Crash Course in Romance: Episodes 13-14

by mistyisles

Things get pretty dire as the killer hones in on his next target and the teens face an agonizing moral dilemma. Unfortunately, that means the romance — and even more so the comedy — gets moved to the back burner to make room for piecing together clues and putting everyone through the emotional wringer.

EPISODES 13-14

The high schoolers take front seat this week, starting with Hae-yi and Sun-jae realizing mid-exam that the study papers Seo-jin procured for Sun-jae were the exam itself. Sun-jae fills in the answers anyway, making him the top-scorer of the school, and bolts as soon as it’s over, unable to face Hae-yi. As for Hae-yi herself, she spends the whole time wrestling with her conscience, and ultimately turns in a blank answer sheet.

In the days that follow, Hae-yi tries repeatedly to talk to Sun-jae, hoping to convince him to confess. Truthfully, that’s what Sun-jae wants, too, but Seo-jin responds to his tearful pleas with a horribly manipulative go ahead — if you want to see me hospitalized again. All Sun-jae can do is cry in frustration and shame every time Hae-yi calls, and all Hee-jae can do is offer silent support.

One night, after Hae-yi tries unsuccessfully to get Sun-jae to meet her at the playground, Seo-jin sees the message and calls Hae-yi to meet with her instead. Her claim that Sun-jae is doing fine and will continue to do so as long as no one rocks the boat doesn’t fly with Hae-yi. Sun-jae is very much not fine, Hae-yi says firmly, and she’ll do what she believes is right.

That night, Hae-yi goes missing. Her disappearance reunites Haeng-sun and Chi-yeol, who were back on uncertain terms after Haeng-sun caught Dong-hee deliberately throwing away food she made for Chi-yeol and the hagwon staff. (She’s now almost certain the boating “accident” wasn’t an accident; Chi-yeol still prefers to believe there must be a misunderstanding between them.) Now, Chi-yeol does his best to keep everyone relatively calm as they search for Hae-yi and report to the police, who can’t track her phone since it’s turned off.

So who was responsible for Hae-yi’s vanishing? Was it Seo-jin? Was it Su-ah, who’s falling apart at the seams and has already imagined pushing Hae-yi to her death at least twice? Nope, it was Dong-hee. (Of course it was.) Hae-yi caught him aiming his slingshot at Haeng-sun through the front gate, so he kidnapped her. Hae-yi managed to escape by using his fountain pen to break the tape around her wrists and ankles, and he chased her through the streets into the pathway of an oncoming car.

Hae-yi survives, thank goodness, but there’s no guarantee she’ll wake up from her coma. Dong-hee leaves a fake suicide note on her phone for the police to find, and since no one saw him chasing her, everyone assumes she jumped in front of the car on purpose — except Haeng-sun, who knows none of the details add up. The police won’t listen to her, though, going so far as to insinuate Haeng-sun being Hae-yi’s aunt rather than biological mother somehow makes her likely to have been abusive. The number of actually abusive (biological) mothers in this show doesn’t make the assumption any less infuriating.

Speaking of Hae-yi’s biological mother, she finally shows up, having been in Japan all this time. And of course she also blames Haeng-sun for Hae-yi’s condition.

Hae-yi’s friends are all devastated by the news, but none more than Sun-jae. After the midterm results are announced, he snaps and marches straight up to the roof, intending to throw himself off. Geon-hu stops him in the nick of time, and has to physically fight Sun-jae until they both run out of energy to keep him from trying again. Geon-hu doesn’t know what went down between Sun-jae and Hae-yi, but he points out that Hae-yi wouldn’t want to see Sun-jae like this, and that’s the final push Sun-jae needs to come clean.

Meanwhile, Chi-yeol and the detectives are working together to sort through clues. After catching Dong-hee in another lie, Chi-yeol finally realizes Dong-hee has been pulling strings to make Chi-yeol’s career turn out the way he (Dong-hee) thinks is best for Chi-yeol. When confronted, Dong-hee affirms that he preferred the Chi-yeol from before he met Haeng-sun — the one who devoted every second of his miserable life to his career and was totally dependent on Dong-hee to keep going.

From there, it’s just a matter of confirming that the last few clues do indeed point to Dong-hee. Hee-jae didn’t see Dong-hee’s face when he witnessed Yi-sang’s murder, but he barely escaped being throttled by Dong-hee himself, and testifies that the killer has a heavy callous on his index finger. That’s easy enough for Chi-yeol to check, and sure enough — Dong-hee’s finger fits the description.

Plus, the ink stains on Hae-yi’s wrist match the fountain pen Dong-hee always carries. The same fountain pen that Chi-yeol gave Su-hyun before her death. Because yes, Dong-hee was her younger brother. And it looks like he very well may have pushed their mother off the balcony, after days of being abused by her for falling asleep instead of studying.

I’ll admit, I haven’t minded the murder mystery aspect of the story up till now. But I understand why so many people have found it extremely off-putting, and even I wasn’t a fan of the turn this week took. I almost wished it had been Su-ah instead of Dong-hee who attacked Hae-yi — though I’d much rather Hae-yi not have been hurt, let alone put in a coma, at all. That said, however, I did appreciate some of what resulted from it.

The scene where Jae-woo broke down, used to being the one who has to be rushed to the hospital but unsure of how to handle seeing Hae-yi in that position instead, was very moving, and far better than the awkward scenes he and Young-joo have shared the past few episodes. Likewise, Sun-jae finally getting through to his mother with the question of whether her career — the thing she’s trying so hard to secure for him at the expense of all else — actually makes her happy was powerful. But I’m not convinced that a serial killer was needed to make either of these scenes happen.

Does it kill my enjoyment of the show? No. But it does make me wonder what it would have been like if the show had let its characters work through their problems individually and together without using murders and kidnappings to force their hands. (And I say that as a big fan of murder mysteries!)

But here’s hoping that with Chi-yeol having discovered the truth, Sun-jae having confessed, and the other moms having stopped letting Su-hee run their whole show, finale week can quickly wrap up the murder stuff and get it out of the way so these characters can all do some much-needed healing.

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Crash Course in Romance: Episodes 13-14