Adamas: Episodes 11-12
by missvictrix
It’s another wild week for Adamas with huge announcements, betrayals, and long-hid truths revealed. The rules of the game have totally changed and our characters’ cards are out in the open — but somehow it’s even more tense and harder to trust people than ever before.
EPISODES 11-12 WEECAP
There’s far too much to cover this week (and to swoon over) so I’ll skip the preamble and get us right back to the Haesong 80th anniversary party. It doesn’t go as planned. For anyone.
Our handsome Woo-shin has one of several charged encounters with Hye-soo this week, but soon he’s off on his mission. Thanks to an incredibly lame “distraction” courtesy of Dong-rim, and some careful pre-planning around the security system with Tae-sung, Woo-shin sneaks away from the party to steal the adamas for a second time. But OMG, it’s like an instant replay. The case is empty, and Woo-shin is so crestfallen it would be sad if it wasn’t so threatening: there’s a newspaper in the case from the day Lee Chang-woo was taken in for the murder. Someone knows his game…
Woo-shin heads back to the party (barely making it outta there, but with Hye-soo helping) and he sees a familiar face. It’s Soo-hyun, who arrives flinging his invite around and marching right up to Chairman Kwon in his totally-not-black-tie outfit.
But Dragon Lady Kwon’s surprise event is about to start. And no, it’s not a piñata full of rose petals for her beloved chairman. She takes the stage and opens the infamous suitcase we know holds the adamas. Then she takes it out and wields it over her head like an Amazonian warrior, eventually pointing it at Chairman Kwon himself. She accuses him of all the murderous and terrible things he’s done over the decades, and announces that the adamas is a murder weapon. “I’ll expose your true demonic face!” she screams.
WOW. I knew Woo-shin got to her, but I didn’t think it was going to escalate quite this dramatically. Important to note that Chairman Kwon barely blinks an eye in the face of this very public string of accusations. He merely says that the police should be alerted that they found the thief that was after the adamas.
While all this is going on, Seo-hee is enduring what becomes an over three-hour ordeal with a bomb strapped to her and an EOD team working painstakingly to dismantle it around her. All the while her hand has been duct-taped — thanks to Hyuk-pil — to the detonator to prevent her finger from shifting out of fatigue… and also to help prove that she’s not a suicide bomber but a victim.
Like so many Adamas plot lines, this bomb story arc has a half dozen permutations — all fantastic – and eventually the team realizes that Seo-hee is holding a remote control, not a detonator, and that the target isn’t the SIH, but a populated market where the slimy Candidate Hwang is currently campaigning.
We only get to enjoy a brief conversation with our twins in the same forest scene before Soo-hyun heads off to save the day, Seo-hee, and the SIH. And also Candidate Hwang, whom he really does save by preventing him from evacuating the threat zone into his K-pop van (which is where the bomb is actually secreted).
While Soo-hyun is busy with that, Woo-shin has also left the mansion (or, has been allowed to leave), and he follows the adamas to the police station where he comes face to face with Team Leader Lee who seems to be waiting for him. It’s tense as heck, and while Lee pins our boy to the wall, he smashes the “diamond” against it, thus telling Woo-shin — no words needed — that it’s been a fake all along. He then tells Woo-shin the only reason he’s been allowed to live is to locate the real one.
Woo-shin might be losing hard, but he hits the fire alarm in an epic hero moment; Lee slams him against the table, unconscious, before escaping. When he wakes up, Woo-shin’s shock is palpable.
But this is Adamas, and we have a bunch of other reveals to go before the end of the episodes! The next one is that Chairman Kwon knew the adamas was fake all along (remind me never to be a jeweler) — and wow, he really played the long game. He kept Lee Chang-woo alive and in prison for so many years, and essentially worked up this entire plot — everything we have seen unfold thus far — in order to get the Song boys to find the real adamas.
I like this as a reveal, but it’s not at all unexpected, since the Evil Chairman trope is every screenwriter’s favorite. But there’s still a lot of room for more entanglements, so we’ll see where things go from here. Not that I think he’s not evil.
The bomb situation is dealt with, but the SIH has a giant mess on their hands since it’s been made to look like an inside job. But more important is this Seo-hee/Soo-hyun relationship! While she was kidnapped, Soo-hyun was distressed to the point of choking up, and it might not have been the point of the scene, but when Seo-hee later wakes up in the hospital with Soo-hyun hanging over her, I was swooning hard. What a fierce duo! I love them.
Chairman Kwon has successfully suppressed all the news-worthy events that occurred during the party, but when he summons Sun to the mansion and she spills the beans on the whole suicide bomber fiasco, Chairman Kwon is furious. I really don’t know how he deals with having Hyun-jo as a son.
But Sun was at the mansion for another reason. We find out that she got a mission from the chairman himself, and when Team Leader Lee inquires what it was — well — it was him. And as he chokes on the wine Sun poisoned, he realizes it a fraction of a second too late. I’m not particularly sorry to see him go, but it’s rather brutal to watch how all these baddies turn on each other so fast.
Speaking of turning, Hye-soo is all over the map of late, and seems more committed than ever to exposing the chairman’s crimes. But first she gets the shock of her life — so many shocks this week — when Hyun-jo finally and tauntingly admits that he was the one that killed Min-jo.
And sure enough we see a flashback of a stricken Chairman Kwon grieving over his beloved youngest, while simultaneously commending his oldest on getting rid of his enemy. We also later learn that he “punished” Hyun-jo himself by keeping Hye-soo around to torment him. Well, if it wasn’t clear before, these people have lost all humanity.
Well, that was the end of what Hye-soo could take, it seems, and she first talks to Dragon Lady Kwon at the precinct and tells her that she’s going to do what she couldn’t: see to it that the chairman and Haesong are destroyed. Then, later, we see this in action when Hye-soo approaches the chairman and requests that he fulfills the “gift” once promised to her father (i.e., the death of whomever she wishes). In yet another thrilling reveal, it’s Hyun-jo’s name on the slip of paper, but the father refuses. The two strike a new deal.
And then, finally, it’s Soo-hyun’s turn for his shocking reveal — everyone has had at least one this week — and he shares an important conversation with his brother. Woo-shin is sitting staring at the giant action figure (come on, guys!) and slowly but clearly tells Soo-hyun that their real father is Lee Chang-woo.
This drama is crazy, right? Even though this week mostly delivered reveals of info we already knew to characters that didn’t, it’s still electrifying to see it all come together. The stellar acting doesn’t hurt either.
With two more weeks to go, it feels like everything is tightening. So much of the game is out in the open now, and we get to look forward to our twins’ next challenges: for Woo-shin, it’s finding out where the real adamas is hidden (and dealing with Hye-soo whom he can or cannot trust); for Soo-hyun, it’s defending Lee Chang-woo as his attorney (because he unceremoniously quit his job to do so).
I love pretty much everything about this drama (well, except how the story has handled Sun), but I think one of my favorite things is that as the story unravels, so much of the ground we stood on has disappeared. In the end, if our guesses are right, the boys have had the adamas within their grasp for the last 22 years, and that packs a glorious, gut-wrenching punch.
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Adamas: Episodes 11-12
Source: Buzz Pinay Daily
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