Secret Forest S1 ep 11

After another few months, WordPress’ interface has changed.

And after the retirement of Flash and a few years, Neopets has too.

On this weekend where there is no time, but also this heavy unshakeable feeling of boredom, I will have my steady one hour worth of Stranger. With no interruptions, and without playing a game on a side.

I immerse myself into. The inertia that kept me away – today I have an hour.

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The episode begins with the box, and viewers know that Police Chief sent the images in that box, so we know it’s the real deal. But how is it that Si Mok’s eyes are drawn to it so keenly the moment he enters the room?

Chang Joon blocks it from view because he’s sensitive and afraid, but how does Si Mok guess?

When he’s offering the single glass – when there are so many other champagne flutes prepared, what does that mean? With every cheers he would have to drink? An odd social convention that you have to infer.

One of the things I appreciated more this round was seeing how Won Cheol didn’t look envious when Chang Joon took a heavy step past him, his reaction as Si Mok poured champagne with one hand, when Si Mok issued his warning. And the camera pans to him each time, the reason behind it.

Si Mok who apologises for not having a free hand, when later he sets down his own flute, and what it means. Why did he set it down if he didn’t have to, to make it clear that he wouldn’t drink?

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I wonder if Yeo Jin meant her words precisely, or if she was simply repeating what the nurse said exactly. After a few years of watching Korean dramas, though the translation was just ‘lady’, ajumma has that closer meaning to ‘auntie’, which no doubt was what made Yeon Jae unhappy enough to repeat it.

Her interrogation technique, fishing.

Her feigning, baiting.

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Since Won Cheol also drove, would he have declined to drink as well?

The touch of Si Mok rolling down his window just slightly so that he could hear them speaking in the carpark. A detail that surprises again.

But the pull apart cupboard with so many medicines. I can’t imagine that being good for anyone who needs medicine when they’re anxious, the focus should be on not needing to open so many bottles to count, right?

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I took time to write. Suddenly there’s not enough time to watch it alone, uninterrupted, there’s another call at 8.

Haaa.

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It’s so close, the tension in the police station when he said she treated them like fools, or that she suspected them of helping him escape. She said ‘no’, but her heart said yes.

That’s how the baiting worked, so well at it.

The reveal is so close.

When Si Mok looks at Yeo Jin, confused by the appearance of all her police mates and she says “I was the one who called them,” she’s explaining it to him, and also wresting away the control that ex-Chief Kim tried to establish.

And her police team leader Choi, stuck with his feet to the ground, only wanting to take him away.

…the music, how it is so good.

When he finally moves to make the arrest, when he says those words.

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He’s quick to go back and aid the investigation, because he knows that the Chief has actually committed the crime. (Is it a crime? Deserving of such a crime? The statute says so, strict liability.)

That one, the cop that covered for the Chief, get rid of him too, please. But when Yeo Jin complains and lets her guard down around her team leader – I trust her judgement. He must be alright.

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Si Mok who says it seriously, “Imagine if Division Chief you had an inappropriate relationship with the victim” and Won Cheol who says in the subtitles, “What did you say?”

But he used those same words back, “What about me and someone?” which hits different. Not, ‘what are you saying’ but, ‘me and who did what??’ that kind of incredulity like he can’t fathom it, not that he’s rearing up in defensiveness.

He goes “Great timing,” and Si Mok actually stops, to wait, for his permission.

When with anyone else, Si Mok would just use that as an excuse to escape.

Amazingly, the Division One Chief had an arrest warrant requested against him – such must be the family issues he was having so he couldn’t make it to celebrate Chang Joon’s promotion. Was that the understanding all the other prosecutors had when Won Cheol apologised for that Division Chief’s absence?

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0 7 , that Ga Young was able to give them.

What I didn’t think much of until this time, was the difference in how Ga Young wrote it, and how Se Won wrote it on the board, with a serif.

Knowing what the actual 0 7 looked like, and what it was, maybe that was deliberate, and not just a quirk of his handwriting. Ah thinking of the ending makes my heart hurt.

It’s also palpable the fear that Detective Jang Geon has – a superior weak to women and hooked by an underage girl is one thing as a crime. Another is to attempt to murder the girl. Being afraid of the truth.

Another of the things that this show does so well, though from a different perspective compared to Mouse, where the focus is on what the viewers are thinking and fearing.

Jang Geon who enabled Chief Kim to dig Lee Chang Joon the Presidential Secretary into the same hole.

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0 7. Yeo Jin who scribbles it multiple times contrasted with Se Won who just stares, Si Mok who turns over the words of Ga Young.

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I still don’t make the connection between Dong Jae trading in his car with a exchange program because he has a new job.

Si Mok is finally eating! Only for Dong Jae to appear and boast about himself. ha, doesn’t he get tired?

At least he explains some of the pieces for us, the odd Japanese speaking and jokes about selling cars in a fancy restaurant. The Minister of National Development who looked uncomfortable that night, with Lee Chang Joon as their eyes met – and Chang Joon who got home plastered.

I wonder, is that how people negotiate to return historical assets?

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Eun Soo who storms in her capacity as a child – Dong Jae’s softness as he gives her the tissues and his look of sorrow instead of running after her.

In a contrast to his very good – no very bad – yes very good attempt to wiretap the conversation. Selling out a country, that theme which I enjoy so much. Money Game was about it too, just causing a second ‘IMF’ rather than the defense system.

Ga Young who has a nightmare of disorientation that even if I paused at every screen, I wouldn’t be able to decipher. What it would be like to bleed out slowly zipped up in a suitcase, left in the basement.

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