That was disappointing.

All the supposed danger we thought K2 would be in fizzled out within the first 15 minutes and just like that, victory has taken out of Assemblyman Park’s hands. It isn’t the first time that a threat established in a previous episode turns out to have little impact at all in the next episode. If anything, it puts Se Joon back in an advantageous position in presidential race again but honestly at this point I hardly care anymore and am not really rooting for him to win, especially after he slapped Yoo Jin.

Speaking of the slapping scene, that scene really confirmed how ultimately useless Se Joon is. And if we were earlier supposed to feel any compassion for him, it certainly disappeared completely with that scene. He’s really been getting the short end of the stick recently and the writers don’t quite seem to know what to do with him.

We’ve been seeing more lately of Yoo Jin as a victim and how she’s also been manipulated and used. However I really wish the show would stop tantalizing us and just tell us already what happened during Anna’s mother’s death rather than dropping hints here and there. It’s hard to tell where the show is really going with Yoo Jin and whether a redemption arc is on the cards for her. She’s clearly a character that’s been fleshed out the most, even more than Je Ha and Anna and while I can’t say I am rooting for her, I do hope the writers do something meaningful with her character.

Turning to our romance storyline, I appreciated that we went beyond cuteness in tonight’s episode and Anna asked Je Ha to talk more about his past. While I understand that Raniya’s death and his subsequent framing is central to his life story and a pivotal moment in his life, surely there’s no need to keep returning it and milking all the sympathy points dry from that episode. Can’t we be shown more of Je Ha’s back story? Why did he join the Special Forces? Any key events that happened there? How did he run away to Spain? Why so? How about his own parents – which the show has been very silent about?

A similar thing can be said about Anna, whose back story never goes beyond the death of her mum. How about what happened in Spain? More scenes of her interactions with Se Joon when she was a child? And that report of her mother’s death… why didn’t she do more with it after reading it? How exactly is she pursuing the truth after finding out more? We need more to feel truly invested in these characters and the romance. I’d prefer more of these character focused scenes as opposed to the JSS scenes that we got too much of in this episode.

At the end of this episode, Yoo Jin and Chief Kim have something up their sleeve and my suspicion is that it’s going to involve Sung Won and Anna. The show has generally portrayed Yoo Jin as competent and intelligent so there’s hope that something of significance will happen in the next episode.