[Drama 2013] Thorn Flower / Spine Flower 가시꽃

[Guest d0137]

@Baduy
Thank you once again for clarifying. Makes more sense as i couldn't believe his decision despite if only for his "daughter interest" which honestly i didn't think it justified ignoring so many serious crimes.
Honestly, could he not have tried to find out why Se Mi came back as Jennifer and chose to move into "his family" home and with such a different character?? he doesn't ask much for someone that loved her so much bufff ever so frustrating character ... i would think her connection with Nam Joo, his aunt and her behaviour were strange all together and would try to dig some more, specially after he discovered they lied to him for 7 years ... he is officially a slow dead man walking, he will kill himself once he finds out everything and Soo Ji will regret to find they manipulated her into providing a false alibi to a murder and a near "murder" case... Can't wait to see this.
Strange that HM and Seon Won never mentioned to Ji Mi about the child, specially Seon Won, but again the child would have been in danger either way, all these parties would want him dead for their own selfish reasons.
I have not been watching it at all so been relying on your great insights and occasionally i check the trailers...i am hoping this week some secrets will be uncovered and someone else goes down and joins the president  >
I am still unsure if the sly driver died...All they did was to rely on secretary Seo confirmation.... unless the director did not want to waist more time with his character...

[Guest atomickitty]

@d0137
I don't know how much Soo Ji will regret her part in the whole set up. As we're seeing, she'll pretty much do anything to keep HM. Unless her pregnancy and the consequent loss is giving her temporary madness, I really believe she would have been on board if they told her everything from the start.

 

[baduy]

As of today, showboom.com is no longer carrying the jtbc live stream. Meaning I'll have to switch to watching another drama in that daytime slot, if I can find one worth watching. Since jtbc bars viewers from outside Korea watching the live stream from its own site, they're effectively saying they don't care about foreigners. Too bad (but it will save me my showboom.com subscription)

EDIT:  After removing the jtbc live stream earlier in the day, showboom.com have now also deleted all jtbc dramas from their site, so this drama is no longer available there. No explanation has been given. One can only assume that mbivbo has cut an exclusive deal with jtbc and so forced showboom.com to stop offering jtbc dramas to their subscribers. This removes the only legal source of downloads of this drama for people outside Korea, since mvibo does not allow its streams to be downloaded and jtbc refuses to allow foreigners  to subscribe to its own vod services.

So that's the end of this drama, as far as I'm concerned.

[Guest d0137]

@atomickitty
You might be right sctually. Well let us hope she loses her memory for the time being or until H Mi is put away to join his father but in the special condition ward (potential serial killer)... perhaps we will get yet another coma??? then we see most characters go through what Se Mi did lol!That would be kind of funny in a way..
@baduy
Kind of disappointed that  jtbc bars viewers from outside Korea watching the live stream... do they know many Koreans don't live in Korea?? but still... anyway look forward to more insights from you. 

[Guest zypeata]

http://streamingkpop.blogspot.sg/search/label/JTBC%20LIVE%20TV?m=1

This is the live stream of JTBC. Not sure if it still works because I'm on my mobile. This needs a computer to view.

[Guest shelbytan]

yap.. i have also stopped following this drama but continue to rely on "baduy" to give us the storyline..  Thanks, "baduy"..

[Guest d0137]

Looks like many if not all of us appreciated  baduy's insights on this drama, however i think Baduy's "stopped" watching the drama or so it seams: 
BADUY said:
...."This removes the only legal source of downloads of this drama for people outside Korea, since mvibo does not allow its streams to be downloaded and jtbc refuses to allow foreigners  to subscribe to its own vod services.

So that's the end of this drama, as far as I'm concerned.


So for us not watching the drama but still wanting to know what has happened or is happening thus rely on this forum & baduy's great insights is very sad ... until they get all episodes with the subtitles errr quite a while from now we need to somehow use our little understanding of Korean or the body language alone to better guess what might be happening  (

We can only hope  baduy didn't give up on this drama or forum all together.

[Triton823]

So in ep 93 looks like sw dad returns and his son is panicing!? After all we are at 93 which means dominos fall.

[Guest d0137]

Yes few things falling into place but no much understanding of what exactly only from visual :-( without possibly miss interpret what is really going on.
Seon Won dad is back and not sure what is the deal, he is asking for Ji Mi help..she seams to be in conflict, Je Joon still an Idiot that i start thinking will do nothing till the end and his wife has no shame to ask about the child that if i am not wrong she already figured is Se Mi's (shameless to confront the IDIOT when she has done worse and he is still by her side) ..., Soo Ji still begging to get H Min back, President (not sure wonder is being killed under his own family orders?), secretary Seo apparently getting a deal proposal from Nam Joon and H Min and Evil Mum still with their clingy relationship covering each others crimes with H min becoming more agressive and possessive that he already is...there was a clip where Nam Joom was telling Jennifer to go back to America?? in front of H Min??

Not been watching for 3 weeks now but this is all i think i understood from previews although will never know ... 8-|
We have lost  BADUY  and we can only wait for 3-4 months before the full drama is subtitles and watch it again to understand what we can't without help....this if the ending is worth to watch..

[baduy]

As soon as mvibo had apparently achieved a monopoly on legal streaming of this drama outside Korea with the disappearance of all jtbc material from showboom.com, they stopped bothering to update their streams. No new episodes have been added for this show on mbvibo  since Monday. (The c-subbed versions are also stuck at the same point.)

But then today, showboom.com put the VOD streams for this drama back, brought right up to date with today's episode, though they don't seem to be planning to restore the jtbc live stream and all the other jtbc dramas they used to have are still absent. Whether they reached a deal of some kind over this particular show, I don't know.

Whatever, I haven't seen anything of this week's episodes, but now that showboom has them available again I will try to take a look at what's been going on,

[Auntie Mame]

It looks like Jennifer's real identity is confirmed in ep 96 and it's in the news and internet.  Perhaps, this drama is a sign that the drama is approaching the end.

Evil mother bought off the doctor, at the looney farm, to drug the husband.  I guess he'll go back into his vegetative state again. 

And, it looks like the 'mole' in the Prosecutor's office is busted.  So, besides the housekeeper with the tape recorder, the avengers team has lost another 'plant'.   Jennifer forgot one rule of revenge schemes, i.e. make it short and sweet. 

You know, I'm not usually a violent person.  But, for this cast of characters, I feel like spraying them with a machine gun.  )

[baduy]

Jennifer isn't busted yet. What's on the Internet is ths story she's had planted about the scandalous affair between Seo Won and Ji Min, which she's got the press to believe even though Ji Min had been determined to break with Seo Won. This scandal is having the intended effect. Ji Min had been celebrating a major career come-back, having just won the leading role in the follow-up movie to the one where she took over after Se Mi's accident (that's why Se Mi's name is being mentioned in the media in connection with the new scandal) and she''s now going to be dropped like a hot brick, while Seo Won's career will also be finished. So after crossing the President off her list, Jennifer has also crossed off Ji Min and Seo Won as totally done for, and says now she will close in on Hyeok Min. It looks lijke she's leaving his mother till the last.

The discovery of the mole in Seo Won's office doesn't matter too much now that the damage is done, which is why the said mole, once he sees the game's up (because Seo Won finally worked out that his assistant was the only one who could have supplied the evidence against his father which Jennifer used to make make his father think it was  Seo Won himself who had betrayed him) spits out his venom at Seo Won and his father and gloats in their forthcoming downfall. There's a hint that Seo Won may identify Jennifer as the person listening in on the phone, but she can probably wriggle out of that one.

However, Hyeok Min is increasingly wondering where she goes on her mysterious absences from the house (why he can't have her followed to her Vengeance HQ is of course no more a permitted question than wondering about how Jennifer and her helper were able to walk into a high-security hospital and wheel out a patient, especially when they were both wearing Maximum Suspicion Evoking Garb, with a closeup so we got to read the label on her sponsored Covert Operations High Fashion Black Boots).

What happened with the President is that after Jennifer had abducted him from the mental hospital, she got Yang Hee to induce him to make  a new will leaving everything to Seong Min. He didn't need any persuading, because he can't forgive his wife and older children for consenting to send him to the mental hospital. He tells Yang Hee that she must live her own life from now on and look after their son, because all he wants now is to punish the rest of his family by contacting the police and admitting his role in covering up Se Mi's murder, knowing that this will get both his wife and Hyeok Min into much greater trouble than anything he will face. When Yang Hee asked Jennifer what she should do with the President now the new will was signed, she told her to just dump him by the roadside somewhere, but instead she left him outside the mansion. But once Seong Min had found him there and taken him inside, he couldn't resisit telling his wife that he'd already made contact with the police and that they would be sending someone soon to question him so she'd better watch her step, especially since Jennifer was none other than Se Mi who had entrapped them all in her vengeful schemes. She believed the first bit, but not the second, which just gave her a pretext, egged on by Jennifer, for re-iterating that her husband really was insane and having him taken back to the asylum, where she has bribed the doctor to keep him permanently unsconscious so that when the investigators inquire they can be convinced he's quite incapable of speaking to them.

But Soo Ji has come up with yet another scheme to discover Jennifer's true identity. Following up an idea suggested by Seo Won, she's brought assault charges against Jennifer, alleging that she deliberately pushed her down the restaurant steps and so caused her miscarriage. That's why we see Jennifer having her fingerprints taken at the police station in the treaser for tomorrow.

Incidentally, mvibo has not added a single new episode of this drama for a whole week. Now that showboom has been dealt with, mvibo obviously feel no obligation to supply their subscribers with what they are paying for. That just re-emphasizes what will happen once such outfits finally achieve the stranglehold over international releases of Kdramas that they're so determined to gain..

[Guest orionofthewolf]

I have started recapping this drama. Yes, I know its nearly over, but for those interested in episode recaps, you can find them at AAA. Just don't expect me to catch up with the aired episodes. I'm going to try for one a day, but life tends to get in the way and I've got several other dramas I am working on, too.
http://www.asianaddictsanonymous.com/tag/thorn-flower/

[baduy]

Not much in today's episode (96) that should be too puzzling to those who've been following along.

Tricksy bit at the start though. Yesterday's teaser when Seo Won grabbed his assistant's phone, listened on the line then, after his assistant had snatched the phone back, said "I recognize that voice" deliberately misled us into thinking he meant he'd recognized Jennifer's voice, but the actual episode reveals something rather different. The voice Seo Won hears is Evil Mom's. Jennifer, though taken off guard by Evil Mom bursting in on her at that point, has sufficent wits to hang up the call (listen to the tell-tale bleep) before replying "Yes, Mother-in-law". Which leaves Seo Won with a shrewd idea that the listener was somewhere in the Kang mansion (and was also someone eligible to be ordered brusquely to "come here while I talk to you", though that covers everyone in that household now that the only person Evil Mom didn't dare boss around in that tone is now locked away elsewhere, and doesn't point especially to Jennifer, with Je Joon being a more likely suspect in Seo Won's eyes). This is confirmed in the later scene, at the advertising photoshoot, where Seo Won tells Soo Ji as they watch from the sidelines that he's set things in motion as she asked him to for Jennifer to be called in for questioning and fingerprinted on suspicion of maliciously causing Soo Ji's miscarriage, but repeats that he doesn't see any reason for suspecting there's anything hidden about her background.

In her dressing-room, Seo Won reveals to Ji Min  that his career is finished and he's going to have to resign before he's ignominiously fired, then asks her to run away with him to Australia [!] before he gets arrested. She contemptuously reminds him that she's now back on the road to major stardom again, so why would she run away with a loser like him? But at four o'clock that afternoon, Jennifer will release the dirt that will  bring Ji Min down as well.

The visit by Nam Joon and Je Joon to Hyeok Min's office (just after Seo Won, Hyoek Min and Evil Mom have all been given another dose of Kim Baek Chun's voice spilling the beans via Jennifer's impressive collection of disposable cellphones) is to inform him that in view of Hyeok Min's refusal to divorce Jennifer, the deal Je Joon had brokered is now off, and Taekang will get no investment or backing from Ji Soo's mother's company.

One other strand is that ex-detective Seo, aware of the gathering disaster on all sides, is trying to work out how best to hedge his bets. He tells the unconscious President he would like to stay loyal to him and protect him from his family, if only because he knows where he stands with him, since for all his viciousness he's able to make a deal and stick to it, whereas his son and wife are utterly unscrupulous and insanely unpredictable. But he fears the President may be a spent force, so he needs to rethink his position. The teaser for tomorrow shows him tailing Jennifer to a meeting with Je Joon, but being intercepted there by Seo Won's ex-assistant. We are meant to think that this means Seo is about to uncover the whole truth, but given his past form it may well be that even if he does so, he will try to cut a deal with the opposition if he thinks they're going to win.

mvibo comtinue to fail to update their episodes (now over a week behind). But youku have put on a spurt (following in showboom's footsteps) and after a hiatus in which jtbc seems to have been cracking the whip even with sites to which it had previously licensed the drama) and is now up to yesterday's episode on its c-subbed streams.

[Guest d0137]

Checking by chance and happy to "see"that Baduy is back  >-
I guess H Min might really end up in a "looney Farm" as an ironic End, still in love with Jennifer even after finding out she is Se Mi, kind of in denial and thinking they are not the same person lol...
@Auntie MameI am not violent or such either but watching some of these dramas i agree, yeah why not??"...spraying them with a machine gun" haha
)

[baduy]

Machine guns are so last century. Enter Shark and the deadly ballpoint pen. Lovely little exchange in tonight's episode. Killer advances on victim, clicking away. "I wish you'd stop clicking that thing!" stammers the victim through chattering teeth. "Oh well, if that's your only request..." says the killer amenably, and keeps on advancing.

[Guest d0137]

...yes SHARK's ballpoint pen idea is a good one for this drama's characters, quick and discrete one by one off they go to beg for forgiveness in hell!  >

[Auntie Mame]

Actually, I was going to suggest comparing the revenge schemes between Shark, Thorn Flower, Your Woman and Crazy Love. 

But, then, I got all confused between all the dramas.  8-}

However, I do know that the Ji Min, from Thorn Flower, Seon Yeong, from Your Woman and Na Young, from Crazy Love would make perfect playmates, for each other, on the looney farm.  They are nuts!  @-)

[baduy]

When you understand the dialogue, today's episode (97) proves to be more complicated than it looks on the surface.

Seo Won hasn't given up yet in his quest to get Ji Min for himself. He tells Hyeok Min that his assistant's vendetta was against him and his father, not the Kang family, so the Kangs needn't suffer through his downfall. Provided, that is, that before taking flight he destroys all the compromising information he has on the Kang family. He says he will do that if, and only if, Hyeok Min and his mother persuade Ji Min to leave her husband and run away with him. So today, and apparently tomorrow as well, Hyeok Min and Evil Mom make repeated attempts to do just that, driving Ji Min to even greater distraction.

Hyeok Min tells ex-detective Seo that whoever broke the scandal must have it in for Ji Min and her family as well as for Seo Won, and orders him to find out fast who that is. Seo asks Je Joon has he any idea of who Ji Min's secret enemy might be, and though he at once thinks of Se Mi / Jennifer, he keeps the thought to himself.

Soo Ji tells Nam Joon she's shortly going to meet Seo Won and is certain he'll have the fingerprint findings that will reveal who Jennifer really is. Alarmed, Nam Joon phones a warning to Jennifer, but she takes the news stoically, saying she always knew she'd be unmasked sooner or later and she's ready to withstand the blow if it comes through Soo Ji's persistence. (To take this call, Jennifer goes into the Soundproof but High Visibility Area of the mansion, and is duly spotted by Hyeok Min, one of several occasions in this and the previous episode where only Hyeok Min's tiny brain saves her from being found out).

Seon Yeong reveals to her sister-in-law that Jennifer has a favor to ask of her (and we flash back to the scene in yesterday's episode in the park with Eun Seok to find out what it is). Jennifer wants Nam Joon's mother to get help her gain possession of the  Kang vacation villa. She says, not for the first time, that she intends to bring her plans to their conclusion where everything started at that villa, and she needs someone to act the part of a rich purchaser, and Seon Yeong won't do because her face is too well known.  Nam Joon's mother doubts whether she's cut out for that sort of thing, but Seon Yeong reminds her that it will let her play her part in avenging her husband, so she finally agrees.

Je Joon sees Jennifer slipping out of the house yet again and follows her. She spots him on her tail, but pretends not to notice and carries on to a café where she's arranged to meet Seo Won's assistant. Meanwhile, Hyeok Min has realized Jennifer is missing yet again and sent Seo out to locate her. Looking out for Jennifer, Seo instead notices Seo Won's assistant and follows him towards the café, observed in his turn by Jennifer's aide, who phones a warning to her. Jennifer thereupon calls Seo Won's assistant and cancels their rendezvous because they're being observed. Instead, she tells him that he'll find Je Joon near the entrance, watching her, and she asks him to make himself known to Je Joon and make sure that Seo sees the two of them talking, which he duly does. By this means, Jennifer deflects Seo's suspicions on to Je Joon, convincing him he's in cahoots with Seo Won's assistant and is therefore the driving force behind Ji Min's disgrace. Seo promptly takes photos of Je Joon and Seo Won's assistant hobnobbing as evidence him that Je Joon is indeed the snake in the grass and despite his protestations of loyalty to his wife has actually engineered her downfall. (In the teaser for tomorrow, we see Hyeok Min showing his mother that same photo to convince her of the same thing). While Seo is spying on Je Joon, Jennifer escapes unnoticed.

[You might want to glug down a couple of bottles of those wonder brain tonics they're always advertising on Korean TV then read that para again. It would certainly baffle Hyeok Min].

But she has another near miss when Hyeok Min pounces as she sneaks back into the house, demanding to know where she's been this hour. She's ready for that one, however, explaining that recently she's been plagued by all sorts of pregnancy cravings, and keeps feeling the need to slip out of the house to satisfy them. This time it was for ice cream - and she brandishes the pack she's brought back with her.

Soo Ji has a rendezvous with Seo Won at the Only Bar in Town. She sympathizes with his plight and says she expects he won't have had time to do her the favor he promised her. At first he admits that he can't even recall what that favor was, but when she reminds him, he assures her that the police have checked Jennifer's fingerprints, and it's absolutely certain that she is not a Korean citizen. Her prints are on record nowhere, so she really must be what she claims to be. Soo Ji is incredulous, but declares she's still convinced Jennifer is a Korean with something serious to hide, and she's not going to give up investigating it.

Back at the mansion, apparently at the same time, Jennifer is returning a call from the police investigator she bribed to give the false fingerprint report to Soo Ji on the previous occasion. He tells her he's no longer a police officer. He's been fired, thanks to her, he says, ... for negligently destroying fingerprint records. We assume he's now after another large payoff, and the reason why Soo Ji drew a blank yet again becomes plain.

[Guest d0137]

Liked Jennifers trick...
errr why is Je Joon following Jennifer??H Min suspicion on him is well deserved, perhaps he will learn the truth through that....is is still slow in his brain and by suspecting it was Se Mi/Jennifer he wants to stop her to protect his beloved new family?? Instead he should investigate further his family and open his blinded eyes ... 
Auntie Mame is right about the Evil women in dramas, they should have a scene where characters from one drama meet characters from other dramas in a looney ward as a finale episode so that the audience is ensured they are still locked up since their drama finales and not on the loose to play their dirty tricks or kill anyone  ...  Soo Ji should join them there even if she is not as bad but her obsession for H Min who stepped all over her for his new love is a little too much ...