The Car Crash
Chocolate returns with another strong episode and this time, there’s some further hurdles for our two protagonists to overcome. There’s some pretty dramatic moments dotted throughout the hour of drama too, including more about Cha-Young’s dramatic past as a child. All of this culminates in a climax that leaves things on a heart-breaking note, with many questions left unresolved ready for next week. In the wake of Min-Seong’s funeral, we begin the episode with Cha-Young handed an envelope and within it, a letter from Min. He thanks her for the dumpling stew and goes on to admit he knew about her feelings for Kang a long time ago. As she gets a taxi to the fishing lake, the words still floating in her mind, the rain pours as Kang hangs his head in shame. She approaches him and tells Kang she made the dumpling stew for Min-Seong before he passed. After Cha walks away, Kang reluctantly picks her up by the side of the road and agrees to drive her closer to the nearest taxi rink. However, en-route there he begins to fall asleep and is forced to pull over to rest. It’s here we flash back and see Cha speaking to Min about her Peter Pan who is, of course, Kang. Only, when we snap back to present day, a truck slams into the back of their car. With Cha in a bad way, he rushes to hospital with Cha in his arms, only to find out the neurosurgery department has been shut down after the professor left, given how difficult it’s been to fill that spot. The next hospital is an hour away too and with time slipping away, Kang decides to do the surgery himself. Despite the surgery being successful, Kang loses blood from his open wound suffered during the accident and collapses. Right infront of Lee Jung who prepares to do surgery on him. We then cut forward a year to see Tae-Hyeon talking to Cha-Young and it turns out she’s lost her memory… only, she hasn’t and actually she just doesn’t want to confront him right now. Meanwhile, Kang’s hand shakes during a simple procedure of drawing blood, throwing big question marks over whether he’ll be able to perform neurosurgery or not. This turns out to be the case soon after too, as Kang struggles to control his shakes in the middle of surgery, forcing him to hang up the gloves and hand it over to a different doctor. With her flight booked for a month from now, Cha fails to pluck up the courage and say thanks to Kang so instead, she heads to the kitchen and creates a video log of her dishes instead. Seon-Ae, the woman from the hospice, seemingly continues to deteriorate as the alzheimers becomes more aggressive. As her condition worses, she forgets how to cook banana rice cake which she made Cha-young before. Deciding to help, the ensuing dish causes Ji-Yong to be rushed into hospital. It turns out he’s allergic to it, hence why it wasn’t made for him before. As his mum slaps Cha-Young, Kang interjects and manages to stop her from hurting Cha too much before calling security to escort her out. Back at Seon-Ae’s house, Cha-Young admits that the pills she’s been given for her treatment are actually fake. As we cut forward, she’s seemingly checked into hospital as Kang confronts his brother over his surgery, convinced something went wrong given the side effect regarding his shaky hands. As he arrives at the nursing home, Cha hides in a cupboard during a game with the kids but then flashes back to the past where she was trapped in the falling building as a child. As Kang opens the closet door, she throws her arms around him and asks for his help where we leave the episode. I have to say, out of all the Korean dramas I’ve watched this year, Chocolate’s timeline of events and cinematography are top notch. There’s some gorgeous shots here and that’s just as well too, especially for a show that features food so heavily! There’s a lot of poignant drama here though and following Min-Seong’s death, this tragic series of events have continued right the way through the episode. Hearing Kang bitterly tell Cha-Young he hopes he never hears from her again is a tough pill to swallow and even moreso given how Min-Seong felt about the entire situation. Between Kang’s shaky hands and Cha-Young becoming more involved at the hospital, could we see a career switch for our two protagonists? I’m guessing Kang will go back to cooking now that he can’t perform surgery while Cha-Young’s future as a chef is certainly thrown into question given how shamed she felt regarding Ji-Yong’s allergies. Or they could wind up cooking together! We’ll have to wait to find out of course but for now, Chocolate bows out with another great episode.
