Uncontrollably Fond: Episode 11

by LollyPip

Fasten your seat belts, folks, we’re in for one bumpy emotional ride in this episode. It’s difficult to keep up a positive image when feelings are running high and stakes even higher, as nearly everyone is beginning to discover. It’s time for some serious decisions to be made, and maybe for some real honesty to be shared. We can only hope.

EPISODE 11 RECAP

After finding Joon-young sick and locked in his room, Ajusshi rightfully berates Gook-young for going along with such a stupid and dangerous plan. He reminds Gook-young that Joon-young only ever helped him, and this is how he repays him?

Gook-young tries to justify his actions by saying that Joon-young is trying to go find Eul in jail, where she’s landed herself for trying to run down Assemblyman Choi with her car. Ajusshi asks Gook-young to clarify, stunned at the mention of Assemblyman Choi Hyun-joon’s name.

In his room, Joon-young’s mom wakes him from his stupor, and he cries like a little boy when he sees that she came to him. He’s not even concerned about himself, but instead he pitifully begs his mother to help him go to Eul.

His mother overrides his wishes and gets up to get some medicine, but the mention of Assemblyman Choi’s name stops her cold. Accusingly, Joon-young says, “If you’d stayed by his side, he wouldn’t have become such a horrible person. It’s all because of you. It’s all your fault! This is all your fault!!” He screams it over and over, finally releasing years of pent-up anger and resentment.

Ajusshi comes to yell at Joon-young for speaking to his mother that way, defending Mom for raising him under so much hardship. “You’re a star, but you’re not a star to us.” But Mom stops him and sends him outside to wait.

Once he’s gone, Joon-young says that he’ll crawl to the police station if he has to, if Mom doesn’t help him. She hesitates for a long moment, then leaves the room and shuts the door. Outside she collapses on the stairs, heavy with the weight of everything that’s happened.

Alone now, Joon-young takes a chair and swings it, hard, at the window.

He makes it to the jail and is let into Eul’s cell, where she cries at him for taking so long. He softly apologizes and gives her his scarf and coat, while she says she wasn’t trying to kill Assemblyman Choi — she just wanted to forget it all and live normally for once.

Joon-young just holds her face, and tells her that he knows. He tells her not to be scared, because he’s here, and they’re going on their ten-year trip now.

Joon-young looks so peaceful just to be with Eul, and she’s finally looking at him the way he’s always wanted her to… with love. She leans on him and sleeps while he drives, and they go to the beach and walk hand-in-hand.

Joon-young leads Eul to a romantic pergola he’s set up, complete with candles and a comfortable couch, right there on the beach. It’s beautiful. He asks her to stay here with him for a hundred years, where nobody can find them, and Eul nods agreement. He pulls Eul’s head to his chest and she melts into him, smiling through her tears.

But it’s all a dream — Eul is still in her jail cell, and Joon-young is still locked in his room. He’s refusing to eat, or even move away from the window, and everyone is beginning to grow concerned for him. Ajusshi threatens to shove the food down his throat if he won’t eat. Or — and this is crazy I know — you could let him out?

Joon-young’s mom is pretty torn up too, having participated in the imprisonment of her son. Jik sits outside the police station, waiting to visit his sister, while Ji-tae watches him from an unseen distance.

He overhears Na-ri complaining that “Hyun-woo” has disappeared right when they need him, and Jik says angrily that both Hyun-woo and Joon-young can go hang. Jik is mostly worried he might see his noona cry — he’s never seen her cry since their dad died, and he’s worried it might make him go crazy.

They let Eul out to have a small meal with her brother and friend there at the station, and she’s a totally different person than last night. She keeps things light and cheerful, telling funny stories on her cellmates, but it’s obvious that she’s trying way too hard. In fact she seems a little manic.

Jik asks if she really was trying to kill Assemblyman Choi, and Eul says of course she wasn’t. That’s all he needs to hear and he relaxes, but Na-ri is angry that Joon-young hasn’t come to speak up in her defense. She tells Eul that Jik even begged Joon-young for help, but he didn’t even open the door. To Jik, this is just more proof that he can’t be trusted, but Eul brushes off her disappointment and tells him to just concentrate on school.

She lies and says that Joon-young called, and that he’ll be coming to get her out soon. When she’s sent back to her cell she snuggles up in the scarf he gave her, and narrates Joon-young’s movements like she’s wishing them to happen: “He goes to the parking lot, he gets in his car, he starts the engine…””

Joon-young still hasn’t moved or eaten, even when Gook-young tells him that the food is from his mother, the food he’s been craving for years. He’s completely unresponsive to Gook-young’s cajoling, and Gook-young says that he’s under orders to keep him here even if he starves. And that order comes from his mother, too.

Mom cuts herself while cooking, too preoccupied to concentrate on what she’s doing. She can’t stop thinking about Joon-young’s accusations that this is all her fault for not staying with Assemblyman Choi all those years ago. She takes off her apron, and heads out with purpose.

Ji-tae sits down with his father, and requests respectfully that he let Eul out of jail. Assemblyman Choi can tell that Ji-tae likes her, but Ji-tae is in no mood to chat, and says that it was his mother and father who ruined her life by lying and hiding the truth.

Assemblyman Choi notes that Ji-tae has always been compassionate, but points out that he has too much to lose to risk it all on pity. Ji-tae says he’s not scared, so his father instructs him to go and tell everyone that when he was a prosecutor, he covered up a hit-and-run case. His wife played along, and they destroyed a young girl’s life. In return they received everything they ever wanted and have no boundaries.

He tells Ji-tae that if he doesn’t have the courage to say all this, then to keep his mouth shut. Oh, you absolute ass.

Joon-young’s mom goes to his house, where Gook-young complains that Joon-young won’t eat or drink a thing. She ignores him and goes straight to Joon-young, and demands to know what Assemblyman Choi did to deserve what Joon-young said. She defends him as an honorable man, and asks who dared to say otherwise.

Joon-young just whispers, “I saw him. I saw him with my own two eyes.” He tells her that he saw how terrible, selfish, and brutal that man is. Mom says he must be mistaken, listing Choi’s good works for the poor, telling Joon-young that he even hid the fact that he was a law school student to her back when they met out of consideration for her. Oof… that’s not love, or even consideration. That’s just lying.

Joon-young tells his mother what Assemblyman Choi did when Eul’s father was killed, but that he thought Eul was okay now that time has passed. Now he knows that she’s not, that she’s still living in hell, and Assemblyman Choi doesn’t even remember what he did to her.

Unwilling (or unable) to accept this, Mom just nods that Ajusshi was right, and Joon-young is out of his mind because of “that gold-digger.” She says that Assemblyman Choi is the most fabulous, most wonderful, nicest man in the world, someone Joon-young can’t even be compared to.

She tells Joon-young to stop calling him by his name because he’s his father, and Joon-young screams back that that’s why he nearly killed Eul. He considered Choi his father, and tried to cover up what he did, and Eul almost died.

Mom now realizes that this is why Joon-young quit school and became an actor, and why he thinks he doesn’t deserve to be a prosecutor. Joon-young confirms it, saying that he has no right to judge others after doing such a thing.

Eul is still narrating Joon-young’s trip to come get her, accounting for his lateness by adding in a fan-related delay, as well as a broken traffic light, and then his car running out of gas. She counts down the miles he still has to go to reach her, trying to keep herself sane.

Gook-young had overheard Joon-young and his mother’s conversation, and he promises Mom that after he takes her home, he’ll go let Joon-young out. He does, telling Joon-young that he still won’t be able to see Eul at this late hour, though that doesn’t stop Joon-young from rushing for his car.

He goes straight to Assemblyman Choi’s home, where his wife looks shocked to see him on her doorstep politely asking to speak to Choi. She tells Joon-young that her husband’s not home (while Haru quietly freaks out in the background), which is a lie since he’s right there. Haru blurts out that Joon-young is here, but her mother painfully grips her arm to shush her and says it was a mistake.

But Assemblyman Choi isn’t stupid, and he wonders why Joon-young would be coming to see him. Joon-young is let in and he apologizes for showing up unannounced, and Assemblyman Choi sends his wife and Haru away so they can talk privately.

Assemblyman Choi notes that Joon-young looks like he’s been ill, and Joon-young doesn’t deny it. Choi knows this is about Eul, but he says that even if he dropped the charges she’ll still be tried for attempted murder. Joon-young points out that it wasn’t considered attempted murder until a week after the incident — until then, the police treated it as an accident.

He asks why Assemblyman Choi changed his mind, and Choi says that it’s because he learned that she really was trying to kill him. He doesn’t know why, because she’s not talking, and asks Joon-young to ask her for him.

Joon-young just calmly says that if she really wanted to kill the assemblyman, she’d have done it five years ago. And if she really wanted to kill him, she’d have never turned the wheel — and if Joon-young had been in her place, he wouldn’t have.

Over at the restaurant, Ajusshi watches as Joon-young’s mom crouches in the kitchen mindlessly shoveling food into her face, and he tells her employee to call the doctor and tell them that a patient is on the way.

At Joon-young’s words, Assemblyman Choi shuts down, and tells Joon-young that he can’t help him. He does thank him for risking his life to save him, but Joon-young says that he regrets it. Choi says that he doesn’t know why but he feels a sort of fondness for Joon-young, and he starts to ask Joon-young to have dinner with Haru since she’s a fan.

But Joon-young slaps the USB file with Eul’s recording of Choi and Madam Song on it down on the table, and says he never wants to see Assemblyman Choi again.

Joon-young runs into Ji-tae on his way out, and freely admits that he came here to threaten Assemblyman Choi. Ji-tae asks if it worked, but Joon-young doesn’t know yet.

Meanwhile Choi watches the video, then makes a call to someone about Eul. His wife bursts in and frantically says that he can’t let her go free, or she’ll just try to kill him again. She begs him not do do this, and he sighs heavily.

Joon-young drives home, but Ji-tae soon calls him to say that five years ago, if he hadn’t taken that USB away from Eul, if everyone had paid for their sins then, Eul would be living a different life. He bellows that Joon-young isn’t innocent in this, and he has no right to be happy with Eul either — he’s also Choi Hyun-joon’s son. Stunned, Joon-young has nothing to say.

The next morning Eul steps out of the police station and into the sun, and she’s immediately tackle-hugged by Na-ri. Na-ri tells her not to bother with Joon-young anymore, and Eul nods, but she can’t help scan the parking lot for a sign of him. Na-ri snaps that he’s not coming.

He’s at home playing video games, and it looks like he’s been up all night drinking. His face is slack and his eyes look dead and cold.

Jik almost gets hit by a car on his way to school, and his ankle is injured. He misses Na-ri’s call, but Eul is still too busy looking for Joon-young to be very worried. Na-ri thinks he’s avoiding Eul now that she’s been to jail, and Jik pulls up just then, having gotten a ride from the driver who almost ran him over.

And then a woman steps out of the backseat of the car… Ji-tae’s mother. She apologizes for Jik’s accident, but Eul just stares at her.

Ji-tae is at the shooting range taking his frustrations out on some clay pigeons, until his assistant reports that Eul was cleared of all charges this morning. Ji-tae hardly reacts, even when he’s reminded of his engagement ceremony tuxedo fitting this afternoon, and just goes back to blasting things out of the sky.

President Namgoong and Gook-young check on Joon-young, and are surprised to see his condition. President Namgoong apologizes for locking Joon-young up, though he says he doesn’t regret it (then you’re not really sorry, are you?), taking the credit for protecting Joon-young’s image.

Joon-young doesn’t respond to their presence at all, until Gook-young tells him that Eul is free, but even then only his eyes flicker. He remembers Ji-tae saying that he has no right to be happy with Eul, and he goes upstairs to sit on his bed. He clutches his head, and curls up under the covers.

Eul is actually outside Joon-young’s door when President Namgoong leaves, but he stops to yell at her for coming here. He tells her that Joon-young wants nothing to do with her, but Eul refuses to leave. President Namgoong tries to poke a hole in her confidence by saying Joon-young would have gone to see her if he wanted to (not if he was locked in his room, you evil little troll).

He even implies that Joon-young was dreading seeing her after she got out of jail. I hate you so much. Eul calls him a liar, but she leaves, deflated.

Upstairs, Joon-young answers his phone when Na-ri calls, and she asks why he never went to see Eul. He says, “Just because,” and Na-ri cries that she wanted him to ask Eul not to leave. That gets his attention… leave where?

We backtrack a bit and see that Ji-tae’s mother and Eul talked privately in her car, and Mom asks why Eul is still hanging around when they’d agreed to have nothing to do with each other again. She makes not-so-vague threats that she can go much further than she has in the past, particularly mentioning that Jik seems like a nice boy who will take care of Eul — if he’s alive to do so. Whoa, are you serious??

That night Joon-young calls Ji-tae to come outside, and when he steps out of his front door, Joon-young punches him in the face, hard.

It’s Jung-eun and Ji-tae’s engagement ceremony day, and Jung-eun’s father crows about his daughter and her impending marriage to Ji-tae to anyone who will listen, while she sits looking like a nervous wreck. She admits that her only ambition in life has been to marry Ji-tae, and now her dream is coming true.

Eul and Jik sneak out of Na-ri’s place secretly, planning to move overseas to escape everything. Jik is against the idea but Eul argues that anywhere is better than here, and she threatens to go alone if he won’t come with her. But before they can leave, Ji-tae comes screeching up and orders Eul out of the taxi.

Joon-young finds the former prosecutor who was in charge of Eul’s father’s case ten years ago, Lawyer Cha, and blatantly asks him who the real criminal was back then.

Cut to Jung-eun, waiting happily for her groom.

COMMENTS

Wow, what a mindscrew this show is turning out to be. Has everyone just gone and lost their damn minds?? I never thought I would say this, but Eul was the only rational person in this episode, and that’s because she was mostly in jail and unable to create more problems for herself. Just last week I was saying how everyone is so human, with both good and bad sides to their personalities, and defending even Assemblyman Choi and his wife for their bad behavior. Now I’m ready to chuck them all out the window for being selfish evil bastards.

I will say that I was glad to see Joon-young finally say to his mother what he’s been truly feeling for years — that she shouldn’t have let Assembyman Choi go. Right or wrong, he needed to say his true heart out loud. Watching Joon-young lash out at his mother, blaming this whole situation on her, was hard to watch. But in a way, it was very necessary… he’s held his true feelings in for so long, trying to ingratiate himself back into her life, and it’s never worked. Once she was in front of him and he was at his most vulnerable, it would have been strange if he HADN’T exploded and said what he’s been thinking all these years — that it’s all her fault.

I’m not convinced though, that Joon-young is right. If his mother had stayed and not run away out fear of being with a man of a different social strata, would Assemblyman Choi have been a better man? I haven’t wanted to think he’s a thoroughly bad person, despite a few truly heinous decisions he’s made, but his philosophy of life has a huge flaw that he pretty much stated right out in this episode: When you have so much to lose, can you afford pity? He said it to Ji-tae, but it neatly sums up his own behavior when Eul’s father was killed — he felt compassion for her situation, but it wasn’t worth risking his position to take pity on her. He may have good intentions in a broad sense, but when push comes to shove, he’s going to choose himself first, and he’s not even above manipulating his own son to keep what he has. So would Joon-young’s mother’s presence have made a difference? Would being with the woman he truly loves have inspired him to make better choices, or would he have still manipulated Eul’s father’s case, out of political greed? The saddest thing is, we’ll never know.

And I was so disappointed in Joon-young’s mother this episode — I really thought she would redeem herself and help him, but instead of believing her son when he tells her the truth, she chose to instead defend a man she hasn’t seen in decades, a man who lied to her to get her in bed as far as we know, who left her (or let her leave) to marry someone more socially acceptable because it was easier, and made his own way smoother. I knew Mom was delusional when it came to Joon-young, but she’s so far in denial about Assemblyman Choi that it’s bordering on dangerous. She willingly participated in imprisoning her own son and put him in danger of dying, all to uphold the questionable honor of the man who abandoned them both. That’s so far beyond sick, I don’t even know what to call it anymore.

Strangely, I don’t even blame Jung-eun for her part in any of this. She made a terrible mistake, but it was her father’s choice to use his connections to get her off the hook. I wonder if she would be different if she had paid for what she did, and learned from it? Jung-eun is nothing but a spoiled princess, with no ambitions or dreams in life other than to marry a certain man, and that’s really just sad. The vacant look on her face as she waits for Ji-tae says it all… there’s no person there, she’s just an empty doll who’s used to getting what she wants on daddy’s money and influence, because that’s what she was raised to believe was due to her. Nobody has ever told her differently, so why shouldn’t she believe in her own entitlement?

Hell, I’m even angry with Joon-young right now, for withdrawing from Eul just when she started to love him. One thing that makes me insane is when a person thinks they know what’s best for someone else — it’s not Joon-young’s right (or Ji-tae’s for that matter) to decide who Eul “deserves” to be with. If she loves Joon-young, she should be with him, and vice versa. Now, I also think a person should be given all the information before being enticed to love another, so it was absolutely wrong of Joon-young to romance her without telling her of his illness. He had every intention of making her fall for him, and it worked, and even if they manage to find a way to be together, now he’s got to tell her that he’s dying. It’s equally as wrong as deciding that she shouldn’t be with him for her own good, because it’s dishonest and selfish. What I wouldn’t give for a little straight talk and honesty around here.

 
RELATED POSTS

• Uncontrollably Fond: Episode 10
• Uncontrollably Fond: Episode 9
• Uncontrollably Fond: Episode 8
• Uncontrollably Fond: Episode 7
• Uncontrollably Fond: Episode 6
• Uncontrollably Fond: Episode 5
• Uncontrollably Fond: Episode 4
• Uncontrollably Fond: Episode 3
• Uncontrollably Fond: Episode 2
• Uncontrollably Fond: Episode 1