Girl Power
Episode 11 of Penthouse Season 2 begins with Secretary Jo rushing into Dan-Tae’s apartment. He has pictures of Ae-Gyo and Logan together. Just to back this up, Ae-Gyo rings and tells Dan-Tae as much, urging him to head over. Unfortunately Dan-Tae shows with his goons and immediately takes Logan to the warehouse. While he’s taken away, Ae-Gyo rings Mr Hong and announces that she is, in fact, Su-Ryeon. It turns out Su-Ryeon and Logan expected Dan-Tae would play this card all along. Logan had his people attack the car – including a driver who happens to be planted. Secretary Jo and the others are attacked, with the latter forced into Logan’s position under the hood. Poor Jo is getting slapped around a lot at the moment! When Dan-Tae finds out, he’s irate and struggling to comprehend what’s happened. Ringing Su-Ryeon brings no clues for him, although it’s clear now that she’s on Logan’s side and trying hard to gain Dan-Tae’s trust. It seems to work too, with Dan-Tae returning and speaking to Su-Ryeon about the deposit money for the lot. She wants Dan-Tae to use the funds from the safe in order to pay for it. After smashing a glass on the floor and walking away, Su-Ryeon realizes there’s a trap door under the rug and when Dan-Tae leaves, finds the key and descends down to check out what’s there. Meanwhile, Seo-Jin tries to convince Yoon-Hee to team up in order to take down Dan-Tae. She promises to destroy Dan-Tae with her own hands but Yoon-Hee refuses, instead showing off her phone with a voice recording and telling Seo-Jin she needs to come clean about everything. For now, she decides to think it over. Elsewhere, a very-much-alive Ro-Na rings Seok-Hoon who’s shocked to see her alive. He charges out and straight to the park where Ro-Na happens to be sitting on a bench. Yoon-Hee apparently still doesn’t know her daughter is okay, but the bombshells don’t stop there. Ro-Na confirms Dan-Tae was the one to try and kill her. Seok-Hoon is enraged but that soon dispels when Su-Ryeon shows up. She’s the one who saved Ro-Na. When Seok-Hoon sees his Mother, the two embrace in a pretty emotional reunion. The next day, Yoon-Hee and Su-Ryeon (under the alias of Ae-Gyo) sign the contract. After, Su-Ryeon manages to convince Yoon-Hee to team up. They want to take out Dan-Tae and gain revenge – and she wants Yoon-Hee’s help in doing so. Only, as she mentions doing everything for their kids, Yoon-Hee suddenly realizes that she’s not actually Ae-Gyo but Su-Ryeon. She’s shocked, and wants to talk, but Su-Ryeon simply drives away silently. In the morning, Seo-Jin succumbs to Dan-Tae’s wishes. The kids however, are not happy with this arrangement and rebel, leaving the dinner table and refusing to eat any more. Seo-Jin does have a plan though, and that includes killing Seo-Jin no matter what. Yoon-Cheol continues to rot away in prison, struggling to control himself in the wake of Ro-Na being his daughter. In fact, the pain is so much that he has the other inmates beat him down. Not long after though, he’s transferred after being prosecuted for Ro-Na’s death. As we already know though, she’s actually still alive. After a big day of betting on the different lots of land, all the Hera Palace supporting cast gather together. There, they learn that they’ve won over Cheonsoo District. Yoon-Hee shows up at Dan-Tae’s apartment to gloat not long after, asking the Chairman just why he cancelled the contract. With the letter from Ae-Gyo, Dan-Tae realizes that his plans have all gone completely awry and Su-Ryeon has taken off with his money. Well, it turns out she’s being held at Golden Real Estate. Dan-Tae is irate and takes her outside. Only, Logan shows up on his motorcycle and manages to take her away. That evening, Su-Ryeon is run down on the road by a mysterious man. He bundles her in the boot and takes her up to a pet funeral home. Paying off the owner, they head inside and burn her inside the furnace. This, as we soon find out, is all a big, elaborate scheme to take out Dan-Tae. On the back of this, the police how up at Dan-Tae’s apartment and arrest him for the murder of Ae-Gyo. Seo-Jin does her best to twist this story to her advantage, including partially burned clothes and footprints by the door. All of this, as it turns out, was orchestrated by Seo-Jin and the other girls to incriminate Dan-Tae. Everything slots into place nicely, including the hidden entrance to leave the apartment. On top of all this, Yoon-Hee shows up as a witness. She recorded their conversation in the morning, including Dan-Tae clearly stating that he wants to kill Ae-Gyo. On top of all this, police search Dan-Tae’s basement and find Su-Ryeon there, weeping loudly and making it seem like she’s been kept there for a long time.
The Episode Review
Does this show always make sense? No. But god damn is it a satisfying melodrama. This episode in particular is incredibly satisfying and seeing Dan-Tae get his comeuppance after 2 seasons of scheming and backstabbing is absolutely glorious. On top of that, everything this episode leads nicely into mountains of evidence stacked against him, with Yoon-Hee, Su-Ryeon and Seo-Jin all forming a loose alliance to take this chairman down. It seems the evidence is insurmountable now but it still remains to be seen whether Dan-Tae will stay behind bars. He seems way too slippery a character for that to happen so suddenly but we’ll have to wait and see for now. After all, if he is taken to prison he could find himself face to face with Yoon-Cheol! Seeing Ae-Gyo and Su-Ryeon switching places and understanding more around what’s led them to this point in time is a nice touch. In fact, the entire episode layers on a whole bunch of reveals, including Ro-Na still being alive and Su-Ryeon helping her survive while in the hospital. There’s still a lot to unpack but this episode has easily been the best of the season so far. The sudden change when Seo-Jin revealed that she knew who Ae-Gyo was all this time is probably the highlight of the entire episode, although everything has meticulously been placed to lead up to this big reveal. What on earth could the writers have planned for the final two episodes?! We’ll have to wait and see but judging by this, it’s going to be a must-watch!
