The Last Scandal of My Life: Episode 8

by javabeans

Subtitles for Episodes 1 and 2 are now out, so check ’em out!

I think the reason Jae Bin is so endearing is that while he’s generally spoiled and immature, he’s actually capable of compassion and has flashes of maturity. He pushes Sun Hee’s buttons with his joking and pestering, but it’s like he’s so aware of her emotions that he knows when to back off and when he’s okay to nag her. But because he’s human, once in a while he mis-gauges and pokes her a little too hard before he realizes he’s done it.

Immature people = irritating. Mature people who can act immature as the occasion calls for it = endearing.

SONG OF THE DAY

Lee Eun Mi – “애인…있어요” which is used frequently as background music. This song is actually a repost from Goong S days and the title translates to “I have a lover.” [ Download ]

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EPISODE 8 RECAP

When Jae Bin arranges a meeting with Sun Hee’s ex, he recognizes Yoo Shik, who doesn’t really understand what’s going on but registers Jae Bin’s displeasure and immediately bolts in cowardly panic. Jae Bin chases Yoo Shik down the hall and through the hotel, catching up to him in the hotel lobby.

In front of a growing group of bystanders (who recognize Jae Bin and start snapping photos), Jae Bin angrily demands, “Are you Hong Sun Hee’s husband?” Yoo Shik nervously denies it, saying, “We got divorced today,” and Jae Bin lets his fist fly, muttering, “You son of a bitch!” His punch sends Yoo Shik to the ground, and Jae Bin growls, “Are you even human?” before his manager and assistant drag him away.

Dong Hwa takes Sun Hee to a quiet spot by the waterside to offer his apology for the night before. Now that she’s cooled down from the heat of the moment, Sun Hee embarrassedly offers her own apology for taking out her personal frustrations on her employer.

Trying to figure out what to do with his knowledge of Yoo Shik’s hasty engagement to Go Jung Sook, Dong Hwa asks Sun Hee a hypothetical question: What she would do if she found out a big secret about somebody, which might hurt that person to know now, or hurt them later if the truth were kept quiet? Sun Hee recalls an instance when a neighbor was caught having an affair, and she’d decided not to say anything. If the couple didn’t divorce, the info would only hurt the wife.

Dong Hwa: “So hypothetically if your husband were having an affair, you’re saying you wouldn’t want to be told, is that right?”
Sun Hee: “That’s right. In the end, most people decide to stay together for the children. Why hurt the woman’s heart like that? It could be the woman’s form of happiness to live in ignorance, thinking her husband is the best.”

Dong Hwa eases Sun Hee’s curiosity by saying he’s referring to a work-related business secret, and she sympathizes with his predicament, knowing that the secret-keeper has to cope with the heavy burden. Dong Hwa also asks her to keep working for him, and she accepts gratefully.

The punch between Jae Bin and Yoo Shik is spun to the press by Dong Hwa, and reported as a “sexual-harassment misunderstanding.” Ha. Jae Bin’s proud of himself, but Sun Hee (not knowing who the other person was) chastises him for attacking an innocent stranger. Jae Bin is confused when Sun Hee takes a call from Yoo Shik, and wonders why she sounds so normal when she just got divorced. Annoyed, he grabs her phone and hangs it up for her. (She kicks him and grabs it back.)

Jae Bin keeps harping on her divorce, and asks why she doesn’t act like someone who just got divorced. Having agreed to keep their strange “technically divorced only” status quiet, Sun Hee answers that they’re keeping civil for Jimin’s sake.

Called away to handle his punching of Yoo Shik, Jae Bin asks Sun Hee: “If you had to hit a truly detestable guy in just one place, where would you hit him?” Sun Hee thinks about it, then answers, “The back of the head!” Jae Bin files this info away for future use.

Yoo Shik has attempted to make himself look less cowardly by telling Jung Sook that Jae Bin came out of nowhere and punched him, but she takes his story seriously and is offended on his behalf. Thus she insists on meeting the brothers to demand an apology.

The meeting is amusingly awkward, because neither brother can stand the sight of Yoo Shik, but Dong Hwa maintains an icy-polite façade while Jae Bin doesn’t bother to hide his low opinion. When Yoo Shik escapes to the bathroom, Jae Bin follows and unexpectedly gives Yoo Shik a sudden slap upside the back of the head. At the urinals. HA.

Yoo Shik is truly bewildered, and defends himself — he’s a divorced man! He ventures, “Are you and Sun Hee… in a relationship?” Jae Bin answers, “And if I am?” which prompts Yoo Shik to wonder what a star like him would do with a married lady with a child. Jae Bin slaps him again (“She’s not married, she’s divorced”).

To bring a quick end to the awkward gathering, Yoo Shik lies and tells Jung Sook that the men have aired out their differences, and the three (very reluctantly) toast in front of her.

Back at home, Jae Bin calls Sun Hee to the basement workout room and surprises her with a cake and a song: “Happy divorce to you…”

Interpreting his lighthearted gesture as him amusing himself at her expense, Sun Hee reacts in a mixture of exasperation and annoyance. He answers, “I didn’t do it to amuse myself. I did it to encourage you to live happily from now on.”

Jae Bin: “When he asked you to marry him, he must’ve promised to love you, to be with you for the rest of his life, to make you happy. Were you happy? I see you can’t respond right away. See, he is a bad guy.”
Sun Hee: “If you look at it that way, all married men are bad guys.”
Jae Bin: “Just figured that out now?”
Sun Hee: “But there were good times, too. You might not understand, but that’s what marriage is. You take a short, happy memory and live with it for a long time, and whenever you feel hate, get upset, or want to cry, you take those memories out and put up with it, you idiot.”

Just then, they hear footsteps above — Dong Hwa — and startle. Since Dong Hwa doesn’t know of their past together (and her position has met with a rocky start), their instinct is to hide and not have to explain their odd familiarity.

They douse the candles and hold their breaths until the footsteps retreat back upstairs, after which they start bickering about whose fault it is. They don’t know that Dong Hwa, still on the main floor, can hear them as they start joking again and Sun Hee oohs over the yummy cake (Jae Bin bought her favorite kind, to which she retorts that he can’t know what she likes best; he answers that it’s the most expensive and she likes expensive things).

The next day, Na Yoon drops by with notes on Jae Bin’s styling for the movie, to his disgust — she’s doing her best to be sweet and insinuate herself back into his life, but he’s not having it. The children arrive from school, and Na Yoon swiftly engages Hoon in an offer of a chess game. Jae Bin declines to join them, instead inviting Jimin and Sun Hee outside to play games in the yard. Na Yoon changes her mind and suggests everyone play together.

But Na Yoon finds she’s continually the odd man out — the kids stick together, and Jae Bin sticks to Sun Hee. (And a crew member(?) gets caught lurking in the background.)

When Sun Hee asks for time off for personal reasons, Jae Bin first dumps excess housework on her, then fakes illness to keep her home. She stays to tend to his sickness, but sneaks out quietly once he’s fallen asleep.

Which means that Jae Bin wakes up in a bad mood to find her gone, frustrated at her continued loyalty to her idiot ex-husband. She returns with grocery bags of food, but Jae Bin is convinced she’s using that as a cover-up for having gone out to meet Yoo Shik, and upends the bags’ contents. As suspected, there are papers mixed in, but they’re not what he’s expecting. I can’t get a clear look at them, but Sun Hee has gone out to collect a large stash of identical forms bearing Jimin’s current name, in the event that she’ll need them for school or whatnot. (In Korea, children take their fathers’ last names, while wives keep their maiden names.)

Sun Hee explains that she wanted to grab as many forms as she could before the name change was made official: “You can’t understand. No matter what excuses I may make, when people hear I’m divorced, they’ll all look at me strangely. Even you bring up the word ‘divorce’ every chance you get.”

Belatedly feeling guilt for his behavior, Jae Bin clumsily tries to make it up to her by picking up the fallen groceries.

As he’s about to leave the house for his movie press conference, Jae Bin sees Sun Hee polishing the dishes in a gloomy mood, and asks what’s wrong. He chides her, saying she’s probably just going to gorge herself on comfort food the instant he leaves and give herself indigestion. She doesn’t respond directly, but says she feels like eating some bread and asks him to bring back some pastries on his way home — and be sure to buy the most expensive kind.

Jae Bin quite adorably breaks into a smile, and armed with a task, he leaves the house in cheerful spirits. It’s like all his poking and prodding of Sun Hee stems from his difficulty in knowing how to treat her nicely, but once she gives him a specific request, he’s all about it. You half expect him to bring home every pastry from the bakery.

At the hotel, Jae Bin poses in front of a phalanx of cameras and reporters with Na Yoon, with Dong Hwa watching from the side (Dong Hwa also sees Yoo Shik and Jung Sook at the hotel for their engagement party, but avoids them). The event is progressing in typical fashion, until Jae Bin spots someone enter across the room — Sun Hee.

While cleaning up Dong Hwa’s desk at home, Sun He had found the engagement party invitation and was struck with the name on the card. Suddenly uneasy, she recalls all the strange coincidences with Yoo Shik, and unable to banish her fears, she heads to confirm that the man in the invitation isn’t her ex-husband, as she keeps telling herself.

Distracted at the sight of Sun Hee clutching the engagement invitation — Jae Bin disentangles himself from his pose with Na Yoon and tells the surprised reporters that he’ll be right back.

Jae Bin finds Sun Hee and drags her into a secluded area to ask what she’s doing here. She insists, “It’s suspicious. I have to make sure.” Jae Bin tries to convince her to go home quietly, that she’s acting oddly, but his attempt to play off the event comes across more like a desperate attempt to keep her away. She cries out on the verge of tears that the man has the same name as her husband: “I know this man isn’t my husband. So I’m going to make sure with my own eyes.”

Sun Hee runs out toward the hall hosting the engagement party, leaving Jae Bin to follow after her, shouting her name in vain — just as Na Yoon, unable to stay still, comes looking for him. Followed by the entire troop of reporters.

Jae Bin catches up to her just outside the hall, where she reads the names of the engaged couple. Wracked with fear, Sun Hee asks:

Sun Hee: “Dong Chul — what do I do if he’s my husband? What do I do?”

Jae Bin can only look at her in worry until Sun Hee hears Yoo Shik’s voice behind her, and starts to turn to see who the man is —

— and in a last-ditch effort to prevent her from seeing Yoo Shik with his new fiancée, Jae Bin grabs her and holds her against himself.

He tells her, “Don’t go” — just as Na Yoon, Dong Hwa, and the frantic reporters swarm around the couple, barraging Jae Bin with a flurry of questions.

Jae Bin turns to see his brother standing nearby, and calls to him. Dong Hwa responds to his brother’s unspoken request for help and immediately steps in, telling the reporters that the event is canceled. He takes off his jacket and covers Sun Hee with it, and together, the two brothers usher Sun Hee through the crowd.

 
Additionally…

I didn’t really dig Sun Hee’s stance earlier in the episode when she told Dong Hwa she’d rather live in blissful ignorance if her husband were cheating. I think part of her may sense what Dong Hwa wants to say, and was trying to rebuff his attempt to tell her out of fear. But as we see at the end of the episode, Sun Hee’s come around and has decided that despite her fear, she’d rather know with certainty, even if that means all her illusions come crumbling down.

As for that last scene… Woo, not bad as far as grand romantic gestures go, right? Still, I think my favorite aspect of the scene was seeing the brotherly relationship assert itself — we get the impression that their relationship may be cordial, but has gone through its share of rocky times. And while they love each other as brothers, they don’t quite see eye to eye as men. Dong Hwa’s made a career out of cleaning up after Jae Bin’s mishaps and smoothing things over, like when Jae Bin hits Yoo Shik in the beginning of the episode. But then, as now, when Jae Bin is stuck in a mess of his own making (granted, a nobly romantic one this time), he turns to his brother, and his brother comes through without hesitation. Aw.

 
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