Iljimae recap, Episode 7

I’ve been wasting a lot of time watching this ridiculous drama online starring Lee Junki, whom me and my friend affectionately refer to as Sauce boy (not as in, he is a saucy sexy, he still has a long way to go, like a few light years maybe, but because his name oh so resembles a famous sauce brand, which I think was infamously endorsed by Yan Can Cook a few dozen years ago. No?)

So I figured, I shall waste more time on this ditzy recap business, since I guess, episode 7 is likely to be the cream of the crop for this series, before to turns into a:

1) Weepy, depressing and “Dear God why do you hate me so” bundle of angst the size of the Singapore flyer or bigger.

2) Hilarious ditty with no logic whatsoeva and would eventually transform its protagonists into life sized bobble heads shooting vulgarities in Korean. (how exciting)

Anyhow, here’s an almost screen by screen recap of Iljimae Episode 7. more incessant ramblings from a rambling TV enthusiast. But not before I throw this bomb of a warning to you:

****WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!*******

Episode 7 opens with Yongi (Sauce Boy) selling what could be more Edison porn to the prostitutes in the district ( you can’t really get enough of those can you? I mean the Edison porn, not the prostitutes. Or the district) Of course, he’s just trying to fish out information from these babbling fools about where his sister might be by getting their tongues waggling with porn (erm, that’s not a very good way to put it ,but nonetheless), but since he is Ilijimae, the master of disguises and all, he manages to come across like a genuine pimp, and a wussy captive at that.

Sauceboy, looking completely pork faced from all that law and order.

Of course, he gets captured by the guards and thrown into a jail cell, so that puts a damper on his sister quest part 2. BUT WAIT! The camera pans left to show that he is actually thrown into the same cell as the sister. Wah, buy Toto also ever so “Zhun".

Sauce boy strikes lottery! HUAT ah! But loses his ticket. WAH PIANG!

But sad Yongi can’t claim his prize, cause apparently, he cannot recognize the woman in the corner as the sister whom he had grew up with. (still got some residue of that ridiculous amnesia huh?)

And so, despite saving her from being molested by the other horny dude also hanging out with them in the cell, he commits random acts of unkindness to his sister (like shooting dagger eyes, refusing to offer her food, and calling her a wretch for getting caught while prostituting herself) all of which we know he will regret and cause our protagonist further pain and a lame excuse for plot progression in future episodes. Through a random monologue from Swedol (Yongi’s father) Sauceboy’s sister learns that the other person in the cell is Yongi, or Kyumi, her brother. But before she has the chance to acknowledge him, she is being dragged off by the guards for some R&R. (you wish ah.)

But we all know Korean dramas, when it comes to tragedy, there’s always a way to bring it to the next level man.

The guards get wind of the fact that the woman in the cell is actually Sauceboy’s sister, and that Sauceboy was trying to get in touch with her before she was caught. They did some small analysis with their pea sized brains and decide to drag her into the torture chamber to try to fish out more information on the whereabouts of the brother by beating her to a pulp.

The poor girl of course refuses to talk and gets beaten to a pulp. Unable to get anything out of her, the poor guards throw her back into the jail cell in exasperation. She is finally reunited with the sleepy brother, and despite the pain in her legs (which were coincidentally, also beaten to a pulp), she manages to crawl across the floor to embrace the sleeping brother.

But of course, Sauceboy doesn’t recognize her, so as a result, he acts like a complete bastard by shaking her off violently and berating her for being a “horny” woman. (The Tragedy!).

And so, the sister, for fear of the guards getting suspicious that Sauceboy is her brother, decides to give up her attempts to reconcile with Sauceboy.

The next morning, Sauceboy is released from jail for his petty crime. He immediately switches to personality #467, and suddenly transform into a wise, kind and advise-dispensing dude, encouraging her by telling her that she would also be released soon, and urging her to not be so “horny” for her own self improvement. I cannot tell whether this scene was meant to be hilarious or sad, these Korean dramas, they mess around with your head. Once he is gone from sight, she starts mourning to the heavens with her half damaged voice in what seems to be a truly touching scene.

Personality #467.

Tis heartbreaking to watch…..

Sauceboy goes back to his friend’s food shack and demands Bong Soon to serve him with food. So I guess personality #467 is taking a rest, and it’s back to personality #456, useless bastard. While enjoying himself, he overhears a conversation between the guards at the next table and learns unfortunately that the women who had tried to embrace him last night was actually his sister, and that one of the guards had with him a bunch of new ropes that they’re gonna hang her with. (They’re gonna hang her publicly to lure her brother out. OH THE AUDACITY OF THE KOREAN SCREEN WRITERS! HURRAY TO THE NEXT LEVEL MAN!)

Sauceboy is visibly disturbed by the news and drops his bowl of food in shock. He briefly contemplates his sister’s act of love last night as incest (no he doesn’t, the dudes’s reeling in remorse) and in a bid to disguise his emotional trauma, he bends forth to pick up the shards like a normal person, and of course, comes across as completely grieving instead.

He quickly shakes off those useless self destructive thoughts and hatches a plan to save his sister. This plan, as the episode reveals, will involve a few Ratatouilles and a helpless cow.

He infiltrates the guards’ conversation and manages to smear the rope (that they will hang his sister with) with honey and blood. Then he infiltrates into prison, lets the rats loose in the rope hanging chambers, so that they will start chewing on the ropes he smeared with honey in an attempt to weaken them. He then infiltrates into the guards’ dressing quarters and steals a uniform.

(One wonders, with all that infiltrating, shouldn’t he have just went straight to the cell his sister was locked in, infiltrate THAT to save her rather than wasting time here with the useless details.)

Meanwhile he gets the gangster guy with the weird hairdo to help him by getting arrested for peeing at the prison building, and in another round of unexplainable luck (Teo Beh Pieo again!), the gangster gets thrown into the cell NEXT to the sister (maybe just the consolation prize this time). He tells the sister not to worry, for Sauceboy is already hatching a plan to save her.

Sauceboy disguises himself as a guard and steals a cow from a cow farmer with his new persona.

Apparently the head of the prison guards is celebrating his big birthday that day and there’s supposed to be some big feast so someone is obviously waiting for his beef.
Sauceboy then transforms into the cow farmer and manages to infiltrate to the prison his sister is staying in. (FINALLY! And whats with the wacky disguises man. What next, Harry Potter and his lightning scar?)

He makes use of the cow’s brute strength to break open the bars on the cell windows, but learns from weird hairdo that his sister’s execution has been pushed forward a day and she had already been sent off to the town centre for hanging.

The scene skips to the town centre where the sis is being hanged.

The guards urges her real brother to step forward at the count of 3 or else she will be hanged.

Shihoo, feeling guilty for being the person responsible for Sauceboy’s sister’s arrest, steps forward to complain and whine about the fact they had promised him to not kill her.
Brilliant irony by the scriptwriters that Shihoo is also her biological brother, but not that the guards realize, and just not the one they were looking for. (DAMN IT! You see I have skipped all prior parts with Shihoo in it. His character is just too angst-ridden, and I just feel he is the reason why some parts of the series sucked. So I shall refrain from mentioning him unless absolutely crucial.)

Sauceboy reaches the town centre just in time to witness the hanging. It seems he is confident that the rope will give way and has already asked weird hairdo to standby on a horse to transport him and his sister to safety once he plunges ahead to grab his sister the moment the rope snaps. But it doesn’t.

Sauceboy watches helplessly, as his plan backfires and his sister is hung to death before him.

For a full minute, the show finally lapses back to normalcy. Having Sauceboy succeed with this plan would have been plain ridiculous and preposterous, and I’m glad that the screen writers had the common sense to insert some logic at this point of the story. Apparently, the guards had done a quality inspection on the ropes before the hanging, and seeing that the one they planned to use is already frayed, had switch to a brand new one for the public performance.

And so logic saves the day and his sister dies in front of him. That’s it, a 60 minute show with just 1 minute of logic to reward its pragmatic viewers. And I’m sure that after this, the show will relapse back to its unabashed ridiculousness.

Of course, the assassin guys who had been out to kill Sauceboy is there at the scene of the hanging and Sauceboy seems to realize this. And here, it seems to provide a good showcase of Sauceboy’s acting with all that subtle suffering. (he can’t really let others, especially the assasins realize he is grieving for his sister for they’ll certainly recognize him as the real brother, which would put his life in more peril. And so he turns on personality #354, plain suffering dude who tries to pretend that he is not suffering by acting retarded.

Aware of the fact that he is being followed home, he screams for food and jokes around with his adopted parents while stuffing some kind of green “kueh” into his mouth. The assassin guard witnesses this stupid exchange between sauceboy and his parents and leaves, dismissing the fact that he could be the real brother when he’s enjoying himself so much after the hanging of his sister.

Peronality #354 and the happy family schtick.

Sauceboy, claiming that he’s choking from too much kueh, tells his adopted parents that he;s going inside the house to get some water. But of course you know he just wants to get a little private time to grief for his dead sister. And so, inside the house, he lets his emotions run wild and weeps openly and uncontrollably, with a piece of green kueh still stuck between his teeth.

I hope he doesn’t choke, man, that would have been stupid.

You’ll see that some time must have gone by, and it is now night and sauceboy manages to wonder back to the plum blossom trees at his old house while still, erm visibly grieving. There, Sauceboy does more of his crazy-looking, loose lip crying. (the grieving continues and is nowhere near ending. You know what would have been really funny? If the kueh stuck between his teeth was still there)

The kueh has disappeared unfortunately.

And so he swears again before the plum tree that he will not forget the tragic injustice done to his family.

He hatches another plan to make himself always remember the revenge he has to exact, rock and roll style. And so, Sauceboy goes to the future to get a computer printout of the emblem on the sword that had killed his father, comes back to the past and brings the printout to the tattoo parlour to get some Miami Ink on his left chest.

Back to the future?

There is a fair bit of “disrobing” for Sauceboy here, but don’t you get excited, there is nothing except maybe, literally some “Ji Xiong Rou”. The guy has a pretty face. Fullstop.

And so Sauceboy gets a fugly tattoo of the sword emblem and vows to exact revenge for his entire family.

Saucebooy gets some ink

Sauceboy meets Weird Hairdo on his way home, and Weird Hairdo offers to help him find his mother as well. But Sauceboy is suddenly all sensible (Personality #564 maybe?) and quips that if he hadn’t tried to get in touch with the sister, she would still be alive and maybe he should just start believing that his mom is living happily somewhere and stop at that.

Some brotherly bonding.

Meanwhile, for further character development (aka, to make Shihoo more angst than his already is) , Shihoo is beaten up by Shiwan’s friends and left by the roadside. He is rescued by an old lady, who turns out to be, none other than Sauceboy’s real mother. Oh yeah, doing the “so near, yet so far” thing again huh? (you see, this part is absolutely crucial)

Sauceboy tries to find the sword that killed his father by showing the printout of the emblem on the sword to a blacksmith, who quips that such a precious sword would only be kept in one place, in the precious treasure vaults deep in the houses of the nobles.
Meanwhile, Sauceboy learns that weird hairdo’s gang works for the various nobles in the area, and have access to their houses and storerooms and so decides to join them.

Turning on Personality #354 again, he tries to disguise his true motive of joining the gang by acting and dressing ridiculously, to hialrious effect.

‘Nough said.

His new outfit obviously questions the legitimacy of the gang. If it were a real ganster gang, I’ll bet he’ll be dead by now.

There is some development between Sauceboy and Bong Soon’s character later on, but at this point in time, and already running 6 pages long, I’ve decided to just post some screencaps and leave it at that. Heck.

Bong Song finding Sauceboy completely repulsive but attractive at the same time.

Sauceboy persuades his adopted father to teach him some thievery tricks.

Sauceboy transforms into Iljimae, finally.

The next episode is also quite interesting too, Iljimae, the night robber finally appears, and the true reason why Sauceboy adopts such a ridiculous and recognizable identity for his acts of night theft is revealed. (hint: it has more to do with friendship then revenge). And of course he is finally reunited with his childhood sweetheart, Eun Chae, but I;m really rooting for him and Bong Soon at this stage. Eun Chae speaks too slowing for my liking. (in fact, I think she speaks SO slowly that I can understand what she’s talking about without any subtitles).

2008-06-15 @ 1:48 p.m.
BACKWARDS // FORWARDS