K-Drama Review: Faith, Episodes 9-10

 

Read Episode reviews for:

Faith--Episodes 1-2
Faith--Episodes 3-4
Faith--Episodes 5-6
Faith--Episodes 7-8
Faith--Episodes 9-10
Faith--Episodes 11-12
Faith--Episodes 13-14
Faith--Episodes 15-16
Faith--Episodes 17-18


Contains Spoilers for Episodes 9-10

King Gongmin reinstates Choi Young and all the other royal guards, clearing them of false charges.

Our Hero Restored to His Rightful Place!

 

And then King Gongmin ups the ante on his newly restored guard--no one will have the right to disarm them except the king himself, and they are to be respected by all.

Choi Young now spends some time off to himself, recalling Tiny King, the former monarch he loved like a baby brother. Choi Young had to kill the boy to stop him from suffering the slow agony of a death from poison, and he's devastated by the loss.

 

King Gongmin decides that the warriors' first order of business should be getting Eunsoo back from Gicheol. Choi Young tenses up at that suggestion, since she might not br happy to see him. Choi Young Aunt, Court Lady Choi, warns him not to fall for Eunsoo because it would be too dangerous for Eunsoo.

Auntie Knows Best.

And at Casa de Gicheol, Gicheol remembers that Eunsoo can predict the future. She said that the Yuan Empire was about to fall, and he wants her to feed him more information so he can change the world.

Choi Young arrives at Gicheol's house, under the pretense of retrieving his sword, which was taken from him when they captured him--yanno, right before he was falsely thrown in the dungeons for treason.

Awkwardest Conversation Ever.

Gicheol then leaves Choi Young and Eunsoo alone to talk. He angrily asks if it's true that she has given her loyalty to Gicheol. She tellingly replies, "If I say that I'm trapped and I want to leave, you'll just get into a big fight again." Choi Young cryptically tells her that she needs to become very good at lying to Gicheol, and he leaves.

At Gicheol's house, Eunsoo tries to escape. By wildly slinging her purse at a half-dozen armed guards who try to stop her.

I Love Her For This.

Gicheol warns her that she belongs to him and he's at the limits of his patience, when Court Lady Choi arrives to pick up Eunsoo. The Queen's wound is infected, and they need the heavenly doctor back. And wow, it's actually true--the Queen is lying sick in her bed, but I wonder if it's from poison, not infection, considering that one of her maids is a spy.

Or....NOT! When the Queen is visited by the King alone, she sits up and it's revealed that they came up with this ruse together.

Three Cheers For Our Scheming Royals!

And the Queen admits that she has wanted to help the King for the longest time, but her attempts haven't been truly helpful to him until now. He pulls aside the curtain, and it looks like the may confess their real feelings for each other...but no, we're stuck in limbo, still.

Gicheol and Eunsoo arrive at the palace and are then escorted to the King's courtroom. I anticipate a showdown. The King acts mysterious, then Choi Young arrives to announce that they're ready to interrogate the traitor--Eunsoo, who conspired against the King.

What Are You Doing, You Madman?

But of course, it's all a clever plot to get Eunsoo back. They couldn't just demand her back from Gicheol, but if she's a criminal, they have to hold her in custody. Ahh! It's such a cool plan! Eunsoo freaks out when the guards drag her to the Queen's quarters, because she's expecting some sort of awful punishment, but her punishment for treason is just to stay in the Queen's territory and be her personal doctor, the same gig she had before. Big sigh o' relief.

Eunsoo briefly sees Choi Young, and she kicks him repeatedly and tells him to stay away from her. She has been threatened with death so many times and been kidnapped and manhandled again and again, and all because he kidnapped her from her home in the modern world. He is hurt by her rejection, and then he has an incredibly long memory montage of all their most intense crisis moments together. I'm glad we had this montage because it emphasizes to the watchers just how much they've endured together in 9 episodes. Eunsoo stumbles off and hugs the Doctor, collapsing into tears.

Poor Baby Has Endured One Kidnapping Too Many.

Doctor Jangbin makes Eunsoo some ginseng tea and helps her talk through her thoughts. He also explains to her why Choi Young had to kill Tiny King to save him, and that in doing so, Choi Young ripped apart his own heart because he loved the child. Eunsoo finally understands why her psycho protector did what he did.

Gicheol is flipping out, back at his house. He clutches his hand, and his own private doctor asks if he wants medicine. Wait. Is Gicheol dying? Or does he take medicine to help him exhibit/control some sort of power?

Either Option Sounds Cool to Me.

Gicheol visits Eunsoo and the palace and for some unknown reason, she agrees to meet with him alone, to see a relic of legendary Doctor Hwa Ta. Gicheol shows her a book that turns out to be a modern diary. But HER initials are on the back page. How can this be her diary? Does she go back even further into the past? Is she the great Hwa Ta?

How Is This Possible?

Eunsoo bursts into tears as episode 10 begins. This diary isn't hers, but it has her name on it and is full of numbers that look like coordinates. She thinks they might be coordinates to heaven-gates, places to go back to the present, but Gicheol snatches the diary away before she can get a good look.

Choi Young assigns one of his men to watch over Eunsoo now, giving him orders to pick her up and carry her to safety if they are attacked.

Random Warrior Seems Rather Pleased at the Prospect.

The warrior assigned to look out for her is Deok Man, and it's pretty funny how Eunsoo can just boss him around when she needs something. In this case, she needs her medical supplies, which are in Gicheol's custody, so she can tend to a new patient with appendicitis. She gets the necessary tools and performs a successful appendectomy.

Choi Young reproaches her for going off to see the villain so carelessly, but she protests that she was fine. Eunsoo also takes a serious moment to apologize to Choi Young for not saving Tiny King, and to thank him for protecting her all this time. Then she announces that she can handle her Gicheol problem by herself now, because she thinks she knows how to control him.

You Might Want to Rethink That Plan, Eunsoo.

Before long, the bad guys invade the palace. Sephiroth has super-hearing and listens as Eunsoo talks about the appendicitis patient she just saved--she almost spills the fact that the kid is one day going to be the first king of a new dynasty, the Joseon dynasty. He's also destined to kill Choi Young in the future. Oy.

The bad guys kidnap the future king, to blackmail Eunsoo. She goes with them to prevent the kid's death. The bad guys kill all the people that King Gongmin was trying to recruit for his new government, and now they're going to make Eunsoo choose who they will assassinate next. Choi Young is one of the potential targets.


Things I Loved:

1. Eunsoo's Talks With Gicheol. Heroine has battle of wills with the villain? It never gets old. She's always having to figure out how to keep the upper hand while she's living in the home of badness incarnate.

At Home With the Dragon.

2. Sleeve-Grab of Significance. When Eunsoo grabs Choi Young's sleeve to let him know she'd been worried about him, it's a very important moment for both of them. I appreciate how these tiny gestures gain loads of meaning in Faith.

Shockingly Important Moment, Right Here.

Complaints:

1. Sephiroth's Super-Hearing. It was really awful that the bad guys found out all of Eunsoo's thoughts and secrets because the white-haired man was listening in. Those scenes were very frustrating.

2. Too Many Kidnappings. Eunsoo's been in bad-guy clutches so many times, I'm starting to not care when she gets hijacked.

Watch Faith on DramaFever.

Episode Evaluations: I love all the layers in the plot. Constraints lie everywhere. Even modern girl Eunsoo can't do whatever she likes; she has to subtly jockey for the position and objectives she wants.

And I really, really like the parallelism we're getting in the story. First Gicheol was "given" Choi Young and Eunsoo because he forced the situation. When he knew he couldn't win over Choi Young, he accused him of treason and tried to get him executed. But the King got Choi Young back, and soon the only way to get Eunsoo back is to accuse her of treason and kidnap her back home to the palace. Turnabout is fair play.

Everything's developing well, but couldn't we get some more Choi Young/Eunsoo soon? Pweeease? And no more kidnappings, like ever.