Father & Son
The latest episode of When The Camellia Blooms delves deeper into the relationship between Pil-Gu and his dad, offering up some emotional moments. We also find out a little more about Hyang-Mi’s dark past, which seems to hide quite a few secrets. The episode starts straight after the kiss with Yong-Sik, where he walks Dongbaek home and tells her he really likes her. She replies that she has decided to stay confident and not let anyone walk all over her again. This causes her to walk around town the next day in a very fancy red dress, shocking everyone. She then arrives back at the Camellia with a motorbike she bought to deliver food from her bar. After finding more cat food around the neighbourhood, Yong-Sik returns to the station with the number of the owner of the building opposite the beauty parlor. He finds out from him that no one ever visits it. The police are then called to the same building to investigate a fire where Dongbaek finds a similar lighter to the one from the school fire. Pil-Gu gets bullied at school when a kid calls him 2D1M (2 dads, 1 mum). This angers him and he ends ups punching the bully. As Jong-Ryeol waits for him outside, he gets him to explain why he had a fight. Jong-Ryeol then decides to take Pil-Gu and his friends to the restaurant. After the other kids leave to get more food, Pil-Gu starts crying, asking Jong-Ryeol why he’s always around and taking his side. He later tells him that he knows he is his dad, but he’s not happy as he left his mum alone which made her cry a lot which in turn, upset Jong-Ryeol greatly. Captain Byun reveals to Yong-Sik that small fires have been happening before each murder which shocks him. Suddenly, a big sign falls off the building revealing a mark on the wall where a surveillance camera used to be. After seeing Jong-Ryeol with Pil-Gu, Yong-sik tells Dongbaek that he is not coming to the bar for now because of Jong-Ryeol, intending to respect how Pil-Gu feels. Dongbaek goes back to her bar only to find Jong-Ryeol waiting for her again. She tells him to stop seeing Pil-Gu, but he replies that he knows about him being his dad. Ja-Young has dinner with Gyu-Tae and his mother who tells her she needs to stop acting so smart and intimidating her son. Ja-Young then tells her mother-in-law that he has been having an affair with a bar waitress which angers her and she tells him he’s just like his dad. Meanwhile, we see three women in a hairdressers talking about the rumour around Jong-Ryeol’s affair. One of them mentions that she heard it from her best friend but stole money and ran away. Suddenly, a man called Nak-Oh appears asking the woman if her best friend she’s talking about now lives in Onsang. We then cut to Hyang-Mi who we see has been hiding money in the freezer. Jessica looks through Jong-Ryeol‘s car GPS location and finds Pil-Gu’s school. She decides to head there where she sees Pil-Gu and Dongbaek and realises who she is. Dongbaek’s mother arrives in the bar with Pil-Gu and finds Hyang-Mi suspiciously looking through the fridge. After the mother warns her about her behaviour, Hyang asks her why she is pretending to have dementia. Yong-Sik then arrives with flowers but the mother tells him that he is being too nice. During diner, Dongbaek tells Jong-Ryeol once again to leave their lives. He asks her why she moved to Onsang and she replies that he once mentioned this place to her, but also that she waited for him for a couple of years. He defends himself by saying that he was quite young when she left but wants to start over. She replies that she is not the same anymore and that it’s too late. Yong-Sik overhears their conversation and confronts Jong-Ryeol. He tells him to back off as he’s here to stay and that Dongbaek likes him. He then tells Dongbaek not to see him anymore and takes her away, holding her hand. As they walk off, Dongbaek smiles and tells Yong-Sik that she is happy and likes him too. As we see Hyang-Mi talking to the mysterious person who has been feeding the cats, we cut to the murder scene in the future. The episode closes with Captain Byun handing the purse they found on site to Yong-Sik, belonging to a Choi Go-Un. The latest episode ends with quite an important twist regarding the future victim – a certain Choi Go-Un. Could it be the real name of Hyang-Mi who, from what we found out in this episode, has stolen money and run away? The new character Nak-Oh seems suspicious and adds some intrigue concerning her story too and this will probably explain why she is so desperate to leave for Denmark. There were some emotional moments during the latest episode too, mainly involving Pil-Gu and his parents. Dongbaek said something very true: “we always worry about our kids”. Being a parent myself, it is something I can really relate to and this definitely adds a lot of depth to the show. We are now at the halfway point of this K-drama and it will be interesting to see if When The Camellia Blooms manages to keep the same level of drama, humour and suspense going. If it can, it’ll certainly make it one of the better Korean dramas of the year.
