The Phone Number
Beautiful Love, Wonderful Life continues to boast strong episodes each week and this one was no exception. Balancing a great balance of humour with drama and tense moments, this soapy Korean drama is really stepping it up during the second-half of its mammoth 100 episode run. As the weeks go by I find myself becoming more and more engrossed in this one and I can’t wait for next week’s installment! We begin with Young-Ae realizing that Yu-Ra is Joon-Hwi’s mother. Yu-Ra confronts her as she’s upset that Cheong-Ah is trying to take her second son away. However, Young-Ae defends her by saying that Joon-Hwi should have stopped dating when he found out who she was, as she’s suffering again. She’s also tempted to reveal the truth about her son’s suicide when Yu-Ra mentions that Cheong should be indebted to them after Joon-Gyeom saved her. Yu-Ra then mentions that Joon-Hwi broke up with her to stop her from finding out the painful truth, so she tells her to make sure she stays away or she will have to get involved. Jin-Woo and Joon-Hwi have a drink together in their office where they talk about the latest events. Joon-Hwi tells his cousin he deserves the slap he got from his father-in-law and also confirms that he would go back to Cheong-Ah if she found out the truth, as he wouldn’t want her to suffer alone again. Baek arrives in the office and wonders if Joon-Hwi is rich and close to Jin-Woo, as he sees them drink together. However they make up a story about his reason for being there. Baek confronts Joon-Hwi about being rich and where he lives, believing the reason why he broke up with Cheong-Ah was because his family didn’t approve. After seeing how upset Joon-Hwi is over Baek’s words, Jin-Woo decides to take him for a drive near Cheong-Ah’s work. It’s here that they end up seeing her dealing with traffic and Jin-Woo tries to get his cousin to go and speak to her. He’s unable to though unfortunately, but asks the driver to go around her one more time. In a coffee shop, Baek tells Cheong-Ah that Joon-Hwi lives in a rich neighbourhood and that it upset her mum greatly as she believes that he broke up because of their financial situation. Cheong-Ah then heads back home and sees on her mum’s phone that she met with Joon Hwi’s mum. Yoong-Woong then returns home with Seol-Ah and as they share a drink with Young-Ae, he’s seething about the affair Jin-Woo had. Young-Ae tells them that they should just cut him out of their lives but Seol-Ah reveals that she wants to see him for a month, just to make sure as her wedding and divorce were rushed and forced. Cheong-Ah decides to call Joon-Hwi to invite him to have coffee and leaves a voicemail saying she will wait for him one last time. As she leaves after waiting for hours, he finally decides to come out of his hiding place. She asks him if it’s his mother who is against them dating. When he replies that she is, Cheong-Ah tells him to get her to leave her mum out of it and that she will get over him. Meanwhile, Tae-Rang cooks for his father’s colleagues who arrive for dinner. When Pa-Rang tells him that Hae-Rang is about to go out, Tae-Rang confronts her and demands that she stay to greet them as she should face Cheong-Ah. During dinner, Joon-Ik discusses the fact that both her and Hae-Rang were in the same school but wonders why Cheong wasn’t in the year book. It’s here she explains that she dropped out because she was bullied but doesn’t say anything more about it, while we see Hae-Rang squirming in her seat. After finishing work, Seol-Ah sees Jin-Woo waiting for her with fake snow. After she gets angry at him again, he vows to wait for her every day and will tell her he loves her while holding her hand. Unable to resist, she agrees to date for a month which makes him very happy. After taking money out from an ATM, Cheong-Ah comes face to face with Si-Wol who asks for a favour given she’s the only one he trusts. While they eat lunch, he asks her to look into the hit and run accident he got accused of as he insists that he never caused it. He goes on to tell her that this incident is why his life started spiraling out of control. This prompts Cheong-Ah to visits Yu-Ra in her office who acts very cold towards her. Cheong-Ah tells her about Si-Wol and asks her to investigate the hit and run. Yu-Ra gets angry though and tells her that all criminals claim that they’re innocent and explains that he was always a trouble maker. As Cheong-Ah returns home, she finds the sheet with all the contact numbers for her sister’s trip. Looking through the numbers, she sees Joon-Hwi’s mother listed as his emergency contact and recognizes the number. It’s here she slowly realises who she is and puts the pieces together. Shocked and devastated, she heads to their house and as she enters, she’s speechless as she sees Yu-Ra and Joon-Hwi together which closes the episode. Beautiful Love, Wonderful Life has certainly delivered another great episode here and with a big cliffhanger to end things on this time around. Cheong-Ah knows who Joon-Hwi’s mother is too and she didn’t hesitate to pay them a visit. As expected, it was quite heartbreaking to see how devastated she was when she found out the truth and the next confrontation promises to be quite the emotional and dramatic one. After this revelation, Cheong-Ah and Joon-Hwi will definitely not get back together for a while as this shock is bound to bring back some painful memories for our main girl. Jin-Woo continues to try and win over Seol-Ah and it’s here we see that it’s starting to slowly work. His character has definitely changed over the episodes as we see him care more for the people around him. Si-Wol asking for Cheong-Ah’s help in the hit and run was quite the clever twist too and I’m really hoping she will start to investigate it soon. There are still more truths to be revealed, with the biggest one of course being Joon-Gyeom’s suicide and Yu-Ra framing Si-Wol. How will all our characters deal with these issues? We still have plenty more episodes to find out but it promises to be explosive and emotional when these are finally revealed.
