The Photos
Episode 15 of Private Lives begins with GK keeping tabs on Jeong-Hwan, placing a bug on his car courtesy of the turncoat Soo-Jin. From afar, she takes pictures of the driver and feeds it back to the head office who learn for sure that Jeong is alive. This catches us up to the moments at the end of the previous episode as the trio race away and hide. Jeong-Hwan decides to distract all the thugs, giving Joo-Eun and Hyeon-Cheol time to escape…until they don’t. Joo-Eun is knocked out with a single punch, Jeong-Hwan races through the hallways evading guards while the driver is stumbling blindly through the corridors. Outside, Joo-Eun is held captive and forced to hand over her phone. Jeong-Hwan heads outside and single-handedly works his way through the dozen or so guards. Honestly, why does Jae-Wook pay these guys? They couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery. Anyway, Jeong-Hwan buys them all some time, long enough for Joo-Eun to drive off…leaving the driver all alone inside the building. He walks straight into Jae-Wook’s path too and is forced to hand over his phone. He refuses to do so though and instead, decides to take his own life and jumps off the balcony above, killing himself. Jeong-Hwan is captured too while Joo-Eun manages to get away scot-free. When Han Son collects her, he asks what happened but she refuses to tell him. Instead, Joo-Eun answers a call from Jae-Wook on Jeong-Hwan’s phone. He asks for the driver’s phone back but she hangs up on him before he can reveal his terms. As we cut back in time, we see Joo-Eun given another phone by the driver which happens to hold lots of incriminating photos of the Chief Judge, Byung-Jun and the Mayor – essentially everyone involved in President Choi’s ledger. All their names are now matched by photos taken by Jeong in secret. Eventually Joo-Eun rings back and saves one of Jeong-Hwan’s fingers from being severed. Heading up to their meeting place, Joo-Eun and Han Son realize that Soo-Jin is the spy and working against them. In order to prove this, Joo-Eun heads up and visits the Detective, giving him Jeong’s phone…which doesn’t actually happen to be his but enough bait to catch her in the act. She messages GK and tells Kim to leave. This, in turn, is relayed on to Jae-Wook who’s told to change locations. Just before Jeong-Hwan’s face is smashed in with a golf club (anyone else getting Last Of Us Part II flashbacks here?) Joo-Eun races to the rescue with beasty Han Son who manages to turn the tide of this battle. When the police show up, led by Soo-Jin and the Detective, driver Jeong is nowhere to be seen. Soo-Jin feeds everything back to GK and shows Kim the phone recovered by the Detective. Only… it has pictures of dogs on and not any incriminating evidence. Realizing that she’s been played, Kim tells Soo-Jin to get out the car and almost chokes her out right there and then. He tells her to quit the police force and leave – or she’ll be run over. On the way out the car, she runs into Myung-Hyun who finds out she’s a GK shadow. He calls her scary and tells her not to meet anymore, walking away from this turncoat. Bok-Gi meets Hyun-Kyeong and asks outright about the ledger. She warns that playing this game with Byung-Jun is dangerous and she could be found out sooner rather than later. As she gets up to walk away, she clings to Hyun-Kyeong’s mention of First Lady and decides to keep playing this game. She outright admits what her real name is to him, as we cut back to 2017 and see that she originally applied for a job at his company. Bok-Gi then mentions President Choi’s ledger and admits that she too has it. Finally, she forces him into bringing her in as First Lady and bit by bit reveals details from the ledger to use against his opponents. With things on the up for her, Joo-Eun heads over asking for help. Joo-Eun comes clean and admits that she’s working with Jeong-Hwan to try and catch Jae-Wook. Given Bok-Gi has gone off script, she’s worried that this swindler is letting her emotions get the better of her. She’s convinced that Bok-Gi is doing this for revenge but she shrugs this off, claiming just to do this to be happy. Jeong-Hwan meets Myung-Hun and remains fixed on his goal of exposing Byung-Jun and making sure he doesn’t become President. To begin with, that includes meeting Reporter Kim and handing over an envelope full of evidence to expose Byung-Jun. Only…police officers suddenly show up prompting him to bolt out before he can hand it over. Instead they switch to Plan B which includes distributing these files through Assemblyman Kwon instead. Before they do so, Bok-Gi goes on numerous campaign runs with Byung-Jun -publicized of course – much to Jae-Wook’s annoyance. Jeong-Hwan meets Kwon and hands over the incriminating photos of Byung-Jun from the ledger. This, of course, puts GK back under fire again as the balance of power swings back. Director Oh requests to meet Kim on the back of this, with yet another slip of paper with X on and forcing them all to destroy every trace of what they’re doing; this one’s come straight from the very top. Jeong-Hwan heads into the VIP lounge but finds Assemblyman Kwon dead and poisoned. This, of course, has come from Kim who’s had no other choice but to kill the candidate. Jeong-Hwan finds his body too and tells the workers to phone the police. As Jeong-Hwan looks set to leave, Joo-Eun lets her guard down and is blindsided by yet another masked figure. While she lies passed out on the ground, Byung-Jun is brought into GK headquarters. There, they confirm that Jae-Wook murdered Kwon but also throw Jeong-Hwan under the bus too. Dae-Sang makes his move and heads over to Jae-Wook’s, telling him to cuff himself. Jeong-Hwan meanwhile is stopped by police and held up at gunpoint as everything is left hanging in the balance for the final episode.
The Episode Review
With the driver and Assemblyman Kwon dead, all eyes now turn to see how the finale will play out and who will come out on top. This espionage thriller has dodged and weaved its way through numerous different flashbacks and moments across the 15 episodes and now the political future of Korea rests on tomorrow’s finale. And what of GK and those at the top? So far they haven’t come under that much fire so it’ll be interesting to see if their position is usurped or not in the upcoming fight. For now though, Private Lives bows out with another enjoyable episode and for those who have stuck with this over the weeks, tomorrow will be the decider over exactly who comes out of this fight on top.
