Strangers Again: Episodes 7-8

by missvictrix

Trouble at home for our heroine means coming to terms with her feelings — first learning to acknowledge them, and then having the courage to express them. Meanwhile, our hero takes cover in his newest case, and though he’s trying to hide, his feelings come to find him too.

EPISODES 7-8 WEECAP

Welp, they totally had me (and Eun-bum) hoodwinked last week — thankfully, Ha-ra’s client is not the same woman that her father was involved with, but the cat is out of the bag when Eun-bum gives it all away. Painful as it is, I actually like that Eun-bum was the one to tell her about her father’s infidelities, and I also like that the drama handled that off-screen.

Ha-ra is shattered, but just like she reacted to Eun-bum’s betrayal when the drama first started, she processes her feelings by huffing and puffing and throwing all her heartache into high stakes litigation. And so, she’s busy confronting her father, chucking around one-liners, and convincing (or trying to convince) her mother to file for divorce, to file a suit against the mistress, etc.

I don’t dislike what this plot arc has brought to the table for our heroine and her growth, but we pass through this whole thing so fast that it was hard for me to feel as connected to this as I did Ha-ra’s initial hurt over Eun-bum’s infidelity. But these rough family circumstances do a few things for our heroine’s own arc — from acknowledging the difficulty of divorce, to having Eun-bum be the person she goes to again and again as her shoulder to cry on.

At first it starts out silly — like when Eun-bum walks into his office and Ha-ra is laying across his office couch with a cold pack on her forehead — but later it gets far more serious. When everything finally hits Ha-ra, and the emotional cover she’s taken in her ire and her litigation slips away, she finds herself in a dark moment… and she calls Eun-bum for help.

The drama handled this nicely, and we can see how Eun-bum is the one Ha-ra reaches for instinctively. It was also nice to see the drama returning to the imaginary scenes that it employed earlier in the show. Sure the CGI is cheesy, but that’s kind of what makes it so visceral. We saw Ha-ra in an old west shoot-out with Eun-bum many episodes ago, but now the imaginary scenes take a darker turn, as Ha-ra stands on a dark expanse of ice that’s cracking beneath her. Just when she’s about to fall, it’s Eun-bum that saves her. (This is a wonderful inversion of earlier in the drama when their roles were reversed and she let him fall from his metaphorical cliff.)

And so, throughout our episodes this week, we see Ha-ra coming to terms with the truth: she still loves Eun-bum. Earlier, when Jae-gyeom was pursuing her, she recognized that she wasn’t over him, but now it’s different. Now she knows she still loves him. And in a way, Jae-gyeom sees it too, and their breakup fight was not unexpected. While I was glad to see them part amicably (and Ha-ra quickly taking his advice to be honest with herself), I am a little salty at Jae-gyeom. I guess he wasn’t as good at waiting as he thought.

With Jae-gyeom out of the picture, and Eun-bum — and Eun-bum only — in her heart, Ha-ra has some decisions to make. With the help of her trusty (and oh-so-obviously-pregnant) Bi-chwi, Ha-ra decides to confess her feelings to Eun-bum.

As for Eun-bum, he’s neck deep in his case with Ha-ra’s ex-client. What started as a simple suit to get her daughter recognized, became a stabbing with a kitchen knife. Ha-ra is too busy with her family issues to take the case, so Eun-bum takes it on, touting himself as a lawyer with a 100% win rate. What he fails to mention is that that 100% is from his meager two criminal cases. Still, he puts everything into the case, but when the stabbed man dies, assault charges turn into murder charges and it gets ugly fast.

We get into a little too many particulars of the case for my liking — especially since we’re running short on our episode count and I want to see more relationship healing happen — but it serves to open Eun-bum’s eyes a bit, too.

Earlier, we noticed a change in his behavior towards Ha-ra. He’s subtly (and sometimes not-to-subtly) icing her out. He’s still friendly and listens to her at first, but seems distracted, and as if he doesn’t want to let her in. Then, it gets more pronounced as the episode progresses. But when did it all start? The drama isn’t explicit, but for me, it’s when Ha-ra called him in that moment of darkness on the cracking ice and told him she wanted to die. He rushed over to her, and — curses on the choppy editing aside — came to her rescue.

The two wake up undressed in a hotel room bed, and this scene is an important turning point for both of them. It’s also one of the strongest of this week’s episodes for me, because it did so much with so little.

Ha-ra wakes up and turns over in the bed, and sees the familiar sight of her undressed husband in bed beside her. He grumbles that she always takes the covers, and is intentionally sleeping on the farthest side of the bed with his back to her. The way she stares as his bare back and slowly skooches towards him was so well done. And kudos on the acting, because you never for a second forget these two characters were once a married couple.

Ha-ra is overcome with loneliness and also attraction to Eun-bum; she asks if he wants to sleep with her and we just see him staring at her and swallowing hard. In the next cut, though, Ha-ra is complaining to Bi-chwi that nothing happened, and mourns that he truly doesn’t feel a thing for her anymore. Of course, it’s obvious the opposite is true, and that his feelings for her are what are driving him away.

Ha-ra does’t realize this, and instead embarks on her ten confessions — expecting ten rejections — with the hope of moving on after that. And though we see several quick scenes of her flashing finger hearts at him and sending “I love you” instant messages at work, this is one instance where I was bemoaning the drama’s use of its screen time. The story would have benefitted from giving more screen time to Ha-ra’s evolving feelings, and her cascade of confessions, and less time to the woman that maybe did/maybe didn’t want to kill her baby daddy.

In the end, though, both plot lines converge. Eun-bum’s closing argument for the case is that both love and hate were at play in his client’s actions. He learned this from Ha-ra, because during one of their earlier exchanges, he asked her, “Don’t you hate me for what I did?” Ha-ra says she does… but that she also loves him. As our episodes close, it’s time for Ha-ra’s tenth and final confession. To her surprise, Eun-bum actually accepts it, and says they should date.

So, as cute as this was, I still need to see more of what’s going on in Eun-bum’s head if I’m going to believe that he’s willing to get romantically involved with Ha-ra again. The drama has given us precious little of him, continually focusing on Ha-ra’s development, so I’m hoping that is what our final chunk of episodes will cover. The Eun-bum we know acts like a jerk, and doesn’t mind if people think he’s a jerk, and even is kind of a jerk sometimes. But he’s also super soft, tenderhearted, and especially kind towards the younger people around him. (I’m hoping the drama is going to do something with this.)

While the drama lost a bit of its shape for me this week, especially when we were dealing with Ha-ra’s family drama (I’m still not convinced that was entirely necessary to propel the plot), I continue to admire how the drama can do breezy and serious simultaneously. Lighter moments of humor are balanced with deep emotions that are nuanced and realistic, and the latter is definitely what keeps me going through the airtime we spend in the courtroom.

I am so very invested in this couple finding their way back to each other, and I want the drama to have all the space it needs to make that a satisfying journey. My guess is that next week’s case will finally bring Eun-bum’s scars to the fore, and we’ll have a chance — along with Ha-ra — to see him heal. And then, perhaps, we’ll have the fluttery moments between our leads that are sorely needed. I don’t know about you, but this rom-com is lacking in the rom!

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Strangers Again: Episodes 7-8