Episode Report Card Sobell: B+ | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Married people never talk anymore
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 17 | Aired on February 22, 2005
The car pulls up at Byung Han's house. Before Nameless Thug #1 can fully exit the car, Jin's cast him a dark look, then burst into the house. As he strides through, Byung Han shouts for his family to scram. The little girl and former dog owner stares for a long minute at Jin. As Byung Han stammers an explanation, Jin slams him into the dining room table, tosses him into the family koi pond, then delivers a dozen meaty punches while Byung Han's wife looks on and his daughter cowers. At the end of it, a bloody Byung Han lies limply, looking up with a dazed, reproachful look, and Jin shouts, "The factory opens tomorrow." Then he leans in and whispers, very quietly, "I just saved your life." There is no sign on Byung Han's face that he understands any of this. Jin is practically sobbing for what he's done. He drops the other man, overwhelmed, and when he looks up, he meets the eyes of the little girl. She's whimpering, "Appa, Appa." My best friend as a child, Na Kyung Hahn, used to call her daddy that.
So, yes. Jin feels like a class-A jerk. He strides over to the thug, who's standing in the doorway, and says, "He got the message." The thug watches him leave with an expression that...will remain a mystery for the ages, because his face is in total darkness while the rest of him stands in relief to the apartment. I'd carp about it, but I think it works for the scene -- makes everything appear shadowy and confusing. And I think it's no accident that Jin's face was lit in stark relief the whole time.
Anyway, Jin's rushing back into the house, hoping to get in the bathroom and get Byung Han's blood off him before Sun catches him. Whoops! No such luck. She comes in, and we basically see the same scene that we saw back when it was Sun flashing back through the assorted scenes of marital deterioration. Only this time, there's a little more subtext, since we're getting the story from his side, and my guess is that Jin's probably a big ball of angry at everyone right now, the wife included. We have the scene where Sun smacks Jin and looks at him with disgust, and Jin gives her a doozy of a look and seethes, "I do whatever your father tells me. I do it for us." Well, that was...nonspecific. You ever get the feeling these two crazy kids would work it out if they just talked?
So there's Sun in the bathroom, reeling because she's either just realized that her dad's not on the up-and-up, or she's had some suspicions confirmed. And now she's got the pesky of question of what her husband actually does for Daddums. Which she could, you know, know the answer to if he would actually say something about what happened, because there's a world of difference between "I'm your dad's hired goon. Surprisingly, I have an aptitude for delivering contusions, lacerations, and abrasions unto others" and "Your dad would like me to be his hired goon, I would prefer not to be, and my life has devolved into a hellish series of Hobson's choices."