that he was practising his metalcraft again at some workshop. I guess they can ‘rent’ time to use the tools at workshops, as it’s too expensive to furnish one’s own place with all the tools and machinery needed.
I liked the rings a lot. In one of the episodes where JW had taken the police exam and passed, I believe HS was making those wedding rings. 🙂
@Au0101 I was noting the same things as you!! Returning to a cherished time/place … recalling quite a good deal … for someone who lost his memory. He seems to have retained enough significant moments in his memory to prove how important JW (and Eun Ha) are to him. So much evidence of so much love and the poor man didn’t know how to interpret it!!!
@GB, thank you so much! I love love love 💘 your writing! Thank you for watching this great drama and sharing your thoughts with me, ladies! I miss this drama already.
@GB, thank you for your comments. 🏆
What a satisfying and intelligent final episode! I loved how HS explained the name of the workshop to JW and how the diaries confirmed and linked his past and present feelings.
I had the feeling that however painful his flashbacks were, they were guiding him when he needed them and might even merge, in time, into some memories of his lost years with his family.
@Snowflower, thank you for the beautiful music. 💐
Okay Bitches, I’m late to comment, but first, want to say that this drama was emotionally satisfying to the vety end. While there were issues of legality (I spent 31 years at the NYC Probation departent going from a probation officer to a manager), I know if lots of irregularities in police investigations so I could buy into what was “illegal” in this drama. And I’mnot only thinking of corruption.
My take on Hyun Soo is that he spent most of his childhood being gaslighted by an evil father. His most inner nsture was andbis good-as shown by his desire to protect his sister, the live he shows for his daughter (and her lackmof fear of her daddy) and his various conflicing emotions towards his wife-but uktimately his love and need for her as symbolized by his work “accidents” whennot wearing his wedding ring. There was always something there-and Ichalk it up to the subconscious mind. His conscious oairing with a woman who wants tobe a police officer says something and I think he really wanted to get caught.
But my wrap up question is-was he legally married because he used a false name. And given family registries in Korea, would he have to marrynhis wife again with his true name. And will his little daughter get confused -do they teach young kids to write their names at that age(guven the academic presdure in Korea, I’msure they start early). So is this ultimately a case for family counselling? And does the real estate agent get mad because the house and workshop will come off the market? Thisvis the stuff that is notvtied up in K Dramas but these detakls are part of myneed for tidying up. I know its fiction,but still amcurious to see how this stuff works in Korea whereblegally marrying seems to be amatterbof filling out e right forms and registering the documents without much fanfare. I just get sooo confused.