Shining Inheritance/Brilliant Legacy Ep 21 Recap
Posted By Claire on March 23, 2009
*originally posted at Dramaworld
The romance in this one finally hit “boiling”. To be honest, this hasn’t been one of my favorite episodes so far, apart from the romance. In fact, I thought it downright dragged and was rather boringly repetitive of all the same tropes the drama has already been relying on…until the end. Oh, until the end. Which shot like a glorious lightning bolt out of the dark:)
Watch episode 21 eng-subbed on Viikii
Recap and comments(highly spoilery) follow.
Episode Summary:
Hwan, after stumbling drunken into Eun-seung’s house, passes out on the floor. Eun-seung considers calling Jun-se or Grandmother to come help her get rid of him but decides against both for various reasons, and ends up rolling him into her bed. There, she gazes at him in fascination, and, as if unable to help herself, gradually approaches and reaches out to touch his face in what’s almost a caress. Hwan stirs at the touch and terrified that he’ll discover her, she rushes back to her seat. Hwan wakes up some time later and finds her slumped at her desk asleep, his necklace clutched in her hand. Gazing at her with a kind of tender wonder, he carefully covers her with the bed quilt, then slumps back against the kitchen counter and stares at her. Falling asleep again, he wakes up in the morning to find himself covered with the quilt again, Eun-seung gone, and a satisfying breakfast laid out for him, with a note on top which says enigmatically “Lock the door when you leave”. At work, Eun-seung is wiping down the door and as she wipes away the water she looks out and straight into his eyes as he approaches. When he comes in, both are awkward as he returns her house keys and she returns his car keys. Eun-seung begins to scold him and tells him that if he ever does that again she’ll call the cops, but Hwan stops her cold by demanding, “then why did you make me breakfast?” and why she had covered him. Seung-mi, who has been calling Hwan all night ever since he stood her up in the evening and didn’t go home, comes in at this point and takes in his intimate conversation with Eun-seung.
Later, Eun-seung goes to see Grandmother to get her feedback on some business plans, and runs into Seung-mi, who demands to know why she hasn’t been fired or quit as she said she was going to. Eun-seung, coldly refusing to answer, tells her to go ask Grandmother if she’s so curious. Hwan calls Seung-mi to apologize as Eun-seung gets in the elevator, and Seung-mi makes sure Eun-seung overhears her conversation. Hwan tells Seung-mi that he won’t be able to meet with her until next week because he has to go on a business trip.
At home, Hwan questions Grandmother about why she trusted Eun-seung so much to begin with, and whether she trusts her now, and she responds, obviously seeing that he’s struggling, like her, between his feelings for Eun-seung and the hard facts against her, responds that they’ll both(she and Hwan) just have to take some more time to make up their minds.
Back at work, Seung-mi finds out that Hwan and Eun-seung are going on a several-day business trip together, and freaks out. Her problems are solved however when Grandmother decides to throw a spoke in the wheels and appoints her to deliver some company papers to Hwan and Eun-seung while they’re on their business trip.
Hwan and Eun-seung drive to the coast together, a drive puncuated by mostly amiable bickering and a call from Jun-se to tell Eun-seung he’ll also be arriving soon, which makes Hwan jealous(Jun-se claims that it’s for business reasons as he’s in charge of the ship’s restaurant but it’s clearly just an excuse to stay near Eun-seung).When they stop for food, Hwan refuses to eat unless Eun-seung eats with him, so she ends up being forced to feed him as they continue driving.
Once there, they wander around the tourist attractions and Hwan makes Eun-seung pose for him, watching her intently as she does so. Seung-mi and Jun-se arrive in short order, however, interrupting their almost-romantic bliss, and as the foursome tour the cruise ship and then the shore Hwan grows more and more jealous of Jun-se, especially after Jun-se offers Eun-seung a job with he and Hye-ri after she leaves 2nd branch, which he takes for granted she will do once her month is up. Eun-seung is very friendly and comfortable with Jun-se, but just once looks back uneasily at Hwan when Jun-se takes her hand to lead her up the stairs. At dinner that night, Jun-se is giving Eun-seung food and puts a clam on her plate, and Hwan instinctively says abruptly, “She can’t eat clams”. All three stare at him, and Eun-seung has a flashback to their meal together in which she told him that she’s allergic to clams, then Jun-se asks her if that’s true and she replies awkwardly that she’s allergic. Jun-se and Seung-mi are both rattled by this sign of how intimate Hwan and Eun-seung have become, while Eun-seung is surprised that Hwan would remember and notice. While the four eat, Seung-mi, plainly desperate to get Hwan’s attention and tip the balance away from Eun-seung, brings up the sticky situation with Eun-seung and says that she and her mother might have been mistaken about Eun-seung’s motives. Jun-se rapidly shuts her up but not before Eun-seung gets really upset by the reference; Jun-se notices her hands shaking and quickly takes her plate to cut her meat for her, upon which Hwan also notices.
Early the next morning while it’s still dark, Eun-seung, still bothered, gets up and wanders down the shore-side mountain path. Hwan, who had been lying awake outside, sees her pass and follows her from a distance. Eun-seung reaches the large stone momument/statue they’d visited earlier but, looking back, sees Hwan approaching, and quickly runs away to hide behind the statue. Hwan sees her running away and his mouth tightens, but he silently approaches and begins circling the statue, hoping to bump into her.
Comments:
As I said, I found most of this episode unexceptional. I’m excessively tired of Seung-mi and her mother’s perennial scheming, futile rage, and childish mood swings when things don’t go their way, but the episode spent as much time as it always does dwelling on their feelings(not that it wasn’t occasionally satisfying to see the helpless fury Seung-mi is reduced to at seeing Hwan’s growing intimacy and affection for Eun-seung, after all Seung-mi has done to our heroine). The parts with the Grandmother and Jun-se were also more of the same(i.e: grandmother is awesome, Junse is nice guy), and while the scenes at Eun-seung’s house at the beginning of the episode were fun, there was not much else new under the sun in this episode…until the last scene. I did like two small moments – it’s the small moments that often lift this drama out of the merely very well-done and into the slightly extradordinary – and those were when Eun-seung and Hwan see each other through the water she’s wiping on the store’s door – that was a very beautiful moment both visually and symbolically – and when, as they’re driving to the shore, Eun-seung puts her hand out the window to feel the breeze and sun, and Hwan follows suit, and they both sit there in peaceful silence, feeling the wonder of the world.
And as far as the last scene goes, I must say that I really really liked how it was handled. The setting was sublime – most dramas tend to choose everyday settings, like lifts, college/high school campuses, the main characters’ houses, etc., as the setting for climactic/romantic scenes, but Brilliant Legacy,which bears more than a little resemblance to Boys Over Flowers(only more well-written and less melodramatic – and yes, I will admit it, somewhat less addicting) decides to invest a bit more effort and funds into it than that, and it paid off. The bridge scene was beautiful, even on a purely cinematic level – the combination of the bridge with the open sky and the sunlight just beginning to come in made for a very very pretty setting for our couple’s first kiss and first real climactic scene(the only other equivalent I’ve seen recently was in Taiwanese drama ToGetHer, which also had an exceptional lead-in and setting for the couple’s first climactic scene). And I really liked how Eun-seung initially rejects Hwan while also inadvertently confessing she has some feelings – she wouldn’t need to point out all the people that stand in their way if her heart itself was also against him – and then runs away, while he, initially shaken by her refusal/logical objections, then can’t take it anymore – I think it’s at this point that he decides just how much she means to him – and runs after her, thus implying both to himself and her(and us) that he’s willing to sacrifice the feelings of all those other people – Seung-mi, his grandmother, the rest of his family – if only he can have her. And then – and then – the confession, and the kiss. That was entirely unexpected I must admit. With 5 episodes still to go, I was expecting them to hold off on major romantic movements until at least one or two more episodes – but then I remembered that the drama was initially going to end in 3 episodes, with the 24th one, and this pacing made a lot more sense; it’s probably how it was initially written. (I only hope they can hold the plot consistency and forward momentum through the next 5). And finally! It was about time for Hwan to tell her that he believed her, and believed in her. I have to say, I respect Lee Seung-Gi’s character a little more every episode – I wish that he would definitively end things with Seung-mi, whose actions and ethics are clearly murky at best by this point, even to his perspective, and I wish he’d stop treating Jun-se like a teenage boy with a chip on his shoulder, but in his dealings with Eun-seung(which I think is nice commentary on and reflection of how large an role she’s played in changing him for the better) he is always at his best, and in this case, certainly at his more grown-up and decisive. I was really glad to see that he’s the one that initiated the kiss as I’ve felt that, for the most part, Eun-seung’s always been the one driving the direction their relationship goes, and it’s about time Hwan stepped up and took charge and became a man.
Last but not least, as kisses go, it was excellent, not in that Eun-seung kissed him back, but in that it was a very natural kiss – their pose in the still shot which ends the episode is not just sizzling with chemistry but it also shows their bodies as fitting naturally together, and at least Eun-seung has her mouth open and is accepting his kiss(yes, I may be odd to notice these things, but not if you’ve seen the cringingly awkward closed-mouth kisses most kdramas count as their first kiss).
Comments
Leave a Reply