[Drama 2013] Thorn Flower / Spine Flower 가시꽃

[Triton823]

I think I just want Ji Min to get her come upins...but in the end the bad guys will all get what is coming and that generally means they will loose everything and they will kneel before Jennifer. The jerk of ex-boyfriend will come to learn the truth and feels guilty, but then regrets once he learns of his wife been cheating and his own daughter is not his! This show has sooo much potential just pray that this doesn't have anyone from Glass mask near or around it! because if  not prepare yourself for unicorns and zombies (translation: Crap that doesn't add up or even humanly possible).

[Guest atomickitty]

I watched A Man Called God. The ending was... ok.. sorta implausible because well.. I won't say since others might watch it. Might be my prejudice because I like the lead actor better in historical dramas. He is really good in those. His only modern one I've really liked was Fermentation Family. That was a good story and the images on screen, location, food, were very pretty. Watch Fermentation Family instead.. heee..

I didn't think Yellow Boots ended that badly. I loved seeing the baddie get dragged off at the end. Glass Mask is another story. I think everyone who saw it hated it. I've never heard anyone say they liked it. No one.

[baduy]

Triton823 said: Snakes raises snakes.

[elegance1]

So I've been reading all of your comments and I am really REALLY appreciating some of the comments about some of the plot-points, because I am not Korean and I do not understand it very well - only few words, because I watch a lot of k-drama. I am watching Thorn Flower without the subtitles (pray for me), and I didn't know that Se Mi had a son, I only thought that the kid thought it was his mother, but thanks for clearing that out. I don't know - I just don't like the thought of the femme fetale having a kid. This drama is really getting more and more fascinating as the episodes progress. I have to say that this drama is really messed up beyond repair most of it, really. Hyuk Min's family is so destructive, it's insane. Now I may seem a little crazy, but I totally like Hyuk Min, now I don't mean that in real life I enjoy when people almost rape other women/men and they're basically insane/evil. Am I the only one that truly believes Hyuk Min loves "Jennifer" in his own little (maybe sick) way? This isn't like with the other pregnant woman (who I don't have any sympathy with whatsoever)  I really want Hyuk Min to kneel before Jennifer and ask for forgiveness, I don't think Jennifer will ever forgive anyone, maybe the ex .. the ending in Angel's Temptation is a good one, a bittersweet ending would be nice. I also want to point out that I think Ji Min REALLY resembles her brother with the temper, haha. It can get annoying. Since I don't understand Korean, I mostly understand the drama by expressions/bodyact/few words etc. but I want you guys to clear some stuff out with me. What is the deal between Jennifer and the prosecutor? I mean, I know about the almost-marriage and all that. I've watched the latest episodes, but I get the vibe that the prosecutor is kind of scared/fascinated by her? Am I wrong? What are his thought upon her? 
Sorry for making such a long post, but I really love this drama, and I made this account on this very day because I really wanted to communicate with other Thorn Flower enthusiasts! This drama is so underrated, and the actors are excellent. I only knew the evil mother's actress, not anyone else. 

[elegance1]

Also some juicy pictures for you guys to enjoy. You may have seen them, but yeah .. you are welcome. 

[Triton823]

elegance1 said: So I've been reading all of your comments and I am really REALLY appreciating some of the comments about some of the plot-points, because I am not Korean and I do not understand it very well - only few words, because I watch a lot of k-drama. I am watching Thorn Flower without the subtitles (pray for me), and I didn't know that Se Mi had a son, I only thought that the kid thought it was his mother, but thanks for clearing that out. I don't know - I just don't like the thought of the femme fetale having a kid. This drama is really getting more and more fascinating as the episodes progress. I have to say that this drama is really messed up beyond repair most of it, really. Hyuk Min's family is so destructive, it's insane. Now I may seem a little crazy, but I totally like Hyuk Min, now I don't mean that in real life I enjoy when people almost rape other women/men and they're basically insane/evil. Am I the only one that truly believes Hyuk Min loves "Jennifer" in his own little (maybe sick) way? This isn't like with the other pregnant woman (who I don't have any sympathy with whatsoever)  I really want Hyuk Min to kneel before Jennifer and ask for forgiveness, I don't think Jennifer will ever forgive anyone, maybe the ex .. the ending in Angel's Temptation is a good one, a bittersweet ending would be nice. I also want to point out that I think Ji Min REALLY resembles her brother with the temper, haha. It can get annoying. Since I don't understand Korean, I mostly understand the drama by expressions/bodyact/few words etc. but I want you guys to clear some stuff out with me. What is the deal between Jennifer and the prosecutor? I mean, I know about the almost-marriage and all that. I've watched the latest episodes, but I get the vibe that the prosecutor is kind of scared/fascinated by her? Am I wrong? What are his thought upon her? 
Sorry for making such a long post, but I really love this drama, and I made this account on this very day because I really wanted to communicate with other Thorn Flower enthusiasts! This drama is so underrated, and the actors are excellent. I only knew the evil mother's actress, not anyone else. 

[Guest atomickitty]

Hi @elegance1
You're just like me. I'm also piecing it together, as I go along, with the help of people here. I'm not 100% sure what the deal w the prosecutor is either and would also appreciate some help with that. I feel how you feel. I think he sees her as a bit of a puzzle judging by the way he looks at her sometimes. But again, that's me reading body language and the few Korean words I know.

[elegance1]

atomickitty

said:

Hi @elegance1
You're just like me. I'm also piecing it together, as I go along, with the help of people here. I'm not 100% sure what the deal w the prosecutor is either and would also appreciate some help with that. I feel how you feel. I think he sees her as a bit of a puzzle judging by the way he looks at her sometimes. But again, that's me reading body language and the few Korean words I know.

[baduy]

On issues like Se Mi/Jennifer having a child, I really would advise anyone who doesn't understand Korean fairly well to watch the early episodes with the subs that are now available, though they're coming at a painfully slow rate.

Those subs are nowhere near as good as the original Korean writing deserves, and a lot of nuances are getting lost in them, but then that tends to be the way with subs,  And there are miscellaneous oddities like translating the word which should be "driver" or "chauffeur" in this context as "manager", so that at one point JJ supposedly tells Ji Min to "call her manager" if she wants to go out drinking. That sounds like he's suggesting she should go out on the town with her agent, when in fact all he's telling her is not to drive herself home if she is going to be drinking.

But the subs do make plain enough things it really is vital to know. Not just that Se Mi gave birth while in a coma, but that when she came round and her first question was what had become of her child, Nam Joon and Seon Yeong lied to her that the baby had been stilborn, with Seon Yeong compounding the deception, for reasons that still baffle me, by telling her that the baby was a girl, as pretty as Se Mi herself. Then later, again in episodes already subbed, we find Jennifer, on her return seven years on, being introduced to the boy that Seon Yeong claims is her own illegitimate child, whom she left for adoption in the States, but then thought better of it and reclaimed him so she could raise him herself. A very large part of Jennifer's behaviour from than on draws on her delusion that her own daughter is dead, but that she might have been somewhat like the child she thinks is JJ's daughter with Ji Min. That's why the business with the coffee and the snakes pains her so much: it's as if she's watching her own child being turned to the bad thanks to her intervention into that family.

I don't think the subs have yet reached the next important juncture in this strand, where Nam Joon and Seon Yeong agree that they must reveal the truth to Jennifer and let her have her child back (partly because Nam Joon has concluded that's the only way to deter her from her scheme of marrying Hyeok Min) but, moments before Seon Yeong was to make that revelation, the attempt to murder her results in the head injury to the boy which has left him mentally impaired, meaning that Seon Yeong feels she simply now can't inflict the blow on Jennifer that the belated revelation of  truth would bring and that she must continue to raise the boy herself, at least until a day comes when he is once more capable of telling one woman from another and knowing that only one of them is his real "Mommy".

But this is one of several major issues the writer has planted into the plot, currently apparently in the background, but in fact shaping a lot of Jennifer's decisions and emotions in the foreground (such as her attitude to Je Min's daughter and her bringing the younger son of the family together with his biological mother). On more than one occasion, Nam Joon tries to persuade Jennifer that joining Hyeok Min's family would ruin her life, and contrasts her schemes with his own, which he stresses are not self-destructive as hers seem to be: his aim, and his aunt's, is simply to rehabilitate his father's good name and see those responsible for his death punished, after which he intends to get on with life for and with his family. But she replies that things are different for her. She no longer has any family at all, and so has nothing whatever to live for except pure vengeance, and she doesn't care if pursuit of that vengeance brings misery upon herself as well as her victims. At which points Nam Joon keeps a guilty silence rather than tell her that she does indeed have a family and someone else to live and care for.

We wonder just how Jennifer will react when she discovers, as she eventually must, that the two people she has most relied on have deceived her for so long on such a fundamental matter. And on top of all that, there's the hint thrown into the mix, but in this case visible only to the viewers, not to any of the (surviving) main characters, that there's a chance Se Mi/Jennifer may have the same biological father as Hyeok Min and Je Min, which would of course be a massive spanner flung into her vengeance schemes. Think of how a parallel discovery about true parentage wrecks the vengeance plans of the main characters in Bad Guy and Five Fingers. If the writer doesn't have some such crippling revelation in store for her down the line, it's hard to see why the motif of her mother being raped by her employer (and staying silent about it until just before her death) was introduced into the plot at all.

[baduy]

Just a few pointers from today's ep 54 for those of you valiantly trying to stay on the leading edge of this drama on the visuals alone... Obviously, this is a no-go area for anyone wanting to avoid spoilers.

The hostile takeover of Jennifer's "parents'" company by a hotel chain not interested in Korean-American joint ventures means that her value to the President's company falls to zero. In fact, she becomes a liability, because news that the joint venture is off causes the Taekang stock price to plunge, calling for desperate measures.

Those desperate measures evil Mom immediately puts in hand, sucking up to Soo Ji's mother (on whom she'd declared "outright war" just one episode earlier, before forbidding Soo Ji ever to come to the house again) and proposing that the wedding of Soo Ji and Hyeok Min should be announced immediately and carried out as soon as possible so as to reassure the markets that Taekang has the financial backing of Soo Ji's family firm.

Soo Ji's mother is anything but keen. She has never liked Hyeok Min in the first place, and his callous abandonment of her pregnant daughter in favor of Jennifer is still unforgivable in her eyes. She sends Soo Ji  round to the Kang mansion, not to be reconciled to Hyeok Min, but to observe at first hand the chaos and panic she imagines must be reigning there and report back to her. And she takes a tough stance with evil Mom, refusing to agree to the speedy wedding proposals and saying that before she will even consider helping out the Taekang group by some means short of handing over her daughter, they must withdraw the charges against Nam Joon and ensure his release.

But to her dismay, she finds that her daughter sees this as a golden opportunity to get her fiancé back and is all in favor of a speedy wedding. She assures her mother that she's never stopped loving Hyeok Min and that apart from that, she wants to marry him for her baby's sake. She doesn't care about her future mother-in-law's obviously cynical switch of allegiance back to her, saying that it's her future father-in-law that matters, and that he's always been on her side all along.

However, Hyeok Min is head-over-heels in (his notion of) love with Jennifer, and he declares he'll do anything to keep her, even though she's now no longer of any financial value. The teaser for tomorrow suggests that that "anything" includes an even more rushed wedding ceremony than his mother has in mind, but not to the bride his mother intends...

There's a lot of other things in the episode, of course, but those are the main things that I imagine would have me the most puzzled if I didn't understand Korean.

[Triton823]

@baduy. Thanks for the heads up.

[elegance1]

@baduy - Thank you, I really appreciate it. It really sucks that I can't find this drama subtitled fast like other dramas and I hate when I don't understand what's going on in a lot of the scenes, it's frustrating. You are really helping me out here, thanks. 

[baduy]

Here's my translation of the text preview for tomorrow's episode (55) which jtbc has just put up. Not much we couldn't have guessed anyway, except maybe for the first part, which shows just how intense Hyeok Min's obsession with Jennifer is, since he is apparently ready to turn down the offer of immediate total control of the company (and risk disinheritance instead, as he's already said he will in today's episode) in order to hold on to her.

His father tells Hyuk Min, in Jennifer's presence, that he will hand the company presidency over to him if he shows up for his wedding to Soo Ji the following month and sends Jennifer back to the States. But Hyeok Min refuses to send Jennifer  away.

In response to Soo Ji's mother's request, the Taekang Group drops the charges against Nam Joon, and he is released from custody. On account of Soo Ji, her mother is unable to carry on her fight against Taekang openly, but she asks Nam Joon to continue working for her.

Hyeok Min decides he will marry Jennifer immediately, despite his family's opposition, whereupon Nam Joon tries to stop her embarking on that marriage.

[Guest atomickitty]

Thank you so much @baduy for the translation and your insights into the last few episodes. This only shows me how much detail I'm missing watching it without subs. I'm tempted to stop watching until subs are available. I have a useless account with Mvibo and I believe they are up to episode 17 now. Maybe they'll sub it all before 2014? Who knows?

I really don't want her to marry Hyuk Min. I understand marrying him makes sense when you look at it only from a revenge standpoint, but I would really like her to have a life after all this is done. The existence of her son gives me hope that she will have a life post revenge. I wonder if Nam Joon will be able to stop it.

[Guest atomickitty]

Episode 55 and the next episode 56 makes me feel as though she's no longer getting revenge but torturing herself.
I started feeling bad for Nam Joon but then I now think he deserves it for telling her her child died. If she knew her child was alive, she would have tried to get revenge while preserving some of herself. or something. I don't know. I should stop watching till subs exist...

[ena_teo]

baduy said:
On issues like Se Mi/Jennifer having a child, I really would advise anyone who doesn't understand Korean fairly well to watch the early episodes with the subs that are now available, though they're coming at a painfully slow rate.

A very large part of Jennifer's behaviour from than on draws on her delusion that her own daughter is dead, but that she might have been somewhat like the child she thinks is JJ's daughter with Ji Min. That's why the business with the coffee and the snakes pains her so much: it's as if she's watching her own child being turned to the bad thanks to her intervention into that family.

[Guest atomickitty]

Hi @ena_teo
I think it's not just Jennifer that Hyun Seok calls Oma. I think it's a symptom of the accident that he calls everyone Oma.
As to Hyuk Min's father raping Jennifer's mother, is it possible that Ji Min is Jennifer's half sister?

[elegance1]

It would be so sick if he were, I really hope that Hyuk Min isn't related to Se Mi in any way - that's just plain wrong. This family has a history of raping. 

[Triton823]

Which episode does it show who raped her mother or it is implied? Think I've missed that one. I agree with @elegance1 that would be just wrong and gross.

[baduy]

Actually, we need to be a bit careful about Nam Jun and Seon Yeong's deception of Se Mi. I have seen various comments saying that Nam Joon tells Se Mi her baby was stillborn in order not to distract her from the path of vengeance, but there's no support for that in the Korean dialogue.

On the contrary, the reason Nam Joon gives his Aunt for telling Se Mi this lie when she challenges him is that it was vital to do that to save Se Mi's life. We need to remember that she is in grave danger of being murdered and the only way Se Mi or her helpers can think of to rescue her is to make her enemies, and the world at large, believe she is dead. (Se Mi herself asks them to "make her die" in that sense). But as Nam Joon tells his aunt, if Se Mi thought her child was still alive and out there somewhere, she would throw all caution to the winds and go looking for her lost infant, with the inevitable result that she'd blow her cover and be murdered. So for Se Mi's own survival they have to keep the child's existence a secret from her, at least until she can safely emerge into view again.

When Se Mi returns as Jennifer, Seon Yeong is in a terrible dilemma. She has clearly come to love the boy dearly herself, and she fosters contact between him and his mother as much as she can, never showing the slightest sign of jealousy and indeed obviously overjoyed to see how closely the two bond. And she sees how much Jennifer has invested in her plans for vengeance (though she has no inkling at first that those plans involve seducing both Hyeok Min and his obnoxious buddy) so out of respect for what she repeatedly refers to as Jennifer's "chosen path" (a phrase Seon Yeong uses repeatedly, including in today's episode, to counter her nephew's increasing urge to intervene and turn Jennifer aside from the course which, to his horror, she seems bent on) she decides to bide her time. It's Nam Joon, who after seeing that he can't talk Jennifer out of her determination to marry Hyeok Min, persuades his aunt that the only way to turn Jennifer off this path to misery is to reveal to her that she has a child to whom she could devote her life. Which Seon Yeong decides to do. Hence the very moving scene in which before they set out to meet Jennifer, the boy tells Seon Yeong he wants to give Jennifer his favorite teddy bear as a present. Seon Yeong, struggling to conceal her tears at her knowledge that in a very short time, she will, as she believes, have returned him to his true mother, pretends to be jealous and says "How come Jennifer gets a present from you, but I don't?" At which he hugs her and says, "But you don't need a present, Mommy. You've got me!"

But as she and the boy are on the way to meet Jennifer and tell her the truth, the child falls victim to the murder attempt on Seon Yeong, and when it emerges that he has suffered enormous brain damage, Seon Yeong decides that knowing that the Kang family had inflicted yet another grievous blow on her in this way would be too much for Jennifer to bear, so she decides to take the burden of her guilt and of the handicapped child's upbringing upon herself by remaining silent, with Nam Joon's assent (the rest of her family, of course, don't suspect that the boy is anything other than what Seon Yeong has told them, namely her own illegitimate offspring).

And yes, the point about the brain lesion that boy has suffered is that it has affected both his speech and his ability to recognize and relate to people, though he has still considerable cognative abilities and motor skills, as his dexterity and patience with various constructor toys shows [One of the many little telling cross-references the writer has put into the script is that, over at the House of Horrors,  Ye Ji's granny is worried about the way her granddaughter plays with building bricks: she very carefully builds elaborate structures, but then takes a disquieting delight in gleefully smashing them to pieces again. Her mother doesn't see a problem there, but it's the first symptom of the way the little girl will behave towards Jennifer later).

So, Se Mi's son has no response to men at all. And to all females, of any age, he applies the one word in his vocabulary: "mommy". This is, obviously, a very moving touch. It means we can see him calling his true mother "Mommy" (before his accident, he adamantly refused to call her "(maternal) auntie" which would be the "correct" address form according to Korean custom in view of their supposed relationship and relative ages, and insisted on calling her "Big Sister" instead). But it also means that because he calls all females "Mommy", it means nothing special when he uses it to Jennifer, although we feel a twinge when she visibly has no inkling that it ought to have that special meaning hin her case.

As for Se Mi's paternity... As I said, I can't see why the writer would have introduced that rape scene, with its obvious visual (and socio-psychological) parallels to Hyeok Min's attempted rape of Se Mi emphasised by the camera work, unless it was with the long-term intention of introducing the possibility that Se Mi's father may be President Kang. But that leaves open the issue of how that possibility may be used.

My guess is that, if it is indeed to be used later in the plot (and jtbc dramas don't normally indulge in the sort of loose ends that the major networks think nothing of) then there will be an additional twist, because I doubt very much if even on a cable channel, we'll see incest between a main couple. I suspect a situation will arise in which Jennifer THINKS she is in, or has had, an incestuous relathionship with her half brother, but then it turns out that Hyeok Min (and maybe Ji Min too) aren't President Kang's children at all. I very much doubt whether, if Kang really is the Se Mi's father, her mother would ever have told him so. Otherwise, she too, would have been in danger of having her child taken from her, although with a dynastically useless girl, that danger is less acute than in the case of male offspring. But some document left by her mother might come to light in due course. Given the writer's penchant for parallels and reflections, that would fit in well with the situation where Se Mi knew that, next day, she was going to have to tell her mother that she was pregnant and so would be giving up the great acting opportunity. Maybe her mother had something to tell Se Mi, too, but planned to keep it a secret while her father was still alive, and by the time her father died it turned out that Se Mi was in no state to be told anything, either. Unless via some sort of letter, still to be delivered from the past...

There is a running motif that although Kang is a pretty nasty guy, he's a kindly saint compared to his massively vicious wife (again today, it turned out the the idea of bribing Hyeok Min to marry Soo Ji with the position of President plus a 5% stockholding, thus putting his father out to grass, came from his mother, and she had to pressure and threaten her husband to get his agreement to the idea)  The one person we're sure is President Kang's offspring is the warm-hearted and generous Seong Min, Nam Hee's devoted boyfriend, who always seems drawn to Jennifer. When she first moved into the house, he had a quiet conversation with her, in which he told her he was really sad to see her moving in and leading his brother astray:  he knew he was out of line saying this, but he felt he had to let her know how disappointed he was in her, but he wouldn't mention that matter again. And in today's episode, of course, when his stepmother declares there's no room at the breakfast table for Jennifer, so if she wants to eat she'd better go join the domestics, he immediately fibs that he's finished his breakfast and offers her his place. So maybe it's Se Mi and Seong Min who will turn out to be half-siblings in the end. That would certainly please Seong Min's mother, who also intuitively warms to Jennifer, as well as being grateful to her for enabling her to have some contact with her son. Needless to say, this is another of the parallels and contrasts the writer has worked into this plot, as we see Se Mi / Jennifer being so obviously happy to bring together a mother and son, although in circumstances, transposing her own situation, though she doens't know it, where it's the son who doesn't know that the woman he feels so drawn to is his mother, while the mother daren't reveal the truth in case she loses her son again altogether.

On a rather minor matter, Se Mi son's name is Eun Seok, not Hyeon Seok (which is a possible, but quite different, name). Eun is written 은 in Hangeul, or 慇 in Hanja and it means "caring, solicitous, thoughtful towards others" and occurs rather more often in female than male names. Since all East Asian people give great thought to how they name their children, and many of them believe that the choice of name shapes the child's personality and destiny, it's striking that Seon Yeong, who presumably came up with the name, decided to bestow this "non-macho" description on Se Mi's son. I also wonder whether her spur-of-the-moment decision to tell Se Mi that the baby was a girl may not have been kindly meant, a wish to protect Se Mi from the thought that she might have brought another potentially rapacious male into the world, for however brief a span...