(KBS2, 2008) Women of the Sun

You just want to shake Shin Do Young and tell her to bring Ji Young home, properly. Her biological mother is right; the ONLY way she could save her own hide is if she were to be the person to find Ji Young (which she did) and then bring her to Professor Choi. Even if Ji Young fully recovered her memory, it's not really a complete memory. But once she realizes that Do Young knew all along and was trying to cover up the truth, what else will Ji Young do but exact revenge and take everything from her sister?

I'm not sure what I think about the Hong Eun Sub and his extortion plot. It's interesting because he's a late player, and there's so many ways he can hurt her. Yet, because he was introduced relatively late, he just seems kinda superfluous. Like an invasion to their misery party.

The scene with Sa Wol and Joon Sae riding on a bike was SO Autumn Tale lol!! I loved it. That scene alone made me root for them as a couple. It makes me wonder if the show will break from tradition, and each lead (Ji Soo and Jae Suk are billed as the leads here) ends up with a supporting character.

One of the great things about the story is that there are so many people who want to bring Do Young down, so her growing paranoia is not unjustified. Her mother is this close to kicking her out. Her coworker rival wants to ruin her job. Her orphan mate wants to extort her. Sa Wol has already told her that she'll destroy the person who kidnapped her, more out of what that person did to her family than herself. And on and on. She doesn't have friends; she makes allies. Her loneliness is palpable and painful.

To me, the story feels a lot like Mawang. However evil you think Do Young was for what she did, she's also tragically, poignantly human. And you are 100% certain she's fighting the inevitable end and she will probably be destroyed. She knows it too. You can see the fear and sadness in her eyes, knowing how fragile and conditional her happiness had always been. Knowing that no amount of good works could possibly atone for abandoning her sister. And that the longer she keeps the truth down, the more her soul grows darker and sadder, and brutal her end could be.

Also, I can't wait for the other shoe to drop and for bright, happy Ya Wol to finally turn evil. (In episode one, she destroys a high school classmate's wedding after that person would not repent for getting her kicked out of school. Ya Wol is not to be messed with.) You know it's coming; the show even does a few sequences where Ya Wol finds out and Ha Na's heavily eyelined eyes (no coincidence that) turns all dark. Then the mechanics of the revenge will finally go into motion.

The revenge arc of this story is flat out brilliant. Going into Episode 13, you were expecting Sa Wol to just flip out, turn evil, and carefully plot out her revenge. Maybe steal her fiance or plant evidence all over the place. Maybe use her new benefactor's money to start out a plan for war.

You didn't think Sa Wol would help start out a play. You didn't think Sa Wol would become Hamlet.

Women of the Sun was from the same writer as Mae Ri (Ha Na's previous show, where she played a starving actress looking for her big shot), and here we see kind of a flip side of it. Here, the concept of play-in-play is used as a Shakespearean device, as a way to revisit the buried demons of the past, the sins between the sisters, and "foreshadow" the outcome . . . i.e. to make the lead character go through judgment, performance after performance, and then be destroyed through play and through reality.

At the same time, the play is a cathartic experience for Sa Wol, and a way to force the people she loves to see the truth, to see that she is that girl. It is Sa Wol's way to revisit her experience and to bring art and truth out of the experience. Traumatic experiences that she herself has just remembered.

Which leads to Episode 15 and how by the end of that episode, we finally have Sa Wol and Do Young finally confront each other properly, finally get it all out in the open by enacting a scene in the play in front of the public and in front of the men they love (who strangely seem to know the entire truth and yet remain passive about the two women, as if they're in plain denial of Do Young abandoning her sister)

And, here, it's a cathartic experience for Do Young. She says what she really wanted to say. If Sa Wol goes further, Do Young will "break her neck." If Do Young goes further, Sa Wol will ostracize Do Young leading her to death. They have become two demons to each other.