dangermousie | Stairway to Heaven eps 9-10. Now with 200% more tears (Reply)

When we last left our hapless heroes, Heroine regained her memory and screamed for her "Songjoo oppa", but Sexy Hero has given up believing she is his dead love and just walked away.

So, your usual weekday then.

When ep 9 opens, we are at the dedication of the mural painted by Sister Luster. I notice that in addition to all his other flaws (kidnapping! brainwashing! incest!), Sister Luster is also a thief - his mural is a pretty mediocre rip-off of the Sistine Chapel. Oh well.

She yearns above, he angsts below. Dude, these two should just kill themselves - they'll be happier.

Ahahahaha, angsty Sexy Hero and his emo cartoon animals? Also, all that talk of heaven as the greatest present certainly indicates the tragic end in the future. Who sees death as the bestest thing ever?

Ugly fashion, like evilness, runs in the family (you know, I've been rewatching bits of IRIS over the weekend and it's incredible to me that Kim Tae Hee, who I loathe so here, is so wonderful as Seung Hee in IRIS - I adored her just as much this rewatch).

She confronts the evil duo but sadly they manipulate it so everyone thinks she's an evil loonie. That everyone includes Sexy Hero's mother.

She tries to tell Sexy Hero the truth but gets dragged away. He's being awfully passive. Must be the meds kicking in.

Ooooooh, that made me so mad. Sexy Hero is apologizing to Sister Luster for liking his girlfriend. The one Sister Luster stole from him, urgh!

How sweet! Sister Luster, driven by guilt (ha!) arranged for the OTP to meet. Hero confesses he let go of Jungsuh and now loves Jisoo (Jisoo who remembers she is Jungsuh listens with mixed feelings). It's an adorable scene that is still rather messed up - he may be saying he likes her on her own merits but when he follows it up with "you smell like Jungsuh", ehhh, not buying. He's so screwed up.

She confesses her love too. Oh man, so messed up - he is in love with the girl who looks like his dead OTP because he sees the dead OTP in her but insists he doesn't, and she is that dead OTP come back to life who can't let him know who she is because how do you break that gently to someone that screwed up?

Adorable!

They dress up as Cindrella and Prince Charming. No, I have no idea why. But it's very pretty if slightly surreal. In the course of this date you also realize that they have no future if she remains Jisoo. He's just too messed up to really commit to a relationship or try to function in one - he's attracted but he'd also like her to be with her boyfriend and he's just basically not functional enough to have a stable, steady, normal relationship with. No matter what he may say, he can't let go of Jung Suh. If this is a fairytale, it's a fractured one, with a damaged Prince Charming and a Cinderella who will never get her happy ending.

Swoooooon.

See, this is what I mean about him being a non-functional mess.

I love it when he stands up for her next morning though when there is gossip at work.

Ahhh, classic scene of Hero's Mom calling Heroine a whore and trying to pay her off. It's another sign of his extreme dysfunction as to how passive the hero is. He defends her to his mother, true, but it's in a 'she is a nice woman, you should not misunderstand' way, not a 'I want to date her' way. Because I don't think he's capable of opening his heart properly, of moving forward, and trying to be with someone, unless Jung Suh comes back.

Hero's awful mother tells him that Heroine has been going around calling herself Jungsuh and claiming she was and then says it's Hero's fault (i.e. she is in love with him, he's seeking Jungsuh, so she sort of got screwed up). Then she brings up his wedding. Lady, if your son is having a major nervous breakdown and has not gotten over his lost love, maybe you should postpone? Naaaaah, that would make you a resonable kdrama parent and that does not happen.

She comes to say goodbye. Hello major dysfunction! Tell him who you are, what do you have to lose?

And then he stalks her to find out she's moved out from Sister Luster's place to get her own.

So he invites himself over, LOL. Mixed messages much!

And then he hops on her bed. Bwahahahahaha.

LOLOLOL Lunatic! I love when the story allows them to be light-hearted. I want to see KSW and CJW in a comedy, please.

She has hit upon an idea!

This absolutely hilarious sequences follows where she drags him into a food tent to try such foods as stomach, intestines, and feet. His upper-class being and stomach are terrified but he gamely goes along. I laugh and fall a little more in love.

They have a conversation about Jung Suh (outside a bathroom, LOL - he really is not used to this food).

Then they get a little drunk on soju.

And then he tells her to go back to her boyfriend, once he found out they fought. It is so dysfunctional - part because he believes the two genuinely love each other and he's come between them, part because he feels bad at getting her crazy enough to pretend to be Jungsuh but in part because he is not capable of truly opening up his heart again - of risking the hurt a second time.

And then she's really drunk and she wails out she's Jung Suh but of course he doesn't believe - to him it's more evidence that he's screwed her up badly and they shouldn't be around each other.

What's a drama without a piggyback of love?

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

A++ plan, moronic Heroine, going back to Sister Luster out of hurt and martyr complex, as opposed to trying to prove to the guy you are Jung Suh.

Pretty pretty angst.

Evil triumphant!

But then Sister Luster shockingly does a good deed and calls and tells the truth to Sexy (but dumb) Hero and Hero is off like a rocket to find his Jung Suh - Sister Luster tells him the location.

Still no mouth kissing! They are evil!

And then Hero decides to take her back to her home. For whatever reason, Heroine neglects to explain that her Stepmonster and Psycho Bitch are evil and caused her amnesia etc. Heck, Hero doesn't even know about amnesia - he doesn't know why she acted like she didn't know him at first (if you don't know the truth it looks like a really evil sense of humor on her part so I am amazed he doesn't ask). Both of them seem to lack the curiousity or explanatory gene.

And on that temporarily happy note, we leave the end of the episode and our lovers. A future episode promises us this. This is his response to her desire to be "only friends." He says before they become only friends, he must do something. She asks what and he says "this" and swoops. MMM.

Indeed.

I may be taking a little break from Stairway to Heaven - so much angst and intensity is hard to do in a big gulp. But I shall get back to it soon!