Hyde, Jekyll, Me: Episode 6

by girlfriday

Yay, I’m happy to report that yesterday’s episode wasn’t a fluke—it may have taken two weeks for Hyde, Jekyll, Me to find its rom-com center, but now that our hero has softened, the romantic development is actually coming along. It’s not that I didn’t have faith that Seo-jin would become likable, but there’s SUCH a difference between tolerating a fussy grumpypants while he’s going through his jackass phase, and enjoying every minute of hilarity when he’s in denial about his feelings and acting out like a teenager. Seo-jin, meet Jealousy. Jealousy, meet your new best friend.

 
SONG OF THE DAY

Shim Hyun-bo – “웃어본다” (Try Smiling) [ Download ]

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EPISODE 6 RECAP

Bolstered by liquid courage, Hana tells Robin (or, as we know, Seo-jin pretending to be Robin) that she likes him. Seo-jin wears his shock right there on his face, and she starts to second-guess the declaration.

She yanks the blanket over her head and runs away before she dies of embarrassment right then and there, and she stands in the yard thinking she must have gone crazy to do something like that.

She confers with Ming-ki and Jackson, the farm’s resident animals, and thinks that her heart is going to beat right out of her chest. At the fire, Seo-jin clutches at his heart too, shocked that it’s beating so quickly. He orders it to stop (then amends the order, realizing that he doesn’t want to die, heh).

In the morning, Hana wakes up to the mortifying memory of last night and buries herself under the blanket again. Her friend Jin-ju asks jokingly if she made a drunken confession to Robin or something, only to meet Hana’s eyes an realize she did just that.

To make matters worse, maknae Eun-chang comes in with a note from Seo-jin-as-Robin, that he left on his own early this morning. Ouch. Hana runs out to the field to have a good stompy scream, and Jin-ju sizes up the situation quickly: Hana thought Robin was a nice guy, but he turned out to be a bad guy.

Seo-jin is already on his way back to Seoul, and as he changes back into his buttoned-up Seo-jin uniform, Secretary Kwon glances at him curiously, wondering how he managed to pull off the charade without getting caught. He asks if anything noteworthy happened, and Seo-jin flashes to Hana’s confession but says that nothing did.

He starts coughing, and in the circus van, Hana starts wheezing as well. Uh-oh, matching colds? Jin-ju spends the whole ride dogging Robin for his inability to reject Hana’s confession in person, which she extends to the entire male population.

Seo-jin makes it to his board meeting without a hitch, and afterwards Chairman Dad confronts him about bringing Hana into his house and not being careful. Mom suggested that they trust Seo-jin because he’s changed, but Dad is as blunt as ever and says to Seo-jin’s face that he can’t be trusted: “You’re still a scared and fragile little boy.”

Geez, Dad, ever wonder where his psychological issues come from? But Seo-jin has changed, and counters, “That might be so, but have you forgotten—the person who rescued that scared and fragile little boy wasn’t you, father, but me.”

We get another flash of Little Seo-jin in a Santa hat, his scream being stifled as he’s dragged away. Seo-jin tells his father that as of that day, he loves himself more than Dad does, and now he looks after himself. He takes it a step further and declares, “I think of no one else but me.”

Dr. Tae-joo gets a call from Detective Na, who’s made some headway on the case. He says he’s got a good lead on their prime suspect, and though we don’t hear the name, Tae-joo freezes and we see Glasses Strangler (CT technician Ahn Sung-geun) sitting behind him, waiting to begin a therapy session. Oh. Crap.

Tae-joo casually answers with a non sequitur, and Detective Na is sharp enough to ask if Glasses Strangler is there with him now. He tells Tae-joo to hold tight and races over. But when Tae-joo turns around, the creepy killer is standing right behind him. Tae-joo has the worst poker face, and the killer immediately knows that he’s been found out.

But he says it isn’t over: “That bastard forgot, but I remember everything. All I have are my memories. Forgiveness shouldn’t be given.” He rides off on his motorcycle, and when we cut back to the apartment, Tae-joo is lying on the floor surrounded by glass. Ack, not Dr. Tae-joo!

Thankfully he blinks awake. He’s bleeding from the head but seems okay, and he calls Detective Na to tell him that the suspect is on the run. The call comes just in time for Detective Na to spot the motorcycle leaving the building, and he gives chase.

Backup arrives but the chase goes on for a while, and Detective Na calls to warn Seo-jin that he thinks the killer is headed right for Wonderland. They assume he’s coming for Hana, which makes sense, but now I’m beginning to wonder if Seo-jin wasn’t the target all along.

Seo-jin runs out of there right away to go track down Hana at the circus venue, and Secretary Kwon stutters after him that he could’ve been the one to go. Seo-jin actually hurries, out of concern for someone else (though obviously he’d never admit it), and is relieved to find Hana blowing bubbles on the stage. He barks at her to answer her phone no matter what she’s doing at all times, sounding a little like an angry boyfriend.

He tells her that the killer is on the run, and takes her back home where they’re to stay until the coast is clear. She says that once he’s caught, she’ll pack her bags and move out, as promised.

Seo-jin doesn’t look nearly as happy as he should, and he and Hana are both reserved as they return to their rooms. Hana decides that moving out is for the best and decides to pack right away, though she can’t reach her suitcase. Seo-jin hears a crash and comes in to find her lying on the floor after a failed attempt to pull her suitcase down, and she’s a little impressed when he retrieves it for her handily. Show-off.

He’s adorably awkward around her today, and he breaks the silence by complaining about the dust in the room and opening her window. But as soon as he does, a big gust of wind sends Robin’s storyboard sketches flying out, and she screams and runs down to collect them.

They’re all over the front lawn, and Hana crouches down to carefully dust off each one as she picks them up, grumbling that nothing’s going right for her lately. Seo-jin follows her out and asks why she doesn’t just redraw them. She just snaps that some people have circumstances that they can’t speak of, not that he would ever know.

He just quietly starts helping her, and once they’re back in her room with all the pages, he asks if the story is about a stalker and if it’s appropriate for children. Ha. She explains that the basic story is about a boy who goes to a bridge every night and stands on the ledge, contemplating a jump (that would be Seo-jin, though she thinks it’s Robin).

Seo-jin gets defensive, wondering where she heard this story, and assumes that Robin is the one who told her. (He still has no idea that she was there every night on the bridge.) But Hana just tells him not to mention Robin again—that’s his rule anyway, and she’s going to abide by it now.

He thinks back to her confession to “Robin” and him weaseling out with a pathetic note, and says quietly that that’s a good idea before walking out. Hee, there is a definite smirk on his face as he’s walking away.

Secretary Kwon calls from the police station with good news: The suspect has been captured and Dr. Kang is still alive. The cops head out to find her, and Seo-jin breathes a sigh of relief.

Hana decides to break the silence and sends Robin a text. But Seo-jin is still awake when he sees Robin’s phone buzzing repeatedly, and he chides Hana for hanging on when she seemed like she was going to make a clean break.

He puts the phone back down since he doesn’t know Robin’s lock code to read the message anyway, but then two seconds later he’s back, contemplating what the code might be. He tries a few that don’t work, and he walks away wondering what on earth he’s doing. But then he’s back again to try a different combo, and then another. This is so great.

In no time he’s become obsessed with unlocking the phone, and proceeds to MacGyver a fingerprint pattern off of the screen using packing tape. Hahahaha. He looks like a crazypants… which would explain the crazy pants he’s wearing.

When that doesn’t work, he goes to his batcave to dig through security footage until he can catch Robin on camera unlocking his phone. I’m so embarrassed for you right now. He finally gets it and unlocks the phone, and finds a string of messages from Hana admitting that she drank too much and went overboard last night.

She says that Robin should take some of the blame too, because he’s so good to her that she misunderstands his intentions all the time and even confessed her feelings. She asks him to forget last night and for them to act comfortable around each other in the future. He contemplates the texts for a long moment, and then erases them. Omo. Hana sees that “Robin” has read her texts, but there’s no reply.

Woo-jung gets it into her oppa-loving head that the best way to muscle in on Hana and Robin’s relationship is to join Wonderland’s circus, so she gets her college cheerleading squad to prepare an audition routine.

Meanwhile, evil (but still totally ineffectual) cousin Seung-yeon gets Woo-jung’s attention by posting her photo with Robin online, with his face blurred out. She demands her photo back and Seung-yeon complies, using the chance to ask about their relationship.

Woo-jung happily lies that Robin is her boyfriend, and that they go back ten years. HA. Seung-yeon gapes, jumping to the conclusion that Seo-jin has made up a fake identity to keep a second girlfriend on the side, and has been dating her since she was a pre-teen. Gross.

Robin wakes up in bed, and the last thing he remembers is the car accident, so he calls Secretary Kwon to find out what happened. He busts out laughing when he hears that Seo-jin had to pretend to be him for a night, complete with contorting that face of his into a smile.

He knows Seo-jin’s personality enough to know he’d be careful enough not to get caught, though he does worry that he made Robin look foolish in front of Hana. But there are no messages for him in the batcave, so Robin assumes that nothing major happened.

Hana rolls around in bed trying to ignore her phone, and chants to herself that Robin is out of her life as of now, and that if she ever goes running to him again, she isn’t her father’s daughter. She can’t even finish the sentence before her phone chimes with a text from Robin, and in the same breath she apologizes to her father before reaching over.

Her heart beats rapidly just thinking about seeing Robin again, and she tells it to calm down before peeking around the corner. Robin is fixing his old car in the garage, and her heart beats out of her chest as soon as she sees him.

He smiles widely and wraps her in a blanket by the fire, which of course makes her think about them sharing a blanket the night before. She gets her hopes up, but Robin keeps talking without mentioning her confession or the texts.

He asks carefully if he made any mistakes last night, and she asks if he doesn’t remember anything. Her wording hints at drinking too much, so Robin rolls with that and says he drank way too much. She still wonders why he ignored her texts, but he pours on the aegyo to ask her to forget it all. It puts her on guard (that he might be a player), but she agrees.

Yoo Jae-ha’s “Because I Love You” plays on the radio, and Robin begins to sing along to the opening lyrics, which describe misunderstanding a look in a girl’s eyes and being made a fool the second she smiled at him. Of course, he has no idea that there’s a double meaning in the words for Hana, and as he sings while smiling at her, she concludes that she’s being rejected.

In the morning, Secretary Kwon delivers the bad news that Dr. Kang still hasn’t been found, though he says that Detective Na seems certain that she is alive. Seo-jin snaps at him for not getting more details, though they’re headed to the station anyway, so that Hana can identify the suspect.

Secretary Kwon mentions that she seems to have a cold, and by the time she gets in the car, his box of emergency medicine is at the ready. She rifles through the massive stash of pills, and Seo-jin asks brusquely what her symptoms are before selecting two kinds and handing her a bottle of water to take with her.

At the police station, Dr. Tae-joo and Seo-jin accompany Hana as she looks through the two-way mirror into the interrogation room where Glasses Strangler is being interrogated. She wrings her hands nervously, and Seo-jin clocks her fear.

Detective Na tells her to take her time, and though she knows that the suspect can’t see through the glass, it looks like he’s staring right at her, which is creepy to say the least. She steadies herself and focuses on his face, and finally feels confident that this is the man who launched the mirror ball at her from the rafters.

The detective on the other side is told to take him away, but at the last second, Glasses Strangler wriggles free and launches himself at the glass. Hana panics and lets out a scream, shaking like a leaf in terror. The suspect looks pleased to have gotten that reaction, and smiles as he’s dragged away.

Tae-joo comes up behind Hana and covers her eyes, and the look on Seo-jin’s face is priceless. You are so jealous. She calms down, though she’s still sniffling back tears, and Seo-jin belatedly stretches out his hand towards her and ekes out hesitantly, “Are you okay…”

But before he can make contact, Tae-joo is already leading her out of the room. Seo-jin just stands there, hand outstretched, watching her walk away.

Seo-jin asks Detective Na to please hurry the investigation to find Dr. Kang, and he in turn asks Seo-jin if he’s going to stop bugging Hana now. He totally nags Seo-jin for not treating her with more care, and Seo-jin is doubly annoyed to find Secretary Kwon smiling in agreement.

Seo-jin grumbles that she’s taking so long with Tae-joo, and watches warily as Tae-joo offers to keep treating her until her traumatic memories are dealt with. He notes that she smiles at Tae-joo warmly, and listens in as Tae-joo tells her that her treatment should’ve come first, rather than forcing her to face the culprit like this.

Seung-yeon comes by the station to ask Detective Na about Dr. Kang’s case, feigning worry over “our Dr. Kang” and Seo-jin’s treatment being interrupted. He fishes to see if Detective Na has her case files, but he’s told that Dr. Tae-joo has them.

On the way back, Seo-jin tells Secretary Kwon to find a specialist for Hana’s treatment—someone who isn’t Dr. Tae-joo. HEE. Seo-jin offers to pay for her continued therapy, wondering why she never asked him when she clearly needs it. She asks if he would’ve heard her if she had, and says she’s moving out anyway and doesn’t need his help.

But Seo-jin tells her that the case isn’t over until Dr. Kang is found, which means she isn’t going anywhere. Pffft, your excuses are getting pretty slim, buddy. She sighs and thinks to herself that the twin brothers are more alike than she thought, flip-flopping and playing a girl hot and cold, just like a player.

Hana gets a call from Seung-yeon (who runs the hotel portion of the company) asking her to meet to discuss a circus performance at the hotel. Seo-jin is standing next to her when she gets the call and finds the whole thing suspicious, but she goes to the meeting alone, happy to discuss another venue for the new show she’s producing.

Seung-yeon introduces himself as Seo-jin’s cousin, which she hadn’t known until now, and thanks her for helping out with Dr. Kang’s case. He asks if she knows Robin too, and Hana is taken aback at the question. She pretends not to know what he’s talking about, but he notices that she seemed to recognize the name.

He asks her to prepare a presentation about the new show idea, and Hana says she has some materials with her now to show him. He leads her to the conference room to watch it on a big screen, when suddenly Seo-jin storms into the room (followed by Seung-yeon’s girlfriend), just in time to find Seung-yeon’s hand hovering near Hana’s back.

Seung-yeon asks what he doing here, and Seo-jin shoots back: “And what is your business with our kid?” Hana’s eyes practically pop out of her head, and she thinks to herself, “He called me ‘our kid’… damn, that’s embarrassing.” Haha. I guess not everyone is Jang Geu-rae.

Seo-jin gets all territorial about the circus belonging to Wonderland’s history, which by the way was stuff he never even knew before Hana’s angry speech the first time they met. He says that the proper order is for her to consult him about concerts in other venues, and wrist-grabs her out of Seung-yeon’s reach.

Outside, she wriggles free and asks why he’s in Chief Oh cosplay all of a sudden, and he’s all, “Who’s Chief Oh?” She waves his lack of drama knowledge aside and asks since when she’s his kid, and he totally flits back to her drunken confession. Yup, that’d be since when, all right.

To Hana, all he says is to be wary of Seung-yeon, because this isn’t about the circus—it’s about Seo-jin, and Seung-yeon’s endless competition with him. She insists on finding that out for herself, though he warns her that she’s just being used.

Woo-jung and her cheerleading squad try out for the Wonder Circus, and every last one of the guys on the panel is smitten with her, especially maknae Eun-chang. He even swoons when she shows off a wrestling move that sends him flying to the ground.

She gets hired, and Hana hands her a contract and asks why she wants to join the circus. Woo-jung doesn’t even pretend to hide her motivations, and asks when Robin is coming by. Hana doesn’t know if he’ll ever come back, and Woo-jung asks if he disappeared again.

She tells Hana that Robin does this all the time—save a girl, make her swoon, then vanish. She calls him a player and a master of the push-and-pull game, and Hana’s heart sinks to hear how routine this is for him. Woo-jung tells Hana to give up before she turns into a slave like her, and says that Robin is a heartbreaker.

Woo-jung is obviously laying it on thick to get rid of her competition, but then she eavesdrops as Hana wails to her friend Jin-ju about her stupid drunken confession and rejection. Woo-jung beams, realizing that this will be easier than she thought.

In his office, Seo-jin thinks back to seeing Hana so frightened at the police station, and he mutters aloud that if she was really that scared, she should’ve told him. Aw. Secretary Kwon stares back and says he isn’t scared, and Seo-jin breaks out of his reverie and wonders when he got here.

Seung-yeon visits Dr. Tae-joo pretending to need therapy, and describes Seo-jin’s new uncharacteristic behavior as if it were his own. At first Tae-joo says there’s nothing wrong with showing a nicer softer side, but then he asks the all-important question—does he remember being a totally different version of himself?

Seung-yeon asks why that’s important, and Tae-joo says that if he has no memory of these events, he could have borderline personality disorder, or in more extreme cases, dissociative identity disorder.

Tae-joo says that the likeliest cause is a traumatic incident in childhood, and Seung-yeon remembers that Seo-jin was kidnapped as a child. Tae-joo says that one way to cope with something like that is to create a second self who never experienced said trauma.

Robin wakes up that evening to the sound of his phone ringing—it’s Woo-jung, calling to say that she knows all about Robin rejecting all other girls because he really loves her. He asks what she’s talking about, and later she recounts the story to her father, insisting that Robin turned Hana down because he realized his feelings for Woo-jung. And ha, Eun-chang is there in the café just idly smiling at her. Someone’s got a crush.

Robin races into the café and demands an explanation, looking pretty frantic. So with her dad by her side, Woo-jung reluctantly tells Robin everything that she overheard Hana crying about. When she sees his concern, she realizes that he must’ve forgotten, suddenly feeling bad for Hana. Aw.

Now that he knows what happened, Robin sits there stunned, thinking back to the moment when he came upstairs to find Hana drunkenly slurring to Woo-jung that she doesn’t want to be the girl that people laugh at anymore—she wants to be the girl laughing: “And Robin made me laugh.”

He runs out of there and searches everywhere for her, at home and at Wonderland. He finally finds her lingering outside the park, and tells her that he remembers everything now. He apologizes for leaving alone that day and for not remembering, and asks why she didn’t just curse at him instead.

He knows he seems crazy, but he swears that he didn’t remember, and wasn’t purposely giving her the brush-off. He asks her to trust him, and she says she wants to. She admits to trusting him and leaning on him, which is why she came to like him… “And that’s why I jumped to the mistaken conclusion that we felt the same way.” She starts to walk away, but he reaches out to hold her back: “Who said it was mistaken?” He apologizes again, but she pulls her hand away and asks about the text messages—even if he forgot the drunken confession, he could’ve responded to her texts instead of making her wait.

He has no idea about the texts, and even searches his phone right in front of her. But it all sounds like excuses to her, and she asks if he erased them. She starts to wonder which of his sides is sincere, and decides that she’d rather believe that she went overboard because she’s been having a tough time lately and needed someone to lean on. She says that she’s sorry for being a burden and giving him any discomfort, and walks away.

Robin stands there for a long while, totally dazed, and then his grip tightens around his phone in fury as he snarls in head, “Gu Seo-jin!” He races home to the batcave and starts recording an angry message. He knows the situation couldn’t have been avoided, but screams at Seo-jin for erasing those texts just to stick it to him.

We cut over to Seo-jin, who’s watching the message in the morning with a shit-eating grin on his face. The usual roles are totally reversed, and now Robin is the one stewing in fury, while Seo-jin sits back feeling satisfied with himself. Robin demands an apology RIGHT NOW, and Seo-jin answers with a smirk: “I. Am. A-pol-o-gizing. Right. Now.” LOL. Caption: Pandora’s biggest mistake—she shouldn’t have known that a thing as dangerous as Pandora’s Box existed in the world at all.

In a short epilogue back at the retreat, Seo-jin chops wood while Hana asks the ajusshi who owns the farmhouse to come back and help them at the circus like he used to when her dad was around. He seems hesitant but she won’t take no for an answer (and we saw him at the auditions, so he must’ve said yes).

 
COMMENTS

I love this reversal. Things are so much funnier when Seo-jin is mucking up the works for Robin. And not only that—he seems to actively enjoy life when he’s found a petty way to make Robin suffer. His gleeful little smirk is so perfect. Obviously Seo-jin is a long ways off from acknowledging any attachment he might have to Hana, but that makes the current jealousy and denial stage more enjoyable, and I’m fine with spending lots and lots of time watching the current dynamic unfold. Things finally clicked into place when Seo-jin’s character softened, because up until now, he didn’t feel anything for Hana, so I didn’t feel anything for their interactions.

But now he’s going out of his way to be considerate, worrying about her when she’s not around, making up excuses for her to stay in the house, getting jealous of Robin, Tae-joo, even Seung-yeon… it’s so cute. And now that I have a romance to root for, I found myself tensing up when Robin ran after Hana at the end of the episode, and wishing that they wouldn’t make up. I know Robin is the one she likes, but Seo-jin is the one I want her to fall for. There’s probably going to be a lot more back and forth for this love triangle, but already I’m feeling very protective of Seo-jin’s feelings (yunno, the ones he doesn’t know he has yet).

Tae-joo’s growing role in the story is another happy development, though I wonder where we’re going with Glasses Strangler now that he’s caught. Because so far, he’s the only villain worth anything in this drama, ineffectual assassination attempts notwithstanding. Seung-yeon is too ridiculous to consider scary, though at least he actually discovered something potentially damaging to Seo-jin in this episode. For now, I just hope he’s too stupid to put the pieces together. I’m not really ready for the truth to come out yet—the twin/double-life hijinks are the highlight, so the longer we delay the truth, the better. (Though I do wish that the show made a bigger deal of clues like Robin getting a cut on his forehead or Seo-jin catching a cold—wasted potential, I tell you.)

Seo-jin’s jealousy—and ensuing comedy, of course—was the highlight of the episode, but it was his growing genuine concern for Hana that finally gave us a moment of sincerity that I desperately needed to be on Seo-jin’s side. He’s always been sincere before this, but only with regards to himself and whatever benefited him the most. Everything and everyone else was secondary, and he was always upfront about that. But with Hana he begins to break from his old patterns, and now he’s actively interfering in her life, worrying over her welfare, and butting in on Robin’s potential relationship with her (and enjoying it, which is key). Maybe now that Robin is back and here to stay for the time being, Seo-jin doesn’t need to be so in control and live like a monk anymore. Attachments could be formed. Fun could be had. I can think of a way or two.

 
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